Ahead of the Election, “Daytime Revolution” Reminds Us to Use Our Vote

By Joseph D’Andrea

Released on what would've been former Beatle John Lennon's 84th birthday, Oct. 9, “Daytime Revolution” uses archival footage from the five episodes of “The Mike Douglas Show” that Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted in early 1972. It made its world premiere on Oct. 5 at the 32nd Annual Hamptons International Film Festival and is now playing in select theaters around the U.S.

The film allows the surviving guests who made appearances on the shows, including political activist Ralph Nader, actor and singer Vivian Reed, and musician Nobuko Miyamoto, among others, to revisit the parts they played in the message being delivered by Lennon and Ono to American living rooms.

It’s no mistake that “Daytime Revolution” is coming out with the United States presidential election right around the corner. In a phone interview, director Erik Nelson said he felt it was apt to bring more eyes and ears to these shows at this point in time. 

“I knew these shows had happened and they weren’t properly celebrated,” he said. “They represented a real high-water mark of the counterculture and American culture in general and I felt attention should be paid to them.”

He continued: “With this film, I wasn’t in the documentary filmmaking business, I was in the transportation business. I wanted to transport people back to 1972 and transport those ideas forward into 2024 in this dramatic election year.”

Reminiscing on his involvement, in the film Nader pointed to the political aspects of the shows, saying in the documentary that “citizenship is a profession” to allow people to control their destiny” and “if you vote, you broaden out the difference between the parties in the right way for the next election.”

(L-R) Talk show host Mike Douglas, multimedia artist Yoko Ono and musician John Lennon on the set of Douglas’ show where the two counterculture icons took over hosting duties for a week. Photo by Michael Leshnov, courtesy Kino Lorber.

Just as the shows did, this documentary puts an emphasis on the intersection between culture, politics and history. Broadcast during an election year under the Nixon presidency, with the backdrop of the widely objected-to Vietnam War, the shows advocated for peace and unification. Despite these seemingly universal hopes being voiced, the shows were nevertheless risky, and within weeks of their airing, Lennon was threatened with deportation, an issue that would persist for several years.

The documentary lets the show’s guests and hosts speak for itself, and through this, may offer a reevaluation for the public of the peace movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. And just like Lennon and Ono’s own intentions, the documentary brings counterculture to audiences in a more digestible way.

“I felt that John and Yoko took a lot of incredibly prescient ideas, an overall trust and a great attitude towards cultural politics and history and put it on daytime television,” Nelson said. “That was the best of the hippie culture. And even the silly stuff on these shows is wildly entertaining. Yoko approached this as a conceptual art project and John was delighted to play a significant part in it, and she pulled it off, in my opinion.” 

Television as a tool for spreading a message is a main point of the film, from being used by politicians and musicians, to the other major theme: empowering women. These “Mike Douglas Show” episodes particularly gave women at home a better insight into political and cultural issues at a time when the floor for discourse was less open to women. The very open environment that Douglas ensured to the co-hosts, guests and audience meshed fabulously with the format, making for shows with many exciting, offbeat and, above all, sincere moments. (Lennon’s performance of “Imagine” is especially earnest.)

“I think that kind of trust is missing in American media today,” Nelson said.

The program not only offered a voice to the female liberation movement but also to the Black Panther movement and Asian Americans. The latter performed folk songs that took pride in their roots, highlighting how their immigrant parents helped make America what it was then, and still is today, through the performance of “We Are the Children,” which includes the lyric “We will leave our stamp on America.” Activism on the broadcasts didn’t just come in the form of the signature pair at the forefront; other guests made their appearances worthwhile, spreading similar sentiments on stage, and Lennon and Ono — ever-curious to learn more about others — treated them as nothing less than equals.

Lennon and Ono were given equal footing and treated each other as such, too, making for a film whose subject matter is hard not to get wrapped up in. It’s easy for many to dismiss public personalities such as them when it comes to political stances, but what Nelson’s documentary dials in on is how culture (whether that be expressed in music, film or any other form) and politics are virtually inseparable — not only concurrently but also in how they influence each other, continually developing in their own ways.

“To the question of ‘will you still need John when he’s 84,’” Nelson said, “I think this film answers an emphatic ‘yes.’”