Original subtitles

Cape Kennedy: 14th November, 1969.

For the 2nd time in the history of mankind the USA

are sending a delegation of human beings

to the moon.

The astronauts that will land on the moon

will find there the same landscapes they studied in the labs.

The interplanetary landscape is cold, fascinating

but already foressen.

We're finding out that the unpredictable

is in fact predictable.

And the astronauts will soon find out

that the moon no longer charms people like it used to.

Much better the neon signs.

And so, while the three men are taking off to the moon,

here at Cape Kennedy the moon is still a... lunar park.

The audience finds new ways

to fill the long wait before the magic event.

Astronaut shaped earrings.

Sandwiches called "Big Moon".

Or medium. According to size.

Landing sausages.

Ice cream and pop corn.

Porno astronauts.

Raised in labs and in charge of soulless machines

the astronauts begin their journey.

Awarding the new civilization the colors of the American flag.

Our journey through America starts here.

But ours will be a journey through

the collective consciousness of the other Americans.

Those who stay on earth.

Those who have given to a rocket

a symbolic message to be carried out in the infinite space.

A journey into men

who feel like they already own the future.

AMERICA SO NAKED SO VIOLENT

produced by LUCIANO MARTINO

outline SERGIO MARTINO

spoken texts by GUIDO GEROSA and GIAN FRAN VENE'

voice GIORGIO ALBERTAZZI

music BRUNO NICOLAI

editing MICHELE MASSIMO TARANTINI

director of photography FLORIANO TRENKER

cameraman GIANCARLO FERRANDO

directed by SERGIO MARTINO

New York!

The heart, the brain of America!

The most chaotic meltin' pot of races in the whole world.

12 million people are living in it.

Maybe more.

The biggest Italian city in the world.

More than four million of its inhabitants have Italian surnames.

The obsessive rhythm of the city.

Skyscrapers. Many of them, the more modern ones,

are built without windows.

Smog, car horns, the filtered air of conditioners,

life under the influence of well-being,

humanity chasing after itself,

indifference.

We're entering the poorest neighborhood:

the Bowery.

Drifters, beggars, drunkards, prostitutes,

in one words:

bums.

These bums count approximately 25,000.

Men that gave up the race for success and money

and found in the Bowery the only place to live.

Without moral, social or civil obligations.

A place that's the last step before the descent into darkness.

The Bowery man doesn't dream of making a whole buck.

His daily goal is to scratch up just a few cents.

Just enough to sleep or booze.

Because sleeping and boozing allows him to forget he's alive.

On the sidewalks of this street

each day happens that one of these fallen derelicts

and not as a figure of speech -

does not have the strength anymore to get up again.

Whether he's fine or not. If he lives or dies, no one cares.

Neither his fellow bums on the street, nor the passers-by.

It's his business.

The 79th street is the street of retirement homes.

They call it the Dead End.

It means street with no way out for the living.

In a city like New York

there are almost a million elderly people

who have no one left to lean on.

Their final destiny is in these retirement homes.

In which indifference has the smell and colors of dirt.

The future and productivity, true Americans myths,

belong only to young people.

Old people are just things to be thrown in the garbage cans.

Among all these sad looks we discover today

a happy old man.

He has suddenly found out that even he's

allowed to have a future.

They told him that he has cancer.

The right opportunity to offer himself as a guinea pig.

To be studied with the most

modern medical equipment available in the world.

But to him this means only

a comfortable bed,

clean sheets,

hot meals.

As long as he lives.

Death in the lab, life in the lab, lab beauty, lab luxury:

we're in Miami Beach, Florida.

These are the most representatives examples

of the most beautiful youth of the world.

The most well-fed youth of the world.

As proved by statistics and slow moving buttocks.

All these girls,

superbly raised according to the gospel

of alimentary advertisement

have perfect sizes.

And therefore... identical ones.

Diets based on butter, eggs, milk and steaks

have raised these perfect specimen

among which you can choose easily

America's most beautiful model,

Miss Cheesecake,

Miss Milk and Honey,

Miss Liberty,

and Miss Applepie.

These too are young Americans.

Not the traditional ones.

They love and breed

but instead of steaks they love flowers.

Especially dried ones.

