UFOS, JOSHUA TREE, COUNTRY ROCK,
AND A STARCHILD
Before Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, there was… Saturation 70. The incredible, full, untold story of a groundbreaking, lost 1970 sci-fi movie starring country rock singer Gram Parsons, shot in Joshua Tree and Los Angeles, will be told in a new book by writer Chris Campion (Some New Kind of Kick, The War is Here) and the film’s visionary writer-director, Anthony Foutz, alongside exclusive photography by Tom Wilkes, Michael Cooper, and Andee Nathanson.
A dystopian science fiction film about environmental collapse, Saturation 70 has been described as an “ecological horror fantasy” and a “counterculture Wizard of Oz”. A 1969 UFO convention at Giant Rock, near Joshua Tree, served as one of the locations. Along with Gram Parsons, it also starred 5-year-old Julian Jones, son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, rodeo tailor Nudie Cohn (creator of the ‘Nudie Suit’), and Prince Stash.
The film was shot but never completed after financing fell apart. Most of the footage subsequently disappeared. Saturation 70 was to feature state-of-the-art computer effects by Douglas Trumbull, special effects pioneer of 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner, and Silent Running, and a soundtrack by Parsons and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn.
Culled from Foutz’s personal archive, the book features over 200 never-before-seen on-set photographs, production and film stills, script fragments, and more. It also reveals the story behind Maxagasm, an earlier film Foutz developed (in collaboration with playwright Sam Shepard) for the Rolling Stones in 1968.
The book also contains a visual survey of Foutz’s post-Saturation 70 projects, including Full-Tilt Fever, an unrealised 1971 movie about an all-female rollerderby team starring Michelle Phillips and Helena Kallianiotes, and Yellow Star, a rarely-seen fantasy film short documenting Donovan’s 1973 tour of Japan.
Part counterculture fable, part historical record, and work of cultural archaeology, Saturation 70: A Vision Past of the Future Foretold documents an extraordinary lost episode of the ’60s counterculture.
AS SEEN IN
AUTHORS
CHRIS CAMPION is a British writer and journalist, based in Joshua Tree.
His work has been published in The Guardian, Telegraph, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and Vice. He is the co-author of the Kid Congo Powers memoir Some New Kind of Kick (Hachette), and the editor, designer, and author of The War Is Here: Newark 1967 (ZE Books).
Hollywood born ANTHONY FOUTZ, the son of a Walt Disney pioneer, worked variously for over 40 years, as a director, scriptwriter, script doctor, and first assistant director, alongside titanic film world figures including Marco Ferreri, Gillo Pontecorvo,Orson Welles, Carlo Ponti, Ralph Bakshi, and producers Gray Frederickson and Al Ruddy (The Godfather).
REVIEWS
"Far-out tale"
UNCUT
"A lost classic"
DEADLINE
"A technological tribal throw-down"
CLASSIC ROCK
