http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/rolling-stoned-20100320-qn1v.html
PHILIPPE MORA
March 21, 2010
Drugs, legal or illicit, have always been part of the Hollywood
lifestyle, on and off screen. I don't believe the frenzy of silent
movie slapstick was accidental.
With the announcement by the Royal Opera House in London that it will
produce an opera about Anna Nicole Smith, drug-related deaths by
prescription chemicals have attained a new cultural high.
Nowadays the death of celebrities caused by "legal" drugs seems
tragically routine.
The history of drugs and Hollywood goes back to early days. In 1916,
D. W. Griffiths, Tod Browning and Anita Loos made a film called the
Mystery of the Leaping Fish starring Douglas Fairbanks as Coke
Ennyday, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Fairbanks imbibes huge amounts
of cocaine in a "comedy" that left my guests slack jawed even in 1980
when I screened it. I don't believe the frenzy of silent movie
slapstick was accidental. Drug related acting drifted into the 1940s
and 1950s with pot evoking more relaxed performances, like some of
those by the great Robert Mitchum and the charismatic James Dean.
While Richard Nixon, according to his aide Bob Haldeman, was getting
the Secret Service to help him open his prescription drug container
after gnawing it unsuccessfully, Hollywood was experimenting with psychedelics.
In 1968 Groucho Marx took LSD in preparation for his role as a man
called God in Otto Preminger's comedy Skidoo. Paul Krassner, who was
present, recorded some of Groucho's acid remarks like: "I'm really
getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty
old man. You wanna know why? Do you realise that irreverence and
reverence are the same thing? If they're not, then it's a misuse of
your power to make people laugh."
In 1959, Cary Grant, under medical supervision, experienced
psychological therapy with LSD and spoke highly of the outcome.
Discovered in Switzerland in 1943 by Sandoz chemist Albert Hoffman,
LSD subsequently had murky origins in CIA experiments with mind
control. In 1978, I thought its history would be the good makings of
a film, so I set off to meet Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over The
Cuckoo's Nest and an early US government guinea pig for LSD tests.
At his Oregon home, surrounded by male and female admirers, Kesey
proved a charming and unusual host. Offering me nitrous oxide instead
of coffee, he whispered to me: "People are morons about drugs, watch
this!" He pulled out a bunch of chocolates and announced: "Everybody,
listen up, I have here the latest, strongest psychedelic ever
invented. You can all try it but I am warning you: You may never come
back!" The guests eagerly reached for the chocolates. After some
time, of course, absolutely nothing happened, although one guy
started making weird noises and dancing. Kesey rolled his eyes at me.
He showed me 16-millimetre colour film of his historic trip across
America in a bus called Further, immortalised by Tom Wolfe in
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
He gave me his illustrated script called Further, based on the
journey, and asked me to pitch it in Hollywood. Even in 1978 this
subject matter, of events that arguably changed a generation proved
outre, and I was greeted with blank looks. I was used to weird
expressions from some studio executives reacting to non-formulaic
material. When I suggested to Alan Ladd jnr a film about
morphine-addicted Errol Flynn, pictured, and his trip to Franco's
Spain with friend and SS spy Hermann Erben in 1936, he suddenly
looked at me as if he had been vomiting for six hours. Further never
went any further either.
Also in 1978 I was assembling a documentary on the 1960s and showed a
cut to LSD exponent Timothy Leary. When he saw himself in a clip
saying, "I well may be a charlatan," he went ballistic and called me
an "arsehole" for using it. "Why? You said it and it's amusing." He
stormed off. He wasn't the only one upset with this film. In brief,
when the studio, Columbia, changed leadership the incoming regime
stopped the film, locked the cutting room and locked the producer
David Puttnam out of his office as well.
One of the studio executives involved, shortly after went berserk on
cocaine, and ended up for a while in a mental asylum.
Seems to me that nowadays arguably the only thing worse than illegal
drugs are legal drugs. Michael Jackson being wheeled out last year as
a cadaver has to be one of Hollywood's lowest drug moments. The
tragic Jackson will not be around to enjoy the record $271 million
album deal his estate signed last week.
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