Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

With Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, co-writer and director Paul Mazursky is expressing a certain sort of Southern California irony, opening his landmark comedy, with Bob & Carol (Robert Culp, Natalie Wood) headed to the new-age “Institute," with nudity, and Mazursky himself learning to scream, in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1970.

Home from a trip north, documentarian Bob (Robert Culp) in L-A with spouse Carol (Natalie Wood), shortly after their experience at the new age “institute,” having put their son to bed, feels a need to confess, Paul Mazursky directing from his screenplay written with Larry Tucker, in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1970.

Another flourish in the screenplay by director Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, as Bob and Carol (Robert Culp, Natalie Wood) pull out the weed for Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon) after the stuffier guests split, in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969.

In the first scene for their co-stars (Dyan Cannon and Elliiott Gould as Ted and Alice), Bob and Carol (Robert Culp, Natalie Wood) try out the liberating truth-telling rules they've learned at "The Institute,” at a restaurant somewhere in LA, Lee Bergere the waiter, early in Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969.

Following the credits, Greg Mullavey steers his group at the Southern California “institute,’ Robert Culp and Natalie Wood, as Bob and Carol, Diane Berghoff as Myrna, Andrè Philippe as silent but obsequious Oscar, in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969, directed by Paul Mazursky from his screenplay with Larry Tucker.