Yippie mashup movie: Krassner, Hoffman et al versus Chicago 1968

Roy Trumbull has recovered some rare Yippee! movement footage: "In the wake of the demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the city produced a white wash entitled 'What Trees Did They Plant?' TV Stations that broadcast the film had to offer equal time to those speaking in opposition. One group was the Youth International Party or Yippies who produced this film. Paul Krassner wrote the script. Some classic film footage was re-mixed with footage shot during the demonstrations. Paul Krassner wrote the script but otherwise there's no traditional credit list. It's hoped the original film still exists and that a better copy can be posted. At the end of the film there is a credit for additional footage to Killian Shows, Inc and a production credit to Documentary Interlock, Inc. However a search doesn't turn up a connection with current companies using similar names. The pitchman for the Yippie helmet was Marshall Efron. The Yippie head was that of Bob Fass. Keith Lampe was the narrator."

Update: Roy adds, "I heard from someone who knew where a totally pristine copy was posted. From the looks of it the copy on this site was made from the film as originally edited. The version I have was as broadcast by Metromedia TV stations. The most obvious difference is in the last scene with the pig where Mayor Daley's face is intercut with the goings on. That is followed by a promo for the inauguration of the pig the following year. On my copy Daley's face isn't there and the promo is missing. Those were probably some concessions made at the last minute."

The Yippie Response to Mayor Daley 1968 (Thanks, Roy!)

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pauldavis

so today i’m feeling particular negative about this pranksterish approach to social change. its all very easy to make fun of stupid authoritarian figures. maybe there’s a bit of value in it if you succeed in creating new questions in the minds of those who didn’t bother to ask them before. but when i look back on the yippies (and the merry pranksters and all the rest), all i can really see is a bunch of self-indulgent game playing that avoided tackling the hard questions: how do you build a better society, how do you manage the corrupting effect of power, how do you balance the interests and needs of entirely different parts of a diverse society, and so forth. the only answers that the yippies seemed able to come up with started with “well, you begin by making fun of it, thus challenging everyone’s preconceived notions and then …”. They never finished the sentence. I don’t think even realized there needed to be another clause. the yippies made great clowns to contrast with the authoritarian culture, but i would have liked more than clowns, and they had nothing else. sad, really.
- Teller
  
  Well, Tom Hayden didn’t build a better society, but he walked away with one of the best-built home lifes on the planet.
- Kieran O’Neill
  
  I think you can clearly detect two goals for policy change in that film alone:
  
  1. Accountability and restraint in policing protests / large gatherings
  
  2. Not sending soldiers to fight someone else’s civil war (thereby dragging it out and causing enormous/unnecessary civilian casualties).
  
  Those are pretty concrete, and to some extent were both achieved.
- Muser
  
  I understand what you are saying, but there is a time and a place for many different kinds of tactics. Humor/satire/silliness is not only about pointing out flaws in the power establishment; they are also very human ways of reaching out to people, and inviting others to join your cause. It asks people to think “Hey, those are fun, insightful, creative, smart people; so maybe I want to hook up with them and find out what they’re up to. Maybe I’ll find it fun, and maybe we can actually accomplish something.”
  
  The motivation, the intention, the bonding, have to come first before the serious thought about tackling hard problems. It is also one of the few tools that a young, powerless class has to gain followers. This is one way movements start. There are other ways movements start, too, such as bonding over common hate. But I prefer the Yippies’ method.
- GlenBlank
  
  Building a better society is a participatory process. Charismatic leaders can ask the questions, but the answers have to come from the people – else you end up with just another cult of personality.
  
  It’s not like the Yippies were the only people trying to change things. Other groups were far more serious, far less ‘pranksterish.’ There were plenty of manifestos, position papers, statements of principle, action plans, and so forth.
  
  Yes, the Yippies were the cheerleaders, the clowns, the attention-getters waving their arms to attract the TV cameras – but they wren’t the entirety of the movement.
  
  Once your attention is attracted, you have to delve deeper than the TV news, which will never give you more than the superficial, the surface gloss, the shiny, the sparkly, the attention-grabbing arm-waving.
  
