Review of Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place (2011) by Walter M — 06 Oct 2012

On a visit to New York City in 1963 to attend the premiere of the stage version of his novel "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey witnesses the construction of the World's Fair site and starts to plan a cross country trip the following year when it will be opened.(What? No Mets game in the new stadium?) At the same time, as Kirk Douglas recalls in his autobiography "The Ragman's Son," Kesey was already showing the tell-tale signs of taking LSD that he had begun as part of a government experiment a few years previously. That would provide the fuel for his friends on the journey, The Merry Pranksters, in a converted school bus, driven by the legendary Beat Neal Cassady who would be fueled by speed.

As I recall from reading "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe(strangely not mentioned here even though it covers the same territory) in high school(Did I ever mention that I had the coolest history teacher ever?), the filmed footage which makes up the bulk of the documentary "Magic Trip" was brought up. At the time, that footage was not edited down into a manageable length and we can clearly see why as most of it looks so rough that it should come as no surprise that it was filmed by amateurs on drugs, with the exception of the World's Fair footage which looks cool. The documentary uses after the fact interviews to piece it all together and it sort of works to make a case for Kesey and his friends being not only a second generation Beats, but also the root genesis of the hippies. However, in the end, we only find out the fates of Kesey and Cassady and the divergent directions their lives would take them.