Original subtitles

This is the city, Los Angeles, California.

Critics once called it a cultural desert,

a city of sun baked people and half baked ideas.

The new civic center is helping to modify that image.

In Los Angeles, ideas are big business.

For some, the stranger the better.

As a rule, new ideas don't stay new for very long here.

They grow big, but sooner rather than later,

they all disappear.

Some ideas are completely illegal.

That's when I go to work. I carry a badge.

It was Thursday, September 12th.

It was warm in Los Angeles.

We were working the day watch out of Juvenile Narcotics.

The boss is Captain Jack Morris.

My partner is Bill Gannon.

My name's Friday.

A man calling himself Brother William

had set up shop in an old house

in an older section of Hollywood.

He was distributing literature

favoring the legalization of marijuana and LSD.

We also believed he was selling narcotics to juveniles.

We had no positive information to develop.

The captain had asked us to go out and talk to him.

The story you are about to see is true.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Does captain really think we're gonna do any good

talking to this bird?

He wants us to let him know we know he's in business.

He's not keeping it a secret.

You may enter.

Welcome, welcome.

Welcome to the Temple of the Expanded Mind.

You William Bentley?

Not, legally, no. I'm Brother William.

Police officers.

Oh, yes, I might have known.

You people are the only ones

who still refer to me by my non-spiritual name.

Well, what brings you to the temple?

We'd like to talk to you.

Surely not about mind expansion.

- Not here. - We have information

you're selling acid and marijuana to juveniles.

Is this an official visit?

How do you mean that?

Are you here to make an arrest?

- No. - Then what brings you here,

- may I ask? - We just told you.

We have reason to believe that you're selling narcotics to juveniles.

Reason to believe?

You people lean rather heavily on that phrase, don't you?

When it's the truth.

Now, now, now, you're making a direct accusation.

If it reads that way to you.

- Do you have a warrant? - No.

Then I wouldn't be throwing false accusations about

unless I could prove them, Lieutenant.

- Sergeant. - Whatever.

Now let me see if I have this clear in my mind.

You're not here to make an arrest.

You don't have a warrant.

Then obviously you remain here

only if I desire that you shall.

So if it's polite conversation that you wish,

I strongly advise you to be civil.

With you?

Last time we bumped into each other,

you were hustling old ladies out of their pension checks.

You've been the route, Bentley,

and that's not an accusation. It's a fact.

That is all behind me now. I'm a man of God.

- People do change. - Is that so?

This temple and my affidavit say so, yes.

My charter is right there on the altar.

- The what? - The altar.

Presuming you can read anything other than a police file,

I suggest you do so.

"Church of the Universal God."

I am an absolutely legitimate member of the clergy.

You write your own Bible, too?

In a sense.

And like the Gideons, I give it away free.

If some wish to offer a small contribution to the temple,

it is accepted, but not necessary.

- You wrote this? - I did.

LSD opens the door to your mind,

permits you to experience the whole of human expression.

You live out every experience, no matter how bizarre.

You create your own brave new world

without ever leaving the comfort of your mind.

That's truth. Real truth.

For who? The kid who reads this trash

and ends up in a psycho ward at a hospital?

Or truth for the guy making a profit

by turning him on to it?

I'm not here to make a profit. I'm here to be a prophet.

I want to turn everybody on.

Let them find out for themselves

about the beauty inside their own minds.

If you've never taken the trip, you wouldn't know.

You haven't seen it.

Neither did the kid who pulled his eyes

out of their sockets to bet a better look,

or the 15-year-old up in San Jose

who went blind from staring at the sun.

LSD really opened up a new world for them.

If it didn't, they're in trouble

because they'll never see the old one again.

They're better off. Once you've been out there,

you don't want to come back anyway.

Ask anyone who has.

Compared to what is in here, reality is a bore.

You don't really care what damage you do

with this garbage, do you?

That is a holy book, the Bible of our temple.

Treat it kindly, or put it down.

How to manufacture LSD. The cultivation of marijuana.

I don't see anything in here about methadrine.

I'm devoting an entire book to that.

And you give this away, do you?

I do, for a small contribution.

What else do you peddle for a small contribution?

You make it sound like I'm selling poison.

Would people give poison to their children?

I know one little 8-year-old

who stayed out on a trip for three days

with her parents' permission.

