Classic Song Chronicles: Kris Kristofferson’s "Help Me Make it Through the Night"

Simultaneously erotic, lonely and altogether heartbreaking, Kris Kristofferson’s landmark “Help Me Make it Through the Night” has been recorded by hundreds of major artists ranging from Kris himself, to Johnny Cash, to Gladys Knight, to Elvis Presley.
The legendary and influential singer song-writer wrote the song in a highly unusual place, as Kristofferson recalled in the essential book on Elvis Presley songwriters, "Writing for the King" with, “I wrote the song when I was still flying petroleum helicopters out in the Gulf of Mexico. I wrote it out there on one of those lonely oil rigs where we lived at for a week at a time. It was a good way to deal with the loneliness out there…” It is that loneliness that comes through the most in the song’s haunting lyrics of a man so desperate for a night of human contact that he is literally willing to ‘let the devil take tomorrow’ for it.
Kris’ version first appeared on his seminal self-titled 1970 album that would alert the world to his considerable skills as an interpreter of his own material. "Help Me Make it Through the Night", ironically and controversially, first became a hit for a woman when country singer Sammi Smith recorded it for her album named after the song also in 1970. Smith’s version was a smash hit and landed at number one across the country charts and was seen as a major leap forward for many conservatively minded radio stations and listeners, as it helped correlate country music with the sexual revolution that was sweeping the country in the early seventies.



Kristofferson’s favorite version of the song was recorded shortly after Smith’s when Elvis Presley recorded a splendidly laid back and chillingly heartfelt take in
1971. Kris said of Elvis in "Writing For The King" that, “I found out that Elvis recorded it when I was on the road” and that even though “all my heroes were recording my stuff” that “To have Elvis record your song was amazing.” Kris recalled the first time he heard Elvis’ eerie take later with, “I was in Bob Beckham’s office at Combine Music in Nashville when I first heard Elvis’ version of "Help Me Make it Through the Night", We played it and it was just like being at church…the fact that it was Elvis singing your song was an honor…I like everything that Elvis did. I just liked his approach.” Not totally sure why Elvis picked the song, Kris finally decided that, “Certainly it’s a situation he could have identified with. I mean, 'Help me make it through the night', I’m sure he could have identified with that emotion.”



The song became one of the most recorded of the seventies and appealed to country, pop, soul and rock fans. It even appealed to director John Huston, who used it to great effect in his 1972 feature Fat City, a film in which Kris appeared.
Some of the most notable version include this wonderful rendering by Gladys Knight and the Pips for the mid seventies:



And here is Johnny and June Cash singing the song famously as a duet:



Kris himself has continued to make the song a staple of his own live shows and this performance of it on the Old Grey Whistle Test with Rita Coolidge remains a particular favorite:



A humorous anecdote about the song came out recently courtesy of Criterion’s excellent Two Lane Blacktop set, on which director Monte Hellman interviews Kris. Kris recalled that during Bob Dylan’s recording session of his legendary Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Soundtrack, a film in which Kris starred as The Kid, director Sam Peckinpah drunkenly interrupted it one night telling Dylan he wished he would stop what he was doing and lay down something like “Help Me Make it Through the Night.”
Despite all of the versions, Kris seems to remain proudest of Presley’s and would say in Writing for the King that, “It’s one of the highlights for me to have had Elvis cut one of my songs…I would have never dreamed that Elvis would sing one of my songs (and) with so much soul. I feel a lot of gratitude for that.” Elvis would record two other Kris Kristofferon songs in the seventies, “For the Good Times” and “Why Me Lord” before his untimely death in 1977. The mind boggles at the kind of collaborative work the two could have done as songwriter and interpreter had things worked out differently.

