Howl (2010)

The Beat Generation seems to be catching another wave of interest recently as modern filmmakers struggle to bring never directed visions to the silver screen, although it would be probably more correct to say that Beat poetry and prose never went out of style managing to carve its own niche in minds of scholars and literary rebels from around the world. I guess Howl has been made for this type of public – however you might call it: my people, our people or just these people – that appreciates Beat Generation's immortal energy and anger still rediscovering Ginsberg's greatest poem as it's been coined yesterday. And there's nothing wrong about it as some gutsy art just never gets old, in the worst case just sinking in to become a distinctive, cultural background.

Howl definitely carries the message with its vivid animation sequences by world famous, Leftist illustrator Eric Drooker, who put a lot of work to translate Ginsberg's poetic jazz into spiderweb of breathtaking images – I'd say it's the best thing about Howl, a kind of Waking Life stuff. A lot of work has been done by young James Franco as well, who plays Ginsberg in the movie treating his persona as it's been handed down on a plate with relaxed interpretation and no trace of pretentiousness (this self-conscious burden, that kills plenty of potentially great roles every year) although maybe short of some insight. Eventually we need to bow down to script writers, who cared about original trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti so much, that they copied its words verbatim, which helped the actors to get a firm ground for character development.



The film hovers around Allen Ginsberg's personal life, his debut in The Six Gallery in San Francisco and the famous case of alleged obscenity filed against City Light Books in 1957, which originally issued Howl. The poem itself becomes a leading thread, a narration and a pretext for overlaying it with stunning animation for which the trial stands as a back story weaving in and out, either meeting it straight-on or jumping to "interview with Allen Ginsberg" and then carrying on. However we might find this concept, as fas as doing a simple portrait of one of the most important American contemporary poets is concerned it quite fits the picture. Thus we get through Ginsberg's homosexuality, his affair with Neal Cassady, his stay in mental institution and obviously his friendship with Jack Kerouac, and you won't hear a bent out note, oh no... the problem is that you won't get jerked up either.

For that reason my feeling about Howl is mixed. Film's irectors (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman) lost a big chance to come up with a bigger picture of Ginsberg's life, his significance for counterculture of the 60's, for gay movement or for American poetry/art in general. Frankly it feels like cutting corners – Howl lacks emotional depth, rarely sparkles and after all doesn't come up with a flash of brilliance (I always expect)... in other words it fails to deliver spiritual madness of Beat Generation... this element, which for me is the most important, secret ingredient of their classic writing. Too normal for me? I'd say so, this is not what you really expect from a film about a guy, who at one point wanted to load everybody with LSD and Hare Krishna chants. Couldn't they reach for a little bit more than just a simple framework of legendary crumbles – however neat it is? I guess, we'll still have to wait for a talent, who wants to fuck Beat Generation open and show its dark underbelly.

Pull My Daisy (1959)

Although not even coming near to dark, surreal visions of William S. Burroughs and Anthony Balch, pictured in underground gems such as "The Cut-Ups" or "Towers Open Fire", "Pull My Daisy" is one of these obscure, experimental Beat movies, playing around with images and words to create a vision of hipster's soul. Written and narrated by Jack Kerouac it brings Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie as directors and Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky as actors (who play themselves). Moreover, we get Thelonious Monk bebop style soundtrack, which swings about as the movie goes on. Weaving on and off it supports a casual, accidental mood of the film.

"Pull My Daisy" shows Beat cohorts gathering in an usual Lower East Side apartment for couple of hours to swing, read potery, drink beer and smoke weed while they're interacting with tenants: railroad worker and his wife. Later on the party is being visted by the anonimous bishop and his partner. The only sequence shot outside the apartment is a strange street gathering, in which all characters jerk frivolously around the American flag. Narration is a goofy word spilling as Kerouac runs his jazzy overflow throughout the footage (inspiring and uplifiting our spirits). Breaking away from the linear his delivers lines more in a tonal, poetic way than tries to tie them up with logic. I'd bet they're heavily improvised anyway.

