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Human Highway is a 1982 comedy film starring and co-directed by Neil Young under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey. Dean Stockwell co-directed the film and acted along with Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, and the band Devo.
Devo appears several times, Booji Boy appears throughout and Mark contributed instrumental background music. Also included is a collaborative performance of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" by Devo and Young with Booji Boy singing lead vocals and Young playing lead guitar.[1]
Gerald V. Casale filmed the segment where Devo and Booji Boy appear as "nuclear garbagepersons" and sing a cover of "Worried Man."[2] (This segment appears in We're All DEVO, with short cutaways to Rod and Donut Rooter replacing the film's cutaways from Devo.) Booji also appears by himself, such as the (chronologically last) scene where he performs a monologue, quoting from his book My Struggle.
The official movie debut was announced June 1983.[3]
Versions of the film were shown in select theaters in 1982 and 1983 and released in LaserDisc and VHS formats in 1995. Events in the 1995 release occur in chronological order, except for the first scene, a  flash-forward featuring Booji.  The film received poor reviews upon its premiere 1 and has received favorable reviews more recently. 2 In 2015 a 4th edit of the film was released in theaters and on video, after it premiered in 2014.[4] Jerry likes this edit the best.[5]

References

  1. Neil Young. Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream. New York: Blue Rider Press, 2012. pg214.
    ”It was a wild time. Devo and I were doing ‘Out of the Blue’ in the studio and a lot of stuff from Trans on the radio, plus Devo’s performance of ‘Worried Man,’ the Kingston Trio classic. There was a lot of Devo in Human Highway; they contributed three performances. Add to that some of the off-the-wall scoring things we did with Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and I am sure we will have something very memorable for the sound track.

  2. Dan Bailey. [Interview with Gerald V. Casale at Gramercy Park Hotel, New York City at 5AM] (1988, November 21).©1990.

    Dan: Tell me about your first meeting with Neil Young.
    Jerry: It was a chance meeting actually. Dean Stockwell the actor who has now gained a renewed career and fame through movies like “Blue Velvet” ...he was friends with Dennis Hopper and he and a woman named Toni Basil brought Neil to see us in L.A.
    Neil liked us very much and he championed our cause in the early days when we were just an underground club cult band.
    He asked us to come up to San Francisco and do a bit in a movie that he was trying to make called “The Human Highway.” He let me direct a five minute segment which he subsequently cut-up and strewn throughout the movie to try to give it some kind of running gag or continuity. We recorded with him in a studio up there called Different Fur Studios our own version of “My my ..Hey hey ..Into the Black” which showed up in the movie.
    ...In “Human Highway”, we sang “Worried Man”, an old Kingston Trio song and we did our own version of it which I directed.


  3. Colin Penno. "Neil Young's Movie HUMAN HIGHWAY: A Bold, Brave, and Zany Look into the Future with Music by Neil Young and DEVO". Topanga Messenger, Volume 7, Number 11, 1983, June 2.
    cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=TM19830602.2.17
    https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=TM19830602.2.17&srpos=2&e=-------en--20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22human+highway%22+devo-------

    “...HUMAN HIGHWAY, a futuristic movie five years in the making which will debut with its world premiere at 7:30 p.m. Thursday June 9 at Mann’s Bruin Theater in Westwood.”

  4. Captioned photograph. "Actress Charlotte Stewart , singer Neil Young and musician Gerald Casale attend the 'Human Highway' premiere during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival…" Getty Images. https://web.archive.org/web/20240529211330/https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actress-charlotte-stewart-singer-neil-young-and-musician-news-photo/455223298

  5. John Anderson. "Neil Young’s ‘Human Highway’ Finally Hits Theaters Decades Later." New York Times, 2015, April 9.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20150413035431/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/movies/neil-youngs-human-highway-finally-hits-theaters-decades-later.html

External Links

Human Highway (1982) -- IMDb
Human Highway (1982) -- allmovie
Human Highway -- Wikipedia
DEVO
Mark Mothersbaugh | Gerry Casale | Bob Mothersbaugh
Bob Lewis | Bob Casale | Jim Mothersbaugh | Alan Myers
David Kendrick | Josh Freese
Jeff Friedl | Josh Hager
Record Labels / Publishers
Booji Boy Records | Warner Brothers | Enigma | Devo, Inc. 
Stiff | Virgin | Rykodisk | Infinite Zero | Restless | Discovery | Rhino 
MVD Audio | The Orchard | Superior Viaduct | Futurismo
Production
Brian Eno | Ken Scott | Robert Margouleff | Roy Thomas Baker | DEVO 
The Teddybears | Greg Kurstin | Santi White | John King | John Hill | Mark Nishita 
Official Studio Albums
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978) | Duty Now For The Future (1979) | Freedom of Choice (1980) | New Traditionalists (1981) | oh, no! it's Devo (1982) | Shout (1984) | Total Devo (1988) | SmoothNoodleMaps (1990) | Something for Everybody   (2010)
Other Albums
B Stiff EP (1978) | E-Z Listening Disc (1987) | Now It Can Be Told: DEVO at the Palace (1989) | Hardcore DEVO Vol. 1 74-77 (1990) | Hardcore DEVO Vol. 2 1974-1977 (1991) | DEVO Live: The Mongoloid Years (1992) | DEV-O Live (1999) | Recombo DNA (2000) | Live In Central Park (2004) | DEVO Live 1980 (2005) | New Traditionalists: Live 1981 Seattle (2012) | Something ELSE for Everybody  (2013) | Miracle Witness Hour  (2014) | Live at Max's Kansas City - November 15, 1977  (2014) | Butch Devo and the Sundance Gig  (2014) | Hardcore DEVO Live!  (2015) | Art Devo 1973-1977  (2023)
Filmography
In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution (1976) | The Men Who Make The Music (1981) | Human Highway (1982) | We're All DEVO (1984) | The Complete Truth About De-Evolution (1993) | DEVO Live (2004) | DEVO Live In The Land Of The Rising Sun (2004) | DEVO Live 1980 (2005) | Butch Devo and the Sundance Gig  (2014) | Hardcore DEVO Live!  (2015)
Related Articles
History | Bootlegs | Booji Boy | Devolution | Influence | The Wipeouters | Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers | Devo 2.0 | Akron, Ohio | Kent, Ohio | Music Videos | Cover Versions | Outfits

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