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From the Los Angeles Times
The Monkees' 'Head' trip
The made-for-TV musical group's surrealistic 1968 film, penned by Jack
Nicholson, got no love at the box office, but American Cinematheque has
resurrected it.
By Susan King

November 12, 2008

Forty years ago, the Monkees' only feature film, "Head," hit theaters -- and
people have been scratching their heads ever since.

Though far from a masterpiece like the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" from 1964,
the film, starring Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith, is
a surreal time capsule -- a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness blast from the
past. It's as if Jean Cocteau had consumed lots of LSD and decided to make a
rock movie. Only its true history is a lot trippier, considering that Jack
Nicholson wrote the script and a motley crew of the era's icons appears in the
film.

Tonight, the American Cinematheque's '60s-centric "Mods and Rockers" series will
present a 40th anniversary screening of "Head," featuring Tork and Jones, plus
other cast and crew members, in person.

When "Head" was released theatrically in November 1968, the Monkees could not
have been less hip, admits Martin Lewis, the "Mods and Rockers" producer who's
hosting the event.

"With the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and the
riots in Chicago, Paris and London, everything was very serious," Lewis says of
the time. "Suddenly, though it had only been two years since the Monkees were
created, it seemed like 20 years."

The Emmy Award-winning NBC sitcom "The Monkees," which followed the zany
adventures of a struggling rock 'n' roll band in Los Angeles, had been canceled
earlier that year.

Though the Monkees had scored numerous hits, including "Last Train to
Clarksville," "Daydream Believer" and "I'm a Believer," their teeny-bopper fans
were no longer buying their records. The counterculture was thriving. People
were turning on and tuning in. Hendrix, Joplin and the Who were zooming up the
charts.

So "Head" was a major bomb. The film had critics perplexed. Teeny-boppers didn't
understand it, and those who considered themselves remotely hip wouldn't have
been caught dead going to a movie with the "Prefab Four," as the Monkees were
mockingly called.

A bad rap

Tork doesn't necessarily think the film failed because the Monkees were passé.

"The TV show had this huge ad campaign, and everybody went for all the hype,"
says Tork. "The 'Head' campaign was designed to be Postmodernist, and the
commercials were off-putting. The hip thought it was going to be another
bubble-gum movie, and they didn't want to see it. And the bubble-gum kids
thought it was going to be a freak-out movie, and they didn't want to see it. I
think if the movie had been thoroughly promoted in an appropriate way, it would
have done much better."

Surprisingly enough, "Head" has quite the pedigree. It was directed by Bob
Rafelson and produced by Bert Schneider, who also did the TV series. And it was
written and produced by none other than Nicholson, who also makes a brief
appearance in the movie. (Two years later, the three would collaborate on the
classic drama "Five Easy Pieces.")

Also popping up in "Head" are Frank Zappa, surgically enhanced stripper Carol
Doda, Dennis Hopper, Annette Funicello, Victor Mature, boxer Sonny Liston and
even Teri Garr, who is billed as "Terry Garr."

The film itself, which spoofs movie genres, is definitely out there. At one
point, the Monkees find themselves akin to pieces of dandruff in Mature's wavy
black hair.

Dolenz jokes that he still doesn't understand the film, "and I was in it. . . .
I don't think anybody knows what it is about."

He recalls Rafelson approaching him during the second season of the TV series
about doing a movie. "I vaguely remember a conversation about what we would want
to do and not want to do," says Dolenz. "I remember the general consensus was
that we don't want to make a 90-minute episode of 'The Monkees.'

"In retrospect, that would have been much more commercially successful. On the
other hand, we wouldn't have this wonderful, very bizarre film floating around
now, which I am very proud of. I think I did some great work as an actor in the
movie."

Rafelson introduced the group to Nicholson, who had written scripts before but
nothing on an "A"-movie level.

"We hit it off with Jack famously, because he was and still is such a
charismatic, intelligent and funny guy," Dolenz recalls.

For the next few months, Nicholson hung out on the show's set and visited the
four at their homes, "just soaking up everything that was Monkee," Dolenz says.
Then one weekend, he, Nicholson, Schneider and Rafelson spent a week at a golf
resort brainstorming their concepts for the film into a tape recorder. "Jack
took those tapes away with him and wrote the screenplay."

Timeless?

Though the film is 40 years old, "Head" doesn't seem dated, by Dolenz's
estimation.

"There were a lot of movies about hippies [made then] getting turned on and all
that stuff," he says. "Today, if you look at them, you sort of cringe in
embarrassment when somebody drives by in a VW bus painted with flowers and goes,
'Groovy.' "

The counterculture era wasn't really like that, Dolenz says. "It was all very
cerebral. It wasn't all about the trappings, the flowers and the bell-bottoms.
It was more of what was going on inside of everybody's mind. They managed to
capture the moment."

And that leads Lewis to conclude that, if the Monkees had been unknowns when
"Head" premiered, the film might have fared better.

"If it had been introduced as a low-key, underground movie, it might have hit
with the hip audience, who were looking for films against the commercial grain,"
he says. "It might have actually struck a chord with them."

King is a Times staff writer.

susan.king@...



Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

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