LEN DELL'AMICO

 

The Grateful Dead's Official "Video Guy"

 

 

 

 

 

Producer/director.  Len's resume is 7 pages long and his credentials in the television and video world are impressive. Len has produced and directed specials for Pay-Per-View, network TV, HBO/Cinemax, MTV and others.  We read that he is "the master of the multi-camera shoot."

 

Len is an award-winning  directed who has done shows with: The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana, Bruce Hornsby, Neville Brothers, Dionne Warwick, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Reuben Blades, Bonnie Raitt,  Quincy Jones, Linda Ronstadt, Blues Traveler, Herbie Hancock,  and many more.

 

He directed "The Allman Brothers Band: Brothers of the Road," and the classic "Fats & Friends," featuring Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Ron Wood with music host Paul Shaffer, and "Blues Alive," on which the legendary John Mayall's Bluesbreakers re-group, joining Mick Taylor, John McVie, Albert King, Etta James, Sippie Wallace, Buddy Guy and Junior Welles.  Len was Assistant Director on THE RED SHOES, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ.

 

Len first worked with the Grateful Dead in 1980 on "Dead Ahead," the band's live TV broadcast and platinum home video.  He was the bands "film and video guy" for the next 11 years.  He and Jerry Garcia co-directed "So Far," the top-selling music video of 1988, which won the American Film Institute's award for best long-form music program.  Included in this body of work he directed and produced "Grateful Dead Truckin' Up to Buffalo," "View From the Vault I - IV," "Ticket to New Years Eve Concert," "Down Hill From Here," and Len was brought in by the Garcia Estate to produce the documentary "Jerry Garcia Band: Live at Shoreline."

 

In 1992 he directed and produced "Infrared Sightings" A mind expanding visual journey consisting of computer animation and other imagery set to music from the Grateful Dead's album "Infrared Roses."  It was released to Home Video  in 1992.  The visuals combined computer generated images, many of them abstract, with found footage that has been altered or edited in various ways, somewhat reminiscent of the light hows that were projected on large screens at many Grateful Dead concerts.

 

 

Len Dell'Amico is a graduate of New York University's School of Film and  Television and initially worked as an editor on documentaries and independent feature films. He switched to directing, when technical innovations made location multicamera video production much more feasible.

Since then, he has been writing, directing, co-directing, producing, and co-producing all kinds of filmed and videotaped entertainment, including children's theater, documentaries, and feature films.

Len now lives in Fairfax, California. He is working on his own independent film projects, still works in visual music production, is a board member of the Mental Insight Foundation, and is an environmental and political activist, and a single father of a teenage girl.

Len has now finished his first feature film, which he wrote, produced and directed called WELCOME TO DOPELAND.

LenDellAmico.com

 

WelcomeToDopeland.com

 

 

WELCOME TO DOPELAND.   The new film by the Grateful Dead’s official “video guy,” Len Dell’Amico, who produced for

Jerry Garcia "Crimson White and Indigo", and has written and directed a feature length film that will make you question

humanity and your own personal sanity.  Mick Stern co-wrote

the script with Dell’Amico.

Set in the not-too-distant future around the San Francisco Bay area, Welcome To Dopeland, takes you on a drug-quest road trip through one fateful afternoon as two friends, Mac and Bobby, seek out a fix for Mac’s nasty Oxycontin habit.  What begins as a seemingly simple quest for one unemployed nano-tech employee and one nutty street guy who channels an intergalactic DJ, ends with both finding way more than the drugs they sought to buy.

Delivering a cast of bizarre and abnormal characters, WELCOME TO DOPELAND mixes a disturbing reality of what might be with a soundtrack full of great songs from Bob Weir & RatDog, Widespread Panic, Joan Osborne, The Ventures, The Mermen, and the Yardbirds.

"This film is destined for “Cult Classic” like This is Spinal Tap, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Heavy Metal or The Big Lebowski.  Highlighted by an amazing, relatively unknown cast including the very funny Ross Turner (Bobby) and a special appearance by Rev.  Billy from The Church of Life After Shopping..."

While the film reeks of low budget masterpiece, it’s overall message of humanity’s battle with nature vs. technology is both pertinent and timely with an overwhelming proof how the legacy of the Grateful Dead continues to permeate the membrane of social, political and cultural norms.

A must have video for the self-aware, consciousness seeking member in every family as it tickles your funny bone into it’s place in the cosmos."   

 

 

 

BACK TO

SATURDAY

with

Len Dell'Amico

Grateful Dead collaborator and concert video guru 

Len Dell'Amico directed Crimson, White and Indigo

 

Back in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, thousands of people

would pack their cars, vans and buses and head off to see the Grateful

Dead each summer. The folks who did this in the summer of 1989

were in for a lot of good times. This DVD captures one concert on that

tour: July 7, 1989 at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

This was an outdoor stadium, and when the band took the stage, it was

still daylight. There is a great shot of the audience as the band starts

"Iko Iko." In the first few notes, the audience recognizes the song, and

responds with enthusiasm. The band rarely played that song so early

in a show, and this DVD captures the audience's sudden understanding

that this was going to be one of those magical nights.

 

WelcomeToDopeland.com