Remember When Neil Young Dabbled in an Arthouse Film, Inspiring David Lynch and Tim Burton?

In 2018, Neil Young said the sci-fi novel he was working on was a “f***in’ mess.” Four decades earlier, he was probably saying the same thing about the art-house film he was making with $3 million of his own money, a ragtag team of actors in varying degrees of addiction, and the ever-weird Booji Boy in tow.

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Human Highway is technically a comedy, but it feels more like a heavy shroom trip where you find yourself laughing but don’t really know why—which, of course, only makes you laugh harder. The movie centered on a gas station diner just before the nuclear apocalypse ends the world. Young plays two different characters alongside (actual) actors, like Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell.

The set looks uncanny in a hyperrealistic, but still artificial kind of way. The costumes are gaudy. Devo is inexplicably walking around as a radiation clean-up crew. “It was ridiculous to explain it, and we had no script,” Young later said.

Still, Neil Young’s Influence in Film Should Not Be Downplayed

While Human Highway certainly sounds like one of many odd rabbit holes Neil Young has jumped down throughout his career, it serves as an important reminder that the singer-songwriter is influential in more ways than just music. And indeed, that’s really saying something, considering he was laying the groundwork for grunge music before grunge was even a thing. Not to mention his many decade- and genre-defining tracks, like “Heart Of Gold”, “Ohio”, and “Old Man”.

On top of all of that, Young helped usher in a new kind of artistic expression in his arthouse film. One can clearly draw a line between Human Highway and the later works of David Lynch, and not just because some of the same characters appear in both directors’ works. The deadpan delivery, unsettling realism, and eccentric otherworldliness also helped inspire the likes of Tim Burton.

As is often the case in the wackier corners of the film world, Human Highway didn’t perform well in the commercial sense of the word. The off-the-wall comedy was definitely not made for mainstream consumption. Still, that only helped boost its street cred as a cult classic in the years that followed.

Young spoke ahead of a screening of Human Highway at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival, explaining that the film was about the importance of focusing on the big picture. He said the film’s characters had a “complacency,” saying, “things that were weird, they just lived with. They just kept ignoring and ignoring until finally, it just couldn’t be ignored anymore.”

Much like Booji Boy, anytime he appeared on screen.

Photo by © Caterine Milinaire/Sygma via Getty Images