  I’m sorry to hear that you’re disappointed at not being handed the answers from on high, but, really – providing the answers was your job, not Abbie Hoffman’s.
pjcamp

Goddamn! That’s boring.
the all seeing eye

This untitled film is called Yippie (1968) at the Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189224/

An original print was offered on Ebay. The seller credits it to Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Jerry Rubin, Ed Sanders and Howard Alk.
http://cgi.ebay.it/YIPPIE-1968-CHICAGO-DEMOCRATIC-CONVENTION-16-mm-FILM-/220746776505

Phil Ochs credits himself, Abbie Hoffman, Ed Sanders, and D.W. Griffith. http://phil-ochs.blogspot.com/2009/02/phil-ochs-video-vault-yippie-1968.html

Killian is a misspelling of the source of the silent movie clips, the now somewhat fragmented Paul Killiam Collection, which doesn’t seem to have a definitive website.

The Chicago protest footage is from the film The Season Changes (1968) by Documentary Interlock, a very loose group of cinematographers who filmed the event. It was directed by Bill Jersey http://www.questprod.com/html/bjbio.htm and edited by Howard Alk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Alk

This film has been available at the Berkeley Digital Library website for several years. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/videodir/pacificaviet/yippie.ram.

It’s part of the GMP collection and copies may be purchased at http://www.footagefarm.com
fyreflye

@pauldavis

The statement of proposals for a new society can be found in SDS’s Port Huron Statement, issued well before the 1968 Democratic convention and still available online at http://www.hnet.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html The Yippies were just the Tea Partyers of their day, only lots more fun.
- coaxial
  
  That’s just watered down dreck. No wonder The Dude left.
  - fyreflye
    
    Well, as The Dude says, we all have our opinions.
buddy66

There was a big debate among left activists on whether or not to go to Chicago. My military veterans group split. Many of us felt it would end badly in the streets and aid Nixon’s candidacy. Remember, it was only a few weeks after front-runner Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. The Democratic Party delegates were preparing to nominate the hack Hubert Humphry, despite his not winning a single primary. We felt there was too much anger and grief for it to go well.

Besides, some of us knew Chicago and that prick mayor and his police thugs. I don’t think we were wrong to stay away.
Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-US91WU8zA
Kieran O’Neill

And here I was thinking of the more modern definition of “yippie” (hybrid yuppie/hippie). There seem to be a lot of those in Vancouver.
strangefriend

This film is an argument for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. Of course, Hoffman & Krassner were/are firm believers in the value of satire. After seeing this, I have to agree. Now, if the Tea-baggers can produce something like this, my respect for them would go from zilch to grudging.
mindfu

Oh man. The great Harlan Ellison went OFF on this broadcast by the yippies. At the time he was a TV critic; his columns from that period were gathered together in a two-volume set, “the Glass Teat” and “The Other Glass Teat”. Awesome stuff, recommended.

Anyway, Ellison’s blast can basically be summed up as: “You guys had a full hour of network prime time to explain what’s really going on to the masses, and why the revolution is needed, and YOU BLEW IT!”
Anonymous

I’ve had this movie posted on my website http://www.yippiegirl.com for some time. I am an original Yippie. What people tend to forget is that Abbie, Anita, Jerry, my late husband Stew Albert & Paul used media, satire & theatrics to promote a larger cause: ending the Vietnam war (levitating the Pentagon, Chicago 68) and deriding capitalism (bringinig the stock exchange to a halt by throwing $ from the balcony.) Isn’t it interesting tho, of the groups from that era whose names are remembered today, the Yippies are at or close to the top?
GlenBlank

By the way, here’s a link to the original draft of the Port Huron Statement, and here’s another link to the published version.
Anonymous

i guess my love for that phil ochs song will never wear off.

.~.
buddy66

This could be a training tape for what is yet to come.

Marshal Efron, The Man of A Thousand Identical Voices, was Club 86′s “permanent guest” on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK in the mid-60s. Later, his “Painless Sunday School” segments for PBS’s Great American Dream Machine were classic.

