THE
DIVINE
RASCAL
The True Story of the Man Who "Turned On" the World with LSD and Why He Was Erased from History
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 'trips' on LSD for the first time, his experience is so profound that he launches a mission to 'turn-on' the world with it.
INTRODUCTION:
THE DIVINE RASCAL is a dramatic, darkly humorous TV series based on the life of my father, Michael Hollingshead. Inspired by his memoir, The Man Who Turned on the World, the show tells the untold story of how he introduced renowned Harvard psychology professor Dr. Timothy Leary to LSD—and how together they created 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 and the man without whom Timothy Leary and the 1960s psychedelic revolution never would have existed, Michael is all these things and more.
WHAT'S LSD?
WEEK TO WEEK:
We follow the journey of our brilliant, broken, boozing revolutionary, armed with the original batch of pure LSD—a force as explosive as the atom bomb itself.
Desperate for recognition and brimming with new purpose, he shares his mysterious hallucinogen with the charming Harvard psychology professor, Dr. Timothy Leary—a rebellious maverick in his own right—and his loyal and doting assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert—a budding spiritualist with immense generational wealth.
With these unlikely allies, Hollingshead's LSD revolution might now be possible.
United by ambition, the trio conducts LSD experiments on Harvard grad students that redefine the entire field of psychology and ignite a revolution across America.
But when egos clash and power struggles erupt, they draw the unwanted attention of the U.S. government.
Gaining notoriety, the CIA decries their movement as an attack on American values and places Hollinghead at the top of their watchlist.
The CIA's secret LSD torture program
Cornered and desperate, how much is one man willing to sacrifice to save his glorious revolution?
Vanessa, his daughter
WHY ME?
"My dad did so much LSD, psilocybin, blue-blotter, and 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 on the kitchen table. 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 it in a way that changed the world for the better? And what if the father of the revolution couldn't be a father to you?
The complex relationships 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 until now."
Vanessa Hollingshead
SERIES OVERVIEW
Part One
New York in the '60s
Fleeing England's oppressive classism and haunted by personal demons, Hollingshead lands in the vibrant chaos of New York City.
He heads for the bohemian heart of the West Village and easily manipulates his way into the inner circle of the iconic Beatnik writers.
The Poetry Gods of Angst
Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac & Hollingshead
When he meets the civil rights activist and femme fatale jazz pianist, Sophie, their erotic love affair leads to an unexpected pregnancy.
Sophie
Natalie Portman
As months pass, Hollingshead battles debilitating writer's block and drowns himself in alcohol. Nearing collapse, the legendary author Aldous Huxley steps in and tells him about an unknown psychochemical that promises salvation, if only he can get his hands on it.
"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? I step to the rooftop's edge into some other land of unlikeliness when 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 throws me over the edge. 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 reborn. I am free. I am One with the Universe, one with the Creator, one with God.
I am God."
While experiencing euphoria, Sophie is frightened and alone, giving birth to Vanessa.
Still tripping, he rushes to her side. Promising a fresh start, he abandons his tired aim of writing the next great novel and replaces it with a bold new one: to turn on the world with LSD. But how?
Part Two
Hard left to Harvard University.
Off the word of Huxley and armed with 5000 hits of LSD, Hollingshead tracks down Professor Leary—a brilliant Harvard mind and roguish drug advocate.
Awed by Hollingshead's conviction, Leary takes his drug and becomes the first convert to Hollingshead's mission.
Leary & Hollingshead
Forging an unbreakable bond, they recruit Leary's assistant, Dr. Richard Alpert.
The trio proselytize LSD, becoming pariahs and rockstars in equal measure.
What follows is a torrent of sex, drugs and scientific discovery.
A threat to traditional values, they're expelled and branded radicals.
Part Three
Which brings us to Millbrook Mansion, a dilapidated 64-room baroque castle in upstate New York.
With Alpert’s wealth and Hollingshead and Leary’s rising celebrity, the mansion erupts into a combination of research lab and madhouse. Experiments with LSD can now carry on with reckless abandon.
