Simple enough so far - nothing you probably haven’t heard before.  So, let’s move on and see why this collective consciousness theory doesn’t work.  First, if it were a collective consciousness why do we only see Micky jump off the bridge?  I know!  But ignore the end for now; we’ll get to that later.  The common thought on this is that it doesn’t matter who jumps off the bridge, because it will always be the same dream – the same film.  True (somewhat), and again this is very tempting, because it allows all four boys to have their equal say and equal time.  They must be equal!  It seems like pure sacrilege to allow one monkee to stand out in any way.  That’s what Hollywood tells us; but they are not equal in this film anymore than they are equal in real life – that’s the point.

Of course this is also a metaphor for Davy’s disgust with being a Monkee; but the point is that Davy does indeed get his million-dollar face bashed in.  The way it is filmed is simply Micky still dreaming in film language.  This is how he sees Davy.  This is how everyone sees Davy; but we really don’t know how Davy sees himself.  Would he cast himself in a cheap B-movie with Annette (an ex-teen idol)?  Maybe, but that would be speculation.  We know what we think because we’re Davy’s audience, like Micky.  Davy’s role as a Monkee was to be cute - lets face it, he really didn’t do much else.  Without that face, he’s nothing.

This happens again during Peter’s sequence after he punches the waitress in drag.  The scene officially ends when the director says cut and shows up in front of the camera.  We have just been watching another film within a film; and to bring us out of it the filmmakers give us the “documentary” style.  The shaky camera presumably belongs to someone shooting a behind the scenes look at Peter.  The main point to this scene is that Peter is not the dummy.  So what does that have to do with the way in which it was filmed?  Since we are supposedly seeing the real Peter here; you could say that the style is indeed “real”.  Peter comes out of character and the camera spontaneously captures it.  The real Peter seems like a nice enough kind of guy who cares about how his character is going to look on camera.  The filming style seems to help define the line between Peter and the character he portrays.

The final sequence gets a little murkier.  This is Mikes Birthday party scene.  This sequence looks like a horror film from the early sixties, and the theme is to be “scared”- but to be scared of what?  Of Mike?  Or is Mike the one who is scared?  If so, then of what?  Whoa – lots to get into here, but difficult to do if we don’t want to speculate too much.  Mike is startled when he opens the closet door and a dummy that looks like Micky falls to the floor; then he quickly recovers when he realizes what just happened.  But why would Micky scare Mike?  And why did Micky and Peter disappear?  Is it all a practical joke?  Or is it some kind of revenge?  At the end of the scene, Mike winds up scaring everyone with his unpredictability.  Is that what this scene is trying to say?  Personally, I never thought of Mike as fear inducing, but then again, I don’t know him – only his alter self – and it isn’t my dream anyway.

So whose dream is it?  We already know it cant be the cops dream as we are led to believe, because it would render the dream irrelevant.  Mike may dream of himself being frightened by something – we all have dreams like that, but would he dream of himself frightening others?  Possibly, but doubtful, there must be a better explanation.  We see Davy and Peter run scared through the haunted house, but why not Micky?  

A fake Micky falls from the closet.  Why not Peter?  They both just disappeared.  Micky would certainly be the most likely to perform a practical joke on Mike for his birthday.  Is that where he is?  If we continue to think of this sequence as Micky’s dream, then it becomes slightly clearer.  A practical joke to Micky might seem like fun; but Mike doesn’t like surprises, so he gets angry.  A clash of two very different personalities; but if this is Micky’s perception of Mike then it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or does.  If Mike frightens him, for whatever reasons, then he can dream about trying to frighten Mike – which is perfectly reasonable.  In the end, Mike frightens him anyway when he blows up at the party givers for surprising him.

The difference is that when Micky tries to scare Mike – it’s just a joke; but when Mike gets angry, no one is laughing.  He truly does become a pretty scary character if he cant take a little joke, especially since his friends just went through all the trouble to give him a surprise birthday party.  So it seems more believable that this would not be Mikes dream, unless Mike was on some kind of guilt trip, but someone else’s.  Someone who has been repeatedly either scared, disappointed or hurt by Mike, and someone who clearly just doesn’t understand him.