Thanks for the time travel.
treyka

Hey, nice post, Cory! That went down well with my cornflakes.
Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my5JIOLkQzk
burritoflats

Although there’s not much actual Lincoln Park ’68 footage in it, the new PHIL OCHS (heard in this film) bio-film “There But For Fortune” captures some of the events before and after the Democratic Convention in vivid fashion.

ALSO, there’s another new-ish bio-film of WAVY GRAVY (AKA Hugh Romney) out called “Saint Misbehavin” which thankfully captures more of the Yippie actions at Lincoln Park. A few of us got to meet and hang out with Gravy in Santa Monica a few weeks ago during the showing of his film. He is not only a card-carrying Merry Prankster, but a Yippie and was the one who brought “Pigasus” into Chicago to be the first pig to run for President. And he’s still knee-deep in the movement.

I’m not sure what to make of this particular “mash-up” (God, I hate that word) – the Yippies prepared much media material for the fairs and protests that took place in downtown Chicago parks. Abbie Hoffman was more or less the “minister of propaganda” although many others including Krassner, Jerry Rubin (to a lesser extent) took part and played various roles in spreading the word about the fun and protests.

HASKELL WEXLER made a brilliant movie called “MEDIUM COOL” that was set and filmed right in the middle of the ’68 Chicago police riots – it’s more than free-form, but fascinating to watch. Don’t think it has anything to do with this particular film post.
- chgoliz
  
  I think you meant to say Grant Park. Lincoln Park is further north.
  - Judy Gumbo Albert
    
    Actually there were two Pigasusses (Pigasi?) Jerry & Abbie had a big fight about the size of the presidential candidate & didn’t speak to each other for the rest of our time in Chicago. Abbie’s pig was small & cute & Jerry’s was big, fat & ugly. Wavy and Keith Lampe brought Abbie’s Pigasus into Grant Park but only after Jerry and my late husband Stew Albert were arrested with big Pigasus. At which point a burly Chicago cop came up to them and said ” I hate to tell you boys, but the pig squealed.” Rumor had it she was sacrificed & eaten at a Chicago cop’s barbeque. Check out my website http://www.yippiegirl.com.
    - chgoliz
      
      Funny! And interesting. I was near the Grant Park conflagration at the time, due to being a conventional political volunteer, though, not a yippee.
    - burritoflats
      
      In the new WAVY GRAVY movie it’s said that Wavy brought Pigasus from the hog farm.
      The pig was a perfect symbol and seemed to have supplied the Yippies with
      an infinite number of jokes, metaphors and other assorted wordplay.
      The single greatest thing (to me) about the Yippies was the resounding sense of humor
      and irony that infiltrated their work
  - burritoflats
    
    “I think you meant to say Grant Park. Lincoln Park is further north.”
    
    No, I meant Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park is where
    the big, ugly (and bloody) confrontations between protestors and
    cops took place. There were things happening in Grant Park also,
    most specifically in front of the famous bandshell where some
    speeches were made. In general, the whole of Chicago
    was a mini-war zone that week. The Yippies did their
    best to throw wrenches into the works. To this day
    there are no EXACT accounts of what really happened leading
    up to the riots. Abbie Hoffman supplies some details
    in 2 or 3 of his books. “Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture”
    is his most clear-headed account. Yippie politics
    were/are the politics of the prank and pranking,
    “putting people on” in order to illicit change.
- joncro
  
  We made a ‘making of’ about Medium Cool:
  
  http://vimeo.com/17233318
  
  use the code – Wexler
  - burritoflats
    
    We made a ‘making of’ about Medium Cool:
    
    http://vimeo.com/17233318
    
    use the code – Wexler
    
    Great! It looks very good. I’m a sucker
    for first-person interviews. The movie itself
    is like a slow river that develops speed gradually
    and splits off into various outlets
jonr

Folks really should read “Steal this Book” before criticizing Hoffman. Then criticize away.

If you were an employer and wanted to make an A-list of job applicants and interviewed Hoffman, no matter what the job, he would NOT be on the list.

Is that something to be proud of? As is the case with many YIPpies, Abbie Hoffman was a legend in his own mind.