Neal Cassady

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

Documentary about Carolyn Cassady, her life and marriage to Neal Cassady, her relationship with Jack Kerouac and how she takes care of the literary legacy from both.

The film was shot on the property of writer Ken Kesey in La Honda, California, in 1965 and depicts Beat Generation figure Neal Cassady high on amphetamines and speaking in a stream of consciousness.

Sound and image captured by the Merry Pranksters in late 1965 and early 1966: the bus on the road, the Grateful Dead playing an Acid Test, Kool-Aid ritual, etc.