Going back to the 'Summer of Love'
Get out your love beads and be sure to wear some flowers in your hair!
PBS’ “American Experience” takes you on a trip to 1967 for “Summer of Love”, a groovy, mind-expanding flashback to a cultural phenomenon full of lofty ideals, but also broken dreams.
The place was San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, where, that summer, thousands of young people from across the country came together to this sudden hippie mecca. But even before they got there, this happening was already on the wane — and the swollen population jamming sidewalks, parks, soup kitchens and health clinics only hastened its demise.
It had begun mere months before as a non-stop celebration of free music, free love, free drugs and “cosmic oneness”. It was a revolution that sprung up in response to 1950s-bred conformism and the rampant bloodshed of the Vietnam War.
“Turn on, tune in, drop out!” druggy guru Timothy Leary exhorted a crowd of 20,000 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in January 1967, the “be-in” that led to that summer’s overwhelming invasion.
Filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco examine the social and cultural forces that sparked the largest migration of young people in America’s history. They hear from a diverse group of people who lived through the Summer of Love (including actor Peter Coyote, who sounds like he would gladly do it all again). And they trace the indelible impact those few months has had on the nation ever since.
“Summer of Love” airs Monday at 10 p.m.
Other shows this week to look out for:
[bul] The senseless death of a man’s wife and daughter sparks a craving for revenge against the reckless driver who was at fault. But then Bruce Murakami forges an unlikely alliance with 17-year-old Justin Gutierrez, who had been part of a street-racing incident that tragic night in November 1998. Teamed up, they begin speaking at high-school assemblies, delivering a powerful message: “Drive responsibly, or what happened to us could happen to you.” Dean Cain stars as Murakami in “Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness,” a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” film based on a true story airing tomorrow at 10 p.m. on CBS. Peri Gilpin (“Frasier”) plays Murakami’s lawyer, Erin Teller. Shiloh Fernandez plays Gutierrez.
[bul] Inspired by real-life events, a new Lifetime movie, “A Life Interrupted”, tells the story of Debbie Smith, a suburban housewife and mother who was dragged from her kitchen in broad daylight and raped in the woods behind her home, while her police-officer husband was asleep upstairs. After suffering through the rape-kit test, Debbie waited for her assailant to be found. But her wait seemed endless — six long years of fear and paranoia — before her rapist was finally identified thanks to a chance DNA test. Determined to help women in similar circumstances, Debbie agreed to work with a forensic scientist to lobby Congress on the importance of nationwide DNA testing. Evolving from victim to advocate, she worked tirelessly with lawmakers to pass the bill ensuring all usable forensic evidence is processed quickly and efficiently so that sexual predators are brought to justice. Lea Thompson (“Caroline in the City”) stars as Debbie Smith in the film, which airs on Monday at 10 p.m.
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