FILM

Looking for Mushrooms
Bruce Conner, 1996, US, 35mm, 14'

1959-67 (1996 version)
Film print courtesy of The Conner Family Trust

A mulligan film. A re-do of Conner’s first color movie. From footage shot while living in Mexico in 1961-‘62. As well as some earlier shots of him and his wife, Jean, in San Francisco. Before the hippies. A psychedelic travelogue of rural Mexican nature, towns, and religious iconography. A document of a search for psilocybin mushrooms. Occasionally with Timothy Leary. Gone is The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” that we heard in the original version. In this re-do, each frame is repeated 5 times. And Terry Riley takes over the score assignment providing “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”.