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The Beats on Film
There have been several
films/documentaries made about the Beats and the Beat Generation.
I've included some of the most notable ones here along with links
to additional information. Comments, suggestions and amendments
are welcome via email.
 Some information
for this page was researched on the Internet Movie Database.
Links to IMDB and other external pages will launch within a new
browser window.
Click to enlarge |
The
Source (1999)
Written and directed by Chuck Workman
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Johnny Depp and John Turturro as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg, respectively.
Summary:
When Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William
Burroughs met at Columbia University in the 1940’s,
they spawned a movement, then called the Beats, that set precedents
for the political, hippie and spiritual movements of the 1960s
and ‘70s. this comprehensive portrait of the Beat generation
includes interviews with virtually every surviving figure from
this period. Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and John Turturro perform
dramatized readings of works by Kerouac,
Burroughs and Ginsberg.
The Source is the definitive film portrait of the Beat Generation
and the counterculture movements that followed, by Academy Award
winning director Chuck Workman. (Summary
from Express.com)
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Beat (2000)
Written and directed by Gary Walkow
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland William
S. Burroughs, Courtney Love as Joan Vollmer, Ron Livingston
as Allen Ginsberg, Daniel
Martinez as Jack Kerouac,
Norman Reedus as Lucien Carr and
Kyle Secor as Dave Kammerer
Summary:
This movie is basically about William
S. Burroughs and his wife, Joan Vilmer. It begins with Lucien Carr's murder of Dave Kammerer
in NYC (Click here for the rest
of that story). According to the film's producer, Donald Zuckerman,
all the scenes were filmed at the actual locations where they
took place. The Mexico apartment footage was filmed at the actual
location where William Burroughs
and his wife Joan lived. The film makers used the apartment across
the street because the actual apartment had been demolished.
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Click to enlarge |
Naked
Lunch (1991)
Written by William S. Burroughs
(novel) and David Cronenberg
Directed by David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands and
Roy Scheider
Summary:
Not an adaptation of beat writer William
S. Burrough's novel but a mix of biography and an interpretation
of his drug- induced writing processes combined with elements
of his work in this paranoid fantasy about Bill Lee, a writer
who accidentally shoots his wife, whose typewriter transforms
into a cockroach and who becomes involved in a mysterious plot
in an Islamic port called Interzone. Wonderfully bizarre, not
unlike Burrough's books. (Summary
from Keith Loh on IMDB) |
The Subterraneans
(1960)
Written by Jack Kerouac
(novel) and Robert Thom
Directed by Ranald MacDougall
Starring: Leslie Carron, George Peppard, Janice Rule, Roddy McDowall,
and Anne Seymour
Summary:
It's difficult to find much information on this film and
I'm guessing from what I have been able to dig up that it's because
it was such a bad one.
Literary Kicks' Levi Asher remarks, "From what I've heard
it's a horrific attempt to translate the Beat mystique into Hollywood
product. George Peppard plays the character based on Kerouac,
Jim Hutton is Allen Ginsberg,
and Roddy McDowall is Gregory
Corso. Most incredibly, the black girl who the Kerouac
and Corso characters fight
over is played by Leslie Caron ('Gigi') who is, well, um ...
she's white. There goes the interracial aspect. The jazz soundtrack
was supplied by Andre Previn. I hope to find a way to see this
film. Sometimes there's nothing as much fun as a really, really
bad movie. From what I hear, this is one."
Renowned reviewer, Leonard Maltin, simply states, "Glossy,
superficial study of life and love among the beatniks, with pure
cornball stereotype performances; MGM was not the studio for
this one."
A rare still from this movie can be seen in The Beat Page photo
gallery here. |
The Beat Generation
(1959)
Written by Richard Matheson and Lewis Meltzer
Directed by Charles F. Haas
Starring Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Ray Danton, Fay Spain,
Maggie Hayes, Jackie Coogan and Louis Armstrong
Tagline:
The wild, weird, world of the Beatniks! ...Sullen rebels,
defiant chicks...searching for a life of their own! The pads...the
jazz...the dives... those frantic "way-out" parties...
beyond belief!
Leonald Maltin Summary:
Exploitation-type story of detective Cochran tracking down insane
sexual assaulter;
vivid sequences marred by hokey script. Retitled "This Rebel
Age". CinemaScope.
Rare stills from this movie can be seen in The Beat Page photo
gallery here
and here. |
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