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Yeah, I don't know much about the original writers, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, but obviously they had little direct experience with the counterculture and probably they were much older than the stereotypical flower children they tried to depict. By contrast, Ken Kesey could write convincingly about beatniks because he was on the bus (literally). The Ragni and Rado take on the hippies reminds me a lot of the rhetoric, guesswork, misunderstanding and outright lurid fiction published in glossy magazines such as Life and Look back then.

The world looked different to those editors and publishers (and to the fiction and script writers who tried to do their homework by reading those mainstream publications) than it did to someone like me, living four blocks from People's Park and trying to slam all my windows fast enough to keep most of the tear gas out. Add enough "artistic verisimilitude" and -- never mind the "bald and unconvincing narrative" -- the whole damn shebang looked bogus. ("The slang is all wrong;" or, "The people using that slang wouldn't wear those clothes," or, worse and more often, "My God, where'd they get that wardrobe? Some Paris fashion show?")

A lot of the people involved with the day-to-day work of making the movie had the clout to ask for changes. I'll bet input from actors and maybe everybody right down to assistant makeup helped out with groans and "Ya gotta be kidding!" to turn that film into more of a fantasy and less of a lame joke than the original stage version.