PAUL KRASSNER, LA TIMES - In 1967, Abbie Hoffman, his wife Anita and I
took a work-vacation in Florida, renting a little house on stilts in
Ramrod Key. We had planned to see "The Professionals." "That's my
favorite movie," Abbie said. "Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin develop this
tight bond while they're both fighting in the Mexican revolution, then
they drift apart." But it was playing too far away, and a hurricane was
brewing, so instead we saw the Dino Di Laurentiis version of "The
Bible."
Driving home in the rain and wind, we debated the implications of
Abraham being prepared to slay his son because God told him to. I
dismissed this as blind obedience. Abbie praised it as revolutionary
trust. This was the week before Christmas. We had bought a small tree
and spray-painted it with canned snow. Now, we were tripping on LSD as
the hurricane reached full force. "Hey," Abbie yelled over the roar,
"this is powerful [bleepin'] acid!"
We watched Lyndon Johnson on a black-and-white TV set, although LBJ was
purple-and-orange. His huge head was sculpted into Mount Rushmore. "I
am not going to be so pudding-headed as to stop our half of the war," he
was saying, and the heads of the other presidents were all snickering to
themselves and covering their mouths with their hands so they wouldn't
laugh out loud.
This was the precise moment we acknowledged that we'd be going to the
Democratic convention in August to protest the Vietnam war. I called
Jerry Rubin in New York to arrange for a meeting. On the afternoon of
December 31, several activist friends gathered at the Hoffmans' Lower
East Side apartment, smoking Colombian marijuana and planning for
Chicago.
Our fantasy was to counter the convention of death with a festival of
life. While the Democrats would present politicians giving speeches at
the convention center, we would present rock bands playing in the park.
There would be booths with information about drugs and alternatives to
the draft. We sought to utilize the media as an organizing tool, but we
needed a name so that journalists could have a "who" for their
"who-what-when-where-and-why" lead paragraph. . .
I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed,
an organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists. In
the process of cross-fertilization at antiwar demonstrations, we had
come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between
putting kids in prison for smoking pot in this country and burning them
to death with napalm on the other side of the planet. It was the
ultimate extension of dehumanization. And so we held a press conference.
A reporter asked me, "What happens to the Yippies when the Vietnam war
ends?" I replied, "We'll do what the March of Dimes did when a cure for
polio was discovered; we'll just switch to birth defects." But our
nefarious scheme worked. The headline in the Chicago Sun-Times read,
"Yipes! The Yippies Are Coming!" What would later happen at the
convention led to the infamous trial for crossing state lines to foment
riot. . .
I got a call from director Brett Morgen, who was working on a
documentary about the 1960s antiwar movement. It would have no narrator
and no talking heads, only archival footage and animated re-enactments
based on actual events and transcriptions of trial testimony. However,
Allen Ginsberg levitating during meditation can be construed as
cartoonic license. Brett invited me to write four specific animated
scenes. . .
Although Brett "loved, loved, loved" the scenes I wrote, the backers
objected to the use of LSD, fearful of diverting attention from the main
focus of the film. I was disappointed, if only for the sake of
countercultural history. The CIA originally envisioned employing LSD as
a means of control; instead, for millions of young people, LSD served as
a vehicle to explore their own inner space, deprogramming themselves
from mainstream culture and living their alternative. The CIA's
scenario had backfired. Anyway, my suggestion--instead of referring to
it as acid, Abbie could yell, "Hey, this is powerful [bleepin']
aspirin"--was rejected. Thus, the hurricane, which was originally going
to open the film, has been omitted, but of course it'll be on the DVD.
. . .
Brett's goal isn't that ambitious, but when he called to tell me that
"Chicago 10" had been selected to open the Sundance Film Festival, he
said, "Wouldn't it be great if Abbie's legacy turns out to be that he
helped to end the war in Iraq?" I hadn't seen any of the rough cuts and
didn't know what to expect at the festival screening. Well, I loved,
loved, loved it. Brett got a standing ovation. Although he was born
two months after the protests in Chicago, he has managed--with the
determination of a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, aided by 180 hours
of film, 50 hours of video, 500 hours of audio and 23,000 pages of trial
transcripts--to reveal in this unique neo-doc, the horror and the humor,
the rhetoric and the reality, of those events and their aftermath, in a
style and rhythm calculated to resonate with--and inspire--contemporary
youth. . .