Under the banner of love

the biggest free concert of modern history

has been celebrated.

The Rolling Stones and other famous modern orchestras

set the rhythm for the army of over a half a million hippies

who wanted to forget war in the name of love.

A half a million of junkies and potheads

if you consider than more that 95% of those attending

has smoked weed,

taken LSD

and other stuff.

Peace American style, peace marihuana style!

A little math?

Try to calculate how many hard drugs

have been used that afternoon.

Impossible.

On the other hand it is possible to imagine

the outcome:

love for everybody,

some strip tease,

five people died.

Three: trampled.

One run over by a car and one stabbed.

And three girls gave birth.

Death beats Life 5 to 3.

And all this in the name of love and peace.

Lots of young people want marihuana to be legalized.

Marihuana, they say, is the powder milk

for those who want to escape on the wings of fantasy.

Adults who had enough weed suits better morphine.

A youngster from L.A. takes us with him on his acid trip.

When totally stoned and successful in his escape from reality

we ask him to tell us who he is, his name at least.

That's how he answers:

I'm me.

And then...

I feel the music and the silence.

...boiled meat, uterus, holy soft drink...

Mao without Ze-dong...

Ze-dong without Mao...

Incest...

Origano.

Salt without a soup.

HOTEL!

Cold breeze of air.

Horse hoof.

Donald Duck pisses Mickey Mouse on the head.

Infinite number.

Nothing.

Once upon a time there was the real man

the Superman of the American legend.

Today he's a bit out of shape

but if you look closely, you can still find him.

At least on the football fields.

He fights bravely, with chivalrous violence.

Headbuttin' the enemy.

He has switched from fantasy flights

to a healthy aggression and a sure catch.

His uniform is armored like a warrior's one.

He doesn't know sickness, weakness or aging.

His liveliness is doping proof

and full heartedly put on show

but it is no more alive than that of a fossil.

A souvenir from a distant past

in nowadays America.

Just like the rodeos and the Indian villages.

The REAL man, a wooden log shaped with muscles,

puts on shows for men

that we cannot define as... "true".

In New York, in the Broadway district,

movie theaters for homosexuals thrive.

The movies show elegant chases

with naked men on Californian beaches.

Or, incredibly, Mr. Muscle

taken by surprise by the magic of slow motion.

A few years ago these kind of films

were shot very roughly.

Nowadays the directors are carefully chosen.

And they have to put on display

a certain taste.

The audience pays more attention

and therefore wants more.

They do not accept that their closed world

is lessened by violent or brutal scenes.

They accept that theaters owners

and producers exploit their vices

but they do not accept to be ripped off.

On the other side the needs of true men

have increased as well.

Some years ago the top less

became fashionable.

Which literally

means...

tits.

Oh, sorry. A poorly dressed lady.

Today the top less is stuff of the past.

Mens curiosity has gone a little further down.

Way... down.

And the tireless minds of the night club owners

of Broadway have come up with the... Bottom Less.

The translation is easy but embarrassing.

But what it means is crystal clear.

Every real man gets it.

We've reached the... bottom.

But there are traditions

that resist over the years.

And stick to different generations.

The natural instincts that American negroes

carry with them like the color of their skin.

It's Sunday morning.

Harlem.

The colored Americans pray in church the same God

that centuries ago the white masters taught them to love.

When the emotional sincerity of the prayer climaxes

the exuberance of the ancestors of these negroes

showed in their native African rites

comes to fore once again and explodes.

The centuries, slavery, the concrete jungle

have not killed the spontaneous expression

of the negro soul.

The new religion and their ancient way

of feeling the faith melt together.

We are in Rodney, in the South.

This old lady is Mrs. Frazier.

She's the symbol of the south.

She's one of the last desperate stalwarts.

To conquer this world,

once noble and merciless,

the Americans from the north fought a civil war

and won it.

Since then places like Rodney

began to die.

Cut away from the new interests.

From the railway tracks.

Even by the whims of nature

that changed the course of the Mississippi.

In the country that always wins wars

Mrs. Frazier is one the last Americans that has lost one.

The old saloon is still there.

The negroes are still "niggers".

The Yankees are just a bunch of blue jackets.

