Long Strange Trip

It was the Fall of 2013 and I had just moved to San Francisco. Ambitious as I was to bask in the culture of the city that I read about since my teenage years, I inaugurated the start of my stay in the Bay Area by going to a Dead show. Granted, I'm not a total Deadhead, yet I'll always have a smile on my face whenever a track from American Beauty pops up on my iPhone. Apart from a few beers, I wasn't as "turned on" as the people that filled the UC Berkeley Greek Theater that September evening who were either smoking one-hitters or microdotting miniature-sized squares of LSD before the surviving members of the Grateful Dead took to the stage. As I sat on the BART (Bay Area Rail Transit) train three hours later, I started asking myself: "What is it about the Grateful Dead that has led to such a devoted fanbase for over 50 years?"

The answer to that question lies in Amir Bar-Lev''s four hour documentary, Long Strange Trip. A devoted Deadhead, Bar-Lev spent 14 years trying to film a comprehensive and authorized look at the Bay Area band that has since become synonymous to the American Counterculture. From clips of Ken Kesey's infamous Acid Tests to stoned-out film crews peaking on spiked coffee attempting to film the band at their creative peak, no stone (or stoned rambling) is left unturned in this massive archival documentary. The film begins and ends with clips of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Jerry Garcia's favorite movie) symbolizing the rise of the band and it's monster-like evolution with a sense of humor and irony similar to how Jim Jarmusch used clips of The Three Stooges to tell the story of Iggy Pop and the Stooges in his documentary, Gimme Danger. Like a Grateful Dead show, the film goes into anecdotes and music familiar to Dead novices-like Hugh Hefner being spiked with acid by the band during a filming of "Playboy After Dark" as "Truckin'" plays in the background-to surreal sounds and images of the band and fans during their marathon tours that led to both nirvana and bedlam, such as when violence became the norm at shows in the 1980s. 

Beyond the smoke, spinners and drawn out solos is a bittersweet look at the band's 30 year career ending with the tragic demise of Jerry Garcia in 1995 told by the surviving members of the band, their road crew, and Deadheads who evolved into members of the Establishment, (i.e. Sen. Al Franken), an anomaly if there ever was one. After sitting through Long Strange Trip, I found myself drawn to listen again to "Morning Dew" and "Brokedown Palace" with a new set of ears and appreciation to a band that many people of my generation have dismissed as "jam-band hippie music." Long Strange Trip won't make you a converted Deadhead overnight, yet it will leave a few heads nodding and fingers tapping over a band that has made a cultural impact for half a century.                

Boycotting the Oscars

It's been a while since I've posted anything as it's been a hectic year for me (graduate school, etc.), and it's around this time that I pick my choices for who's going to win big at this year's Academy Awards. But this year, I'm not going to pick or choose the winners as I will not be watching the Oscars on Feb. 26th.

The reason for this is due to the devastating news I've been reading in the last few days as the new president-elect (whose name I dare not write) signed an executive order of banning Muslims from entering the United States. Not only does this ban affect the entry of refugees from war-torn Syria, but it also affects the Oscar-nominated artists like the filmmakers for the Short-subject documentary, White Helmets, and Asghar Farhad who was nominated this year in the Best Foreign Language Film category for The Salesman.

One of the reasons I enjoy watching the Oscars every year is to celebrate film as it is an international art form and seeing countries from around the globe be acknowledged for breathing new life into the film world. As I write this post, I can't help but remember the story of Billy Wilder receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1987 Academy Awards. He spent the majority of his speech thanking the Immigration officer who stamped his passport and gave Wilder the chance to flee his home country of Germany after the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. Had Wilder not have the chance to live in America, he would not have made the canon of films that have since been recognized as the greatest American films of all time (Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, etc.).

Not only did Wilder find solace and promise as a filmmaker in America, but so have the other immigrants who came to this country like Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Nichols, and the countless other directors, actors and writers who fled to America, a country that has been called "The land of opportunity." Try imagining films like The Graduate, Psycho, and Scarlet Street not being made if there was a ban on European filmmakers from entering the United States. Consider what Easy Rider and McCabe and Mrs. Miller would have looked like had cinematographers Lazlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zigmond been denied access to the United States and forced to live in fear in the wake of the 1968 riots in Czechoslovakia; would those films have ever been made? Imagine living in a country where Milos Forman didn't direct One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Amadeus, two films that the Academy honored as Best Picture Winners. Imagine if John Cassavetes was denied from leaving his native country of Greece, who would have created American Independent Cinema?

It is understandable that we do live in a world of fear due to acts of terrorism, but excluding a group of people from entering the United States based on their religion and their background is not American, it is tyranny. The sad fact that certain artists cannot enter the country and be applauded for their Oscar-nominated work is tragic, which is the reason I won't be watching the Oscars this year. Instead, I'll be watching the films made by proud immigrants and refugees.