MAGIC TRIP
Written & Directed by Alex Gibney & Alison Ellwood, based on the words & recordings of Ken Kesey
Produced by Will Clark, Gibney & Alexandra Johnes
Released by Magnolia Pictures
USA. 107 min. Rated R
 

The Merry Pranksters, the folks who sponsored the notorious “Acid Test” parties in the mid-’60’s and gave the Grateful Dead one of their first performing venues, enacted a wild adventure: a cross-country road trip in a converted school bus, from their Northern California home all the way to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. Under the leadership of self-proclaimed acid-head Ken Kesey as spiritual guru and speed-head Neal Cassady as the fearless bus driver, this zany cast documented their trip on beautifully shot and preserved 16mm film.

Kesey described them as too young to be beatniks and too early for the hippie generation, yet the ragtag group of hipsters and free-thinkers were part of the first wave of what made San Francisco the place to put flowers in one’s hair. There was a tiny, nearly forgotten, middle generation for whom art, intellectualism, and free love parties were one and the same. Despite a rambling style, this bunch actually had a subtle message about the hypocrisy of many institutions of American culture, and worked to make iconoclasm an actual style in itself. The scene was a direct precursor to what became the Summer of Love of 1967, and this trip was the very one Tom Wolfe dramatized in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Magic Trip is kind of a documentary version of that 1968 novel.

Even without synched sound (there was a problem with the recording, and none of the dialogue is in synch), directors Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney are able to piece together a dense and evocative portrait of this beautiful summer. Rarely screened outside of the Pranksters’ acid test parties, the well-shot color footage is a celluloid lover’s wet dream. The candid observations here are about as good a subject as you can imagine. The inspired leaders of the pack are Kesey, wise amid the psychedelia, and Cassady, the mostly shirtless partier, who was also one of the main inspirations for Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road.

Though much of the “narrative” is pieced together from interviews that play over the visuals, one never gets the sense that a conventional narrative is needed in the first place. For the tweens of the upcoming social revolution, the cause was secondary to the journey, and directors Ellwood and Gibney understand this perfectly. And like the best of acid trips, the ending begins to trail away fairly early, leaving wispy traces of the reason and the connections that seemed so important an hour ago.

Specifically, several interviews with Kesey describe well the ethos of the time. A highlight is the eventual meeting of the “East Coast acid-heads” and the “West Coast acid-heads,” when the Day-Glo painted bus journeys to Timothy Leary’s compound in upstate New York. Leary and his fellow experimenters were of a more subdued, intellectual cut, and generally went hiding in the woods when Kesey, Cassady, and the rest of the crazies poured out of the magic bus.

If nothing else, this is a gorgeous artifact about a time when there was a lot more optimism and excitement about American culture. In today’s crisis-driven, hyper-financed world, Magic Trip is needed refreshment. Are our goals so different today than the goals of these drugged-out adventurers in 1964? I don’t think they are. Michael Lee
August 10, 2011