Who accidentally won a civil war.

Hundred years ago

as if it were only yesterday.

Mrs. Frazier's rifle is still loaded.

Ready to shoot

against time that's marching on.

Yesterday like today: violence does not die.

And it becomes a touristic attraction.

A lure.

For those visiting Dallas.

A map on the square

shows the stages of JFK's killing.

You can't send your greetings with a postcard

that pictures the death of the president.

It looks like Dallas does not want to forget

its responsibilities.

These are the last images that JFK saw that November day.

This is the spot where the three deadly shots were fired.

A rifle is always out to set an ambush around here.

Even on a harmless and defenseless target like this.

A good rifle can be bought everywhere in America.

You don't need a police permit

or a license.

You don't even have to declare what you're going to do with it.

You just have to have 25 bucks in your pocket.

With a rifle in his hands

each nowadays American

feels like the direct heir

of yesterdays cowboys.

The targets,

like these poor defenseless rabbits

that will never nourish someone

but were only born to please

those who like to shoot,

who love to aim at living targets,

are always... free.

To raise bunnies

is far more profitable

than to raise rabbits.

Hugh Heffner makes unimaginable amounts of money

with his bunnies.

Heffner, as everyone knows,

is the lord of the kingdom of Playboy.

The magazine for men

that's printed in more than 5 million copies.

The operative brain of Playboy dwells

in five storeys of this skyscraper

in the heart of Chicago.

Here they study and photograph

some of the most beautiful women of the world.

Heffner, talking about his bunnies,

describes them as pure beauty without sin.

The descendent of a puritan family,

he would have never dared

to commercialize female beauty

if in doing so beauty would not destroy sin.

OK: it's a bit complicated.

But to stand his ground

Heffner has published

in each issue of his magazine

a philosophical article.

The well known Playboy philosophy.

There is no other philosopher in the world

that has gained so many reader

in so little time.

There is no better place to make some honest buck

than New York's 42th street.

Everyone owns the merchandise:

it's blood.

Those who are hungry, thirsty...

who need a fix...

who need a gun...

have only to remember

that they carry in their body a good

that here, at the Blood Bank,

is valued highly:

5 to 20 bucks.

Obviously price varies with the quantity sold.

In the arteries of this dehumanized humanity

blood keeps flowing.

Even tough the heart that pumps it

counts it drop by drop.

Don't betray Africa while waiting to get back.

This is one of the slogans that the 10%

of the American population,

the negro one,

whispers or shouts.

And while waiting to get to Africa,

free at last,

after their ancestors were put into slavery,

the negroes of this secret sect

relive their memories.

The sect is one of the manies

that acts together with the Black Power.

Negro power.

That fights with the same violent means

the white power

while preaching the return to Africa

of all American negroes.

We're in the heart of New York.

Among the very same skyscrapers

that white people believe to be

milestones of the world's civilization.

In the name of the ancient African civilization

the negroes of this sect reenact,

among concrete baobabs,

the ancient rite of sexual initiation.

A show of strength and courage.

The witchdoctor, after parking his Caddy,

burns on the fire the blade

with which he will operate.

After gettin' rid of their expensive clothes,

those attending dance naked around the fire.

Their faces, in the frenzy of the dance,

look like those of their savage brethren.

Finally the rite comes to an end.

With the same authenticity

with which it happens in the heart of secret Africa.

This is psychodrama!

A therapeutic performance

for Americans with plenty of problems

headed by Dr. Moreno

a psychiatrist who lives in his residence in Beacon, NY.

The actors are Dr. Moreno's very same patients.

They reenact freely the situations that caused their traumas.

Even white men look in the intimacy of man

for the secret of unhappiness.

And through rite they try to solve it.

These are rites that try to understand and focus

on every aspect of our modern culture.

Here, to heal people from the sadness of loneliness

and from the anguish of modern day alienation,

they use psychiatry and the healing qualities of drama.

At the end those sick of loneliness touch themselves,

with their hands

to feel the warmth of another human being.

As they are told by science.

But what kind of warmth can you get

in touching with your mouth and hands a rubber doll?

Here you REALLY need a shrink!

And yet, in this overcrowded desert of loneliness called America,

someone came up with the idea of Jacqueline:

the inflatable doll that keeps you company.

