Purple Haze
In the spring of 1968, Princeton University student Matt Caulfield and his three roommates celebrate President Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the presidential race with loud music and marijuana. A n…
Purple Haze
In the spring of 1968, Princeton University student Matt Caulfield and his three roommates celebrate President Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the presidential race with loud music and marijuana. A neighboring student lodges a noise complaint with the police and the four are expelled. Matt hitchhikes to his family home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and finds his sister, Phoebe, alone in the house. While Phoebe is happy to see her brother, she warns that their parents, Margaret and Walter, are deeply upset by his expulsion. In the morning, Walter orders Matt to get a haircut and a job if he wants to continue living at home. Sometime later, Matt meets his girl friend, Kitty Armstrong, outside her high school. Although she greets him enthusiastically, Kitty is bewildered by his lack of concern over losing his scholarship. She also worries that his sudden disinterest in higher education could jeopardize their future together.They attend a screening of The Graduate, which Matt considers an allegory for his own life, while Kitty dismisses it as unrealistic. She invites him to a country club dance the following Saturday, but suggests he cut his hair to placate the more conservative members. Matt is offended and prefers to discuss the matter later in the week. Upon his return home, Matt learns that Senator Robert F. Kennedy has been shot by an assassin while campaigning for the presidency. When Matt arrives at the country club on Saturday evening, Kitty is with another escort. Matt is indignant, but Kitty reminds him that he never telephoned her. Angered and embarrassed, Matt wanders outside and encounters "Jolly Jeff" Maley, his former military academy classmate, sitting on a diving board at the country club pool. Matt compliments Jeff on considerable weight loss, which the latter attributes to amphetamines, among other recreational drugs. Jeff falls in the water and most of his drugs are ruined. He tells Matt he knows where another party is. They go over the speed limit and get chased by a cop on the way and when they veer out of the wrong lane,they actually cause the cop to go off the road. The cop is okay and they drive on.They go to a party at the home of their friend, Dwayne Billings, also known as "Derek Savage," a popular late-night radio disc jockey, and almost get shot walking into a room with some big time drug dealers. Derek apologetically leads them out of the room.A young radical woman seduces Matt, then reveals herself to be Derek's live-in girl friend. When Matt arrives home the next morning, his family is leaving for church. Phoebe wishes he could give in a little,but it's too late anyway.Walter Caulfield orders him out of the house.Jeff solves Matt's problem by offering him a free room in a house he inherited from his late father. While attending a piano recital by her daughter, Phoebe, Margaret Caulfield encourages Matt to reconcile with the concerned Kitty, but he declines, believing they are no longer compatible. Walter is at his cabin fishing.Matt and Jeff play around that afternoon underneath the highway overpass,and Jeff nearly falls and hurts himself trying to get his falling drugs back.Jeff and Matt discuss how while they like free love, it's kind of taking the sport out of courtship since people no longer have to act like they're in love.Matt admits to Jeff that, while he rejects Kitty's conformist lifestyle, he feels equally unsuited to Derek Savage's open relationship, and wonders if a middle ground exists.Jeff replies the only middle ground is marriage,and neither one of them is ready for that.That evening, they find Phoebe sleeping outside their door.She borrowed their mother's car.She asks to move in with Matt since Walter has denied her the opportunity to attend the Juilliard School in New York City,which her tutor has set up.Matt said she can't stay with him because he can barely take care of himself. He drives his sister home, with the promise that he will personally take her to Juilliard if she can secure a scholarship.Their parents are upset,and Walter says he should have known she'd be with him, and he is dismissive of Matt,who says he should deal with his problems with Phoebe. He doesn't even want Matt in the house. Matt wanders the streets, and in the morning,Jeff picks him up by a phone booth, and recounts his own difficulties as a teenager, such his parents' divorce when his father walked out on his mother, his severe weight gain which actually came from his mother's gene pool,and his premature hair loss.However, Jeff's losing his virginity,and years of psychotherapy have taught him to stop blaming his parents for his troubles,and advises Matt to do the same.He also tells Matt to stop feeling guilty for not being the person his parents expect