Brianland

Here’s part of the script I’ll be riffing from when I introduce the movie “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac on Sunday October 13th.  

Edit Update  —  Here’s video of the event . . .

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Here’s the post-screening Q&A . . .

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This is the original Merry Prankster Bus Trip footage finally turned into a theatrically released film.

This is a GREAT movie —

I first saw it at its premiere at TIFF — the Toronto International Film Festival

and also watched it with Carolyn Cassady at her house.

Made by Alex Gibney — who WON the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2008 for Taxi to the Dark Side (about U.S. interrogation techniques in Afghanistan)

and co-directed by Alison Ellwood — Gibney’s long-time editor who was kicked up to director.

* This is a MASTERPIECE of editing — both video and audio.  Watch for it.  Blending of historical footage with Prankster footage.

Interestingly — the guy who made the greatest Beat doc The Source

made by Chuck Workman who is an editor so

the best Beat doc and the best Prankster both made by Master editors

Great directors often have editors they work with and create together on every film.

Scorsese & Thelma Schoonmaker  —  Tarantino & Sally Menke

Gibney also made —  * Gonzo (2008 Hunter Thompson doc)

Kerouac was to the ’50s  —  what Kesey was to the ’60s  —  Thompson was to the ’70s

Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room — nominated for Best Documentary Feature

The Rolling Stones: Stories From The Edge

narrated by Stanley Tucci — friends with Alex Gibney

Point #1 — the movie includes footage of the last time Jack & Neal ever saw each other — Sunday, June 28th, 1964 — thanks to Neal’s friends The Merry Pranksters.  It appears 1 hour into the movie.

Tonight you’re going to see more film footage of Neal Cassady than you’ve ever seen in your life.

There’s actually even more live footage of Neal synched to his audio in the Prankster version — “North To Madhattan” — including a couple more mins from the NY party with Jack.

Three Keseys on the Bus — Ken, his brother Chuck and his musician cousin Dale.

#2 — both Kesey and the filmmakers point out how important Jack Kerouac was to what they were doing — including going On The Road.

Fun Tip — at around 34 mins — when they’re talking about Sometimes a Great Notion — they show the back cover — and there’s Kerouac’s quote!

“This guy Ken Kesey is really very good!  A great new American novelist.”  (!)

They went to NY in part to do press for Notion but he did none! 

#3 — Original Prankster George Walker is going to join us via Zoom after the movie if his internet is working.

There’s TONS of George in this film — from beginning to end.

When they show somebody leaning over into the Bus engine — that’s George.

Prankster saying “On the Bus or off the Bus.”

Kesey said of George “He’s either On the Bus   or Under the Bus.”  

When they introduce Jerry Garcia late in the movie — he standing right beside George.

When they show somebody leaning over into the Bus engine — that’s George.

*  Clue in early to what he looks like – his blond-ish hair — clean shaven, great smile, movie star handsome face — and his voice — he’s in virtually every scene —

and his voice — TONS of him narrating the action

and you can ask him questions when it’s over

George & I did “Jack & Neal Ride Again” at LCK in 2017.

George’s Prankster name was HARDLY Visible — but he’s HIGHLY visible in this film!

George was the only mechanic on the Bus. Without him they wouldn’t have gotten out of California.

Cassady couldn’t fix anything to save his life.  Tell story about broken down cars at Bancroft house in Los Gatos.

And speaking of names — don’t miss the sign “NEAL GETS THINGS DONE” on the front windshield.

The Pranksters said and wrote that about Neal in 1964 . . . and his wife Carolyn say that about me in 1994.

Funny story of me seeing it on the screen at TIFF — and “Did I just see that?!” got to Carolyn’s, watched it, hit pause — “That’s what it says!!”

Neither of us could believe it.

#4 — I’m gonna talk more about the film than the Pranksters cuz this is a film event —
but they were the first band of counter-culture experimental Life-as-art people who spawned the Grateful Dead — and things like The Living Theater and the bright colors of a just a few years later.

Because of The Bus — The Who wrote Magic Bus, The Beatles did their Magical Mystery Tour, and when network TV tried to capitalize on the idea of a family of musicians called The Partridge Family in 1970 — they put them in a painted school bus!

Time Magazine — the most famous bus in history.

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The Film:

Made from 30 hours of 16mm film like Pull My Daisy was shot 5 years earlier.

with no sound, which had to be painstakingly matched up from original audio tapes. 

Stanley Tucci will explain some of this in the opening of the movie.

It took 6 years to restore and synch up footage.

The Scorsese-led Film Foundation funded the repair the footage using technicians from UCLA.

Kesey & Babbs’ Intrepid Trips finally made their version of this in the ’90s

           2 parts — “Journey To The East”
and “North To Madhattan”

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SUPER Psychedelic Graphics

Watch for the different psychedelic graphics — used many times in the film — particularly BEAUTIFULLY — the opening graphics you’ll soon see —

and over the recording of Kesey’s acid trip when he first took it under medical supervision

— and the acid trip when stuck in mud in Wikieup

— and the crumpled postcards unfolding into title-card locations.

