From the Vault: The Monkees’ “Head”
A look back at one of Hollywood’s most strange and influential films.
Since I was young, I have been an avid fan of The Monkees. This is something I’ve talked about previously when I wrote about The Monkees show and its unique and powerful legacy melding television and music together. They were a cultural phenomenon during the 1960s, becoming one of the most popular “clean” acts of their era. Many considered them a rip-off of The Beatles, something that has haunted them ever since their inception. They were a group of talented artists trapped behind the personas that were created for them.
Now, I had never seen Head, The Monkees single cinematic offering, until recently. This has always surprised people due to my love for The Monkees…but after watching this film, there’s probably a reason why it never made an appearance in my house as a kid. Allow me to summarize the film as best I can. Or, rather, as best the Monkees can. From the movie’s song “Ditty Diego (War Chant)”:
Hey, hey, we are the Monkees
You know we love to please
A manufactured image
With no philosophiesWe hope you like our story
Although there isn’t one
That is to say there’s many
That way there is more funYou told us you like action
And games of many kinds
You like to dance, we like to sing
So let’s all lose our mindsWe know it doesn’t matter
’Cause what you came to see
Is what we’d love to give you
And give it one, two, threeBut there may come three, two, one, two
Or jump from nine to five
And when you see the end in sight
The beginning may arriveFor those who look for meaning
And form as they do facts
We might tell you one thing
But we’d only take it backNot back like in a box back
Not back like in a race
Not back so we can keep it
But back in time and spaceYou say we’re manufactured
To that we all agree
So make you choice and we’ll rejoice
In never being freeHey, hey, we are the Monkees
We’ve said it all before
The money’s in we’re made of tin
We’re here to give you more
While those lyrics rather succinctly tell you exactly what the Monkees believed this movie was about, that was not the film’s theme song. That was the second song in the film. The theme was the fantastic, psychedelic song “Porpoise Song (Theme from Head),” which has very often been referred to as “Goodbye,” the oft-repeated word of the chorus. This was the Monkees attempting to say goodbye to the image music critics had labeled them with, one of not being real musicians, being cheap Beatles knockoffs that deserve no praise or consideration.
To the Monkees, the most frustrating part of this claim was that it gained fervor during their tour for their record Headquarters, for which they wrote all the songs and played all the instruments. The album is generally considered one of their best, but the “Pre-Fab Four” moniker kept sticking, even as they pumped out two more major hit albums showing their musicianship and songwriting abilities. And this, rightly enough, frustrated them. They decided against a third season of their hit show, focusing instead on the film Head and their effort to kill the personas that had been thrust upon them by public perception.
The Beatles did something very similar, transitioning over time from their pop-rock and cover days in the early 1960s to more artistic music, full of psychedelic elements, using sitars, creating a new and different, yet still familiar, sound for the band. For them, it took several years, several albums, and the efforts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, two of the most brilliant songwriters in the past century, and their change was an organic one crafted through the group’s changing sensibilities. Plus, they had the support, by and large, of the music critics. The Monkees, distinctly lacking that support, ended up speeding up the process, trying to shed their undesired image by force.
Head literally has no plot whatsoever. Or at least, not any discernible one. As the song quoted earlier states, “We hope you like our story/Although there isn’t one.” As the film’s advertising went, this was to be “the most extraordinary adventure western comedy love story mystery drama musical documentary satire ever filmed,” and it delivers in a fascinatingly bizarre fashion.
The film introduced drugs (finding a blunt) and overt promiscuity (the same woman kissing all four Monkees in immediate succession), subverting their image of good clean fun. It bloodied Davy Jones’ pretty-boy face in a boxing match. Peter admitted in a religious-like vision he was always meant to be “the dummy,” later using Peter to espouse complex and possibly meaningless philosophies. We also see Micky refuse to participate in yet another “dumb skit,” walking through an old West backdrop and ruining it. It appropriately showed the Monkees performing a concert in all-white, cult-leader-esque clothes as the screaming horde immediately clawed them apart after the show (when it was revealed the Monkees were in actuality mannequins), commenting on the rabid fanaticism of their fans. They juxtaposed screaming fans with images of death and war and murder, their most obvious anti-war statements since their songs “Zor and Zam” and “Mommy and Daddy.” And, ultimately, they continued to be trapped in the same black box, carted away to do the same routines and gags, their image inescapable.