him to be.Later, an uncomfortable Margaret meets Matt for lunch at a diner full of hippie radicals.She scoffs over the largely vegetarian menu,and tells him that his father misses him, but is unable to accept how his son has changed.Matt admits he's changed but he doesn't know what he can do. He just doesn't want to deal with his father. That evening, Jeff is despondent and overeating over losing his computer-engineering job, partly because they discovered his supposedly dead mother was still alive.Unfortunately, that job granted him a deferment from military service. He and Matt discuss methods to avoid being drafted,as both are 1A and therefore eligible,but neither can agree on a solution.Jeff says with Matt's ROTC and his military background already they could get a promotion, but Matt says 4 years of that crap was enough.Jeff suggests going to Canada, but Matt says they may never be able to come back and it's too cold. Jeff suggests prison."At least we know when we're getting out, after a friendly g******** or two!" Mask scoffs at that but suggest they could become priests."We'd get a free education and when it came time to take our vows we could say we changed our minds."Jeff replies he isn't catholic. Matt says just convert.Jeff shrugs.They attend the screening of a film depicting the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. While Jeff attempts to seduce a young woman who is saddened by the images, Bill, the host, reveals that the bombing of North Vietnam has caused much greater devastation, and people are fighting for nothing more than their own self-determination over there.Derek is at the screening too. Matt asks how he beat the draft,and Derek replies he faked being crippled. Derek makes out with a girl in his DJ office while he's introducing a song on the air,, and Matt is the other room making out with another girl who rambles on about how all we're really doing is going on with the flow latching on occasionally some to some brief security, like her unemployment checks.Jeff is in the next room with a young woman from the screening, ready to party. In August, Matt and Jeff sit in a bar and watch television news footage of riots outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.The young folks in the bar curse the cops.Despite police brutality toward anti-war demonstrators, Matt regrets not attending. Upon receiving his draft notice,Jeff stairs wistfully at his high school in the rain, until Matt gets him back in the car. He takes Matt's advice and requests a letter from his psychiatrist, stating that he is mentally unfit.The psychiatrist writes a fraudulent letter, as he has for numerous other reluctant draftees, saying Jeff is depressed, chemically dependent, impotent, and falls to pieces in the face of aggression.Jeff is ordered to report for examination the next morning. He acts clumsy and disoriented even bumping into a wall,but they laugh at his phony letter and Jeff is officially drafted.He is told to report for induction the following morning.That evening,at a bowling alley,Jeff encounters his former girl friend, Lori, who is saddened by the news and gives him a tearful goodbye,despite the fact that she's dating someone else.He and Matt enter the adjacent barroom, where they are harassed by a group of rednecks who threaten to shear Matt's head. Jeff and Matt get into a brawl with them,and run for the parking lot with the gang in pursuit. They run across the bowling alley and out the back way, throwing pins to slow their pursuers down.They make it outside but are cornered and attacked.Jeff is hit in the stomach,causing him to cough blood. The thugs run and drive off as police arrive, while Matt tries to comfort Jeff.They sit behind their car to hide from the police until Jeff recovers and he admits to Matt that he's really scared. He couldn't even shower and go to the bathroom with strangers when he was at the Academy. He always went home smelling. Still coughing up some blood he sobs in Matt's arms afraid he's not going to make it.Matt says he'll make it.In the morning, as Jeff leaves for boot camp on the bus with the other recruits,Matt gets out of the car,runs up to the bus,and as it pulls off,he runs by the overjoyed Jeff's window and promises to join him in the next few days. That evening, Matt visits his parents' home with his hair clipped short away,(the disbelieving barber did it for free),explaining to his dad in the garage that he has enlisted in the Army and is leaving in a couple of days.Walter just mutters good luck and admonishes Matt,saying he could have avoided combat duty by enlisting as an officer,or in the reserves,but instead he should be in Vietnam in about 6 weeks and he's a damn idiot.Matt says he just wanted to get it over with.Walter says he has no idea what he's getting himself into.Margaret isn't home but Phoebe is.When he goes inside and tells her,Phoebe angrily reminds her brother of his promise to take her to Juilliard.Matt says Jeff needs him and he can't do it alone. Matt sits outside the