THE
DIVINE
RASCAL
The True Story of the Man who "Turned On" the World with LSD and the People Who Erased Him
created by:
Jeanne Heaton &
Vanessa Hollingshead
LOGLINE:
In 1959, when a down-and-out British writer desperate to reinvent himself arrives in New York City and he 'trips' on a powerful drug called LSD, his experience is so profound that he goes on a mission to 'turn-on' the world with it—but when his mysterious and traumatic past catches up with him, he becomes an easy target for the CIA, and the world 'turns' on him
INTRODUCTION:
Inspired by his memoir, The Man Who Turned on the World, THE DIVINE RASCAL is a dramatic and darkly humorous TV series about my father, Michael Hollingshead—the man who gave the infamous Harvard professor Dr. Timothy Leary his very first hit of LSD, and how together they ignited the most powerful counterculture revolution of our time.
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Michael hollingshead
Dr. Timothy
Leary
IP:
"The Man Who Turned On The World"
by Michael Hollingshead
Published 1973
©All Rights Reserved
WHO IS HE?
With a glass of scotch in one hand and 5000 hits of LSD in a mayonnaise jar in the other, no one is more mysterious and unfathomable than the Divine Rascal, Michael Hollingshead. A genius, a Zelig, a trickster, a guru, a conman, a writer, an alcoholic, a junky, a father, an ex-member of the British Air Force, and the man without whom Timothy Leary and the 1960s psychedelic revolution would have never existed, Michael is all of these things and more.
WHAT'S LSD?
WHY ME?
"My dad did so much LSD, psilocybin, blue-blotter, purple haze... that we used to go on family trips together without ever leaving home. When I was five, he left a tray of acid-laced sugar cubes laying on the kitchen table and I ate them all. I don't have childhood memories; I have flashbacks."
But now what if, in those flashbacks, your inept father was also an advocate for drug use? And what if he advocated for drug use in a way that changed the world for the better? In fact, what if, without him, the entire social, cultural, and political uprising of the 1960s wouldn't have happened?
The complex relationship my father had with LSD, the remarkable people he "turned on" with it, and the impact they had on an entire generation have never been dramatized in a television series before, until now.
Vanessa Hollingshead
WHY NOW?
"To fathom hell or soar angelic, take a pinch of psychedelic"
With psychedelic-therapy centers opening all over the world, LSD is back in the zeitgeist and hipper than ever before.
In fact, psychiatrists are experimenting with LSD to treat PTSD, depression, Alzheimer's, cancer, alcoholism, and drug addiction. What was once considered a dangerous drug is today a promising mental health therapy.
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael Hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert, Ram Dass
In 2010, scientists picked up researching psychedelics exactly where our main characters: Michael Hollingshead, Dr. Timothy Leary, and Dr. Richard Alpert left off 60 years ago, before the US government shut them down.
Joaquin Phoenix
as Leary
Benedict Cumberbatch as Hollingshead
Bill Skarsgård as Alpert
THE DIVINE RASCAL's world, set against the backdrop of a nation fractured by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the battle for equal rights, mirrors the deep divisions of hatred, racism, and the stripping away of women’s rights in our world today.
Week to week, the series dramatizes LSD's origin story through the tumultuous relationships of these East Coast Harvard academics. Driven by their need to redefine consciousness and transform all of psychology with this brand-new chemical, each episode highlights their mounting sacrifices—putting friendships, sanity, and family on the line. Teetering on the brink of genius and madness, they face off against the US government and ultimately each other, losing everything they love most:
Vanessa
"I moved to the rooftop and all is chaos. Kaleidoscopic images surge powerfully in on me and I am seized by an overwhelming fear of going insane. My body is strange... Numb... Lifeless... Am I dying? As I step to the rooftop's edge into some other land of unlikeliness, a sudden bolt of lightning splits me through. The primordial ooze from a childhood crushed by the tyranny of a monstrous and violent alcoholic father grabs me by the throat and tries to throw me over the edge. But then, as if woven on wings of stardust, a heavenly realm delivers me to a place where the "I" of "Me" no longer exists. And I am born aloft. I am suddenly free. I am One with the Universe, one with the Creator, one with God. I am God."
A lifelong atheist, Michael's first rooftop trip is so profound that he abandons his tired aim of writing the next great novel and replaces it with a new one: to "turn on" the world with LSD. But how?
SERIES OVERVIEW:
New York in the '60s
Fleeing England's oppressive classism and battling personal demons, the headstrong and penniless writer Michael arrives in New York City.
The Poetry Gods of Angst
Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac & Michael
When he meets the West Village civil rights activist and jazz pianist Sophie, they fall in love, she gets pregnant, and Vanessa is born.
Sophie
Natalie Portman
We make a hard left to Harvard University where Michael, armed with 5000 hits of LSD shows up and turns-on Leary.