The film was an incredible meta-commentary on themselves, a vanity project that served no story purpose, and it had the goal of eliminating their image that I’m not sure the Monkees even realized they would accomplish this so devastatingly well. To a non-Monkees fan, the movie likely makes zero sense. To a Monkees fan at the time, without knowledge of the behind-the-scenes turmoil, the movie likely felt insulting or uncomfortably different. Both the film and the album flopped, and the Monkees soon said goodbye as a cohesive, four-man band. And yet, I would argue Head had an incredible influence on Hollywood over the next several decades.
Now, it’s difficult to say whether the film directly influenced anything, but there are elements reminiscent of other movies. The awkward, disjointed, deep thought randomness and repeated themes reminded me strongly of David Lynch and Mulholland Drive (though, based on what I’ve been told, Lost Highway or Inland Empire could be even better examples), who, as much as I dislike what I’ve seen, has been influential in several corners of Hollywood. The film also gives a slightly less comedic And Now for Something Completely Different vibe, one of Monty Python’s cinematic efforts after Head came out (though Monty Python was fully capable of being random without needing outside influence, so this may be a stretch). There’s even a scene strongly reminiscent of a moment in The Muppet Movie, out eleven years later. Further, I’d wager that this film, while not being successful itself, opened the door for other musician cinematic vanity projects, like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or the lesser-known Metallica 3D concert film Through the Never, which looked to Head for inspiration.
But those are just educated guesses. What makes Head so influential is the people who were involved. While Frank Zappa’s cameo is an interesting and perhaps unexpected appearance, the film was directed, produced, and co-written by Bob Rafelson, executive produced by Bert Schneider…and produced and co-written by Jack Nicholson.
Jack Nicholson had yet to catch a big break as an actor when the film Head was released. He’d had several roles in Roger Corman films, but nothing major or leading. The film certainly did nothing to launch his career as a writer. But it did introduce him to Rafelson and Schneider. For Rafelson and Schneider, Head was their introduction into the world of cinema from the world of television. The money they made from making Head, as well as The Monkees, allowed them to start in on their projects, including a little 2-time Academy Award-nominated film called Easy Rider (directed by Dennis Hopper, who also appeared in Head) starring one Jack Nicholson. His next project was another Rafelson endeavor, the Academy Award-nominated film Five Easy Pieces where Nicholson gained a second nomination, allowing for his career to take off.
But Nicholson wasn’t the only influential person that benefitted from Head. Bob Rafelson is largely credited with helping usher in the “New Hollywood” age of cinema, an era long since dead, but still important to American cinema. Cinema started deteriorating in quality and originality during the late 1960s, and film studios had been the real creators of how a film was meant to turn out. The “New Hollywood” movement saw the voice being given to directors with unconventional because studios did not know what appealed to audiences anymore. And Head truly symbolized that movement. As Rafelson himself put it, “Of course Head is an utterly and totally fragmented film. Among other reasons for making it was that I thought I would never get to make another movie, so I might as well make fifty to start out with and put them all in the same feature.” That sense of making whatever film you want (one that has waned in recent years) exemplified the “New Hollywood” movement, and Head is a perfect example of the extremes to which this movement could go.
If you want to experience something that is difficult to explain, bizarrely unique, and is the murder of one of the biggest cultural phenomena of 1960s America, I strongly suggest you watch Head. You might love it, or you might be utterly confused and hate it. But whatever your opinion of the film, the effect the Monkees had on cinema, directly or not, cannot be denied.
