HEAD (1968)

 "This better be straight."

Opening on a bright sunny day, we watch as a small crowd gathered to witness the dedication of a new suspension bridge face an interminable delay as the mayor and the chief of police of ... Wherever the Hell We Are, deal with a massive feedback glitch over the PA system. And with the crowd already restless, this ribbon cutting ceremony is then rudely interrupted when four men storm the bridge and plow through the assembled luminaries.

These men -- Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith, known en masse as The Monkees, appear to be fearfully running away from something. And at the head of this frightened pack, Micky makes an abrupt right turn and dives off the bridge, splashes into the water below, where the surrounding liquid is quickly transmogrified, shifting and swirling into amorphous blobs of psychedelic colors. And then, while "The Porpoise Song" contemplatively serenades, several mermaids join him and they swim away...

Cut to the Monkees' beach house in Malibu, where a beautiful girl passes from Micky, to Peter, to Mike, and finally, Davy, kissing them all as she goes. When Mike asks for seconds and inquires on taking this smooching a little further, she just laughs him off and leaves ...

Cut to a wall of television screens, showing slices of life in the late 1960s. And as our boys piss and moan about being stereotyped by their manufactured origins, and after they promise to give the people what they expect, all the screens suddenly shift to the notorious execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Vietnamese POW, by brigadier general Nguyễn Ngọc Loan on the streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive, which was caught on film and became a metastasizing flashpoint for the anti-war movement. 

And while I would never try to defend these brutal actions, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that Lém was an NVA infiltrator, an assassin, who was captured shortly after he (allegedly) slit the throats of a South Vietnamese colonel, his wife, their six children, and his 80-year old grandmother. And we get to watch him die, on multiple screens, except for the one in the lower right corner, where a young woman is screaming; soon revealed to be just a rabid Monkees fan, oblivious to the atrocities being committed all around her…

Cut to a football field, where the boys lead a raucous crowd in a cheer for more war, and then jump to a four-man foxhole. Under heavy fire, Peter goes for more ammo, pauses for a photo for LIFE Magazine, and then runs afoul of a mixed-metaphor in the form of a football player (Green Bay Packer legend, Ray Nitschke), who just wants to win the big game.

After getting past this lunatic, Peter makes it back to the foxhole. Then, together, Sgt. Nesmith and his Howling Monkees storm into Ro-Man's cave, fight their way inside, only to emerge out the other end in a concert arena, where they tear through a rousing rendition of "Circle Sky.” But as they play, mixed with shots of the frenzied audience are clips of terrified Vietnamese refugees, bloodied, bombarded, and fleeing for their lives. To punctuate the obvious to the oblivious, when they finish the song, the crowd rushes the stage and tears effigies of the band apart...

Okay, let’s just get this outta the way first: I love the Monkees, and love 'em unconditionally. Were they a manufactured pop group? Absolutely. But I don’t care. Did they play their own instruments? Still don’t care. But they didn't even write the majority of their major hits, you counter. Again. Don't care. How many songs do you think Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley wrote for themselves? And we all know how I feel about Elvis, right? Right. And the same goes for Frank.

Now, my only real beef with the “Pre-Fab Four” is whenever they got a little too pissy over their artistic merit; a perceived lack of “street-cred,” musically speaking, trying to make the whole Monkee phenomenon out to be both more (and less) than what it was actually intended to be. And I have no intention of doing that, here, either. For what it rightfully is/was/whatever was pretty damned clever, funny, and catchy as all hell as is, whether we're talking about the music or the TV-series; and it doesn't need me or anyone else blowing smoke and sunshine up anybody's wazoo to prove it. And yet, sadly, it was this belief in one's own manufactured hype that destined the group, which had flashed so big, so bright, and so fast in 1966, to just as quickly fizzle-out in only two short years.

Contrary to the going notion, according to an article by Monika Raesch for the Journal of Film and Video (Fall, 2013), Bob Rafelson’s idea for The Monkees actually predated the emergence of the Beatles, and was instead inspired by his own youthful misadventures. "I had conceived the show before the Beatles existed," said Rafelson, and thus, it was based on his time as an itinerant musician more "interested in having fun" than "earning a living." And according to an interview with Josh Karp for Esquire (April, 2013), these misadventures included riding a bull in an Arizona rodeo on a five-dollar bet that resulted in a broken coccyx (tailbone) and spending time in a Colombian prison, where he was strung-up by his ankles while his testicles were wired-up to a car battery; an experience Rafelson described as painful, but “painful, not so much because of the wires attached to my nuts, but because Perry Como was on the radio.”