Ginsberg and Corso are dubbed by Kerouac to answer questions about buddhism and zigzag frenetically as they get tipsy. But when Peter Orlovsky finally arrives, it kicks into sort of artistic chaos. They swap bottles with booze, squeeze on the couch or play brass instruments, we know they cannot really play. Everything is innocent fun here and although straight people do not really get the meaning of this fooling around, they are embraced by the Beat wave of madness if they want it or not. Angels with dirty faces are here and they're gonna change the world (as we'd read it back then). Light-hearted, experimental short – an interesting artifact from America's important cultural and literary movement.

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Cocksucker Blues (1972)

As it was likely to happen and eventually it did, the most notorious documentary about a rock group ever made never got a chance for a public release. While an artistic vision of Robert Frank embodied in "Cocksucker Blues" doesn't offer any justification itself, it's potentially damaging effects on the image of the group who ordered it, definitely do. Despite coming through as one of the grittiest documentaries you'll ever see, it grabs The Rolling Stones by the balls handing these lads over on a hot smokin' plate. However it's more than that as one of the most famous photographers of the last century and a real Beat Generation documentarist not only shot ravishing footage of famous British rock stars, but also stamped his persona on the reel. What he said about "Cocksucker Blues" afterwards appears very significant too: What goes on on the tour was worse than what you see. Even if after watching the movie it hits as a strong statement, it's probably true anyway.

Although definitely a masterpiece of beat cinema, it was actually made when Beat Generation cohorts have already burnt out as comets while the remaining ones – whose pieces of life-as-art have flown freely around and inspired the others – joined the second circuit of culture. Still, it might be seen as the ultimate prank of counterculture's godfathers. "Cocksucker Blues" was initially ordered and produced by Marshall Chess, the president of freshly started Rolling Stones Records and filmed on multiple locations in United States, which The Rolling Stones were passing on their Exile On Main Street '72 Tour. Being first US tour of the group since 1969, when they played infamous gig on Altamount Higway in California (during which 4 people died), the expectations of the American public were very high. It shows clearly in the movie when die-hard fans are being interviewed outside local venues sometimes declaring their need of seeing the group is strongest than will to live... My life is half-wrecked anyway – we get to hear from one of the hippie burnouts.

"Cocksucker Blues" underground fame has been rising for a long time and finally achieved a real cult status. It's scarcity helped! First screening of the film in 1976 was closed to the public as Robert Frank has got involved in a long lawsuit over the rights to it's release with The Rolling Stones themselves – musicians tried to block it, scared to death by it's nihilistic agenda. The court ruled in favour of Frank's demand eventually – the movie could have been shown... but only if director was present in person. This ruling obviously stopped it's theatrical release and was a primal reason why "Cocksucker Blues" never made to DVD. As screenings became very rare, the only existing copy of the movie was finally bootlegged (as usually by these cool anonymous film lovers) and effectively circles around in the Internet today. This is our luck as this shit is a real must-see for those who have a passion for drug fueled madness rarities from the epoch of spiraling hedonism.



Robert Frank's insider, homemade 16 mm style is a foggy tunnel of casually edited scenes from the tour. A camera jumps in and dives into the hotel rooms where The Stones sleep and do drugs, where they fuck and play cards, where they drink and mumble to the camera... usually strung out or zipping up their pants after a good dick wetting, or just waiting for a quick fix and a bottle of whisky to be delivered. The king of decadence and intravenous drug use quickly pops forward – it's Keith Richards, who occasionally rumbles around throwing TV sets from hotel balconnies for fun. Otherwise he's just getting fucked on junk, continually cooked on demand by one of his skinny girlfriends. In one of the best scenes he cannot even stand... he's just there on a bench zonked out like a can of mushed peas, leaning on his girl who's equally wasted.

Except hotel footage, The Stones are captured on stage usually giving a top notch performance. When they join forces with Stevie Wonder and his band, the scene goes on fire while Uptight becomes Satisfaction and Mick grabs Stevie and together they kick off a live soul dance to a romping, cracking-ass work of extended brass, rhythm and guitar section. Steamy stuff, which becomes a cloud of blurriness when band comes off stage to get loaded all over again. Frank catches genuine moments of ultimate bendover as Mick Jagger gets so washed up that his monologues become nothing more than worn humming without any sense or clue. In the meantime roadies go on a frenzy of fixing their veins or coke snorting with occasional group fucking – a famous scene of screwing stripped groupies on a private plane would be probably enough to wake up most of The Stones fans. We even get some famous drug fiends featured – Terry Southern is cleaning his nose passing the bump to Tina Turner and then being involved in a long chat over precious qualities of white powder. Mick Jagger comes through as a coke fan too... but from time to time he'll pass a joint and get hungry.

