In the old Hollywood days movie studios would keep a man on the set who, when all other sources of ideas failed (writers, directors) was called upon to 'cook up' something for filming. He was called The Wild Man. The Flower Thief has been put together in memory of all dead wild men who died unnoticed in the field of stunt.

Inspired by the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and especially by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's Pull My Daisy (1959), Ron Rice cast Mead as the protagonist of his own improvised, Beat-inspired vehicle: a picaresque ramble through San Francisco coffee houses, playgrounds and ramshackle seafront structures. – DP