The remaining scenes in the film are essentially filler composed of metaphorical vignettes, and only work to disintegrate the structure with confusion. 

It’s easiest to pick out the musical scenes first.  There are six where we expect to find only four and that’s because the songs don’t really correspond to the characters themselves; but rather to a thought, idea or feeling of one or all of the four characters.  Of course, the music is nice to have, I think they are some of the best scenes in the film; but they do not really contribute anything to the structure.  It’s as if the film is beginning to become an exercise in entropy.  All the chaos of the dream fights to break down the original format that we thought was established, that’s why the film becomes so confusing; and that’s why it is so important to keep that original structure simple.  So it will be easily carried through all these scenes of chaos.

Another important theme running through the film is how each character deals with the black box, which represents many things such as Hollywood, a cage or storage box, and the universe (or at least Micky’s universe).  This is the world they are desperately trying to escape, and each has a different idea for coping with the enemy.  Peter and Davy keep disappearing in search of their solutions – one being philosophy and the other being sheer determination, and strength.  Mike doesn’t seem to have any means to deal with the problem.  He simply reacts poorly when something happens.  Mostly, he gets angry or upset and does nothing at all except an attempt at intimidation.  Micky has no real solution either, or the ultimate one, depending on how you look at it.  His way of coping is to end it all with a leap off the bridge.  Neither of which is much of an effort to keep the black box at bay.  They are the two extremes. 

While Davy tries to take everyone on with his fists in pure action-hero style, Peter tries to use his head to escape, which also doesn’t work.  Peter hasn’t escaped, he has simply learned to live with the problem and try to change his “reality” or perception so that he will not be bothered by it.  The key here is irony.  Each character acts in the way we would least expect.  What is little Davy doing when he attempts to be a boxing champ or action-hero?  I find it difficult to believe that David Jones is this way in real life.  And what about Peter?  Of course he isn’t the dummy he plays on T.V.; but he probably isn’t a rocket scientist either.  So he is somewhere in between, like most people.  We know that Mike probably wouldn’t sit back and do nothing - he just doesn’t seem like the passive type. 

At this point, the film starts to slowly back up through previous scenes until they finally reach the point where they started – the bridge; but this time the scene has changed.  Look at it carefully and compare it with the first version.  It isn’t the same scene at all.  In fact, it looks like the film was reversed because the perspective is from the opposite side of the bridge – only a very observant viewer will pick this up, it’s very subtle and you need to pay close attention to the comparisons of both scenes.  Why the perspective trickery?  Because it is indeed a different perspective.  When Micky jumps off the bridge in the first scene, we are watching the “real” event take place in a movie called “Head”.  In the ending scene Micky is dreaming of himself and the others jumping – an imagined point of view, in a dream, in a movie called “Head”.

And with some very clever editing of the same film footage, the end scene looses the seriousness of the first.  It is more chaotic and frantic.  The scene looks more like it came from the TV show – like a “typical monkee romp”.

When we see Micky run through the red tape on the bridge he acts as though he just won a race, not like he’s being chased in fear for his life; and when he jumps off the bridge this time we don’t get to see his face, so we don’t know if he is serious or not.  When we see the other three witnessing Micky’s jump there doesn’t seem to be any “real” concern.  Instead, their expressions convey a comedic leap off the bridge similar to the way the girl jumps from the building earlier, almost cartoonish.  When the others jump (although Davy never really jumps he just kind of falls off the bridge) their just following their friend – since no one else’s solution to escape the black box worked they are now going to try Micky’s extreme solution.  This time when they hit the water no one drowns.  They all get up and swim away.  They even seem quite pleased with themselves for finding a means of escape.  However, as before it is only temporary because they end up in the tank of water – fished out of the sea to be stored away for future use.  So, no ones solution worked.

