"You Are What You Eat" has been uploaded to YouTube. Here is the link: http://youtu.be/_U9-k3086x4 It is not the clearest transfer, but I think it is now complete. It has the Super Spade scenes I mentioned in my 2002 review. "You Are What You Eat" is an artifact capturing that brief patchouly scented moment when the world's youth migrated toward its free love Mecca, the Haight Ashbury. Before the mean spirited chill of hard drugs, Charlie Manson, Nixon and Pol Pot shocked everyone back to their senses. It's puzzling, incoherent and unflatteringly besotted with unattractive flakes pontificating nonsensically, yet still rather engaging. The new version is 1:11 long.
The film begins with notorious San Francisco pot dealer Super Spade who is described in reviews at the time of the film's release. The fact that before "You Are What You Eat" was released Super Spade was murdered and left in a sleeping bag beneath a cliff by the Point Reyes lighthouse seems ominously portentous. Rumors after his death of imminent mob control of the Haight caused a whole, new emigration of older hipsters to the countryside in search of some Utopian dream that perhaps wasn't there.
Tiny Tim duets with his then girlfriend Eleanor Baruchian on "I Got You Babe" while mania-addled girls (inserted from The Beatles 1965 Shea Stadium concert) scream for their idols. Nature, leaves and flowers accompany a plaintive " Don't Remind Me Now of Time" sung by Peter Yarrow with whispers of "in the sky". Hell's Angels Motorcycles and a black screen precede the film's first title "The Heart Attack" (a narrator recounting how a loved one died after seeing motorcycles and while taking pictures of the Pope).
Youthful frolics include a desert ceremony with bearded conga drummers, ritualized dancing, body painting and a proper "Freak Out" with Zappa on stage (the music in fact a jam featuring John Simon & The Electric Flag with Michael Bloomfield on lead guitar).
The film begins with notorious San Francisco pot dealer Super Spade who is described in reviews at the time of the film's release. The fact that before "You Are What You Eat" was released Super Spade was murdered and left in a sleeping bag beneath a cliff by the Point Reyes lighthouse seems ominously portentous. Rumors after his death of imminent mob control of the Haight caused a whole, new emigration of older hipsters to the countryside in search of some Utopian dream that perhaps wasn't there.
Tiny Tim duets with his then girlfriend Eleanor Baruchian on "I Got You Babe" while mania-addled girls (inserted from The Beatles 1965 Shea Stadium concert) scream for their idols. Nature, leaves and flowers accompany a plaintive " Don't Remind Me Now of Time" sung by Peter Yarrow with whispers of "in the sky". Hell's Angels Motorcycles and a black screen precede the film's first title "The Heart Attack" (a narrator recounting how a loved one died after seeing motorcycles and while taking pictures of the Pope).
Youthful frolics include a desert ceremony with bearded conga drummers, ritualized dancing, body painting and a proper "Freak Out" with Zappa on stage (the music in fact a jam featuring John Simon & The Electric Flag with Michael Bloomfield on lead guitar).