The Wind Cries Mary concludes on a radio. Sue Swanson, listens, smoking a joint and ironing her hair. Part way through, she changes stations and hears last verses of Golden Road.


Announcer: (Tom Donahue Voice)...and there you have it, the first spin of the first single from San Francisco's own Grateful Dead: "the Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion" right here on KMPX FM where the sky meets the sea and all things bright and beautiful rise like mist to float into your ear. And now Scoop Nisker with Planet News.


(Research & run a short typical bit of Scoop to use as a thematic passage to whatever comes next)


OTHER SCENES (Not necessarily in order yet)


Lead in to Acid Test Scene


Bill Graham stands outside the Straight Theatre, as it was in '67.

BG: Acid was legal in those days. It's not legal now. But legality isn't the point. It took an A bomb to end World War Two and who can say with certainty it didn't take another kind of bomb to end the War in Viet Nam?


Flower children and drug casualties walk by during this scene. One dude approaches Bill:


Dude: Spare change?
BG: Get the fuck out of the world asshole!
Dude: Hey, peace brother!
BG: Peace. Piece of your fuckin' ass!
Dude: Hey, fuck you Graham! Why don't you give some of the bread you rake in back to the people?


People gather & join the exchange. Establish and develop this for about a minute, covering Bill's economic frankness over and against the hippie ethic (Digger ethic vs. Graham for another segment) During the discussion, dissolve the scene, going back in time, to the Acid Test.


Neal Cassady (some typical dialogue)


Cassady: So there we were at the border sweatin' it when the sweetest pinpoint tornado lifted the duffle right out of the arms of the customs inspector, damned if it didn't, & set it down in El Paso square in the bed of a pickup truck lined up to cross into Juarez & ...


A square mind in a square head. It was mammoth, I mean, sat on his shoulders like a diesal on a duck egg but as I said to Jack you got to catch yourself thinking before you can think about catching yourself. Lamantia thinks automatic writing is the most clear and conscious way to proceed, and of course Kerouac never looks back except, heh heh, when he does, then he gets so pissed off with himself he goes out and gets drunk, the problem with that being when the liver gives out so does the writing, but that's another story.


the fertility of ancestor worship as opposed to the sterility of monotheism, or like Lewie Welch said the conception of one God made modern government possible ...


If I am a style what I am could be spoken by anyone.


But allow, heh heh, just naturally, find my personal prejudice to lie just somewhat southwest of that particular portal.


There's no free ride in the sensorium. You look as long as you can then beat it the hell out of there. If the sensorium is too strong or goes on for too long, the witness is swallowed up and the circus is left to play for itself, nobody feeds the lions and the whole thing runs out of control.


The following bits of actual Neal Cassady dialogue are extracted from Kerouac's Visions of Cody. An android mimicking Cassady's body language, keyed on some of Kesey's home movie footage, would be Apocalyptic if the technology could convince. If so, Cassady could appear in his film in several places. If not, we could just pin a picture of his face to a cardboard box and run tape dialogue.


... it was about a hundred yards away, fifty yards, seventy, about fifty yards, yeah, seventy, sixty yards
and, ah, it was (VC p122)


Phew! Naw, but man, what I'd tell you is, I didn't know that I'd appreciate remembering these things more, so therefore when I was there I didn't pay much attention to any of this, I was hung up on something else, you know, so I can't remember, say, for example, I can remember NOW for example, but now that I CAN remember it doesn't do any good, because ...man... I can't get it down. You know ... I just remember it, I remember it well, what happened 'cause I'M not doing nothin, see? (VC 123)


But I don't know if that's the case but it seem to me, it doesn't seem like it's usually been now as I remember because I wasn't thinking about those things, I certainly wasn't hungup on that, but it seemed to me (126)


Oh, I don't know what I was doing, I can't remember man, it's a terrible feeling not being able to remember what I was doing (laughing)... Jesus was I there, I don't remember where I am but I think I was there, shit one time or another, damn that, Oh Christ, mmm ... That's an interesting question, what WAS I doing? (laugh) What I was doing I think ... the reason I don't remember too well ... (127)


Woodstock


Include GD Woodstock footage but gradually dub in hallucinations of fields of different kinds of flowers for the audience and create changing weather conditions during the tune chosen, drown the band out with thunder, move the stage to the moon, change night to bright daylight with daisies raining out of the sky resolving to PigPen & Janis doing Lovelight in the center of a mandala with Altamont, Manson, Patty Hearst ...SLA, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Hayakawa at SF State, at the edges of a slowly rotating mandala collage resolving into Jimi at Woodstock playing Star spangled Banner waist deep in an ocean made of an American Flag, foaming with surf. Let the roar of the flag ocean grow until the music is drowned out and dub in Dylan singing "I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world" resolving to "one way or another this darkness got to give" as the scene begins to darken and dwindle. Voice over of Ginsberg (reading first verse of howl): I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness/ Starving, hysterical, naked / Angel headed hipsters prowling negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix ..." his voice fades to give way to Diane DiPrima repeating (from Rant): The only war that matters is the war against the imagination ... The only war that matters is the war against the imagination ...The only war that matters is the war against the imagination ... while all pieces of the visual presentation shrink & dwindle into a tiny whirling mass which settles on a paper plate ... it's sunrise at Woodstock ... Wavy Gravy holds this plate high and announces: Breakfast in bed for four hundred thousand!