New DVD reviews: 'FTA,' History's 'The 60s'

"Foxtrot-tango-alpha," the man sang. "Tell me what does it mean? ... Free the Albanians?"

Nah. Anyone with a cup of coffee in the armed forces can tell you FTA spells Fuck the Army. A solid acronym, verb, adverb and proper noun, as handy as a P-38 can opener.

Back in 1971, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and their FTA "political vaudeville" troupe told the military it stood for "Free the Army." They wanted to perform for the boys overseas, like Bob Hope in reverse. (Yeah, right.)

Four decades later, the former Hanoi Jane clears up any lingering confusion: 

"It meant Fuck the Army," she says in the DVD extras for the 1972 documentary "FTA"-- as if she were sharing a recently declassified military secret.

The docu film hasn't been seen in decades, but now the one-of-a-kind "FTA" is back in a good but sparse presentation from Docurama home video. 

I recall the movie playing our Army cinema in Colorado Springs in '72, at a time when the draft was ending and the military wanted to show its cool side to prospective volunteers. (A lot of counterculture movies screened on base, go figure.)

Director Francine Parker saw her film pulled from release after a week in release. She blamed Nixon's White House. 

Entertainment value just might have been a consideration: "FTA" no doubt plays a lot better as an unusual artifact. It'd make a great double-feature with Chris Marker's Japan travel piece "Sans soliel."

The docu tracks Fonda and company as they played 21 dates on the Pacific Rim, from Hawaii to Hiroshima, Japan. Performances were held off-base, and in some cases the military deliberately spread word of false starting times. Didn't help: FTA played before enthusiastic crowds of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Fonda, interviewed recently in the DVD extras, tells how many of the boys showed up to get a glimpse of "Barbarella," the sci-fi vixen she played in the Roger Vadim movie of 1968.

"I was a pin-up" to many of them, she says. Fonda did the show in standard hippie-chick jeans and blouse, shag haircut and no makeup. "You could tell they were disappointed."

The FTA show wasn't much, anti-war comedy skits and some so-so political songs. ("FTA" answers the question why Fonda didn't do musicals.) Still, the performances had a lot of humor and heart.

The singer Rita Martinson provides a poignant moment as she performs her ballad "Soldier We Love You." The GIs seem delighted to get attention from these counterculture ambassadors.

Not surprisingly, the documakers were able to get lots of footage of troops bellyaching. I don't recall any anti-war activism in the barracks back in 1971 -- mostly we protested the food and the occasional shortages of good dope. 

In "FTA," director Parker captures the tour's turmoil with a fairly objective camera. Events speak for themselves. The silent coverage of local wage protests in Okinawa is particularly effective.

The FTA troupe, interestingly, freaks out when confronted by a right-wing GI protester. Other soldiers have to shut him up and get him out of the auditorium.

Sutherland looks alternately stoned and exhausted as he performs, somehow, like a pro. The Canadian does a great fast-talking comedy bit in which he calls the Vietnam War as if it were a ball game, a bit right out of "MASH." The movie's final words are his, as he speaks of "the futility and the horror and the stupidity of war." 

Parker's film looks quite good, considering. Audio is clear. The interesting 20-minute Fonda interview is the only extra, unfortunately. 

Docurama also recently released a well-received film about the anti-war movement in the military, "Sir! No Sir!"

* * * * *

Stashed away in the History Channel's new and expansive "The 60s" box set is "Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey," a terrific mind-expanding documentary that has little to do with the '60s. This appears to be its DVD debut. 

"Psychedelic Odyssey" centers on adventurer botanist Richard Evan Schultes, who searched for "the plants of the gods" in the Amazon and Mexico during the late 1930s and '40s. Our guide is contemporary explorer Wade Davis, a serious gent who wanders around Mexico and Brazil tripping with the locals.

Schultes is credited with discovering the indigenous people's "medicines" (psychedelic mushrooms and morning glory seeds), which were were applied by shamans. The ritualistic trips are used to treat psychological distress, addictions and assorted blahs of the spirit.

The docu checks in with psychedelic music star Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and offers the usual goofy clips of 1960s acid tests, as well as comments from Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. Schultes was no fan of the consumer psychedelic movement.

The two-hour docu's tone can be summed up thusly: 

When the beat poet William S. Burroughs found his way into the jungle and finally experienced the local highs, he spoke of world-shattering visions. 

"That's funny, Bill," Schultes replied. "All I saw were colors."

Plenty more freakouts can be found in A&E Home Entertainment's "The 60s" box set -- a sprawling affair with 14 DVDs packing in something like 29 hours of content.

"1968 With Tom Brokaw" looks at that kaleidoscope of a year from the perspective of the veteran anchor. We see young Brokaw at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets in 1968, wearing a tie and a bowl haircut. Decades later, he's back on the corner, without a tie but still looking lost. 

"1968" hits the highs and lows of that crazy-awful-giddy year, as you'd expect. The narrative and clips feel familiar. Good for high school kids, perhaps. The docu offers no revelations for those who were there in the late '60s and sort of remember it.

The best documentary in "The 60s" set appears to be "JFK: A Presidency Revealed," from 2003. 

The history of JKF's days in office spares us another lengthy visit to Dealey Plaza. The assassination is treated as epilogue. 

We learn about Kennedy's chronic and painful medical problems, which were covered up as carefully as his sexual liaisons. As a result, it appears the country was run by a workhorse drug addict during the "Camelot" era, one with his personal Dr. Feelgood.

Real White House audio tapes made by JFK are played as a shadowy actor wanders the Oval Office. We listen in as the president negotiates with the governor of Mississippi during a racial crisis. Later, JFK chews out an officer who let slip some information about the cost of the Kennedy family's stay in a military hospital. Startling and cool to hear this enraged American icon drop the F bomb.

One chilling tape captures the military chiefs urging the young president to strike first in the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy's experiences with the botched Bay of Pigs operation taught him not to trust the officers, the docu argues, thereby preventing nuclear war.

"JFK" makes no investment in the myths surrounding the president. In the crowded field of Kennedy documentaries, this is among the best -- straight, no chaser.

Other documentaries in the History box set cover the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the radical protest movement and the race to the moon.

Buy "History Presents: The 60's" at Amazon.

Buy "FTA" at Amazon.