Born in 1933 and raised in Manhattan, Rafelson knew right away that he didn’t want to stay in the family business of making hat ribbons. Drawn to the local art-house cinemas, he soon became fascinated with foreign and experimental films, including Hans Richter’s surrealist Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), which Rafelson later called “the weirdest shit of all time.”

After studying philosophy at Dartmouth College, conflicting accounts say Rafelson was either drafted or joined the Army in the early 1950s. He wound up stationed in Japan, where he worked as a disc jockey on the Far East Network. He also lucked into a job translating Japanese films into English for Shochiku Studios, where he also served as an adviser on which of the studio’s features would be viable for an American release. Here, he became fascinated by the works of Yasujiro Ozu -- Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story (1953). “I was hypnotized by the stillness of his frames, his sureness of composition," said Rafelson in an interview with film critic Peter Tonguette. And Ozu’s signature style “of a motionless, observing camera” would heavily influence the future director’s work.

When his hitch was up, Rafelson returned to Manhattan, where he knew somebody who knew somebody that got him a job with David Susskind as a story analyst for the anthology TV-series, The Play of the Week (1959-1961), where he wrote additional dialogue for the adaptations of Henry IV (1960) and A Palm Tree in a Rose Garden (1960) among others.

Rafelson and Schneider.

Now, it was during this period when Rafelson first met Bert Schneider, a cocky and militantly radical young executive for Screen Gems, which was the TV-branch of Columbia Pictures -- a position he was appointed to by his father, Abe Schneider, the current head of Columbia Pictures, after his son got expelled from Cornell University over a gambling scandal. Fast friends from the start, Rafelson and Schneider would spend hours walking around Central Park, cussin’ and discussing what they felt was the sorry and stagnant state of American movies, feeling Hollywood had fallen behind the efforts of Italy, France, Japan, England and, basically, everywhere else.

“The problem isn’t a lack of talent [in Hollywood],” said Rafelson. “It’s that we don’t have people who will recognize it.” And one day, he and Schneider vowed they would start a company dedicated to identifying and supporting these original filmmakers. The idea wasn’t to beat the system, Rafelson declared, but to create their own.

And as this idea continued to percolate, Rafelson migrated to Los Angeles around 1962, where he bounced around Desilu Productions and Universal Television, where he wrote and produced a couple of episodes of The Greatest Show on Earth (1963-1964) for the former and helped launch a new series for the latter, Channing (1963-1964), a drama based on a college campus, where Rafelson tried to practice what he preached by making it timely and tried to bring in some fresh faces to keep it real. These noble efforts soon brought him into conflict with Lew Wasserman, the head of MCA, who owned Universal, and who was very upset over the casting of Michael Parks, feeling he wasn’t handsome enough. This meeting ended with the volatile Rafelson calling his boss hopelessly “out of touch” before violently trashing his office.

Needless to say, Rafelson was now out of a job. Luckily, a lifeline came when Schneider moved to Hollywood in 1965. By then, Beatlemania had swept through the United States and Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964) had become a colossal hit. Thus, Rafelson’s idea about the televised misadventures of a rock ‘n’ roll band suddenly had legs. And to bring this notion to fruition, Rafelson and Schneider formed Raybert Productions and sold the idea of a TV-Show that would also produce hit records, at least in theory, to Screen Gems -- who were mostly known for distributing Hanna-Barbera cartoons and re-introducing The Three Stooges to a brand new generation of fans via the boob-tube in the 1950s, who were intrigued enough to order a pilot.

Okay. When you dig into the fossil record of The Monkees, it shows the original plan was to plug The Lovin' Spoonful into the proposed series but the band was already under contract with another label. So was The Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits. Thus, to avoid any other legal entanglements, the decision was made to just start a band from scratch. Thus, a cattle-call was in order and a wide net was thrown out via a conspicuous ad in the trades that called for four “Folk ‘n’ Roll Musicians-Singers,” ages 17-21, “preferably insane” with the “courage to work” for a new TV-series.

Rafelson and Paul Mazursky, who would help write all but two episodes of the show, and who would go on to write and direct the likes of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Harry and Tonto (1974) and An Unmarried Woman (1978), were in charge of these screen tests. And in their wide net they managed to catch and release Danny Hutton, later of Three Dog Night, and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, along with singer-songwriters Harry Nilsson and Paul Williams. However, despite it being both debunked and traced to a radio interview in the early 1970s, where Micky Dolenz pulled it out of his ass to prank the interviewer, and the fact that he was currently serving time in a federal penitentiary at the time of these auditions, the persistent rumor that Charles Manson was among those who auditioned for The Monkees has tenaciously refused to die.

