By Hank Reineke
In
the aftermath of the surprise runaway success of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and
Clyde – the Warner Bros. crime-drama garnering a fifty-million dollar
profit on a two million dollar investment by the close of 1967 – rival studio
United Artists wisely chose to give the director free-reign in choosing his
follow-up project. Ultimately, Penn
chose to give folksinger Arlo Guthrie’s already fabled talking-blues, the
“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” a big screen treatment. The timing seemed right.
Though
Penn’s new film would be far removed in temperament and style (and certainly
less violent) than his previous effort it was, in many respects, a prudent
choice. Such anti-establishment films as
Easy Rider, Medium Cool and Wild in the Streets had proven
critical and box successes in the years 1968-1969. Such free-spirited films brought in young,
enthusiastic audiences, the movie industry’s most important target demographic. But Penn was also aware that this recent
trend from literary to reality-based story-telling on film signaled an
important shift. He told the Los
Angeles Times that filmmakers were in increasingly “moving more and more
into direct relationship with the populace.”
Guthrie’s
meandering, sardonic epic – one seamlessly weaving an innocent’s view of
government inanities, the overreach of small-town policing, of “American Blind
Justice,” the travails of Selective Service draft board induction and of U.S.
foreign policy in Vietnam – was blistering clear-eyed and acutely withering in
its impossibly gentle, but mocking satire.
In
March of 1968 Guthrie’s manager, Harold Leventhal, was in process of inking the
film deal with Penn and UA. That very
same month Guthrie’s debut album, also titled Alice’s Restaurant, had
climbed to the no. 29 spot on the Billboard Top 100 album chart. Guthrie’s album had, improbably, been
charting steadily upward since it’s entry in the no. 180 position in November
of 1967. This was a particularly impressive
feat for an album whose signature song was eighteen minutes and twenty seconds
long. The song’s maddeningly memorable
and cyclical melody was supported only by the most basic backing
instrumentation: Guthrie’s acoustic guitar, a sparse standup bass and an impish
typewriter-cadence drum beat.
By
all measures, the commercial success of the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” was
implausible. Guthrie’s studio recording was understandably ignored on
ever-important AM radio – partly as no broadcast-length version was made
available to them.* But long before Guthrie would formally record his
shaggy-dog studio version of the “Massacree” in a professional setting in June
of 1967, the song was already well-known by those listening to such free-form
underground radio stations as New York City’s WBAI and Philadelphia’s
WMMR. The song had been pirated – in
several differing “live” versions and iterations – from reel-to-reel recordings
sourced from Guthrie’s appearances during late-night on-air radio show
appearances.
Thanks
to the underground circulation of those recordings, the “Massacree” was quickly
adopted as an anthem of the counter-culture, and by writers, artists and
anti-war activists. In time, Guthrie’s
talking-blues filtered up from underground radio to a more mainstream
audience. The song particularly appealed
to open-minded listeners, draft-age youngsters, journalists and
social-political pundits. They
immediately recognized that many of Guthrie’s satirical observations were acute
and perhaps too-closely reflected a society going amiss.
Upon
its release in September of 1969, Penn’s cinematic version of Alice’s
Restaurant wasn’t the box-office blockbuster that Bonnie and Clyde
was – but no one expected it to be. It
was a more personal low-budget film, but one that still did great
business. The film would bring in some
6.3 million dollars and sell just shy of 4.5 million paid admissions in the
domestic North American theatrical market alone. The film’s cast of professional actors were
supplemented by the townspeople of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and by Guthrie’s
own friends working as extras on the edges. Penn estimated that ninety percent of the extras in the film were of the
community.
Penn’s
cinema vérité style dabbles are evident throughout. The film’s primary strength is in its
glimpses of the otherwise private involvements of the community congregating at
Alice and Ray Brock’s Old Trinity Church in Great Barrington. The film, on occasion, has a documentary feel
to it. This was Penn’s choice, his
personal way of doing things. “I work
very fluidly, with almost no preconceptions,” he told a visiting journalist on
set. Penn also shared that he did not
work from storyboards nor even visit locations prior to shooting. “I just sort of set up how life would be if
you were in that situation.” It could be
argued that the biggest issue with this approach was Penn’s viewing the
unfolding drama through a lens of presumption: the film’s reality and fictional
episodes are uneasily juxtaposed throughout.