airport the next day in his car.He returns to his place to find Phoebe outside again.She says Jeff's mother called.Jeff died of a heart attack his first day in boot camp.Matt drives to Derek's radio station that night and tells him. Derek somberly stops playing Cream's "I Feel Free"and puts on Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." "This is for Jolly Jeff from two old friends.Happy trails." After the funeral,which is,ironically,a military one,Matt sees his family has attended He says he's going to be staying with Jeff's mother until he leaves,and he gives Phoebe the keys to his car so she can drive herself to Juilliard.He gets in the hearse with Jeff's mother, this is the funeral was very nice although "Jeffrey would have hated it."She doesn't understand how Matt could say his death was a waste, but Matt replies Jeff would be the first to agree with him.She remarks at how bitter Matt is,and he can't believe she isn't bitter but she says she's just sad and lonely. She asked if Matt believe in God.He doesn't know but she believes everything God does is part of His plan, even if we can't understand it On the day of Matt's induction,a Sergeant coldly instructs the recruits in the recruiting office as they are all officially inducted into the army and take the oath of office.The recruits all say goodbye to their families.Walter expresses his pride,while Margaret hugs Matt goodbye and apologizes for Phoebe's absence,but saying she sends her love,unaware that she is watching from across the street in his car.Matt sees her as he gets on the bus for boot camp.The group departs on the bus for boot camp.After they've driven awhile,the young officer sergeant in charge berates one of the recruits for listening to music,and throws his headphones out the window, then he goes back to the front of the bus.Matt is filled with growing despair, finally,he removes his belt, walks to the front of the bus,and tightens it around the bus driver's neck,then renders the officer sergeant unconscious with a kick to the head.He forces the driver to pull over,then he opens the doors,and runs from the bus as the other passengers cheer and applaud. The bus has pulled over on a bridge overpass above a river,and he runs down the overpass,past a few backed up cars,then he leaps off the overpass at the front,and runs into the woods by the river. He runs away into the fields and we hear Jimi Hendrix playing The Star Spangled Banner.and the film ends.
Purple Haze
Drama
Film Details
In the spring of 1968, Princeton University student Matt Caulfield and his three roommates celebrate President Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the presidential race with loud music and marijuana. A neighboring student lodges a noise complaint with the police and the four are expelled. Matt hitchhikes to his family home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and finds his sister, Phoebe, alone in the house.
While Phoebe is happy to see her brother, she warns that their parents, Margaret and Walter, are deeply upset by his expulsion. In the morning, Walter orders Matt to get a haircut and a job if he wants to continue living at home. Sometime later, Matt meets his girl friend, Kitty Armstrong, outside her high school.
Although she greets him enthusiastically, Kitty is bewildered by his lack of concern over losing his scholarship. She also worries that his sudden disinterest in higher education could jeopardize their future together.They attend a screening of The Graduate, which Matt considers an allegory for his own life, while Kitty dismisses it as unrealistic. She invites him to a country club dance the following Saturday, but suggests he cut his hair to placate the more conservative members.
Matt is offended and prefers to discuss the matter later in the week. Upon his return home, Matt learns that Senator Robert F. Kennedy has been shot by an assassin while campaigning for the presidency.
When Matt arrives at the country club on Saturday evening, Kitty is with another escort. Matt is indignant, but Kitty reminds him that he never telephoned her. Angered and embarrassed, Matt wanders outside and encounters "Jolly Jeff" Maley, his former military academy classmate, sitting on a diving board at the country club pool.
Matt compliments Jeff on considerable weight loss, which the latter attributes to amphetamines, among other recreational drugs. Jeff falls in the water and most of his drugs are ruined. He tells Matt he knows where another party is.
They go over the speed limit and get chased by a cop on the way and when they veer out of the wrong lane,they actually cause the cop to go off the road. The cop is okay and they drive on.They go to a party at the home of their friend, Dwayne Billings, also known as "Derek Savage," a popular late-night radio disc jockey, and almost get shot walking into a room with some big time drug dealers. Derek apologetically leads them out of the room.A young radical woman seduces Matt, then reveals herself to be Derek's live-in girl friend.
