aLiCe’S ReStAuRaNtdirected byArthur Penn

1969

• The Motorcycle Song• http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g266Uwp6ZnI&feature=related

Arthur Penn

• Directed “The Miracle Worker” 1962

• Won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Director (Dramatic) for "The Miracle Worker.“

• Nominated Best Director for both “Alice’s Restaurant” and “The Miracle Worker”

Arlo GuthrieBorn July 10, 1947

• The son of legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie (This Land is Your Land – song)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_HGDCj8hP0&feature=related

• and Marjorie Mazia Guthrie, a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Company and founder of the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease.

• (Huntington's disease is a disorder passed down through families in which certain nerve cells in the brain waste away, or degenerate.) – Woody died of this disease.

A little Guthrie History• Since his first public performance at the

age of thirteen, Arlo became absorbed in the music that was shaping the world.

• Arlo is a natural-born storyteller as well as an accomplished musician playing the piano, 6-string and 12-string guitars, and harmonica.

• Arlo's career soared with his debut of "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Later that year, Arlo was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Folk Performance category.

• Although he had not performed "Alice's Restaurant" for years, Arlo put it back on the menu for the Alice's Restaurant Massacree 40th Anniversary Tour, June 2005-May 2006.

Where did “Alice’s Restaurant” come from?

• It’s a true story!• Forty years ago, Arlo Guthrie dumped a pile of trash. The

minor crime made him ineligible for the draft. In 1967, he immortalized the saga in "Alice's Restaurant."

• Arlo goes to see Alice for Thanksgivng and as a favor takes her trash to the dump. When the dump is closed, he drops it on top of another pile of garbage at the bottom of a ravine. When the local sheriff finds out a major manhunt begins. Arlo manages to survive the courtroom experience but it haunts him when he is to be inducted into the army via the draft.

• It also started off as a song and then was made into a movie!!!!

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8DtpdXZi0M&feature=related

Why was this song written?• The song lasts 18 minutes and 34

seconds, occupying the entire A-side of Guthrie's 1967 debut record album, also titled Alice's Restaurant.

• It is notable as a satirical, first-person account of 1960s counterculture, in addition to being a hit song in its own right.

• The final part of the song is an encouragement for the listeners to sing along, to resist the U.S. draft, and to end war.

• It recounts a true but comically exaggerated Thanksgiving Day adventure as a satirical, deadpan protest against the Vietnam War draft.

The Church• The Alice in the song was restaurant-owner

Alice M. Brock, who in 1964 used $2,000 supplied by her mother to purchase a deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where Alice and her husband Ray would live.

• It was here rather than at the restaurant—which came later—where the song's Thanksgiving dinners were actually held.

• In 1991, Guthrie bought the church that had served as Alice and Ray Brock's former home, at 4 Van Deusenville Road, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and converted it to the Guthrie Center, a nondenominational, interfaith meeting place.

• On Thanksgiving, the church hosts a "Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat" for the local community. The annual "Garbage Trail Walk", retracing the steps of Arlo and raises money for Huntington's Disease research.

Trivia!!!• After discovering that the character "Officer

Obie" was modeled after him, actual Stockbridge (Massachusetts) Sheriff William Obanhein demanded that he play the role himself. His reason: "If anyone is going to make a fool out of me, it might as well be me!"

• Although many people regarded Arlo Guthrie's recording of "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree" to be fiction, Arthur Penn, who owns a home in Stockbridge where the story takes place, realized it was for the most part based on events that had actually taken place. Therefore, what appears to be a continuity problem is in fact a correct representation of the facts. The movie portrays the actual photos used as evidence at the trial. The real life "blind judge" in Guthrie's song, "Judge James Hannon", also plays himself (Judge James Hannon) in the film.

You’re Kidding…• Continuity: The narration speaks of 27 8x10 color

glossy photos, yet all the 8x10's shown are black and white.

Factual errors: Although Arlo's mother says after Woody Guthrie's death that there will be "no funeral," a private funeral service was held the day after Woody died, after which he was cremated and his ashes scattered at Coney Island.

• Factual errors: According to a published newspaper account of the incident at the time, as well as Officer Obie's own account much later, the envelope that provided the clue to the litterbugs had Ray Brock's name on, not Arlo's.

• Factual errors: The Joni Mitchell classic "Songs to Aging Children Come" is sung at the funeral. However, this song was released in 1969, the same year as the movie, whereas the movie portrayed events in 1965.

Factual errors: The outdoor scenes in Stockbridge, MA on Thanksgiving Day show brightly colored leaves on the trees. By late November, the trees are bare. This scene was likely shot during the first two weeks of October.