Back in 1964, some friends painted a school bus in wild colors and took a cross-country trip, hoping to take in some scenery and freak out the squares.
The writer Ken Kesey and his friends the Merry Pranksters crossed the country and back again, filming themselves and their drug-fuelled exploits. They intended to make a documentary, but the reels sat rusting in the Kesey family barn the last four decades.
Enter Alex Gibney, one of the most prolific documentary filmmakers working today. He’s probably best know for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), and he won the best-documentary Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side (2007).
Now he’s turned the Pranksters’ footage into a film called Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place. It shows an America on the precipice of huge change.
“This was not just home movies,” Gibney tells Kurt Andersen. “The movie of this bus trip would be the new kind of novel that Ken Kesey was going to write. He had tried of the literary scene and now his tools were going to be the movie camera and the tape recorder, and this was going to be this big movie that would take the country by storm.”
Video: Ken Kesey participates in psychedelic drug experiments — a clip from Magic Trip
Guests:
Alex Gibney
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Really difficult to convey this as a "sound story" and it was done beautifully. Really compelling.
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Comments [3]
Just got done watching "Catchin Hell" on ESPN. Being a die-hard Cubs' fan, I thought it was a great documentary about hoe it wasn't actually Bartman that caused the Cubs to lose. Too bad that guy had to go through all that stuff. Anyway, my question to Gibney is,,,How come Moises Alou didn't admit that he wouldn't have caught the ball anyway like it was reported a few years ago? Just curious....
hi
I 'm so pleased to know your website.i need an email address or face book address concerned to Alex Gibney directly for asking some questions and also an invitation.
please help me
sincerecly
The literary genius of Ken Kesey is indisputable. The personal legacy is more susceptible to revision from those may judge out of context the essential and actual character of the man who personified the greatness of the American pioneer spirit of exploration, and in the proccess, exposed hypocracy and sham.
Because he indulged in psychedelic compounds, many will dismiss him and this is unfortunate to the man as a whole.
Because Kesey was larger than life, that perspective, regrettably may cloud his overall personal contributions to society, and more germane, overlook his literary masterpiece, "Sometimes A Great Notion."
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