Sundance may be a long way from Ramrod Key, the spirit of Yippie lingers
on.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-yippies28jan28,1,2060567.story
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took a work-vacation in Florida, renting a little house on stilts in
Ramrod Key. We had planned to see "The Professionals." "That's my
favorite movie," Abbie said. "Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin develop this
tight bond while they're both fighting in the Mexican revolution, then
they drift apart." But it was playing too far away, and a hurricane was
brewing, so instead we saw the Dino Di Laurentiis version of "The
Bible."
Driving home in the rain and wind, we debated the implications of
Abraham being prepared to slay his son because God told him to. I
dismissed this as blind obedience. Abbie praised it as revolutionary
trust. This was the week before Christmas. We had bought a small tree
and spray-painted it with canned snow. Now, we were tripping on LSD as
the hurricane reached full force. "Hey," Abbie yelled over the roar,
"this is powerful [bleepin'] acid!"
We watched Lyndon Johnson on a black-and-white TV set, although LBJ was
purple-and-orange. His huge head was sculpted into Mount Rushmore. "I
am not going to be so pudding-headed as to stop our half of the war," he
was saying, and the heads of the other presidents were all snickering to
themselves and covering their mouths with their hands so they wouldn't
laugh out loud.
This was the precise moment we acknowledged that we'd be going to the
Democratic convention in August to protest the Vietnam war. I called
Jerry Rubin in New York to arrange for a meeting. On the afternoon of
December 31, several activist friends gathered at the Hoffmans' Lower
East Side apartment, smoking Colombian marijuana and planning for
Chicago.
Our fantasy was to counter the convention of death with a festival of
life. While the Democrats would present politicians giving speeches at
the convention center, we would present rock bands playing in the park.
There would be booths with information about drugs and alternatives to
the draft. We sought to utilize the media as an organizing tool, but we
needed a name so that journalists could have a "who" for their
"who-what-when-where-and-why" lead paragraph. . .
I came up with Yippie as a label for a phenomenon that already existed,
an organic coalition of psychedelic hippies and political activists. In
the process of cross-fertilization at antiwar demonstrations, we had
come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between
putting kids in prison for smoking pot in this country and burning them
to death with napalm on the other side of the planet. It was the
ultimate extension of dehumanization. And so we held a press conference.
A reporter asked me, "What happens to the Yippies when the Vietnam war
ends?" I replied, "We'll do what the March of Dimes did when a cure for
polio was discovered; we'll just switch to birth defects." But our
nefarious scheme worked. The headline in the Chicago Sun-Times read,
"Yipes! The Yippies Are Coming!" What would later happen at the
convention led to the infamous trial for crossing state lines to foment
riot. . .
I got a call from director Brett Morgen, who was working on a
documentary about the 1960s antiwar movement. It would have no narrator
and no talking heads, only archival footage and animated re-enactments
based on actual events and transcriptions of trial testimony. However,
Allen Ginsberg levitating during meditation can be construed as
cartoonic license. Brett invited me to write four specific animated
scenes. . .
Although Brett "loved, loved, loved" the scenes I wrote, the backers
objected to the use of LSD, fearful of diverting attention from the main
focus of the film. I was disappointed, if only for the sake of
countercultural history. The CIA originally envisioned employing LSD as
a means of control; instead, for millions of young people, LSD served as
a vehicle to explore their own inner space, deprogramming themselves
from mainstream culture and living their alternative. The CIA's
scenario had backfired. Anyway, my suggestion--instead of referring to
it as acid, Abbie could yell, "Hey, this is powerful [bleepin']
aspirin"--was rejected. Thus, the hurricane, which was originally going
to open the film, has been omitted, but of course it'll be on the DVD.
. . .
Brett's goal isn't that ambitious, but when he called to tell me that
"Chicago 10" had been selected to open the Sundance Film Festival, he
said, "Wouldn't it be great if Abbie's legacy turns out to be that he
helped to end the war in Iraq?" I hadn't seen any of the rough cuts and
didn't know what to expect at the festival screening. Well, I loved,
loved, loved it. Brett got a standing ovation. Although he was born
two months after the protests in Chicago, he has managed--with the
determination of a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, aided by 180 hours
of film, 50 hours of video, 500 hours of audio and 23,000 pages of trial
transcripts--to reveal in this unique neo-doc, the horror and the humor,
the rhetoric and the reality, of those events and their aftermath, in a
style and rhythm calculated to resonate with--and inspire--contemporary
youth. . .
Sundance may be a long way from Ramrod Key, the spirit of Yippie lingers
on.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-yippies28jan28,1,2060567.story
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