If you watched the oddball 1969 film "Alice's Restaurant" without knowing its source material, you're missing all the context that would help make sense of it.

It's a cinematic retelling of Arlo Guthrie's landmark folk song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (though most people drop the "Massacree," as the film did). That also explains the strangely unpolished performance of the lead actor -- Guthrie plays himself in the film.

On the surface, it's about a guy dumping trash in the wrong place, but most agree that the film, like the song, was in fact a larger comment on the broken priorities of 1960s America and on the emerging counterculture's attempts to correct them.

Normally a song wouldn't give a filmmaker much to work with, but "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," released in 1967, was 18 minutes long and is as rambling and odd as the film.

Though watching "Alice's Restaurant" out of context may be a bit bewildering, it was very well-received at the time.

Director Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde," 1967) got an Oscar nod for his work, and Newsweek called it "the best of a number of remarkable new films which seem to question many of the traditional assumptions of establishment America."

Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided.

Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided.