PROVIDENCE — More than a decade in the making, the Netflix original documentary, “Have a Good Trip,” an exploration of LSD and other psychedelics starring Sting, Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman and many others on the Hollywood A List, premieres Monday.
For filmmaker Mike Rosenstein, a Rhode Island native, it has been a long labor of love that began more than a decade ago on Nantucket, where Stiller, a summer resident of the island growing up, was attending a film festival. Rosenstein was working for Stiller at the time. Stiller knew an up-and-coming comedy writer named Donick Cary.
Yes, this is how it happens sometimes in Hollywood.
“At one of the storytelling nights on Nantucket, some of these psychedelic tripping stories came up and Donick pitched it to Ben: ‘Hey, what a great documentary idea this would be,’ ” Rosenstein said in an interview with The Journal.
“It a started out as different celebrities just telling stories. So you sort of feel like you're at this personal dinner with them and everyone's opening up. But then, me being the young guy at Ben Stiller's company, I came on the project and we started to just call up some friends.”
He and Cary had a lot of them.
“Donick is a big comedy writer,” Rosenstein said. “He's written a lot of episodes of ’The Simpsons.’ He was a writer on ’Parks and Recreation’ and ’Silicon Valley,’ so he and I both knew a lot of comedic actors and stand-ups that were willing to be a part of this. It sort of snowballed from there and it became this thing where we interviewed almost a hundred people.”
Cary wrote and directed the film, which blends live action with animation. Production was handled by Rosenstein, who has left Stiller’s Red Hour Productions to found his own company, Sunset Rose Pictures.
If you recognize Mike’s surname, that’s probably because he belongs to the extended family that ran Benny’s, which began closing all of its stores in 2017.
“I worked at Benny's when I was younger,” Rosenstein said. “My uncles and mother all ran it, so I grew up around it. The love that people had for the stores was so meaningful and special. We never took that for granted.”
Rosenstein attended Classical High School and then Boston University, where he studied entrepreneurship. That would have helped had he decided to work full time at Benny’s, but comedy had a pull on him and he went West.
“I got a great opportunity to be a production assistant on a film and just started hustling and working hard for everyone on the set, running around, doing things that weren’t my job and someone there noticed me and asked if I wanted an internship at Ben Stiller's company.”
Well, yes.
During his years with Stiller, Rosenstein worked on dozens of projects, including “Zoolander 2,” starring Stiller, and “Another Period,” “The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail,” “Burning Love” and “The Birthday Boys.” He also acted in films, and currently is readying for the release this summer of a one-hour Netflix comedy special featuring Eric Andre.
Many of the stars in “Have a Good Trip” recount their own surreal and often comic experiences with psychedelics — “the true stories you don’t know from the people you do,” according to the trailer, which as of Thursday afternoon had been viewed more than 337,000 times.
“I took acid once,” Stiller says at trailer’s end. “Maybe didn’t even need to. Probably could’ve just watched this documentary.”
While storytelling drives the film, “Have a Good Trip” also explores the therapeutic use of LSD, which has a long history. One recently published scientific paper concluded: “LSD is revealed as a potential therapeutic agent in psychiatry; the evidence to date is strongest for the use of LSD in the treatment of alcoholism.”
Rosenstein, in his Journal interview, recounted a little-known episode from his own personal history — the summer he interned for Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr., then mayor of Providence. That summer ended when Cianci was sentenced to federal prison for racketeering conspiracy.
“They gave me a city car to drive around and a mayor's office badge and I would run errands for him,” Rosenstein said. “I was on the advance team. We would go to all the events, but before he would speak, I would work with all the writers. He had a big writer staff. And this was my first opportunity to work in a writers’ room.”