06/11/2007
Gus van Sant to Trip Out on Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Gus van Sant is set to direct Tom Wolfe's LSD road trip chronicle, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Variety reports: "The book told the story of a cross-country road trip that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey orchestrated with a group called the Merry Pranksters. Driving in a psychedelically painted bus from California to visit the World's Fair in New York in 1964, Kesey and his band used the trip as a way to turn on those they met to the mind-expanding wonders of LSD. Kesey ingested the drug while he wrote Cuckoo's Nest, crediting the hallucinogen for many of the ideas in the book. Shortly after the Wolfe book was published in 1967, its film rights were purchased by entrepreneur Alfred Roven. Not a film producer, Roven had some meetings over the years with filmmakers but was very protective. When he died, Roven left the rights to his children, Daryn and Alison Roven. FilmColony's Gladstein was introduced to them by attorney Peter Grossman, and for the first time, the rights were entrusted to a producer."
Van Sant has enlisted Lance Black, with whom he's currently working on one of the two competing Harvey Milk biopics in development, to write the script.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
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Posted 11:00 AM EST by Andy Towle in Film, Gus van Sant, Ken Kesey, Lance Black, News, Tom Wolfe | Permalink
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Gus tells me the Harvey Milk project is an idea nowhere near the development stage at this point.
Being that his filmmaking is now entirely conceptual rather than drama tic I wonder how he's going to do Ken Kesey.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | Jun 11, 2007 12:15:52 PM
For the record, I've read that Kesey was, surprisingly, very homophobic.
Hopefully, another film about Milk will kill Van Sant's as his "conceptualism" would only smother the story to death.
Posted by: Leland | Jun 11, 2007 12:59:21 PM