When the award-winning director of counterculture documentaries Grass (not the kind you mow) and Comic Book Confidential Ron Mann exhorts you, the audience, to Know Your Mushrooms, it’s not a stretch to imagine you’re in for a trippy ride. Nor is it unusual for non-fungophiles (and non-psychotropic shroom partiers) to be a little wary of the adventure. Especially after having a peek at the DVD cover’s eerie montage of floating fungi hovering around a hippie cowboy, grinning like a shroom-crazed Cheshire cat as he holds out hands brimming with a cornucopia of fungi. And with a psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips and The Sadies plus a storytelling style that mingles animation (cute googly-eyed, cartoon mushroom trivia interludes and disturbing squirrel death-by-fungi fables), archival educational footage, and B-movie trailers (Attack of the Mushroom People) with modern-day interviews and narratives … the documentary certainly is trippy at times. But it’s also a fungi ode — scored with Muzacky tunes like “Do You Believe in Magic” and esoteric “I Love Morels” mushroom blues — and a quest for a different sort of elevated mushroom consciousness led by mushroom guru Larry Evans and author/educator Gary Lincoff.

Evans eases audiences into the myco universe with a lighthearted tour of fungi fundamentals. What to eat, how to eat, and where to dig up the dome-topped delicacies. Of course, long-haired and bearded men with names like Art Goodtimes also discuss the spiritual, getting-closer-to-god role of psychotropic fungi in various cultures while other visionaries share fascinating fringe theories. There’s also talk of mushroom industry conspiracies. Yet Know Your Mushrooms ultimately has a higher environmentally and medically urgent motive. Mann’s entertaining and enlightening 70-minute mushroom smorgasbord also touts the scientifically proven health and ecological benefits of fungi, including their ability to clean up oil spills and other pollutants. Mann wants you to Know Your Mushrooms not just because they’re groovy but because they’re good for you, everyone else, and the planet. Let the ‘shroom revolution begin!

EXTRAS:
DVD extras include the dry and academic “Welcome to the Fungal Jungle,” which catalogues fungi varieties and uses, a fungi home-growing how-to, and the slightly disturbing Lincoff lecture on fungi poisoning punctuated by his 1985 audience’s unnervingly inappropriate laughter. Other special features include deleted scenes of Art Goodtimes expounding on cultivating good mushroom karma, more “Fun With Fungi” mushroom trivia, listings of mushroom clubs across the U.S., and a Ron Mann interview where he discusses the decriminalization of magic mushrooms and director Jim Jarmusch‘s role in inspiring him to make the fungi documentary.

Know Your Mushrooms is available Decemeber 15, 2009 from New Video Group.

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