Cast:
The Monkees [Peter Tork • Davy Jones • Micky Dolenz • Michael Nesmith], with Victor Mature (The Big Victor), Annette Funicello (Teresa/Minnie), Timothy Carey (Lord High 'n' Low), Logan Ramsey (Officer Faye Lapid), Abraham Sofaer (Swami), Vito Scotti (I. Vitteloni), Charles Macaulay (Inspector Shrink), T. C. Jones (Mr. and Mrs. Ace), among others. Directed by Bob Rafelson.
Review:
"Of course, Head is an utterly and totally fragmented film. Among other reasons for making it was that I thought I would never get to make another movie, so I might as well make fifty to start out with and put them all in the same feature." - Bob Rafelson
Here's an opening line: induct the Monkees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Who are the Monkees? Well, it is an interesting question...First, let us talk about Bob Rafelson. The Manhattan native was distantly related to Samson Raphaelson (a prolific writer for a handful of Ernst Lubitsch films) but found himself studying at Trinity-Pawling School and Dartmouth College. He served in the U.S Army and found influence from disk jockey work when stationed in Japan (such as Yasujiro Ozu). He got involved in the TV industry in the late 1950s, specifically in story editing. He went to associate producer for shows and films, and it was during his time with Screen Gems that he met Bert Schneider (son of Abraham Schneider, who served as president of Columbia Pictures in the 1960s). They formed a partnership with a company called Raybert Productions. The release of A Hard Day's Night (1964), the hit music comedy featuring The Beatles, inspired the two to revive an idea that Rafelson had thought of a few years prior involving a music group that would be developed with Screen Gems. They even ran an ad to do auditions (after attempts to recruit The Lovin' Spoonful failed) for "Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers...4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's-types." The recruitment of who became the Monkees went four-ways: Davy Jones went first (July 1965) because Gems already had him under contract (he was a Tony Award nominated actor after starring in Oliver!), while Michael Nesmith was cast due to that September '65 audition, in which his wool hat and demeanor won him a part, and Peter Tork came on with the recommendation of Stephen Stills (yes, that one), a fellow one of the music scene of Greenwich Village, while lastly Micky Dolenz had screen experience in the 1950s with Circus Boy and his own interest in rock band music. Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker are credited as developers of the show because they wrote the pilot, which was shot in November 1965. The pilot didn't test well, but edits made by Rafelson helped lead to a two-season order that premiered on September 12, 1966 (it lasted 58 episodes until March 1968). Of course, with a show of musicians, one needed a producer to provide songs worthy of a hit status. Don Kirshner was hired to oversee that requirement, since he had a variety of musicians and writers at his disposal when it came to making the idea of music of session musicians that delivered something for select Monkees to then put vocals on ("I'm a Believer" for example, was written by Neil Diamond, who also did acoustic guitar). This worked...to a point. The group wanted to be, well, a group, and they delivered more input with their third album (released in May 1967). Kirshner's micromanaging led to his dismissal in 1967 (he later assembled another pop group that used studio musicians for something with no group to deal with in The Archies).
A few years before his death, Rafelson stated that his partners and friends urged him to not make a movie with the group, but he insisted on doing so to "complete the cycle" and telling a "true story, in abstract" would be worth it. Of course, one can't forget Jack Nicholson. On a weekend in 1967, the group, Rafelson, and Nicholson went to a hotel in Ojai Valley for a weekend, smoked some pot with a tape recorder, and Nicholson utilized the tapes for what became a screenplay, although Rafelson said it was structured while on LSD. I would like to mention that despite being a part of the basis of what became a screenplay, the Monkees were not given credit for the screenplay alongside Rafelson and Nicholson. Raybert (later re-named BBS Productions) would later back films such as Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and The Last Picture Show (1971) before its demise in the late 1970s. Schneider went on to win an Academy Award as a producer for Hearts and Minds (1974), while Rafelson would direct nine further films as a director (with five of them featuring Nicholson as star, such as the aforementioned Pieces film) before his death in 2022. After the 1969 television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee, Tork left the group. The group continued until 1970, although various reunions of varying sizes came and went in the next five decades. Jones died in 2012, Tork died in 2019 before a farewell tour with Dolenz and Nesmith closed the group out prior to Dolenz's death in 2021.
The original cut was 110 minutes but was trimmed to 86; somehow, it was promoted as not being for children in some ads but was given a G rating. All of this may seem like window dressing, but you really haven't seen nothing yet with a film as weird and as interesting as this one is when it comes to a yell to try and escape the plastic prison of fame. It was written by the man who wrote The Trip (1967)! The show was a weird enduring hit that maintained a following for two seasons, so why should it be a surprise that the Monkees making a film would be too different? Tork apparently watched the film many times over the years and felt that the film could be a dazzler for those in psychedelia, the point of the film for him was that the Monkees "never get out". A guy named John Brockman was behind the PR for the film, and the original poster apparently was just a shot of him. Simply put, the movie was a financial flop. Nesmith enjoyed the experience of making it (even if he had joined a one-day walkout with Jones and Dolenz after the aforementioned "no writing credit" incident), Dolenz called it an "incredible, weird, psychedelic movie" and Jones wasn't too big on talking about it. Years later, Tork suggested that in some way, the film was made (unconscious level or not) by Bert and Bob as a way to kill the Monkees and that Rafelson's view of life is one can't get out of the black box is in just like the group in the film. Who can't enjoy songs such as the opening sequence with "Porpoise Song" (where one of the Monkees jump off a bridge) or Jones (and Toni Basi, pay attention) doing a song and dance of "Daddy's Song" right before a cameo of Frank Zappa arises? Or sequences involving playing dandruff (to Victor Mature, the "Old Hollywood" embodiment that surely got a kick out of this)? Or an exploding Coke machine? Or wonder how it all comes in the same movie where footage of Nguyen Van Lem being shot is shown? Or the ending where each of the Monkees jump off the bridge from the beginning? It is a series of vignettes with a good deal of evident ideas about, well, cutting the strings of the puppet. The manufactured pop group image is delightfully demolished by the four members in countercultural fervor that makes it the ideal watch on a late night that would be quite compelling to pair with Easy Rider and look upon the mavericks that did their vision in the late 1960s, and in some ways, Head may be the better film. Time has rewarded the Monkees as people with their own useful perspective within music rather than critics that thought burying them was the way to go. But in the lines of films of A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Tommy (1975), Head (1968) stands just as tall in enduring band vision: imperfect but a hell of a time to decipher, all because of the efforts of Rafelson, Nicholson, and just as importantly, The Monkees.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Review #1405: One-Eyed Jacks.