Brianland

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The Jerry Garcia-directed film “The Grateful Dead Movie” will be back in theaters for one night (Thurs Aug 14th) — and for *the first time* IMAX has remastered the picture in 4K and remixed the sound for their surround-sound speakers. (!)

Revisiting the film, here’s some deets you may not know … or you knew and forgot . . .  😁

— it was shot over five nights – Oct. 16-20, 1974 — at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco — because these might’ve been the band’s last shows.  They ended up taking a 19-month hiatus, but at the time it was uncertain if they were going to keep going after nearly 10 years of non-stop touring.  In fact, the ticket for the final show of the run was actually stamped “THE LAST ONE.’  They also had the idea the film could play around the country so they wouldn’t have to.

— shows started at 8PM — tickets were $5.00 — and it was produced / promoted by the great Bill Graham.

— just before these shows the band had returned from a 7-show tour of England, France & Germany (September 9th-21st).  They had 3½ weeks to prep for the ‘final’ shows and the filming.

— before resuming their live show schedule in June of ’76, they played four one-offs in ’75 — a 5-song Blues For Allah set at the SNACK benefit in S.F. on 3/23/75;  another Blues For Allah one-off run-thru at Winterland on 6/17/75;  the classic Great American Music Hall show on 8/13/75 that became One From The Vault (in 1991);  and a one-set show in Golden Gate Park on 9/28/75.

— the movie was released in theaters in the summer of ’77 (June 2nd).

— Mickey rejoined the group (after a 3½-year break) during the 2nd set of the final show.  He showed up because he thought it might be “the last one” ever and he should be part of the wrap.

— opening night was Bob Weir’s *27th* birthday!  Jerry was 32, Phil 34, Bill 28.

— this was really cinephile Jerry Garcia’s baby and passion project, and his indulgence was not very popular among his bandmates.  As to his vision, Garcia told an interviewer, “I wanted elegantly framed, seamless photography.  And I wanted a sort of roughness to the general quality of everything else.  That was the only original conception.”

— Leon Gast was the director during the 5-show shoot, then Garcia took over after that and Gast bowed out.  The outside editor they brought in, Susan Crutcher, said, “When I came on it they had about 100,000 feet of film to sync up.  That alone took six months.  What [Gast] did was introduce the television concept of [multiple cameras for complete coverage], which was quite new then.  He was hip enough to know about SMPTE timecode, which was a video thing.  So we were one of the first movies that ever tried to interface SMPTE timecode and film.  It really was kind of the crest of the wave.”  Gast went on the direct When We Were Kings about the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in The Jungle” fight that won him the Best Documentary Oscar in 1996.  Interestingly, the events of that film also took place in October of 1974.  (!)

— the two-years-long editing process, combined with not gigging, their failing Grateful Dead Records label, and a massive theft from the band by quasi-manager Ron Rakow, left the band bankrupt and in debt, with no income coming in — hence the ’76 return to touring and release of Steal Your Face.

— all-told, the movie cost $600,000 to make.  Converting 1975 dollars to today, that would be about $3.5 million.

— the 7½ min opening hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation sequence cost more than twice the original filming costs (!) and took eight months to make . . . but it turned out so cool and iconic it’s been repurposed in the futuristic Sphere visuals in Las Vegas.  U.S. Blues was chosen as the focused song because when they were making it it was the lead-up to the U.S. bicentennial, and the animator Gary Gutierrez (who’d been animating for Sesame Street at the time) was inspired by Jerry with the Uncle Sam top hat on the cover of the first album to create the Grateful Dead skeleton wearing it.  The only ideas or guidance Jerry gave him was the vague idea to make the concert posters come to life, and that “chance” should be part of it — something that showed up in a lot of their songs and manifests in the animation with playing cards, dice & pinball.  Garcia & editor Susan Crutcher came up with the audio backing first (Late For Supper / Spidergawd /  Eep Hour [from the 1972 Garcia solo album], U.S. Blues etc.) then he worked to put visuals to it.  Once the animation was complete they went to Jerry’s studio in Marin and he added all sorts of sound effects.  Gary would go on to direct the Dead’s first music video for Touch of Grey.  In fact, he was the one who came up with the idea to have the skeleton puppets playing and then turn into the real guys.  He also did the surreal intro to the CBS reboot of The Twilight Zone in 1985 that Garcia played the music for.

— with a musician as the director, Garcia guided the editing cuts to be in synch with the music beats.

— they used a 46-person film crew — seven cameras shooting in both 35mm (mostly the stage) and 16mm (mostly the audience & backstage) including one on a crane — and recorded the shows on two 16-track machines (so they could start a new tape on one before the other ran out, thus capturing it all).

— pioneering documentarian Albert Maysles was one of the cameramen (who focused mainly on the audience);  also shooting was the esteemed Don Lenzer who helped shoot Woodstock and five other Oscar-winning movies (doing the excellent handheld work close to Jerry).  The cameramen were not on headsets being directed by anybody but rather all just free-flowing capturing whatever moved them.

— Owsley was the band’s soundman that night and Candace Brightman was doing the lights.  Dan Healy and Betty Canter both helped with the film’s mix and sound during the editing.

