Variety Reviews - Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place - Film
Reviews -
A History Films presentation in association with Optimum Releasing,
Imaginary Forces and Jigsaw Prods. Produced by Will Clarke, Alex Gibney,
Alexandra Johnes. Executive producers, David McKillop, Molly Thompson,
Robert Belau, David Kowitz , Gareth Wiley. Co-producer, Zane Kesey.
Directors, writers, Alex Gibney, Alison Ellwood.
With: Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Neal Cassady, Gretchen Fetchen, Allen
Ginsberg, Stark Naked. Narrator: Stanley Tucci.
The counter-cultural equivalent of an archaeological dig -- or maybe an
acid flashback -- "Magic Trip" is Alex Gibney and Allison Ellwood's
reconstruction of the LSD-fueled, bus trip-cum-rolling revolution of Ken
Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, long pinpointed as the start of the
psychedelic '60s. Fans of the subject matter, especially students of the
Beat era, will find this revisionist reconstruction indispensible;
others will share the same tedium claimed by some of the principals on
the bus. Nevertheless, doc is like a hipster's King Tut's tomb, and
History Films' involvement assures cable exposure. Arthouse openings
also seem likely.
As explained early on in "Magic Trip," Kesey and his crew decided to
film their journey -- begun on the West Coast and aimed like a misguided
missile at the New York World's Fair -- and bought the cameras to do it.
But they didn't think, or know how, to synch sound, so Gibney and his
longtime editor Ellwood were faced with an editor's nightmare -- miles
of film, and no indication of who was saying what or when. As narrator
Stanley Tucci informs us in the opening chapters of the film, the
Pranksters spent 40 years trying to edit it before Kesey simply put it
away.
The solution for Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side," "Client 9: The Rise
and Fall of Eliot Spitzer") and his longtime editor Ellwood was
commentary that the group recorded post-Trip, while viewing the raw
footage. These voices provide the soundtrack for the film, along with
questions interjected 45 years later by Tucci, and a musical score that
eschews psychedelic rock for the music of the period -- Ike Turner,
Dion, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.
The Pranksters -- who included novelist Robert Stone, Beat icon Neal
Cassady (the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road")
and passengers with such nicknames as Stark Naked, Intrepid Traveler and
Swashbuckler (Kesey) -- were never proto-hippies: They were
post-Beatniks, with a far greater affinity for the intellectual
adventurism of the late '50s than the free-love ethos of the late '60s
(not that there wasn't a lot of love aboard the bus). Kesey was a
novelist with two acclaimed books ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,"
"Sometimes a Great Notion"), and all had approached LSD not so much to
get high, but in search of enlightenment. (The film does go into
protracted detail about the history of LSD and, during one particularly
lengthy episode, a recording Kesey made while taking a
government-sanctioned trip.)
The real bus trip was a relatively anonymous event, although much of
what came out of it became part of the cultural infrastructure (yes, the
Grateful Dead and their involvement with Kesey is part of the
conversation here). The Prankster mythology was really thrust into the
mainstream by Tom Wolfe and his nonfiction novel "The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test," which came out in 1968 and inspired all manner of tuning in,
turning on and dropping out. There's no mention of Wolfe in the film,
but what Gibney and Ellwood are re-creating is of a moment, and predates
the book's publication.
Production values are largely irrelevant, given the homemovie aesthetic,
but the use of period archival footage and music are terrific, and the
animation by Imaginary Forces is often quite clever.
Camera (color/B&W, 16mm); editor, Ellwood; music, David Kahne; music
supervisor, John McCullough; associate producers, Sam Black, Susan
Johnson; design/animation, Imaginary Forces. Reviewed at Sundance Film
Festival (Premieres), Jan. 21, 2011. Running time: 90 MIN.
Contact the variety newsroom at [email protected]
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http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117944365/
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