\u201cWell, if it isn\u2019t God\u2019s gift to the 8-year-olds.\u201d \u2013Mrs. Ace<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n When I first stumbled onto Head<\/i><\/strong> in the mid-\u201990s, I was fresh out of college and a decade removed from the \u201980s Monkees revival that had brought their show back into syndication and coaxed Dolenz and Tork into the studio to record three new songs for a greatest hits collection. I was in the habit of staying up late on Friday nights to watch TNT\u2019s MonsterVision<\/i> with host Joe Bob Briggs, and its chaser, 100% Weird<\/i>. It was under the latter\u2019s auspices that I learned of Head<\/i>\u2019s existence, and my curiosity about what a Monkees movie would entail overrode my desire to turn in at a decent hour. And a curiosity is how I would have described it at the time, its most salient feature being Nicholson\u2019s screenplay credit, which seemed as much of a joke as anything that had preceded it. (In the pre-IMDb days, I had no idea he\u2019d written several films before this, including two for Monte Hellman and Roger Corman\u2019s The Trip<\/i>, with which Head<\/i> shares its psychedelic underpinnings and trippy philosophizing.)<\/span><\/p>\n If my first exposure to Head<\/i> failed to make me a convert, its designation as a \u201cweird\u201d movie remained, such that when it was featured on TCM Underground<\/i> a decade later, I was moved to revisit it on April Fools\u2019 Day, an appropriate choice given its prankish nature. That the joke is on The Monkees themselves is baked into the film\u2019s DNA, along with its circular structure, as the first song heard \u2014 Gerry Goffin and Carole King\u2019s \u201cPorpoise Song\u201d \u2014 is reprised at the end. In between, Rafelson and Nicholson cycle through an array of genre parodies and piss-takes, which the band gamely participates in. But with its blunt antiwar messaging (incorporating \u2014 of all things for a G-rated movie \u2014 footage of the execution of Viet Cong officer Nguy\u1ec5n V\u0103n L\u00e9m during the Tet Offensive) and its fatalistic streak, Head<\/i> is more Three Resurrected Drunkards<\/i> (also from 1968, starring Japanese pop band the Tokyo Folk Crusaders and directed by Nagisa Oshima) than Good Times<\/i> (Sonny and Cher\u2019s sole big-screen outing, and director William Friedkin\u2019s feature debut).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOkay, you think they call us plastic now, babe, but you wait till I get through telling them how we do it, huh?\u201d \u2013Michael Nesmith<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n My interest in Head<\/i> picked up steam when the Criterion Collection released it as part of the America Lost and Found: The BBS Story<\/i> boxed set, placing it in the context of the \u201cNew Hollywood\u201d filmmaking revolution it was obliquely responsible for ushering in. For evidence of this, look no further than the fourth-wall-shattering scene where Peter punches a verbally abusive lunch lady (immediately revealed to be played by a man in drag) and Rafelson calls cut, steps in from of the camera to consult with Nicholson, and downplays Tork\u2019s concerns about how it will affect his image. \u201cBob, it\u2019s a movie for kids,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to dig it, man.\u201d Meanwhile, Dennis Hopper passes through the frame, presumably trying to get a word in about Easy Rider<\/i>, which was next on Raybert\u2019s production slate. (As legend has it, Head<\/i> got its title because if it was a massive hit, Rafelson and company wanted to bill their next film as being \u201cfrom the people who gave you Head<\/i>.\u201d That could very well have been Easy Rider<\/i> had Head<\/i> not sunk like a stone after briefly topping the box office<\/span><\/a> upon its release on Nov. 6, 1968.)<\/span><\/p>\n One of the most illuminating supplements on Criterion\u2019s release is the commentary by all four Monkees (who were, alas, recorded separately). Among the lore brought up is the weekend they spent with Rafelson and Nicholson passing around a tape recorder (and very likely something else), brainstorming ideas for the movie. No mention is made of the protest where they refused to show up for the first day of shooting (save for Tork, who apparently didn\u2019t get the memo), but as Nesmith says, \u201cI don\u2019t recall the four of us contributing that much,\u201d so their failure to secure writing credits is understandable. \u201cIf there is a magic trick inside Head<\/i>, I think it\u2019s Jack Nicholson,\u201d he says. Dolenz, meanwhile, states that he\u2019d \u201clike to know what in the world Jack was thinking when he wrote some of this stuff.\u201d As to how the film marked the beginning of the end for the group (Tork was the first defection, buying out his contract at the end of the year), Jones is philosophical. \u201cI think we said what we had to say and got out when we were supposed to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou say we\u2019re manufactured. To that we all agree. So make your choice and we\u2019ll rejoice in never being free.\u201d \u2013Davy Jones<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Of course, getting out is easier said than done for Jones\u2019s fictional counterpart, who is the only one of the group to notice something is amiss when they tour a factory and wind up trapped inside a black box. Having spent the first half of Head<\/i> parodying war films, Lawrence of Arabia<\/i>, cavalry pictures, and boxing melodramas, The Monkees spend the second half repeatedly trying to break out of said box while parodying horror films, Westerns, prison movies, and silent cliffhangers before the whole shebang collapses in on itself. In the meantime, they shoehorn in a live performance of the Nesmith-penned \u201cCircle Sky,\u201d proto music videos for Tork\u2019s \u201cCan You Dig It?\u201d and \u201cLong Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?\u201d (one of the few Monkees songs on which he sings lead), a \u201cFool on the Hill\u201d-style lyrical interlude set to the Carole King\/Toni Stern ballad \u201cAs We Go Along,\u201d and a performance of Harry Nilsson\u2019s \u201cDaddy\u2019s Song\u201d by Jones (who dances a duet with choreographer Toni Basil), which a passing Frank Zappa (credited as The Critic) dismisses as \u201cpretty white.\u201d \u201cWell, so am I,\u201d Jones replies. \u201cWhat can I tell you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As much of a failure as Head<\/i> was considered (\u201cIt\u2019s too bad that it didn\u2019t go anywhere,\u201d Nesmith says on the commentary, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know that it could have at the time\u201d), it has gone on to achieve cult status. The same cannot be said for the thematically similar Good Times<\/i>, an object lesson in how easily this kind of self-aware meta-movie can go south. Where Head<\/i> sees The Monkees rebelling against the marketing gurus out to exploit them (represented by Timothy Carey\u2019s Lord High \u2019n Low) and the godlike Big Victor (a larger-than-life Victor Mature), Good Times<\/i> pits Sonny and Cher against Mephistophelean financier Mr. Mordicus (George Sanders), who says he wants to produce their first movie without telling them he plans on inserting them into a maudlin, hillbilly-themed rags-to-riches story. This inspires Sonny to fantasize his way through a series of genre parodies in which he\u2019s a bumbling Western sheriff, a clumsy king of the jungle, and a jerky private eye, with Cher playing a role in each, leaving room in between for several incongruous musical numbers. While Sonny and Cher\u2019s love triumphs over Mordicus\u2019 machinations, though, there is no such escape for The Monkees, whose closed-loop narrative deposits them right back where they started. A downbeat conclusion, to be sure, but definitely more realistic (however surreal its trappings may be). And hey, at least they\u2019re able to look back on their sole cinematic venture without embarrassment.<\/span><\/p>\n Fifty years ago, at the height of their popularity as television personalities and platinum-selling recording artists, The Monkees \u2014 Micky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":10526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/MonkeesHead.jpg\")
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