In Search of America

One of the problems with popular culture, especially when discussing the popular culture of the 1970s, is that mass media - especially television - is usually about four years behind 'underground' media, primarily music. Many people think the 'Woodstock Generation" remained important throughout the 1970s; actually, it was all over at Altamont in 1970. By 1972, 'underground' rock or the 'counterculture' had moved east to England and Led Zepplin, Black sabbath, and David Bowie, early metal-heads and the so-called 'glam-rockers,' who were all 'peace and love' - not. Neither, in a darkly different vein, was Charles Manson's 'family.'

This obvious pilot for a television show (that, thankfully, was never picked up by the networks) is attempting to come to terms with a culture that was already as withered as yesterday's flowers. The script must have been lying around a few years - by the time it was produced, writer Carlino had already achieved recognition for tough Mafia revenge tales. And the cultural references are all to "Easy Rider" and Woodstock (1969). The music referenced on the soundtrack is actually earlier, 1966/67 - at Woodstock Hendrix, Canned Heat, and Sly and the Family Stone had blasted this kind of folk-pop into oblivion.

The movie is about a middle-class family that goes on the road in order to meet hippies. Wow, man, farout, outasight, it's a groovy mind-blowing happening of a bag. However, politics count for nothing - Vietnam? some place in Asia, right?

This average (meaning stale and vacuous) TV movie is only redeemed by Jeff Bridges' surprisingly mature performance as the young college drop-out who convinces his parents and grandma to 'discover' (hippie) America. All the rest of the performances are standard TV fair by standard TV actors of the time. The director avails himself of some nice location cinematography, but otherwise the film is a poor way to spend 90 minutes.

I knew it was all over when Sal Mineo remarks of a young runaway (who tells the other characters they are not really there): "She's a latent existentialist." Wow, far out, groovy.

A couple extra points for being 'so bad it's funny,' but if you don't care about the '70's TV version of the '60's, stay away.

This movie purports to show a middle class family's attempt to figure out what is "going down" in the America of the late 1960's. Their trip to a rock festival is as far as their refurbished old bus gets. Without exception, the characters are superficial stereotypes.

If you want to know which well-established Hollywood actors were desperate for a paycheck in those days,.. just look at the credits. Sal Mineo, I had forgotten just how badly his career had hit the skids! Thank God, his career rebounded before his untimely death.

The writers on this television turkey were clueless. Outside of doing weed, their insights into the "hippie movement" were laughable.

I bought this title at Sam's Warehouse in Lithgow New South Wales for 2 dollars. I got 2 movies with Jeff Bridges in them. I really love Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski and Ruthless and other things for which he has become legend. I was interested to see stuff from his early career. This was a TV Movie in a boxy format (cool) and previously in Black and White. The film was washed with a bit of colour, which was a bit strange but gave it an interesting blast from 'the worn out' past appearance. Visual Quality aside this was a total knockout. I took the evocative rocket back to the late sixties practically instantaneously. It wasn't just the "Right On's" and "Far Out's", it was that the costume and hair was so right, even though it was the early seventies mediated by film. The aimless pack-wandering of the stoned and the initial parenty reactions seemed so right. It was interspersed with some genuine rock festival footage, which enhanced the authenticity. This film has the right look. The plot line was utterly ridiculous however.

This film surprised me; I didn't expect it to even be worth the $1 price of the horrible Digiview catalog, but it turned out to be nicely acted. Veteran TV toilers Ruth McDevvit, Carl Betz, Vera Miles, Howard Duff and even Sal Mineo turn in some rather fine performances, but of course it's Jeff Bridges who steals the show. Early in his career, it's (almost) the last thing Bridges would do for television, since his breakthrough "The Last Picture Show" came out the same year. Plus, relative newcomer Tyne Daley gives us some fantastic work (especially during her character's childbirth scenes).

That said, the movie itself is barely mediocre. Only Bridges' acting elevates this above the average 'made-for' (made-for-television movie) of it's day. Filled with clichéd characters and stereotyped situations, it might have seemed very original in, say, 1967. Coming from 1971, at the end of the hippie movement instead of the beginning, it's just grindingly derivative. Like most television of the time, it's painfully obvious the writer & director have little or no understanding of the hippie culture they're trying so earnestly to portray.

