this is the part of the script that explains it all :
DUKE (V/O)
Strange memories on this nervous
night in Las Vegas.
(he gets up, pours
himself a drink)
Has it been five years? Six? It
seems like a lifetime -- the kind
of peak that never comes again.
San Francisco in the middle sixties
was a very special time and place
to be a part of. But no
explanation, no mix of words or
music or memories can touch that
sense of knowing that you were
there and alive in that corner of
time and the world. Whatever it
meant.
THERE WAS MADNESS IN ANY DIRECTION,
AT ANY HOUR... YOU COULD STRIKE
SPARKS ANYWHERE. THERE WAS A
FANTASTIC UNIVERSAL SENSE THAT
WHATEVER WE WERE DOING WAS RIGHT,
THAT WE WERE WINNING. AND THAT, I
THINK, WAS THE HANDLE -- THAT SENSE
OF INEVITABLE VICTORY OVER THE
FORCES OF OLD AND EVIL. NOT IN ANY
MEAN OR MILITARY SENSE; WE DIDN'T
NEED THAT. OUR ENERGY WOULD SIMPLY
prevail. We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high
and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later,
you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look west, and with
the right kind of eyes you can
almost see the high water mark --
that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
We are all wired into a survival
trip now. No more of the speed
that fueled that 60's. That was
the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip.
He crashed around America selling
"consciousness expansion" without
ever giving a thought to the grim
meat-hook realities that were lying
in wait for all the people who took
him seriously...
All those pathetically eager acid
freaks who thought they could buy
Peace and Understanding for three
bucks a hit. But their loss and
failure is ours too. What Leary
took down with him was the central
illusion of a whole life-style that
he helped create...
... a generation of permanent
cripples, failed seekers, who never
understood the essential old-mystic
fallacy of the Acid Culture: the
desperate assumption that somebody...
or at least some force -- is
tending the light at the end of the
tunnel.
complete script here
One hell of a movie. Ad I thought there weren't any good American writers in our time. I was wrong....dead wrong. J