With not one, not two, but three movies based on Jack Kerouac books coming out this year (2013) it makes sense to make sense of the world of cinematic dramatizations based on Beat works.
Since real people are given different fictional names in every movie, for clarity I’ve stuck with the original names of the people the characters are based on.
The Most Factually Accurate / True-to-The-Work Beat Movies (in chronological order) Pull My Daisy Howl
Big Sur
Pull My Daisy — 1959 — the definitive and only authentic Beat dramatization. A film of act 3 of Jack Kerouac’s “The Beat Generation” play/screenplay. This 26-minute movie may be the single greatest Beat Generation creation ever made, in good part because of the collaboration: Jack’s narration is perhaps the best audio he ever laid down; it’s set to a jazzy world-beat score by David Amram; and has the Beat badboys filmed in their prime by a visionary cameraman Robert Frank in an actual Greenwich Village artist’s apartment, typical of where the whole movement was born. It’s based on a real event at the Cassady’s house in Los Gatos in the summer of 1955, which can be read about in detail in ch. 45 of Carolyn Cassady’s “Off The Road.” Directed by Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie — starring Gregory Corso as Jack; Allen Ginsberg as himself; Larry Rivers as railroad man Milo / Neal Cassady; Delphine Seyrig as Carolyn; portraitist Alice Neel as the bishop’s mother; dance choreographer Sally Gross as the bishop’s sister. Selected for preservation by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 1996. B&W, 26 mins.
* This once uber-rare film is now on the interwebs and you can experience the entire masterpiece here or here.
Here’s 5 minutes of silent street & bar footage likely shot by Robert Frank in June of 1959 using the same 16mm camera he’d just shot Pull My Daisy.
The Beat Generation — 1959 — rape-centric Hollywood exploitation B-movie that’s about as pro Beat as “Reefer Madness” is pot; no connection to the Beats except the title and negative stereotypes — dir. by Charles Haas. On the up-side it actually opens with a Louis Armstrong performance! and he also shows up playing again in the middle, and has some dialog. It has a crazy cast including Jackie Coogan (best known as The Kid in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” and later Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family” TV show — and to give you an idea of the authenticity here — he’s also credited with being the beatnik “dialogue coach”!) And speaking of Charlie Chaplin, it also features The Little Tramp’s first son Charles Chaplin Jr. in a bit part as the Lover Boy (the beatnik talking on the payphone trying to pick up a girl). And speaking of famous actor’s children, it also has Robert Mitchum’s dead-ringer son James as the hip-talkin framed badguy; and Bing Crosby’s niece Cathy Crosby completely out of place singing in a white formal evening gown in a beatnik club; segue to Vampira as the female Beat poet with a live rat on her shoulder; and most noticeably Mamie Van Doren (the stage name of the B-movie Marilyn Monroe who Jack actually described his first wife Edie as looking like in Vanity of Duluoz, and no relation to the esteemed poet/author/editor/ Columbia professor Mark Van Doren or his quiz show scandalized son Charles). And she delivers the best line of the movie, purring — “Would you rather be dead with him, or alive with me?” Besides the curious cast, in all its kitschiness and negative cliches it actually has some redeeming themes of sexism, domestic violence, and a subplot and discussions about abortion in the case of rape (which was still illegal everywhere at the time) — but of course it’s just a set-up for an on-screen Catholic sermon. B&W, 94 mins.
Here’s the opening with Louis Armstrong playing & singing an anti-Beat Generation song.
Here’s the 11 mins of Mamie Van Doren’s scenes in nice HD.
Here’s the 4 mins featuring the beatnik club, including Vampira’s poetry reading, complete with a live rat on her shoulder.
The Subterraneans — 1960 — dir. by Ranald MacDougall — abysmal script but an impressive cast — gamely starring George Peppard as Leo/Jack; Leslie Caron (twice Oscar-nominated Best Leading Actress for Lili and The L-Shaped Room, and An American In Paris as “Mardou”; Roddy McDowell as Yuri/Gregory (!); Jim Hutton as Adam/Allen; Arte Johnson as Gore Vidal (!) and a musical appearance by Carmen McRae, the Andre Previn Trio!, plus Gerry Mulligan (with an acting role as well as sax playing), Art Pepper & Art Farmer! Corny, vapid, painfully clichéd, white-washed, neutered, silly interpretation of Jack’s novel, with the Black girlfriend turned into a French girlfriend. (!?) Kerouac’s wildest prose/story/novel is run through a Leave It To Beaver Hollywood conformity filter ending up a cartoon version of the original. Upon re-viewing in 2022 I found the campy portrayal comically endearing — reminiscent of the portrayal of hippies on network TV shows just a few years later. It’s simplistic and watered down and verging on camp, but it’s historically important in that it’s the only example of how Hollywood interpreted Jack in his lifetime (other than the Route 66 rip-off). If it’s any consolation, he got $15,000 for the rights, which was enough to buy a nice house in Northport, the first he ever owned in his life. Another minor positive — there’s some nice location shots of San Francisco captured in the fall of 1959. Interesting little-known tidbit — the LA Times reported in Dec 1958 that Dean Martin was attached to play the Jack part! Never released in any home video format ever. Color, 89 mins.
Here’s the original trailer from 1960. Here’s a scene with some of the jazz with Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer & the gang.
And this is interesting — 10 minutes of shots from the movie set to Monk & others.
Beat Girl (aka Wild For Kicks) — 1960 — Britain’s entry in the cheap exploitation beatnik field; no actual connection to the Beats except the title and base stereotyping — dir. by Edmond Greville — curious for its bit parts by a young Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed. B&W, 79 mins.
Here’s the entire movie on YouTube.
The Beatniks — 1960 — another terrible beatniksploitation B movie perpetuating the media-contrived image of mean lowlife criminals. It actually has a not bad score, and the story is solid — A Star Is Born gone wrong — but the dialog and every other aspect of filmmaking is absurdly atrocious. As others observed — this is like if Ed Wood made a beatnik movie. 🙂 IMDb Ratings has this at an astounding 2.5! I’ve never seen such a low number in my life! B&W, 78 mins.
You can see the whole terrible movie here on YouTube.
Beany & Cecil — Wildman of Wildsville — 1961 — Since no film festival would be complete without some cartoon shorts — take a break from the serious and enjoy this satire of all things Beat — with none other than the immortal Lord Buckley voicing the lead beatnik, Go Man Van Gogh, and some crazy jazz, daddyo. Color (animated), 6 mins.
You can watch the full clip here.