60's were over for The Rolling Stones, guys! Hard stuff dominates in "Cocksucker Blues" and while lads are tumbling down, their golden period wears off, they get to be seen as a bunch of not so highly aspiring rock'n'rollers with simple vices. Frank's approach is great as it doesn't sugarcoat the shit! His film is very dark and gloomy lacking any voice-over with the only exception being a quote from William S. Burroughs in the end of the movie. A very witty choice indeed as the life of the band has just become a non-stop sex and drug party with rollercoaster amplitude of moods and sliding concentration on music matter. Occasional, non-verbal commentary like showing TV with '72 presidential campaign going on or dexedrine ad, fills this picture of a killing music tour by the biggest rock stars remained on stage. You wanna find out what The Stones got into when the 60's went down crashing? Just grab this and forget about other documentaries.

Night Tide (1961)

Although Curtis Harrington's B-movie debut got slightly dusted with time and is rarely being revisited by movie geeks nowadays, it's off-beat, dreamy atmosphere and occult undercurrent combined with avant-garde cinematography, make it a perfect film challenge for those digging in vintage obscurities and forgotten gems. Made on a shoestring budget and filmed on a location in Venice Beach, California in glorious black & white, "Night Tide" was released in 1961 by American International Pictures and instantly flopped. From perspective of today it doesn't seem strange, because it wasn't much of a cheesy, drive-in flick, providing whole lot of cheap thrills by default like 15 ft women, teenage werewolves, giant crabs or octopusses from outer space – typical exploitation themes for late 50's early 60's AIP repertoire.

By filming a soft mystery, we couldn't grasp till the end and that never would be fully explained, Harrington sparked off instead an occult thriller, which harnessed esoteric tools like Tarot, Greek mythogy and Hitchcockian suspense via experimental cinema tools which he mastered well working with Peter Hamid, Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger on their legendary shorts and then making his own experimental works. In fact, Curtis Harrington was one of Anger's closest friends taking part in "Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome" (1954) together with other occultists belonging to Agape Lodge of O.T.O. - para-masonic order dedicated to practising Thelemic group rituals of Aleister Crowley. It's when shooting the movie with Anger, he got to meet Marjorie Cameron – John W. Parson's wife – whom he later invited to act as a witch from the sea in "Night Tide".

The whole plot of the film, which draws American sailor on a leave in a seaside town (Dennis Hopper) meeting a beautiful girl working in the circus (Linda Lawson), who he finds out soon is a dangerous femme fatale with an account of two lost boyfriends, both killed in an unusual accident, being herself deeply convinced to be a siren, plays out fundamentally in The Dream Time – a space and time continuum, where imagination is as real as flesh and bone. Harrington's cinematographic experiment with possibilities of setting the action in a sacred space is generally outlined by drifting characters of this bizarre game – sailor, circus people (with retired English captain as a siren show master), witch from the sea and finally the siren herself (girl who doesn't know neither where she came from nor where she's going to). These faint silhouettes – despite their soap bubble quality – pull the viewer deeply into the neverland, where he's supposed to confront the subconscious eye in the eye... exactly what Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren proclaimed in their own works.



Except occult musings, this fascinating film could be seen as a sort of late beat generation offshoot definitely owing a lot to beat experiments with form. It's countercultural derivation becomes strikingly evident in the first scene, when main character randomly meets his soon to be object of desire in a jazz cafe starting out a casual conversation, while bebop jazz is played live in the background. The whole frame of two people just kind of hanging out and falling in love could be actually seen as very beat – it just happened "on the road". Although "Night Tide" has a very tight narration, based on a sound screenplay, Harrington favours rather picturing atmosphere, using minimal dialogues, which serve mostly as the only anchors of a firm reality – barely an offset of The Dream Time. That's where he comes in fact near to Maya Deren's ritual masterpieces like "Meshes Of The Afternoon" or "Ritual In Transfigured Time", which hold onto life of the subconscious in an intriguing manner, with an exception that the latter ones drop linear structure totally.

