Directors: Alison Ellwood, Alex GibneyStarring: Alison Ellwood, Alex
GibneyDetails: US/TBC TBCIn 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of "One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-
country road trip to the New York World's Fair. He was joined by "The
Merry Band of Pranksters," a renegade group of counterculture truth-
seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in
Kerouac's "On the Road," and the driver and painter of the psychedelic
Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about
their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and
the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Academy
Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and co-
director Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw
footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation,
HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and
audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary
piece of American history.Did you know that people in the 60s dropped
acid and it was a really popular time for the psychedelic drug? I did and
most likely you did too. Magic Trip follows the road trip of author Ken
Kesey and his "Merry Band of Pranksters" as they drove across America and
did lots of drugs. What was gleamed from this grand experience? Did they
better understand the heart of America during the 1960s? Did they learn
the strengths and limitations of the counterculture movement? Did they
uncover any truths about themselves? The answer to all of these questions
is "No." They did, however, discover that doing loads of psychedelic
drugs is awesome. Not surprisingly, watching the home movies of a group
of uninteresting, self-serving quasi-hippies while they regale you with
stories of their 1964 summer vacation isn't fascinating, insightful, or
rewarding.In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and with the
coming of the World's Fair to New York, Ken Kesey decided to assemble a
group of friends and travel across the U.S. while doing loads of LSD.
Kesey had first been exposed to the drug during his time at Stanford when
it was being used in experiments whose stated purpose was to study its
affect on anxiety and depression (it was actually being studied by the
CIA as possible interrogation tool). In the film's best scene, co-
directors Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood craft a bravura animation
sequence set to Kesey's recording of himself while he was high out of his
mind on acid. Kesey was a true believer in the power of the drug and saw
himself as an explorer on a new wave of consciousness.And since explorers
usually don't go solo, he brought along a group of friends who we never
really get to know. We're never really told about how most of the "Merry
Pranksters" were connected to Kesey or why they chose to sign up for this
psychedelic journey. Aside from Kesey, the group's most notable member
was Neal Cassady who was the basis for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's
novel On the Road. The group (or at least the men) dressed themselves up
in red, white, and blue in order to celebrate America, but like almost
everything they seem to do, it seems more like a celebration of
themselves. They bought a school bus, painted it up with psychedelic
patterns and colors, and named the bus "Further". Once the trip begins,
everyone gets little nicknames (e.g. "Stark Naked", "Zonker") and then
they shot a bunch of footage even though no one knew how to use a camera
or sound equipment.download Magic TripThe result is a compilation of the
video mashed with voice-over audio (it was never recorded in sync) as
well as the surviving Pranksters talking off-camera about their non-
adventure. The big problem with the celebration of the gang's partying is
that it can never properly be conveyed through cinema and in fact, the
objective camera shows them for what they truly are. In one scene, one of
the Pranksters recalls how during a trip, she went into slimy water and
felt that the algae was calling to her and pulling her deeper into their
world. watch Magic Trip onlineThe film sets this narration against a
beautiful image of a submerged camera in vibrant blue water. Then we cut
back to the actual footage and see a chick covered in slime. Despite
their attempts to explain a transcendent experience, it always comes up
short and the closest the film comes to conveying the psychedelic
experience is when it animates Kesey's recording of his first trip on
LSD.