Can you imagine that?

Three glorious days, and that little girl,

I tell you, knows more about the universe within her

than you will ever know.

Someday, all the kids will turn on.

But you wouldn't know, would you?

I mean, you don't turn on? Do you?

- Not your way. - Then don't knock it.

I haven't tried driving a car off a cliff, either.

I've seen other people who did.

I don't have to take a pill

or shove a needle in my arm to experiment.

I've seen it.

I've seen high school kids so strung out on methadrine

they didn't know their own names,

so high on LSD,

they couldn't even remember how to feed themselves.

It does not bother me in the least

that a few mental incompetents never came back from a trip.

That's the price we pay. It's evolution.

The survival of the fittest.

Those who don't survive the trip

could not have survived in life.

But, those who take it and come back,

they are the winners.

They are the new generation, an evolutionary breakthrough.

In 10 or 15 years, the kids you're arresting now

will be the senators, governors and presidents.

They'll be running the universities,

and writing the laws of the future.

How many kids have you sold acid to?

Ideas. That's all I sell.

But you take LSD, don't you?

In the book, I've said so in print,

I admit it. I smoke marijuana.

I take LSD from time to time.

Nothing you can do about that. Is there?

How many times have you taken acid?

Several hundred times, and look at me.

I'm as sane as you are. Maybe more so.

Why don't you arrest me? You have my book as proof.

It takes physical proof. You know that.

And if we had any, you'd have been in jail a long time ago.

Aha. So there you have it, my friend.

As I've been saying, I deal in ideas, nothing more.

I may even sell you a few.

You couldn't sell me directions to the men's room.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you really believe that smoking marijuana

automatically transforms an otherwise normal human being

into a depraved and raving dope fiend?

We know that too many kids hooks on heroin

began with marijuana.

On the books.

Possession of marijuana is classified a felony.

You may be bound by public policy to enforce the law,

but privately now, just between us,

don't you think the law is stupid?

It's still a law.

Possession of marijuana is a felony.

It is classified as a narcotic by the federal government.

It changes perception of time, space, distance.

It warps judgment.

No law that restricts what I can do to myself,

in the privacy of my own home,

on my own land, is a good law.

Policemen have no right to tell me

if I may or may not smoke cigarettes,

drink liquor, or use narcotics.

My body is mine.

What I do with my body is my business.

You know, this entire new wave,

this new form of declaring personal freedoms

in this country is disturbing

not because I'm a police officer,

because I'm a citizen.

I'm a member too.

You people all stand on the same platform,

the same termite-ridden, decayed planks.

What about my freedoms, my rights,

my family's way of living?

You don't concern yourselves with that. Do you?

You say no law or authority

has the privilege of depriving you of anything,

so long as it concerns only you.

Isn't that what you insist?

Precisely.

I claim the birthright to live my life

as I deem fitting and proper.

And what about me?

I don't blow weed. I don't drop acid.

You do.

And when you do, you lose judgment.

You have hallucinations.

Hallucinations that can and do prove dangerous

not only to you, the user, but to people around you,

people who don't want your warped and distorted sensibilities

to interfere with their way of life,

sometimes even to the point of taking their life.

Now suppose you tell me,

what gives you a privilege greater than God's?

You go ahead.

You live your life the way you see fit,

but don't you crowd me.

I demand the self same right.

And so far, the thin line separating your kind from mine

are the laws of this country.

That's why there's a stiff one for marijuana

and there should be.

And what about liquor?

It blurs vision, slows reaction,

causes mistakes in judgment.

At one time, there was a law against that too,

was there not? That law was changed.

When you pick up kids for drinking,

you don't automatically classify them as alcoholics.

But arrest a kid for smoking for marijuana,

and you throw the book at him.

It's senseless, and you know it.

I'll tell you what I know.

I know that in fact, too many kids

that begin with pot end up with heroin,

then onto LSD.

I know that if you drink, you suffer a loss of judgment,

if you drink to excess.

But I also know that judgment returns when you sober up.

I know, and so do you,

when you flip out on an acid trip,

you never know when you're gonna slip out again.

This is now, Bentley, not a couple of years ago.

We've had time now to see and study the effects of LSD.

People who haven't had a dose in weeks

sail out on another trip. They never know when.