As these auditions progressed, they ran into a bit of a snag when most of the established musicians discovered that Screen Gems would retain the publishing rights to all the songs written for the show, causing a few on the short-list to back-out. In the end, through fate or serendipity, they wound up with two actors and two musicians as things were eventually whittled down from 437 hopefuls to an apprentice jockey from Manchester, a former child actor, a refugee from the Greenwich Village folk scene, and a guy whose mom invented White-Out.

Truth told, Mike Nesmith was the only Monkee to come out of this infamous cattle call. Davy Jones, who had recently appeared as the Artful Dodger in the musical production of Oliver, was already under contract at Screen Gems, who were looking for a proper vehicle for him and felt they’d finally found it. Micky Dolenz broke into the business back in 1956, taking the lead of Corky in the TV-series, Circus Boy (1956-1958), and got an audition through his agent. And Peter Tork was actively sought out after his former roommate, Stills, recommended him to Rafelson.

As I said, Nesmith and Tork were already musicians. Dolenz could sing and play the guitar, while Jones could play the drums. But this was nixed due to his height, as the studio, who initially felt Jones should be the face of the franchise, feared he would get lost behind the drum-set. Thus, Dolenz got a crash course on the drums, and would eventually become the lead vocalist. And while Dolenz and Jones already had acting experience, the entire group went through a six-week boot-camp on improvisational acting with actor James Frawley, who taught them “the essence of the joke” and how to assume and change characters as the scenes played out -- mostly on sets with leftover props from that Three Stooges revival I mentioned earlier. And through the spring and summer of 1966, with a lot of rehearsals, the Monkees started to cohere into a unit.

But! All of this hard work was almost all for naught as the initial pilot -- Here Comes the Monkees (1966) set a new record for the lowest test-ratings ever scored. Things were so dire Screen Gems was ready to stop “throwing good money at a bad product” and just pull the plug on the whole thing until Rafelson managed to get a 24-hour stay of execution to re-cut the pilot and get the show one more shot. And to help salvage it, he added the audition outtakes of Jones and Nesmith to more properly introduce the group. This did the trick, as the second test-screening scored one of the highest approval ratings ever recorded for a pilot. Screen Gems was sold, too, and bought the series, which would be aired on NBC, giving Raybert two seasons with an option on a third.

Now, the extant fossil record also shows that these creators and collaborators managed to catch lightning in a bottle, everything seemed to gel, and whether the show was a vehicle to help promote record sales or the records were released to help boost the TV-ratings is still open for debate. What isn't, was the popularity of both. And while the series was breaking ground artistically and raking in Emmy awards, the records, under the guiding hand of Don Kirshner, with some hideously infectious tunes penned by Neil Diamond, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, the Monkees were rocketing up the charts and spinning gold records with each new release -- even out-selling the Beatles for a hot minute. It was alchemy. Pure alchemy. Alas, while things appeared to be running smoothly on the surface, underneath, things were already starting to curdle.

“Was it a TV-show? Was it a rock ‘n’ roll group? I don’t have any idea. I do not know. It was neither, and it was a little of both,” offered Nesmith in the later documentary on the phenomenon, Hey, Hey We’re The Monkees (1997), which traced the group from its jumbled beginnings to its eventual cratering. See, as Monkey-Mania went absolutely ape-shit in ‘66, along with the resultant merchandising and music that was targeted at 14-year old girls, the four-headed monster Rafelson, Schneider and Kirshner had created was soon rebelling.

As the show entered its second season, tiring of the same old formula and fed-up with the restrictions of the canned, hands-off hit-making-machine that produced the albums The Monkees and More of the Monkees, the group, led by Nesmith, were demanding to have more creative input on the music -- especially when word broke they weren’t playing their own instruments on the tracks, just adding the vocals. These finks were fakes; and fair or not, this assessment stuck. 

Thus, the Monkees began to exert more influence in the recording studio and, against Kirshner’s wishes, began touring to prove their bona fides. And while these tours proved successful, acrimony behind the scenes soon found Kirshner, essentially, getting himself fired, leaving the Monkees to their own recording devices. And while the newer music of Headquarters, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., and The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees might’ve been more creatively satisfying, the damage was done and sales quickly leveled off -- and then started to free-fall.