Celebrities, artists, mystics, and revolutionaries travel from around the world just to have Hollingshead guide their trips— inspiring The Beatles to go from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "I Am the Walrus."
McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg
Lennon & McCartney
Andy Warhol &
Edie Sedgwick
William Burroughs
The Rolling Stones
Salvador Dali
But these are halcyon days, and they don’t last.
Hollingshead and Leary’s ideologies begin to clash and jealousy kicks in over who is the real Godfather of LSD.
Hollingshead's relationship with Sophie begins to crack as well. When their 5-year-old little girl eats a tray of LSD-laced sugar cubes and nearly dies, Sophie reaches a breaking point.
Meanwhile, the net around Millbrook tightens.
THE ANTAGONISTS
On a parallel track, Sydney Gottlieb, a sadistic bureaucrat leading the CIA's chilling MK-Ultra program, weaponizes LSD against those that he and the U.S. government deem disposable.
As Hollingshead and Leary's 'Make Love, Not War' rebellion takes America's youth by storm, Gottleib deploys the ruthless FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy to shut Millbrook down.
Hollingshead's world unravels as he faces the stark reality of losing his freedom and everything he holds dear. He must choose: save himself or sacrifice it all for his revolution.
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 2010, scientists picked up researching psychedelics exactly where our main characters—Hollingshead, Leary, and Alpert—left off 60 years ago—before the US government shut them down.
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael Hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert, Ram Dass
Today, psychiatrists are experimenting with LSD to treat depression, PTSD, Alzheimer's, cancer, alcoholism, and drug addiction. What was once considered a dangerous drug is now a promising mental health therapy.
Joaquin Phoenix
Benedict Cumberbatch
Bill Skarsgård
Set against a nation fractured by Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the battle for equal rights, The Divine Rascal mirrors the deep divisions of racism and sexism in our nation today.
THE WORLD:
LSD blasts its way onto the 1950s post-industrial "Norman Rockwell" scene. It shatters America's puritanical view of the world and opens the curtains of the mind.
MAIN CHARACTERS
MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD - THE DIVINE RASCAL
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Raised by a violent and raging alcoholic father in the unforgiving North of England, Michael harbors an insatiable need to be admired and adored. As a teenager, he unexpectedly finds solace at a reform school, until haunting flashbacks from his horrific childhood continue to torment him. With a massive chip on his shoulder, he uses his high IQ and razor-sharp wit to manipulate his way into any social circle, especially the upper class and academic elite. Yet beneath this magnetic facade lies a dangerous belief: if his father is disposable, so is everyone else. With Michael, you risk losing your mind, your money, or possibly both. He's the guy that 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 don't and he sabotages everything, including the ones he loves the most. His greatest tragedy is that the enlightenment he so effortlessly guides hundreds of others to find he never finds for himself again. He spends the rest of his life chasing his first LSD trip to oblivion.
Before LSD
After LSD
DR TIMOTHY LEARY - THE HIGH PRIEST
The alpha-male antithesis to Hollingshead's flamboyant peacock, Tim is a psychology professor at Harvard 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 harder into his work with one overwhelming need: to scientifically prove that, in twelve hours, psychedelic drugs can accomplish 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 the "High Priest" of LSD 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 Hollingshead shows up. A respected Harvard psychology professor, he brings an unrequited love for Leary along with a ton of money to pay for all of their projects, including Michael himself. Dick 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
After LSD
SOPHIE HOLLINGSHEAD - JAZZ PIANIST & ACTIVIST
Sophie, the stunning femme fatale pianist of West Village's smoky jazz joints, is a fierce activist, who tirelessly defends 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 to a flame, it burns too bright. When she gets pregnant with Vanessa, the weight of motherhood, coupled with Michael's infidelity and his chronic writer's block, smothers her vibrant spirit. Unable to conform to the expectations of a housewife, she makes choices that irrevocably alter the entire course of her life.
Before Michael
After Michael