A Showdown With Dean Martin and Rock Hudson

Even though it contains the only screen teaming between two of the biggest stars in Hollywood history, George Seaton's 1973 feature SHOWDOWN has been largely forgotten. Starring Dean Martin and Rock Hudson, SHOWDOWN has been unjustly neglected since it opened and closed quickly back in June of 1973.
Seaton had been directing since the mid forties when he shot SHOWDOWN in 1972, and it would turn out to be his final feature film as director. A talented, if undervalued director, Seaton is probably most famous for the original version of MIRACLE ON 34th STREET. Other credits include the searing Clifford Odets adaptation, THE COUNTRY GIRL, the charming TEACHER'S PET and the best picture winning AIRPORT. A two time Oscar winner, Seaton would sadly die of cancer just a few years after finishing SHOWDOWN.
SHOWDOWN would mark one of the last major appearances by Dean Martin, who was said to be unhappy during the shoot due to the death of his favorite horse. SHOWDOWN also marked an end to the great Rock Hudson's prolific run of films that had started in the fifties and he would just work sporadically after 1973.
SHOWDOWN was a bit out of step for the early seventies. Directors like Sam Peckinpah and Monte Hellman had totally transformed the American Western and the fairly subdued and elegiac SHOWDOWN didn't stand much of a chance in mid 1973.
Seaton's film tells the fairly simple story of two men, Chuck and Billy, who grew up together but went very separate ways in their lives. Rock Hudson's Chuck settled down and became a lawman while Martin's Billy chose a life of crime. It is a story that had been told a countless number of times before and since but there is something so weary and sad about SHOWDOWN that I think it stands apart from them.
With it lovely, and at times, haunting score by David Shire and wisely shot 2.35 compositions, SHOWDOWN is a very effective film throughout it's fairly short running time of 99 minutes. There is something positively epic in this little film about two friends who chose the most different of lives but never stopped caring for each other or forgot where they came from.
The acting is fine throughout with Martin and Hudson surrounded by many top tier character actors including Donald Moffat and Ed Begley, Jr. in a smaller role. Susan Clark does a good job as Chuck's wife Kate but I always think of Tuesday Weld when I watch the film and can only imagine the multi-layered performance she would have given in the part. Hudson is at the top of his game here, middle aged and exhausted looking but still beautiful. He does a brilliant job at playing a man who has a job to do that he knows will ultimately ask him to make the hardest decision of his life. Martin is excellent as well and it is a performance that improves as the film goes along. At first it appears Dean will be giving one of his patented comic and winking performances but he does some really remarkable heavy dramatic work here as a man who knows what his destiny holds and that there isn't any escape from it.
Shot by prolific cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo, SHOWDOWN is gorgeous to look at and his photography is particularly good in the films many flashback scenes to the boys youth, when they were the closest of friends.

SHOWDOWN isn't perfect, I don't think that anyone working on it realized that they had what was close to being a really great film on their hands. It could do with being about thirty minutes longer as more characterization is needed, especially with Kate and Chuck. It feels edited a bit tight also, although the cutting by DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER editor John W. Holmes is mostly well done throughout. SHOWDOWN feels like a film that the studio expected to fail but that somewhere along the way, Seaton and crew realized they might have a winner on their hands. I think had that thought been there at the beginning, SHOWDOWN would have turned out to be a small masterpiece. As it is, it is a solid and moving good film with more great moments than anyone might expect.
SHOWDOWN does indeed reach greatness in its final few minutes where we see both men reaching their individual destinies. There is a particular flashback scene and a line speaking of "the world spitting at you" that brings a tear to my eye every time I watch the film and the look on Rock Hudson's face at the end of this movie is the work of a master giving one of his last truly great performances.
SHOWDOWN would open and close quickly with very little critical or popular attention given to it. For most in the Summer of 1973, it was a product of a time that had slipped away. Ironically it was about two men who themselves were living in a world that had passed them by. SHOWDOWN would appear briefly on VHS in the mid nineties but has never been released on DVD. It is currently missing in action and is rarely mentioned in film circles.

SHOWDOWN reminds me of some of Jean-Pierre Melville's films. It, of course, doesn't achieve the greatness of Melville but in its own small way it has some of the same emotional resonance as the great French master's films.
Late in his life, Dean Martin was said to get great pleasure from watching old westerns on tv. I often think about the lovely man, sitting in his chair smoking, with perhaps a drink, and watching the flickering memories of his youth. I sometimes wonder if he ever happened to stumble across SHOWDOWN during one of those Western marathons he so enjoyed. Would he have flipped quickly by or would he have stopped, if only for a brief moment, and smiled at a film that is a lot better than anybody has ever given it credit for? There is no telling, we lost Dean as well as Rock years ago and I suppose in a way it is fitting, even if it is unjust, that SHOWDOWN has in its own way all but been lost to time also.