Leary
Leary & Michael
United, this unlikely duo pushes the boundaries of LSD experimentation with their students that shatter the fundamental principles of psychology and the very fabric of society itself.
The newly fired Leary and the terminally unemployed Michael land at the sprawling, infamous Millbrook Mansion in upstate New York, where research with LSD can now carry on with reckless abandon.
A cross between a country club, a madhouse, a research center, a monastery, and a Fellini film set, Michael becomes known as the greatest "trip-guide" of all time.
Lennon & McCartney
Andy Warhol &
Edie Sedgwick
Jefferson Airplane
Michael
McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg
Jagger & Richards
One night, in a drunken stupor, Michael leaves a tray of nine acid-laced sugar cubes laying on the kitchen table, and Vanessa eats them all.
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With her life on the line and knowing the Mansion's under surveillance, they make the agonizing decision NOT to take her to the hospital, but eventually...
THE ANTAGONISTS
On a parallel contrasting track, Sydney Gottlieb, the sadistic leader of the CIA's "Operation MK Ultra," is using tortuous amounts of LSD on prostitutes, addicts, and jazz musicians to erase their minds and turn them into ruthless CIA killers.
When Gottlieb is threatened by Leary and Michael's "make love, not war" revolution taking America's youth by storm, Gottleib orders FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy to shut Millbrook down and put them all in jail.
As Michael's loyalties clash, we're on edge of our seats: will Michael betray Leary with the CIA, or will Leary betray Michael with the FBI? Or could Michael mastermind a cunning double-cross that saves them all?
THE WORLD:
LSD blasts its way onto the 1950s postindustrial "Norman Rockwell" scene. It shatters America's puritanical view of the world and opens the curtains of the mind
"With my LSD, I will create the world's first bloodless revolution."
Michael Hollingshead
Set against the turbulent backdrop of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War...
A love-fueled renaissance, defiant and vibrant, refuses to be snuffed out by government forces determined to silence them.
MAIN CHARACTERS
MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD - THE DIVINE RASCAL
Michael emerges from a brutal childhood in the impoverished north of England with memories stained by an alcoholic and violent father. Vowing to break the cycle, he dreams of being a loving father, the kind he never had. But the trauma from the beatings and needing his dad's approval creates one primal need: to be loved- by everyone. A sinner and a saint, he’s the guy everyone can’t wait to get to the party and the one they can’t wait to leave. Women, drugs, and booze fill his god-size hole until they stop working and he sabotages everything. Beneath his magnetic surface, he seethes with the raging belief that since his father is disposable, so is everyone else. When you fall under his spell, you risk losing your mind, your money, or possibly both. His greatest tragedy is that the liberation he so effortlessly guides others to find he never finds for himself again. He dedicates the rest of his life to pursuing his first euphoric trip to oblivion.
Before LSD
After LSD
DR TIMOTHY LEARY - THE HIGH PRIEST
The alpha-male antithesis to Michael's flamboyant peacock, Tim is a Harvard psychology professor who everyone wants to teach their class or take to bed. With his relentless womanizing and his promiscuity with men, his wife commits suicide, leaving him to raise their two kids on his own. Guilt-ridden, he throws himself even harder into his work with one overwhelming need: to scientifically prove that LSD can accomplish in twelve hours what it takes twelve years of psychotherapy to do. But with his need to be in the limelight and preaching to the youth of America to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," he goes from LSD’s "High Priest" to Nixon’s "Most Dangerous Man in America." When asked about how he feels about ruining an entire generation of 72 million people, he says, "Yeah man, but only a hundred thousand thanked me for it."
Before LSD
After LSD
DR. RICHARD ALPERT - BABA RAM DASS
Dr. Alpert is Leary’s right-hand man— until Michael shows up. A respected Harvard psychology professor, he brings an unrequited love for Leary along with a ton of money to pay for their projects, one of which is Michael himself. Richard desperately wants to fit in but how, when you’re a gay man in the ‘60s. His desire to win Leary's romantic love at any cost becomes his undoing. The first time he trips, instead of seeing God, he has a full-blown panic attack, and the chains of conformity are not removed for him. His search for permanent enlightenment takes him to India, where he transforms into the famous Guru, Baba Ram Dass and writes the famous best-seller:
"Be Here Now."
Before LSD
Before LSD
After LSD
After LSD
SOPHIE HOLLINGSHEAD - JAZZ PIANIST & ACTIVIST
Sophie, the stunning femme fatale pianist of West Village's smoky jazz joints, is a fierce activist, tirelessly defending her fellow Black musicians against racism and mob violence. When she meets Michael, their erotic love affair makes her feel more alive than ever before, but like a moth drawn to a flame, it burns too brightly and too quickly. When she becomes pregnant with Vanessa, the weight of motherhood, coupled with Michael's infidelity and his chronic writer's block, begins to smother her vibrant spirit. Unable to conform to the expectations of a 1960s housewife, she makes choices that irrevocably alter the course of her life.
Before Michael
After Michael
