Head (film) - Origins and Aftermath

Origins and Aftermath

The storylines and peak moments of the film came from a weekend visit to a resort in Ojai, California, where the Monkees, Rafelson and Nicholson brainstormed into a tape recorder, reportedly with the aid of a quantity of marijuana. Jack Nicholson then took the tapes away and used them as the basis for his screenplay which (according to Rafelson) he structured while under the influence of LSD. When the band learned that they would not be allowed to direct themselves or to receive screenwriting credit (since they didn't write the actual shooting script), Dolenz, Jones, and Nesmith staged a one-day walkout, leaving Tork the only Monkee on the set the first day. The strike ended after the first day when, to mollify the Monkees, the studio agreed to a larger percentage share of the film's net for the group. But the incident damaged the Monkees' relationship with Rafelson and Bert Schneider, and would effectively draw a curtain on their professional relationship together.

Filmed at Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems Studios in Culver City and at the Columbia Ranch in Burbank, as well as on various locations in California (the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Gerald Desmond Bridge, Long Beach; the "WAR!" chant cheerleader sequence at Pasadena Rose Bowl, Pasadena; the factory sequence at the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant, Playa Del Rey; the war sequence at Bronson Canyon; some sequences at San Francisco; the desert sequence at Palm Springs), Utah (the concert sequence at Valley Music Hall, Salt Lake City) and The Bahamas (Micky's underwater sequence) between February 15 and May 17, 1968, the movie makes fun of the band's image and the bandmembers' personae. The song "Ditty Diego – War Chant" was written by Jack Nicholson and is a parody of the band's original Boyce and Hart written TV theme song; its lyrics illustrate the tone of self-parody evident in parts of the film:

He, hey, we are The Monkees
You know we love to please
A manufactured image
With no philosophies.

You say we're manufactured.
To that we all agree.
So make your choice and we'll rejoice
in never being free!

Hey, hey, we are The Monkees
We've said it all before
The money's in, we're made of tin
We're here to give you more!
The money's in, we're made of tin
We're here to give you...

The final "We're here to give you..." is interrupted by a gunshot, with footage of the execution of Viet Cong operative (q.v.) Nguyễn Văn Lém, by Brigadier General and then Chief of National Police Nguyễn Ngọc Loan.

Elements of the film were based in fact, including the stampede leaving the studio canteen when the Monkees break for lunch, and the "big black box"* the band repeatedly becomes trapped in. (During the first season, veteran performers would regularly complain about the Monkees' presence – and walk out of the cafeteria whenever they came in – while members would sometimes wander off-set when they weren't needed on camera. The studio responded by building a break area on-set for the Monkees, with a meat-locker door and the walls painted black.)

A poor audience response at an August 1968 screening in Los Angeles eventually forced the producers to edit the picture down from its original 110-minute length. The 86-minute Head premiered in New York City on November 6, 1968; the film later debuted in Hollywood on November 20. It was not a commercial success. This was in part because Head, being an antithesis of The Monkees TV show, comprehensively demolished the group's carefully groomed public image, while the older, hipper audience they'd been reaching for rejected the Monkees' efforts out of hand.

The film was also delayed in its release (owing partly to the use of solarisation, a then-new technique both laborious and expensive), and badly under-promoted. The sole television commercial was a confusing, minimalist close-up shot of a man's head (John Brockman); after thirty seconds, the man smiled and the name HEAD appeared on his forehead. This ad was a parody of Andy Warhol's 1963 film Blow Job, which only showed a close-up of a man's face for an extended period, supposedly receiving 'head'.

Another part of the promotional campaign was placing "Head" stickers in random places. An urban legend has circulated for years that Jack Nicholson was arrested for trying to place one of these stickers onto the helmet of a New York City police officer while he was mounting his horse.

Receiving mixed critical reviews and virtually non-existent box office receipts, the film only succeeded in alienating the band's teenaged fanbase, while also failing to attract the more adult audience they had been striving for. Head's abysmal reception instantly halted studio plans for any further films with the Monkees. It also corresponded with a steep drop in the group's popularity as recording artists; the film's soundtrack album only peaked at #45 on the American chart, the first time any LP by the Monkees had not risen to the Top 5. The single released from the album, Porpoise Song, was the first 45 RPM record by the band to fail to crack the Top 40 as well.

The film eventually found a cult following, although even fans tend to disagree whether the film is a landmark of surreal, innovative filmmaking or simply a fascinating mess. Today, it receives mainly positive reviews from fans and film critics alike. Leonard Maltin describes it in his comprehensive Movie Guide as “delightfully plotless” and “well worth seeing,” giving the film 3 out of 4 stars, while Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 75% rating. Head premiered on television across-the-board as a CBS Late Movie on December 30, 1974 (Michael Nesmith's 32nd birthday, and David Jones' 29th), at 11:30pm (EST); the network rebroadcast the film on July 7, 1975 (the 35th birthday of ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who is mentioned in the film). Cable TV took hold in 1981, when Head began periodical showings on Spotlight; Cinemax began airing the film in 1984. In the UK, Channel 4 also aired the film on British TV for the first time in 1986, and then again in 1991. It was later shown regularly on Starz Cinema, and in 2007, Turner Classic Movies featured the film as part of TCM Underground, showing the film unedited and in its original aspect ratio. It was released on video and Laserdisc by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video in September 1986 (taking advantage of the group's 20th Anniversary), again on VHS and DVD by Rhino Entertainment in January 1995, and a third time on Blu-ray and DVD in November and December 2010, respectively, by The Criterion Collection, in a box set with other films from Rafelson.

When asked by Rolling Stone magazine in March 2012 if he thought making Head was a mistake, Nesmith responded by saying that "by the time Head came out the Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection . . . and it was basically over. Head was a swan song. We wrote it with Jack and Bob . . .and we liked it. It was an authentic representation of a phenomenon we were a part of that was winding down. It was very far from suicide—even though it may have looked like that. There were some people in power, and not a few critics, who thought there was another decision that could have been made. But I believe the movie was an inevitability—there was no other movie to be made that would not have been ghastly under the circumstances."