Monday, September 10, 2007

Head: Hey, hey we're waiting to be taken seriously by people who do lots of drugs


I'm certainly no expert on the subject but as near as I can tell The Monkees were created as a spoof of The Beatles, only once they were assembled the group decided that they actually wanted to be The Beatles. It was this tension which was the undoing of their TV show's second season (at least, that's what it sounds like here) and what motivated the pre-fab four to deconstruct their mythos in the film Head. This movie features Annette Funicello and Frank Zappa which, I think, says everything you need to know about what it tries to achieve. And why it fails.

The film has a circular structure but no plot that I could identify. There seemed to be a theme that involved subverting each of the Monkees studio-defined images (in real life Peter Tork is not, in fact, retarded) but it was a little hard to make out. The whole thing is very psychedelic. And by psychedelic, I mean drug-influenced, somewhat juvenile, boarder-line incoherent and still kinda compelling. Or, at least, interesting in it's uniqueness.

Even if Head is more or less a complete fiasco, it sill has a prominent (or, at least, unique) place in film history. It was directed by Bob Rafelson, written by Jack Nicholson and Rafelson, and produced by Bert Schneider, Nicholson and Rafelson. The next year Nicholson and Schneider went on to do Easy Rider and after that all three of them were involved in the creation of Five Easy Pieces. These men, like the phoenix, rose from the ashes of an ill-conceived musical to begin a decade of challenging, revolutionary films. Also, Dennis Hopper was hanging around the set (he can be seen in the background, briefly, along with Rafelson and Nicholson) so you know he was mixed up in this whole thing, even if he doesn't have any official credits.


The choreography for this film was done by Toni Basil which begs the question: Did she find Micky Dolenz to be so fine?

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