Loosely based on Arlo Guthrie's spoken ballad, Alice's Restaurant is Penn's first and only credit as a screenwriter. A lament to the end of the countercultural "revolution," Penn's film vividly evokes the hopes and dreams burnished by the hippie generation. Guthrie himself stars as a wandering soul perplexed by the strange contradictions of Vietnam era America and ultimately engaged in a peaceful one-man battle against the bureaucratic war machine. Effused with a melancholy spirit, Alice's Restaurant is one of Penn's gentlest and most poignant films.