Author: Martin McGee

Join cast, crew members and original Merry Prankster, George Walker for the Buffalo premiere of GOING FURTHUR. There will be a single matinee screening on July 10 at 11:30 AM followed by a performance and a Q & A (see Facebook event).

The legendary 1964 cross Country psychedelic bus trip sparked the 60s counterculture movement and was immortalized by novelist Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Fifty years after the iconic first Trip, Ken Kesey’s son Zane took Furthur-and his father’s legacy-back on the road for its longest running tour in history. Armed with a new band of Merry Pranksters (Neo Pranksters), the Furthur bus traveled over 15,000 miles in 75 days, riding into music festivals, community events, tribal gatherings and national landmarks.

A local scene in the movie that many Buffalonians will remember is the bus stopped for a party at the Tudor Lounge on September 17, 2014 while Happy Birthday was sung to the late Ken Kesey who died in 2001. The bus and the pranksters are also shown visiting Niagara Falls.

Get “On the Bus” as we experience first-hand the seeds sown by Ken and his crew, and how they’ve inspired a new generation. Through never-before-seen archival footage, as well as over 300 hours of film shot over the course of three months, Going Furthur will explore the roots of a culture birthed in the early sixties, and how the mission of those first few idealists have influenced the counterculture of today. Inspired by Furthur as a beacon of true American freedom, this will be an on-the-ground account of the massive potential we have in this generation to be the change we wish to see in the world.

How It All Started

Kesey had flown to New York in November 1963 with his wife Faye and Prankster George Walker for the opening of the Broadway version of his bestselling novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Kirk Douglas. He also managed to see the 1964 New York World’s Fair site under construction. Kesey needed to return to New York the following year to attend the publication party for his second novel Sometimes a Great Notion and hoped to use the occasion to visit the Fair after it opened. This plan gradually grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends and turn their adventures into a road movie, taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. As more Pranksters volunteered for the trip it became apparent they had outgrown Kesey’s station wagon, so Kesey bought a retired yellow school bus for $1,250 from Andre Hobson of Atherton, California. The license plates read “MAZ 80”. Hobson had already added bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen with refrigerator and stove for taking his 11 kids on vacation.

The Pranksters upgraded the bus with a generator, a sound system (with an interior and external intercom), a railing and seating platform on top of the bus, and an observation turret coming out the top made from a washing machine drum fitted into a hole cut in the roof. Another platform was welded to the rear to hold the generator and a motorcycle. The bus was painted by the various Pranksters in a variety of psychedelic colors and designs. The paint was not day-glo (which was not yet common in 1964) but primary colors, and the peace symbol wasn’t yet evident.

After finally reaching their destination, New York City, they picked up Allen Ginsberg and headed to the rural Millbrook estate to pay a visit to ex Harvard psychologists, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka, Ram Das) who were practicing a different, more meditative kind of trip than Kesey and his pals were involved in. The Pranksters coined the scene there the “Crypt Trip”, as the participants at Millbrook were mostly holed up deep inside the recesses of the mansion exploring the cosmic Mind. The 2014 bus in Going Furthur visits the famous house.

The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern, who first painted the word “Furthur” (with two U’s, quickly corrected) on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. The misspelled name is still often used, as in Wolfe’s book.

The original bus’s last journey was a trip to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Once its historic trips had come to an end it was parked in the swamp on Kesey’s Farm in Oregon where it deteriorated over the decades.