Sure that what they were doing was seminal, they decided to film themselves. Unfortunately, they were tripping so much during their trip that they didn’t bother to learn how to use the camera or sound equipment, leaving the resulting footage unusable. This documentary is the result of years of painstaking work to correct their mistakes, sync up the sound and edit together something coherent. It’s a strange documentary – not quite the film they wanted to make at the time and not quite a full retrospective analysis of why the events were important.
Certainly it is very interesting to see the journey in colour, and hear from the people involved, even if most of it isn’t exactly riveting. The group were an odd bunch, the oddest by far being Neal Cassady, otherwise known as Dean Moriarty from On The Road. The whole enterprise was a homage to Kerouac, and having Neal on board was a living link to that past. As anyone who has read On The Road will testify, Cassady was never the most stable of souls. That the Pranksters let this speed freak drive the bus shows that they weren’t exactly in their right minds.
The film cuts back and forth across time, showing how the clean-cut college boy Kesey ended up leading the acid movement. In one of the most fascinating sequences, we hear the actual recording of his first ever acid trip, part of the CIA’s LSD experiments. We also see snapshots of life after the bus trip and his eventual disillusion with the movement he kick-started.
For those interested in the period, this is essential viewing. For those who are not in the know, this is likely to be a confusing watch.
N.B. A little niggle I had watching the film – why did they use the font Comic Sans for the subtitles? I’m sure it’s because they wanted to keep the film non-serious to match up with the footage, but it just looks very unprofessional.
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