I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS
I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is a 1968 romantic comedy film starring Peter Sellers, directed by Hy Averback with music by Harpers Bizarre. The film is set in the counterculture of the 1960s. The cast includes David Arkin, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young (in her film debut), and a cameo by the script’s co-writer Paul Mazursky. The title refers to the writer Alice B. Toklas, whose 1954 cookbook had a recipe for cannabis brownies. (More from Wikipedia)
The Modern Lovers is probably best known for their song “Pablo Picasso”. (Another of their tracks is “Roadrunner”; “Roadrunner” was covered by Sex Pistols on their little-known, sort-of second album, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle). I actually first heard the song on the Phranc album, Positively Phranc (1991), where (with Jonathan Richman’s blessing) she had rewritten the song as “Gertrude Stein” in honor of the famed Paris avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein who was the life partner of Alice B. Toklas – her 1954 recipe for marijuana brownies was celebrated in the Peter Sellers film, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968). An excerpt of “Pablo Picasso” (as performed by Burning Sensations) appears in the 1985 cult classic film, Repo Man that has been in heavy rotation on my TiVo for most of the year.
(December 2016)
