In the 1968 film Head, The Monkees played a fictionalized version of themselves under the name The Monkees.
Head was the group’s second feature film and was co-written by Jack Nicholson and The Monkees. Rather than presenting a straightforward concert story, it used surreal comedy, musical sequences, and self-aware commentary about pop stardom and entertainment contracts.
The members—Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork—were already famous from the television series The Monkees. Head deliberately challenged the clean, manufactured image associated with that show.
Because the movie is highly experimental, viewers sometimes remember its characters as having a separate fictional band name. They did not: the performers’ on-screen group is still called The Monkees.