To give you the same desperate and friendly smile each day.

We're in NY, one of the most crowded cities in the world.

To get some company, this man blows into rubber

with the same faith with which God blew on the mud

and thus Adam was born.

And Eve was born from one of his ribs.

From a man that has killed every hope in himself,

like the guy who's looking for friendship in a rubber dummy,

what can be born if not a woman who's looking for love

and the happiness of understanding in a heavy trafficked place?

This is Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.

All the girls that during the week could not find a friend for lack of time

come to look for a man here, among the hippies on the run from city, headed towards the desert

and hitchin' a cheap ride.

This is called "follow up".

Which, more or less means,

"hustling".

Let's love a lot! Let's love forever!

'Till Monday.

A way like any other to break down the monotony of weekends.

And so, to break down the monotony of moderates,

of one the most heinous crimes of the USA has been committed.

The killings in the home of director Roman Polanski.

Here Sharon Tate was murdered.

Here died the unborn son she was carrying in her womb.

Here her friends were slaughtered during a party.

For some time the police tried to profile the murders, signed with the word "Pigs!",

to a logical motive.

The word was written with the blood of those slaughtered there.

Then it was discovered that the murders had no reason whatsoever.

It came into happening almost by... magic.

Among a clan of young people

who through a criminally insane blood rite

were seeking revenge for having been brought into the world.

The day before the killers of Sharon Tate confessed

our crew could film an almost identical rite

to that performed by the Tate murders.

The body of a girl, drugged and hypnotized, is cleansed by hot wax.

Everything is happening in the name of Satan.

The blood of the victim is swallowed by all.

In a society in which everything is controlled by machines

where machines threatens to replace man

man tries desperately to find a dimension where machines can not harm him.

So is the cruel folly of Black Masses born.

Or the exotic mysticism coming from some distant past.

No one among those busy people building modern America

that was winning the race for the future, could have guessed

that among Uncle Sam's nephews were those

who were desperately looking backwards.

We're watching the Indian rite of Rama Krishna.

In this America, at the threshold of the Seventies.

Scared by their own soulless perfection,

scared by a technological religion

these young people are treading backwards the path of civilization.

The quest for new extraterrestrial worlds

is replaced by the retreat into an unreal world

buried in the subconscious

into the... Eternal.

The children are watching.

The conflict between those civilizations is just a game to them.

A silent, unreal, endless, empty land

is the place where the last native American Indians live today.

The true Americans.

Arizona's Grand Canyon bares it's magnificent horizon

before the dried eyes of a race

that has been pushed to the brinks of society.

This is what is still standing of their America.

A huge graveyard of memories.

This grave silence in which the last war cry vanished long time ago.

Their homes are dug in the rocks.

No hygienic facilities nor electric light.

Grass does not grow on their land.

Nor life.

We filmed these images on the same day

in the same hours in which the Apollo 12

was landing on the moon.

Thus unveiling a new page of the history of the world.

Even old chief Sitting Bull is looking at a lunar landscape.

It's the moon on earth that the white man has left for him.

To die for.

To close the last page of his history.

Here's the other side of the moon.

Only 500 miles away from the Indian reservation.

Electric light is wasted here.

Las Vegas!

World's Capital City of Gambling and Futility.

And of the most outrageous vices!

The only rule in Las Vegas is the rule of the game.

You cannot stay in Las Vegas if you are not willing

at least for one night

to be driven by the stupid rules of the gambling rules.

Everyone gambles. Even priests.

Praising the Lord

at the ring of the coins that come crashing down.

Las Vegas: a big dive into escapism.

In order for adult to enjoys themselves without worries

children too need to have fun.

Near the gambling rooms is this circus with acrobats

and other artists.

Their job is to entertain the gambler's children

while they are loosing their money.

If the gamblers still feel like children

they can play a very peculiar skittle game.

Three balls, one woman.

Sociologists say that the American male is still a child.

Las Vegas entertainers have found a way of mixing together

childish ingenuousness and adult malice.

The Las Vegas girls bare themselves each time the ball hits the bullseye.

And, we have to admit, as a price their are far better than candies.

Better luck next time buddy!

