Two albums have been released in conjunction with the film and the concert run: Steal Your Face and The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack.
Furthermore, Dead shows were known for their positive, exuberant and celebratory atmosphere as the band and the audience interacted, fostering a special environment of musical celebration.
The film also includes interviews with members of the Dead and vintage footage from their colorful history and early days in the band.
By 1974, lead guitarist Jerry Garcia wanted to stop touring and take a break from performing with the Grateful Dead.
Before beginning a hiatus of uncertain length, a five-show farewell run was set for October 16–20, 1974 at Winterland in San Francisco.
In contrast to Keith Godchaux (a traditionalist who favored acoustic grand pianos and the Fender Rhodes), Lagin's array of instruments included a Rhodes, the ARP Odyssey and an Interdata 716-controlled E-mu Systems modular polyphonic synthesizer; technology in the latter instrument would eventually be licensed and appropriated for the Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer (1975) and the ubiquitous Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 (1978).
Due to myriad recording and mixing problems that plagued the engagement, many of his parts were not recorded; this was exacerbated by his preference for playing through the powerful vocal system (considered to be "the best part of the entire Wall of Sound PA"), often resulting in the group's sound crew neglecting to switch between his quadrophonic input and the vocal input during long sequences.
[3] In the film, Lagin is only briefly seen in silhouette during "Morning Dew" and "Johnny B. Goode", fulfilling a request he made to Jerry Garcia after estranging himself from the Grateful Dead in 1975.
With filmmaker Leon Gast directing, the concert footage was shot on six film cameras and the audio recorded on two 16-track machines.
"[6] Bassist Phil Lesh explained "I don’t think Jer had any idea at the beginning how much mind-numbing repetitive detail he would have to wade through just to storyboard the film’s structure; the editing ended up taking more than two years, in the process scarfing down hundreds of thousands of dollars we didn’t have.
"[7] The opening animation sequence cost approximately as much as the rest of the movie, which together brought the Grateful Dead organization to the brink of bankruptcy, threatening the band's own record label and requiring the accumulation of more debt.
To cover costs the band took out loans, signed a distribution deal with United Artist Records and self-released a string of albums: Robert Hunter's Tiger Rose; Garcia's Reflections; the Godchauxs' Keith & Donna; Lesh & Lagin's Seastones; Old & In the Way (David Grisman and Peter Rowan's bluegrass band with Garcia); and the Dead's Blues for Allah and Steal Your Face.
[7] Rather than make dozens of prints of the film and distribute it through normal outlets, the movie was toured city-to-city, to control quality.
[9] Drummer Bill Kreutzmann had a more positive reaction, saying "Producing that thing really consumed Jerry’s time, on a day-to-day basis, throughout the hiatus. ...
This edition was made from a cropped scan of the film to fit a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and the monophonic sound and visual quality were not of high standard.
The second disc contains bonus tracks from the concerts and several featurettes about the making of both the movie and the DVD, including then-recent interviews with Grateful Dead members.
While Garcia worked on the movie project, Phil Lesh and band sound man Owsley Stanley listened through the audio tapes to produce a soundtrack album.
The restored version of The Grateful Dead Movie was screened as a one-night-only event, in approximately 540 theaters throughout the U.S., April 20, 2011.