Meantime, things on the show weren’t going that much better. Rafelson always claimed The Monkees was “made” in the editing booth. “The tempo was of paramount importance,” according to Rafelson in an interview with John Wakeman (World Film Directors, 1988). “I had to direct one or two of the shows to set the pattern of how these things should be made." And to keep it from going stale, in the first season, he made sure 29 of the 32 episodes were directed by people who had never directed before -- himself included. “So the idea of using new directors, not perhaps too encumbered by traditional ways of thinking, was initiated on that series -- and then just continued on with the movies we made later."

Thus and so, it didn’t help that by the second season both Rafelson and Schneider had been “kicked upstairs” to executive produce the show and turned the actual hands-on production over to others. And while this freed up the Raybert brain-trust to pursue their notions on making a new kind of American cinema with the money they had accrued from the success of The Monkees thus far, the show quickly fell into formula and slowly and painfully lost its anarchic edge as NBC and Screen Gems, despite all the money it generated, refused to spend anymore money on the show.

Then, things continued to unravel as the second season came to a close. Seems the cast wanted some massive changes if The Monkees was picked-up for a third season. And in their ultimatum, they wanted to dump the half-hour sit-com and turn it into an hour-long variety show, where they could do some sketches but also showcase other musical guests. But NBC refused to budge, saying the show had to stay the same or it would be canceled. And as tensions rose between the talent, the studio, and the network, Rafelson stepped in and offered his cast a peace-offering: What if they made a movie?

Enter Jack Nicholson. Now, Nicholson had been kicking around Hollywood since the mid-1950s, trying to make it as an actor. He debuted in The Cry Baby Killer (1956) for Roger Corman and Allied Artists. From there, he kinda became part of Corman’s unofficial stock company with Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, Beach Dickerson, and Ed Nelson, appearing in things ranging from The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) to The Raven (1963) and The Terror (1963), with some episodic TV roles mixed in-between. But after ten years in the journeyman actor trenches without a real breakthrough, by the mid 1960s, by necessity, Nicholson felt it was time to transition out of acting and move behind the camera as either a writer or director.

While working for Corman, Nicholson had struck up a friendship with another cog in the producer’s fabled learn-on-the-fly film school, Monte Hellman, an editor, who had also directed Beast from Haunted Cave (1959). Together, they would co-write Flight to Fury (1964), a jungle adventure yarn, which Hellman would direct and Nicholson would co-star in. And as the decade progressed, “Hellman and Nicholson would haunt screenings of European films and talk about them into the night,” according to author Jonathan Kirshner in his book, When Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited (2019). “The influences of these films and the conversations that followed were visible in two micro-budget westerns they would shoot on Corman’s dime, The Shooting (1966), written by Carole Eastman, and Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), written by Nicholson.” Both would produce, Hellman would direct, and Nicholson would co-star in these highly existential westerns. And while I find The Shooting to be far better, and with a lot more to contemplate, both are worth your time.

 Rafelson and Nicholson.

Now, it was during one of those underground screenings when Nicholson first met Rafelson. Apparently, neither of them liked the film all that much and both shouted their disapproval at the screen as the reels played out. When the lights came up, these two malcontents found each other. And as their friendship blossomed, Rafelson thought Nicholson was a genius on many levels, while Nicholson felt Rafelson was “a kindred spirit” with “a tendency to stir the pot when things got boring,” according to Karp’s article in Esquire. “He had a nature that irritated a lot of people,” said Nicholson. “Which was also appealing to me.”

Wanting to collaborate on something, when Nicholson said he could write a script about anything, Rafelson called him on this boast and charged him to write one about the Monkees. Look, despite the lofty ideals, Rafelson was no fool. He knew this might be his only shot at directing a feature and, at the time, the Monkees still had enough juice left to get Columbia to agree to finance a film featuring the group directed by him.

Still, I think both Rafelson and Schneider felt two years in The Monkees madhouse was enough; it was time to move on to other things (-- which we’ll be getting to in a sec), and perhaps in a fit of Frankensteinian parental rejection, they would kinda leave their “monster” behind to fend for itself, which I think explains why, when Nicholson made his initial pitch with two radically different plots -- one that would draw inspiration from A Hard Days Night and make them millions, while the other idea would be a drug-induced head trip that wouldn’t make them a nickel, Schneider eagerly chose the second version.

Here, the fossil records show a large pocket of lysergic acid diethylamide. For, as the story goes, Rafelson, Nicholson, and the collective Monkees would meet at a resort hotel in Ojai, California, where they holed-up, lit-up, licked-up, and started airing their beefs and bouncing nonsensical ideas off each other and into a tape recorder, which was roughly translated into a shooting script. Rafelson and Nicholson would continue to expand on the script in the damndest of places but mostly in Harry Dean Stanton’s basement -- Nicholson was currently crashing there, where they continued to get high and the film got even more … out of hand.

