All things considered, imagine America fifty years ago when there were barely three television networks available and daytime talk shows could reach viewership of up to forty million a week which was said to be a fifth of the entire population. Now do picture American television at the time when a darling of afternoon television able to be watched in both red and blue states would want to sever a considerable part of his viewership with two revolutionary movie stars as his co-hosts. You can almost envision the panic But we’ll lose the housewives!
But in 1972 February, this is exactly what occurred when John Lennon and Yoko Ono were invited as guests of the easygoing host of The Mike Douglas Show and were free to invite their guests throughout that entire week. This came after they wrote their song ‘Attica State’ which was aimed to shine a light on human rights and the lives lost that ruined the prison riot. They were entitled to choose the invitees who would discuss almost anything from politics and terramorphic biofeedback to the advantages of ma acrobiotic diet.
Erik Nelson’s doc Daytime Revolution sheds another light on the experimentation in the Daytime Revolution and takes a bold leap toward the counterculture as a vigorous time capsule.
Two years after The Beatles disbanded, Ono was still faced with criticism as a political figure and Lennon had become a legendary musician. The blame for the breakup of the spectacular band was put on Ono, a sister painter, and filmmaker who met the musician during recording sessions and was considered an unnerving influence. But that was hardly fair.
Nevertheless, the warmth Douglas radiates and the professionalism complement the couple’s complimentary aspect, and the initial tensions that existed are somehow mended. It seems to me that he helped a great deal; he has been seen on many occasions acting as a peacemaker between Douglas and their guests.
At the beginning of the first episode, Douglas should have asked them what bridal dress each of them would recommend but what they should not have asked them in any circumstance is whether drugs, women’s lib, prison conditions, racism, peace, love, or even communication is what they would like to talk about during the week. This shows that these people are here to not only talk politics but to do the dharma and spread the word as well. And if Douglas thinks that his audience is certain to bear any embarrassment on that note, he is not letting anybody see that apprehension either.
Douglas does exude a certain semblance of a generation which seems largely at odds with the duo, but the construction of a framework around the Big Band era style of singing the Beatles’ rendition of ‘Michelle’ as an intro only deepens this view. While still on this tangent, it is worth adding that the very reason why the experiment is successful is both Lennon and Ono’s laissez-faire attitude and Douglas’ willingness to go with it.
Although Douglas disagrees with guest Jerry Rubin’s radical beliefs, fearing that he may be problematic, he remains calm while the activist asks the audience to help convince the youth that defeating Nixon is for their advantage. This is one of many examples that prove how different ideologies should not clash with today’s world that seems to focus on the loudest screaming.
For the most part, Douglas appears to be enjoying himself while talking with guests whom his usual booker would not schedule or while working on Ono‘s group art pieces such as picking up broken pieces from a teacup and then assembling it daily. The mood is friendly but also truthful and educational, with appearances from Ralph Nader, Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale, and comedian George Carlin.
Then there are lesser known faces such as biofeedback practitioner Gary Schwarz whose application is considered both to meditation and to its effect on health, such as reducing blood pressure, and David Rosenboom an interdisciplinary avant-garde musician who connects them all to electrodes enabling brainwaves to produce music; Hilary Redleaf a macrobiotic cook who facilitates a cooking classes on preparing hijiki pockets, and folk singer/activists, Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima from yellow pearl, who quite beautifully made a song We Are the Children concerning all second-generation migrants, more than half a century after still has its relevance.
Schwarz, Rosenboom, and Redleaf, along with many others, feature in this show alongside Redleaf who provided modern commentary as they reflected on their past video appearances. Miyamoto offers a great story about her refusal to omit certain lines she considered subversive, while Redleaf proudly shows the voucher received as compensation for appearing on the show for 100 dollars.
The 37-year-old Nader currently 90 years old served the context to further explain the significance of those episodes. In the 1972 appearance, he advises students who wish to politically or socially get involved with a how to guide fostering safe citizenship. He engages in a modern interview where he humorously agrees with Lennon and Ono urging the younger generation to participate in voting because scepticism is better than cynicism.
One of the most interesting snippets in all of this is the fact that Roger Ailes is present behind the cameras, which is amusing, as this man started out as a publicist and ended up as a producer of the show. Nader notes that Ailes had known Nixon when he was still a guest and was to work with Nixon during his first presidential campaign and then makes the droll observation that you could see the future Fox News CEO studying every aspect of the TV production machine, thinking to himself: “One of these days I am going to see to it that television becomes an important weapon for the right.”
Nelson also draws a blank in the documentary about whether there was any movement in the audience figures during the week in question or indeed whether there were any complaints from the many syndication stations which had relayed the show. But there are many interesting off-screen commentaries and eyewitness information from a long-serving associate producer, E.V. Di Massa, who at the time of the broadcasts was 24 years old.
Even though the concentration shifts more toward social issues rather than music, Lennon speaks about the Beatle’s time and his childhood and early inspirations (He and Paul McCartney had the vision to be the next great songwriting duo, after Carole King and Gerry Goffin). It is said that he claimed that the Latin Quarter basement studio in Philadelphia, where The Mike Douglas show was filmed, was reminiscent of the early Beatles concert hall, The Cavern, Liverpool. He does however give McCartney’s first albums with Wings the slightest of compliments although it is worth noting this was a year before their time of commercial and criticism success with Band on the Run.
Ono’s short songs can be quite harsh on the ears but still are interesting during such movements. Lennon’s rendition of “Imagine” on the keyboard is borne out of a song that has been turned into rubbish because of soppy covers over the decades but is not beautiful in its original form.
The unusual aspect of these shows is the unrehearsed nature of the musical segments. The musical highlight that stands out is a meeting of Lennon with one of his inspirational idols, Chuck Berry, dressed in a yellow shirt and white pants. The look on the faces of Lennon and the band members as Berry performs his trademark guitarplaying duckwalk while sharing the stage with them during “Memphis, Tennessee” is joyous.
While the integration of the archival news clippings of Nixon’s China trip, the Vietnam war, scaremongering about marijuana, and busing school children to end segregation of neighborhoods alongside these shows could have been done better, these shows sorely needed VHS footage of protesters.
There are enough and more Lennon documentaries, and it was not long ago that the Venice Film Festival held a screening of One to One: John & Yoko about a magical one year, while TWST: Things We Said Today chronicled an experimental Beatles 1965 Shea Stadium concert. But this review of an old and heartful effort to define the utopian ideals for the regional people to the nuclear temptations through the veil on commercial television contains interesting insights into a completely different period in the history of this country.
For more movies like Daytime Revolution visit 123 movies