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VH1 chronicles America's drug culture
Ray Richmond | Reuters | Jun 11, 2006

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Recent American pop cultural history continues to be Job 1 at VH1, which has somehow managed to transform nostalgia and the camp framing of its ideals and icons into a growth industry and a hook on which to hang the fortunes of a TV network's entire focus.

The network has found great success with such shows as "I Love the '70s" and "I Love the '80s," which were not only labors of love but also authentic historic narratives.

But it is safe to say that "The Drug Years" -- a four-hour documentary airing in hourlong nuggets Monday through Thursday nights at 9 -- exists at a whole other level.

The first two hours supplied for review are something like classic television, packed as they are with magnificent archival footage and consistently profound insights about the role that illicit drug use and abuse has had in shaping our nation and its social fabric since the 1950s.

Produced by filmmakers Dana Heinz Perry (who directed) and Hart Perry -- the team responsible for numerous projects for VH1 including the acclaimed 2004 documentary "And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop" -- the show has a definitive feel to it.

It takes no sides other than to detail the true impact of weed, LSD, uppers, downers, speed, coke and the rest on impressionable youth, on a disapproving and uncomprehending older generation and on how it influenced everything from art to politics to interpersonal relations. It's alternately funny and sad, surreal and enlightening, strange and sobering -- not unlike the drug culture itself.

"The Drug Years" kicks off in Hour 1, "Break on Through" (1950s-67), with a detailed and expertly woven look at how it all began for a country whose narcotics use was essentially nonexistent before the 1960s -- aside from a few beatniks and poets.

That would all change, of course, with the '60s and the explosion of the marijuana culture and ultimately psychedelics like LSD via Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey.

The clips are superb, framing the way drugs played into a youth rebellion and a counterculture revolution that manifested itself in music, sexual freedom and the ideals of a generation that wanted to be anything but like their parents.

The Perrys make effective use of now laughable old educational films about the horrors of grass and LSD and vintage interviews with Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend and many others.

The second installment, "Feed Your Head" (1967-71), details the acid craze and rise of San Francisco as America's hippie capital as well as the reverberations on the antiwar movement, drugs and idealism.

The other two hours deal with the way drugs played out through much of the '70s and the coke and crack infiltration of the '80s onward.

Based on the book "Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age" by Martin Torgoff (who is a guiding presence in on-camera interviews as well as writer and consulting producer of the documentary), "The Drug Years" serves up a sublime potpourri of impressions and contextual anecdotes.

It's a kick to see film of people stoned and tripping out of their minds swaying in Human Be-ins, of Kesey's magic bus immortalized in Tom Wolfe's classic "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," and of Jimi Hendrix wigged out on acid while performing at the famed Monterey Pop Festival in '67.

Lending their recollections are such eyewitnesses as Ray Manzarek of the Doors, Peter Coyote, Jackson Browne and Tommy Chong.

I never knew that it was Bob Dylan who first turned the Beatles on to pot in 1964 and that it was over a lyrical misunderstanding: He thought the line in "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was "It's such a feeling that my love . . . I get high" instead of what it really was, ". . . I can't hide."

From such errors are cultural rebellions born. "The Drug Years," produced as a joint venture between VH1 and the Sundance Channel (where it repeats beginning Friday), documents an earth-shifting movement and its ongoing aftershocks with perceptiveness and candor.

Executive producers: Brad Abramson, Shelly Tatro, Michael Hirschorn, Laura Michalchyshyn, Lynne Kirby; Producers: Dana Heinz Perry, Hart Perry; Supervising producers: Ann Rose, Audrey Costadina, Stephen Mintz; Associate producer: Salimah El-Amin Director: Dana Heinz Perry; Teleplay/consulting producer: Martin Torgoff; Director of photography: Hart Perry; Art director: Guy Walker; Editor: Richard Lowe; Story editor: Pam Widener;Original music: Matt Hauser.

Produced by Perry Films Inc., VH1 and the Sundance Channel

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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Frojoe

i saw this earlier but forgot. thanks for reminding me! I've been watching for a few minuets and it looks awesome.

Chron

It's great to see something like this on television. I'll be watching the whole week.

nornerator

I watched most of the first installment, and its AMAZING. I highly suggest watching, I know I'll be watching the rest!