This, of course, is why the end result of their efforts, which would eventually be christened as HEAD (1968), can be best described as less of a film and more of a stream of consciousness committed to film; or random thoughts being constantly bombarded by non-sequiturs, bound together by metaphor that is, at times, subtle, and other times, well, not so much. As for me, I think it’s more like late-night channel surfing, where you've already cycled around the dial several times, stopping randomly and sticking around long enough to see what a program is before moving on, hoping not for something better, just something else.

Here, Rafelson and his kooky quartet have their hands on the remote control. And as we bounce around between Ronald Reagan giving speeches, Bela Lugosi doing his thing in The Black Cat (1934), and some commercials for Ralph Williams’ Ford Dealership, we finally settle on another war film, with Micky stumbling through the desert.

Alone, out of food and water, he finds a stray Coke machine amongst the dunes. But when he puts in his change, the machine clunks empty. Flying into a rage, Micky assaults the machine while a Coke jingle merrily plays. Then, an Arab horseman rides up, says "Pssssst" according to the subtitles, and then rides away. Next, a tank rumbles over a dune but the driver quickly surrenders; and then more soldiers appear, hundreds of them, all laying their arms at Micky’s feet before filing away. Once they're all gone, Micky crawls into the tank, takes aim, and blows the Coke machine to smithereens. When the smoke clears, we have another musical interlude as our heroes find themselves in a harem and indulge in both the pleasures of the flesh and the pipe....

Change the channel to the wild west, where a wagon train is under Indian attack. The situation dire, an injured woman (Garr) begs trooper Micky to suck the poison out of her wounded finger. Nearby, Mike also lies gravely wounded against a tree. But as the Indians close in for the kill, Micky, tired of playing make believe, storms off the set, breaking through the backdrop, and disappears. Mike follows him ...

Change the channel, and we find Davy in front of a Brownstone, playing the violin. But Mike and Micky, still in their cowboy garb, interrupt his scene. Davy follows them, and they wind up in a train yard, where a Phantom Kook appears and bellows at them for wandering off the set.

Leaving the Kook behind (played by the great Timothy Carey -- who made a career out of playing phantom kooks), the trio head down a street, their mere presence triggering mass panic as everyone else quickly disappears. Inside a cafe, they find Peter and a surly waitress, who chides them as "God’s gift to eight-year olds." But Peter isn't listening; intent on staring at -- nay, staring into his melting ice cream cone as we change channels again...

Now, we settle on Davy, who's in a boxing match with Sonny Liston -- and he’s losing badly. And as he's pummeled senseless, our boy flashes back to his violin playing, where he argues with his girl (Funicello) about agreeing to be in this fixed fight. But back in the ring, Davy refuses to take a dive. In the crowd, when Mike criticizes Micky for messing up the fix, Micky loses it when he's called a dummy and storms the ring. Mayhem ensues until Peter magically appears and reminds everyone that, no, he’s the dummy, and always the dummy, and then we jump back to the cafe and the melting ice cream.

Here, after Peter decks the surly waitress -- who turns out to be a man in drag, the scene wraps and the director and crew spill onto the set, including Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. Peter, meanwhile, visibly upset, tries and fails to corner director Rafelson and producer Schneider, or anyone who’ll listen, really, that he isn’t happy about having to hit a girl. Suddenly, it starts snowing inside the cafe, signaling another musical interlude; which begins with several serene scenes of nature that quickly dissolve into chaos with the intrusion of civilization, billboards, power lines etc...

Change the channel again, and suddenly, we find the boys in a factory. And while the tour guide spends his nickel, Davy notices something isn’t quite kosher here; but this realization comes too late as the group is herded into and locked in a darkened room -- to be known from here on out as the Dreaded Black Box. 

Floodlights soon blind them, and the unseen director orders them to come forward and crawl onto a giant false head; seems they're supposed to be dandruff for a shampoo commercial. And so, they rummage around in the hair -- revealed to be the scalp of one Victor Mature.

Now, this soon to be running gag of a giant Victor Mature can be read in two ways: one, as a poke-in-the-eye at RCA Victor, who distributed their records, who were in cahoots with the brass at NBC, and whose logo was a trained dog transfixed by his master's voice; and two, as a poke-in-the-eye at what Rafelson felt was the old and antiquated studio system, which had come to him during one of those acid trips in somebody’s closet as Victor Mature’s sculpted hair.