Though
Arlo Guthrie holds mixed feelings about the resulting film (“I only made one
film,” he’d tell concert audiences over ensuing decades, “…’cause I saw
it.”), his memories of working with the creative team involved remain
warm. He thought Penn’s effort was an
“honest” one, his efforts allowing outsiders a small peek into the “scene”
built around the Old Trinity Church. But
Guthrie was also aware that the scene at Trinity circa 1965 – the time of
Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Day crime of littering - was a fluid one. Penn’s film could only provide a brief
snapshot of a time already passed since, in coming days, Guthrie reckoned,
“there’ll be a whole new scene up there, as everywhere else.”
Guthrie
was only twenty-years old when the film went into production - and had not
acted professionally in any capacity. Many on set in the summer of ’68 found the folksinger private and
distant, “elusive” in answers to both crew members and visiting
journalists. According to a long essay
in Playboy magazine, even old friends at the Trinity suggested that
Guthrie was “thought by some” to have already “left the family.” Certainly, his visits to the Trinity were
less frequent due to his new touring and recording commitments. On the brighter side, manager Leventhal was
impressed by his young client’s professionalism. He told the New York Times, “Here’s a
kid who likes to sleep until 3:30 in the afternoon who had to make a 7:30 A.M.
movie call every day for three months of shooting, and he did.”
In
November of 2023 the University of Oklahoma Press published a biography of the
folk-rock singer in which he and I collaborated: Rising Son: The Life and
Music of Arlo Guthrie. Cinema
Retro editor Lee Pfeiffer asked if Arlo might be willing to share some
memories of his experience working on the Alice’s Restaurant film with
Arthur Penn. Though it’s been nearly
fifty-six years since production on the film began in June of 1968, Guthrie
graciously offered to share some of his remembrances of that time with
readers:
Q:
My first question to you is a pretty general one. As a kid growing up in the 1950s and early
‘60s, how would describe your interest in cinema? Were you a big fan of the movies? If so, what sort of films were you attracted
to?
Arlo: I wasn’t so much into films as I was more into TV
shows. Obviously, films that came out when I was a little older - the mid to
late 60s - had a bigger impact on me. “Bonnie & Clyde” for example.
Q:
What were you favorite TV programs? I
understand you were a big fan of Star Trek –
and just missed out on being cast on an episode. What was the story behind that?
Arlo: I got a phone call from Leonard Nimoy one time, out
of the blue! I couldn’t believe I was chatting with Spock! But I have no memory
of being asked to participate with Star Trek. **
Q:
I have a news-cutting from Variety reporting from your overseas
promotional tour for the Alice’s Restaurant film. In this case, from Paris in May of 1970. At the press conference you suggested that following the release of the Alice
film in the U.S. you were suddenly “offered ten films about hippies but
would prefer to do a western.”
Arlo: We didn’t do any promotional tours
in the US, as they were un-needed. But when I was asked to do a promotional
tour of Europe I jumped on it. I wanted to go to Europe. I had offers for more
acting roles, but mostly on TV shows that were popular at the time. Hawaii 5-O,
etc. But in those days everyone who had long hair was cast as a drug-addled
thief or a murderer. So I kindly
declined those invitations.
Q:
In any case, you did accept a number of television acting assignments in the
1990s. Our readers might recall your
reoccurring role as the graying-hippie Alan Moon on ABC’s Byrds
of Paradise. My
personal favorite of your television work was your role as a 1960s
folk-singing, Weather Underground-style fugitive on the Lorenzo Lamas series Renegade. How did those opportunities come about?
Arlo: I don’t remember exactly. But my
booking agents, David Helfant and later Paul Smith, made those roles possible.
Those offers came through their offices. I wasn’t looking for acting jobs.