Route 66 — 1960–64 — one-hour B&W dramatic TV series airing Friday nights on CBS — obviously “inspired by” / ripped-off from Jack’s On The Road — two young men (an outgoing street-wise orphan and a bookish New England Ivy Leaguer who recently lost his father, hmmm), drive around the country having adventures while looking for the meaning of life (Hollywood is nothing if not original!) It was shot almost entirely on location around North America — with 3/4 of the episodes written by show creator Sterling Silliphant (who’d later win a Best Screenplay Oscar for In The Heat Of The Night). Starring George Maharis and Martin Milner (who narrowly beat out Robert Redford for the role). Often compared to the original Twilight Zone, the intelligent adult scripts attracted a mile-long list of now-household-name guest stars — Martin Balsam, Joan Crawford, Boris Karloff, Buster Keaton, Cloris Leachman, Peter Lorre, Lee Marvin, Walter Matthau, Robert Redford, William Shatner, Martin Sheen, Rod Steiger, Rip Torn — to just scratch the surface. They also employed local actors so the dialects were both authentic and different in every episode. Also notable was Nelson Riddle’s music, including the instrumental theme song that actually became a Top 30 Billboard hit in the summer of 1962. Show sponsor Chevrolet saw their product-placement Corvette sales double by the end of the first season! B&W, 50 mins.
Here’s the entire 3rd episode — all filmed in New Orleans in 1960! Unreal footage!
There’s tons of other entire full episodes on YouTube.
Saturday Night Live — 1977 — a TV oddity — John Belushi played Kerouac in one scene in the second season. Dan Aykroyd as a cop brings Jack into Broderick Crawford’s Highway Patrol office. That original show ran from 1955 to 1959, so writing the Beats into the sketch was both a nice ode and made sense. B&W (to mirror Highway Patrol), 2 mins.
Heart Beat— 1980 — written & directed by John Byrum; based on a part of Carolyn Cassady’s autobiography Off The Road; Nick Nolte as Neal, Sissy Spacek as Carolyn, John Heard as Jack, Ray Sharkey as the Allen-like character, Ann Dusenberry as LuAnne; also notable for four weird/cool cameos: Jack’s daughter Jan is the smoking girl in a white dress sitting in the cafe/bar around 11 minutes into the movie in the scene that begins with Cassady/Nolte tipping out of his chair onto the floor; John Larroquette in his first-ever film role playing an obnoxious TV talk show host interviewing Jack; director David Lynch appears briefly as a painter; and Steve Allen pokes his head in the TV studio makeup room when Jack’s in the chair.
Carolyn called this movie “Heart Break” because she hated the final product, but did like Sissy Spacek’s portrayal and as a person. There’s loads of fictionalized liberty-taking and deviations from real events & Carolyn’s book, but it’s a pretty great capturing of the late ’40s/early ’50s era, and deserves praise for its casting, acting, editing, art direction, costumes, and Jack Nitzsche’s fantastically cool score. One little detail they got bizarrely right, undoubtably because of Carolyn’s on-set consultation, they used the real names for the Cassady children, and had kids their ages appear throughout as the three children came into the real life storyline.
Nick Nolte really embraced playing Cassady, and even channeled him into the role he played immediately before this one in Who’ll Stop The Rain — which also starred Ray Sharkey, the Allen character here.
A mistake I’ve made my whole life was taking these Beat dramatizations too seriously — looking at them through a Beat historian’s eye — where they inevitably all come up short. Upon re-viewing in 2022 I realized for the first time that this was crafted as a romantic comedy — in the classic Hollywood tradition. The editing is often done to create comedic juxtapositions — like when Carolyn talks Neal into selling their car so they can move to a house in the suburbs — cut to forlorn Neal riding in the back of the moving truck. Or the refrained cut of the suburban foil couple leaving the Cassady’s house after three successive visits. Think of the scene of the Allen character being oblivious to everyone in a restaurant as he passionately yells out his poetry. Or Jack & Neal happily, obliviously, planting marijuana in the front yard of their suburban house. Or the scene where Jack nervously thinks he’s become Carolyn’s new husband, then Neal literally sweeps her off her feet into his arms and carries her to the bedroom. Or Neal getting stoned when the straight suburban couple comes over and then goofing on them. This film is unique among all other Beat dramatizations in that it has multiple intentionally funny scenes written into it — again, in the tradition of countless 1940s and ’50s romantic comedy classics — the very era this film is set in. Color, 110 mins.
Special Note: Jack’s only child Jan appears 11 minutes into the movie in the white-walled café/bar scene that begins with the Nolte/Cassady character tipping over out of his chair. Jan is the girl in the white dress sitting along the wall on the right smoking, seen in 3 different shots over a 90-second stretch. In her book “Trainsong” she wrote in chapter 22, “In September I was offered the job as an extra in Heart Beat, a movie about my father’s menage-a-trois with the Cassadys. … The Acropolis Cafe was just the place for a beat generation coffeehouse scene: a Greek restaurant in downtown L.A., unchanged since the thirties. … My job was to sit at a table where two guys were playing chess: to follow their moves like a cat, to look mildly bored, … and to puff like mad on Camels to produce a thick, smoke-filled atmosphere.” If you watch it on a screen larger than a phone/computer, you can see that the two men at the table with her are indeed playing chess — especially visible in the third and final shot of them, starting at 12:21. Further, you can google photographs of the interior of the Acropolis Cafe in L.A. and see that it’s where this scene was shot.
You can see a great 11-minute interview with Nick Nolte talking about the film here, including about getting to know Carolyn, and getting to the essence of Neal.
For more details on the production check out this article from the American Film Institute.
Quantum Leap — 1990 — a TV exception — the “Rebel Without a Clue” episode set in Big Sur in Sept. 1958, with Michael Bryan French playing Kerouac in one 2:15-long scene. Also features series stars — the perennially Emmy-nominated Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. A screening of this at the “Jack on Film” show at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac evoked a spontaneous round of applause. Color, 2 mins.
You can watch the entire scene here.
Naked Lunch — 1991 — screenwritten & directed by Canadian David Cronenberg (and shot entirely in Toronto); Peter Weller as Burroughs; Judy Davis as Joan Vollmer; Nicholas Campbell as Jack (named Hank); Michael Zelniker as Allen (named Martin; the actor played Red in Bird). Like The Last Time I Committed Suicide, characters based on Jack & Allen are inserted into the story even though they don’t appear in the original text. Plus Ian Holm and Roy Scheider as Burroughs’ recurring Dr. Benway character. Howard Shore (Lord of The Rings, Hugo) does the cool jazzy music, with Ornette Coleman playing. Cronenberg’s sister Denise does the costuming, as she does for many of his films. Title card at the opening says “New York City – 1953.” It’s not really an adaptation of the novel per se, but rather a surreal biopic of Burroughs’ life during the time it takes place in. This was the first remotely popular Beat movie; it swept the Canadian film awards taking home 7 Genies, including Best Picture, Director and Cinematography. Color, 115 mins.
Here’s a 3 minute clip where Bill is walking through a Tangier market talking about writing and killing his wife.