After all, "Night Tide" is a very unusual picture staying off the rails by going B-movie strictly down the experimental line. Worth noticing is Dennis Hopper's acting as well, rarely brought up in any summary of his – however you wanna look at it – long film career. He's still pretty far from this outrageous, jibbery, drug-fueled style of late 60's, that went on the record around The Glory Stompers" (1968). Here he goes completely with the mood – a rebel soul swinger, who can make his tone of voice significant or suggest something barely with face mimics. It's hard to disagree, that in "Night Tide" Hopper was still one leg in the 50's, getting effortlessly theatrical as if still playing "Macbeth" in Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. His later, condensed fury is totally absent here. Clean face, straight walk, subtle speaking and last but not least almost adolescent emotions. I really enjoyed watching him here and if you feel like checking him in this Harrington's obscure flick, definitely go for it!

Nie probujcie tego oglądać.

O Beat Generation powiedziano już chyba wszystko w książkach biograficznych, pracach naukowych, dokumentach filmowych i na forach internetowych :)

Rzadko zdarzało się jednak komukolwiek przenieść życie pana Burroughsa, Ginsberga, Kerouaca i innych na ekran w ramach filmu fabularnego. Nieliczne próby kończyły się porażkami udowadniając niejako trudności, związane z ekranizacja tak wielopoziomowego zjawiska jakim byli bitnicy.

"Beat" (2000) w reż. Gary'ego Walkowa jest przykładem gniota najwyższego rzędu. Pomimo zatrudnienia Keitha Sutherlanda, który wcielił się w samego Billa Burroughsa i Courtney Love, grającej Joan Volmer-Adams, fabuła grzęźnie na mieliznie scenariusza i w totalnym braku wyobraźni zarówno reżysera, jak i samych aktorów.

Film skupia się na nowojorskiej komitywie zmarlego cztery lata temu, Luciena Carra, Allena Ginsberga, Williama Burroughsa oraz jego żony, Joan Vollmer tropiąc "kontrowersyjne fakty".

Akcja snuje się wokół koszmarnego zabójstwa Davida Kammerera, którego dopuscil sie Carr szlachtujac go scyzorykiem harcerskim podczas nocy w parku. Sprawa nie została nigdy porządnie wyjaśniona, pomimo tego, ze Carr dostał za to zaledwie dwa lata obwiniajac swoją ofiarę o próbę gwałtu. Drugim motywem, eksploatowanym przez reżysera jest zastrzelenie Joan Vollmer w Meksyku przez Burroughs, za które pisarz nie poniósł żadnej konsekwencji oprócz 13 dni w areszcie. Wreszcie, oglądamy też romans Joan i Luciena na tle meksykańskiej natury.

Generalnie, siedzimy przez 1,5 godz. nie wiedząc czy oglądamy melodramat cz pilot serialu telewizyjnego. Nie znajdziemy tam ani śladu napięcia, ani wglądu w umysły bohaterów. Nie ma też prób wyjaśniania motywów postępowania bitnikow, eksperymentów z obrazem czy z narracja. Jednym słowem, nie znajdziemy tam niczego, czego bitnicy nie powiedzieliby o sobie w swoich książkach. Film jest totalna strata czasu i nie wnosi absolutnie nic dając nam za to kolejny dowód, ze filmowcy za pewne tematy brac się nie powinni w ogóle.

Jeśli macie jednak ochotę na czytanie obrony tego dziela, znajdziecie taka na tej stronie.

William S. Burroughs w Lawrence

Bardzo ciekawy film, przedstawiający legendę kontrkultury i sztuki literackiej XX wieku - Williama S. Burroughsa w otoczeniu przyjaciół, wśród których są: Patti Smith, Steve Buscemi i Allen Ginsberg. Materiał został nakręcony przez Wayne'a Propsta, długoletniego dokumentalistę życia bitników.