Q: Since you are a musician first and foremost, I’d like to ask you a
few questions about the soundtrack accompanying the Alice’s Restaurant film. Prior to his work on Alice’s Restaurant, Gary Sherman was the arranger and conductor for John
Barry’s soundtrack for Midnight Cowboy. On Alice’s Restaurant, Sherman is billed as “Musical Supervisor,”
credited as composer and arranger of the film’s “Additional music.” What exactly was Sherman’s contribution? Did
you work closely with him on the arrangements?
Arlo: Gary Sherman wasn’t very familiar with the kinds of
instruments I wanted to be used as a sound track. But he was very knowledgeable with regards as
to how music supported a film. We worked very closely together trying to
integrate our different skills.
Q: Fred Hellerman, the producer of your first two albums for Reprise - is
credited on screen as the film’s “Musical
Director.” What exactly was
Hellerman’s role in creating the soundtrack?
Arlo: Fred had some knowledge of the kinds of musical
instrumentation - and songs - I was into at the time. He may have worked with
Gary more than I was aware of, but I think the credit was more of an honorific
title.
Q: In Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie, you recall your
enthusiasm of having partnered with John Pilla on the soundtrack sessions. Pilla, of course, would soon become the
“Spiritual Advisor,” producer and/or co-producer of all of your albums from Running
Down the Road (1969) through Someday (1986). What was it about this earlier collaboration
that made you so trusting of John as someone musically simpatico?
Arlo: John and I loved the traditional songs and
instruments that became the underlying sound track for the film. For example,
we made extensive use of the autoharp which had not been used before (or since)
in Hollywood movies.
Q:
Any particular fond (or perhaps not-so-fond) memories of working on the Alice’s Restaurant soundtrack sessions with
Pilla and Sherman?
Arlo: Arguing about music became the
hallmark of my collaboration with John Pilla. He was very traditional in his assessment of what was good while I was a
little too experimental. Gary was good at determining what worked. So between
us we arrived at a consensus.
Q: The Old Trinity Church is central to Arthur Penn’s imagining of the Alice’s Restaurant film. What role did Ray and Alice’s deconsecrated
church-home play in your life?
Arlo: I always felt very much at home at the church. Long
before we began working on the film, I had stayed there often. It wasn’t very
long after Thanksgiving 1965 that I was to spend more time traveling around and
less time at the church. Using the church as a central location was fabulous.
Q:
The “real” Alice, Alice Brock told a journalist in 1969 that the church wasn’t
the “hippie” commune as portrayed in the film.
But she thought the church did serve as a haven for some: the community
there “grew out of the same roots – the need to belong to something and for
some feeling of family. These were kids
who felt they didn’t belong in the outside world, and who, because of this,
didn’t get along too well with their families.”
A
visiting journalist to the set said nearly the same thing, if a bit more
gruffly. He believed the young people he
met saw the church as a second home, “maybe even a first home, since an
unusually large number of them came from broken or well bent marriages.” What did the church mean to you in 1965? And, perhaps, more importantly what does it
mean to you today?
Arlo: In the film there seem to be about fifty “kids”
but, in reality, there were less than a half dozen who regularly visited or
would stay overnight. There were a few who would live there longer, but always
at the invitation of Alice or Ray. It was a hub of counter-culture activity for
those who came by. But it was never a commune or even close.
Q:
In many respects Penn’s vision for his version of Alice’s Restaurant seemed bleak and contrary
to the spirit of your original song. You’ve said that your talking-blues wasn’t necessarily an anti-war
statement; it was instead a song addressing the stupidities of authorities. But Penn and Venable Herndon’s screenplay
seemed to focus on the adult-orientated issues within the community. Critics noted the film spun two separate
stories, each hinging together awkwardly. How involved were you in the crafting of the film’s final screenplay, if
at all?
Arlo: I sympathized with Arthur Penn who had a major
problem. The song which the movie is based takes twenty minutes to tell the
story. A film has to be about ninety minutes. So Arthur recruited Venable
Herndon to create the needed seventy extra minutes. He filled it with drug
abuse, sexual tension and infidelity and death. None of which actually happened
in real life but works in movies – especially movies from that era.
