Filmmaker Larry Kent on the dark side of hippies and censorship
Image: Ad for the screening of the movie High in Montreal, 1968. The Georgian student newspaper, vol. 32, no 19, November 15, 1968
Transcription: 3rd week / “Poignant Rather than passionate… Searching rather then than fulfilling” – Toronto Star / HIGH / By Larry Kent / Special price for students from 11.00 am to 5.30 pm Mon to Fri / 18 years / for adults only / Guy / Guy and Maisonneuve / Tel 931-2912
Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview was conducted in Montreal on May 27, 2021 with Larry Kent by Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 3:54 min
In this interview conducted in May 2021, Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL, and filmmaker Larry Kent discuss the main themes tackled by the movie High (1967) and the context of its censorship.
Warning: This interview contains explicit content including references to sexuality, drugs and violence.
Transcription:
Larry Kent: The only film that’s ever been censored in Quebec for, um, a film festival was High. For the ’67 Film Festival, you know, the big one…
Louis Rastelli: Why your film got that treatment, whereas others didn’t?
Larry Kent: I think because of the amorality of it.
Louis Rastelli: Yeah. So it needed to have the happy ending or else that kind of stuff didn’t pass.
Larry Kent: Yeah. Um, no, I think it was because, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll! That’s why. I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t just sex, it was sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, you know.
Don’t forget, this is just before, I mean, the Manson killings. So, I, this film was made in ’67, so it’s just before the Manson, and in a way, a prediction. How he was able to get those girls to do all of that is because they bought into that whole culture.
Charles Manson was saying, you know, I’m a hippie! It took a lifetime criminal, you know, Manson, to do it. And I think there, the very positive thing was, you know, it was a freedom from basically the fifties period of tight morality, you know, religious, almost religious morality.
And they were let loose. And, there’s always a yin and yang, alright? The abuse of drugs and the abuse of freedom. I guess nothing… You gotta pay for whatever you get, right?
Actually, if you look at it, the end result was the Manson killings and the Manson thing. You’ve got the re… the reaction to puritanism.
And it’s swung so far to anarchy, you know? The idea of breaking away from puritanism was right and correct. But what happens often, I mean, what happens all the time, there’s a swing and when we, we go to the distance on anything we want. The human condition is to go to extremes.
Louis Rastelli: Would you say what you were seeing that to some degree in the ’66, ’67 was sort of lurch to extreme?
Larry Kent: I, what I said about it, I, I really, what came to fruition, I kind of had a premonition that, I mean, the guy just, you know (inaudible) he was doing very, he was living a, a good life. And I’m not talking about it in a moral sense. I mean, just wandering around and (inaudible) was awesome. But he met somebody who took it even further than him. How far can you go is the question, and she, the end of the film is, hey, she went all the way, all the way and is enjoying the killing of the guy. Which we saw in the Manson killings, you know? It was the, it was the girl who did it! And of course, hippiedom dies with the Manson killings.