The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).
Week #6: Massachusetts -
Details about Massachusetts:
State bird: chickadee
State flower: mayflower
State tree: American elm
Additional historical trivia:
Four U.S. Presidents were originally born in Massachusetts: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush.
For you chocolate lovers; the first chocolate factory was established in MA, as well as the invention of Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) was the first established MLB baseball field.
"Watson! Come here! I want to see you!", the famous first telephone call occurred in Boston.
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (and there's a tongue twister) holds the record for the longest lake name in the U.S. The name, BTW, is Algonquin, and roughly means: "Fishing Place at the Boundaries - Neutral Meeting Grounds". And sometimes you may hear the since disproven translation as "You fish on your side, I'll fish on my side, and no one shall fish in the middle."All I can say is, Thank God no monster like the Loch Ness Monster has been spotted in Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg....
Alice's Restaurant (1969):
Arlo Guthrie's famous "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", a folk rock protest song about the Vietnam War and the draft, was originally recorded in 1967. The word "massacree" deserves a bit of explanation. According to wikipedia it comes from the dialect spoken by natives of the Ozark Mountains. It is "a story that describes an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe". Which pretty much defines the story as Arlo Guthrie relates the events preceding and surrounding his attempt to register for the draft. Keep that in mind, because I will point out some differences between the real story, the song and the movie as we go along.
The movie opens with Arlo and several others appearing before a draft clerk (Vinnette Carroll) to justify exemptions they listed on the draft registrations on why they may not be eligible for the draft. Arlo's excuse is Hutchison's chorea, which is hereditary. Unfortunately even though his father and other members of his family have it, Arlo does not have it at this point so his exemption is disqualified.
(Note: this may be a fictional representation of the real Arlo, but since he is called Arlo Guthrie in the film, and he does indeed have a dad named Woody Guthrie, both in the film and in real life, I am forced to take most of his personal part in the film as somewhat biographical. And Woody did indeed die from Hutchison's chorea.)
Arlo decides his best bet to avoid the draft is to enroll in college, which he does in Montana. but he is not cut out to the rigors of fitting into college life. He eventually gets expelled and heads to Stockbridge MA, where a couple named Ray and Alice Brock (James Broderick and Pat Quinn) have bought a de-consecrated church and basically have turned into some kind of commune for like-minded hippies. Alice also pens up a restaurant nearby, which, by the sound of the menu, has a rather eclectic feel to it.
The first hour of the film involves some rather deep and emotional content that was used to bulk the song up into a full-fledged movie.Two people that play an important part in Arlo's life come into the film. Roger (Geoff Outlaw) is a friend that Arlo grew up with, and Shelley (Michael McClanathan) is a former heroin addict who has just gotten out of rehab and is trying to make it straight.
The film is ostensibly a comedy, but there are some serious moments in the film. One in particular that stands out is that Alice keeps becoming increasingly disenchanted with Ray, and often falls into other men's arms for solace. This is a microcosm of the attitude towards sex and fidelity that was a part of the 60's, especially among those who felt disenfranchised from the norm of the establishment (at least as much as I know from my history books... I was WAY too young to even be aware of it until I reached my teens in the 70's...)
Of course, the original song never mentions Arlo's dad, Woody, but there are some heartrending moments in the film as he visits dad in the hospital. Woody (played by Joseph Boley) is dying from the aforementioned disease. Arlo deals with it as best he can, but it is apparent, at least in moments that he is in the hospital room with Woody, that he would rather be anywhere else. I can empathise with that sentiment completely. I, too, have dealt with death in my family and often wanted to be far away from it, because then I could pretend it wasn't happening.
Eventually the part of the film that incorporates the events in the song come into it. Ray invites a raft of friends and gets Alice to fix a "Thanksgiving meal that can't be beat".
After the meal, Arlo and several friends pack up the debris left over from the shindig and take it to the city dump, only to find that the dump is closed for the holiday.
But they find a back road where they find a place that someone else has dumped a load of garbage and combine he two. Bu the fly in the ointment is Officer Obie (William Obanheim, playing himself). he finds out that Arlo was behind the illegal dump and arrests him. He also takes him to court.
But the problem with the trial is that all the pictures that Obie and his officers took are pretty much useless, because the judge (James Hannon) is blind. All that Arlo receives is a fine and an order to clean up the garbage
Later, while at the draft board registering for the actual draft, Arlo makes a nuisance of himself, first by tring to pretend to be psychotic, then by complaining about a line in the form questioning whether he was rehabilitated from his crime (which is well and good if he had been convicted of rape or murder, but Arlo thinks it rather stupid to ask if he has rehabilitated from being a litterbug.
The movie is not quite over yet, however, there is some sentimental stuff to end it, which I won't delve into, but suffice to say that someone close to Arlo is going on to a greater reward.
The film has a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and did garner some good reviews. Newsweek said it was "the best of a number of remarkable new films which seem to question many of the traditional assumptions of establishment America." Believe it or not, director Arthur Penn even garnered a nomination for Best Director at the Academy Awards. His competition that year included George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the eventual winner John Schlesinger for Midnight Cowboy.
According to a real life compadre in crime for the event, Richard Robbins (on whom Roger was based), the film is only about 15% based in fact, and the rest is totally fabricated. Arlo even said that the reason for his leaving Montana was not because of some run-in with the law, but that he dropped out voluntarily. Arlo himself has expressed the opinion that the movie was fairly accurate however, So who to believe? The friend or the central character himself?
You should know before going in that this film is markedly different in tone and feeling from Penn's acclaimed Bonnie and Clyde. Although both deal with characters who are somewhat at odds with the rules of normal polite society, the only way I would recommend these two as a double feature is if you wanted something to cheer you up after watching the devastation caused by the characters in the Bonnie and Clyde film, on BOTH sides of the law.
All in all, I can recommend Alice's Restaurant as at least a good window into the counterculture of the time period.
Until next time. drive safely folks.
Quiggy
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