The minute they drop one acid capsule

or ingest it in any way, they've bought the farm.

They've lost any chance to depend on and even restore

that most precious of all inner senses, judgment.

And in my way of thinking, without judgment,

you might as well be dead.

Your brain is, so why not the rest of you?

We were talking about marijuana.

We still are. Marijuana is the flame.

Heroin is the fuse. LSD is the bomb.

So don't you try to equate liquor with marijuana, Mister.

Not with me.

You may sell that jazz to another pothead,

but not to somebody who spends most of their time

holding some sick kid's head while he vomits and wretches

sitting on a curbstone at 4:00 in the morning.

And when his knees get enough starch back in them

so he can stand up and empty his pockets,

you can bet he'll turn out a stick or two of marijuana.

And you can double your money

he'll be holding a sugar cube or a cap or two.

So don't you con me with your mind expansion slop.

I deal with kids every day.

I try to clean up the mess

that people like you make out of them.

I'm the expert here. You're not.

Really? When's the last time

you were asked to appear on television?

How about radio?

Had your picture in the newspapers lately?

Now you better begin to understand this.

You put that $400 a month brain of yours to work, Sergeant.

I am the new way to go, the way of the future.

I can't begin to fill all of my personal appearance requests.

I've been asked to make a phonograph record

setting forth my philosophy.

You want to bet that it sells?

I'm not just news, my friend. I make news, big news.

So did Judas.

Lovely, isn't it?

One of the temple maidens painted it.

Temple maidens?

One of the students of the philosophy of mind expansion.

Looks like she hasn't completed the course.

I might have expected such a comment from a lay person.

The next question most assuredly will be,

- what is its meaning. - Right?

Does it have one?

It means nothing. It means everything.

It means whatever you want it to mean.

See, we in the temple live in a totally free society

on all levels of artistic endeavor,

particularly the two vital ones, art and music.

Mm-hmm. I see it, and I hear it.

You know, at times, I amaze myself.

How is that, Bentley?

That I permit you people to linger here.

I've listened with great patience

to your insulting gibberish concerning my religion,

my philosophic advancements, and my hope for the world.

You're not gonna throw us out though, are you?

Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn't?

- The best one. - Yes?

There's a high school two blocks from here.

Yes.

You know that we know you've been selling to those kids.

My literature?

If it comes in a number 5 cap.

Now, look, I don't preach to anyone

they should imbibe acid,

smoke marijuana or inject heroin.

We have reason to believe you do.

We think you sell it to them at kid's prices, 50 cents a pop.

That's preposterous.

We don't think so.

We think you get them all steamed up

with this stuff that you write,

then you sell them a sample or two

at the right price, promising them a look

at that so-called beautiful world of LSD.

You preach all right.

And I have to admit, you preach good.

Your kind always does.

Just enough of the intellect, a sprinkling of phony religion

and kindness and love for all.

Oh, you're good.

I got to hand it to you, Bentley.

I suppose I should regard that as a compliment.

But, considering the source, I won't.

Remember this.

You will never hear me recommend to anyone

to become involved with LSD or marijuana.

I say the choice is theirs.

I can only recount to them the beauty

of the spiritual transfiguration,

the elegance of having passed through death unscathed

to touch the very soul of the universe,

to find themselves.

For surely, in this chaste world we live in today,

without LSD, no one can know for certain

just who he or she is.

But, the choice belongs to them and to them only.

This is a religion.

In this temple, LSD is a sacrament.

You know, you're really an enigma to me.

You appear to be a moderately well-educated man.

I didn't think it showed.

Or rather, I seriously doubted that you'd recognize it.

Oh, yeah. Policemen have been known to go to school,

some even to college.

I can assure you I did. Graduated magma cum laude.

Did some post graduate teaching.

It shows.

And I've come to another conclusion here,

perhaps the most pregnant of all.

You're dangerous, Bentley.

Maybe more so than the narcotics you push.

You use that highly trained intellect,

not the way those who taught you intended that you should,

but you utilize it much the same

as a highly sophisticated weapon, don't you?

You've had the finest university teachings in the world.

You're a product of some of the most skilled instructors

we've ever known to be educating

at the same given period in history.

And having once been gifted with all that,

how do you put it to use?

For the common detriment of man.