Someone, deep in the Las Vegas night, finds death.

We have shot this images with the help of the police.

We're looking for a man vanished in the desert

after having lost everything at the poker table.

The chopper we're flying on serves this hallucinatory tasks.

To get on it we had to beg: no one in the capital city

of gambling wants these sad aspects of its life to be revealed.

We hope to find the man still alive.

But the police knows better.

This kind of people, so they told us,

comes this far just to put a bullet in their brain.

There he is: the American issue of the great sinner!

Sadly, there's nothing left to do.

The police keeps us away from the dead body

because they do not want us to film it's face.

We try, but there's nothing we can do.

No. They do not allow us to film the face.

They do not want that the Las Vegas dawn

has the same face of this sad suicide.

America's most powerful, triumphant and rich face

is this one: a face whose vital force goes by the name of oil.

This is California.

According to economic statistics it's the country

with the largest numbers of millionaires.

According to shrinks

this is the country with the largest percentage of neurotics.

No one yet has put these two informations on the same balance.

To check to which side it leans.

For or against humanity.

Like the keys of a huge piano

the wells keeps digging oil out of the ground.

Each note of this crazy symphony

is worth three dollars.

The mind of an average man

cannot imagine the real value of this wealth.

The incredible power that can be born from it.

For people who have to struggle daily for their lives

the thrill that stems from such wealth is unthinkable.

It's unthinkable, crazy. Exactly

like the speed at which these cars race.

Completely useless cars.

The cowboys exchanged their horses for a car

to cover one mile at a 250 mph speed.

In the end these wacky races with these incredible cars

are the equivalent of old time rodeos

in which cowboys showed off taming wild horses.

Someone said: speed kills time.

How many are the Americans that try to kill time?

At 200 miles distance from NY

and few miles away from Philadelphia

lives a community that has decided

to freeze time at the threshold of the 18th century.

They are the Hamish,

the last descendants of the Dutch,

who bought a slice of America from the native Americans.

They live without motors, electric light and modern clothes.

They do not use radio or TV.

To them the moon is still a dream satellite.

They move with carriages.

When tomorrow someone will tell them

that a spaceship has landed on the moon

they will deny the news with the same indignation

with which they shy away from our cameras.

But how long

can they go on resisting against time that marches on?

Hawaii: legendary heaven!

But they had to surrender to the marines of mass tourism.

Advertised to Americans and people from all over the world

as a triumph of nature,

they have been colonized by the specialists

of concrete and plastic.

The Polynesian society, exploited and destroyed,

has been rebuild in a kind a mechanical crib.

A bunch a moving dummies in flesh and blood

that stage among plastic flowers

the most beautiful rites of what's left of their culture.

This is the Polynesian Center.

One of the most noble society of the Ocean

has become an amusement park like Disneyland.

Meltin' pot of races, customs and habits

America buys what the refugees of other cultures are forced to sell.

In NY an old Chinese called Mr. Chu

teaches theoretically his country's art of loving.

His feathers shows his pupils

the map of love on the body of this girl.

Caress here,

and here.

A kiss... here.

It's school or a show?

For old Mr. Chu it's just a way of living.

Life, speed of modern life notwithstanding, flows

with the majestic slowness of the old river,

the Mississippi.

Hundred years ago

the river listened to the painful chanting of the slaves

sentenced to burn their lives in the cotton fields

of the white masters.

Now the same waters, the same vastness of nature

are witness to a life closer to real human values.

Uncle Tom's cabin is gone forever.

These are men no longer chained.

The chanting is no more mournful.

It's the howling of machines.

Something stronger than the law anchors

the white man to the past.

It's racial hatred.

We're in Fayette a small village with 1000 inhabitants.

Here the negroes, outcounting the white voters,

have elected the first black mayor of American history.

His name is Evers.

His brother, a unionist, was killed a few years ago by racists.

The mayor is a hero for the negro people.

But an usurper for too many whities.

The newspaper of his own city, The Fayette Chronicle

lead by Mrs. Walker, attacks him brutally on a daily basis.

This is Mrs. Walker.

Before granting us an interview

she showed us proudly

the family bell of her house

with which her father called his negro slaves.

