Ken Kesey and The
Merry Pranksters film of their
1964 adventure across America zonked to the gills on
LSD in the very first
psychedelic bus Furthur driven by
Neal Cassady.
The film gathered dust for some 30 odd years, mostly because they couldn't synchronize the sound track recoded on old Ampex reel-to-reel and the film shot in Super 8 and 16mm.
Then the
90s and the advent of
digital film editing and before you can say
Viola Lee Blues they had a film being shown at the
Whitney Museum of American Art and on the
BBC.
Kesey sells videocassettes of the film for $30 on his website: www.intrepidtrips.com,
the catch is you place your order they ship you the
video and then you pay them. Nice catch, huh? Kesey says it doesn't matter how many copies they sell. He's just happy the project is finally finished.
Remember folx this was "the original fantasy," the Pranksters always wanted to be movie stars!
The film (well
Episode I at least) follows the Prankster's adventures from painting the bus to driving it across Cali (there's even the scene in which they are pulled over by the highway patrol and the forest is burning and Cassady is rapping and and and) to Texas where they lose
Stark Naked to
New Orleans where they all go swimming at a segregated beach on
Lake Ponchatrain (did I spell hat right?)
Episode 2 will have their arrival in NYC, their meetings with
Tim Leary (or at least the assault on his house) and
Jack Kerouac who didn't really understand
who the hell these new friends of Cassady's were.
Kesey says he'd love to see a Hollywood version of this film done, and that
My Private Idaho director
Gus Van Sant has expressed some interest.
Wait aND See.