The Last Time I Committed Suicide— 1997 — written & directed by Stephen Kay; Thomas Jane as Neal, Keanu Reeves in a Kerouac-like role (named Harry), Adrien Brody in a Ginsberg-like role, a great Claire Forlani as Joan Anderson, 24-year-old Gretchen Mol playing 16-year-old Cherry Mary, the great Marg Helgenberger (from Erin Brockovich) as Joan’s mother. A really well made film based on the then-only-surviving part of Neal Cassady’s famous Joan Anderson/Cherry Mary letter to Jack (written Dec. 1950) about events around Christmas 1945 before Neal had met any of the other soon-to-be Beats. It’s notable that this is the earliest Beat writing ever turned into cinema. Carolyn Cassady & I agree this is the best Beat dramatization on film. Interesting tidbits: Carolyn Cassady and George Walker both said this Thomas Jane portrayal was the closest to Neal they ever saw on screen; the complete 16,000-word letter, a fragment of which this movie is based on, was lost in the mid-1950s — but was miraculously found intact in 2012 in an old box that had been stored since being rescued from the Sausalito publisher Golden Goose’s garbage when it folded in 1955. The film’s got a bitchin soundtrack, both snappy original compositions by Tyler Bates, plus Bird, Dizz, Monk, Miles, Mingus, Ella & others. It’s got shades of Michael Polish’s Big Sur (see below) with its heavy use of voiceovers of the original text (although with additions and edits) and the cinematic details thereof; and it’s like Walter Salles’s On The Road in that it expands upon the existing text using other Beat writings, except in Suicide’s case they also completely make stuff up like adding Jack-like and Allen-like characters to a story set before they ever met. The acclaimed Bobby Bukowski (no relation) is the cinematographer. Filmed in Ogden Utah filling in for old Denver at last. The film builds to a brilliantly executed beautifully exploding-like-stars climax. The whole last half hour is masterful filmmaking – cinematography, editing, acting, pacing, dynamics, score. Color and B&W, 92 mins. Here’s the official trailer.
Or here’s a cooler trailer.
Or here’s the coolest longest most musical & Beat trailer.
Here’s part of the masterpiece climactic sequence where Neal gets out of jail and goes for a run — featuring the swingin’ soundtrack by Tyler Bates who went on to score over 100 other movies & TV shows, including the John Wick films, Guardians of The Galaxy and a ton of others.
Here’s a nice 6-min interview with Keanu Reeves including why he made the movie, and what it was like doing it and ‘dancing’ with cinematographer Bukowski.
Or here’s an absolutely great 6-min interview with writer/director Stephen Kay and Thomas Jane.
Beat— 2000 — written & directed by Gary Walkow; Kiefer Sutherland as Burroughs, Courtney Love as Joan Vollmer – those two being the focus of the movie; Ron Livingston as Ginsberg, Norman Reedus as Lucien, and Daniel Martinez as Kerouac (although he seems to be completely cut out of the re-cut hour-twenty home video version). Shot entirely in Mexico. A deservedly not-well-received-on-any-level dramatization of Burroughs, Lucien, Allen and Joan’s time in Mexico, including the William Tell killing. Prioritizes Lucien and Joan’s brief affair which is a pretty insignificant and minuscule event to base a film around. Basically an indie low-budget B movie with some respectable name actors, probably because of the subject matter. This and Subterraneans are tied for the worst Beat dramatizations — but this doesn’t even have the 1960 Hollywood kitsch to it. It tries to be serious, and fails painfully. It’s a wonder to me how these things get made. And you think of the months the actors and crew committed to it. I wonder if they know when they’re making it that it’s a disaster and going nowhere? Color; 93 mins in theaters; 80 mins in home video.
Here’s the trailer. Here’s an even cooler trailerincluding lots of the jazzy original soundtrack. Here’s a trailer narrated by the Allen character. Here’s a 5-minute collage of various Lucien & Joan scenes.
Starving Hysterical Naked — 2003 — written & directed by Michael Bockman; Billy Zane as Jack (!). It appears as though it has never been released, and maybe never even completed. Set in 1957 on the cusp of On The Road being published, with Jack looking back at his life. It includes Jack appearing (as “Nick Constantine”) on stage at the hungry i nightclub in North Beach. Billy Zane’s characterization resembles Jack’s appearance in the 1950s more closely than any other on film. Besides the on-stage appearance, the narrative story seems to be a very no-budget amateurish covering of largely the same ground as Kill Your Darlings (see below) — the Beat Gen birth at Columbia.
If anyone knows anything more about this movie, please let me know.
Color and B&W, 9 mins.
Here is the only known clip of it.
Beat Angel — 2004 — director, editor and D.P. Randy Allred; written by Bruce Boyle, Frank Tabbita, Randy Allred & Vincent Balestri; Vincent Balestri as the Jack character, Frank Tabbita as the foil. A quirky, clever, interesting, heart-felt, kind of surreal, sometimes funny, well done, low budget indie movie about Jack Kerouac coming back to life for a night in 1999, with a cool minimalist jazz score. All shot in funky locations, including some neat footage of Desolation Peak and the lookout cabin. The actor who plays Kerouac had been performing him live on stage in a one-man show since 1980. His is the most spirited, joy-evoking, linguistically sharp portrayal of all the actors who take a crack at Jack. The centerpiece performance at the poetry reading in the middle of the film was all shot in one take on the last roll of film they had. (!) Color, 98 mins.
The Great Sex Letter— 2006 — a visual dramatization set to a reading of Neal Cassady’s letter of March 1947 to Jack Kerouac that Jack dubbed “the great sex letter.” Despite the film’s inaccuracies — like the person receiving it appears to be Allen not Jack — this low-budget 7-minute indie effort is notable for being the earliest Beat writing ever interpreted on film, followed closely by Neal’s “Joan Anderson/Cherry Mary” letter to Jack written in December 1950 and turned into the feature-length The Last Time I Committed Suicide (see above). The film begins in silence, then the only audio you hear is the reading of Neal’s words set to music by Charles Mingus. Color, 7 mins.
You can experience the complete short film here.
Neal Cassady — 2007 — written & directed by Noah Buschel; Tate Donovan as Neal (who a lot of people including son John Cassady and myself think did a pretty good job), Amy Ryan as Carolyn, Glenn Fitzgerald as Kerouac, and Chris Bauer as Kesey. The first 15 minutes, shot in B&W, are Jack & Neal looking for Neal Sr. pre On The Road being published — then the rest is post Neal’s arrest during the Prankster years (shot in color). A well-intentioned low-budget ($1 million) film that fairly accurately portrays Jack as the born writer (forever taking notes) and Neal as somebody with aspirations but who gets on a merry-go-round he can’t get off of. Features the only dramatization on film of the historic 1964 Prankster party in New York where Jack and Neal saw each other for the last time. It would be easy to call it bad, and many do, but there’s lots of interesting little accurate details, and Donovan really has Neal’s mannerisms and speech pattern down. B&W and color, 80 mins. Here’s the trailer.
Luz Del Mundo — 2007 — co-written & directed by Ty Roberts; Austin Nichols as Neal (and the focus of the movie), Will Estes as Jack. The dialog is in both English and Spanish, but there’s no captions. Shot on locations in and around San Miguel de Allende. It starts of Feb. 3rd, 1968, the day before Neal’s death, then flashes back to the summer of 1950 with Jack & Neal (and Frank Jeffries/Stan Shepard) on the road. It’s mostly about Neal being pursued by the ghost of death. Only released in Mexico as far as I know. The title translates to “Light of The World,” which is kind of ironic since the movie is pretty dark. Color, 31 mins.
You can watch the full movie on Vimeo here.
