BR: And to put things in historical context, you arrived on the Prankster scene in 1964 just in time to get involved with the original editing effort, correct?
MG: That’s right – it was the week after they got back from the cross-country trip. And it was really interesting, because Kesey says to me, “You can go to work on cataloguing these audio tapes.” And there were three boxes of these tapes – oh my God! (laughs) Some of it had fallen off the reels and some of it was unlabeled … I had to try to figure out which piece of film it went with.
BR: Oh, man. (laughs)
MG: You know, the camera would shut off, but the tape would keep rolling. (laughter) And the soundtrack was all wiggly because the generator on the bus wouldn’t run at a constant speed – the tape recorder would speed up and slow down. It was all so wacky to try to make sense out if it, you know? And I was just a kid; still a teenager.
But it was a huge challenge for me – and the Pranksters were just so much fun … such a hoot. (laughs) We took time to have fun, which is really rare in my experience as an American – nobody was doing that then. The Pranksters put “fun” at the top of the priority list, which is so unusual.
BR: That’s what I’ve enjoyed about getting to know Babbs: he’s serious about the things he’s passionate about – but he’s serious with a twinkle, you know? He’s serious about the fun.
MG: Oh, Babbs has a big twinkle going on – and he really enjoys getting out and talking to all these people he didn’t know. He’s having the time of his life with his book and this movie coming out in the same year – he’s having fun.
BR: Was there a point in the Pranksters’ attempt to put all the bus trip footage together when you simply said, “We can’t do what we wanted to do with this” – when you knew it was impossible with what you had to work with?
MG: Yeah, but it took a long time to get there – it took years. Even just before Kesey passed away, he was still working on pieces of that film to sell. He and Babbs had a little office and they would just get up there and work and work on that stuff. By then they had transferred it to video and had computers that they really didn’t know how to run very well. (laughter)
And then, of course, before they mailed them out they’d have to hand-paint each box that the videos went into … and the paint wouldn’t dry properly so the boxes would be sticky. (laughter) It was never easy; it was just never an easy project … and to have this much fun … (laughter)
BR: Is there any footage in Magic Trip that you hadn’t seen before?
MG: Yeah, there is, actually. Like, I had not seen the stuff from up at the lake on the way back – or the Millbrook part, either. When they come in with the green smoke bombs? (laughter)
BR: Yes! It was great that somebody went ahead to be able to capture their entrance!
MG: And you know, at that point they were running out of film – and film was wickedly expensive back then. Nowadays, everybody has video cameras and they don’t think about what it used to cost for film. They didn’t want to waste a single shot, you know? And it wasn’t like they had “auto-focus” or anything. (laughter) There was a lot of wasted film. Technology has really come so far and it’s amazing what we have at our disposal now. But, still – I don’t think that there are too many people having the level of fun that we had. (laughter)
BR: One of the big things in Magic Trip for me personally is the video and audio of Neal Cassady. There isn’t a lot of it around.
MG: No – and there’s still stuff that needs to be found in that archive; there’s much more of Neal, but it’s gotten lost. Oh, what a character he was! (laughs) We were just surrounded by these characters: Tiny Tim; Neal; and Ginsberg – what a character he was! And they were so sure of who they were and they didn’t have any problems worrying about exactly who they were going to be. They were like strong cheese – they were exactly who they were and kept the ball rolling, all of those people.
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