Watch Closely Now: Kris Kristofferson on Screen in the Seventies

There’s a moment towards the end of Frank Pierson’s often maligned 1976 big budget remake of A Star is Born that plays over and over in my head like the fragments of a favorite song or the memory of a long lost lover never to be seen again. It’s the bit where the aging and defeated rock star John Norman Howard is flying down his last lonely highway on the way to oblivion. While the scene is expertly handled in everyway possible, it isn’t the music, editing or direction that gets me but it is unbelievably moving way that Howard keeps glancing at his reflection in his rearview mirror as he tears down the road faster and faster. It's a remarkable moment and what really makes it great is the actor behind the wheel perfectly portraying all of the lonliness and frustration of a man well past his limit.



While I have celebrated the music of Texas born Kris Kristofferson here before, I haven’t really paid tribute to the fact that the man is one of my favorite actors as well. Kris has now been acting for more than forty years and he’s proven himself more than capable in any kind of role imaginable. He’s become one of America’s most dependable character actors but there was a period in the seventies where he was also one of the big screens great leading men. Projecting a potent mixture of vulnerability and ruggedness that has always separated him from his peers, Kris Kristofferson’s value as an actor has often been overlooked but his best wrork resonates and is ripe for rediscovery.
Before he was seen on the big screen Kris Kristofferson was heard, and his legendary voice and songwriting skills have played a major part in his film career. There is just something downright musical about the guy and his best roles as an actor reflect this. Before being considered as serious material as an actor, filmmakers like Tom Stern, Dennis Hopper and Monte Hellman incorporated Kris' songs and sound into their work, and Kristofferson’s distinctive view of America is stamped all over works like The Last Movie and Two Lane Blacktop.
After proving himself incredibly charismatic on the small screen in the early seventies, Kris Kristofferson made his feature-length debut in Dennis Hopper’s legendary The Last Movie in 1971. Billed as one of the ‘Minstrel Wranglers’ and just appearing briefly, Kris could have made it a one-off but he had ambitions that stretched beyond the black vinyl grooves his name was already stamped on. It would take just a year for those cinematic ambitions to come to fruition.



Kristofferson’s first starring role did indeed come in 1972 opposite acting heavyweight Gene Hackman in the very intriguing and undervalued Cisco Pike for director Bill L. Norton. This strange but effective film featuring Kris and Gene along with Harry Dean Stanton, Karen Black and Viva immediately shows Kristofferson as a force to be reckoned with. Remarkably natural and poised on the screen, Kris proved himself as and actor to watch with star power in Cisco Pike.
Among the filmmakers who took notice of Kristofferson’s early screen work was Sam Peckinpah, a director whose films reflected the bruised and wearied worldview of many of Kris’ greatest songs. Peckinpah gave Kris one of his greatest roles in the beautiful and unforgettable Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. While the way the film was handled by the studio was tragic, Kris’ moving performance as the kid was a triumph in any version and it remains one of the seventies most iconic and haunting turns in front of the camera.



Had Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid been released with Peckinpah’s original vision completely intact, the film career of Kris Kristofferson would have gone ever further than it did. The film seemed to cement Kris as a talented actor customed made for director’s more personal and often less commercial visions. Such was the case with Paul Mazursky’s flawed but valuable Blume in Love, a film that hinted at Kris potential as a possible romantic lead.



After his brief but menacing moments in Peckinpah’s Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Kris would deliver one of his most effective performances in Martin Scorsese’s surprising and heartfelt drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974. Holding his own with powerhouse Ellen Burstyn, Kris once again proved himself as an actor capable of delivering a performance as nuanced and skilled as his more experienced and trained costars.
After his marriage to Rita Coolidge just before Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Kris took a break from his film career to refocus on his music. He would return in 1976 with a whopping three films, two of which would prove to be among the most important and controversial of his career.
Ironically of the three films he starred in in 1976, it is the lesser of the three that would have perhaps the biggest impact on his later career. George Armitage’s enetertaining but less than stellar Vigilante Force might have been a failure critically and commercially but it planted the seed for later works like Semi-Tough and Songwriter, films that seeked to capitalize on Kris’ status as a ‘country icon’. Much more interesting though was the film that opened 1976 for Kris Kristofferson, an erotic drama adapted from a famed Japanese novel by Yukio Mishima.



