The Source

We are nation obsessed with pop culture. The Internet has become the great equalizer; there are websites, forums and groups devoted to every imaginable interest, philosophy and lifestyle. The term “counterculture” is charmingly obsolete. We are the assimilators and the assimilated. In America’s pre-connected recent history—the 1960s and 1970s—this was not the case. Young people by the tens of thousands took Timothy Leary’s admonition to heart: tune in, turn on, drop out. Hundreds of social experiments in communal living cropped up along the California coast. Some terrified us (think Manson Family), some mystified us (think Krishna Consciousness), and some exploited us (think People’s Temple.) There was one group in West Hollywood who embraced the concepts of communal living and spiritual enlightenment quite successfully. They worked hard, ran a successful business and tried their best to embrace a spiritual philosophy that promised enlightenment while dictating a less than comfortable lifestyle.
This group was known as the Source Family. Led by a fiftysomething, physically imposing, very handsome, decorated World War II veteran born Jim Baker, 140 attractive kids from all over the country attempted to establish their own utopia dedicated to enlightenment. Baker was known to his followers as Father Yod and Ya Ho Wha. Father Yod was a wealthy owner of three wildly successful health-food restaurants in California. The most famous of the three, The Source, was so well known that it was covered in the national press, spoofed in both a Saturday Night Live skit and in the Woody Allen classic, Annie Hall. Acknowledged as the first organic health food restaurant in the nation, The Source was a magnet for high-profile celebrities such as Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando and John Lennon. From 1970 until 1975, The Source was staffed by Family members and was the Family’s source of support.
The film The Source is based on the 2007 book, The Source, the Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wha 13 and the Source Family, edited by Jodi Wille. Wille saw potential for a documentary in the book, and teamed with commercial director Maria Demopoulos to write and direct it. Source Family member Isis the Aquarian (nee Charlene Peters), appointed by Father Yod as the Family’s official historian, once again opened the Family archives to Wille. Isis currently serves a loosely organized group of former family members as archivist, collecting and cataloging thousands of photographs, hundreds of hours of film footage, countless press clippings, and rooms full of other artifacts. Drawing on this vast collection, Wille and Demopoulos assembled The Source. The documentary tells the story of the Source Family, alternating photographs, clippings and footage with talking-head style commentary by former cult members. (Don’t be put off by the word “cult.” It’s what Father Yod himself called his group of spiritually hungry young followers.) The film centers on Jim Baker, chronicling his self-directed ascent from seeker to Father Yod, to Ya Ho Wha, to self-proclaimed God, while shouldering the responsibility for dozens of followers and their children. Along the way, he picked up a brand new Rolls-Royce sedan dubbed “The Chariot,” a fleet of Volkswagen vans, and 13 wives.