Big Sur— 2013 — screenplay adaptation and directed by Michael Polish; starring Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac; Josh Lucas as Neal; Kate Bosworth as Billie (Jacky Gibson); Patrick Fischler is great as Lew Welch; Anthony Edwards as Ferlinghetti; Radha Mitchell as Carolyn; Balthazar Getty as McClure; Henry Thomas as Philip Whalen; and gorgeous Stana Katic as Lenore Kandel. The second major Kerouac novel released as a movie in a year — and a 180 degree counterpoint vision to the youth and optimism of On The Road. Setting aside Pull My Daisy, this is probably the most accurate portrayal of Jack and his writing on film. Hauntingly shot on location in S.F. and Big Sur, including an evocative mystical cabin set. Definitely the most artfully lensed and edited (visually composed) of any of the Kerouac films. Roughly 85% of the dialogue is voiceover of Jack’s own Big Sur prose. They use the real names for everybody, not the novel’s fictional ones. Beautiful haunting minimalist electric guitar and grand piano score by the Dessner twin brothers from The National. Color, 81 mins.
Here’s an atmospheric 3-minute trailer.
Here’s a more traditional 2-minute trailer.
Kill Your Darlings — 2013 — directed by first-timer John Krokidas; incredible cast — Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg; Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr; Jack Huston (John’s grandson) as Jack Kerouac; Ben Foster as William Burroughs; Michael C. Hall as David Kammerer; Kyra Sedgwick as Lucien’s mother; Elizabeth Olson (the twins’ younger sister) as Edie Parker; Jennifer Jason Leigh and David Cross as Ginsberg’s parents; and John Cullum as the Columbia English teacher. Allen Ginsberg’s coming of age story from entering Columbia through the David Kammerer killing, which was the subject of the early Kerouac/Burroughs co-authored novel And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks. The film’s title comes from the William Faulkner line, “In writing, you must kill your darlings,” meaning you sometimes have to delete your favorite passage for the betterment of the story. Sadly, the Kerouac character is very much minimized, gay themes are stressed, women are portrayed as shrews, and there’s tons of perplexing factual inaccuracies in a film that presents itself as “a true story.” Color, 104 mins.
You can read my full detailed review from its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival here.
Here’s the official trailer.
Here’s all of Elizabeth Olson’s scenes as Edie Kerouac to show you how painfully bad the film’s portrayal of women in general is and of the key Beat Generation catalyst in particular.
Here’s the film’s portrayal of the Kammerer murder.
Here’s the awkward 3-minute bar scene with all the principals.
The Subterraneans — 2013 — directed, edited and screenplay adaptation by Simon Benelhady; Oskar Brown as Leo/Jack, Taneshia Abt as Mardou/Arlene Lee. German indie production — second attempted adaptation of the novel after the disastrous Hollywood version in 1960 (see above). The full film doesn’t seem to have manifested. B&W, 4 mins.
You can watch the full 4-minute sizzle reel/pitch tape here.
Kill Your Darlings — set in 1944 (released 2013) The Last Time I Committed Suicide — set in 1945 (released 1997) Heart Beat — set in 1946-66 (released 1980) On The Road — set in 1947-49 (released 2013) Beat — set in 1951 (released 2000) The Subterraneans — set in 1953 (released 1960 and 2013) Pull My Daisy — set in 1955 (released 1959) Big Sur — set in 1960 (released 2013)
The day of the “On The Road” premiere in New York (Dec. 13th, 2012) I was up at the NYPL trying to get through the doors of the hermetically sealed vault of the Berg Collection, home to a gazillion literary papers from Emerson to Shelley — but most importantly the entire Jack Kerouac collection! And when I say “entire” I mean from grocery lists to manuscripts. The book that lists his stuff there is single-spaced and four inches thick! And of course the place is harder to get into than the Oval Freakin Office, but I figured with the mojo of this 12/12/12 opening I oughta spin the tumblers and see what happens.
There’s forms ya gotta fill out, cards ya gotta get, background checks, Jeopardy questions, a swimsuit competition — it’s all way too much, but I jump through every hoop and roll with every punch, and they say they’ll get back to me . . . in a week.
So, I go to the library’s free computers to check my email and find this from the film’s director . . . “Brian, Walter wanted to see if you would like to ride up with him to the premiere tonight.”
! ! ! !
Done.
And then at the same time, I get an email from Teri McLuhan saying she can’t join us as planned — so suddenly I’ve got an empty seat beside me for the premiere night adventure! But instantly, from the NYPL interwebs I’m able to track down The Mighty Debster, my intrepid partner from the MTV daze, the Emma Peel to my John Steed, a dynamic duo that got into every concert or mega-party we ever set our sights on.
“Does Walter want a pretty girl to join us in the car?” I email assistant Gerry.
Two minutes later: “Yes, one pretty girl in the car, please.”
And BOOM weir on.
Back to the Jane Hotel to drop off the day and costume into night,
and before I can get out the door there’s an email telling me I’ve been approved to get into the Berg! I dunno how I dun it — and in 3 hours — but I’m sure it wasn’t the swimsuit competition! So, I float out the door, and make my pilgrimage past John Lennon’s house at 105 Bank Street, and although not a very religious type, I did a cross on my chest and say a little prayer of gratitude to John and The Spirits for lighting my Path.
Then cab it down to Walter’s funky SoHo shelter from the storm, and there’s the limo and there’s the driver and before long, There’s the birthday boy! And we’re laughin and tellin stories, and I’m remembering my Spirit Guide role in this vital mission. As Gerry says, “It’s your infectious enthusiasm.” Everything positive, everything up, on our way to the New York premiere, the last in a loooong series for Che Walter on his North American crusade for truth, justice & the Road.
And of course Deb’s not there yet, and he goes, “You don’t promise a pretty girl and then not deliver. Just don’t saying anything. But don’t promise and not deliver,” he’s ribbin me cuz we gotta get in the car and go, but just then, “There she is! Just a walkin’ down the street singin’ Do wah diddy, diddy-dum diddy-doo.” And Boom weir off in the Starship, sittin back that comfy way you can in limos, almost on beach chairs with your legs stretched out catching rays from the New York lights flashing in the windows like an old projector.
And Walter’s holding these pages of a speech he’s written, but he’s not reading them, just looking down and saying, “I hope I don’t forget anybody. Everybody’s gonna be there tonight … oh man …” And I ask, “What about Steve Buscemi? Is he comin’?” And Walter’s, “Oh my gawd, Buscemi!! Gerry, did we invite him?” And St. Gerry checks on his gizmo, and about a minute later reports he was invited but sent his regrets. And we’re back to Phoosh! as we whoosh through the Sixth Avenue traffic. And I remind him the premiere is being held right around the corner from where Jack birthed the On The Road scroll, and Walter says, “There’s no such thing as coincidences,” and twinkles through the flashing night lights.
And as we turn onto the block we can see the mobs on the sidewalks and the whole scene, and the driver starts to slow down right in front of the red carpet and Walter calls out, “No, no, drive up ahead, don’t let me out here!!” not wanting to step into the flashbulb blitzkrieg. We get our shit together in the darkness of the stretch-Hudson, and then it’s, “Go!” and we open the door and stride as quickly as we can into the theater, people calling, “Walter,” from all directions, and he grabs Deb on one side and me on the other and we were pretending like we were in the middle of some great conversation for the distance between the car and the glass theater doors. Funny, fast, and efficient.
