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Parent Issue
Day
15
Month
November
Year
1974
Additional Text

A large shipment of Acapulco Gold is due in Ann Arbor November 20-26.

If it's the real thing, that's coincidental. This Acapulco Gold is a movie - a documentary on the harvesting, cultivation, and smuggling of marijuana on the North American continent. The film has not been seen as the SUN goes into press, but reviews, comments of people who have seen it, and a telephone conversation with director Bob Grosvenor indicate a highly interesting film. It's time the citizens of the Dope Capital of the Midwest got the nitty gritty on the subject

The first question is obvious - how did these people escape arrest? Everyone who appears in the movie was informed that they were being filmed, and they would have to be out of the business by the time the film was released or there was a good chance they would be busted. The Americans you will see in Acapulco Gold are hard at work, harvesting in Kansas and Missouri, cultivating in Kentucky and California. There is also a smuggling scene - the exchange of money and goods-somewhere in the area of Acapulco, Mexico. Somewhere along the line, unrelated to the movie, the smuggler ended up in prison in California. But all others safely avoided arrest.

Director/producer Bob Grosvenor is one dedicated artist. and apparently a true lobbyist for legalization. Before the film project began he was busted in California for growing 5,000 marijuana plants. At the time, this was the largest bust for domestic cultivation of dope. While Grosvenor was out on bail, he and cameraman/editor Steve Rosen shot the film. The editing was done while Grosvenor was in jail-he did the thinking and arranged for the music from the cell. The film was completed and distribution arranged during his two year probation. That's dedicated film making.

Acapulco Gold premiered two months ago in San Francisco, and has played in 43 locations in the West and Midwest. The distribution has been plagued by perhaps expected problems. Major distributors would not touch the film, and Grosvenor and his staff have had to arrange each booking individually. That means renting theaters, paying weekly rates off to the theater and hoping there might be some money Ieft over for them. A number of theaters have flatly refused to show the film. They have also faced the additional problem of radio advertising, with many AM and FM stations refusing to carry their ads. A tip of the hat goes to Ann Arbor's Campus Theater, which gave Acapulco Gold rental, and no trouble.

Despite these difficulties, Acapulco Gold has had a fairly good reception. Grosvenor explained that on the week end of November 8-10 the movie was playing in Columbia, Missouri, with the stiff competition of two films that draw the same audience-Fantasia and The New York Erotic Film Festival. All three movies grossed well.

Audiences like the movie, and come out pleased. It isn't an exhilarating adventure movie, or romance, so expect a documentary of a straightforward nature. A local who saw the movie in California said simply. "Anybody who smokes pot would probably like it."

Acapulco Gold sounds like a movie that would have the same effect as a film of an abortion-show how it is done, and the mystery is cracked. If you see it, you will understand it, and many fears go away. With national legalization of marijuana becoming more and more visible, this sort of film is much needed.

The documentary film's ability to explain and demystify characterizes Attica as well. This documentary of the 1971 rebellion and subsequent indictments was recently shown at the Law School, followed by two speakers, one of the defendants and a mother of another. Very few films have received the non-stop rave reviews that Attica won when first released last spring in New York. The New Yorker, The New York Times and other august bodies of the press let out a flow of superlatives that easily excited the reader, and made one eager to see the movie. Despite the reviews, the film proved to be pretty much of a commercial failure. Why go see 40 people killed, and guards and prisoners explaining the facts, when you could get some frill and froth out of your bucks from some light entertainment picture?

Attica will probably be back in Ann Arbor sometime within the next two months. Hopefully it will be shown under better conditions than that one night stand at the Law School. The combination of straight-backed wood chairs, an antiseptic auditorium, one projector (with a pause between reels) and an abysmal sound system made viewing painful. Staying through the movie under those conditions came out of a sense of obligation, and certainly not a desire to view a highly praised film.

Attica was directed and primarily edited by Cinda Firestone, rebellious daughter of the tire family. Her previous work included a stint with the now defunct Newsreel organization, a group that shot some fine cinema verite films of political action of the turbulent late sixties. The first hand approach is evident in ATTICA, and not out of choice.

Firestone was allowed within the prison courtyard during the four day seige, and there she filmed and recorded the statements of a number of prisoners and guards. When negotiations between the prisoners and officials broke down, and Nelson Rockefeller ordered a shoot-out to retake the prison, Cinda Firestone and all other newspeople were ordered out of the prison. Footage of the massacre was shot through the scope of the offensive rifles. Footage of the subsequent McKay Commission, the legislative inquiry into the rebellion and massacre, was transcribed from video tape, and is therefore somewhat rough, but very much first hand. The film also includes interviews of men presently under indictment, parents of prisoners, and several men who have since been released.

The rough shooting conditions, and the mixing of video and film, with a rugged soundtrack, make Attica a turbulent spectator's experience. But the deeper turbulence comes from the facts of Attica. It is a fantastic education, and one well needed as the trials go on in Buffalo right now. Prisoners, ex-prisoners, guards, legislators and other members of the non-ruling class explain in a highly moving manner that the takeover of the prison was motivated by the prisoners' desire for humane conditions within the jail: minimum wages, edible food, just treatment from guards, etc. They rebelled because their requests were not heard, and what else was to be done? They were killed-seven guard hostages and thirty three prisoners-because the State of New York. and above all, Nelson Rockefeller, did not want an example to be set. They would rather murder than have a successful challenge of their authority.

It is impossible to discuss the aesthetics of the film in a manner external to its politics. Better films have been made of prisons-particularly Saul Landau's The Jail, shot in the San Francisco County Jail and released in the Ann Arbor Film Festival two years ago. But the shooting conditions of Attica are a reflection of the chaos of the rebellion. This is Battle Of Algiers come to life. It is the real side of some great American prison movies, including Wallace Beery in the incredible 1931 The Big House. Throughout the movie, you feel that realism, and are hit hard with the fact of how many people continue to live under such conditions. If you want to know about Attica, see Attica. And if you have only a vague interest, try to go when it comes to town, both out of an obligation to a major and just cause, and out of a perhaps unrealized need to understand a part of life we all try to shove aside.

As for current commercial films, The Devil's Triangle and UFO's: Target Earth is the interesting looking double bill at the State Theater through Tuesday, November 20. A movie brigade of six of us-four adults and two kids-poured into the theater last Saturday to give it a try. Both films deal with the other-worldly the presence and earthly influence of beings from other planets. Sounds interesting, but both movies were, according to all of us, and the boos and guffaws majority of the audience, terrible. The Devi's Triangle explains a strange phenomena of disappearing ships and planes in a certain area near the eastern Bahamas. Vincent Price narrates in his characteristic sincere, somber tones, and the somewhat weak wording completely overshadows the limping visuals. Shots of anchors, rough drawings of former sea-life, and lots of waves just don't make it as the core of a documentary.

UFO'S: Target Earth is a very crude and self-conscious fictionalization of true life encounters with the other beings. The movie tries real hard to be right on and beyond materialistic thought, but the sincerity is completely flattened by the stiffness of the film. The closing line: "In that rush into oblivion, the darkness and the contours of your mind turn in on the truth." The audience laughed a lot, and maybe we learned something, but the two movies do very little to expand our fields of earth-bound ledge.

-Ellen Frank