From the vault and worth seeing: Gessner & Hurwitz's LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN

A remarkable testament to a time and a movement delivered in a manner which I have not seen anywhere else, LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN, the hour-long, 1968 DIY documentary by Peter Gessner (shown below) and Tom Hurwitz shows us some of the leading players in the protest movement of that era -- from Abbie Hoffman to Paul Krassner to Phil Ochs and others -- in an almost offhand, fly-on-the-wall way that brings them to life quite differently from how we usually have seen and experienced them.

The war in Vietnam was raging at the time and so were the protests. The movie will make you wonder at how involved so many young people seemed to be back then, and how little so they seem to be now.  Inter-cut between what looks like black-and-white newsreel and TV footage, these color sections bring to life the place, the people and the situations in a way that places you smack in the center of things.

In addition, this odd and very homemade piece of filmmaking offers up interviews with denizens of Manhattan's East Village in that time period -- a runaway young girl (below), a drug-dealing young boy (further below) -- that capture the bruised spirit of the day in a style that is simultaneously spectacularly immediate and intimate, yet very off-the-cuff.

We so often saw (and still see), whenever this subject is addressed, people like Hoffman and Krassner "speechifying" and/or clowning around (particularly Abbie), rather than questing and questioning the way they do here. In this film they seem so much more like real people rather than performers, and the ideas that they and others offer up and then toss around and disagree with show the protest movement's very real conflicts that were not so easily settled.

The movie calls itself a "partisan look at these times," and indeed it is. But it not uncritical or simple-minded. It's a kind of time capsule that gives us everything from fashion and art to advertising and conversation of the day, and little of the music, too: Procol Harem and Country Joe and the Fish. (In one interview you'll notice a poster for the Broadway musical, Illya Darling, then playing at the old Mark Hellinger theater.)

There is no narration per se but plenty of people either speak (in public or in private) or are interviewed. It's interesting to see certain sacred cows of the left being mocked ("I have the feeling that Che Guevara used to kid around a lot, too," notes our favorite Yippie.) Listening to Hoffman (above and below) tell an assembled audience of mostly middle-aged and older folk how America's kids are going to keep coming to places like NYC East Village and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, looking for "a different America, a free America, and a revolution that's a threat to middle class American society," you can't help wonder what the guy, had he lived longer than his 53 years, would have thought of youth today. He's also funny and satirical about the Madison Avenue idea of revolution.

"This can't go on much longer," he notes, referring to society as it was then. Well, that was 45 years ago (when pollution and global warming were but whispers of what they have now become), and many of us are still saying the same thing, with no hope in sight.

The final discussions between, I believe, Paul Krassner and a couple of others, is something quite special. They talk of the thrill of beating up cops (who themselves had been doing plenty of beating up on protesters), of flying over America and realizing that the vast majority are not us, of this summer of protest set against last year's summer of love, and of whether Abbie will have burned himself out in two years -- all this is so fraught with bruised idealism, tamped-down hope and sadness that it is worth the entire movie.

Last Summer Won't Happen, from Icarus Films and running just 60 minutes, is available now on DVD, with some very good "extras": the excellent Time of the Locust, a 13-minute, award-winning, early documentary by Mr. Gessner that shows us the Vietnam War in a manner that had not yet been seen in America; and interviews with the two filmmakers from 2012 (which TrustMovies has yet to watch. He will as soon as a few more deadlines disappear). Finally -- be absolutely certain to scroll through the Photo Gallery in the EXTRAS section. This will let you know the identities of all those folk you've just seen, and in some cases what happened to them over the years. For more information on this little video treasure, click here.

HAPPINESS RUNS -- for its life -- in Adam Sherman's based-on-truth tale

Maybe it has to do with TrustMovies' advancing years, but he does wonder if there can be anyone out there past the age of, say, 35 who does not realize that would-be Utopian communities -- particularly those run by out-of-touch, elderly hippies with drug-and-other problems -- are not the best places to raise healthy children.  Really?  You had no idea?  Then do see HAPPINESS RUNS and revel in its revelations.

So much sex and sin -- and so soon, too! -- are packed into this 88-minute movie that it's little wonder characterization comes up a bit short. You may also begin to miss getting to know a character or two who possesses even a marginally conventional life.  Teenage sex, group sex, heavy-duty drugs, the commune slut: they're all here but appear to offer so little enjoyment that you begin to wonder why sex 'n sin have that don't-miss-'em reputation.

There is also a scene of cow torching -- cow torching?! -- (Yes: and those are the flames, at left) which just might be the event that turns the corner for this woeful little movie made by a fellow named Adam Sherman (shown above) and which is reportedly based upon his own life growing up in just such a commune.  I don't envy Mr. Sherman his experience, and I wished I had liked his movie better.  But it really has nothing to say, save the utterly expected, and there are no full-bodied characters on view, either -- just a catalog of unhealthy quirks parading about in the skin of some relatively attractive actors.

I suspect that the writer/director is simply too close to his material to achieve much objectivity.  He tries to blend fantasy with reality, and his camera does capture the dry-yet-green, firetrap-laden landscape you find in the hills (shown below) that rise from the Pacific Ocean, where I assume the film was shot.  Much of  the dialog has the sound of on-the-spot improvisation -- which only adds to the weird feeling of off-the-cuff DIY film-making.

The director also gifts us with that de rigeuer shot of fast-moving clouds.  What is this for, I must ask?  The first time (or twenty) that I saw this kind of shot, a decade or more ago, it seemed new and interesting.  Now it's standard and boring.  But what it is meant to suggest?  Is it the new-fangled way to showing us time passing -- as did those 1940s and 50s shots of calendar pages turning in the breeze?  Or does it simply remain a now-standard trope that shows us that the director and his cinematographer know how to be not-quite au courant?  Please, somebody, post a comment and explain to me the significance of the fast-moving clouds shot.