Yet, this is still the dream – it hasn’t ended.  Even as the credits roll, Micky is still dreaming his little film.  Only when the film breaks and the screen goes black, and the music finally fades does the dream end – along with Micky’s life.  So Mike, Peter and Davy never actually jump off the bridge the way Micky does.  Micky only dreams they follow him off the bridge the way they might in the television show.

Now, I’ve given this careful (obsessive) thought, and at first I just couldn’t let go of that collective consciousness idea because it’s just a lot more fun to think of it that way.  After I was convinced that it was only Micky that actually jumps and therefore the only one dreaming, I thought why couldn’t he be dreaming in a collective with the other three who are still conscious? 

Well, aside from the obvious – they are still conscious; there would need to be some kind of metaphysical tether connecting everyone, which is just plain silly because we’re supposedly dealing with reality here, and this is not science fiction.  Or, maybe Micky is dreaming the whole collective himself - simply dreaming from everyone’s perspective.  Though this would not be a true collective consciousness, it is a possibility which I am willing to accept (with difficulty).  However, I prefer to reduce it to its common denominator – its most simplistic form which is one person, having one dream, from one perspective.  It keeps the structure sound, and stable enough to hold up to all the chaos that it must support.  The dream itself now becomes nothing more than a stream of consciousness which just happens to be about three people and the person dreaming.

The one problem I find with this perspective is, if this is solely Micky’s dream then the film starts to take on a more personal or human quality because it is less abstract.  It now begs the questions: Why Micky?  Why not Mike, or Peter, or Davy?  And why did he really commit suicide?  Well, there is no way we could really know for certain since the filmmaker chose not to deal with it, so we are left to deduce from what we do know.

Actually, in answer to the first question, I suspect it was merely for technical reasons.  Since the point of the opening scene is to be “real” and serious then it would be most logical to choose the person who is the least serious, because the filmmaker has to get this point across in only a few seconds of film just before the jump off the bridge.  The audience only gets one quick facial expression to grasp this point.

As soon as we see a serious Micky, we know something is wrong.  If instead, we saw a serious Mike we probably wouldn’t give it a second thought because he is always serious.  It would be a different film entirely because there would be no differentiation between the “real” Mike and his TV character, so we couldn’t know that the opening scene is supposed to be different from the dream.  Peter would be difficult if not impossible to use because he requires dialogue for his explanation about not being the dummy, which he gives us later in the film.  Peters “irony” is intellectual, not emotional like Micky, so it can’t really be shown with a quick glance of his face.  Besides, it would be too sad and sentimental if Peter jumps.  He evokes too much sympathy, kind of like a puppy.  Davy is out of the question because he is simply too shallow and therefore would not be believable.  But this is also a more intellectual concern, like Peter, so he isn’t a practical choice either.

There are probably other reasons as well.  For example, since Micky was essentially the wackiest member of the group, it makes for a good excuse for the film to be a comedy.  Where if it were Mike it might be more serious, or Peter less intellectual, or Davy shallower.  Finally, if you had to choose one of the four monkees to one day snap and commit suicide by jumping from a bridge; who would be your choice?  The lunatic of coarse!  Micky was already a bit emotionally unbalanced anyway.

However, when we turn to why he would do such a thing we tread on shaky ground, because there is really no way we can know this without some more information.  If we keep with the content of the film, then Micky is trying to escape the black box.

In real terms it means he was just fed up with being a monkee – which he in fact says in the film.  The problem with this is that it seems like a pretty lame excuse to end it all.  Which brings us to another problem – the films subject in general doesn’t seem worthy of the films efforts.  These four guys are tired of being the Monkees; tired of being rich and famous.  I can appreciate the fact, even sympathize with their feelings about not having control over their music and television show – but come on – life couldn’t be that bad!  These were four pretty lucky guys and maybe they should have been just a bit more gracious.  The film makes them look like a bunch of spoiled brats who are throwing a tantrum because they aren’t getting what they want.  They weren’t happy with their image, and with the music that they were forced to put their names on – the poor things.  But then again, maybe life really was as unbearable as thy claim; after all didn’t Kurt Cobain shoot himself in the head for similar reasons?