Q: Were you given any sort of “right of refusal” for certain scenes or
dialogue that weren’t in accord with the youthful realities of the time? Did you ever confront Penn and say “My
friends wouldn’t say that” or “We wouldn’t do that” and ask for a change?
Arlo: I would often tell Arthur Penn “I would do this” or
“I wouldn’t say this” to which he would respond “Pretend.” And I did. It was
his movie after all.
Q: Well, for someone who never acted before, you acquitted yourself well. Penn sighed the only “maddening” thing about
your performance was your “passivity.” He argued that it was OK to appear passive,
but to do so “actively.” This had to be
a tough directive for someone like yourself who had no formal training.
Arlo: I never was very good at acting. I wasn’t a pro. I
could do my best at recreating events in which I had some real-life experience,
but otherwise I was awful.
Q: It’s true that in most of the television and
film roles in which you were subsequently cast, the characters were tailored to
your public persona, both real and imagined. In Byrds of Paradise you played an aging hippie
who had done time for growing dope. In
that Renegade
episode you were cast as an aging ‘60s radical. On TV’s Relativity you
played editor of an underground newspaper. Were the taking on of such roles easier transitions for you as an
actor?
Arlo: Yeah! Those were character roles and not me. Much
more fun! Note that it took another twenty years to want to be in front of a
camera again.
Q: Penn’s residence was in Stockbridge, Massachusetts – the scene of your
crime – so he knew many of the real-life characters and places referenced in
your song. Did he ever explain to you
why he was interested in crafting a film version of the “Massacree?”
Arlo: Nope.
Q: From the beginning Penn suggested that his version of Alice’s would
not be “confined” by
the parameters of the song. Which is
exactly the case. He told one
journalist, “I work mostly in films where I have a good sense of
authorship.” Since the narrative
conceived by Penn and Herndon measured more than half of the film’s running
time, did you ever express discomfort regarding any of the fictional drama
interposed?
Arlo: Maybe at the time. But it wasn’t until afterward that realized I could have been more
forceful in my assessment of what was being portrayed. I chalked it up to experience.
Q:
The blending of the real-life events with fiction would ultimately cause some
personal distress for years to come. Alice Brock sighed that following the release of the film that few
strangers believed her when introduced as the “real” Alice.” When you married Jackie Hyde in 1969, many
fans were surprised she wasn’t of Chinese-American descent - since actress Tina
Chen had played your girlfriend in the film. When you were trying to purchase the church in 1992, the town council
feared you might drive a motorcycle through the sanctuary. Which, of course, never happened, except in
the film. In hindsight, do you believe
it was a mistake for Penn to employ so many of your friends from that time to
work as extras? That decision certainly
brought unintended confusion that lasted for years.
Arlo: What really surprised me was how many people
believed the film version rather than the real version. Everyone who
participated in making the film had the same response. In hindsight, it
would’ve been a better film if it had more professional actors.
Q: When you signed to do the film in 1968 you were twenty-one years old. But Arthur Penn was 45 years old, Venable
Herndon was 40, and producer Hillard Elkins was 38. These were all men who came of age in the
years following WWII, a time of upward prosperity for a lot of – if not all -
Americans. Do you think the film’s sadness was due to the generation gap prism in which they viewed hippie
counter-culture? That there were aspects
of the Trinity community they couldn’t grasp or accept due to their encroaching
middle-age?
Arlo: None of the adults in the room could’ve foreseen
what would happen. They all viewed our reality with some degree of skepticism.
The hope and dreams young people shared were alien to anyone over thirty. So,
yes, there was certainly a generation gap. And so the film is kind of sad. Some
of their skepticism was, in the long run, justified. But the overall gloom and
doom feeling was overdone.
Q: How well were you acquainted with Alice’s co-screenwriter Venable
Herndon? Following his passing, one colleague described him as someone who
would “say things aloud that most human beings don't. He was always
controversial, provocative and outrageous." Is that how he came across to you?
