According to The Fugs bandleader Ed Sanders, the 60s were steeped in artists of all genres and media collaborating and influencing each other on various projects. This led to artists like Warhol branching out into film and, at the very least,making a great 60s music documentary. As the son of famous cinematographer Floyd Crosby, musicianDavid Crosbywas no different, having movie-making aspirations that apparently made it to the pre-production stage in 1971 to create an “apocalyptic hippie movie.”
The founding musician of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, who recently passed away this week, had reportedly teamed up with screenwriter and friendCarl Gottliebon the project, according to a recent interview withVariety. Gottlieb, who would reach success four years later with his screenplay forJaws, was also set to direct the apocalyptic movie tentatively titledFamily.At the same time,Crosby was signed with United Artists to produce and write the score for the film. According to Gottlieb, Crosby had a “real vision of what he wanted the movie to be.”
Recalling the utopic hippies communes that tried to improve society through alternative living in the 60s, the 1971 film script reflected a sense of that type of community after the world ended. “It was kind of a hippie idyll,” Gottlieb toldVariety. “It was basically a dawn-til-dusk, group-eye-view of a post-apocalyptic world in which an extended family group is moving. Within the group there’s old people, young people, babies and horses and all that stuff. It was meant to be a documentary about a non-existent world.”
Related:The Best Movies About Hippie Subculture, Ranked
We Packed Everything and Went On About Our Lives
A sense that a culture had died in the 60s was widespread in the 70s. For 60s writer Joan Didion, the hopeful spirit of the 60s died when news of Charles Manson made the national press. For Hunter S Thompson, whose famous Las Vegas novel (now a 1998 film featuring Johnny Depp) reflected on the end of the 60s, it was like a “peak that never comes back again,” a “sense of inevitable victory over… Old and Evil” where you could look West and “almost see… where the wave finally broke.”
According to Fugs musician Ed Sanders, who rubbed elbows with Crosby in the 60s, the assassinations of MLK and RFK had very much to do with hippie culture ending. Others might look to the spontaneous gatherings like the Beatles’ rooftop concert inLet It BeandWoodstockas iconic (and happier) endings to the 60s. Any way you cut it, the production for Crosby’s filmFamilyshortly met its demise before it could reflect on the post-apocalyptic 60s.
According to Gottlieb,Familywas set to film in Oregon in 1971, with Crosby and Gottlieb working on costume and casting from their headquarters in Los Angeles. But the project was axed when Crosby, asked by UA to put up the publishing rights to his songs as collateral against the film’s budget, felt compelled under good advice to leave the project. While theJawsscreenwriter and Crosby collaborated on other film projects in the future, only theFamilymovie made it closest to becoming a reality.The 60s were over, and so wasFamily. “The movie never got made,” recounted Gottlieb. “We packed everything and went on about our lives.”
