HAVE A GOOD TRIP: ADVENTURES IN PSYCHEDELICS is a documentary featuring comedic tripping stories from A-list actors, comedians, and musicians. Star-studded reenactments and trippy animations bring their surreal hallucinations to life. Mixing comedy with a thorough investigation of psychedelics, HAVE A GOOD TRIP explores the pros, cons, science, history, future, pop cultural impact, and cosmic possibilities of hallucinogens.
The film tackles the big questions: Can psychedelics have a powerful role in treating depression, addiction, and helping us confront our own mortality? Are we all made of the same stuff? Is love really all we need? Can trees talk?
Cast members include Ben Stiller, Adam Scott, Nick Offerman, Sarah Silverman, Ad-Rock, Rosie Perez, A$AP Rocky, Paul Scheer, Nick Kroll, and Rob Corddry to name a few. Written and directed by Donick Cary. Produced by Mike Rosenstein, Sunset Rose Pictures, and Sugarshack 2000.
“I’ve always loved documentaries, real stories about real people,” Cary says. “I was at the Nantucket film festival about 11 years ago, and Ben Stiller’s on the board. Fisher Stevens was also there to launch The Cove, and we all ended up in a conversation about psychedelics and people’s experiences, which turned out to be so entertaining. The Aristocrats had come out a few years before, and I realized how much I liked this vibe of an extended dinner party, with everyone sharing a story.”
So began an off-and-on project that would stretch out over the next decade, as Cary undertook the work of securing interview times with a lineup of subjects that he estimates as somewhere between 75 and 100. The array of familiar faces making the cut ranges from standup and sketch’s usual suspects (Nick Kroll, David Cross, Sarah Silverman) to musical luminaries (A$AP Rocky, Sting) and late legends with an unexpectedly poignant presence (Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain appear posthumously). “We were at the mercy of 100 celebrities’ schedules,” Cary says. “Someone like Sting would be available, but he’s got a concert tour and he’s doing a stage show in London and all this other stuff. He was great, though. We just had to wait nine months.”
Restricting himself to an 89-minute run time meant that he had to ditch the lion’s share of footage on the cutting room floor, a pain that years of “killing your babies” in writers’ rooms had prepared him for. Nevertheless, that left him with some great tidbits of his own. He says he’s got enough material for three or four more features, which might afford him a place for the clips with Whitney Cummings, Patton Oswalt, Bootsy Collins and Ed Ruscha, a cursory sampling of his unused favorites. Some A-listers, like Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney, just weren’t gettable. In other cases, Cary got the goods, but had trouble clinching permissions.
“We did sit down with Ozzy [Osbourne], and ended up not using it,” Cary recalls. “He didn’t feel comfortable after he’d told his story. He was like, ‘I don’t think I want to be in a drug movie.’ Which was fine! We respect that from anyone, but man, he’s got some stories … I got on the phone with Susan Sarandon, and we talked for an hour-plus on two or three occasions. But we couldn’t get her to commit to doing it or not. She had such wonderful things to say – she knew Timothy Leary, you know. But I guess I couldn’t get her to feel fully comfortable about the project. Still, these are people we were ridiculously lucky to have a little time with.”
So began an off-and-on project that would stretch out over the next decade, as Cary undertook the work of securing interview times with a lineup of subjects that he estimates as somewhere between 75 and 100. The array of familiar faces making the cut ranges from standup and sketch’s usual suspects (Nick Kroll, David Cross, Sarah Silverman) to musical luminaries (A$AP Rocky, Sting) and late legends with an unexpectedly poignant presence (Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain appear posthumously). “We were at the mercy of 100 celebrities’ schedules,” Cary says. “Someone like Sting would be available, but he’s got a concert tour and he’s doing a stage show in London and all this other stuff. He was great, though. We just had to wait nine months.”
Restricting himself to an 89-minute run time meant that he had to ditch the lion’s share of footage on the cutting room floor, a pain that years of “killing your babies” in writers’ rooms had prepared him for. Nevertheless, that left him with some great tidbits of his own. He says he’s got enough material for three or four more features, which might afford him a place for the clips with Whitney Cummings, Patton Oswalt, Bootsy Collins and Ed Ruscha, a cursory sampling of his unused favorites. Some A-listers, like Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney, just weren’t gettable. In other cases, Cary got the goods, but had trouble clinching permissions.
“We did sit down with Ozzy [Osbourne], and ended up not using it,” Cary recalls. “He didn’t feel comfortable after he’d told his story. He was like, ‘I don’t think I want to be in a drug movie.’ Which was fine! We respect that from anyone, but man, he’s got some stories … I got on the phone with Susan Sarandon, and we talked for an hour-plus on two or three occasions. But we couldn’t get her to commit to doing it or not. She had such wonderful things to say – she knew Timothy Leary, you know. But I guess I couldn’t get her to feel fully comfortable about the project. Still, these are people we were ridiculously lucky to have a little time with.”
“The takeaway should not be that we’re advocating this for everyone, or that absolutely everyone should do drugs,” he says. “No one should get peer-pressured into taking it, because if you start with fear and trepidation, you’re much more likely to have a bad time.”
In his own soundbites as well as the ones he selected and arranged for the film, Cary urges care and preparation. Hunter S Thompson, William Burroughs, Michael Pollan, and Carlos Castaneda fill out his recommended reading list for squares curious about the ins and outs of consciousness expansion. He wants to demystify psychotropics, which could stand to benefit more people than previously assumed. “What’s been great in the last two or three years has been seeing a destigmatization and a more rational conversation about using psychedelics for therapy, or in therapeutic settings instead of party settings,” he says. “One of the big things we’re up against as humans is empathizing, being able to think from another person’s point of view. Psychedelics can help a person get out of their own box, and think their way into someone else’s.”
In his own soundbites as well as the ones he selected and arranged for the film, Cary urges care and preparation. Hunter S Thompson, William Burroughs, Michael Pollan, and Carlos Castaneda fill out his recommended reading list for squares curious about the ins and outs of consciousness expansion. He wants to demystify psychotropics, which could stand to benefit more people than previously assumed. “What’s been great in the last two or three years has been seeing a destigmatization and a more rational conversation about using psychedelics for therapy, or in therapeutic settings instead of party settings,” he says. “One of the big things we’re up against as humans is empathizing, being able to think from another person’s point of view. Psychedelics can help a person get out of their own box, and think their way into someone else’s.”
The Guardian
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