My Dinner with Jimi

How sad that after being one of the better known groups of the time and having hits, the most interesting thing in your life was meeting other famous people.

Time has not been kind to the band. All the other bands in the film are well remembered, constantly played, numerous bios and documentaries, thought of as long lasting art. The Turtles get brief mentions, seem almost one hit wonders though they were not.

There were some amusing moments that are familiar from other films. The whole trope about young band overwhelmed by first taste of fame. But it's been done many times, and better.

I just saw the film at a film festival in Hollywood. I thought THE TURTLES made a great subject, the time period and other musicians of the era were well represented. The budget is low, but the director (Bill Fishman) did a great job incorporating stock footage, animation, and a limited production schedule. Overall, if you like the song HAPPY TOGETHER, you will be entertained learning more about this group.

Also, Justin Henry, the child actor from Kramer vs. Kramer, turns out a great believable performance. Watch it.

I smiled through the whole film. The music is great. The story-telling is great. It's a wonderful film. This picture is made with respect and a true love of the sixties.

I had never heard of this movie until it came on Amazon Prime in 2019 and as someone who was alive during the 60's it was wonderful.

Howard Kaylan presents a very tongue in cheek look at his experiences with the Turtles at the point of their first "Big Hit" and tour of England in 1967. Meeting all the usual suspects and their British Invasion heros in 1967 London The Turtles were shocked to find feet of clay in meeting The Beatles, a musical group that were at the height of their power with the release of Sgt Pepper's lonely hearts club band coming the day after the events in the movie.

All the characters are played by actors with various degrees of success. Some come across as caricatures of their public personas. Then again it is all filtered through Howard Kaylan's memory and his well known degree of snark.

Partner Turtle, Mark Volman comes across as a buffoon and is relegated to the background mostly except when singing.

Donovan is a mystic hippie, John Lennon is an insufferable guy. Paul is polite and fun, George just tries to keep John from being an insufferable guy. Ringo is kind of drunk. Meeting Brian Jones (Rolling Stones) in an alley way leads to being introduced to Jimi Hendrix and the subsequent dinner with Jimi, really more of a way to many drinks before eating kind of gabfest for Jimi.

Jimi is a sympathetic and humble man in this portrait, beset by the same insecurities that Howard has about success and acceptance by the audience..

A wonderful filtered by time remembrance by one who was there.

"My Dinner With Jimi" (2003) is a great "snap shot" of counterculture times much better than other "portraits of the 60's."

The 60's (which actually took place roughly from 1964 through 1974) were interesting, hopeful times. You had to be there (and the screenplay writer, Howard Kaylan, was there) to understand it, why it was good, important, worth remembering.

And how it worked.

A lot of good things were done, and done because young people wanted to have fun with their adult lives after formal education, and not be chained, tethered to wage slavery or equivalent slavery always part of the "entrepreneur" life.

Most people face wage slavery or the entrepreneur's life, and that was true both before and after the 60's....

Almost nobody is a pure inheritor guaranteed big money, undisputed property ownership, and an important, interesting occupation until he dies, except maybe Prince Charles of England and a small number of people in his same situation.

The 60's suggested that other possibilities might happen in the lives of people who came of age back then, and that included entertainer people like Howard Kaylan of the TURTLES pop music group, and later part of the Frank Zappa band called THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION (for part of the 1970's).

The Howard Kaylan "voice over" actor states at the start of this movie..."When high school graduation came and went, I decided to put college on hold....and do something different!" (I paraphrase).

Many decided to "do something different" or at least try it, and many had good results and times as a result.....

MY DINNER WITH JIMI (2003) is all about that, and for all it's shortcomings, is precious because of that, and worth getting and screening often.

The 60's were different, hopeful, and are worth remembering the way Kaylan has remembered it.....for all the technical and artistic shortcomings of this movie, the overall message and mentality shines through in a way other "memoirs" of various types of the 60's counterculture times and people mostly have failed to do.

BTW, this movie portrays the lives of two members of the 1960's pop music group called the TURTLES....Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman.

Actual movie/video footage of these two gifted comedians and vocal musicians performing astonishingly can be seen in two other videos about and part of the 1960's era.

One is titled THE TRUE STORY OF 200 MOTELS (1984) documentary by Frank Zappa about the making of his 1971 feature avant Gard movie which stars both Kaylan and Volman (they are more prominently shown than Zappa himself is...Zappa was behind the scenes most of the time).

The other movie starring Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman shown in their middle 20's is the actual 200 MOTELS (1971) movie itself.

Get both in addition to MY DINNER WITH JIMI (2003) to have the best portrait of the two TURTLES stars, one of whom wrote the screenplay for MY DINNER WITH JIMI (2003).

Well..........

I got a MY DINNER WITH JIMI (2005) 60's pop music nostalgia movie yesterday, and watched part of it before bedtime.

It's a docudrama memoir acted by modern (recent younger) actors about famous pop singers meeting each other during the 60's done by Howard Kaylan who was part of the TURTLES and later joined Frank Zappa's MOTHERS OF INVENTION.

Howard Kaylan (1947 - ) wrote an autobiographical screenplay produced in 2003....done on no money, promoted at minor film festivals, never a mainstream movie......

I liked it.

Obviously a very cheaply done movie (younger actors especially weren't ideal, and the direction wasn't wonderful, either), but the movie made it's points, and it made me remember the good old days I enjoyed so much, now long gone.

One had to think of the movie as sort of a Greek masked stage drama where the actors were sort of gross symbols of the people they were portraying.

The older actors (not many, since it was a movie about the "youth culture" of the 60's) were very good, few of them as there were.....shows how many old actors are out there willing to be in cheap, "indy" movies.

The TURTLES wrote the song titled "You, Baby, Nobody But You" which I heard the Mamas and the Papas sing, and the song is featured in the movie.

I got the lyrics for the song, and played it on my always handy and available ukulele before going to bed. GREAT SONG!

"A little bit of sunshine! A little bit of soul! And just a touch of magic! "It's the greatest thing since Rock and Roll!"

Same mentality as THE LOVIN SPOONFUL and it's "Good Time Music" ("Do You Believe In Magic?" etc.) Terrific, light, fun....brought back the good times, loud colors, etc.

One big problem presenting a movie about famous music and musicians of the 1960's is that copyright laws and claims make it almost impossible to include any of the music famous in the 1960's and mentioned in MY DINNER WITH JIMI (2003). Only the TURTLES music and hit songs are played, and other music is not presented, though clever ways are found to suggest such music.....

Movie titles were in the gaudy, noisy Peter Maxx style, which was great. Authentic for the times and re-visiting it.

The movie shows the protagonists meeting up with other famous pop singer types at nighttime food and after-hours joints in L.A. and London! A lot of banter light, air-headed, and fun, fun, fun, which was the main point of the times!

You had to be there to understand how great the 60's were, and it's important not to be bitter about how it all ended, promise unfulfilled......

Howard Kaylan's movie isn't bitter...it's fun...and so were the 60's at their best.

----------------