And there’s the girls with the clipboards and the seas part and we sail into the safe harbor of the lobby. Outside were the unaccredited paparazzi. Inside there’s a whole Special Forces unit of them — and this time there’s no getting around it. But we slip behind the photographer’s backdrop for a deep breath and a twinkling jazzed regrouping before facing that first line of cameras both still and rolling, then a whole wall lined with reporters with notebooks and recorders and accreditation around their necks. While hanging backstage I spot the crew’s cheat-sheets — pages with color photos of each of the expected celebs so the door crew know the faces when they appear. Good look-out.
Turns out all the seats in the theater are assigned, so you don’t just get a ticket, you get a specific seat like at a concert. Once Debs and I score our juicy pair, we go pre-scout the venue and sure enough we’re in primetime dead-center, and I see some cat nearabout our seats, and ask how he came to be here, thinkin this whole row will be friends n family, and he said, “I’m a friend of one of the actors.” “Oh, nice. Which one?” And he says, “Garrett.” And I’m like, “Oh great!” And he asks about me, and I start tellin’ him, and he’s like, “I’ve heard of you! You wrote those great pieces. Yeah, Garrett was telling me about you.” And I’m thinkin’, this is going well so far.
So, Deb & I prankster about for a bit, checkin the scene, eavesdropping on anticipatory conversations, looking into the faces of all the beautiful people who are about to go On The Road. And there’s this guy who looks like Michael Stipe who sang at the Hurricane Sandy benefit last night at Madison Square Garden, but I’m thinkin, “Na, that’s just somebody who looks like him.” And I take a roll down the aisles proudly wearing my American flag shirt that later gets raved about at the afterparty for happily waving it in this second term engagement season, and I’m lookin for familiar Beat faces but this is the film bidniss and not exactly St.-Mark’s-On-The-Bowery.
Then finally we all take our seats and I’m makin friends in about four different directions, including with these crazy red-haired girls who keep droppin booze bottles on the clanking floor all night which was really funny and very On The Road but I bet some less-than-spirited patrons may have been offended at their lack of decorum at this serious occasion — but to me they were just quiet Jacks laughing in the immensity of it.
And soon some IFC honcho comes on stage and praises Walter up down and sideways as “a master filmmaker and one of the best cinematic storytellers in the world,” then Walter comes out and he’s all, “Geez, well now I’m really trembling a little after that introduction!” Then goes, “And I’m also nervous to be here because ‘On The Road’ was birthed (he’s using my word!!) just three blocks from here,” And I’m, “No way! He’s doin’ my bit! He remembered!! Cool!” And then he says, “It was written on 20th Street and 9th Avenue in April 1951, and I want to thank my good friend Brian Hassett, who is here tonight, for reminding me.” And I’m, No way!! Not only does he thank me, but I’m the first person he mentions in his New York premiere night speech!! What the?!?!
Then he goes on and talks about the movie and thanks the IFC people and John Sampas and Ann Charters and others but I barely heard it cuz I was still in such a tizzy over he thanked me!! . . . First!! And then he does it again! Crazy! Pinch me!
Walter does all these incredible off-the-cuff riffs covering any number of subjects. Like, “I had a passion for the book that was triggered when I first read it in 1974 when I was entering university in Brazil which was living through the dark ages of a military dictatorship, and the book carried all the freedoms we were seeking but not able to experience, so it had a very resonant quality, but I knew that that wasn’t enough of a reason to begin an adaptation, so I proposed to American Zoetrope to do a documentary in search of a possible film based on ‘On The Road.’ And they went for this insane idea! And for six years we crisscrossed America on the paths Kerouac had taken when he wrote On The Road, and we met with the characters of the book who are still alive and they were extremely generous to us. We talked to the poets of that generation that changed the cultural landscape not only of this country but of Brazil as well. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka, Hettie Jones — it was a unique experience because I had never met younger 70-year-olds than this group, because they had kept two things intact — their beliefs and their integrity. And that’s very very hard to keep in the long run.”
And then he brings out the actors in this cool way — in the order in which they first committed to the film. First it’s Kirsten Dunst who plays the person he met on the project who most impressed him — Carolyn Cassady. “In meeting Carolyn in 2005, I was so impacted by the intelligence and the sensitivity of that unique woman, and I thought that only an actress with those qualities could play her. Please welcome Kirsten Dunst.”
Then he goes into this whole story about a friend of his who saw an advance screening of “Into The Wild” and immediately called Walter about the perfect actress to play Marylou, and he wrote the unknown’s name down on a napkin: “Kristen Stewart” “And when I first met her in 2007 she had such an in-depth understanding of what ‘On The Road’ was about and knew the book inside out, and she was 17.”
Then … “When Garrett Hedlund drove from Northern Minnesota for 3 days to the audition in Los Angeles, he brought such electricity and life to Dean that we knew we had found one of the most difficult characters to cast, and that electricity never dissipated — but what I didn’t know is that he would be such a great Road companion.”
And then he intros Sam Riley with, “One day I saw ‘Control,’ and for those of you who love cinema, you know how impactful that could be. Seeing Sam Riley in that film was something I wasn’t going to forget. There was such intelligence in the performance, such intensity, but also in the non-verbal there was the capacity to understand and decode the world. And these are qualities writers have, and that we wanted to have to bring Sal to the world.”
Then he says, “I have to confess I belong to a specific religion that states — there is no independent film without Steve Buscemi.” Gets a big laugh. “Many thanks to him for helping, not only for being in the film but for recommending so many great actors that we ended up casting in it. You’re wonderful.”
And then the movie happens — my fifth time seeing it on the big screen (!) — and I kinda lost it at the Orgone Accumulator scene. Now that I know it’s coming, I see Viggo as Bill as so freakin funny in this scene, it’s just nuts in the Crazy Dept., and before he ever climbs into that outhouse I’m laughing my head off and infect the rows around me so by the time he finally sticks his head in the window our whole section is roaring.
Then the movie’s over to many whoops and whistles and raucous applause, and it’s one of my favorite times on earth — being in a movie theater right after “On The Road” ends and eavesdropping on conversations and talking to people and looking into their movie screen faces for the story they tell, and of course every face is aglow and the room’s a Marshall stack of fast talking New Yorkers all soloing at once, but you can pick out fragments “… the cinematography … ,” “… that guy who played Ginsberg … ,” “… those party scenes were great!” “… and when he starts to cry at the end …”
And after much beaming Debs and I finally weave out front and hang under the marquee and I ask this group of models what they thought (purely research, you understand) and the prettiest one goes, “AMAZING!” unabashedly beaming, almost giggling in joy.
And we schmooze our way around the circle until the afterglow begins to fade, and it’s like, “Okay, let’s hit the party.” But of course there’s no cabs at the moment you need one, so we mosey on down to 9th Avenue yakkin our fool heads off … What about Kristen Stewart?! and How about that soundtrack?! And Debs is goin’ on about the costumes and how the people look and how they totally brought post-war America to life.
