Movie/DVD Review

These days it can be easy to forget why someone would want to be a Deadhead. Nobody really wants to formally acknowledge it, but the band that currently tours as “The Dead” doesn’t exactly provide the sort of repeat transcendental moments that once inspired total devotion. That’s not to say the modern-day Dead concert isn’t a valid experience — for many, it is. It’s just that in the wake of reunion tours, spin-off groups, merchandise blitzes, and news-grabbing legal grapples, it is easy to forget about the good ole’ Grateful Dead.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that even a Dead concert isn’t a Grateful Dead concert…and “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.” It was true then and it’s true today.

The Grateful Dead Movie suspends the post-band quagmire. Renders it irrelevant. Makes you want to be a Deadhead again. Reminds you that Grateful Dead shows were a fantastically communal experience. Reacquaints you with a cast of cosmic clowns and brilliant bozos. Realigns you with the Great Goof. And reconnects you to the Grateful Dead’s music at its most eloquent, energetic, and spiritually invigorating state.

This music, recorded two full decades ago, is still living and breathing today — not through nostalgia acts or tribute bands, but here on this DVD. Like a classic Dead acid trip, the music actually drips from the speakers and slides off the screen. And it’s more than just the digital transfer and the 5.1 sound that does that — those are just the genie’s bottle that, when rubbed, unleash the beast. I know I’m being dramatic. It’s deserved.

In 1974 when the Grateful Dead decided to go on an indefinite hiatus, they scheduled a five night run at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. A place they could justifiably call home. The future of anything is, at any time, uncertain. But usually we at least have illusions of their certainty. The hiatus stole the illusion — in 1974, the future of the Grateful Dead was uncertain.

According to band historian Dennis McNally, in his exhaustive and infinitely enjoyable Dead biography, “A Long Strange Trip,” Garcia decided this would be a good time to pursue his filmmaking career. For four of the five nights at Winterland, camera crews captured the action on stage, backstage, in the audience, and even outside the building.

During the hiatus, The Grateful Dead Movie became Garcia’s labor of love. Not everyone in the band was as committed as he was to its eventual release and in fact, as McNally reveals in his book, some even questioned if it was worth the investment. The movie was eating up band funds. The movie was Garcia’s private obsession. The movie was going nowhere for the band, as a whole. Or so it seemed. But Garcia knew what was at stake. He knew what the risk was and had his mind on the final reward.

The Grateful Dead Movie hit theaters in June of 1977 to mixed reviews. It played in just a handful of theaters, in Deadhead markets. The band rented the theaters, equipped them with rented sound systems, and worked with local promoters, treating the screenings like they were satellite concerts. Think the movie turned a profit? Not a chance!

Naturally, a dozen years later when The Grateful Dead Movie was released on VHS, it finally became the classic that Garcia had dreamed of. The home movie became a Grateful Dead initiation rite for tens of thousands of kids just getting into the band in 1989 and in the years to follow. In 1993, my square-as-a-box parents bought me a copy for the holidays. I can remember taking that video with me from dorm to dorm that semester, “Hey man, check this out!”

Its final resting place was on the mantel at my ex-girlfriend’s apartment where I had brought it the first time we hung out together. It was my way of saying, “If you’re gonna run with me, you’ve got to be down with THIS.” She dug it, I suppose, and I suppose too that she eventually dug it more than she dug me because when we split she held onto the videotape. I held onto her Henry Miller, so it was a fair deal, I suppose. That was seven years ago.

Now it’s 2004 and nobody watches VHS tapes anymore anyway. It’s a DVD world and bands are lining up their releases like drunks with shotglasses at an open bar. So I admit, when the Dead Empire announced the DVD release of The Grateful Dead Movie, I was undecided if that meant anything to me or not. After all, the VHS version was still miraculously implanted in my brain — I could recite most of the dialogue even though I could no longer name every state’s capital — but would I really watch this again, more than once, just because it was now on DVD?

Here’s the thing — this double-disc set is not just the movie. It’s really a “deluxe redux” edition. The original version, reportedly, was over five hours long and had to be cut down closer to two for, well, every practical reason in the book. And although we don’t get a restoration of the original director’s cut, what we do get is an entire disc of bonus material — an old-fashioned double-picture show, if you will — including lengthy concert footage from the Movie shoot. The “Uncle John’s Band” that was once slated for the opening sequence kicks off the riveting bonus section, which also includes a mind-bending version of “Scarlet Begonias” and a legendary “The Other One” cycle that swallows a “Spanish Jam” and a “Mind Left Body Jam” before coming back around.

I’m so taken by the bonus concert footage that I’m tempted to forego further contemplation of the movie itself. After all, you’ve all seen The Grateful Dead Movie before one way or the other, and if you haven’t, I’ll let your own guilty conscious do the persuading. And as for the animation that everyone always wants to talk about, you know, in 1977 it was as groundbreaking as they say it was (and there’s a bonus documentary on Disc Two where the animator lectures on the now-antiquated process).

That mini-documentary, as well as some of the other additional bonus features, can skirt the line between interesting and tedious. You’ll be glad you watched it once. But really, what you’ll come back to again and again is that the movie has preserved the Grateful Dead live experience and makes it a living, breathing, tangible thing. In a way that nothing else can, other than the memories of the participants.

All told, The Grateful Dead Movie is enough to make Deadheads want to be Deadheads again.