[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alices_restaurant_1969.jpeg]]

''Alice's Restaurant'' is a 1969 comedy-drama film directed by Arthur Penn (his follow-up to ''Film/BonnieAndClyde'') and inspired by the title song of the Arlo Guthrie album ''Music/AlicesRestaurant''. (The song itself is officially named "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree", but is frequently also called "Alice's Restaurant".)

The film, like the song, is loosely autobiographical. Arlo Guthrie stars as himself.

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!!''Alice's Restaurant'' (the film) provides examples of:

* AdaptationExpansion: Eighteen minutes is long for a song but short for a film, so the film version adds additional incidents drawn from the same period in Arlo Guthrie's life.
* AsHimself: Officer Obie.
* AutobiographicalRole: Arlo Guthrie plays himself. Stockbridge police chief William Obanhein ("Officer Obie") plays himself, reportedly on the basis that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool. James Hannon, the blind judge in the song who presided over Guthrie's real litter trial, also plays himself. Folk singer Music/PeteSeeger plays himself, too. Actually, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXbigAuy0xo the whole town of Stockbridge (more or less)]] played themselves.
* BaitAndSwitch: Arlo is denied entry into the army, not because of the littering incident as he thought...but because of his long hair.
-->'''Sargent:''' Kid, we don't like ''your kind''.
* BillBillJunkBill: At the physical, a doctor comes in with a stethoscope.
-->'''Doctor:''' TurnYourHeadAndCough...Turn your head and cough...Turn your head and cough...''(Arlo's turn)'' Turn your hat and cough...
* CerebusSyndrome: The movie recounts about all the events of "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree", but the true emphasis is on the miserable marriage of Alice and her alcoholic husband.
* CompositeCharacter: Roger Crowther is a combination of two of Guthrie's real life buddies: Rick Robbins (his actual accomplice for the garbage incident), and the character's portrayer, Geoff Outlaw.
* CompressedHair: Arlo's long hippie locks concealed under his hat when hitching a ride with the redneck truck driver. At the reveal, the truck driver's reaction is very much PleaseKeepYourHatOn.
* {{Commune}}: The church
* TheFilmOfTheSong
* HippieVan: Arlo's VW microbus
* HolyGround: Alice and Ray live in a former church, which was in the process of deconsecration when we first meet them.
* ListingTheFormsOfDegenerates: In both the film and the song, Arlo Guthrie presents a list of the people he met in prison: ''"mother rapers... father stabbers... father rapers"'' before reminding the audience that he was simply there for littering.
* MessyHair: This being TheSixties, Arlo's hair got him kicked out of institutions and picked on by local authorities. But it ''did'' save him from the draft, though.
* PublicDomainSoundtrack: "Amazing Grace" gets tossed around a lot in this one.
* RealMenHaveShortHair: Arlo gets assaulted in a restaurant and pushed out through the window pane due to his long hair. The police arrest him instead of the perpetrators. He keeps his hair under his hat when hitching a ride in a truck. On entering, he lets his hair out, and the driver gives him a look of surprise and possibly also of regret that he had picked him up.
* RealPersonCameo: The real Alice appears in a couple of crowd scenes.
%%* ThanksgivingDayStory
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The bare outlines of the film are fact-based (Arlo Guthrie going to Montana and then heading back east to visit his old friends Alice and Ray[[note]]Ray was his high school shop teacher[[/note]], who lived in an old church, only to get caught littering and then having to deal with the draft board, while Alice opens a restaurant), but it's largely fictionalized beyond that, to the extent that Alice Brock wasn't entirely comfortable with the final results.
* WeddingFinale: The last scene in the film involves Ray and Alice's hippie-style wedding.
* WouldNotHurtAChild: A teenage girl named Reenie who says she has been intimate with other up-and-coming musicians offers herself to Arlo while he is backstage at a music venue, but Arlo politely rejects her advances and gives her his bandana as a souvenir.
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