And we get to the avenue and of course there’s no cabs there either, and by now a whole krewe from the movie including the models have caught up with us, and we’d need about 3 cabs anyway, and Deb goes, “It’s really close, let’s just start walkin,” and of course — Bing Bing Bing — “And if we don’t get one by 20th Street, wheel swing past Jack’s house on the way to the party!”
Then on the very first corner there’s this deli and I’m like, “My God! I’m in New York!” And dash in for a cold Heineken Road jar … because I can. And now weir really rollin and I know no fleet of cabs are comin so I start tellin’ the gang the whole story of the 50th Anniversary of Jack writing “On The Road” show I produced — which started by going to this house on 20th and then walking to the corner to find the closest bar and talking them into giving me the place for the night Jack started writing the Scroll. And one of the krewe actually LIVES on this block of 20th and didn’t know this was The Street!
And just as the tour bus is approaching the sacred site, I see someone go up the stairs and through the door! I scootch up ahead and somehow get the guy’s attention, and he’s squintin through two sets of doors at this maniac at his gate, then I start waving him out and gosh darn if he doesn’t come!
“Hey man! You know who used to live here?”
“I sure do,” the shy guys says.
“Well, we were just at the premiere of his movie! Of the book that was written right here in this apartment!”
“You’re kidding?! The premiere was tonight?!”
“Yeah, it’s great, you’re gonna love it. Hey — what apartment are you in?”
He points up to the second floor, “Right here in number 2.”
And I fairly yell, “THAT WAS JACK’S APARTMENT!!!”
And he goes, “Yeah, I know,” and smiles a twinkle.
I figured he didn’t want to have our whole krewe up to his place without any warning, so we just blessed him, and thanked him, and buzzed him, and left him with a big glow as we continued our flow to the aftershow.
And Aretha’s flyin through my head — “This is the house that Jack built, y’all, remember this house …”
“I stopped at John’s place on the way to the premiere, and Jack’s house after the premiere!” I’m gushing like a geyser and dancing down the street like a dingledodie delirious with everything at the same time and spinning like a centerlight top, and everybody goes, “Awwww … that Brian guy’s nuts!”
Then we get to the corner of the party, and now Deb starts jumping up and down! “Oh my God, it’s at The Top of The Standard?!?!” and starts screamin and laughin and yankin on my arm like a little kid about to go on her favorite ride!
Everything had already taken on that surreal tone of a night in magic places in endless New York … and we hadn’t even gotten to the playground in the sky yet!
And just as a last throw-ya-off and freak-ya-out before you step into Netherland, the elevators have those crazy mirrors, and trippy lights, and the girls are gorgeous, and the guys are crackin jokes, and we’re travelin straight up at the speed of light.
BOOM — into the Gilded Age, in a place that looks for all the world like Windows On The World at the top of the World Trade Center — a high-rise along the Hudson with no buildings out the windows — because it’s in the West Village you can just see forever out the vertical frames of floor-to-ceiling glass. And there’s Walter being the gracious host, greeting everyone at the door as they arrive, and I tell him about the pilgrimage to Jack’s house and meeting the current resident, and he’s shaking his head, “Only you, amigo!” And another big hug and cheek kiss and wild night with the mad ones was just beginning.
Then he leans in and tells me Patti Smith was at the movie, but he doesn’t know if she’s here at the party or not.
And I’m like, “Got it.” Boom: Mission Patti. Find her in about 3 secs. Back to Walter. “She’s right there by the window,” I nod. He smiles. “Anybody else you want me to find?” We laugh, and I’m off to the party.
And right away his saintly assistant Gerry goes, “Oh, there’s something Walter asked me to give you,” and pulls out these magic beans — tiny “On The Road” buttons based on the orange-covered first edition I ever owned!
And I wander a few more feet and there’s ol’ John Sampas … and we’re all super friendly. I know bad shit’s gone down, but he was really helpful to Walter and the film, and I thanked him for that, and he was all wide smiles and really liked how the movie turned out.
And there’s Hal Willner the forever music supervisor of “Saturday Night Live” and movies like “Howl” and “Gonzo” and also produced a bunch of Allen and Burroughs’ albums, and posthumous Lenny Bruce and Edgar Allen Poe, and so he’s right in with the family of crazee Roadsters, and we jammed on the fragments of lost memories in the mindfield landscape.
And then there’s Ann Charters and Regina Weinreich at a nice corner table overlookin the city, and just like the movie — the women are most prevalent.
And after scouting the room, I realize the headliners’ section was that sunken booth area by the front door, and as I head down into it I overhear the undercover security protecting the stars saying, “He’s okay, I saw him with Walter,” and Boom — I’m in. And there’s Garrett beaming, and we finally talk, and he knows who I am, but he’s still in official promo mode, all polite and by-the-books, but a while later I spin back and he’s got a pack of cigs in his hand. “You goin’ up for a smoke?” The eyebrow high-five, and weir off.
The Roof! I’m Home! They have a whole closed-in heated plastic room up there, but the real scene is the wide open spaces — most of the entire roof is a giant party space with views in every direction around this port city, and weir just blazing as the night starts kickin’ in, and Kirsten joins us, and some director doing Garrett’s next movie, and Debs is there refraining Amsterdam, and we’re finally havin’ a yak about all things Beat, and Garrett tells me the two scenes he had to audition for the role were the suicide rap and the 4-way sex letter. I guess Walter felt if you could deliver those two solos you could be in the band. And I flashed back to Walter saying how he loved Garrett’s acting but didn’t know then what a great road buddy he’d turn out to be.
Then after a smoke or three we start headin’ back down the stairwell to the party, but up comes brother Ben and Katia, Garrett’s friend couple from our row at the premiere, and suddenly weir having this reunion on the landing of a stairwell with a glass wall behind us facing uptown New York City, and a party ensues, and then Boom, Sam Riley appears at the top of the stairs, and Garrett goes into an incredible Sam impersonation, and MAN has this guy got the gift for it!! He does Riley better than Riley. And suddenly Jack and Neal are together again hangin’ in the stairwell, riffin off each other 50 years later. And THEN Kristen Stewart comes walkin down the stairs, and suddenly it’s the whole Road crew! hanging on a stairwell balcony, only missing Big Al Hinkle, who we could see on the street below running out for more rolling papers, as weir looking over twinkling New York with Neal carrying on multiple conversations in multiple voices at once.
And then back to the party and Walter introduces me to Kristen Stewart, which is such a strange and unexpected thing that he has to be dealing with with this movie. Like, nobody in it was supposed to be a movie star. The leads were all cast because they were unidentifiable fresh faces — film goers were already coming in with such fixed images in their minds as to what the characters looked like, the filmmakers couldn’t also have actors with established characters affixed. So they cast all relative unknowns in the main roles. Then lo and behold, Kristen Stewart becomes the biggest grossing actress of 2012 before the movie even comes out. So Walter, and her, and everyone, have to deal with this.
