A case of amazing material and fascinating history being squandered in the hands of an unfocused team. Lacks a coherent and clear vision, but is a serviceable time capsule of John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosting The Mike Douglas Show in 1972. Their agenda - to reach middle-class Americans (or housewives, as they say) and inspire more sociopolitical engagement/liberate marginalized folks - is sorely underdeveloped as a thematic thread, which continually baffled me as the film stretched on. 

Some really great moments in here with interesting guests (Nobuko Miyamoto! Chuck Berry! Vivian Reed! Ralph Nader! Jerry Rubin! Bobby Seale!!!) who are otherwise pushed aside in favor of cramming as much into this film as possible. Though they make an effort to provide some historical context I still walked away with very little overall understanding of the “revolution” on a narrative level. They needed to provide much more context for what each of these guests’ appearances meant for them, the show and the wider culture at the time. I wanted to watch more of the clips, get to know the guests without being told loosely what to think. The talking heads would have been fine after the fact, not as the point to spin the narrative on. 

The film is structured entirely conventionally and lacks the kind of compelling direction that would make even its uninspiring structure work. The editing is ludicrously bad; the title graphics appear more than a dozen times in the same ‘70s-inspired font and animation seen in every piece of ‘70s memorabilia ever. Its frequency and placement led me to wonder if it had been originally created to accommodate commercial breaks (no). Editing is, I believe, the film’s biggest downfall. If you’re going to make a documentary based mostly on archival footage and some talking heads you have to know how to weave together a compelling narrative with all that content. They didn’t, unfortunately.

Would love to see this stretched into a mini-series of 5 episodes, where we can spend more time considering the implications of these guests even being allowed to appear on daytime television. I want a discernible point of view, more history, more time spent with these people. There’s so much great material here. It’s a shame we couldn’t get more from it.