Medicine Ball Caravan
Cast & Crew
Francois Reichenbach
B. B. King
Tom Donahue
Francois Reichenbach
Alice Cooper
Doug Kershaw
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In Aug 1970, an "organized happening" is set in motion in San Francisco, led by local disc jockey Tom Donahue and French director Francois Reichenbach. Donahue, Reichenbach and his film crew organize a caravan of buses and cars to travel across the United States and attend rock concerts. The group consists of more than 150 volunteers, assorted free thinkers, hippies and flower children who plan to live in teepees, get to know one another and have fun. In addition to the adults and teenagers, several young children ride along in the caravan, accompanying their parents. At first the exteriors of the three principal buses, which are decorated in tie-dyed fabric and psychedelic colors inside, are painted stark white. As the caravan advances across the country, the exteriors of the buses are painted to express the feelings of the caravan members, who variously smoke marijuana, sing, take communal showers, jump into a vat of Jell-O created by Hugh Romney, more famously known as Wavy Gravy, and argue over how to drive the buses and set up camp each night. Along the way, the caravan encounters many highway patrol officers, some who are suspicious and want to arrest them, while others are sympathetic and flash the peace sign as they pass. Donahue discusses the slogan on one of the buses, "We have come for your daughters," which he says reflects the different points of view of the caravan members and citizens they encounter at various stops. Outside several towns, the caravan stops to attend rock concerts that variously feature B. B. King, Alice Cooper, Doug Kershaw, Sal Valentino, Stoneground, The Youngbloods and Delaney & Bonnie. In Colorado, the caravan encounters STP, a group of former Green Berets who carry guns but dress in Jesus costumes and pretend to be hippies. Donahue states that members of the STP used drugs, mostly alcohol, and their presence led to the biggest problem the caravan had with drug use. After passing through several other states, the caravan stops at Antioch College in Ohio where they are heckled by local students and others for being shills for Warner Bros., which provided the financing for the caravan and owns the contracts to the musical talent. Feminists also accuse them of being sexist for assigning only the women to be cooks, while a black student says that everyone there is an outcast from society. Following heated arguments with some of the protestors including activist David Peel, who claims that someone pulled a knife on him, the caravan gets back on the road and heads east.
Director
Francois Reichenbach
Cast
B. B. King
Tom Donahue
Francois Reichenbach
Alice Cooper
Doug Kershaw
Sal Valentino
Stoneground
The Youngbloods
Delaney & Bonnie
David Peel
Katy Akin
Carolyn Brush
John Blakeley
Vern Bildt
Tim Barnes
Patricia Blalock
L. Brilliant
C. Brilliant
George Brooks
Niles Brown
Hugh Brant
William Candelario
Barbara Campbell
John Curl
Cathy Chase
Carol Cisneros
Joseph Capodice
Marsha Cooper
Ruffin Cooper
Peter Count
Tom Donahue Iv
Tom Donahue Iii
Rachel Donahue
Kathleen Donahue
Sean Donahue
Diedre Donahue
Bonnie Duncan
Tom Dunphy
Bonnie Engber
Chris Franz
Ted Fisher
Rex Foster
Laura Foster
Paul Foster
Jerry Franswick
Sally Forrest
Linda Forrest
Lynn Gray
John Grissom Jr.
Clay Grillo
Christine Garrett
Joanne Heidrick
Lynn Hughes
Cathy Hahn
Michael Hall
Gayle Howard
Larry Hankin
Charles Van Haren
Barbara Hancock
Steve Horvath
Ron Pat Helton
Robert Hauxhurst
Vicki Hanson
Marilyn Hassett
Greg Irons
Evan Irons
Mike Jacob
Bruce Kahoun
Diedre Laporte
Leslie Lederer
Jerry Lewis
Fred Lane
David Le Brun
Mrs. Le Brun
Milan Melvin
Mike Mau
Gary Mintz
Claudia Mayer
Lee Moore
Willie Norton
Doyle Nance
Colleen Nelson
Florence Nathan
Henree Napier
Christine Ohanian
Lydia Phillips
Karen Peterson
Gene Pruit
Gail Pirnie
Erica Rasmusen
Leslie Roche
Brian Rohan
Tom Reid
Hugh Romney
Bonnie Romney
Rosemarie Rubino
William Rose
Andrew Romanoff
Pamela Roy
Mike Smith
Annie Sampson
Ron Solis
Paula Stauffacher
Ellen Schiff
Ron Schuff
Judy Smith
Steve Schremp
Patti Towle
Maureen Titcomb
Kira Todd
Kit Thomas
Morgan Upton
Elizabeth Vandermei
Julio Valdes
Randy Waters
Elyse Weinberg
Janice Waddleton
Maryann Wrobleski
Bob Weber
Sparky Weiler
Chan Lockman
Crew
Raymond Adam
Roger Andrieux
Bruce Bell
Karl Böhm
Joe Boyd
Gerard Chevalier
Gerard De Batista
Tom Donahue
Jimmy Driftwood
Dennis Dunaway
Bob Dylan
Jane Feather
Leonard Feather
Jean-jacques Fourgeaud
Bill Gold
Chas. Gold
Serge Halsdorf
Christian Haren
Don Hoskinson
Michel Houssiau
Jere Huggins
Alain Didier Jean
Barbara Keith
Doug Kershaw
B. B. King
Maggie Koven
Lowell Levinger
Bob Matthews
Milan Melvin
Van Morrison
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Christian Odasso
Gérard Patris
Leonard Peterson
Jean-loup Puzenat
Francois Reichenbach
Roger Rippe
Ervin T. Rouse
Johnny Russell
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Stoneground
Jean Michel Surel
Fred Talmage
Sal Valentino
Dan Wallin
Dick Weaver
Fred Weintraub
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Working titles of the film were Caravan of Love and The Great Medicine Ball Caravan. Although the onscreen copyright statement reads "copyright France Opera-SARL-PECF," the film's original copyright registration is listed as France Opera Co. Each of the film's opening title cards appear as an animated bus crosses the screen, which has a tie-dyed background, leaving the words and names in its wake. The title card reading "A Fred Weintraub Family Production" first appears with the name spelled out "Frederick," but the bus backs up, erasing the last two syllables of the name before proceeding. The opening credits also list all of the places where the caravan traveled, although some of the locations listed are seen only in brief shots or montages in the released film: San Francisco and Mono Lake, CA, Warm Springs, NV, Zion National Park, UT, Jacob Lake and Pleasant Valley, AZ, Gallup and Placitas, NM, Pueblo and Boulder, CO, Kearney, NE, Sioux City, IA, Moline, IL, Yellow Springs, OH, Warrenton, VA and Washington, D.C.
