THE SIXTH SIDE OF THE PENTAGON (1968) "If the five sides of the pentagon appear impregnable, attack the sixth side."— Zen proverb On October 21, 1967, over 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. It was the largest protest gathering yet, and it brought together a wide cross-section of liberals, radicals, hippies, and Yippies. Che Guevara had been killed in Bolivia only two weeks previously, and, for many, it was the transition from simply marching against the war, to taking direct action to try to stop the 'American war machine.' Norman Mailer...

F.T.A. (1972) The FTA Show took shape as the inevitable consequence of this unrest at home and abroad. Led by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland with backing from activist folk musicians such as Len Chandler, the anti-USO variety extravaganza channeled the moment’s bitterness and frustration into rollickingly subversive protest-tainment. (The title tune clarifies the four-letter profanity directed at the army.) A little-screened 1972 documentary under the truncated title of FTA followed their tour of active bases from Hawaii to the Philippines to Japan, each performance packed to the rafters with disillusioned GIs eager to hear an alternative to the rah-rah...

Mr. Freedom (1969) William Klein moved into more blatantly political territory with this hilarious, vicious Vietnam-era lampoon of imperialist American foreign policy. Mr. Freedom (John Abbey), a bellowing good-ol'-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine (a satirically sexy Delphine Seyrig) to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown of kitschy excess. Delightfully crass, Mr. Freedom is a trenchant, rib-tickling takedown of gaudy modern...