Arlo: I liked him and his wife. They were a little
spooky, but I liked that.
Q:
What was “spooky” about them?
Arlo: Venable and his wife (mostly his wife) were into
the occult, the hidden behind the obvious. It was fun working with them, but it
was pretty spooky to me. It felt dark-side-ish. Personally I had no problem
with their interests, but always suspecting ulterior motives in relationships
with others wasn’t my forte. Not my cup of tea leaves as it were.
Q: I once mulled that Herndon might not have been the best choice to co-script
the film. But I later warmed to him when
I came across this quote. He offered
that the central idea of their script was to capture the ambition of the
kids to re-awaken the spiritual within the shell of a deconsecrated church: “If
they take away the holiness of the old society, can they put holiness into the
new one?” I thought that was an interesting approach to take. But, ultimately, I’m not certain that idea
was translated successfully to the screen.
Arlo: I bought the church in 1992 and the first thing I
did was re-consecrate it. It’s amusing to me that Venable and Arthur didn’t see
that possibility - and even went so far as to make that realty seemed
far-fetched. I’m happy to know Venable may have re-thought it.
Q:
Well, parts of the film are very melancholic in spirit. I thought the Thanksgiving Day ‘65 scene
where everyone gently sang “Amazing Grace” together was the only moment in the
film when a sense of a new spirit blossoming in the church was truly
evident.
Arlo: It’s still a favorite song. I don’t believe we know
everything. There’s always room for surprise.
Q: Producer Hillard Elkins was a notable wheeler-dealer in the entertainment
industry - and 1969 was a big year for him. Months prior to the arrival of Alice’s Restaurant, Elkin’s sex-musical revue Oh! Calcutta! made its debut at New
York’s Belasco Theatre. Do you have any
memories of Elkins involvement in the Alice’s film?
Arlo: I liked Hilly! He was bigger than life and lived
that way. He wasn’t around for much of the filming though.
Q: The release of the film ignited a small industry of Alice’s Restaurant ephemera. You were the cover boy of the September 29,
1969 issue of Newsweek magazine. Random House published Alice Brock’s Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook,
Grove Press published Marvin Glass’s cartoon book, and Doubleday documented
Penn and Herndon’s screenplay of the film. In early December of 1969, your
debut album on Reprise was, some seventy-nine weeks since release, holding
strong at no. 18 on the Billboard chart. That same month the soundtrack
album to the Alice’s
Restaurant film charted eight weeks following its release.
But
the oddest potential spin-off was Hilly Elkin’s attempt to launch a franchise
chain of Alice’s
Restaurant eateries in October of 1969. His prospectus promised investors that diners
would be treated to “unusual food, cooked unusually well, served in an
unusual setting.” He also offered that Alice Brock herself would handle
“menu development.” Did anything ever
become of that?
Arlo: I heard about it afterward. Cardboard cut outs of
me and Pete Seeger wasn’t my thing. Thankfully that idea went nowhere.
Q: It was Harold Leventhal negotiated the rights of the Alice’s Restaurant film with United
Artists. Was it his suggestion to get
some of his long-standing clients (such as Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Pete
Seeger) involved with the film? I recall
reading that Lee Hays was particularly excited about his small appearance in
the film, even arriving in town a week prior to his single scheduled day of
shooting. ***
Arlo: Why not! Lee was great! So was Pete!
Q: I suspect that many of our readers might be
unfamiliar with Lee Hays. Hays was,
along with Pete Seeger and others, the bass singer of the Weavers, the
chart-topping folk-music quartet of the late ‘40s and early 1950s. Lee was a significant influence on your own
stage mannerisms, wasn’t he? What made
him, as you say, so great?
Arlo: I loved Lee Hays! Good story teller with a good
sense of humor. Aside from Pete’s musicality, Lee was the one Weaver I loved
being around. His sense of timing with his comments and asides onstage were
inspiring to me. He could say more with less than anyone I knew.