- Can we ask you a few questions? - Sure. Shoot.

How has the the situation in Fayette changed with a black mayor?

Even tough it's too early to say I haven't noticed any positive changes at all.

And sure enough he's not done yet what he's promised to do.

Do you think racial equality is a good thing?

- You wanna know if I agree with it? - Absolutely no!

Do you want to explain why you're against it?

- I believe it's against nature. - If the good God wanted integration

He would not have created any difference among colors and skins of white and blacks.

Instead He would have created just one race of men.

It's only a matter of the difference between black and white?

No. The difference is the greater intelligence of white people.

What do you think is God's skin color?

He' surely white.

My skin is black and I'm proud of this!

We hate white people because white people hate us.

This is the proud answer with which the Black Panther reply to all the Mrs. Walker of America.

Hundred years after the end of the Civil War

black America gets ready for the last war.

Violence, say the Black Panthers,

is the only chance to gain respect for the color of our skin.

Racist violence explodes heinously at the lowest steps of the the social ladder.

These are lumberjacks from the south.

The REDNECKS!

So called because the sun burnt their necks.

Among them are the worst enemies of the negroes.

That's because they live on the lowest step of society.

And so to kill or lynch black people makes the rednecks feel worthy human beings.

There's a man on the run.

A negro. Guilty of having touched a white girl.

The hunt begins.

It's just the first step of a vengeance that will ignite other vengeances.

That will prompt the Black Panthers to exact the life of a white man.

Wild justice is done this way.

Following an ancient ritual.

As ancient as racial hatred.

And a hand beaten to a pulp by a wooden stick.

Exploited and bleed to death, Africa

is still a promised land for the American negroes,

but no more than an amusement park to white people.

A park in which to play out all the fantasies of forbidden adventures.

This is Africa as imagined by the rich Americans.

An Africa rebuild in Florida with the help of millions of dollars.

It's a fake Africa. A gigantic zoo.

For the children that always play with continents and stars.

Make love not war!

Say the rhinos on the picture.

But Americans make love AND war.

These are neither flower children, nor hippies, nor pacifists.

They are good American bourgeois.

During the week they have an absolute normal life.

Strictly observing the rules of official politics

and traditional moral values.

But from Friday night to Sunday...

they grant themselves a holiday.

They forget war and faithfulness in all matters of love.

These are Saturday night's forbidden games.

Everyone wears a mask.

As they used to do at the carnival in Venice.

The difference is that here they mask only the head.

The rest of the costume is the same for everybody.

As mommy made you.

A little mask frees them from every problem and fear.

Away with shyness... here comes the fun.

And every one humps every one.

I know you little naughty girl, said our grandparents

while taking the mask away. But in this case it's better if we leave the masks on.

Other kind of masks reveal the American nature.

This little plastic monsters are fashionable toys for kids.

Once upon a time there were fairy tales.

Where the bad always lost and the good and the beautiful won.

In the richest country of the world these stories are no longer needed.

Children play with horror.

Fear and terror are just a way of having fun.

Farewell, bogeyman, farewell werewolf. Farewell!

From a pedagogical point of view this destruction of fear is a healthy thing.

A very good one indeed.

But can we state the same for adults?

America, blessed by material wealth, ignores the depths of death.

America has killed death as much as Macbeth, according to Shakespeare, has killed dreaming.

Men head toward the sunset of their life smiling.

As much as their grandchildren play with horror toys.

For those who serve America and for those whom America needs, there is no fear of death.

On this Miami Beach land men that don't need to go back anymore.

This is their last amusement park.

If we could sum all these people's ages, we would possibly obtain earth's age.

But from this task comes one of the few truths of America: those who have worked are looked after

and these retirements are never just a waiting room for death to come.

If only for this one reason, it's worth living in America.

Just to forget the final price of human life.

This gent looks a bit dead? Not at all: the finger moves!

At least the finger does.

And after the almost dying that are full of life thanks to hope and fun

it's the turn of the dead who look like funny wax statues of themselves.

The continent of profit and happiness

does not accept the end of neither profit or happiness.

We're in LA. Here the dead bodies are made ready for their last parade.

Romanticism was born in Europe from death and love.

