The Summer of Love is officially threatening to take over the cinema. Across the Universe is set for fall release, Gus Van Sant’s take on Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is in the works and now moviegoers can start preparing for the most acid-soaked tale of them all: Home Before Daylight, a film based on the formative years of The Grateful Dead. The movie will be adapted from a book by Steve Parish, who has some real credentials: He was a Dead roadie for 35 years.
The story, which has already been endorsed by Dead guitarist Bob Weir, will chart the history of the band, focusing on those times they chilled with Ken Kesey and Jefferson Airplane in the Haight-Ashbury days. We’re totally stoked for this film, if just to see who gets cast as Grace Slick (please not Lindsay Lohan).
While no release date is set for the film, we anticipate something in the 2009 ballpark, as the script will undoubtedly be a fact-checker’s nightmare (how would you verify whether or not Weir actually saw an eight-headed dragon that breathed purple flames while he was tripping acid during the twenty-third minute of a “Dark Star” jam?). Plus, the CG effects will likely cost in the millions to make sure those hallucinations look realistic.
So, who would you like to see cast in this film? Paul Giamatti as Pigpen, anyone?