The Distant Drummer: A Movable Scene
About The Distant Drummer: A Movable Scene
Robert Mitchum narrates the first of four short documentaries warning against drugs in the counterculture. The film follows marijuana and hallucinogens through a large outdoor concert and through smaller gatherings in San Francisco, New Orleans, New York, London, Europe, the Middle East, and the High Himalayas. Mitchum opens on what he calls the "straightened society" of work and discipline, then on the city culture that rejects it.
Cast & crew
More about The Distant Drummer: A Movable Scene
William Templeton directed. Don Peterson wrote it. The credits list cooperation from the American Academy of General Practice, the District of Columbia Medical Society, and the National Institute of Mental Health. National Archives dates the production to 1969. It runs 22 minutes and was released in 1970. It is not the 1972 short Flowers of Darkness, which Paul Newman narrated.
Themes
Background
The short was made as an official-sounding warning about marijuana and the late-1960s counterculture, with a Hollywood narrator.
Making
Airlie Foundation and the medical-affairs department at George Washington University produced the series with the National Institute of Mental Health.
Music
Robert Mitchum narrates.
Preservation
The National Archives holds A Movable Scene in Record Group 511, the records of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration. The catalog copy is not online.
Notes
- It is the first of four Distant Drummer shorts. The second, A Movable Feast, also uses Mitchum.
- Mitchum was arrested for marijuana possession in September 1948, served 43 days at a California prison farm, and had the conviction overturned in January 1951.
- In 1970 he was also top-billed in Ryan's Daughter.
- A National Archives description places scenes at a Haight-Ashbury street corner and at a 1968 love-in.
Scenes
- Mitchum's opening contrast between the orderly establishment and the other culture in each city.
Quotes
This is the straightened society. The orderly, well-managed, well-disciplined world of the establishment.