Wild in the Streets
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"I did have a good time at Wild in the Streets, which is more than I can say for Petulia or 2001 or a lot of other highly praised pictures. Wild in the Streets is not a work of art, but then I don’t think Petulia or 2001 is either, though Petulia has that kaleidoscopic hip look and 2001 that new-techniques look which combined with “swinging” or “serious” ideas often pass for modern picture art."--"Trash, Art, and the Movies" (1969) by Pauline Kael |
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Wild in the Streets is a 1968 film featuring Christopher Jones, Hal Holbrook, and Shelley Winters. It was produced by American International Pictures and based on a short story by writer Robert Thom. The movie, described as both "ludicrous" and "cautionary," was nominated for an Academy Award (for best film editing) and became a cult classic of the counterculture era.
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Background
Wild in the Streets was first released to theaters in 1968. Its storyline was a reductio ad absurdum projection of contemporary issues of the time, taken to extremes, and played poignantly during 1968 — an election year with many controversies (the Vietnam War, the draft, civil rights, the population explosion, rioting and assassinations, and the baby boomer generation coming of age). The original magazine short story, titled "The Day it All Happened, Baby!" was expanded by its author to book length, and was published as a paperback novel by Pyramid Books.
The movie features cameos from several media personalities, including Melvin Belli, Dick Clark, Pamela Mason, Army Archerd, and Walter Winchell. Millie Perkins and Ed Begley have supporting roles, and Bobby Sherman interviews Max as president. In a pre-Brady Bunch role, Barry Williams plays the teenaged Max Frost at the beginning of the movie.
A soundtrack album was also successful, and the song "Shape of Things to Come" (written by songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) and performed by the (fictional) band Max Frost and the Troopers, featured in the movie, became a No.22 hit on the US Billboard charts.
Wild in the Streets was released on VHS home video in the late 1980s, and in 2005 appeared on DVD, on a twofer disc with another AIP movie, 1971's Gas-s-s-s.
According to filmmaker Kenneth Bowser, the part eventually played by Christopher Jones was first offered to folk singer Phil Ochs. After reading the screenplay, Ochs rejected the offer, claiming the story distorted the actual nature of the youth counterculture of the period.
Plot summary
Christopher Jones stars as rock singer and aspiring revolutionary Max Frost (born Max Jacob Flatow Jr.; his first public act of violence was blowing up his family's new car). Frost's band, The Troopers, live together with him, their women, and others in a sprawling Los Angeles mansion. The band includes his 15-year-old genius attorney Billy Cage (Kevin Coughlin) on lead guitar, ex-child actor and girlfriend Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi) on keyboards, hook-handed Abraham Salteen (Larry Bishop) on bass guitar and trumpet, and anthropologist Stanley X (Richard Pryor) on drums.
When Max is asked to sing at a televised political rally by Kennedyesque Senate candidate Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook), who is running on a platform to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 (a genuine issue, not passed until 1971), he and The Troopers appear — but Max stuns everyone by calling instead for the voting age to become 14, then finishes the show with an improvised song, "Fourteen Or Fight!", and a call for a demonstration.
Max's fans (and other young people, by the thousands) stir to action, and within 24 hours protests have begun in cities around the United States. Fergus' advisors want him to denounce Max, but instead he agrees to support the demonstrations, and change his campaign — if Max and his group will compromise, accept a voting age of 15 instead, abide by the law, and appeal to the demonstrators to go home peaceably. Max agrees, and the two appear together on television, and in person the next day using the less offensive mantra "fifteen and ready".
Most states agree to lower the voting age within days, in the wake of the demonstrations, and Max Frost and The Troopers campaign for Johnny Fergus until the election, which he wins by a landslide. Taking his place in the Senate, Fergus wishes Frost and his people would now just go away, but instead they get involved with Washington politics. When a congressman from Sally LeRoy's home district dies suddenly, the band enters her in the special election that follows, and Sally (the eldest of the group, and the only one of majority age to run for office) is voted into Congress by the new teen bloc.
The first bill Sally introduces is a constitutional amendment to lower the age requirements for national political office — to 14, and "Fourteen Or Fight!" enters a new phase. A joint session of Congress is called, and The Troopers (by now joined by Fergus' son Jimmy, played by Michael Margotta) swing the vote their way by spiking the Washington water supply with LSD, and providing all the Senators and representatives with teenaged guides.
As teens either take over or threaten the reins of government, the "Old Guard" (those over 40) turn to Max to run for president, and assert his (their) control over the changing tide. Max again agrees, running as a Republican to his chagrin, but once in office, he turns the tide on his older supporters. Thirty becomes a mandatory retirement age, while those over 35 are rounded up, sent to "re-education camps", and permanently dosed on LSD. Fergus unsuccessfully attempts to dissuade Max by contacting his estranged parents (Bert Freed and Shelley Winters), then tries to assassinate him. Failing at this, he flees Washington with his remaining family, but they are soon rounded up.
With youth now in control of the United States, politically as well as economically, and similar revolutions breaking out in all the world's major countries, Max withdraws the military from around the world (turning them instead into de facto age police), puts computers and prodigies in charge of the gross national product, ships surplus grain for free to third world nations, disbands the FBI and Secret Service, and becomes the leader of "the most truly hedonistic society the world has ever known". The final moments of the film indicate, however, that Max and his cohorts may face future intergenerational warfare from an unexpected source - children ten years of age and younger.
Production
The film was shot in 15 days.
Other
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century Page 43. Panels 1-2. “I mean that the current president of the United States is Max Foster. Max Foster the pop singer. He’s setting up camps for anyone he thinks is too straight. It’s hippy fascism.” It’s a reference to the film Wild in the Streets (1968), in which singer Max Frost becomes president and has everyone over 35 sent to “re-education camps.” Max Foster analogues with the real life American president Richard Nixon, becoming president 1969.
See also
