Director Report Card: Errol Morris (2020)

14. My Psychedelic Love Story

Errol Morris' reputation as a documentarian is such that, over the years, sometimes interview subjects reach out to him. Morris' 2017 Netflix docudrama “Wormwood” received a lot of attention. Among its many viewers was Johanna Harcourt-Smith, who was the girlfriend of Timothy Leary at the time he was arrested. Harcourt-Smith has long been the center of rumors that she set Leary up for imprisonment. After many years, Johanna has come to believe she was intentionally misled by the government to achieve these goals. She would contact Errol Morris to make a film about her story, in hopes of exploring this idea some more.

In the 1960s, Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychologist professor, became the prophet of psychedelic drugs. His rhapsodizing of LSD made the drug far more popular and made Leary a target of government scrutiny. Richard Nixon considered him the most dangerous man in the world. But “My Psychedelic Love Story” is not Leary's story, not solely. Johanna Harcourt-Smith is the woman Leary was in love with when he was arrested. She lived the sex and drugs lifestyle with Leary. While Leary was in prison, she led the movement to free him while also working as a CIA informant. This and many other stories from Johanna's life are told in “My Psychedelic Love Story.”

It's a cliché to say this but: “My Psychedelic Love Story” really is a snapshot of its time. Acid was just entering the public consciousness. Nixon would officially engage the War on Drugs, declaring that nebulous problem as the greatest woe facing America. Expanding your consciousness was the biggest thing for young people to do. Through Johanna's recollections and archive footage, Morris recalls all the drugs she took, many of the men she slept with, and some of the times she was naked in public. It was truly a different time and “My Psychedelic Love Story” gives us a little peek at what living through the sixties must have been like.

Johanna Harcourt-Smith proves to be a good topic for a documentary. She has led a fascinating life. She was born into the lap of luxury, the granddaughter of a British archaeologist and raised by a well-to-do family. Johanna would rub shoulders with the Rolling Stones, appear on Swish television, and become a minor celebrity in her home country. Her journeys with Leary would take her all over the world. Johanna talks about heading to Kabul as a simple trip. Yet she looked at visiting America as a truly exotic trip. In casual speech, she talks about appearing at public places in the nude or arranging elaborate drug deals. And Johanna relates all of that with a smile and a sly sense of humor.

Johanna took the sixties' ethos of free love to heart. She breathlessly recounts the number of sexual encounters she had throughout the decade. Any time a man would resist her charms, she considered that quite strange. Yet Johanna's relaxed attitudes towards sex was not just an aspect of the time and place. Tearfully, she recalls an episode from her childhood where her mother's chauffeur molested her. She found the experience intensely wrong and uncomfortable, yet her body reacted with pleasure. She was never taught about pregnancy, only STDS. Inevitably, she got pregnant as a teenager. The child was taken away and she never saw it again. Johanna learned to use sex as a tool to get what she wanted. Of course she did. She was always taught that intimacy was only a way to control people. It explains a lot about her casual attitude towards sex.

While “My Psychedelic Love Story” is the story of Johanna's life, it obviously focuses the most on her time with Timothy Leary. Their love is described as spiritual, Leary seducing her with Tarot cards and crystals and long talks about her third eye. Opinion on Leary ranges wildly. Many consider him an acid prophet, bringing mind expansion to the public at large. Others consider him a charlatan, who was only interested in getting high and getting famous. Either way, Leary suffered for his fame, sitting in prison for four years. Ostensibly arrested for his ties to radical left organizations and drug trafficking, Leary's sentence wouldn't be lessened until he started to talk. 

Johanna talks about the long process it took to even get Leary to that point. She was eventually wrapped up in a plot that involved drug smuggling, cocaine, sex, and another man in love with her. All along, Johanna claims that she was totally naïve about what she was doing. (And also high on coke most of the time.) That she had no idea that her words were sending people to prison. At the same time, more than once, she talks about how good she is at lying. Is this a subtle admission of her crimes? And if we can assume this to be true, the long discussed conspiracy theory that Johanna was a Mata Hari sent to seduce Leary seems more plausible.

Whether or not Johanna knowingly led Leary to the CIA or not, we'll never know. The film discusses her post-Leary life only slightly. There's a brief discussion of the death of Johanna's mother, as she sadly recalls her final breath. How their passionate relationship – which lasted all throughout his incarceration – dissolved suddenly after an argument one night. (Leary was married five times.) She clearly never totally got over the end of the relationship, holding regrets over it for years to time. One can't help but wonder if “My Psychedelic Love Story” was a way for Harcourt-Smith to finally put her complicated feelings about the end of the relationship to rest. She would die only a few months after the documentary was filmed.  

After straying from his trademark interrogation style somewhat with “American Dharma,” “My Psychedelic Love Story” is a more traditional Errol Morris movie. We hear the director talk back at Johanna from behind the camera a few times, slightly incredulous at her pleas of innocence. Mostly though, this is one person telling their story. To keep things upbeat and energetic, Morris incorporates frequently psychedelic imagery. Clips from “Alice in Wonderland,” shots of Tarot cards, and of Nixon speeches are included. The text is brightly colored and the editing is fast paced, nicely capturing the sixties rock-n-roll feeling of this story. Morris includes audio from Leary, to make sure his presence is still felt in this story that's partially about him.

“My Psychedelic Love Story” would air on November 22nd of this year, a little over a month after Johanna passed away. Coming away from the film, you can't help but have a mixed impression of her. I definitely feel like she's a little bit full of shit. At the same time, I get the impression that she really did love Timothy Leary and believed in his message. If nothing else, her story is a surprising and fascinating one. While the film could have propped a little more into the topic of how the government tried to suppress radical speech in the sixties, it's ultimately more focused on Johanna's unique story. Seeing her tell this wild tale is more than worth it. [Grade: B]