NEW YORK - YIPPIE RESENTMENT

By viceland

So, not sure if you already caught this, but that guy who made The Kid Stays in the Picture is putting the final touches on an animated movie commemorating the Chicago 8's brave stand against due process and featured Yippie Paul Krassner is all bummed out because the sponsors (read: Man) made them cut some of the acid stories.

There's a decent point to be had here, but of course Kassner being a scion of the 60s we can't just get a simple "Aren't studios pussies?" and be done with it. No, it has to be buried in 20 paragraphs of the kind of blathering acid-scarred self-aggrandizement that would make most of our senile grandfathers yell "Cut to the chase, already." See if you can make it down to the graff [that's a bit of "mag" lingo for all you hep-sters out there] that starts with "And so we held a press conference" and tell us, the March of Dimes quip, the "Yipes" headline, the payola joke: Is any of it really relevant to what he's supposedly on about? Dude is on autopilot.

And what about the scenes, those scenes so integral to communicating the spirit of the Yippie endeavor? The Chicago protests being the result of an acid trip and FARC-grown weed, the Yippies' empty threat to dose the Chicago water supply, Kassner barfing in court, and the inaugural session of perhaps the most inneffectual protest of all time (though perhaps they can be given credit for Miss America's evenutal move from tackiness hub Atlantic City to the world capital of Vegas)? We wouldn't expect this to occur to anybody as ego-blind as one of the Yips, but maybe the studio just didn't want the whole movement to come across like a self-righteous dry run for the Partridge Family Temple. Just a thought.

PS: Doesn't Abbie look like Billy Crystal's character in Princess Bride?