A good documentary last night on American Experience about the "summer of love" in 1967 when the utopia of the counter-culture came crashing down from the weight of its numbers and the intrusion of elements foreign to the original utopian dreams of the movement.
Interestingly enough, for me it was the Summer of Transformation. I dropped out of a Ph.D. program "to become a writer," which also involved breaking up my first marriage and running off with another grad student. We settled into a cheap apartment in North Portland and found jobs to survive, mine editing The Northwest Mobile Home News, a monthly rag that put me on a crash course of learning a multitude of practical editing and writing skills. With my hiring, a one-man newspaper became a two-man newspaper. Yep. My boss went on the road to sell ads, leaving me to write and publish the monthly paper on my own. I invented a variety of pseudonyms I wrote under, to make it look like something it wasn't, became a news reporter gathering hard news about the mobile home industry, became a columnist reviewing mobile home parks and restaurants and movies, began a serial mystery about a detective who lived in a mobile home, and so forth and so on. Even interviewed Sen. Wayne Morse during this gig. My boss was amazed at what the paper had become when he returned. He gave me a raise, and I saved him even more money by convincing him that I could assemble the rag in my apartment instead of driving so far to our "office." I learned a lot of skills in a sink-or-swim environment -- writing, editing, ad copy, and so on -- and yet still had time to write and begin publishing stories in literary magazines and also finally broke into selling to Northwest Magazine. The summer of 1967 was monumental for me.
For the hippies, the serious ones drifted off to form communes. A lot of drugged and disoriented bodies were left behind.
Interestingly enough, for me it was the Summer of Transformation. I dropped out of a Ph.D. program "to become a writer," which also involved breaking up my first marriage and running off with another grad student. We settled into a cheap apartment in North Portland and found jobs to survive, mine editing The Northwest Mobile Home News, a monthly rag that put me on a crash course of learning a multitude of practical editing and writing skills. With my hiring, a one-man newspaper became a two-man newspaper. Yep. My boss went on the road to sell ads, leaving me to write and publish the monthly paper on my own. I invented a variety of pseudonyms I wrote under, to make it look like something it wasn't, became a news reporter gathering hard news about the mobile home industry, became a columnist reviewing mobile home parks and restaurants and movies, began a serial mystery about a detective who lived in a mobile home, and so forth and so on. Even interviewed Sen. Wayne Morse during this gig. My boss was amazed at what the paper had become when he returned. He gave me a raise, and I saved him even more money by convincing him that I could assemble the rag in my apartment instead of driving so far to our "office." I learned a lot of skills in a sink-or-swim environment -- writing, editing, ad copy, and so on -- and yet still had time to write and begin publishing stories in literary magazines and also finally broke into selling to Northwest Magazine. The summer of 1967 was monumental for me.
For the hippies, the serious ones drifted off to form communes. A lot of drugged and disoriented bodies were left behind.
 clipped from www.pbs.org
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2 comments:
Greetings; My names Phil Morningstar and I was interviewed for the SOL show and I just wanted to say this show was horrible. They made it seem like the whole thing was over by the end of 67. The Haight didn't die out until the early 70's and all the negative drug stuff was going on all through it, there were so many other people around they chose to ignore it. I know this because I was always being accused of being negative for pointing out our own foibles. But the communal movements took a lot of folks away from the city.
But my biggest gripe about the show is that they didn't show continuity within the counter culture. I live in Berkeley and half my friends are from I'vce known for 40 years. Also, they didn't put things in the big picture of a world wide cultural revolution. The students in Paris were rioting, Londoners were agitating for squatters rights and we turned Chicago into a battlefield. Oh well the idea of,"look at them, they tries something different and failed." is one the "man" wants people to belkive and the producers of this show did thier best to protray as negative and distorted view of what happened.
All I can say is that they interviewied for two hours and I got two sentences on it and I think its because I wouldn't give negative answers and I tied things into the bigger picture and drew comparisons between then and now soooo I wound up on the cutting room floor.
I must move onward and google more blogs, just trying to set the record straight.
philmorningstar@yahoo.com
I don't think the focus of the docu was the counter culture in general but the Summer of Love in SF, which is the story they told. The TITLE is The Summer of Love, NOT The Counter Culture ... so I think they made the documentary they set out to make. This clearly is not the documentary YOU wanted them to make but I think they do a decent job for their tight focus. I do agree with all your points: I just don't think they belonged in this documentary. I'm a writing teacher and if they were, I'd say, Hey you are drifting away from your subject matter ha ha!
This happens a lot with material we are close to. We want them to make the movie WE want, with OUR focus, and this isn't always what they are setting out to do.
Actually, from my friends who were there, I think they didn't emphasize the negative stuff enough, particularly regarding the drug trade power struggles.
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