In Manhattan: Reliving the '60s

By Donald Morrison

So this little old lady gets on the No. 10 bus down Central Park West, just as she does every Sunday morning, with her white gloves and little pillbox hat, the whole thing, on her way to church. She looks up and--whoa, driver, this bus is loaded with hippies. Wrong. It's packed with them, strange cats in flowers, feathers, frock coats, velvet vests, beads, bangles, headbands, hair out to here, and everybody passing joints. Far out. This thing is a rolling time capsule, Age of Aquarius stuff, very 1960s. So the lady sits down next to this dude in old Army fatigues, and after a few blocks she says to him. "We don't see many hippies around here any more." And he says to her, I swear, "Lady, at these fares. I'm not surprised."

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it. Same as with the 1960s. All these books and movies dribbling out now about that fine old decade are so heavy, they lack the old ring of verismo. But this bright and mellow spring Sunday just might turn out to be, well, different, you know, together. Milos Forman, the Czech-born director (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), trying to turn the Aquarian Age stage hit Hair into a movie, needs an authentic circa 1968 "bein" as backdrop for crucial scenes. Those affairs having gone the way of peace symbols and miniskirts, he has to wing it. So Forman's munchkins hire six rock bands, reserve the twelve-acre Sheep Meadow in Central Park and put out a call for extras: "Director Forman will prominently feature those who dressed appropriately in the costume of a flower child." the ads say. "That is, exactly what was worn in 1968!"

Hence the morning's motley on the No. 10. The gang de-buses at 67th Street, joining park-bound streams and eddies of other brightly plumed flower children --active, retired and would-be. In the first category is Sukey Leeds, 34, who says she wasted much of the 1960s "working on the Nixon finance committee, and I never went to a demonstration in my life until the animals turned me on." By way of explanation, she points to a RESPECT THE ANIMALS DON'T EAT THEM button on her peasant blouse (coordinated skirt, 35-c- at a rummage sale) and continues: "People are into getting healthy now. I do yoga every night, so I don't go to movies any more. I won't see this one. I'm trying to get into herbs." Another keeper of the flame is Steve Shliveck, 27, a onetime student radical. "Me, I haven't changed," he says. "I'm a little mellower maybe, and my acne has cleared up."

Among the retirees is Peggy Polinsky, 34, who can trace her bona fides back to longtime residence in Haight-Ashbury, when that was the world capital of hippiedom. Now a mother of two and the wife of an actor who works in soap operas, she has brought her brood, because "city kids don't get a chance to play in the dirt much. Besides, I used to go to a lot of these things." But rock concerts today are not the same as their 1960s antecedents, she insists, surveying with disgust the already growing carpet of empty beer cans and wine bottles around her. "There's a lot more drinking and puking now."

By far the largest number of pilgrims marching through time and beer cans this morning are too young to remember much of the 1960s. "That age was a bit early for me, so I didn't really know how to dress for this," confesses Mark Kaplan, 23, out of Atlanta, who adds that a more knowledgeable friend lent him the striped Indian cotton shirt he is wearing. A lady companion confesses further: "We're really just waiting for the tennis court we've reserved."

Toward 9 a.m.--still an ungodly hour for secular New Yorkers to be up and about on a Sunday--there are some 2,000 of these folks (8,000 more are still coming on the No. 10 bus and other conveyances) spreading their blankets, unpacking their Frisbees, getting one toke over the line and window-shopping the small army of pushcart food vendors already in business. There are shishkebab carts, doughnut-and-apple-juice carts, organic-bread carts and, later, one kimono-clad Occidental mixing onions, ground beef, celery and sweet peppers in a charcoal-fired wok (yummy). Suddenly, from behind a 20-ft.-high wall of amplifiers, one of the six bands strikes up "Keep on rockin' me, baby," rattling windows and dental work blocks away. Slowly and unobtrusively, Director Forman's talent scouts circulate through the crowd, buttonholing especially photogenic candidates for medium-distance crowd shots. The serious business of moviemaking is under way.