Then, a vacuum cleaner sucks up the miniature Monkees. And while the rest wind up in the bag, where they marvel at a giant reefer butt found within, Davy gets stuck in the nozzle. Managing to crawl his way back out, we get another dazzling musical interlude, where Davy gets his Anthony Newley on something fierce as he sings and dances a psychotropic dance with Toni Basil. 

When the number ends, Davy heads outside, where he bumps into Frank Zappa and a talking Hereford bull. Both are critical of Davy's number as Zappa advises him to worry less about the dancing and more about the music -- the youth of America are depending on him to show them the way after all.

Suddenly, the Dreaded Black Box emerges from out of a nearby street and the other three Monkees bail out. Accosted by a passing police officer (Ramsey), who, after listening to their story about the factory, the dandruff, and the vacuum cleaner, is ready to haul them all in on suspicion of drug use until Davy and a passing military parade saves them.

Herded into a restroom, Davy sees a large, bloodshot eye in the mirror and is suddenly zapped into the House of Usher (1960) set -- complete with some sinister laughter. He heads for a large red door, opens it, and we spy a very large bug. Only he isn’t looking at it -- Micky is. And then Micky, in full jungle gear, is captured by savages and chained to a wall next to Peter and Mike. But the wall quickly revolves and they find themselves back in the bathroom, where Davy saw the giant eyeball. And after the same surly policeman rousts them out of the john, he looks in the mirror, sees Victor Mature, and promptly passes out...

Change the channels, and we find Mike in bed, who is rudely awakened by a persistent doorbell. Answering the call, Peter receives a telegram; but, as he reads, he inexplicably winds up on the House of Usher set, too. Back in the house, Mike finds everybody gone, and then slowly retreats back into the bedroom, pursued by a bunch of malicious silver balloons. Turns out this was all for a surprise birthday party for Mike, who isn’t all that happy about this because all he really wanted to do was stay in bed. Then, the Phantom Kook shows up again, compliments Mike on his surly sentiments, rants some more, and then appears to have a stroke...

Change the channels, and we find Mike and Davy in jail. Peter, meanwhile, is in a steam-room with the mystical guru Abraham Sofaer, getting some advice on the cosmos and our place in it. When Peter thinks he has it all figured out, he seeks out the others, finding Mike and Micky now betting on whether a distressed girl will jump off a building or not. Here, Peter tries to clue them in on his big revelation, but they won't listen. Moving on, he tracks down Davy in that trippy bathroom; but he won't listen either. When they all regroup, Peter tries again, but his warning comes too late as they all wind up back in the Dreaded Black Box. Trapped, Peter finally has a captive audience and goes into his mystical spiel, inspiring Davy to just kick the walls down.

Free again, the Monkees fight their way out of the factory and begin revisiting all the earlier sets, where they run into the Phantom Kook, who is determined to rein them in permanently. But our boys manage to dispose of him with a handy cannon. Alas, the 50-foot Victor Mature returns and scares them back inside the Dreaded Black Box. The Box is then airlifted and dropped into the desert, where it breaks open on impact, revealing they're now surrounded by everyone we've met so far -- the soldiers, the Arabs, the Indians, all the women, Victor Mature, and even the Coke machine!

And here, as the film kicks into a kind of surreal-overdrive, the group is thrown back into the factory, fight their way back out, and wind up in a dune-buggy. Peter floors it, and they're magically back in the desert, with Big Victor right on their tail. Meanwhile, the real Victor Mature is getting bored by the Monkee movie he is watching on his TV and kicks in the screen, which knocks the car onscreen over, making the Monkees flee for their lives on foot.

Soon pursued by everyone, the quartet head for a bridge, where a dedication ceremony is taking place. And as the mayor and the chief of police fiddle with a troublesome microphone, the Monkees plow through the ribbon-cutting ceremony fleeing from this wild menagerie; and then, one by one, jump off the bridge. Plunging deep into the water below, the pretty colors start to swirl, "The Porpoise Song" kicks up again, and, free at last, everything seems nice and peaceful until our boys realize they're trapped in an aquarium -- an aquarium that looks suspiciously like the Dreaded Black Box as they’re hauled off by Big Vic and the end credits roll.

