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| Micky Dolenz in Head |
Cast: Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, Timothy Carey, Logan Ramsey, Abraham Sofaer, Vito Scotti, Charles Macaulay, T.C. Jones. Screenplay: Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson. Cinematography: Michael Hugo. Art direction: Sydney J. Litwack. Film editing: Michael Pozen, Monte Hellman. Incidental music: Ken Thorne.
Bob Rafelson's Head feels like an attempt at an apology for creating the Monkees, the pop rock quartet that emerged full grown from the heads of Rafelson and fellow producer Bert Schneider in the mid-1960s as the stars of a musical sitcom. They were meant partly to spoof groups like the Animals, the Byrds, and above all, the Beatles. After they became commercially successful not only on TV but also on records, it became inevitable that they would make a movie. So, fueled by LSD and some other drugs, Rafelson sat down with his friend Jack Nicholson to come up with a screenplay. Watching it today, it's hard to believe that any of Head was ever set down on anything so tangible as paper. Much of it consists of what would become music videos a decade later, linked by something that never really qualifies as a story, but instead as a linked series of crises and outrageous situations. Cinematic genres like war movies, Westerns, and detective stories get lampooned. Camera tricks abound. Guest stars and celebrities like Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, Sonny Liston, Carol Doda, Frank Zappa, and even Rafelson and Nicholson pop up almost randomly, and newsreel clips hint that the movie has an intended relevance to what's going on in the real world, like the Vietnam war. But although television, the medium that gave birth to the Monkees, seems to be the movie's primary target, Head never coalesces into anything that can comfortably be called satire. It was a box office failure, partly because Rafelson misguidedly took charge of promoting it, and it exists today because of a cult following. But it's really not much more than an artifact of an era.