Q: In the scene when you arrive at the hospital bedside of your father, Woody
Guthrie, we chance upon Pete Seeger singing your dad’s “Pastures of Plenty” to
him. Seeger often wondered aloud why the
two of you didn’t sing “Hobo’s
Lullaby”
in the film. By Seeger’s recollection
that was the song you sang together to your ailing father in real life - and
made more sense in context. Do you
recall any discussion on what song might be most appropriate for that scene?
Arlo: No. But we just went with the script. Could it have
been better? Sure!
Q: One last question. One of the major coups of the film was managing to get
William J. Obanhein, the police officer who arrested you in real-life, to play
himself in the film. “Officer Obie” had
a reputation as a hard-nose, no-nonsense type of small-town cop, but the film
gave him an opportunity to see the kids on the “freak farm” as decent people -
not as community interlopers. Obie told
UPI in 1969, “My life is the same, but my attitudes have changed. I realize that kids with long hair and weird
clothes can be basically nice people.”
Obie’s
remark reminded me about something you said when visiting Woody’s hometown of
Okemah, OK in 1971. You were told
residents there didn’t want a flood of “hippie-types” to “invade” their town
for any sort of commemoration of your father or of his perceived “Union Gospel” radicalism. Your response was perfect: “I think when
America is ‘invaded’ by Americans it is a sad day.”
It’s
hard in 2024 to read the news and not get depressed by how deeply divided
America is today. It seems the promise
of the Age of Aquarius has long since passed. Do you still hold out hope that there’s a way out of this ever-evolving
cycle of mistrust and anger?
Arlo: Hahahaha. The way I see it humans are a part of the
natural world. Show me a river that runs straight. They go left and right and
wander around. But whatever way they’re going at any given moment, rivers still
go down to the sea. If you know that you don’t tend to get as anxious.
*****************************************************************************************
*In
an attempt to piggyback on the hoopla and success of the Alice’s Restaurant film, Reprise Records
issued an AM radio airplay-length friendly 45rpm single titled “Alice’s Rock
& Roll Restaurant” in November of 1969. A slightly embarrassed Guthrie disavowed that single’s release, though the
45 would briefly chart in the U.S. in January of 1970.
**In November of 1996, the Cocoa-based newspaper Florida Today reported
that Guthrie was approached to appear in an episode of Star Trek: Next
Generation. But he was unable to
oblige due to previously scheduled concert touring commitments.
***Lee Hays makes his cameo appearance in Alice’s Restaurant as the revival tent
preacher of the Gospel directing congregants to sing along with him on “Amazing
Grace.”
In
2019, Omnivore Recordings released a masterfully assembled deluxe 50th
Anniversary edition of the Alice’s Restaurant soundtrack on CD (OVCD-342) and as a limited edition 2 LP set (OVLP-342). Both releases feature the album’s ten
original tracks, but enhanced with the inclusion of an additional eleven tracks
sourced from the original soundtrack sessions. Also issued on both formats is a 1968 recording of one of the “alternate” versions of the “Alice’s Restaurant
Massacree,” the “Alice’s Restaurant Multi-Color Rainbow Roach Affair.” Both sets include an eight-page booklet
featuring an essay by Lee Zimmerman, a contemporary Guthrie interview, and a
series of color photos as illustrations.
Both
formats of this expanded soundtrack edition – as well as many other of
Guthrie’s albums and books – can be ordered directly from the artists’
website: https://store.arloguthrie.com/
In
1991, Arlo Guthrie founded The Guthrie Center to honor the humanitarian works
of his parents, Woody and Marjorie. The
Guthrie Center is located in Great Barrington’s Old Trinity Church, once the
property of Ray and Alice Brock. Wishing
to return the old building as a house of worship, the mission of the interfaith
Guthrie Center is “to meet the ongoing needs of the community” while supporting
“cultural preservation and educational achievement.” If you wish to help support their mission,
more info can be found here: https://guthriecenter.org/
(Hank Reineke is the author of "Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie" (with commentary by Arlo Guthrie, available from the Guthrie Center).
Click here to visit Arlo's official web site.