It is an adaptation of the 1967 folk song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", originally written and sung by Arlo Guthrie.

[3] Alice's Restaurant premiered in Boston on August 19, 1969,[citation needed] a few days after Guthrie appeared at the Woodstock Festival.

His long hair and unorthodox approach to study gets him in trouble with local police as well as residents, so he quits school and hitchhikes back East.

He first visits his ailing father Woody Guthrie in a New York City hospital, then performs music at various local venues.

After Thanksgiving dinner, Arlo and Roger offer to take months' worth of garbage from Alice and Ray's house to the town dump.

Finding it closed for the holiday, they drive around and discover a pile of garbage that someone else had placed at the bottom of a short cliff.

Arlo and Roger are driven to the "scene of the crime", where the police collect extensive forensic evidence amid a media circus.

At the trial the next day, Officer Obie has photos of the crime, but the judge is blind and simply levies a $25 fine, orders the boys to pick up the garbage, and sets them free.

Days later, Arlo is called up for a physical examination related to Vietnam War draft at the New York City military induction center on Whitehall Street.

He attempts to make himself unfit for military induction by acting like a homicidal maniac in front of a psychiatrist, but this gets him praise.

He is then pronounced unfit for military service when he comments on the dubiousness of considering littering to be a problem when selecting candidates for armed conflict, making the officials suspicious of "his kind" and prompting them to send his personal records to Washington, D.C.

Returning to the church, Arlo finds Ray and members of the motorcycle club showing home movies of a recent race.

A high Shelly enters, and Ray beats him until he reveals his stash of heroin, concealed in a mobile he has made from spare car parts.

In the scene where Ray and friends are installing insulation, she is wearing a brown turtleneck top and has her hair pulled into a ponytail.

[6] Guthrie's real-life co-defendant Richard Robbins appears (in blue shirt, with mustache) outside Woody's hospital room right before the funeral.

[citation needed] The original song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" that formed the basis for the film's central plotline was, for the most part, a true story.

According to Guthrie on the DVD's audio commentary, the film used the names of real people but took numerous liberties with actual events.

"[11] In 2023, Guthrie admitted that he thought the film was "frankly, garbage" and "a terrible movie;" he walked out of the premiere screening, believing that Penn and Herndon drew the totally wrong message from the material and that, contrary to the nihilistic mood of the film, Guthrie's generation had indeed made a major difference.

"[12] Brock held similar sentiments in late 2022, noting that they may not have been successful in all of the things they had tried to change but had managed to accomplish much good in their lifetimes.