Hookay, then. Some would argue that HEAD has no plot, but, I dunno, I did just spend the last couple hours pounding out a synopsis. So, yeah, there is one; it's just kinda hard to follow the shattered logic of it amidst the thunder and the chaos as Rafelson and his errant pranksters really blow-up the toy-box in their efforts to deconstruct the phenomenon they had created. Deconstruct it? Hell, they demolished it and sewed the resultant wreckage with salt and urine. But was this on purpose? Maaaaaaybe.

"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," said Rafelson. It was an audacious film by his estimation -- and he never wanted to do anything like it ever again, but, “It was so audacious that nobody saw the f@cking thing.”

Yes, the Monkees felt trapped by the machinations of their success -- personified by the Dreaded Black Box. And whenever they try to break out, to do their own thing, or try something different, they are met with resistance on all fronts and are then lured or forcefully herded back into this Box, where they are expected to behave. That’s obvious, and provides the needed connective tissue for everything else. Namely, the stinging commentary on commercialism, celebrity, and the folly of war by holding up a mirror to their rabid fan-base, who are so caught up in Monkee-mania, what's being spoon fed to them, they don’t see the horrors going on in the world around them.

Unfortunately, this keening and finger-wagging is why many argue that HEAD missed the profundity bullseye it thinks it nailed and only managed a rather embarrassing three-story belly-flop into the pretentious pool instead. And while I think it hedges dangerously close to toppling into this very trajectory, I feel it’s saving grace is how this allegedly shallow, manufactured pop group were completely sincere with their message -- muddled though that message may be. And in their search for deeper meaning, keeping it real, and demanding that we acknowledge this … tsunami of significance, all involved tended to overlook the fact that they already served a purpose by making folks laugh -- a lot, and bringing joy to the ear by offering an escape from these very same horrors. I mean, Didn't Sullivan's Travels (1941) teach us anything?

Anyways, despite the schizophrenic nature of this most extraordinary adventure - western - comedy - love story - mystery - drama - musical - documentary - satire - feature ever filmed, Rafelson did a commendable job of holding things together. Like with the TV-series, HEAD is both saved and succeeds thanks to the editing, which adds a strange narcotic effect to the whole shebang -- a contact high, thanks to the efforts of Rafelson, Mike Pozen, and an uncredited assist by Hellman, who keep this patchwork assault on the senses humming right along. And when you add that editing to the musical numbers, the results will blow your brain right out of your, well, head.

Two numbers immediately come to mind -- three if you want to count the “Porpoise Song” that bookends the movie. First, Peter belting out “Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?" during Mike’s disastrous birthday party, which quickly devolves into an orgiastic dance party. But the absolute show-stopper is Jones torching his way through "Daddy's Song" -- which was written by Nillson, by the way, where the sequence is seamlessly spliced together from two different colored takes, where the palettes of the costumes and sets is totally reversed, positive to negative, from cut to cut into one helluva an eye-popping delight, which I’m sure also melted a few minds of those under the influence. 

High or straight, the number is one of my favorite pieces of cinema, right behind the Hawkmen’s attack on Rocket Ajax in Flash Gordon (1980) and the climax of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- from “The Ecstacy of Gold” through the three-way duel, when it comes to moments of pure cinema fusion.

Before the film was finished, both Screen Gems and NBC came to the conclusion that The Monkees was just more trouble than it was worth and officially canceled the series. It should be noted that neither Rafelson nor Schneider put up much of a fuss when the plug got pulled on the show they helped create. The two had always acted as a buffer between the studio bosses and their unruly stars, but all that came to an abrupt end when HEAD first got the green light.

Remember that hotel script-session I mentioned earlier? Well, apparently, when Nesmith found out that he and the others weren't going to get a screenwriting credit, those tapes mysteriously disappeared. When that didn't work, Nesmith, Jones and Dolenz went on strike, and only Tork showed up for the first day of filming. Seems the group, feeling exploited, had hired themselves a new manager, who was at the studio and making demands. And if they weren’t met, there would be no Monkee movie. Here, after snorting several lines of cocaine, Rafelson confronted the manager and wound up throwing him down several flights of stairs. And worse yet, even though filming eventually commenced, the damage to their creative partnership could not be undone. This, obviously, goes a long way in explaining why Rafelson and Schneider so casually cut bait and moved on to their next project, which also came to them by way of Nicholson.

See, Nicholson had written The Trip (1967) for Roger Corman and American International Pictures, which starred Peter Fonda. Meantime, Fonda and Dennis Hopper had a script they wanted to film about a couple of stoned bikers traversing across America. Corman turned it down, feeling the market had been saturated thanks to the countless cash-ins and knock-offs after the success of The Wild Angels (1966). And AIP took a pass, too, when they wouldn’t let Hopper direct it.