Translated in dollars, this same culture offers the view of magnificent girls

that make up the dead bodies eternal rest.

A clear example of an... idle hand.

Death does not exist: it's an order!

If death would exist even for America,

says a tiny voice hidden somewhere in our conscience,

the world would have a different face.

To help them ignore death, this beautiful girls give these dead bodies a smiling, happy face.

The exact face chosen by their relatives on the catalogues of the funeral homes.

But the final solution belongs to the funeral homes that dispose of the bodies.

Better book on time if you want a good service!

Then you can have all the optionals: even a grave with electricity for the Christmas tree.

Just to keep on celebrating life's anniversaries.

If someone wants to paint naked bodies of living girls,

he only needs to go 39th street, New York.

Exactly at the corner with Broadway.

Each one of these...

living canvasses

costs 5 bucks each.

The use of fantasy is free.

As is the entrance granted both to painters and non-painters.

Don't need to be ashamed if you can't paint.

No place for modesty around here.

As there is no more place for the garbage that heaps up daily in NY.

Those in charge of the waste management of NY

don't know anymore how to dispose the tons of garbage

produced by skyscrapers and factories.

Someone tried to do the math.

In a year the city produces enough garbage to fill up the Empire State Building.

The architectonic pride of the city.

The world's highest skyscraper.

Incinerators are not enough anymore.

There are boats that cross the river Hudson night and day.

Never stopping.

To discharge on State Island the waste excess.

There, where the boats unload, an island of waste is growing.

A hill not foreseen by nature. That becomes larger day after day.

An artificial paradise for seagulls and other birds.

No need to be a gourmet to eat in a restaurant whose best dish is a surprise.

In fact under the food lie pornographic pictures.

Food is an excuse.

Eating is like watching a gastronomic strip tease.

The uniforms of the waitresses are completely in tune with the pornodishes.

The usual question, what's the chef's suggestion, is better not to be asked in this place.

You're likely to get this kind of answer: hasn't your mother told you anything?

These are a different breed of gourmet. They gather here at sunset.

And at sunset they eat.

The main dish today is... cockroaches à la nature.

There's only one way to get back to purity, believe the hippies.

Go back to nature.

And to nature belong cockroaches too.

Or desert spiders or mice.

It's all a matter of habit.

A matter of overcoming preconceived ideas,

hygienic rules and caution.

What is the difference after all between the cockroach eating hippies

and these crazy motorbike riders?

They know exactly what's at stake: broken heads and broken bones.

They know the game may have a tragic outcome.

But they play the game anyway.

America, home of safety and wealth, feels the need for danger.

The violation of moral and individual codes.

Otherwise no one would have thought of calling "angels"

these angels from hell

who have put all their power's search and self expression

in a motorbike.

Addicted to the howl of the engines,

slaves, instead of masters, of their crazy machines

they conquer the freedom they don't have

by threatening the lives of those who cross their path.

Why they do behave this way,

no known language can put it into words.

They just express it through short, desperate sentences.

We've recorded some of these words, apparently with no meaning at all.

In their words there's just a hatred that no philosopher will ever explain.

- What do you think of America? - America? What do you mean?

I mean the USA. Your country.

I don't give a shit about America.

- It's just another shitty country! - We don't give a shit!

My bike's enough for me!

A girl on my ass and a road!

But who are you angry at?

With everyone who's breaking our balls!

Those well-meaning idiots who want us to behave the way they do!

And the cops?

We pity them because they're payed by the administration to enforce the so called laws.

If we find a cop that really believes in it, we challenge him to race us!

No cop will ever catch us!

The hippy is fashionable. And not only in fashion.

In New York as in San Francisco exist magazines called free press.

But along the usual articles against war and bourgeois values

there are ads in which hippies of both sexes

declare themselves available for all sorts of... encounters.

It's new form a of prostitution:

cherished by the so called free love morals,

a little less by the stalwarts of traditional values.

Especially if this free love thing is a mean to milk money from the hated bourgeois

and thus preparing the long awaited... revolution.

Get yourself a hippy!

Discounts for more multiple services!

But before making love to them,

the girls do not give up on the good bourgeois manners.

Hippy? Yes.

But clean!

If you wanna make love, get yourself a bath!