Overshadowed by a steamy Playboy spread featuring Kris and costar Sarah Miles used to promote the film, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea is a strange and eerie work that was pulverized critical upon its release and has never really found its audience. It’s an interesting if flawed work though and Kris is mesmerizing as the complicated lead Jim Cameron. While both The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea and Vigilante Force failed to make much of an impact, Kris’ third film in 1976 would prove to be the biggest hit of his career.
While it is hard to imagine anyone else as John Norman Howard in the still exciting and wonderfully overdone 1976 version of A Star is Born, star, composer and producer Barbra Streisand had originally wanted and pursued Elvis Presley for the role Kris Kristofferson would eventually fill. After Presley turned down the plum role of the boozing and aging rock star in the midst of a spiritual crisis, Streisand offered the role to Kristofferson and he turned out to be the perfect choice for the uber-talented singer. Kristofferson actually steals the film from Streisand and it remains my favorite performance by the man, a powerful and beautiful turn that is simultaneously tragic and triumphant.



A Star is Born would prove to be the mega-hit that had evaded Kris up until that point and its soundtrack would musically be his biggest seller as well. For his work, Kris would win the Golden Globe as best actor but both he and fellow winner Streisand were ignored at the Oscars. Sadly though the film wouldn’t immediately lead Kris Kristofferson to greater roles as both Semi-Tough and Convoy were disappointing despite the talent involved in front of and behind the cameras. As the seventies came to a close, Kris Kristofferson’s career on the big screen had lost its momentum but there would be one more film that would prove to be both his biggest disaster and most powerful moment.



While it was released in 1980, Michael Cimino’s absolutely masterful and unforgettable Heaven’s Gate is very much a film from the seventies. Along with Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Heaven’s Gate can be looked upon as the last movie of the seventies, and it is fitting that Kris would close the decade with it considering that he had opened the decade with a similarly controversial work.
Heaven’s Gate is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen and Kris Kristofferson’s unfairly maligned performance as James Averill is extraordinary. Kris would later recall the irony in the fact that it would take a role in a film that he had believed in to ruin his career, which is precisely what Cimino’s powerful epic did.
Kris had already filmed Alan Pakula’s disappointing 1981 film Rollover with Jane Fonda when he was all but blackballed in Hollywood due to his involvement with Cimino and Heaven’s Gate. He would return his focus to his musical career but that lanscape had sadly changed as well and there was little room for someone as intelligent and challenging as Kris Kristofferson.
Kris Kristofferson would return to the screen in the mid eighties but the films would prove to be typically not worthy of his considerable talents. He would continue on though and would finally become one of America’s most dependable character actors, even though ultimately he was deserving of much more.



When I think about the film career of Kris Kristofferson in the seventies, I am always reminded of Heaven’s Gate famous promotional tagline, “What one loves about life are the things that fade.” Indeed, Kris Kristofferson’s place as one of Hollywood’s most distinctive leading men has very much faded but for many, myself included, the memory of it remains. To paraphrase another famous quote from a film that bears the iconic Kristofferson stamp, the satisfactions of Kris Kristofferson's film career in the seventies are permanent.

My Favorite Closing Shots: Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

Take it as a major tribute to my love affair with Two-Lane Blacktop that it is just the second film in this series that I have broken my own rule of just capturing ten stills.

Also, I have recently started using a new program grabbing my stills that allows me to capture them without having to do any editing. However this program does, on certain DVDs, retain the black bars in the frames. Please let me know if this in anyone takes away from the quality of the presentation, as I want to keep Moon in the Gutter as visually pleasing as possible (especially right now in this period where I can't write as much as I like). Thanks!