Saturation 70: the Gram Parsons UFO film that never flew.

[riqster]

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/05/saturation-70-the-gram-parsons-ufo-film-that-never-flew

Fascinating!

The last thing you’d think of when you hear the name Gram Parsons — the heartbreakingly sensitive singer-songwriter who died aged 26 in 1973 — is science fiction. But between late 1969 and early 1970, towards the close of his two-album career as leader of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons was making his acting debut in a mind-boggling fantasy project that predated Star Wars by almost a decade.

Called Saturation 70, the film was the brainchild of an American writer-director named Tony Foutz, the son of a Walt Disney company executive and a friend to both Parsons and the Rolling Stones. The film was shot (but never completed) at a 1969 UFO convention at Giant Rock, near Joshua Tree in the Mojave desert, and in Los Angeles. It tapped into the spectrum of esoteric interests and outlandish ideas — aliens, psychedelics, time travel— of the late 60s counterculture. “The whole experience of making the film was like a technological tribal throw-down, with an energy buzz off the Richter scale,” Foutz says now. “It took on a life of its own.”

Tons more at the link.

[Tom Ripley]

1. I've heard Phil Kaufman talk about this, but always thought it was just another Phil Kaufman story

[riqster]

2. I am a Parsons fan, but had never heard of this before.