Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, Sep 4th at 7:15p for Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place at the Kendall Square Cinema . Look for Dan wearing a multicolored shirt in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.
Magic Trip is a freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ legendary LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip in the psychedelic Magic Bus (named “Further”). In 1964, 29-year-old Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, decided to drive across the country to the New York World’s Fair and film the trip. He was joined by a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s On the Road, who drove the bus, fueled by Speed, talking a mile a minute. Much footage was shot on the eventful (and sometimes hilarious) journey, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. Directors Alex Gibney (Gonzo: the Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson and the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side) and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage. Restoring over 100 hours of film and audiotape, they have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history. Narrated by Stanley Tucci.