Customer Reviews

American Experience - Summer of Love

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The rise and decline of the popular conceptions of hippiedom are well depicted in the documentary; indeed, it the best that I have seen of similar works produced locally in the Bay Area and nationally, typically with focus on 1968, the year after the so-called Summer of Love. I am an academic hippie myself, age 62 at the time of this review, and was present at the Gathering of Tribes, the formal start of the period, and have lived through all the depicted events before and after. Most other documentaries failed to emphasize the key spiritual component of the cultural revolution. Yes, it was sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but it was also spirituality and consciousness studies that eventually led to environmental/ecology movements, cognitive neuroscience, and psychoimmunology, as well as the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the United States and the development of world music appreciation. As described, all the hippie wannabes spoiled the scene, did not understand the ideologies nor the proper use of entheogens. The popular image of hippies was of them, not the more thoughtful, experimental, and realized post-Beats, the pioneers who led the way. [Peter Coyote's use of B***S*** was bleeped from the PBS broadcast, but we do not need such censorship on the DVD.] Unfortunately, the documentary is too short, merely an hour, making the price of the DVD a tad too much. Still, if you want a proper introduction to the rise of this American Experience, yet influencing the nation as much as the Vietnam War, then this DVD is for you.

Though just an hour, this film manages to communicate, with depth, an essential part of the American mind. It shows divisions our society continues to experience. It shows the lost dream of the 60s movement. I'm 44; I missed the 60s, but could feel it in the air when younger. This film helped me comprehend the what, why, and how. A clip of Ronald Reagan railing against LSD as governor of California helped me understand how we moved from being the society of civic duty, in which accumulation of massive wealth was viewed with suspicioun, to the "me society" of the 80s that we still experience. Really, in one hour, snippets communicate enormous volumes of information. To me, the film does not one-sidely glorify the summer of love. It shows the summer's positive and negative affects on society. I think it shows how the extremes of that time led to the backlash in which we live today. Maybe you'll see it differently. In any case, it is essential viewing - especially for anyone who did not live in, as an adult, the pre-Reagan era of American thought.

This film left me longing for the 60's San Francisco.I was 14 during the Summer of Love,often at Golden Gate Park for the free concerts, and we were protesting something called The Vietnam War? A more innocent San Francisco existed back then. The movie didn't realize that 1967 was the beginning of this cultural revolution which continued for 10 more years!
It did however point out that 1967 defined the City, and its mark is, and forever shall be, indelible.

This fine although somewhat short documentary gives us a rather good understanding of the 1967 "Summer of Love" in San Francisco as hippies and other young people from all over the nation gathered together to try to experience a utopian world in which money and materialism were shunned while peace and love were embraced. Of course, the truth is more than just that: some of these people were occasionally using a lot of really rather dangerous drugs that could result in their having "a bad trip;" and the eventual overcrowding of the Haight-Ashbury district became so intolerable that many of the original hippies fled to communes east of San Francisco or elsewhere.

Without giving it all away (and I assure you I won't), the film starts by telling us briefly about the "beatnik generation" that loved to gather in coffee shops and read poetry. The women didn't exactly bother getting their hair done every week; they were into natural experiences and they didn't care about fitting into society. The "hipsters," or "hippies" as they came to be called, were a somewhat different group. Like the beatniks, they shunned societal norms but they wanted to be outdoors enjoying nature; and they were much, much larger in numbers as they shared freedom of expression while dancing and making love with whomever they pleased.

The film does a great job of showing the rise and fall of the Summer of Love; we see how hippies gathered in January of 1967 in a large park in San Francisco for the first ever "be-in" and how word spread quickly that such freedom could be possible for anyone in the nation who made the trip to San Francisco. Soon more and more people were coming; and the ensuing events, both good and bad, helped to define the "Summer of Love." We also see how these hippies were able to subsist and that's terrific.

The archival footage is wonderful. We see Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, railing against drugs and the footage of tourists on a San Francisco tour bus is incredible! One woman looks absolutely horrified as the bus passes through the Haight-Ashbury district which was billed as the only "foreign tour" within the United States. There are interesting film clips of older people who had always lived on Haight Street, or "in the Haight;" and their reactions to the Summer of Love fascinated me.

Overall, American Experience - Summer of Love is a solid documentary about the summer of 1967 in San Francisco. I would give this five stars but it is a bit too succinct as another reviewer notes. Some more interview footage would have been wonderful, for example. I recommend this film for anyone studying the hippie social movement; and people interested in the history of San Francisco would do well to add this to their collections.

