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, a down-and-out British writer desperate for redemption arrives in New York City. When he 'trips' on a mysterious drug called LSD, his experience is so profound that he goes on a mission to 'turn-on' the world with it. But when the demons from his past resurface, he becomes an easy target for the CIA, and the world 'turns' on him
INTRODUCTION:
Inspired by his book, "The Man Who Turned on the World," THE DIVINE RASCAL is a dramatic and darkly funny TV series about my dad, Michael Hollingshead—the man who gave Harvard professor Dr. Timothy Leary his very first hit of LSD—and how together they ignited the most consequential countercultural 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 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 never would have happened, 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 all of them. 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 social, cultural, and political uprising of the 1960s never would 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
Psychiatrists are experimenting with LSD as a treatment for PTSD, depression, Alzheimer's, cancer, alcoholism, and drug addiction. What was once considered a dangerous drug is a promising mental health therapy
Dr. Timothy Leary
Michael Hollingshead
Dr. Richard Alpert, Ram Dass
In fact, scientists today have 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
Set against the backdrop of a nation fractured by the Vietnam War, the bloody Civil Rights movement, and the battle for equal rights—their world mirrors the deep divisions of hatred, racism, and the stripping away of women’s rights in our world today
THE DIVINE RASCAL will not hesitate to thoroughly explore the complete truth about LSD, but the show is not a documentary. It is, instead, a compelling TV narrative that dramatizes the story of how these East Coast academics challenge the status quo with just a single drug and risk everything to do it:
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
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 conducts LSD experiments 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 an entire tray of acid-laced sugar cubes laying on the kitchen table and Vanessa eats all of them
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With her life on the line and knowing the Mansion's under surveillance, they make the agonizing decision to NOT take her to the hospital—but eventually...
THE ANTAGONISTS
On a parallel track, Sydney Gottlieb, the sadistic leader of the CIA government program "Operation MK Ultra," is conducting tortuous experiments with inhumane doses of LSD on prostitutes, addicts, and jazz musicians
President Nixon orders the CIA and NY District Attorney, G. Gordon Liddy to put Michael and Leary in jail. Liddy's relentless pursuit to criminalize LSD is as shameless as his ostentatious mustache
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
Set against the turbulent backdrop of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War, deep social unrest is ignited by a dangerous quest for justice
"My LSD will create the world's first bloodless revolution."
Michael Hollingshead
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 renowned and stunning femme fatale pianist in the smoky jazz joints of the West Village, is also a vigilant activist, fiercely protecting her fellow Black musicians from 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 fast. When she gets pregnant with Vanessa, the responsibilities of motherhood, coupled with Michael's incessant infidelity and chronic writer's block, take their toll on her fiery spirit. Unable to conform to the traditional role of a 1960s housewife, she winds up making choices that forever change her entire life.
Before Michael
After Michael
