ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.

“Pleasure, the inevitable byproduct of our civilization. A new world where our only preoccupation will be…how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you might get exactly what you want.”–some random guy leading The Monkees through some sort of factory. Was this the factory where The Monkees were initially manufactured?

I was a huge fan of The Monkees during their, thanks to MTV rerunning their television show, resurgence in the mid 1980s. I quickly scooped up any cassette tape I could find. On a road trip back to Louisiana from Ohio, I subjected my poor aunt to their debut record on a loop. Looking back, I’m surprised that she didn’t intentionally drive off into a ditch after the seventh time hearing Davy Jones warble I Wanna Be Free.

I did not have any idea that The Monkees were considered a prefabricated cash in on Beatlemania. Even after purchasing a replica magazine originally published in the 1960s, where the group was dubbed The Pre-Fab Four, it never occurred to me that The Monkees could possibly be seen as subpar artists.

My love for The Monkees did not die out when their second wave of fame ended perhaps prematurely after more intra-band disputes (turns out the relationships among the members were often volatile). As a teenager, I was an avid VHS collector. I loved receiving those catalogs in the mail from Movies Unlimited. And it was through one of those catalogs that I discovered The Monkees starred in a major motion picture (co-written by Jack Nicholson no less) entitled Head. The VHS was a striking yellow. The members of The Monkees seemingly suspended in mid-air, with some sort of spiral in the background. I immediately mailed in my order form, anxiously awaiting this tape to be sent to me.

After watching Head, I instantly began gaslighting myself into thinking that the film was good. Great even. Sure, it was different from any other film I had seen up to that point. There was no plot. The songs were not as poppy as I was accustomed to. But this film had to be great, right? I tried to get my friends to watch it and like it. They were less than interested, not making it more than 10 minutes before insisting that I turn it off. Eventually, I began to come to the realization that I was simply fooling myself–Head was a flop.

Fast forward many years. Once I had kids of my own, I did what any good parent does–indoctinate them. Force them to like the things I liked when I was their age (not just The Monkees, but also Family Ties, Masters of the Universe and Jem and the Holograms). It worked! My daughter loved The Monkees as much as I did, only with a major crush on Davy Jones that I never had (I was more of a Peter Tork kind of guy).

And then, the unthinkable happened. Criterion released Head as part of their BBS: America Lost and Found boxset. And if it was worthy of inclusion in The Criterion Collection, surely that meant that the film was indeed the cinematic masterpiece I always deep down inside knew that it was.

After we watched all of the episodes of The Monkees, my daughter and I watched Head. I warned her that it was a bit surreal and did not have much of a plot. She said she enjoyed parts of it, particularly the scene between Davy Jones and Toni Basil, set to Daddy’s Song, an upbeat tune about a deadbeat father. That scene was always a favorite of mine too when I was younger.

But as I watched the film, I was awestruck. Everything was right there in front of me the whole time. Head was The Monkees suicide attempt. A chance to unshackle themselves from their teenage girl fanbase and embrace the counterculture. To be seen as more than four guys brought together by a television producer. They were true artists and musicians. The songs were perhaps the best songs in their entire catalog. But what should have been their opportunity to burst out of the literal and figurative box turned out to be a financial failure. The Beatles could go to India and return changed people, but The Monkees would forever be a band who did not play their own instruments on their records (even though they later did. And nobody seems to care that The Beach Boys (minus Brian Wilson) hardly played instruments on Pet Sounds).

Watching Head today, I realized how much of the film entered my daily vernacular. There are so many lines from the film I say quite often: “That song is pretty white” (Frank Zappa’s retort to Davy Jones after Daddy’s Song), “And the same thing goes for Christmas” (Michael Nesmith’s response after berating surprise birthday parties), “Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor” (Peter’s advice to Davy in the bathroom where Davy is experiencing issues with a psychedelic mirror). 

Am I probably still overrating Head all these years later? Maybe. Am I crazy for preferring this soundtrack album over anything The Beatles produced? Definitely. At any rate, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will remain a joke until The Monkees are inducted. My playlist will remain jam packed with plenty of tunes from The Monkees. And if I ever need to reach for a comfort movie that features the assassination of a Viet Cong officer, I need to long no further.