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Head was the movie that killed the Monkees. It was universally panned, alienated their
teenage TV following with a vengeance & it's, well, heady, mix of psychedelia & dark
surrealism formed a complete contradiction to the shiny, happy, manufactured Monkee phenomenon. Late night
TV commercials advertising the film were so avant-garde (a shot of a be-spectacled young man pouting
with the tag line HEAD in small letters in the top right hand corner) they left most people confused as to
what or who Head was (the pout belonged to media expert John Brockman hired to promote the movie)?
Newspaper ads carrying the same picture were equally perplexing, asking "What is Head? - Only John
Brockman's psychologist knows..." The campaign proved a commercial disaster: Head grossed just
$16,111 at the box office - a long way from the $790,000 Columbia invested in it.
The movie was directed by Bob Rafelson & written by Jack Nicholson & the Monkees & eventually named
Head with Nicholson & Rafelson's intention to label their next movie, Easy Rider, with the moniker,
"from the producers who gave you HEAD!" Except nobody saw Head & the movie became more famous for
pairing the future triumph of the Rafelson/Nicholson connection. Despite it's dramatic flop at the time,
scholarly revisionism has distilled Head into an understated classic. Head didn't take any prisoners,
an intention illustrated right from the start: within the first 5 minutes, the good time Monkee feel is
entirely subverted by crowning the introductory sequence with an infamous Vietnam execution scene - the first time
the sequence had been used in a piece of art - an impact intensified by the worsening war on SE Asia & Nixon's
election to power. What unravelled from here was a dadaist dismantling of the Monkees & Hollywood myth. It was
a non-linear, anti-establishment, self-immolating hallucinogenic attack on everything the Monkees
had created & stood for. The film was so disengaged & so surreal there was even talk of sending
the reels out to theatres in no particular order! The shock teenage audiences felt at first viewing
must've been incredible, akin to turning up to a G-G-Gareth Gates concert & watching him stride onstage
dressed as the anti-christ & perform a set of Marilyn Manson, Butthole Surfers & Slayer covers with
total integrity, pausing only to bleed.
Head has been credited with influencing everything from Monty Python to MTV (Rafelson is nicknamed
"the Godfather of MTV") & distinct echoes can be
found in Blazing Saddles, Airplane & throughout the work of David Lynch. The film recieved its just
revision during the punk years when it's ironic, anti-everything stance found its place in the zeitgeist.
John Kordosh wrote in Creem magazine, "Head is anti-rock & anti-fame, [and] so self-mocking that it
borders on tragedy."
And in being so, Head has never appeared so influential as today. It is MTV before the blandness, surrealism before
its pop-art infection, Airplane! before Scary Movie & blowing up a coke machine with a tank never seemed
so apt in a world of corporate domination.
Head crowned off the Monkees legend: from goody-two-shoe pop act to introducing Jimi Hendrix to
audiences in the US, from birthing the Rafelson/Nicholson collaboration to the first appearance of
another relative unknown, Dennis Hopper & from the young writer allegedly structuring the film whilst
on acid to him still quoting lines from the film on a daily basis even today.
What is Head? Worth seeing that's what.
RATING: (c)Limer 2002
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Head (Sky Movies Gold; 2002)
