Movie Description
The long, strange trip of Dr. Timothy Leary, alternately lionized and despised as the High Priest of 1960s LSD subculture, has inspired generations in search of self-discovery and expanded consciousness. This authorized documentary of Leary's life pays homage to Leary and other '60s counterculture personalities such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters--who inspired Tom Wolfe's THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST--and Acid Test house band The Grateful Dead. Like other films that deal with the work of iconoclastic American heroes, such as WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: COMMISSIONER OF SEWERS and GROWING UP IN AMERICA--spotlighting '60s political radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin--this film offers testament to the power of revolutionary thought.
LAST TRIP recounts Leary's early life, from his schooling at West Point and his tenure as a Harvard professor, to the university and government experiments that prompted his research into LSD and other hallucinogens. Centering on Leary's relationships with key figures in the heyday of the drug era, archival footage and interviews chronicle the famous bus trip that first brought Leary and Kesey together. Insightful interviews with Leary toward the end of his life (he died of cancer in 1996), show that he dealt with terminal illness in a manner as colorful as the era with which he will be forever linked.
| Credits | | Producer: | David Herman | | Cast: | Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary |
Notes
Theatrical release: January 23, 1997. (Premiered at the Slamdance Festival.)
Filmmaker O.B. Babbs is the son of Merry Pranksters Ken Babbs and Paula Sundstern (aka: Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen).
The "Further" bus, used for the film to recreate Ken Kesey's famous bus trip, is a replica of the original bus.
The reunion between Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey was shot on location at Wavy Gravy's Hog Farm commune in North Carolina.
After reuniting at The Hog Farm for the film, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey saw each other only one additional time before Leary died, for Kesey's birthday, one week after their reunion.
This film includes Timothy Leary's final recorded interview on death and dying.
This documentation of Timothy Leary's last days was authorized by the subject and his family.
All the music for the film was provided by The Grateful Dead.
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