Fox Searchlight has picked up “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” a project based on the 1968 Tom Wolfe book. Gus Van Sant is directing.
“Kool-Aid” is Wolfe’s account of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken Kesey and a group dubbed the Merry Pranksters as they drive across the country in a DayGlo-painted school bus dubbed Furthur, reaching personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.
I saw a doc about these Merry Pranksters. They drove a bus from town to town setting up dance parties and giving out LSD. At one event a fledgeling Grateful Dead was seen playing among the hippies. What an interesting time the 60’s must have been. Buses of merry makers giving out free drugs in the name of expanding your consciousness. These are the kinds of missionaries that I would let into my house for lunch.
This wheeled tube of pranksters is a fantastic subject for a film. If there was any vehicle that was to embody the 60’s – this bus would be it.
The above picture is where Furthur lies to this day.
