Pitch: The Farm

So I did this in LaTex--I'll go through and redo the formatting for Blogger after class maybe.


\section*{Pitch}
We see the beginning, middle, and not-quite-over-yet end of a commune in Tennessee called The Farm. Through the eyes of a young idealist, we watch as infrastructures are set down and principles are lifted up, organizations are formed and children are born, love is found and love is lost, and 420 hippies from California are shown how to make tofu. The fervent idealism of the 70s is examined from within--the ways it did and did not succeed, and how it influenced us as children of the 90s. We examine the commune as it struggles through the decades with this question: How do we change the world?

\section*{Background}
Here is how Wikipedia describes the Farm: ``The Farm is an intentional community in Lewis County, Tennessee...based on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and 420 San Francisco hippies.''


\section*{Act 1: The Caravan}

We meet Stephen Gaskin and his family, living in a converted school bus. There's a lot of pretty art and dialogue that familiarizes us with the early seventies--the Vietnam war, Woodstock, Apollo 8, the Stonewall riots, college shootings, the creation of the EPA, weird hair, acid--all of these things that are happening of which the reader should be reminded. The narrator is a ghost at this point--we are cruising through, looking at Gaskin as a legend instead of a man.

\section*{Plot Point 1}

\\ October 12th, 1970: Stephen Gaskin and his swarm of San Francisco hippies hit the road in anything that will roll. Gaskin has been invited on a speaking tour, but at some point his entourage stops being a bunch of hippies on wheels and becomes the Caravan. Our protagonist, A Female Character, stumbles into this community while hitchhiking, and decides to stay on. She has run away from college and her overbearing boyfriend and parents. This is the point at which our story becomes personal--instead of being broadly about the injustices of the era (most if not all of which are still pertinent today), the focus narrows to the community A Female Character has just joined.

\section*{Act 2: The Farm}

Gaskin and the hippies set up camp in Lewis County, Tennessee. They're vegan. They're faced with Herculean workloads. They start growing soybeans. They're also feminist, so the commune becomes a mental boot camp--there's a tent called the ``Rock Tumbler" where arrogant guys with ``rough edges'' can go to get sorted out. A Female Character falls in love, which is probably inevitable. But it's lean and hard-going and even a pretty face can't distract her from the thought that the commune might fail.

\section*{Midpoint: Harvest!}

1973: The Farm can make tofu! Life improves. It's spring, it's beautiful, even if the commune's marijuana growers are still in jail. Everybody goes on a ``grass fast'' and Coke and Dr Pepper become the drugs of choice. A Female Character starts to see sharp edges in the commune, as if all this talk about treating one another right doesn't work as well as she had hoped. Gaskin is a far-away, almost religious figure. In the midst of heady springtime tofu love, A Female Character and her Love Interest get into a fight about a condom, which she isn't supposed to use as part of the rules of the commune. He dumps her--but we'll have to find a more enlightened word for it. She is crushed.

\section*{Act 3: The Changeover}

1983: The Farm is in debt, and the growing population cannot supply the workers that the commune needs. The Farm changes its policy so that its members must support themselves on their own incomes, which is almost impossible for most, given the barrenness of Lewis County. There's implication of foul play on Gaskin's end. A Female Character has left, unable to deal with the heartbreak she met after the Midpoint. She watches as most of the commune, friends and strangers, leaves in what they term ``the Exodus.''

\section*{Plot Point 2}

A Female Character finished school, became a doctor, and now kicks butts on all levels. She misses the commune but prefers the freedom of her life. She overhears that Gaskin has steered the Farm back to its original purpose--sustainability and charity work come again to the forefront. One day she gets an email inviting her to volunteer with a group of Farm members in her area. She goes, sees a very dear, familiar face (maybe her best friend from that time.) They hug, end.
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\section*{Reflections, Major Turning Points, and Cast of Characters}

Reflections: The seventies are rich with the juxtaposition between young, hip ideals and horrific realities. There's a lot of opportunity for storytelling in 70s history, as well as for delicious art--hippie communes, goats, brightly painted buses, women with flowers in their hair, tinted sunglasses, backbreaking farm work, endless plumes of marijuana smoke...I also think that the eager activism of the Farm mirrors what my generation is dealing with today. Today, there's a lot of talk about problems but not very much action, and Farm is exciting because it was an action towards \textit{something}, even if some of its members weren't sure what that was. It's also an opportunity to show the flimsiness of ideals, which is as much a problem today as in the 70s, especially in the case of feminism. The story is challenging, though, because its plot is not clearly delineated--it is the rise and semi-fall of an organization but also of an individual--and whether its protagonist is the Farm itself or A Female Character will have to be answered before beginning.

\section*{Major Turning Points} Joining the Caravan, the Caravan putting down roots, the Farm's first successful harvest, the Exodus, the Farm's return to social activism
\section*{Cast of Characters} Stephen Gaskin and his family, 420 San Francisco hippies, A Female Character, Her Best Friend, A Love Interest.

\section*{Sources}

Wikipedia!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The[underscore]Farm[underscore](Tennessee)#Changes
\\The Farm's website: http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/index.html
\\``American Commune,'' a documentary about the Farm: http://www.americancommunemovie.com/film-synopsis/
\\A memoir of the Farm by John Coate: http://cervisa.com/stories/farm.txt
\\Also, a good fictional rendering of a commune: ``Drop City'' by T.C. Boyle