The Flower Thief

A collection of puckish, improvised vignettes, this experimental film works best as an obliquely satirical window on Beat counterculture, embodied by the loose-limbed Mead wandering through smoky clubs and lofts in his cloak of ironic whimsy. Some of his friends' rants make it onto the cruddy-sounding audio track ("Peruvian civilization on coca...America on Coca-Cola!"). Other skits bound into slapstick, without the rigor that the casual viewer might require. For the historically curious, however, Mead's feature-length riff captures a freewheeling moment in full.