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 In the spring of 1981, I took a road trip with four friends. We piled into my pick-up truck and headed off to my very first Grateful Dead concert. To say that that night changed my life would be the grossest of understate-ments. In the middle of the show, as the music thundered around us, I remember very clearly looking at my friends - guys I had known my entire life - and thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same again." A couple hundred more shows, a million miles and several near death experiences later, I was forced to look back and say, "Yeah, man, I was right."
The day Jerry Garcia died was a crystalline summer day. I remember the color of the sky, the twinkle of the light on the ocean and the faces and voices of my friends. The answering machine filled up, shock and denial morphed into reality which was nothing but overwhelming sadness. Suddenly, the music of The Grateful Dead - the soundtrack of my adult life - was everywhere. Every car that rolled by, every open window, every radio station on the dial sang in homage to our departed friend. I truly felt like I had lost one of my friends. That was the magic of Jerry Garcia. He was a virtuoso musician; a gifted and generous player, a musical prankster. But he was also strangely accessible. I never shook his hand and he never said a word to me but I knew he was and always would be my friend, there every night for me with that beaming smile and that soaring guitar. Was I crazy or delusional? If I was, so were several thousand others. The energy and affection that radiated from Jerry (everyone was of course on a first name basis with him) was pure and unwavering. He didn't demand attention or affection. He just played his guitar and sang his heart out and if he moved you that was fine. If he didn't, that was fine too. He just did what he did and left the rest all up to you to decide.
Soon after Jerry died, a friend said to me, "You should write down all your Grateful Dead stories." At the time, it seemed completely inappropriate. But ruminations and reflections take strange turns in the middle of the night. We did have great stories from our times traveling to see The Grateful Dead. Adventure and misadventure. Love and mayhem. Laughing till we cried in some small town in the middle of nowhere on our way to another small town in the middle of nowhere. All the places we had been together. That's when I realized, what I needed to write was not a Grateful Dead story. That is best left to biographers and documentarians. Can you imagine trying to cast someone to actually play Jerry Garcia in a movie?! Charlton Heston once played Moses but, Moses was no guitar player. What I needed to write about was what The Grateful Dead gave to me: The best friends I have ever had and a shared history so proportionally beyond what we would have experienced if we had become, say, rabid Red Sox fans.
Which brings us to here and now and LOSING JERRY, the screenplay that will become a sort of “BIG CHILL” movie for the Deadhead generation. It is the story of three best friends, united by their love of the music of The Grateful Dead. They start out invincible at 19, but over the course of their 14 year friendship their, “life is a party” attitude faces all of the challenges and obstacles that growing up throws in their way. And on August 9th, 1995, Jerry Garcia's death becomes the ultimate true test of their friendship. This is a story that is bursting with life; full of humor and tragedy, pathos, love and loss. All played out against the soundtrack of one band; the band that brought the friends together, drew them closer and finally makes them face the toughest choices life has to offer.
From the outset, before we budgeted the movie, even before we finished developing the script, we knew that producing it would be impossible if we couldn’t get our hands on the music that not only inspired the film, but would serve as one of the main characters. To that end, we contacted the Grateful Dead organization and, over the course of a year and a half, secured all of the rights to the music (25 songs) we will use in the film. As a music fan, I am giddy. As a director, I am motivated and inspired to be directing a film against the backdrop of the music that I love. The scope and breadth of The Grateful Dead's music is so great that the cinematic possibilities afforded me are staggering and I plan to take full advantage; moving the camera fluidly to the music, designing color palettes that emphasize the psychedelic elements of the story, using silence for emotional punctuation amidst the soundscape.
“LOSING JERRY” will be shot entirely on location in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. The most basic reason for this is authenticity. On the day of Jerry Garcia’s death, Bob Weir, his bandmate of 30 years, was scheduled to play a solo concert at the Club Casino Ballroom in Hampton Beach. Weir decided to go on with the show and, for that one mournful night, Hampton Beach became the place to be for the Deadhead world and the accompanying media attention. This makes it the logical place to recreate the events of that night for LOSING JERRY. As a personal point of pride, I want to shoot in New Hampshire for ideological reasons. I am a New Hampshire native. My family used to spend every summer at Hampton Beach. I think all of my work reflects my strong roots within the region and I am committed to fully realizing this particular work in the environment that continues to support and inspire me. By shooting LOSING JERRY in New Hampshire, I hope to bring the local communities together in support of a homegrown project that can, literally, touch millions of people around the world. At the end of the film, as the streets of Hampton Beach are pulsing with the “Not Fade Away” clap and chant of “Love is love, not fade away,” it is my desire that as far as the camera eye can see, the streets are filled with New Hampshire faces and voices contributing to this cinematic sense of community.
I have come a long way from that fateful trip in a pick-up truck 25 years ago. And I have arrived at the perfectly logical place. There was always much more than music at a Grateful Dead concert. There was faith, hope, forgiveness and, always, friendship. It wasn't just a band playing music. It was all of us creating something magical together. The Grateful Dead still provides the soundtrack to my life. "LOSING JERRY" is my way of returning all the favors received along the way and inspiring those who may have never known the magic to always be open to that wonderfully scary possibility that, on any given night, anything could happen.
Down the road...
Mitch Ganem
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