Magic Trip in the New York Times

With its opening in theaters this past Friday, Magic Trip has been gathering plenty of attention in the press. Count the New York Times among those who’ve noticed the film. Magic Trip was featured in a piece earlier this week on the front page of the Times website. The article, “Film Hitches a Weird Ride on Kesey’s Bus,” takes a look at the amazing story behind the Magic Trip documentary — including the hours of 16mm footage taken during the legendary 1964 trip: In all Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as his crew called themselves, shot some 40 hours of 16-millimeter film, but the project was never really finished. As [Tom] Wolfe wrote, “Plunging in on those miles of bouncing, ricocheting, blazing film with a splicer was like entering a jungle where the greeny vines grew faster than you could chop them down in front of you.” Kesey showed all 40 hours unedited a couple of times and also hacked the footage up into various shorter versions before stowing the film cans in his barn, near Eugene, Ore., where they rusted away — until Mr. Gibney and Ms. Ellwood showed up. Check out the article here.