But I get to hang with the mega-star for a while, and man, she’s so petite you could put her in your pocket! And she’s bookish, and reserved, and 180 degrees different than Marylou. We talk about indie film, and she confirms my assumption that’s she’s gonna do them the rest of her life. We didn’t say it, but this is a 22-year-old indie chick who fluked into the biggest movie franchise of the last few years and she never has to work another day in her life. Yet she is going to be so many different interesting characters in the years to come. I tell her the truth that she brought Marylou more to life than Jack did, but she would hear none of it. To her, it was all Jack. And I beamed.
Then back to the center bar with windows out three sides, and now it’s lookin’ like The Rainbow Room, and all New York is spinning, and there’s the krewe from the Jack’s house walk! And we start riffin’, and I pull out my scroll book, and they start jammin and reading passages from it, and then 20th Street homie sez, “You got a favorite part?” and hands me back The Bible and I play some boppin’ “Hearing Shearing” in the bull’s-eye center of the room, Jack’s voice in the house, and the whole krewe whoopin’ and the Gold Club bartenders bug-eyed, and the neighbors nodding, as the bass player hunched over and thrummed the beat, faster and faster it seemed! And oh, Mighty Jack — his songs still singin’ and swingin’ above old New York …
And suddenly there’s Walter! And we hug and he says he has to go find somebody and I’m “Okay,” and we wander off on some mission. I dunno what we were doin’ but we ended up on the roof and back again and I dunno if we ever accomplished anything but I told him, “Your kids are all gathered in the corner — you should go see them.” And this was the most amazing thing — in this beautiful penthouse skyline scene where I would not and did not take any pictures except for the one I’ll share shortly, but in the corner of this mobbed premiere party, Garrett, Kirsten, Kristen, and Sam were able to sit side-by-side in this alcove by the window, the four of them together again for perhaps the first time since they were all crammed in a ’49 Hudson for months, and able to enjoy the reunion together. And it’s so obvious how close they all are — it was like my high school reunion of a couple years ago — talkin, laughin and huggin all at the same time.
And like a high school reunion, things started to get crazy, people were making out, people were disappearing, people were reappearing, and all of sudden I’m talking to Michael Stipe, and he’s a leprechaun, and I ask him how it felt to be out on stage at MSG last night for the first time in years, and he kind of avoids the question, then I ask him again, and he says he hadn’t planned to do it, and then I asked him again how it felt to be out there on that stage, and he looked away. Then he smiled a beam and looked back and twinkled, “It felt good.”
And then Patti Smith comes by and we chat for a bit about the old St. Mark’s Church scene, and she says it’s still happening, and then Walter shows up and we form a trio, and I’m like, “Wait a minute,” and I pull out the camera and capture these two artists gushing over the others’ work.
And they had a great long one-on-one, and she called the movie “authentic” and that’s the kind of thing you want to hear from someone who knows the meaning of that word.
And then there was the part about … I hated that I was comped and on-the-list for this whole thing. There wasn’t a single sneaking in prank involved anywhere and I hadn’t really broken a serious rule all night as far as I could tell.
But then the party was suddenly over, and all these strange people were streaming into the club who weren’t at the event … and ol’ fast-thinking Deb, Master Of All Things, gets us to boost a booth from the sunken celeb scene, then scores a bucket of fresh ice from one table, and a bottle of juice mixer from another, then I dump out a glass full of stir-sticks for a clean one, and she does the same from the next table, and before long we’ve got a booth and a stocked private bar overlookin Manhattan with a nearly full bottle of Grey Goose that Deb says would be $400 to be sitting here with.
And the staff comes and cleans up the other booths all around us to a pristine club-opening state, but our scene looked like New Year’s Eve at 3AM, with two happy semi-sober streamer-covered revelers still poundin them back.
And from this well-stocked cockpit, the last Beats holding the fort saw out the night, overlooking the twinkling Christmas of lower Manhattan, curved booths at our back, an open bar at our knees, and more stories to tell than we could ever get through.
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For a story about the London “On The Road” premiere at Somerset House — check out this sex & drugs & jazz.
For a great story of the world premiere of the new shorter final version of “On The Road” — check out this Meeting Walter Salles Adventure!
For an excerpt from my book about the ’82 Kerouac Conference in Boulder — “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” — check out Meeting Your Heroes.
Some Favorite Moments, Classic Quotes and Lasting Images of the 2012 Campaign,
roughly in the order they happened …
— The ever-increasing availability we all have to unlimited polling data, particularly at RCP and 538.
— The sharing of funny images and insightful articles on Facebook — like having your own customized clipping service by friends from all over the world.
— Looking forward to 11PM for Jon Stewart’s take on the last 24 hours.
— Michele Bachmann getting laughed out of the race by the voters of Iowa and going home after one contest.
— Newt Gingrich’s, “It obvious to any thinking, independent observer that I’m going to be the Republican nominee.”
— Moon bases.
— “Oops.”
— All 9 9 9 things Herman Cain said.
— Everything Rick Santorum said.
— “I’ll bet you $10,000.”
— “I like being able to fire people.”
— “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
— “Middle-income families make around $250,000 year.”
— “I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.”
— Being in England when he told the country they were not very well prepared for the Olympics and seeing him become a running joke on the tabloid covers and cartoon pages for the rest of the summer.
— And him trying to be witty answering a voter’s question about unemployment: “I’m also unemployed.”
— The New Orleans Musicians for Obama concert.
— Donald Trump cementing his reputation as a wholly demented buffoon.
— “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
— “Legitimate rape.”
— Senator McCaskill: “This Akin guy is so far to the right he makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie.”
— “I love this state. The trees are the right height.”
— And of course Lindsey Graham’s classic “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business.”
— Clint Eastwood and the chair.
— Then his later comment to “Extra,” “Anyone who asks me to speak at a political convention is an idiot.”
— Jon Stewart’s tag line for the RNC in Tampa: “The road to Jeb Bush 2016.”
— Bill Clinton’s hour-long improvised speech at the DNC.
— Watching any and every appearance by The Big Dog after that — seeing the master back in his element.
— “Don’t boo. Vote.”
— The whole week that the “47 percent” video came out.
— Mitch’s “Nostrahassett.”
— Ryan getting booed to his face at the AARP convention.
— Dave Letterman’s ongoing refrain “Just don’t vote for him” after Romney would never appear on his show.
— Watching Paul Ryan getting challenged by Chris Wallace on Fox and saying he doesn’t have time to explain how their tax cuts add up.
— Hearing Rush say, “If Romney doesn’t win this election it’s the end of the Republican Party.”
— The Democrats Abroad’s debate watch parties in Toronto.
— Malarkey.
— “Please proceed, Governor.”
— “Binders full of women.”
— And Bob Schieffer making fun of Romney, cutting him off to end the final debate with “I think we can safely say we all love teachers.”
— Bruce Springsteen.
— Katy Perry’s form-fitting ballot and “Forward” rubber mini-skirts.
— All the early voting numbers.
— “When a pregnancy occurs during rape, it is something that God intended to happen.”
— Tina Fey’s “If I hear one more grey faced old man with a two dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m gonna lose my mind!”
— Romnesia.
— Axelrod’s “I’ll shave off my mustache that I’ve had for 40 years if we lose any of Pennsylvania, Minnesota or Wisconsin.”
