THE SUNSHINE MAKERS (2017)

The names Timothy Scully and Nicholas Sand might not be at the tip of your tongue but if you’d taken acid in the late 60s then their brand, Orange Sunshine, possibly would’ve been.

Cosmo Feilding-Mellen’s documentary (and with a name like that I’m guessing Cosmo’s parents were no strangers to recreational drugs) tells how the pair attempted to change the world via lysergic acid diethylamide. Scully and Sand possessed a heady mix of idealism and ambition believing if they, as patriotic American citizens, “could turn on everyone in the world then maybe we could have a new world of peace and love”.

Having served as apprentices under Timothy Leary and Owsley Stanley, when LSD became illegal in California in ’66, Scully and Sand set up their own factory in Denver and proceeded to manufacture 3-4 million doses of their market leader, Orange Sunshine. As they witnessed a psychedelic nation expanding around them they estimated – based on little more than intuition - three-quarters of a billion people would be willing to take a trip and it might take a couple of years to reach them.

Their distribution network was run by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the so-called hippie mafia, who according their leader, Mike Randall, ruled by love rather than fear. These previous stickup men allegedly turned in their guns to instead smuggle mind altering substances throughout America, Europe, India, Afghanistan and beyond. Randall, who even now you'd be wary of accepting a glass of water from, looking back says, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelette; you’re gonna have to break some laws to make a revolution”.

The real stars though are Tim Scully and Nick Sand – both thankfully still alive to tell their story – who make an odd partnership. Scully is a shy, bookish, nerdy, scientific genius with a touch of Asperger’s, who lived for 30 years on a diet of white spaghetti and white cheese until medically unsafe to continue while Sand is all New York hustle, bold and bullish, a stirrer of the pot, a ‘madman psychedelic commando’ who wanted to become The King of LSD and is happy to let it all hang out and practice yoga, naked, in front of the camera.

They weren’t driven by financial profit but by the sheer idealism. Scully wanted to give all their product away for free; Sand was less keen although his main motivation wasn’t money either, saying he heard a voice while tripping, “Your job on this planet is to make psychedelics and turn on the world”.

Centred around new interviews with Scully, Sand, plus their former girlfriends, associates and even the drug cops looking to bust their sorry asses for the degradation of mankind, The Sunshine Makers is a well-made and engaging film with a cracking soundtrack (Charles Sheffield, Slim Harpo, Cymande, Joubert Singers etc). With the protagonists now able to view their escapades with a mixture of mild embarrassment (Scully) and pride (Sand) this is a look at a different innocent age.

Running a huge scale drug production factory is morally open for debate but these outlaw chemists, with charming 60s naivety, genuinely believed they could change the consciousness of the world in a positive way, create a revolution of the mind, that people would become gentler and the planet would not be destroyed through recklessness and war. You’ve got to admire that.

The Sunshine Makers is available on Netflix.