Artwork in the film was directly inspired from Ken Kesey’s Jail Journals.

The directors hired Imaginary Forces animation house to create acid effects.

They do the graphic effects for the Paris Olympics, the Emmy Awards, the movies Dune, Mission Impossible, the Transformers movies,
and  Mad Men  and Boardwalk Empire

and they succeed in creating acid trip-like visuals better than pretty much anything else I’ve seen in a film.

Got approval of Pranksters at private screening in Eugene.

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Narration by Actors

Four of the narrations you’ll hear are read from the John Teton interview transcripts done in the mid-’70s by actors — particularly for  Gretchen Fetchin, Zonker, Stark Naked and Jane Burton — because the original audio was either lost or useable — but they had the typed transcripts.

all top voice actors — Veronica Taylor (Jane Burton) 229 film credits

But all the other voices are real — Kesey, Cassady, Babbs, George Walker

Ethan Hawke did this with his 2022 Paul Newman documentary “The Last Movie Stars” using different actors’ reading interview transcripts.

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Larry McMurtry

50 mins into the movie they get to Houston —

same advanced writing class at Stanford 1960 – Malcom Cowley teaching!

around the time he was writing The Last Picture Show —
made into a hit movie by Peter Bogdanovich —
Timothy Buttons — and Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd’s first films

— and years before he would write Lonesome Dove and Terms of Endearment etc.

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Robert Stone’s voice appears when they get to NY an hour in.

Friend of Kesey’s from early days — visited in Mexico when Kesey hiding out.

That’s him in the white shirt playing a drum at the NY party.

He wrote Dog Soldiers which won the National Book Award for Fiction

He wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation Who’ll Stop The Rain

features Nick Nolte in a very Neal Cassady-like role —

in fact it was the role he played immediately before playing Cassady in Heart Beat.

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Also, watch for Gene Wilder’s name playing Billy Bibbit in the credits for Cuckoo’s Nest on Broadway along with Kirk Douglas as McMurphy.

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Some of the Kesey interview clips you hear are from a 1989 interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air on NPR.

Probably the best interviewer we have in America these last many decades — and here’s Exhibit A

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The Grateful Dead / Warlocks

Neat little tidbit — when the Dead appear during the Acid Test segments late in the film — it’s mid-1965 when they were still The Warlocks — didn’t become the Dead until November — and the filmmakers wanted to stay accurate — so they use Warlocks pre-Dead live recordings. “Mindbender” and “Can’t Come Down“

You also get nice Morning Dew, Brokedown Palace and Truckin.

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* Birth of Documentary Films

Important to know the context of the filmmaking time —

George talks about waves —

This was a wave of filmmaking innovation that changed documentary filmmaking forever.

The was The Birth of modern documentary filmmaking.

Robert Drew — Alfred & David Maysles — D.A. Pennebaker — and friend of Jack’s Robert Frank & others — all of them in Manhattan.

Pull My Daisy was shot silent — all the audio was in a recording studio.
Shot Jan thru April — first screen at MOMA in May ’59

Robert Drew & the Maysles shot Primary about the Kennedy campaign in April 1960 — first documentary film to use audio connected to the camera.  Pennebaker also worked on it.

Penny & the Maysles understood the problem of synching up live sound to footage shot in the field — and they each independently invented ways of hooking up a reel-to-reel to a camera.

Problem was reel-to-reels were huge machines at the time — you’ll see a couple of them inside the bus — these were not mobile units.

Then some were made for remote audio recordings — but they were never intended to be hooked up to cameras.

Great picture of Pennebaker filming Don’t Look Back wearing a top hat looking thru the lens of a 16mm camera on his shoulder with probably the smallest reel-to-reel he could find hanging on his other shoulder.

Penny’s homemade cameras were like black square metal breadboxes — he take part from other cameras to build in the metal box.

And these cutting-edge filmmakers were capturing the cutting edge of society — Maysles making doc of The Beatles arrive and 1964 tour — Penny filming Dylan’s tour in England in 1965 that became Don’t Look Back.

And here’s the Pranksters filming their own cutting edge.

But didn’t know the first thing about filmmaking.

The directors said on the commentary that in all the 20-30 hours of footage they used a clapper-board to synch things up ONCE. 🙂

And then they immediately stopped shooting right after. 😀

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Here’s the evening’s special guest George Walker recounting how Kesey would cite the bus as his greatest work and how they came to buy it

 

Here’s the Magic Trip movie trailer . . .

You can order the movie DVD here.

You can order the stream here.

Or you can get my book How The Beats Begat The Pranksters from me directly or order it here.

Or here’s a whole page of George Walker and my touring around America and Canada doing our “Jack & Neal Ride Again” live shows.

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

Or here’s my Facebook page if you wanna join in there —

https://www.facebook.com/Brian.Hassett.Canada