Daytime Revolution

What IS remarkable, and kind of awesome, is that these confabs were beamed directly into the living rooms of some 40 million Americans via a rather unlikely platform: “The Mike Douglas Show,” a pleasant and mainstream daytime program aimed primarily at what we used to call housewives.

The movie’s quiet star is Douglas himself. Whether gently asking a tense Rubin about his upbringing, or helping Ono with her “box of smiles,” Douglas’s kindness and intellectual curiosity are more compelling than any political argument.

This recap of a unique and deeply sincere bid to demystify utopian ideals for the conservative masses using the platform of popular television offers a fascinating glimpse into a very different period in this country’s past.

The film is thus mostly a surface gloss with a bit of context, relying on the performers and thinkers from way back when to create all the interest here. But Daytime Revolution is a nice editing job of presenting that landmark week of slightly weird TV to viewers 52 years later.