The Grateful Dead in the early ’70s (photo from the Sundance website)
Update (Jan. 18): The Martin Scorsese-executive-produced Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip, first announced more than two years ago, will be coming to Amazon Prime for streaming in May, according to an announcement today. The four-hour film, directed by Amir Bar-Lev, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this month before coming to Amazon.
Here is our original article…
The long-awaited documentary of The Grateful Dead, titled—what else?—Long Strange Trip, will premiere next month at the Sundance Festival in Utah. The film, directed by Amir Bar-Lev and executive-produced by Martin Scorsese, has a running time that rivals that of the average Dead concert, 235 minutes.
A blurb on the film’s dedicated Sundance page reads: “The tale of the Grateful Dead is inspiring, complicated, and downright messy. A tribe of contrarians, they made art out of open-ended chaos and inadvertently achieved success on their own terms. Never-before-seen footage and interviews offer this unprecedented and unvarnished look at the life of the Dead.”
Scorsese has a long history in the field of music documentaries, starting with camera and editing work on Woodstock through the Bob Dylan doc No Direction Home and George Harrison: Living in the Material World. He, of course, also made The Last Waltz, documenting the final concert of the Band. Another of the film’s co-producers comes from the Dead’s own camp: Justin Kreutzmann, son of Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Another executive producer is Eric Eisner, son of Hollywood heavyweight Michael Eisner. Bar-Lev’s credits include The Pat Tillman Story. Dead archivist David Lemieux is its music supervisor.
Related: Rhino is releasing a deluxe edition of the Dead’s debut album
And the band’s surviving members all support it. “Millions of stories have been told about the Grateful Dead over the years,” they said in a statement in 2014.
Jerry Garcia in the ’70s (Photo from the Sundance website)
Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir has already been the subject of his own, similarly titled, documentary, The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir.
Related: Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was the first of four Grateful Dead keyboardists to pass away
Long Strange Trip will screen at the following locations and times:
Monday, January 23-24, 8:30 p.m. – Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City, Utah
Thursday, January 26, 6:00 p.m. – Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City, Utah
Saturday, January 28, 8:45 p.m. – Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City, Utah
Watch the Dead perform “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider” in 1972
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3 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationAny chance this is featured at the Dead at the Movies 2017?
Sorry, but we don’t have that information available.
I hope it comes out here to Sonoma County movie theatres,that would be the coolest,with souveneirs at the show!!!,Listening to DarkStar 5/11/1972 primo sounds,then New Potato Caboose 2/14/1968 Carousel ballroom s.F