Van Sant takes 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'

Indie helmer Gus Van Sant is to adapt Tom Wolfe's tome about Ken Kesey's LSD-fuelled trip across America.

Jun 11 2007

Long-time Ken Kesey fan Gus Van Sant has signed up to direct a film version of 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test', Tom Wolfe's account of Kesey's legendary drug-fuelled road trip across America.

First published in 1968, the book chronicled Kesey's journey from California to the World's Fair in New York in 1964. Travelling in a multi-coloured bus with psychedelic band the Merry Pranksters, Kesey used the trip as a way of educating Americans about the mind-expanding effects of LSD, a drug that Kesey claims helped him write 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.

And having cast Kesey in 1993 flick 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' and dedicated 2002's 'Gerry' to him, Van Sant seems like just the right man to tell the story.

Lance Black, with whom Van Sant is currently collaborating on a Harvey Milk biopic, has been charged with the task of adapting 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' for the screen.