Only B. B. King, who is listed as an "ABC/Dunhill Records Artist," is given onscreen credit among the musical performers, and crew members who appear onscreen were not credited in the cast. Following the word "Starring," the end credits include a semi-alphabetical list of the names of persons who were part of the caravan. Just before the action begins, there appears a group photograph of the troupe. This photograph reappears at the end of the film, following close-ups of many of the principals riding in one of the buses. The following quotation, attributed to Federico Fellini, is superimposed over the photograph: "It doesn't seem important at this point to ask if their choice, their way of life, is a valid alternative to the world they have rejected. To be able to lose oneself in that caldron, where everything is burning, and where the old myths, and yesterday's utopias are all melting away, there is something sacrificial in that moment." At several places throughout the film, the screen turns into psychedelic colors and images, often keeping time to the music being played.
According to news items and press information, the 154-person troupe who appeared in and worked on Medicine Ball Caravan set out from San Francisco on August 5, 1970, traveling across the United States throughout the month of August. In early September 1970, the caravan also traveled to London and the Isle of Wight in England, where the film's final segment was shot. However, no segments set in England were in the released picture, which ends shortly after the incident at Antioch College.
Contemporary sources relate the following information about the production: French filmmaker Francois Reichenbach (1921-1993), who co-directed the Academy Award-winning 1970 short documentary Arthur Rubinstein: The Love of Life, decided upon the topic of the caravan to document American "hip" culture after friends suggested the idea when his plans to make a documentary about a proposed Toronto Peace Festival fell through. Reichenbach then contacted Tom Donahue, the Bay Area FM radio disc jockey often credited as the father of "underground music." Donahue agreed to organize the large group of volunteers that would travel in the caravan, including many technicians who could drive and set up the various concerts along the way.
Soon thereafter, Warner Bros. agreed to finance the French-American co-production, which Reichenbach describes on camera as "an organized happening" to show a "new minority in America." Just as various hecklers during the Antioch College sequence accuse the people on the caravan of fronting for Warner Bros., reviews also made the point that the studio not only provided the money for the caravan but flew in the featured musical performers, primarily artists under contract to their record label, for each of the concerts filmed.
According to the Variety review, the completed film cost $1,000,000. It opened in Los Angeles at the Westwood Bruin on August 17, 1971 and was reviewed by New York Times for its New York City opening a week later. However, according to contemporary news items, Medicine Ball Caravan only played a week in New York City and was soon withdrawn from distribution. Reviews, which were consistently negative, compared Medicine Ball Caravan unfavorably with the spontaneity of Woodstock (1970, see below), on which Martin Scorsese, who edited Medicine Ball Caravan and supervised post-production, was also one of the film editors. In an interview printed in a modern source, Scorsese stated that he only came onto the project in post-production, while he was working on the Warner Bros. lot. He described the experience as not being a happy one.
According to a September 27, 1971 Publishers Weekly article, William Bayer, the son of producer Eleanor Perry, who traveled with the caravan as a production supervisor [although he is not credited onscreen], wrote the book Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead, which included significant portions dedicated to Medicine Ball Caravan. In the article, Bayer was quoted as stating: "I was for hippies when we started out, but after six weeks I ended up loathing them." A May 10, 1972 Variety article described another book on the making of the film, We Have Come for Your Daughters: What Went Down on the Medicine Ball Caravan by John Grissom, Jr. [credited onscreen as John Grissim]. As noted in Variety, Grissom was highly critical of Warner Bros., stating "In the lexicon of the radical left, (Warner Bros.) has become the Dow Chemical of media." Grissom also chronicled the involvement of Freddie Fields, then head of Creative Management Associates [later ICM, International], his then-wife, actress-cosmetics mogul Polly Bergen and Warner Bros. producer Ted Ashley in the project.
The film's soundtrack album, which was distributed by Warner Bros. Music, subsequently became a much sought-after cult album among fans of late 1960s and early 1970s music.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1971
Techniscope
Released in United States 1971