Assistant Director Mike Hausman, 42, a bronzed and bearded fellow in a red baseball cap, divides the elect into three teams and moves them around the field with the firm assurance of an offensive line coach. Group A is ordered to "mill around" behind one of the movie's stars, Suzette Charles, 18, as she lip-syncs a song. Getting solipsistic '70s people to mill properly is not as easy as it might sound. "Hell no, we won't go." quips a recalcitrant young man, face painted red, white and blue. Some mill too fast, others too slowly: still others stare into the camera when they should be ignoring it. Italia, a billiard-bald extra known as "Miss Bald America," sidles up to Charles in mid-song, plops down behind her and stares fetchingly into the camera. Cut. Hausman, neck veins bulging, yells at her; she leaves, muttering, "I bet he's bald under that cap." Hausman reshoots the scene successfully--until a young man strides in front of the camera in a pair of bright blue Adidas sneakers. Cut. They made Adidas in 1968, but flower kids didn't wear them. "We researched everything carefully," says Lester Persky, who is co-producing the movie for United Artists. "We were even worried about Frisbees, but it turns out there were a lot of them then."

There were also a lot of bicycles in 1968, but not in the numbers and models that descend on Central Park these Sundays: flotillas of gleaming ten-speed Peugeots, Atalas, Gitanes, Raleighs and Fujis. Cut. One curious cyclist is nearly clothes-lined by a Hausman staffer to prevent his vehicle from mowing down the entire Twyla Tharp dance company as it limbers up for a Hair number. Cut. And then there are the joggers. Cut. Cut. Cut.

Jogging is a very '70s pursuit, and Hausman's goons have to shoo away armies of gum-soled fitness freaks whenever they get in Hair's way. Most are gracious, and one even pitches in to help tether a 40-ft. red phallic balloon for the crew. But a thirtyish intruder does not take it well.

"F___ your movie. We're the ones who ended the goddam war!" he shouts, and turning to a New York City policeman, adds: "Mow 'em down, why don't you? In 1968 you knew how to mow 'em down!"

This is an unfortunate reminder for Milos Forman. In 1968 he was still making movies in Prague; after seeing Hair in New York, he wanted to bring the musical to his home town. The 1968 Soviet invasion cooled that dream, and it did not thaw until Forman met Co-Producer Persky at a party (for Cuckoo's Nest) in Manhattan three years ago. "These people fought the good fight, and they shouldn't be ashamed of it," Forman says of his guests for the day. "We think the time to make the movie Hair is now."

John Savage, 27, Forman's leading man, agrees. He plays a sober, clean-cut student activist who gets drafted and is brought to today's be-in by freaky friends for a preinduction fling. "The spirit of the '60s is only something to feel good about," says Savage, displaying all the articulateness that distinguished the youth of that period. "These kids ... some of the memories are happy," he adds, and his eyes mist over with happy memories.

More likely they are misting over with dust. It is everywhere, thick as Mayor Daley's tear gas, swirling up in gritty gusts and sticking to your body paint. Alas, one major difference between the first Central Park be-in and today's is that this time there is more grass in the air than on the ground. New York City's finances, having gone the way of peace symbols and miniskirts, do not permit enough maintenance to keep the grass in the style to which Park Designer Frederick Law Olmsted's 19th century sheep were accustomed. The dust flurries are so bad that filming has to be halted a few times, and a wind machine is imported to make sure that later scenes will match today's. Quips Savage: "This is really a remake of Lawrence of Arabia."

Of course, a little creative film editing and nobody will know the difference. Despite the best efforts of Forman and his helpers to re-create the spirit of the '60s, the spirit of the '70s keeps intruding, striding through the day in bright blue Adidas. Too many telltale Perrier bottles, expensive French jeans, $30 blow-dry haircuts. And while 10,000 visitors to the Sheep Meadow this day at least try to recall a simpler age of love, peace and tolerance, hundreds of citizens who live near the park file complaints of one sort or another with the local authorities.

A few days later the city will mail a summons to Hair's producers for an offense that was not even on the books in 1968: noise pollution.

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