And so, Nicholson brought it to Raybert, who, anxious to put their theories to the test, agreed to finance it for around $400,000. And after the film proved a smashing success at Cannes, Schneider was able to not only negotiate a release for Easy Rider (1969) by Columbia, but also signed a six-picture deal with the studio -- and most importantly, if they kept the budgets below a million, Raybert could essentially do whatever the hell they wanted with whomever they wanted.

At that point, Rafelson and Schneider brought in Steve Blauner to assist them in this new endeavor, and Raybert officially became BBS Productions. Nicholson, meanwhile, wound up co-starring in Easy Rider when Rip Torn wigged-out and walked off the picture. He would also take the lead in BBS’ follow up feature, Five Easy Pieces (1970), and soon rocketed to stardom and several Academy Awards -- like Rafelson always knew he would.

Easy Rider was well into pre-production as the filming of HEAD wrapped up. And as the story goes, after several title changes, it was decided the Monkee movie would be called HEAD -- basically so it could later serve as a vulgar punchline. Seems when it came to the future promotion of Easy Rider, Rafelson and Schneider thought it would be hilarious if the tagline for the film would read “From the people who gave you HEAD.” The only problem, nobody went to see HEAD.

As to why, well, when it was finally finished, the original cut of HEAD was nearly two hours long. But after a disastrous sneak preview, Columbia forced Rafelson to go back and gut over a half-hour out of it. And with no faith in the film, and fearing what they felt was an incomprehensible mess would only hurt the already declining record sales even more, the initial advertising campaign for HEAD neglected to mention the Monkees at all. Instead, the public got a dose of the avant garde and were presented with a balding man’s head and the film’s title in print ads, posters and TV commercials. That’s it.

When this completely backfired, an attempt was made to salvage the campaign by admitting this was the Monkee movie that had been promised all along. And then, two months after their show got canceled, HEAD was released in November of 1968. And while some critics got it, others did not -- and neither did ticket buyers, none of whom could say, exactly, what they had just watched. And with that dry-fart at the box-office, Columbia kinda left the film to wither and die and then washed their hands clean of this Monkee business.

Cast adrift, the Monkees officially broke up in 1970. Tork had already left the group back 1968, using an opt-out clause in their original contract. Nesmith lasted another year before bowing out in late 1969, defaulting on his contract to the tune of $500,000. Dolenz and Jones stuck it out for one more album; but when Changes fizzled, Jones announced he was going solo, leaving Dolenz as the sole Monkee left standing. And sadly, at the time of this writing, Dolenz is now the only Monkee left period. (Jones passed away in 2012, Tork in 2019 and Nesmith in 2021).

Somewhat sadly, Rafelson and BBS’ cinematic revolution was also destined to fizzle. New Hollywood they called it, the rise of the independent, character-driven productions. But after starting strong with Five Easy Pieces and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), which were both critical and box-office successes, things cooled off considerably with Drive, He Said (1971), which was Nicholson’s directorial debut, and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). Then in 1974, Nicholson broke ranks and did Chinatown (1974) for Paramount, and while shooting Stay Hungry (1976), Rafelson took his cast -- Sally Field, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jeff Bridges to see JAWS (1975). And when it was finished, he told them, “This is the death of the movie you’re in right now.” He was right, the era of the corporate-backed blockbuster was upon them, and BBS soon dissolved. The revolution was over.

I think history has been kind to the Monkees. With documentaries like The Wrecking Crew (2008) and Muscle Shoals (2013), which showed hardly nobody was playing their own instruments in the recording studios during that era, along with numerous revivals and reunion shows, has really helped legitimize what they managed to pull off back then. As for their film, I think Rafelson summed it up best, saying, “I regard film not as a sacred parchment, but as a pliable canvas.” And while HEAD did its best to derail that runaway train to Clarksville, and succeeded, consciously or not, I think the end-results truly captured the zeitgeist of a certain moment quite unlike any other. It was different, and it was wild, and it was the start of something. Something wildly different. It was the death of a phenomenon that did not go quietly. And it was one helluva’n experience crawling around inside this particular headspace. 

Originally posted on July 7, 2000, at 3B Theater. 

HEAD (1968) Raybert Productions :: Columbia Pictures / EP: Bert Schneider / P: Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson / D: Bob Rafelson / W: Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson / C: Michel Hugo / E: Mike Pozen, Monte Hellman / M: Igo Kantor / S: Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Timothy Carey, Annette Funicello, Teri Garr, Sonny Liston, Victor Mature