— they played thru the indoor version of the Wall of Sound — its last-ever appearance on a stage.  There’s good footage of the crew setting it up & tearing it down.  The band continued but it was really the famous sound system’s ‘last one.’

— the top of the two microphones was the vocal mic, the bottom being a reverse polarity to cancel out the feedback from the speakers behind.  Note there’s no monitors in front of the band.  All the sound the players heard came from behind them. 

— unprecedented for the time and still rare, the initial idea for the film was to take the viewer to a Grateful Dead show, including entering the venue, talking to people during the set break, looking at the fans around you as well as the band, and present things as they really were.  An early working title was The Grateful Dead: Warts and All.

— the film was featured as the first Grateful Dead Meet-Up At The Movies in 2011, then again in 2017 (for its 40th anniversary), but neither were offered in IMAX as it is in 2025 — the first time any Dead film can be experienced this way.  If you haven’t made it to the Sphere, this is the next best thing.  This year’s screening will also feature a 15-minute China Cat–>I Know You Rider from Winterland that will be shown after the closing credits.

— The Band would stage and film their own farewell Last Waltz concert on this same stage two years later.

— as to the decision to make the movie so much about the fans, Garcia said around this time, “We didn’t invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead.  We were just in line to see what would happen.”

— 34 mins in a Jack Kerouac quote from On The Road written on the wall of Winterland is zoomed in on — “Pass here and go on, you’re on the road to heaven.”  No doubt huge Kerouac fan Garcia made sure this shot was in the movie.

— at 35 mins (also probably at his direction) there’s a brief capture of the legendary bespectacled San Francisco Chronicle music writer Ralph Gleason in line entering Winterland with all the young Deadheads.  He was an influential early champion of the band’s music in the straight press world (as he was for Lenny Bruce and Bob Dylan) and he was one of the founders of Rolling Stone magazine.  He tragically died of a heart attack just nine months after these shows, but his name still remains in the the magazine’s masthead all these decades later.

— there’s an actual Phil bass solo in Eyes of the World!  He always played a ‘lead’ style bass, but rarely does he take a featured solo.  Once again, I’m sure this was a Garcia call to include this of the hundred songs they had to choose from.

— it’s a nice change to see the one-dummer band on film with Billy alone powering the engine.

— the comically long pause between Sugar Magnolia and the Sunshine Daydream coda is beautifully & dramatically captured.

— occasional sit-in Ned Lagin can be seen (but not heard due to recording f*ck ups) on keys behind/beside Garcia during Morning Dew and the Johnny B. Goode climax.

— the double live album Steal Your Face was also recorded at these shows.

— a 2-disc DVD of the film was released in 2004 (and re-released on Blu-ray in 2011) including 95 mins of additional concert footage of great performances too long for the film, like a 16-min Other One, 13-min Scarlet Begonias, a 17-min San Francisco Dark Star, a 15-min China–Rider, and the last ever full Weather Report Suite clocking in at nearly 17 mins — and Garcia goes into a trance and plays maybe the best solo of the film or extras!  It also has a 28-min “Look Back” mini-doc with interviews shot in 2004;  a very informative 17-min doc on the “Making of the Animation” featuring animator Gary Gutierrez explaining how he created it;  a 14-min doc on how David Lemieux assembled the additional footage & Jeffrey Norman improved the audio with 21st century technology;  plus a wonderfully informative & fun Commentary version of the original film with its two main editors Susan Crutcher & John Nutt guided by the DVDs producer Frank Zamacona.  They mention that when Garcia was not in the editing room he’d sit on the couch in the front of the Film House with his guitar writing Terrapin Station and making notes on napkins and stuffing them in his briefcase.

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Here’s a piece I wrote for “Kerouac on Record” (Bloomsbury, 2018) — The Grateful Dead: Jack Kerouac Manifested as Music.

The Grateful Dead: Jack Kerouac Manifested As Music

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Or here’s what it’s like to experience the current Dead & Company incarnation at the greatest venue ever built . . .

Dead & Company at The Sphere in Las Vegas review

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Or here’s an account of being at a Grateful Dead concert in 1982 at the greatest outdoor venue in North America — Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado — from my book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac . . . 

The Grateful Dead at Red Rocks

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Or here’s a feature story on the definitive Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip after an advance screening at the Lightbox in Toronto and post-screening hang-outs with director Amir Bar-Lev and GD archivist David Lemieux . . .

Long Strange Trip – Grateful Dead doc review

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Or here’s a recent piece on why this Deadhead Beatnik Beatlemaniac also loves Taylor Swift —

Taylor Swift, the Grateful Dead and The Beat Generation

 

Or if you love music films — here is an annotated time-coded breakdown of The Beatles: Get Back with quotes and every person who appears identified and background on everything out of the ordinary you see on screen . . .

The Beatles: Get Back — Time-Coded and Annotated

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Or here’s a similar time-coded annotated quote-filled breakdown of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown  . . . 

“A Complete Unknown” Scene Breakdown – Time Codes, Song Titles, Quotes & Context

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

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