Footage of Allen begins, December 1965, with him traveling in his VW bus in San Francisco, (sorting through letters –he reaches for pen and paper – overheard conversation) – I’ll take that out.. This’ll do.. It came in this morning… It’s from a.. It’s from somebody round here in San Francisco. I’ll get to take care of the rest of these letters from my father..
You know where I hit on this car, where it comes from? Guggenheim money (Guggenheim money?) Yes.
(What can you tell me about this trip?) – Oh we start from San Francisco go out to downtown Los Angeles, if possible meet some.. meet Bob Dylan there and spend a couple of days with him, meet Marlon Brando and hang around with a friend named Wally Berman, a painter, I’ve known for a long time, stay there about a month, then I have some relatives that have come over from Moscow, visiting cousins at Riverside, so I’ll stop over there a week. From there, go out to the desert (and) sit around in the desert a while, because we’ve got our own independent water supply here, sleep out, then go to Creeley’s at Placitas, New Mexico, stay there a week – (We may see you there ) – Oh really, will you be going down to work? – (No, not now, I’m just going stay here) – And then (we) go off to Kansas City…no, Wichita (VW jolts in the traffic – “Take it easy on the clutch there, man!”) – So I’m supposed to read at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas, and I’ll also I’ll probably try.. try to give a reading in Wichita, because that’ll be difficult because Wichita is sort of like in the center of a vortex of, like, real Birch reactionary…
The painting is by Robert LaVigne, who was a friend of Peter’s. Peter had been living with Robert LaVigne when I met Peter originally, a few blocks away from the cafeteria and we all came down every evening to drink coffee and talk and sketch and write poems about each other. So Robert tried to memorialize the whole scene in Fosters with the multiple reflections of the mirrors and the local characters who were hanging around. I guess he did that.. he started sketching this (in) about 1955 and finished around ’57, though the painting isn’t yet complete.
(Do you ever get any second combination of (the) people or the circumstance?) – Well, yeah, because, while I’m explaining (where) this picture is, right now, Robert LaVigne is here, and so is Neal (Cassady) sitting over there, Peter and I are here, (Michael) McClure is.. well, we had a party here in LaVigne’s studio, just the other day with Bob Dylan, after his first concert. I think everybody alive from this picture was here.. as well as Dylan, as well as the Hells Angels, as well as members of the Vietnam Day Committee who had been fighting with the Hells Angels. So we had an even larger combination here the other night, or even more historic, combination, actually – (Nobody got busted) – Nobody got busted, everybody had a good time. Everybody was, naturally, smoking pot – (No commercial) – No commercial – oh, commercial, yes, this picture is as yet unsold, nobody’s ever bought it, some big museum for historic purposes ought to get it and give Lavigne a lot of money.
Just as a historic document it’s worth something, but as a painting it’s, like, a very beautiful panorama, I think. It’s too bad you haven’t got color in that camera so you can see it. It’s, like, all green and orange, violet.. beautiful little..beautiful little green thigh.. what did you say?
(Were you still working as a market researcher?) – No actually when I arrived here I had a beard but then I shaved it off because I had to get a job down in Montgomery Street. So.. And I had another beard again about a half year after this painting, I shipped out to… and went to the.. North Pole , to the Arctic, on a USNS ship going to the DEW line , (I) went up the Bering Straits and into the Arctic Circle. and I grew a beard there (Were you there in the army?) – No, no. At this time Peter had been in the army but just got out of the army on a psycho discharge. He had gone to his Captain and said that the Army, any army, is an enemy of love. So they sent him to a psychiatrist who..who agreed, but said, well you don’t fit in here so obviously you’re a misfit and by army standards you’re insane, so they sent him to the hospital for a few weeks and discharged him. So those were in quieter times
[Allen continues observing LaVigne’s painting] In this painting he has violet eyes, he has shorter hair too, he was drinking, what, iced tea? I was drinking coffee. Shelia (sic) married.. later married the jazz pianist, Joe Albany..
Footage concludes as it had begun with Allen sitting chanting mantra, Peter, behind him, on guitar