oll stage & screen 8 | rollmagazine.com by Jay Blotcher
he guitar face of folk singer-activist Woody Guthrie bore a scribbled message: This machine kills fascists. The same slogan could be applied to <strong>the</strong> extensive arsenal belonging to Wavy Gravy, which includes a number of huge red noses, bowler hats, rainbow suspenders and a floating goldfish on <strong>the</strong> end of a leash. For more than a half-century, Wavy Gravy has played <strong>the</strong> bumbling but knowing fool, at <strong>the</strong> 1969 Woodstock Music Festival concert, at anti-war protests, in humanitarian missions to Nepal and Bangladesh. This sly diversion has allowed him to win he<strong>art</strong>s and minds while stealthily spreading potent messages about peace, love and understanding. For <strong>the</strong> better p<strong>art</strong> of a decade, Michelle Esrick has followed this psychedelic Pied Piper with a camera. The result is <strong>the</strong> documentary Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie, not only a celebration of this sacred clown and his good works, but also a mind-blowing civics lesson on <strong>the</strong> American counterculture. Dizzying in its scope and joyous in its execution, Saint offers a contact high <strong>for</strong> <strong>the</strong> uninitiated. Like <strong>the</strong> man himself, <strong>the</strong> film provides a message of selfempowerment that you’ll eventually discover tucked in between <strong>the</strong> unbridled insanity. As Wavy says in one of <strong>the</strong> countless aphorisms that tumble from his lips during <strong>the</strong> film: “Laughter is <strong>the</strong> safety valve on <strong>the</strong> pressure cooker. If you don’t laugh, you’re gonna have beans on <strong>the</strong> ceiling.” “Wavy is <strong>the</strong> fool of our time, he’s <strong>the</strong> great court jester of modern-day,” said director Esrick. “He’s just so brilliant. And a lot of people see him walking a fish walking by, or whatever outfit he’s in, and say, who’s that crazy guy? Or, who’s that fool? They don’t realize he’s a sacred fool. He uses it to draw people in, and if you wait a minute, you do get drawn in and he does transmit <strong>the</strong> most simple, beautiful messages of basic human needs.” On Saturday, December 11, Woodstock Film Festival presents <strong>the</strong> Hudson Valley premiere of <strong>the</strong> documentary Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie at Upstate Films on Tinker Street in Woodstock. The wise fool himself will be in attendance with director Michelle Esrick. Seltzer bottles and fright wigs are not mandatory but strongly suggested. DDDDDDDDDDDDD ubu Esrick was a New York actress and a leftie activist when she first met Wavy in 1992; four years later, she launched an unlikely line of Grateful Dead neckties. The band members, still in shock over Jerry Garcia’s demise <strong>the</strong> year be<strong>for</strong>e, had no interest in promoting <strong>the</strong> merchandise. So Esrick and her business p<strong>art</strong>ner tapped Wavy <strong>for</strong> <strong>the</strong> job, since he had a long association with <strong>the</strong> band. “They love Wavy and he’s like Santa Claus to <strong>the</strong> Deadheads.” The newly recruited spokesperson was also motivated by <strong>the</strong> two percent of sales profits that would go to allowing 9 | rollmagazine.com lower-income children to attend Camp Winnarainbow, Wavy’s finishing school <strong>for</strong> clowns and free spirits in Nor<strong>the</strong>rn Cali<strong>for</strong>nia. In a tour that hit New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Wavy was in his element; knocking off 101 press interviews in 25 days with <strong>the</strong> same combination of loopy logic and Dadaist philosophy that had made him a fixture in <strong>the</strong> counterculture movement in <strong>the</strong> 1960s. “My mind was being blown every day,” Esrick said. “Like, I couldn’t believe that he was here, he was <strong>the</strong>re, he was everywhere,” she said, referring to <strong>the</strong> many lives Wavy had led, appearing Zelig-like at cultural milestones throughout <strong>the</strong> last generation. He began as a Greenwich Village stand-up comedian and beatnik named Hugh Romney in <strong>the</strong> late 1950s, was <strong>the</strong> leader of a commune called The Hog Farm, became an icon <strong>for</strong> <strong>the</strong> ages as head of security and food commissaries at Woodstock 1969—famously announcing <strong>the</strong> plan to serve breakfast in bed <strong>for</strong> 400,000. (The origin of his career moniker, revealed in <strong>the</strong> film, involves a man with a guitar named Lucille.) Along <strong>the</strong> way, he crossed paths and mingled creative visions with <strong>the</strong> Beat poets, Tiny Tim, <strong>the</strong> Yippies and Bob Dylan, sharing a mixture of Eastern religion, bohemian freethinking and anarchic commedia dell’<strong>art</strong>e that Wavy calls “intense elevated shenanigans.” (The meaningful madness has not always been fun; Wavy was often tear-gassed and beaten at protests by cops, resulting in serious spinal injuries that still plague him.) Wavy, Esrick soon realized, was not some quaint tie-dyed caricature, still living on <strong>the</strong> fumes from his role in three days of peace, love and <strong>music</strong>. Building shrewdly on that watershed moment, he had commandeered Merry Prankster-like bus trips across Europe and Asia to help people in impoverished areas in <strong>the</strong> 70s and 80s. Esrick was fascinated by <strong>the</strong> mystical way <strong>the</strong> clown with calculated mania ef<strong>for</strong>tlessly buoyed people around him. “I just saw that everybody that got to hang out with him wanted to go hug somebody when <strong>the</strong>y were done being with him.” “It sounds so silly, but I was completely transported,” she said. “And I said, I’ve got to make a movie about this guy. And it was more like, I have to share him.” Esrick began plans to do <strong>the</strong> film with her necktie business p<strong>art</strong>ner, who had already won an Emmy <strong>for</strong> his John Cougar Mellencamp documentary. But he had to fulfill a book contract and begged off, leaving novice Esrick to approach Wavy with her <strong>cinema</strong>tic proposal. She had little previous experience, save <strong>for</strong> assisting Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple on <strong>the</strong> 1994 film My Generation, about <strong>the</strong> 25th anniversary Woodstock festival. While happy to play <strong>the</strong> fool, Wavy is far from gullible and considered <strong>the</strong> offer sceptically. “And I thought, Well, I’ll just see what happens,” Wavy said. “I often have people say that <strong>the</strong>y’re going to do things <strong>for</strong> me and <strong>the</strong>y’re promising me millions of dollars, and <strong>the</strong> next day I see <strong>the</strong>m with <strong>the</strong>ir face painted blue and a balloon tied to <strong>the</strong>ir ear.” Esrick accepted Wavy’s wait-and-see stance and began lining up investors. The process was arduous: she would raise a bit of cash, race c o n t i n u e d o n p g 10...
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