When Matt arrives home the next morning, his family is leaving for church. Phoebe wishes he could give in a little,but it's too late anyway.Walter Caulfield orders him out of the house.Jeff solves Matt's problem by offering him a free room in a house he inherited from his late father. While attending a piano recital by her daughter, Phoebe, Margaret Caulfield encourages Matt to reconcile with the concerned Kitty, but he declines, believing they are no longer compatible.
Walter is at his cabin fishing.Matt and Jeff play around that afternoon underneath the highway overpass,and Jeff nearly falls and hurts himself trying to get his falling drugs back.Jeff and Matt discuss how while they like free love, it's kind of taking the sport out of courtship since people no longer have to act like they're in love.Matt admits to Jeff that, while he rejects Kitty's conformist lifestyle, he feels equally unsuited to Derek Savage's open relationship, and wonders if a middle ground exists.Jeff replies the only middle ground is marriage,and neither one of them is ready for that.That evening, they find Phoebe sleeping outside their door.She borrowed their mother's car.She asks to move in with Matt since Walter has denied her the opportunity to attend the Juilliard School in New York City,which her tutor has set up.Matt said she can't stay with him because he can barely take care of himself. He drives his sister home, with the promise that he will personally take her to Juilliard if she can secure a scholarship.Their parents are upset,and Walter says he should have known she'd be with him, and he is dismissive of Matt,who says he should deal with his problems with Phoebe. He doesn't even want Matt in the house.
Matt wanders the streets, and in the morning,Jeff picks him up by a phone booth, and recounts his own difficulties as a teenager, such his parents' divorce when his father walked out on his mother, his severe weight gain which actually came from his mother's gene pool,and his premature hair loss.However, Jeff's losing his virginity,and years of psychotherapy have taught him to stop blaming his parents for his troubles,and advises Matt to do the same.He also tells Matt to stop feeling guilty for not being the person his parents expect him to be.Later, an uncomfortable Margaret meets Matt for lunch at a diner full of hippie radicals.She scoffs over the largely vegetarian menu,and tells him that his father misses him, but is unable to accept how his son has changed.Matt admits he's changed but he doesn't know what he can do. He just doesn't want to deal with his father. That evening, Jeff is despondent and overeating over losing his computer-engineering job, partly because they discovered his supposedly dead mother was still alive.Unfortunately, that job granted him a deferment from military service.
He and Matt discuss methods to avoid being drafted,as both are 1A and therefore eligible,but neither can agree on a solution.Jeff says with Matt's ROTC and his military background already they could get a promotion, but Matt says 4 years of that crap was enough.Jeff suggests going to Canada, but Matt says they may never be able to come back and it's too cold. Jeff suggests prison."At least we know when we're getting out, after a friendly g******** or two!" Mask scoffs at that but suggest they could become priests."We'd get a free education and when it came time to take our vows we could say we changed our minds."Jeff replies he isn't catholic. Matt says just convert.Jeff shrugs.They attend the screening of a film depicting the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
While Jeff attempts to seduce a young woman who is saddened by the images, Bill, the host, reveals that the bombing of North Vietnam has caused much greater devastation, and people are fighting for nothing more than their own self-determination over there.Derek is at the screening too. Matt asks how he beat the draft,and Derek replies he faked being crippled. Derek makes out with a girl in his DJ office while he's introducing a song on the air,, and Matt is the other room making out with another girl who rambles on about how all we're really doing is going on with the flow latching on occasionally some to some brief security, like her unemployment checks.Jeff is in the next room with a young woman from the screening, ready to party.
In August, Matt and Jeff sit in a bar and watch television news footage of riots outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.The young folks in the bar curse the cops.Despite police brutality toward anti-war demonstrators, Matt regrets not attending. Upon receiving his draft notice,Jeff stairs wistfully at his high school in the rain, until Matt gets him back in the car. He takes Matt's advice and requests a letter from his psychiatrist, stating that he is mentally unfit.The psychiatrist writes a fraudulent letter, as he has for numerous other reluctant draftees, saying Jeff is depressed, chemically dependent, impotent, and falls to pieces in the face of aggression.Jeff is ordered to report for examination the next morning.
