A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour,” which opens the 25th San Francisco Documentary Festival on Thursday, May 28, at the Roxie Theater.
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“Summer Tour” is a music-filled portrait of Deadheads, but the Grateful Dead themselves are hardly seen.
Focusing on the fans rather than the musicians finally unlocked the documentary for photographer and filmmaker Mischa Richter, who had been turning the idea of a Dead documentary over in his mind for years.
A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour,” a documentary about Grateful Dead fans, aka Deadheads.
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The concept came to him before Dead & Company’s final tour in the summer of 2023, which capped its run with three nights at Oracle Park. Richter, a Deadhead himself, realized it was the concertgoers devoted to a vagabond lifestyle he wanted to capture onscreen, especially a new, younger generation of diehards. Many of them — like the film’s 20-year-old subjects, Jerry and Annie — weren’t even born when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, yet they’re as passionate about the Dead’s music as their parents and grandparents were during the Summer of Love.
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Now the resulting portrait opens the 25th San Francisco Documentary Festival on Thursday, May 28, at the Roxie Theater.
A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour.”
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“There has always been this incredible community around the band,” Richter told the Chronicle on a recent phone call from Cape Cod, Mass. “It’s this traveling village of young people who’ve found a sense of belonging and acceptance.”
From his first Dead concert 36 years ago, he recalled, “I couldn’t believe how inviting and friendly and open-hearted the Grateful Dead community was. It was so different from any other scene I’d encountered.”
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So Richter — who shot the famous photo of Amy Winehouse on her “Back to Black” album cover —trained his camera instead on the crowds who have collectively embodied the Dead’s ethos of free expression and communal joy for six decades. He captured the young fans dancing and twirling at shows and selling vegan sandwiches and handmade tie-dyes on Shakedown Street, the sprawling bazaar that pops up outside every Dead show.
“I saw myself in these young kids, and I was so struck that even all these years later, this traveling carnival is still going strong,” said Richter.
A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour.”
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He fell in love with the Dead’s music in1990, when he was a teenager in Darien, Conn., and sneaked into his first show at Madison Square Garden with his not-yet-famous high school girlfriend, Chloë Sevigny. She found an unlocked door and the two — now in their 50s and still close friends — have seen the band in all its incarnations hundreds of times since then, from the original lineup through the post-Garcia projects to Dead & Company.
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Sevigny, an Oscar-nominated actor (“Boys Don’t Cry”) and fashion icon who was instrumental in helping Richter get his film idea greenlit, describes that MSG concert as a kind of conversion. “Something just clicked, and I fell hook, line and sinker,” she said on a separate call from New York. “I think it was probably the scene first, and then the music. All these kids were experiencing this incredible abandon, and I loved the way the music washed over me and made me dance and (spin) in circles with other girls in beautiful floral dresses.”
She bought a Volkswagen bus to chase shows and has remained a Deadhead ever since, showing up on every new film set in merch to find her tribe. “Then there’s an immediate ease and connection between us, and something to talk about,” she explained.
A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour,” a documentary about Grateful Dead fans, aka Deadheads.
Utopia
She signed on as Richter’s executive producer and introduced him to Dead & Company co-manager Bernie Cahill.
“I told Bernie you’d never see the band. You’d be dropped inside the energy of the people dancing,” Richter recalled. “He said they get pitched documentaries of the band over and over, but they’d never heard this idea before.”
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The conceit was true to Richter’s own experiences as a fan. “When we’re at shows, we’re not really looking at the band. We’re dancing,” he explained.
All he and Sevigny needed were the right subjects. They found Jerry and Annie, a sweet, nature-loving young couple (he’s from upstate New York, she’s from Santa Cruz) at Bob Weir’s 75th birthday run at the Warfield in 2022. (Founding band member, guitarist and songwriter Weir died in January.)
“They just walked up to us and said, ‘Hi,’ and they were so cute and young, maybe 18 then,” Richter recalled. “It felt like one of those Grateful Dead moments, like they were angels sent to us.”
“Summer Tour,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last August and will screen in theaters this summer, follows the couple as they set out on a 10,000-mile journey to catch every show on Dead & Company’s final tour the following summer.
A scene from Mischa Richter’s “Summer Tour.” The film’s main subjects are young Deadheads Jerry and Annie.
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Their “Sunshine Daydream” road trip — skinny-dipping in rivers, sleeping in a Napa-bought van outfitted with a redwood-paneled roof and a stained-glass back window — intentionally portrays a more accepting, less divided America.
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He and Sevigny both see “Summer Tour” as a kind of antidote to negativity in the news and also to the stereotypes that have dogged Deadheads for years.
“Deadheads get a bad rap, like they’re just dirty barefoot stoners that are leaching off everyone,” said Richter. By focusing on a summer journey through the eyes of one wholesome young couple, he wanted to show another way of being young and attuned to nature, not tech, in America today. He sees them as “a positive part of this tradition of the American quest, of hitting the road, and of equality and acceptance and adventure.”
Sevigny said she hopes true believers and non-Deadheads alike connect with the film’s buoyant spirit.
“When I’ve invited friends to come see the Dead who might be a little more New York-cynical, I tell them there’s an innocence, a purity, a joy — although let’s be honest, there’s also a lot of acid,” she said with a laugh. “That kind of joy is counter to us all kind of buttoning our coats up and looking down or into our phones, and it’s really refreshing.”