While I believe that growing up in such a sad and desolate place (as this commune apparently was) has resulted in what we see, it can't have always been like that.  Communes sprang up in part as a reaction to the continued conformity of post-WWII America, and, from the documentaries and narratives we've already seen, these places seemed to offer something new and vital, for awhile at least.  Because Sherman shows us the end of the line, without a hint of anything good in either his parents or the place itself, he manages to alienate his viewers very nearly as much as he himself has been alienated.

The cast is as good as this highly circumspect material permits. Among the youngsters, only Shiloh Fernandez (from the exquisitely nasty DeadGirl) was recognizable to me.  But, according to the IMDB, he wasn't even in this movie. (Maybe he's decided to leave it off his resume?)  The saddest part of Happiness Runs comes from seeing once-capable actors -- Rutger Hauer (above, center, the commune's elderly-but-still-randy "spiritual" leader) and Andie MacDowell (as our hero's mom, below, who evidently supplies financing for the commune) -- wasted in utterly thankless roles.  When, toward the film's conclusion, Ms MacDowell tosses her cookies, this seems the only logical reaction to all that has gone before.

Happiness Runs, from Strand Releasing, opens this Friday, May 7, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and then in Los Angeles on May 14 at the Laemmle Sunset 5.

DVD catch-up: Ang Lee's sweet, smart TAKING WOODSTOCK

Think of TAKING WOODSTOCK as the flip side of Woodstock, that 1970 movie with the music by Michael Wadleigh. If you must have the music, then rent that one. Meanwhile, if you -- like me and almost everyone else in these United States -- missed seeing the theatrical release (its box-office barely topped $7 million) of this lovely coming-of-age tale from Ang Lee (shown below), thanks to reviews that ranged from so-so to worse, I'd suggest you give the film a shot. The movie garnered only 49% fresh on RottenTomatoes' critical rating, but interestingly enough over 4,000 IMDB voters rated it a 7 out of 10, and nearly 17,000 Netflix viewers gave it a 3.2 out of 5. Sometimes film-goers are more astute than film critics as to what is worth seeing. Part -- only a small part -- of my enthusiasm may be chalked up to lowered expectations; I'll be surprised if this one does not end up on my list of favorite films for the year.
Might as well say it upfront, however: The main reason for the movie's critical drubbing and also for its lack of what we might term "popular appeal" is its gay element. In one of the more ham-fisted judgments on the film, Mark Peranson, in his Cannes 2009 assessment in the summer '09 (# 39) issue of Cinema Scope magazine, says: "Ang Lee made what probably can be called both the stupidest and gayest film about Woodstock imaginable". Mark, honey, when the main character of a coming-of-age movie is gay, are you really asking for more heterosexuality? But of course you are, as do, on a regular basis, maybe 70 to 80 percent of male viewers -- even though Woodstock and the hippie era was notori-
ously given to fomenting bi-sexuality and sexual experimentation. You're also younger than I, who remembers the whole Woodstock/
Hair/hippie scene from a more personal perspective.
I have no idea of the sexual proclivities of director Ang Lee (he's married with family, but then, so was TrustMovies for 20 years) but I do know that the film that first put Lee on the map (The Wedding Banquet) was gay-themed, as was the film that won him his Best director Oscar (Brokeback Mountain). In any case, Taking Wood-
stock (and yes, the word "taking" has ramifications political, social, economic and sexual) is all about a boy on the cusp of manhood and how he helps bring the fabled event into actual being by being himself smart, businesslike, forward-thinking -- and the head of his little community's Chamber of Commerce (and not coincidentally the co-author of the book on which the movie is based).

In (relative) newcomer Demetri Martin (above, center), Lee has found a delicious young actor with just the right mixture of "push" and reticence. In Martin's hands, his character Elliot seems a young man on the cusp of just about everything, trying his best to step forward gracefully without falling in. If this actor never makes another movie (or one anywhere near as good), I'll remember him well for this. In an enormous cast that includes everyone from Paul Dano (flanking Martin above, right: blond and gorgeous) and Kelli Garner (above, left: also blond and gorgeous, but we're used to that mix from her) to Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton who play Elliot's sad parents (as Catskill Jews, both these Britishers are terrific), Emile Hirsch as a baby-faced VietNam vet, and Eugene Levy as the farmer on whose land Woodstock takes place, it's Liev Schreiber (above, right), who is most memorable. So centered, sexy, and on-target in each idea and thought he puts forth in his role of, yes, a transvestite security guard, he nearly steals the movie (this is the kind of part, and the playing of it, that Oscars were made for).

Ang Lee always likes to get "behind" the subjects of his films to see how things really work: the "key parties" of The Ice Storm, the Civil War in Ride with the Devil. In Taking Woodstock, he shows us how, via chance, timeliness and the various skills of a multitude of people, one of the most famous concerts in the world came to happen. Yet, rather than the concert itself, which we glimpse and hear only from afar, it's everything else that seems important: the fate of the rundown motel Elliot and his folks occupy, the bright-eyed concert promoter (played by Broadway's Jonathan Groff) and his retinue (among which is Mamie Gummer), the spaced-out hippies hoping for something special -- and mostly Elliot himself, who gives everything he has but then gets everything he could have hoped for from this wildest of weekends. I wouldn't be surprised if you do, too.

Taking Woodstock is available now for purchase or rent.