Kosmic country
Flying Winnebagos and fairies in Nudie suits: the far-out tale of lost Gram Parsons sci-fi film Saturation 70
IF you’ve ever wondered why The Flying Burrito Brothers are dressed in Hazmat suits on the cover of Burrito Deluxe, the answer lies in a new book that tells the story of Saturation 70. The film was the brainchild of Tony Foutz, who had planned to make a “psychedelic Western” called ‘Maxagasm’ with The Rolling Stones and James Coburn in 1969. Back in California, he chanced upon a UFO convention at Joshua Tree and went down to take some footage with Gram Parsons and Michelle Phillips. From this “spontaneous combustion”, Saturation 70 was born.
“I was living at the Chateau Marmont with Gram, and Michelle Phillips was an old friend, so they came with me,” says Foutz, now 85 and co-author of the Saturation 70 book with Chris Campion. “We went for a week and came back with this footage. We showed it to Universal, who thought it was great but didn’t know what it meant. Douglas Trumbull [2001AD] was going to do the special effects using the only analogue hybrid computer in the world at the time.”
Foutz retconned a plot. Parsons, Phillips, photographer Andee Nathanson and Stones sidekick Stanislas ‘Stash’ Klossowski de Rola played aliens called the Kosmic Kiddies, Hazmat-clad environmental police who come to Earth in a flying Winnebago. There they encounter five-year-old Julian Brian Leitch (son of Brian Jones) as a Victorian ragpicker who’s fallen through a wormhole into a dystopian LA. The aliens navigate societal and environmental collapse as they reunite the child with his mother, along the way encountering characters such as a fairy godmother in a Nudie suit. Parsons and Roger Mcguinn were lined up to compose the soundtrack on Mcguinn’s Moog, while Foutz planned “data inserts” featuring announcers on floating clouds delivering breaking news.
“We wanted to saturate people with information and imagery,” says Foutz. “We wanted to keep the rhythm going so fast you had to see it twice.” Around 60 minutes were filmed, including a scene in a supermarket where shoppers browsed the aisles as war raged around them, before the oil crisis caused financing to collapse. Sadly the reels are long since lost, believed to have been binned by producer Perry Leff during a house move.
“There is nothing to compare it with,” says Stash. “It was so far-out and fabulous to look at. The scenes we made are etched on my memory – how beautiful and poignant it was, and how brilliant a political and social satire it was. The more you think about it, the more you want to cry. This is a great film, a masterpiece, that disappeared.”
Foutz is more phlegmatic but hopes the book will at least give people some indication of what might have been. There are also plans to hold an exhibition with surviving footage.
“There’s a showreel of outtakes made by Bruce Logan, the editor, who went on to do Star Wars,” says Foutz. “He cut that to Gram playing ‘Wild Horses’. Then I have a 10-minute demo reel that was made to show Universal the effects we wanted to use, which I thought was lost but I recently found. That’s never been seen.
“In some way I like it being mythic, but I agreed to do the book because what we were talking about then is happening today. When I look back at Saturation 70, it’s not about how good the old times were, it’s about what we were saying.”
“This is a great film, a masterpiece, that disappeared” STASH KLOSSOWSKI DE ROLA
Saturation 70 by Tony Foutz and Chris Campion will be published in April 2024 by Wolf+salmon. See more and contribute to the Kickstarter at saturation70film.com