• Hybrid documentary with archival footage, present day interviews, and a few reenactments.
• First person memory carries the story, there is little outside narration.

Timeline

• John Griggs took LSD for the first time after robbing it from an actor in Hollywood. The trip made him want to change his life and begin a mission to turn on the world.
• His friends and all their girlfriends formed the The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
• The group moved to Modjeska Canyon. An old church became a sanctuary. Spiritual books circulated and practice grew.
• They flew to Europe, rented cars, and drove to Afghanistan to buy hash from the Tilkai brothers. Hidden steel compartments were welded, shipments routed through Seattle, the money supported the scene.
• They visited Millbrook and met Timothy Leary. Ideas and texts came back to California. Leary later received a harsh sentence, pressure increased.
• They opened a public storefront in Laguna Beach called Mystic Arts World. It was a bookstore, gallery, and meeting place, a quiet education space. The store was firebombed, the open phase ended.
• With Nicholas Sand and others, and access through contacts, they produced a large run of high purity LSD tablets, bright orange, about 300 micrograms.
• The name Orange Sunshine came while a Sunshine Company song played on the car radio. People asked for it by name.
• Meetings at a ranch planned Timothy Leary’s prison escape. A blanket went over the wire, a motorhome picked him up. The Weatherman Underground claimed the action and a fee, the date is given as mid September 1970.
• News came that John Griggs had died. The center was gone and the mood shifted.
• Coordinated pre-dawn sweeps followed. Large seizures and named labs appeared in the news. People scattered across borders. The story meets the War on Drugs and Scheduling of Drugs era.

Themes

• Sacrament and crime appear together, the film lets both frames stand.
• Ease of movement in that era shaped events, flights were simple, borders were light, smuggling looked easy.
• Community came first, a shared belief held the group together
• Utopia met the state, idealism turned into exile and court cases, War on Drugs.

Quotes

• “He said he could feel divinity flowing through him as he ran.”
• “A couple brothers fly to Germany, then drive into Afghanistan.”
• “Mystic Arts World was torched, smoke ruined everything.”
• “They named them Orange Sunshine.”
• “The pre-dawn sweep netted over a million tablets.”