Inside Dope1971

"One rainy day in Tulsa, when I was 13, the gym teacher showed our class some films in the 'mat' room. One film was about Dope: Jane's a nice girl dating Bob, and they go out in his '48 convertible and park with some friends of Bob's, rather fast friends it turns out. Pretty soon someone lights up a bent little cigarette and offers it to Jane. What's the matter is she chicken? Too late. Pretty soon she's hooked. On H. It has taken me 16 years to find a film which rivals this masterpiece. INSIDE DOPE is a pseudo-educational, fictitious documentary survey of the ups, downs, ins and far-outs of Dope. It is stunningly entertaining, because it is at once very funny and slightly sinister, like Red Skelton in the sky with diamonds. Burckhardt has assembled a star-studded cast: Edwin Denby, the silver ghost himself; beautiful naked girls Tessie Mitchell and Joan Fagin; beautiful but not naked girls Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Gerry Jacquette, Elisabeth Rodgers and Susan Leites; dancer Bill Dunas; painters Larry Rivers. Red Grooms and Arthur Cohen; philosopher Edmund Leites; filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt and his son Jacob; and a supporting cast of thousands, including a crack drill corps of marching pills (in an animated sequence by poet Larry Fagin). The film has too many high points to mention, except for one, when a bum falls on the sidewalk and makes along distance call on a milk bottle." – Ron Padgett