Peter Coyote narrates this documentary, which takes a look back at the infamous Summer Of Love. San Francisco was a haven for idealist youths during the summer of 1967, who were looking for the great utopia. The film shows how overwhelmed the Haight Ashbury neighborhood became, from the huge influx of young people that summer.

The film points out that by the time the summer of 1967 was over, the hippie hordes had begun leaving the Haight, and moving to the country. The hippies even staged a mock funeral march through the Haight, to signify the 'death' of the love vibes, that they felt were rapidly dwindling there.

Even before the Summer Of Love was over, the Haight district was already suffering. Increasing crime rates, hard drugs filtering into the area, and inadequate resources to accommodate the scores of
hippies in residence there, all took a serious toll on the Haight neighborhood.

I recommend this film, for those that want to revisit the Summer Of Love, and/or find out just what it was all about.

Whoa, I should have passed on this one. Really boring. Basically just some amateur video of 1967 on Haight street, spliced in with boring talking heads and even more boring old TV clips. I was living on Haight St, 1966-1967, and it would be so great if a real movie could be made about it. There has to be better film footage lying around somewhere. This was so disappointing, like throwing money out the window. Parts of this movie looked like dated ads for "psychedelic" clothing. Since I was actually there, I can say, this is a very inaccurate picture of how things were. But, basically, just boring, boring, boring.

Purchased this item from Supermart, order 102-*******-9121010, via Amazon, item was never received. Contacted Supermart, received no response. I am still out the product and my money. Amazon has requested a review, so here it is.

I have to chuckle at some of these reviews. One reviewer said that "the country was not as diverse then as it is now." I've got news for you -- it WAS as racially diverse then. The difference is that back then, you didn't see black and brown faces on television, in commercials, as you do today. If you look at most tv shows of 1967 they were basically all "white". White America actually believed that there were no Asians, blacks, Mexicans, Caribbean peoples in the USA in 1967!

But it is true that the hippie movement was basically a white, middle-class movement. Most poor kids couldn't afford to "drop out" and take drugs -- they were too busy trying to find jobs, get into college and break the cycles of poverty and illiteracy that they were born into. Only white wealthy kids had the luxury of moving to SFO and become "hippies" -- it wasn't a luxury that poor kids could afford, especially black kids in the inner cities, or children of immigrants.

There's a lot of talk about "hippie ideas" but all of these pseudo -utopian ideas could be traced back to the end of the 19th century. The Nazi's, after all, were environmentalists and vegetarians and they took some of their ideas from German Romanticists who wanted to create a world of "brotherhood", vegetarianism, "higher consciousness" found in the religions of India and China. Think Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophists, the Rosicrucians, the Transcentalists. None of these hippie ideas were original to them -- they existed way back when and were adopted by many totalitarian regimes in Europe in the '30's. It's easy to manipulate young, naive, discontented souls with minds too numb on drugs. The hubris that they could "change the world" is funny now. Charles Manson's thought-control murder cult in 1969 showed what happens when all of this is perverted. For all their talk of "liberalism" the hippies were quite illiberal ("don't trust anyone over 30") as if they were going to be young forever, as if their ideas were somehow new and never tried before. When left unchecked and without any core moral basis, adapting relativism as the rule, the movement was to self-destruct.

But the hippies had rock and roll, an infectious drug in and of itself. They were angry to be fighting in a war they didn't agree with -- and who could blame them? There was a draft and the voting age was 21, so they were really being asked to fight a war without having a political voice until the age of 21 (VERY different from today, by the way, when we have a volunteer army and the voting age is 18). But yes -- what talented people Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia -- very bright people with big hearts, no doubt. But it was their very hippie ideas and lifestyles that ended their lives. That alone serves as a cautionary tale.

Like punks in Britain, hippies in the US were a passing phenomenon. However, they had a major impact on American culture and it's great that the American Experience series has documented it.

Many people have said the hippies of the 1960s became the corporate enthusiasts of the 1980s. I'd add that they are now the generation that wants to make sure they receive full retirement, pension, and Social Security benefits. Nothing "free" comes to mind now. Still, this may be a useful work for younger generations to see.

Young people had concerns about a war, just like they do now. This documentary is filled with older, reserved people fearing younger, liberal people; this division exists in the 2000s as well. If everyone was moving to San Francisco then, in my generation they were moving to Seattle. If they were worried about the Grateful Dead then, they worried about gangster rap for my generation. They spoke of LSD then; now the concern is ecstasy. One exceptional difference is how Woodstock of the 1960s totally had good intentions that Woodstock of the 1990s lacked.