For the ultimate and positive disintegration of the society

that made that learning possible for you.

And the pity of it is, you are believed in,

particularly by the young.

With the power of that highly refined intelligence,

you can move mountains.

You're the big danger we have to cope with, Bentley.

I'm delighted to see that you recognize genius

when you're confronted by it.

Not genius, Bentley, sickness. Genuine sickness.

How so?

Sickness because I want to make the world

a more beautiful place in which to live?

Sickness because I believe the teenager

is the citizen of tomorrow?

Sickness because I believe

that in order for the youth of today

to shape the future of tomorrow, he must start now.

You call that sickness?

I call it vibrant radiant health.

Like chromosome mutation.

That kind of radiant LSD health?

Oh, come now. You're getting further out

than you claim I am.

Chromosome mutation is nothing more

than pure conjecture and you know it.

Well, from the experiments conducted,

would you say it's a possibility?

Perhaps.

And I hold mighty strong reservations about perhaps.

Research has proven that it's a little further along than simply perhaps.

But even if it's no more than a possibility,

what kind of a suicidal gamble is that?

To run the risk that any drug,

regardless of what so-called pleasures it may bring,

can also bring a generation of mutations into the world,

babies with no hands, without an arm or a leg,

or two holes where ears should be.

Even if it's only the slightest chance,

is it worth the risk?

There are those who check into this life

the self same ways that you mentioned.

LSD wasn't the cause.

Maybe not. You willing to compound it?

I won't even dignify that with an answer.

You're not reasoning. Now you're dreaming.

And you rule out brain damage as well.

Pure fantasy.

You don't hamper the brain with LSD.

You enhance it.

I think you're beyond knowing.

And what may I ask is intended by that remark?

Well, you know it's entirely possible

that you've been on this stuff so long

that you've damaged the very cells

that could determine for you

whether you have brain damage or not.

You should really do yourself a favor, Sergeant.

Yeah?

You should consider taking the seashore test.

That's a hearing test, you know.

I've heard of it.

Really? I'm not sure you can hear.

Either that, or you don't listen.

Or maybe, like the rest of society, you're guilty.

- Of what? - Deceit.

I don't deceive the young people.

I don't lie to them. I offer them truth.

The youth of today cannot and will not be satisfied

with a society based on deceit

where the single standard of an individual's worth

is his material possession.

They look around them and they see the world they inherited

pays nothing but lip service to virtue.

They hear greed and cunning denounced from the pulpit,

yet they see society praise the men

who are the most greedy and the most cunning.

They discover soon enough that charity and humility

characterize the failures in our society,

that aggression and avarice are the mark of successful men.

Small wonder young people prefer their own company,

prefer to revert to tribalism

than become part of a society

that has reduced love to an advertising slogan.

Well, I've shown them the way,

a new approach to life, an approach they can live with.

And die with.

They're not gonna find what they're looking for

by dropping acid.

We let them be the judge of that, my friend.

Then you figure that every kid in the country

is gonna climb on your bandwagon. Do you?

I do, in time. They all will.

You're wrong.

The kids you're talking about

are a little more than a noisy minority.

The majority are more concerned about their lives

than to throw them away.

You forget about the kids in the Peace Corps,

the kids from good homes who volunteer to work the slums,

the kids who go to school and go to work.

Sure, they're dissatisfied.

You ever meet a 17-year-old who wasn't?

When you're 17, you're full of enthusiasm and ideas,

and you're boiling over with energy.

You want to change things, so you look around.

You see a lot of things that need changing.

People kill each other, and they shouldn't.

People are hungry, and they shouldn't be.

People are cold, and they're illiterate.

They need shelter. They need books.

And when you're 17, you're seeing it all for the first time.

All at once, the world is bigger than home and mother.

You find out that there are more important things

than high school football games,

and because you're 17, you wonder why?

Why nothing's been done about it?

Seems so simple to stop wars, to feed the hungry,

to teach people how to read.

And the only answer they get from our generation

is we tried and we failed.

And when you're 17,

failure is something that happens to somebody else.

And so you try.

And maybe with a lot of sweat the help of God,

you make a little progress.

People still kill each other.

But they're learning.

A few less die from starvation.

A few more learn the trick

of transforming printed words into ideas,

and then, you're not 17 anymore.

