Main Cast: Conrad Rooks, Jean-Louis Barrault, William S. Burroughs, Paula Pritchett, Allen Ginsberg
Release Year: 1966
Run Time: 92 minutes
Plot
The bizarre hallucinations of a heroin addict in withdrawal provide the basis for this unstructured, autobiographical film by director Conrad Rooks. It begins as he arrives strung-out in Paris for a sleep-cure. As the strange visions begin, the story jumps haphazardly between reality and his dream-world memories of growing up in Chappaqua, New York. The score was composed and played by sitarist Ravi Shankar. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Chappaqua is a 1966 cult film written, directed by and starring Conrad Rooks. It is based on Rooks' experiences with drug addiction. It includes cameo appearances by a host of famous names of the 1960s: author William S. Burroughs, guru Swami Satchidananda, beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Moondog, and Ravi Shankar, who co-wrote the score with Philip Glass. Rooks had commissioned jazz artist Ornette Coleman to compose music for the film, but his score, which has become known as the Chappaqua Suite was ultimately not used. Coleman too makes a cameo appearance in the film.
The film briefly depicts its namesake, Chappaqua, New York, a sleepy hamlet in Westchester County, in a few minutes of wintry panoramas. The hamlet is an overt symbol of drug-free, suburban childhood innocence, and is also one of the film's many nods to Native American culture. The northern Westchester area had been heavily inhabited by Native Americans; the word chappaqua itself derives from the Wappinger (a nation of the Algonquin tribe) word for 'laurel swamp'.
