Nearly 40 years after its original publication, Tom Wolfe’s hallucinogenic novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is headed for the big screen. Gus Van Sant is attached to direct, and Lance Black (“Big Love”) will write the script.
The book told the story of a cross-country road trip that “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken Kesey orchestrated with a group called the Merry Pranksters. Driving in a psychedelically painted bus from California to visit the World’s Fair in New York in 1964, Kesey and his band used the trip as a way to turn on those they met to the mind-expanding wonders of LSD.
Kesey ingested the drug while he wrote “Cuckoo’s Nest,” crediting the hallucinogen for many of the ideas in the book.
The film will focus on Kesey and include events that occurred after the road trip.