Somewhere along the line, you grew older.

You got married, and you had children,

and one day, you have a son

who makes the same discovery you did.

The world needs changing.

Well, it does need changing,

but it'll never get that way

by people who'd rather drop out than stay in.

That's precisely the response I expect from a policeman.

Preach conformity. Wave the flag.

But history isn't made by conformists.

To make progress, you've got to break out of the mold.

You have to dare to experiment.

New ideas never go down easy.

The establishment's used to that.

It doesn't matter that history proves them wrong.

We like to forget that Socrates

was forced to drink hemlock,

that Galileo was excommunicated,

that even Christ was put to death

for preaching a new idea.

Some ideas are worth dying for.

You talk about young people in America.

I don't recognize them. I don't think they exist.

I think your kind creates them.

You force them into little molds

and pop them out like little plastic figures

off a production line.

You stuff them full of preconceived ideas,

praise them for turning out so well,

but they're not people. They're machines.

Then you wind them up like little tape recorders

and send them out into the world

to spread another generation of lies.

This is the best of all possible words.

This is a recording.

And the ones who escape from your assembly line,

the rare ones, you call them delinquents,

weirdoes, hippies, pill heads, freaks, pot heads.

You tell them they're sick.

They know better.

They're not satisfied with a little change.

They want it all. They want it now,

and they know they can't change the world

so they change themselves.

They seek others who believe as they do.

They start communities, tribes.

They grow. They share food, shelter,

and most importantly, love.

All they ask is the right to live

the way they want to live, without being harassed,

without being told what they can or cannot do.

Now, is that too much to ask, Mister Policeman?

No. If that's all they ask.

But it's not.

They're not asking to be left alone.

They're asking for a handout.

If they really believe what you say they believe,

they'd do something about it besides panhandle in the streets

and use narcotics to escape reality.

A lot of people have started with an idea

and they've made it work,

but not by begging or stealing

or standing in line to get paid for not working.

The Amish did it in Pennsylvania.

They built self-supporting communities.

The Mormons did it in Utah. They built a city.

The Jews did it in Israel. They built a nation.

But they were willing to work for it.

We tried in San Francisco.

- Yeah. - Well, you learned something.

- Didn't you? - What's that?

If you're gonna live with the rest of us,

then you'll have to learn to play the game by the rules.

And in case you've forgotten the name of the game,

we call it democracy.

I don't think we'll have to build new cities.

I think we'll take over yours.

I think there will a day when you'll be in the minority.

I wonder how you'll like democracy then.

And it won't be long in coming,

10 years, maybe 15 at the outside.

When the kids start going to the ballot box,

you better hope you're ready to draw your pension

because all your hysterical laws will be repealed.

Anyone who has the courage and the curiosity

will be able to buy LSD over the counter.

You really believe that. Don't you?

I still insist, it's strictly a personal choice.

The same with marijuana.

There's no shortcut to getting through life, fella.

It's not easy. I guess it wasn't meant to be

and sometimes it can be an unhappy affair.

But nobody's ever succeeded yet

in putting happiness in a bottle or a pill,

despite the claims on the label.

That law is there for a very good reason.

It keeps the record straight.

Marijuana is a narcotic, medically and legally.

It never did anybody any good

and does everybody a lot of harm.

And we're right back where we began.

You haven't made a point.

You claim marijuana leads to hard narcotics

and ultimate addiction. I disagree.

Because most people are normal

and only a psychologically defective personality

is prone to true addiction.

- You're half right, Bentley. - Half right?

It takes more than psychologically defective personalities

to become addicts.

Really? What's that?

Something to become addicted to.

- Pity. - What's that?

- I said it's a pity. - What is?

That you do not comprehend the glory

of becoming close to God.

Yeah. Well, you don't get there on LSD.

You'll never know the wonder of it all,

of being close to Him.

Oh, I don't know, Bentley.

I can tell you a better way, and it's worked for centuries.

And what's that?

You begin by kneeling.

What do you think, Joe?

We won't lose his address.

The suspect was found guilty of violating section 11502,

Health and Safety Codes, State of California,

in that he knowingly furnished a narcotic to a minor.

The penalty for unlawfully selling, furnishing,

administering or giving a narcotic to a minor

is imprisonment in the state prison

from 10 years to life.