Festival

Timothy Leary's Dead

 (Docu)

By KEN EISNER

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A Davids and Mills Prods. (Los Angeles) production. Produced by Paul Davids, Todd Easton Mills. Directed by Paul Davids. Screenplay, Davids, Mills.
 

Little could the Moody Blues have known that their trippy little ditty would one day provide the title and theme song for a life-summing docu on the psychedelic movement's greatest guru. Allowing for a somewhat over-laudatory temperament, pic is likely to be the definitive Tim Leary docu for some time to come. College circuits seem appropriate, with heavy traffic in vid and webcast versions assured.

Deceptively straightforward heads-and-clips pic concentrates on the final days of famed Harvard prof and LSD monger, who died of prostate cancer in May. Helmer Paul Davids (who made the UFO tube pic "Roswell") engages the gaunt-looking but nattily attired Leary in an ongoing conversation that brings out the older man's cranky and still wicked wit.

Along the way, his sharp ruminations provide ample opportunities to drop in archival footage of the twinkle-eyed teacher in his early incarnations as an envelope-pushing academic, a commune-building potentate (at his halcyon Millbrook estate) and a globe-trotting fugitive of American justice. This material is fleshed out by old TV and newsreel interviews and current chats with associates --- running the gamut from Ram Dass to G. Gordon Liddy --- who remember the lysergic vizier with varying degrees of affection and approbation. Overall, the good-humored, sometimes rough-looking pic treads lightly on Leary's dodgier, more contradictory aspects, althoughit's certainly not blind to his self-serving side.

So far, so nice, but pic's most intriguing and controversial parts have to do with the good doc's impending death. As his health fails, he flits from one offbeat idea to the next, including a plan to die "wired" to the Internet.

One constant, though, appears to be his faith in cryogenics, and doctors start bringing out ice packs even as Leary lies in his final bed. Actually, not every part of him is slated for the deep freeze: Graphic shots of his head being severed from his body are sure to shock even the most prepared auds --- not least because both helmer and subject drop hints that the whole grisly thing might be staged. The sequence looks real enough, but the docu makes a convincing case that it would take a force far more powerful than death to keep Tim Leary from staging a farewell practical joke.

Camera (color), Paul Helling; editor, David Wilson, Mark Deimel; music, Moody Blues, etc.; sound, Ted Gordon. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 12, 1996. Running time: 80 MIN.