The Untold Story Of A Lost Classic: Whatever Happened To Gram Parsons’ Sci-Fi Film ‘Saturation 70’?
26.10.2023 - 21:49
/ deadline.com
In the late 1960s, Gram Parsons, fresh from leaving The Byrds and becoming close pals with the Rolling Stones, signed on to star in a sci-fi film, Saturation 70.
Directed by Anthony Foutz, who worked with the likes of Orson Welles and Richard Lyford and was the son of a very early Walt Disney exec, the film was shot across Joshua Tree and Los Angeles.
But Saturation 70, which also featured the work of Douglas Trumbull, the pioneering special effects wizard behind 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, was never finished, and the footage subsequently vanished.
But a new book tells the wild story of a possible lost classic.
Chris Campion, who rediscovered the film while working on a book about The Mamas & The Papas, is putting together Saturation 70: A Vision Past of the Future Foretold, raising money via Kickstarter for the project with a view to publish next spring via Wolf+Salmon.
Foutz talked with Deadline about the movie, how he fell in with Parsons and the Stones, why the movie fell apart and what happened with the footage.
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Foutz was living in Italy in the ‘60s, working with Welles during the time he was making Don Quixote, and was introduced to Sam Shepard. Around this time, he had also become friends with Anita Pallenberg, who started dating Keith Richards. Foutz and Shepard started working on Maxagasm, a sci-fi Western that was set to star Richards, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones.
Maxagasm, considered one of the hottest unproduced scripts of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, was written at Redlands, Richards’ home in West Sussex, where Foutz met Parsons. Foutz’s agent Michael Gruskoff, who was at Creative Management Associates (where he also represented the likes of Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Robert Redford and