And get yourself some scent too, my dear boy.

We're now at Alcatraz Island.

The native Americans

who read now between the lines of the codes of white man

have taken the island over.

Using an old clause that was meant to rip them of.

All the lands that the USA will not use will be yours,

states the ancient law.

Alcatraz, legendary prison, has been abandoned by the whites.

The natives, instead, got themselves a reminder.

Everywhere are cardboards that state...

This Land Is My Land.

The native Americans,

that we saw a few minutes ago scanning with an empty gaze a lunar landscape

have just begun their last war with the white man.

America, the most extreme meltin' pot

of races, cultures and beliefs,

thru the symbolic occupation of Alcatraz

goes back to her most heartfelt origins:

where different races meet but don't get conquered.

This is the meaning too of a play by a San Francisco underground theater group.

A boy made up like a negro and a girl

love and kiss each other wrapped in the American flag.

But instead of the stars that stand for the different States

we get the colors of free love.

But, while making love, the young negro becomes white.

It means that against all racial and sexual prejudices

love destroys all kind of differences.

It's love.

This immense anti war rally is love.

We filmed it in Washington one November morning celebrated by the sun.

Love is the spirit that has gathered together more than a million Americans.

They have come from every corner of the country to ask

mind you: not to beg, to ask

with all the strength that a genuine people has in a democracy

the end of the genocide in Vietnam.

Even what we're going to witness with horror is love.

This is how far a young American pacifist is willing to go

just to make sure his hands will never hold a rifle.

This is an absurd love, a crazy love

giving up all hope to be a normal man again

if being normal means having to kill other people.

In Vietnam or elsewhere.

It's love what the soldiers fighting in Vietnam share with their wives here in Honolulu.

The soldiers, fighting at the front line, have a week off.

A week, to catch up with all the years of being apart and the suffering.

To talk about hope, anguish, doubts.

Just a week to tell each other, maybe on the last night,

how cruel and senseless war is in the greater scheme of things.

It's love, once again, what we're filming here in Suffolk, close to New York.

Here the meaning of love,

the very same that America seems to forget on the pursuit of happiness,

finds an almost perfect dimension.

That shows us that caring for humanity has not disappeared

and that it can be heightened by technological advancement.

We're in a city that shelters 2000 retarded children.

The most recent conquests of science are used

to give their useless lives a new meaning.

This is perhaps the greatest proof that America

has sheltered deep down in it's soul that idea of man

and health.

Quoting what once Thomas Mann wrote about it's own country

we can say that there do no exist two America.

A good one and a bad one.

Just ONE America.

Maybe a little bit in a bad shape.

These are America's good things that no one in the world can deny.

Science and good will teach these children how to eat.

To use their language. To Think even.

And through them a small part of humanity is finding their way out.

Just like the astronauts that have put the American flag on the moon

these people here have done the same in their own way.

A proof of humanity and civilization.

A new hope for a rebirth.

A rebirth that resonates like the out of tune song

that these children sing all together on Christmas day.

Devoid of a millenarian culture,

the new America inaugurates a new culture

each time a new voice resounds among the soulless machines,

from its souls lost among the machines.

It's love

true, sincere painful love

the blues, heartfelt and melancholic,

that a negro composer

poor and unknown

has written trying to measure with his fantasy

the statue of liberty.

While traveling on the Staten Island steamer

you'll find a spot that's beautiful to look at.

A statue on the water.

That's useless now.

Give me your tiredness,

your poors, she shouts.

On each road that crosses the Ocean.

And I answer.

Oh, put out your light.

Ye hoarse old gal.

Your shouts do not move me anymore.

Your call sounds always fine, I must admit.

But I cannot accept it any longer.

After years listening to your lies

I don't care anymore.

Put out your light!

Ye tired old gal.

And turn your back to the Ocean.

And put a little love, if you can, in me too.

I know very well that in America, as well as in any other part of the world,

there are sensitive people that do not tolerate truth.

But from the very first moment I always knew how to treasure the welcoming America offered me.

The best way to express my appreciation to it is to reaffirm, outside the United States,

freedom of speech and judgment of which I so fully enjoyed there. Charles Dickens.

Subtitles: Giona A. Nazzaro