Oscar Watch: Long Strange Trip Groks Grateful Dead Mystique

It was supposed to be a 90-minute documentary due for completion in 2015 in honor of the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary. But when filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev in 2003 started digging into the story of guitarist Jerry Garcia and his band mates, one thing lead to another and he blew past the 2015 deadline to produce an epic four-hour film. Short-listed for an Oscar, Long Strange Trip aims to embody the group’s free-flowing aesthetic,