EZTHEWASHINGTONPOST.
FRIDAY,NOVEMBER27, 2020Movies
and seemingly kept tripping
throughout sojourns in Switzer-
land, Beirut, Kabul and, eventual-
ly, California.
The fact that Harcourt-Smith
was under the influence through-
out the first few months of her
romance with Leary made her cu-
rious, in retrospect, about wheth-
er she was manipulated as an un-
witting source for federal agentsinvestigating the controversial
Pied Piper. When she saw Errol
Morris’s engrossing documentary
series “Wormwood,” about the
CIA’s covert LSD program, she
reached out to the filmmaker to
tell him her story and, maybe, get
to the bottom of it. Leary eventual-
ly turned into a government in-
formant, an event likened to “hip-
pie Watergate,” for which many ofLeary’s misogynistic friends
blamed Harcourt-Smith. (Allen
Ginsberg’s accusations were par-
ticularly repugnant.) As “My Psy-
chedelic Love Story” opens, it’s
clear that she’s still uncertain her-
self how it all went down.
Morris’s strength has always
been to allow his subjects simply
to speak (his editorializing can be
less effective, as the recent filmMy Psychedelic Love Story
A trip down memory lane with Timothy Leary’s companion
BY ANN HORNADAYIf Joanna Harcourt-Smith
hadn’t existed, a screenwriter
might have had to invent her.
Harcourt-Smith, who died re-
cently at the age of 74, was a
jet-setting denizen of the ’60s and
’70s at their most hedonistic: The
daughter of a prosperous family,
she effortlessly joined various fab-
ulous entourages in such places as
Marbella and Gstaad. At one point
in the documentary “My Psyche-
delic Love Story,” she recounts
fetching up in Manhattan in 1972
and crashing with Diane von
Furstenberg because, why not?
“Those are just the people I grew
up with,” she says with French-ac-
cented nonchalance.
In other words, Joanna Har-
court-Smith is a marvelous crea-
ture, and she provides delightful
ballast to “My Psychedelic Love
Story,” which centers on her rela-
tionship with Harvard psycholo-
gist Timothy Leary. By the time
she met him, Leary’s outspoken
advocacy of LSD had landed him
in prison, from which he had es-
caped to go on the lam. The two
met through a mutual friend (who
was an international arms dealer,
natch), and felt an instant connec-
tion they attributed to destiny.
They immediately dropped acid
“American Dharma” demonstrat-
ed). Here, he trains his camera on
the still-beautiful Harcourt-Smith
in her attractive wood-paneled
home in Santa Fe and allows her to
emerge as an exceptionally
charming, self-aware and astute
narrator — if not always an entire-
ly reliable one.
“My Psychedelic Love Story” is
essentially an illustrated mono-
logue, with Morris editing togeth-
er quick montages of period pho-
tographs, tarot cards, op-art titles
and neon-colored graphics to pro-
vide visual interest, often with
LSD blotters used as witty back-
drops and recurring motifs. The
result is an absorbing yarn and yet
another lens on that era’s social
history that baby boomers are
now excavating with frantic en-
thusiasm before their sources
transition to another astral plane.
Luckily, Morris caught up with
Harcourt-Smith before she left for
the next stop: She’s the best thing
about “My Psychedelic Love Sto-
ry,” and a far more sympathetic
and compelling character than the
man she almost risked her life for.
[email protected]JOANNA HARCOURT-SMITH/SHOWTIME
The documentary “My Psychedelic Love Story” focuses on Timothy Leary, the Harvard pschologist who
was an advocate of LSD, and his partner, Joanna Harcourt-Smith.TV-14. Available Sunday on
Showtime. Contains mature
thematic material and brief nudity.
101 minutes.which he attributed various ail-
ments to the years spent near
hazardous material. When the
family moved to California, Zap-
pa broke out of his stultifying —
and racist — environs by playing
music with Black bandmates at
the same time that he cultivated a
lifelong appreciation for theavant-garde composer Edgard
Varese.
As a chronology, “Zappa” is
pretty straightforward: Winter
has a wealth of visual material to
work with, and he luckily com-
pleted interviews with Zappa’s
wife, Gail, before her death in- Although Winter touches
Zappa
A≠ectionate documentary makes case for musician’s brilliance
BY ANN HORNADAYIn “Zappa,” actor and filmmak-
er Alex Winter provides an eco-
nomical, uncritical documentary
about the eponymous musician,
who died at 52 in 1993. Frank
Zappa became famous as an icon-
oclast, his note-heavy, hyper-or-
chestrated instrumental riffs
meshing with satirically pointed
lyrics to create a cerebral, funny,
musically mind-blowing genre all
his own.
Here, Winter is given the keys
to Zappa’s vast and varied per-
sonal archive to deliver an enco-
mium to an artist who would
have been enormously influential
had anyone been able to keep up
with him. Failing that, he’ll sim-
ply go down in history as sui
generis. Tracing Zappa’s child-
hood in Edgewood, Md., where
his father worked at the Ab-
erdeen Proving Ground during
the development of mustard gas
and other chemical compounds,
“Zappa” finds a motif that would
recur throughout his life, during
on Zappa’s private life — includ-
ing his unapologetic infidelities
— he's far more interested in a
creative trajectory that never
went entirely mainstream, but
proved to be surprisingly endur-
ing nonetheless.
In part, that was because of
Zappa’s own notoriously prickly
nature and stubborn self-belief:
Interviewing former members of
his band, the Mothers of Inven-
tion, Winter conveys a vivid por-
trait of the artist as a remote,
demanding and uncompromis-
ing leader. “Zappa” covers the
attack from a fan at a 1971 concert
in London that resulted in life-
threatening injuries; Zappa’s
feuds with record labels and rock-
lyric alarmists like Tipper Gore
and Susan Baker; and his emer-
gence as an unlikely internation-
al statesman in post-Soviet
Czechoslovakia. It’s a whirlwind
yet comprehensive journey
through pop culture and politics,
during which Zappa remains a
steadfastly principled but essen-
tially unknowable presence(none of his children are inter-
viewed in the film). This isn’t a
revealing documentary as much
as a judiciously admiring one.
“Zappa” gives its subject his
well-earned due within the rock
firmament. But even more valu-
able, Winter gives Zappa pride of
place among the most important
composers of the 20th century,
sharing some extraordinary per-
formances of his little-known
classical work. The most moving
sequence of the film might be
former Mothers percussionist
Ruth Underwood performing one
of Zappa’s most exquisite and
difficult compositions, “The
Black Page.” In that moment, it
becomes clear that for all of
Zappa’s earthbound appetites
and flaws, he was blessed with the
ability to tap into something cos-
mic, lasting and true.
[email protected]ROELOF KIERS/MAGNOLIA PICTURES
Rock icon Frank Zappa is depicted as a remote, demanding and
uncompromising leader by his former band mates.Unrated. Available at
afisilver.afi.com. Contains profanity,
smoking, partial nudity and
suggestive material. 129 minutes.