I loved how this documentary revealed that not everyone had altruistic motives. Some college students played hippie, but had no interest in abandoning school. Some denizens wanted the drugs and could not care less about the ideas. This work may be fascinating for public health workers and economists just as much as historians. This documentary stated that hippies themselves didn't want everyone to move to SF for fear that their limited supply of LSD would be depleted. Having hundreds of runaway teenagers and people living in parks is a health-related and policy-based crisis.

As much as challenging racism was brought up, photos and footage of this time and place seemed very homogenous. Granted, the country was not as racially diverse as it is now. And also granted, the Black Power movement was departing from the pro-integration stance of the Civil Rights movement. Still, looking at this documentary, I saw a lot of people speaking about equality with people just like themselves.

Willie Brown is noted as having been a state assemblyman, but they never mention he also served as the city's mayor. Actor Peter Coyote uses a profanity that is, surprisingly, not bleeped out of this public television special.

I could also relate as a person who moved to the Bay Area briefly. This documentary mentions that many people who came to that area also quickly departed from it. I can relate. SF is a strong example of the "grass being greener on the other side."

I've been reading the book Barry Miles wrote called "Hippie" and he makes an argument that San Francisco's "Summer of Love" did not happen in 1967, but in the summer of 1966-when music promoter Bill Graham came up with that phrase (he still gets a check today for every time that notorious phrase is used), LSD was still legal, and the rest of America was gridlocked in city riots (and I think it wasn't because of racism). Miles also points out that it was in that summer that communes began in that city. And for good reason: Those people realized that The Great Society that Lyndon Johnson created was becoming a big fraud. And as for '67? Miles hints that was when the rest of America got exposure of what San Francisco was doing (Newsweek, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post wrote articles or cover stories that year and news reporters such as NBC's Tom Brokhaw and CBS' Harry Reasoner did reports from there) and the San Francisco Police began to crack down on Haight Street (before long, the U.S. government would so follow under President Johnson-aka Lying Bastardly Jackass).
I am currently writing a novel-it's a sci-fi comedy called "A Week in S.F.'67", in which it's about Kevin-a young working man living in San Francisco in 2009. One day while at a bar, he is discovered by Curt-a scientist and he tells the main character that he has come up with a pill that could take a person back into time. He agrees and armed with his suitcase full of clothes, he takes the pill and unaware that it will take him back to 1967. Once there, he runs into a hippie girl named Julie (she's actually a plastic hippie)-who happens to be an Italian-American with black hair (her hair is sometimes braided like an Indian and she is modeled after actress-comedianne Leigh French; who appeared on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" as a cool, San Francisco hippie), single, and has a fancy job working at a downtown Frisco department store (her family is middle-class). She takes him to her house; which happens to be a beautiful two-story Victorian house on Hayes Street. Once they are inside, Julie pampers Kevin like it was her brother. Along the way, Kevin meets her friends: Nancy, who's Hungarian-American (they call her "Wild Thing" over the fact that she was dancing to The Troggs' song while on LSD and also "The Hungarian Hippie"), Howard-who works two jobs in the Bay Area, and Troy-who has a girlfriend named Susan and just happens to be working at The Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street (I basically copied the friendship of four from the movie "Reality Bites").
To make the long story short, Kevin spends the next week in 1967 while Curt tries to create a pill that will bring him back to 2009. During this time, he goes with Julie to see a Giants baseball game, attends the legendary club The Hungry i with her (and they watch Spanky and Our Gang and Shelley Berman perform), takes a ferry boat ride to Angel Island and, of course, they both walk to Haight St. leading up to Ashbury Street. During this visit Kevin meets a handful of celebrites: Willie Mays (at the Giants game), The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Julie Andrews, Les Crane, and Julie Christie.
I am also planning two scenes in which he and Julie are walking on a sidewalk in Oakland where they are squeezed by a bunch of Black Panthers (Kevin noticles that one of them is Bobby Seale) and the other one involves him on a S.F. sidewalk and runs into a clean-shaven drifter that just happens to be Charles Manson. My book is a cross between "Back to the Future", "Forrest Gump", "The Truman Show", "Pleasantville", and "The Time Traveler's Wife." There will be a twist at the end in which Kevin returns to the present and meets Julie at an old age! He connects with her and Julie's friends and ends with the Giants winning the World Series. It will be wild, but entertaining.