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Dusty and Sweets McGee
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Wikipedia article
'Dusty and Sweets McGee' is a 1971 American drama film written and directed by Floyd Mutrux.[https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/dusty-and-sweets-mcgee The New Yorker] The film stars Clifton Tip Fredell, Kit Ryder, Billy Gray, Bob Graham, Nancy Wheeler and Russ Knight. The film was released by Warner Bros. on July 14, 1971.
Production
In the alternative Hollywood of 1970s, director Floyd Mutrux got the green light to produce a film about young drug addicts. Eager to tap into the youth market, and without a clue of how to do it, studio heads signed off on the film despite it having no viable script. It was instead based on some interviews with actual drug addicts.[https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2020/dusty-and-sweets-mcgee-panic-needle-park Dusty and Sweets McGee / The Panic in Needle Park|Hammer Museum]
Plot
'Dusty and Sweets McGee' follows the two young addicts of the title as they idly spend their days in early 1970s Los Angeles. The camera rolls as the addicts roam the streets of LA from downtown to the beach. Car radios play the hits of the day as they aimlessly go about their drug-addicted lives. Eating hot dogs at Pink's, committing petty crime, scoring drugs and cruising the sunset strip are lovingly documented by Mutrux.
There is no plot, but what evolves is a portrait of lost, young souls adrift in a failed consumer society.[https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2015/12/04/dusty-sweets-mcgee UCLA Film & Television Archive] Affluent America is all around them, shiny and sun-drenched like a beautiful California orange, but there is something rotten at the core of this fruit. Vietnam rages on, the Watts riots were still smoldering in people's minds to the South as the big, shiny convertibles rolled majestically down the endless freeways. Many neo-realist films, including this one, indict society for failing to provide for its citizens economically; 'Dusty and Sweets McGee' seems to point a finger at spiritual deficit.[http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/15-great-american-movies-influenced-by-italian-neo-realism/ 15 Great American Movies Influenced buy Italian Neo-Realism Taste of Cinema]
Cast
*Clifton Tip Fredell as Tip
*Kit Ryder as Male Hustler
*Billy Gray as City Life
*Bob Graham as Little Boy
*Nancy Wheeler as Nancy
*Russ Knight as Weird Beard
*William A. Fraker as The Cellist
Reception
Experimental filmmaker Thom Andersen praised the film for its "lyricism, sense of wonder and humor".[https://www.filmlinc.org/films/dusty-and-sweets-mcgee/ Film at Lincoln Center]
Controversy
In 1998, film critic Leonard Maltin settled a libel suit brought by cast member Billy Gray, whom Maltin had identified in his review of the film as a real-life drug addict and dealer. The statement had appeared in print for nearly 25 years in Maltin's annual movie guide before Maltin publicly apologized for the error.[https://www.sfweekly.com/news/father-knows-bud-didnt-use-heroin/ Father Knows Bud Didn't Use Heroin - SF Weekly]See also
* List of American films of 1971
*'Aloha Bobby and Rose'
* New Hollywood
References
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