Word: caravan
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...first, Medicine Ball Caravan looks like another whelp from the Woodstock litter. The idea was to have some freaks travel cross-country in Day-Glo buses disseminating rock music, good vibes and easygoing propaganda for the counterculture. Warner Bros, would pack along a camera crew to record the music, the interaction and the scenery...
...caravan duly set forth in the summer of 1970, and the filmed record proceeds predictably enough for the first few minutes. Then Director Francois Reichenbach appears in an on-camera interview. As he goes into a number about the glories of grooviness, the film cuts abruptly to a very quick shot of a bus being thoroughly whitewashed...
That moment is an early signal that Medicine Ball Caravan is almost schizoid. One part celebrates the youth culture; another is a crafty send-up of the whole caravan project. There are, of course, the requisite number of elaborate rock concert sequences (B.B. King, Alice Cooper). There are also the usual nude bathing sequences, the dope sequences and the rapping-with-Middle-America sequences...
...Fashion-Model Czarina Eileen Ford got into a ranting match with two other women over whether mannequins are sexually promiscuous (some are, some aren't). Author Luigi Barzini told of the time that Mussolini, accompanied by a phalanx of officials and journalists, was motoring through the countryside. Suddenly the caravan halted and Il Duce got out and walked to a wall, apparently to gaze at the scene. Everybody else respectfully went over to share the leader's bucolic vision, only to discover that Mussolini was simply relieving himself. Too late to retreat, the entourage followed protocol...
...along with a refrigeration plant, laundry, bakery, and five additional hotels. There is talk of constructing a shopping center under a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome which would be air-conditioned to offset temperatures that reach 125°. Another problem to be overcome is the water shortage. Yehoshua Shapiro, the Caravan Hotel manager, who wears a jacket, tie and cuff links in spite of the heat, says: "We get our water by tank truck from a military desalination plant down the road. If the tanker breaks down, we're in trouble." Even so, Shapiro intends to settle permanently in Sharm...