(9 of 10)
She has reduced her weight ("I like to feel close to the bone"), and her lifestyle. The haute-couture frocks have been exchanged for thrift-shop goods. French cooking has given way to health foods, plus occasional side orders of hash. Her father owns a Bentley, a Mercedes and a Thunderbird. Peter is a bike freak. Jane owns no car and does not drive.
In the '70s, the daughter will dominate the screen far more successfully than the father did in the '30s, '40s, '50s or '60s. Her bony body and lean, clean features can attack grin or grim pictures with equal ease. She has performed in period, contemporary and science fiction with total facility. Her speech still smacks of elocution lessons, but her throat thrums with conviction.
She is all by herself, a vindication of the maligned Method acting that Henry puts down as "crap."
Waiting Out the Rain Even so, she may not be the greatest Fonda. It has taken Peter the longest to establish priorities, to coincide his in- telligence and his energy. He still guns his emotional engine too loud, and the exhaust from his pronunciamentos of ten obscures the man. "Peter has made a career of not being repressed," says Susan Blanchard. But the career has gone from bullying waste to something measurable. His scenario for Easy Rider was sometimes self-indulgent. Its villains were as exaggerated and snarling as the overdrawn wrongos of his Dad's old oaters, and its bloody ending reminiscent of the Emperor Nero's desire to attend his own funeral. Today Peter has evolved an elaborate ambiguity to justify its action-comic wanderers, Wyatt and Billy, and the mindless violence of their redneck antagonists. "Dennis Hopper and I represent a complete misunderstanding of what freedom's all about," he claims. "Both concepts are untenable, whether it's scoring and wanting to retire to Florida and ride around on your chopper, or whether it's just making money off of people."
The family belligerent has turned his hostility outward—toward the System. He has established a modest production office—where he arrives anonymously in a Volkswagen. His movie company, Pando, forbids the word star. "We have other words that concern us," he boasts. "We will make documentary films designed to overthrow the church, Mom, Dad and fashion in general." Such projects are unlikely to feature Henry—and possibly not even Jane. But then the family similarity is marbled with varied outlooks and insights. They are not yet the new Barrymores. "We're not a theatrical family," insists Peter. "Someone else may think of us like that, but my father is Henry Fonda, a peculiar, incredible person on his own. My sister is Jane Fonda, but she could be Jane Seymour, see, and she on her own is incredible. And I'm Peter Fonda. I could be Peter Henry and still be doing my number."