I don't know exactly why I wanted so much to rewatch this on streaming, which I did in little fifteen or twenty minute chunks over more than a week. I appreciated the simple structure imposed on it, where there is a frame delivered by Shawn's character in voiceover, and the bulk of the film delivered (mainly by Gregory) in between, a weird sensory deprivation caused by the minimal amount of action which gave the dialogue a nearly hypnotic feeling as he talked in such a strange way about the extreme experiences and ideas he had been seeking. His friend is understandably bewildered just as the audience is, but not in a hostile way, and the way it ends in companionable agreement feels soothing. What they say about the ills of the world can't help but be viewed through the lens of the more than forty years between then and now, and it looks kind of bad for humanity in some ways.