He acts clumsy and disoriented even bumping into a wall,but they laugh at his phony letter and Jeff is officially drafted.He is told to report for induction the following morning.That evening,at a bowling alley,Jeff encounters his former girl friend, Lori, who is saddened by the news and gives him a tearful goodbye,despite the fact that she's dating someone else.He and Matt enter the adjacent barroom, where they are harassed by a group of rednecks who threaten to shear Matt's head. Jeff and Matt get into a brawl with them,and run for the parking lot with the gang in pursuit. They run across the bowling alley and out the back way, throwing pins to slow their pursuers down.They make it outside but are cornered and attacked.Jeff is hit in the stomach,causing him to cough blood.
The thugs run and drive off as police arrive, while Matt tries to comfort Jeff.They sit behind their car to hide from the police until Jeff recovers and he admits to Matt that he's really scared. He couldn't even shower and go to the bathroom with strangers when he was at the Academy. He always went home smelling.
Still coughing up some blood he sobs in Matt's arms afraid he's not going to make it.Matt says he'll make it.In the morning, as Jeff leaves for boot camp on the bus with the other recruits,Matt gets out of the car,runs up to the bus,and as it pulls off,he runs by the overjoyed Jeff's window and promises to join him in the next few days. That evening, Matt visits his parents' home with his hair clipped short away,(the disbelieving barber did it for free),explaining to his dad in the garage that he has enlisted in the Army and is leaving in a couple of days.Walter just mutters good luck and admonishes Matt,saying he could have avoided combat duty by enlisting as an officer,or in the reserves,but instead he should be in Vietnam in about 6 weeks and he's a damn idiot.Matt says he just wanted to get it over with.Walter says he has no idea what he's getting himself into.Margaret isn't home but Phoebe is.When he goes inside and tells her,Phoebe angrily reminds her brother of his promise to take her to Juilliard.Matt says Jeff needs him and he can't do it alone. Matt sits outside the airport the next day in his car.He returns to his place to find Phoebe outside again.She says Jeff's mother called.Jeff died of a heart attack his first day in boot camp.Matt drives to Derek's radio station that night and tells him.
Derek somberly stops playing Cream's "I Feel Free"and puts on Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." "This is for Jolly Jeff from two old friends.Happy trails." After the funeral,which is,ironically,a military one,Matt sees his family has attended He says he's going to be staying with Jeff's mother until he leaves,and he gives Phoebe the keys to his car so she can drive herself to Juilliard.He gets in the hearse with Jeff's mother, this is the funeral was very nice although "Jeffrey would have hated it."She doesn't understand how Matt could say his death was a waste, but Matt replies Jeff would be the first to agree with him.She remarks at how bitter Matt is,and he can't believe she isn't bitter but she says she's just sad and lonely. She asked if Matt believe in God.He doesn't know but she believes everything God does is part of His plan, even if we can't understand it On the day of Matt's induction,a Sergeant coldly instructs the recruits in the recruiting office as they are all officially inducted into the army and take the oath of office.The recruits all say goodbye to their families.Walter expresses his pride,while Margaret hugs Matt goodbye and apologizes for Phoebe's absence,but saying she sends her love,unaware that she is watching from across the street in his car.Matt sees her as he gets on the bus for boot camp.The group departs on the bus for boot camp.After they've driven awhile,the young officer sergeant in charge berates one of the recruits for listening to music,and throws his headphones out the window, then he goes back to the front of the bus.Matt is filled with growing despair, finally,he removes his belt, walks to the front of the bus,and tightens it around the bus driver's neck,then renders the officer sergeant unconscious with a kick to the head.He forces the driver to pull over,then he opens the doors,and runs from the bus as the other passengers cheer and applaud. The bus has pulled over on a bridge overpass above a river,and he runs down the overpass,past a few backed up cars,then he leaps off the overpass at the front,and runs into the woods by the river.
He runs away into the fields and we hear Jimi Hendrix playing The Star Spangled Banner.and the film ends..