Especially the decidedly UN-psychedelic background "songs", which mostly consist of a large male & female chorus sing/chanting bad "poetic" commentary on what we're seeing. Think "Paint Your Wagon" on acid (I'm sure the composer was). Near the beginning they persist in repeating the phrase "magic bus", and you can almost hear Pete Townshend wishing he could sue them, just to make them STOP... And ohmigod the whistling section -- somewhere near the middle, there's a dozen of them whistling, and I swear no two of them are in the same key. It's positively the worst whistling ever recorded, ever. (And maybe worth the dollar all by itself!)

The plot, also, is a sad waste of concept, although it does start out bright, with Bridges as a clean-cut proto-hippie who (somehow) convinces his mom, dad, and grandmother(!) to join him in 'dropping out' and taking out in an ancient, rebuilt bus, to find themselves, and hopefully America. Unfortunately, their tour (as far as we get to see it) consists entirely of visiting one ramshackle rock festival, apparently only a few days away from their suburban home. (The footage of the festival is genuine, however, obviously shot during the setup and daytime of some small festival somewhere, without any participation therefrom (and no music!), but featuring lots and lots of shots of real, genuine 1971 model hippies dancing, grooving, playing in the mud -- all the usual stuff. But it's obvious the 'camp' was shot nowhere near the festival itself, and the attempted montaging sometimes becomes hilariously bad.)

So, arriving at said festival, the Olsens set up near a small enclave of 5 hippies: the pregnant Daley & husband, Mineo's vaguely rebellious 'Burnout', the Token Black, and the Love Interest. Each character is exactly that obvious from the start, but all of them manage to transcend their crappy dialog and make us actually feel them as people. Especially Glynn Turman as "Bordo", the 'shaman', who runs around chanting and making faces in the worst possible witch-doctor-put-a-hoodoo-on-you fashion, spouting semi-nonsense in an ostentatious generic African accent. But somehow, someway, he actually makes it work. And gives a fantastic touch near the end, when he slips up and (very subtly) for just one line, talks in American to Grandma Rose -- and then immediately spits out more mumbo-jumbo (which Grandma fully 'digs', of course). Far out! (He would soon star in the 70's classic "Cooley High", which set a new standard for "black" films, with Turman's wooden-yet-somehow-compelling acting being a primary cause.)

It's not all bleak though, which justifies (I hope) this lengthy review; after all, while writer Lewis John Carlino might not 'grok' the hippies, it doesn't mean he doesn't get human beings. This is the same guy who wrote "The Great Santini" and the adaptation of "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden", after all. And director Paul Bogart (eventually) went on to do "Torch Song Trilogy", so we know they both had at least some talent in them. And, as I said, the ensemble's acting is actually worthwhile here; it certainly feels as if most everybody involved really cared about this production, and gave it their best.

So, overall, if you like to watch the craft of acting done well, you will likely enjoy this unimportant yet unassuming little film. If, that is, you can sit through the painful chanting chorus, the laughable suburban-sitcom setup, and the clichéd situations with sensible television resolutions by the end of the episode ... er, of the movie.

Which brings me to my last point: it doesn't mention it on the IMDb here, but it seems rather clear to me that this movie was (at least at some point) considered as a pilot episode. Without spoiling the internal plot threads, I can tell you that, by the end, its time to leave the festival:

Mom: Anybody know where we're going?

Son: Nope... you?

Mom (to Dad): You want to go home?

Dad: (thinks): No!

All: hahahaahahah

Swell the godawful "music", and cut to external shot of bus driving away along a coastal highway to who-knows-where, In Search Of America. And when I think about it, what a fantastic series it could have made! Each week, new adventures in their completely square psychedelic bus, discovering themselves, and America! Perhaps they even could have had a very special episode where they stop to help a broken-down Partridge Family, and Laurie falls in love with Bridges' character, and... on second thought: no. But still, a TV drama starring Jeff Bridges would have been something to see...

I should also mention that it's yet another awful transfer from Digiview, with no features, special or otherwise.

The late 60's was a different and frightening time and place. Adolescents and adults alike were questioning who they were, why they existed, and whether these gosh-darned flower children kids might just have something. This movie shows all that as suburban Dad, Carl Betz, flower child Jeff Bridges, loose-as-a-goose grandma Ruth McDevitt take off for the road in search of America. Most of the usual made-for-TV cliches and pat solutions are offered, but the mood is so '60's, I didn't mind a bit.