Still young enough to know it all Tim Scully and Nick Sand decided on their own to make the world a better place by "dosing" it with LSD. In tight with frequent flyers and promoters of the drug Timothy Leary and Owsley Stanley they decided to manufacture and distribute "Orange Sunshine" throughout the country by way of the "Hippie Mafia" aka The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Getting a late start and dismissed by authorities as a "kiddie drug" in comparison to heroin and coke the boys eventually came under closer scrutiny by the law and labs moved elsewhere. Eventually busted Scully and Sand ended up sharing the same cell in prison where a chastened Scully heads for the library and Sand smuggles LSD into the joint claiming he at one time dosed the entire prison. When Scully finds a loophole in the system they are both sprung on appeal. When it is denied Scully heads back to prison and Sand lights out for Canada and begins manufacturing again only to be caught 20 years later.
The Sunshine Makers is strictly a through the past lightly commentary on acid culture when it main streamed in the late 60s and early 70s. There are testimonials from our two groovy counter culture heroes regarding transcendence but little regarding bad trips and suicides as well as the cash flow or the profits they were reaping. Given its prominence in my neighborhood growing up as a teen and its use by vet friends in Viet Nam it fills in on the history of the phenomena but much of it with a sentimental nostalgia.
Now in their 70s the men along with former hippie chicks and retired detectives offer up interesting snippets of the time and era as well as reflect in dotage. Scully acts a little shell shocked but seems very much at peace and a little more rational about his youthful grand plan content these days to listen to brain waves. Sand on the other hand continues to lead trip sessions as well as practice nude yoga which the director places extra emphasis on perhaps to inform us of Sand's shaman like qualities but instead he comes across at times as a slovenly smug and bitter braggart in search of new ways to get laid. It is rather ironic that retired narcotics agent Patrick Clark seems the most self aware character in the present day. Grounded and introspective he lacks Sand's anger and Scully's catatonia without ever having walked through any "doors of perception."
