Saint Misbehavin' - The Wavy Gravy (a/k/a Hugh Romney) documentary

By Jack Brummet, Counterculture Editor

The trailer for this film is intriguing.  My son, Del, his cousin Melanie, and a friend, Sam, went down to Wavy's "clown camp" in Mendocino County, California, for three years running.  One year we were also down there and got to see their show, and even meet Mr. Gravy.  For all his bluster, hot air, and possibility confabulated stories, he has done a lot of good in the world, and I think that half the kids who go to Camp Winnarainbow are poor kids, on full scholarships.  Wavy Gravy is something right in the world. 

"Beginning with Woodstock ‘99, director Michelle Esrick has spent ten years documenting the life of Wavy Gravy.

 "Saint Misbehavin’ journeys from the hills of California to the Himalayan Mountains to reveal the life of this one of a kind servant to humanity. The film blends Wavy’s own words with magical stories from an extraordinary array of fellow travelers both cultural and counter-cultural, revealing the man behind the clown’s grin and the fool’s clothing.

"In Saint Misbehavin’ Wavy is revealed more than the tie-dyed entertainer and ice-cream flavor namesake that often defines him in the popular imagination. Audiences will come to know the activist, the optimist, and the healer who reaches beyond political, economic, and cultural divisions in his commitment to social change and the alleviation of human suffering.
Wavy’s life is his message, serving as deeply needed inspiration that we can change the world and have fun doing it.

"Satirist Paul Krasner describes Wavy as “The illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Theresa, conceived one starry night on a spiritual whoopie cushion,” to which Wavy has replied, “Some people tell me I’m a saint, I tell them I’m Saint Misbehavin’.”

"Featuring: Wavy Gravy, Jahanara Romney, Jordon Romney, Dr. Larry Brilliant, The Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Odetta, Patch Adams, Lisa Law, Buffy Sainte Marie, Denise Kaufman, Tom Law, Steven Ben Israel, The Hog Farm, and more!"

Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie - Theatrical Trailer from Ripple Effect Films

From the film:



JACKSON BROWNE
“I have known Wavy for over 20 years, but it wasn’t until last year that one of my kids went to his camp. I was really amazed at how powerful this camp was in the lives of these kids…Wavy was connecting with these kids in such a meaningful way and I really looked at him with new eyes because I am used to his joking and his philanthropy but it was brilliant, it was revolutionary stuff, it was about really turning the tides in the lives of people who will be the next to inhabit the corridors of government, and business, and become the artists and the influential people of this century…only a really serious revolutionary would have the vision and the depth and the breadth of character to actually continue to do this all these years and on into the future and so add to the description of clown and Saint….Revolutionary.”

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Jack Kerouac's On The Road Turns Fifty (includes video of Jack reading from On The Road)

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was published nearly fifty years ago (on September 5). It is still taught in college, and it has spoken to several generations of readers now as well as being one of the seminal texts of both the 60's counterculture and the 50's beat subculture.

I devoured this book when I was in high school, and many times afterwards. It led me to the poetry of Allen Ginsberg (who we bumped into off and on in our NYC days), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (the last man standing among the beats), Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Diane DiPrima, John Clellon Holmes, Lew Welch, Phillip Whalen, Gary Snyder, and, of course, Neal Cassady, and the next generation of Ken Kesey, Jean Shepherd, Ed Sanders, Jim Carroll, and others.

The hero of some of Jack's novels, Neal Cassady, was a link between the beats and the next generation; he "starred" in several of Kerouac's novels, but also went on to pilot the bus Furthur for Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters (detailed in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test), as well as rap as a performer at the infamous Acid Tests. [Note: I use the word rap here as it was used in the 60's, meaning to speak in an extended improvisatory mode]. What many of us learned from the book was that you could write about America and not necessarily have to wear the straightjacket of our European antecedents. And that you could write a book patterned on the actual America around us. . .a book that found the rhythms of the road, and detailed what we now know were just the beginnings of being connected. They connected by routes and highways; we have found new, but not better ways to make that connection.



Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady (a/k/a Dean Moriarty)


What I have enjoyed about this 50th anniversary is reading the critical acclaim for Kerouac, and in particular for On The Road. The New York Times fell all over itself this weekend, detailing Kerouac's enormous cultural influence, but also not ignoring his impact on literature. His influence on rock and roll (interestingly, he wasn't a fan) has been enormous. In many ways, Jack Kerouac was the first modern "indy" writer (I would have to put William Blake and Walt Whitman as the first). All these years later, On The Road still sells 100,000 copies a year (although I suspect it will outstrip that this year).



My favorite works from Kerouac, the beats, their disciples and offshoots:

Kerouac: On The Road, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Neal, Scattered Poems, Book of Dreams, Big Sur, Maggie Cassidy
Neal Cassady: The First Third (memoir), Selected Letters
Allen Ginsberg: Planet News, Howl
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: All the poetry
Phillip Whalen: On Bear's Head
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch, Junky, Exterminator, The Yage Letters, Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Burroughs File, The Adding Machine
Hunter S. Thompson: The Gonzo Papers, Volumes 1,2,3, The curse of Lono, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diaries, The Hells Angels
Lew Welch: Ring of Bone
Ed Sanders: The Family, Tales of Beatnik Glory, 1968: A History in verse, Love and Fame in New York
Diane DiPrima: Memoirs of a Beatnik , Pieces of a song, Loba,
Denise Levertov: Selected Poems
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