— Governor Christie’s praise and embrace of Obama.
— Watching Obama’s poll numbers rise as Sandy’s waters receded.
— Romney’s Jeep-jobs-to-China doubled-down final lie ad.
— Joe Biden’s “It’s Daylight Savings Time tonight. This is Mitt Romney’s favorite time of year … he gets to turn the clocks back.”
[This piece originally appeared in different forms in numerous publications following these events of May 22nd, 2001.]
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Part I, The Author’s Song
The passing of the scroll … It’s gone to a good place …
. . . with an iconoclastic, white-tie wearin’ John Lennon lovin’ “huge Bob Dylan fan,” spirit of the 60s, buddy of Brinkley’s, crony of Thompson’s, and owner of the Indianapolis Colts (my new and forever favorite team), Jim Irsay.
It was football that got Jack out of Lowell, and it was football that saved his holy scroll.
… it’s late in the game, the secret weapon, a long bomb from Brinkley caught on the 2 million yard line by Irsay fresh off the bench, dodges past Sterling Lord on the 1 yard line — touchdown!
$2.2 million dollars — a new world record for an original manuscript, more than Joyce’s Ulysses, which some people think is a pretty good book, more than Kafka’s Trial, and every other literary manuscript ever sold. In fact, it comes to about $2,430,000 when you add in the commission and taxes.
I’d tell you about visiting the scroll Four out of five days you could see it unrolled, But I’ll save that for some other time Cuz the essence of the moment is the auctioneer’s rhyme …
I went over to Christie’s at Rockefeller Center across from NBC and next door to The Today Show at about 11:30AM to register so I wouldn’t have trouble getting in later. They asked me how much the bank could clear me for. I wrote down some absurd amount, which actually was my accumulated debt, now that I think of it, not my plus column. So I was literally sweating it out in the humid high noon heat till the Christie’s cutie came out and said, “I can’t get anybody on the phone at Citibank. They keep giving me the runaround. Here, just sign this Credit Check form and here’s your paddle.” Whoopee Cushion! I was in! Swingin’ paddle #427.
Returning around 2:45, I walked again through the opulent and decidedly un-Beat Christie’s Palace past the 6-foot wall mountings of animals in foliage like 3-D Rousseaus, and climbed the ornate inner staircase two cushioned steps at a time until my bean crested the second floor and I immediately saw a mob filling the doorway and spilling into the hallway from the auction room (oh-oh!), the same as where the scroll was displayed. I squeezed through like I had a seat, got to the front of the mob (something I seem to have a knack for) and lo — there it was — the packed in-action auction room! There were 120 seats, all filled, about 25 people standing on each side, so maybe 175 in all, plus 12 Christie’s suits manning rows of telephones on either side of the rectangular room, and about 20 people in the press corral at the back with five major camera set-ups, but none with network logos.
There were several assorted Sampases, Doug Brinkley, Sterling Lord, Ann & Sam Charters, Regina Weinrich, Michelle Esrick, Ed Adler, and scattered throughout was the hard core group of five of us who were there at closing time on the last visitation day: photographer Aaron Schuman and writer Ken Caffrey in the press pen, writer Ronna Johnson who’s coming out with a second take on Women of The Beats later this year, and New York Beat guitarist Randy Hutton who we’ll be hearing more from before long. Others too in the eternity of it.
And I’m there tryin’ to figure it out — who’s with who, what’s goin’ on. It’s Lot number 242 when I came in. Jack’s scroll soul is number 307. A guy gets up from a seat in the back row right in front of me. I hesitate maybe 10 seconds, then step forward before someone else reaches their courage threshold and I ask the next seated person if he’s gone for good and get this rich suit’s disdain, “I have no idea.” Which I interpret as Snagged! Homie’s home. Howdy doody and a whole lot more!
Part II — The Auctioneer’s Song
There are rows of people and the flashing of paddles as the auctioneer speeds through oodles of numbers, pointing out bidders like a presto allegro conductor. But — Sure looks like it’s goin’ to a telephone bidder, I think immediately, as they’re lined up like stoic, somber six-gun shooters facing down each other across the room, concentrating, in their zones, conferrin’ with the coach on the phone-gun, “When do I pull the trigger, chief?”
The bidding increments are all predetermined. Over $1,000, each next bid is $100 — so if you bid, that’s your bid — you can’t pick an amount. Over $5,000 it goes up $500 with each bid. Over $10,000 it goes up $1,000 every time. Over $1 million it goes up in $100,000 increments. When it hits $2 million it starts going up in $200,000 steps. But by then it’s startin to get outta my league.
Up above the auctioneer is an electronic board that lists the lot number and current bid in US dollars. Below that are lines with each country’s equivalent monetary value — so as the auctioneer’s zipping up the numerical ladder, all these foreign currency values are flapping by like the track-changing sign at Penn Station. Euros, UK pounds, French francs, Swiss francs, Deutsche marks, yen and lira in 000s, and the good old Canadian dollar squeakin’ in on the bottom line. (We exist! In fact, in a general sense, there really was one of those “we exist” feelings in the room. It was the magic zing of the old Jack ring!)
So the auction’s goin’ by lickety-split. Lot 249, a copy of Ulysses signed by Joyce himself and by — get this — Matisse! (Who I always remember for saying, “Work cures everything.”) “Okay, I’ll open the bidding at … 5 thousand, 55, 6 thousand…” and 20 seconds later, “Sold for 13,000 to paddle number 319 in the fourth row.” And it all happens in less than a minute. The big ones take maybe a minute and a half, but lots of stuff’s goin’ for under 10 grand, all sorts of little things, no idea what they are, but I felt like bidding just ’cause they’re so cheap. Hey — I’m cleared for it! It had to be something cool, right? Some Emerson thing. But there’s the catch. You can’t scratch your nose or anything. Like, if you move your arm you might be bidding. Then of course your nose would get itchy, and you’d have to turn away from the auctioneer like he’s the teacher and sneak a scratch.
So you’re watchin’ your moves, watching the crowd, and watching these people watching their catalogues and marking in scores and bidding up to a certain point on lots, and then when their last item of the day is gone, they immediately get up and leave. Professional buyers. People with money. A set of Oxford dictionaries goes for $850,000! (And I bet it’s used.) An autographed copy of To Kill A Mockingbird for $18,000. I keep wondering, Who are these people? The guy who’s sittin’ next to Brinkley gets up and steps out for a minute at about lot 270. He’s a big guy wearing this striped suit like I don’t know what, 20’s gangster? 40’s hipster? I don’t know. Big white tie on big black shirt, hair greased straight back, almost like a football player but with a cuff-linked Four Seasons polish and rock ‘n’ roll swagger.
By the time we get to lot 300 there are only four gunslingers left on the sideline phonelines as the auctioneer’s still rattlin’ through numbers like he’s unloading on Bonnie & Clyde’s car, ratta-tat-tatting by the thousands, 19 thousand, 20 thousand, my whole life savings and worth flashing by in split seconds for some piece of autographed paper. Holy Zippers! “15 thousand… 24 thousand… 45 thousand, fair warning at 45 thousand… sold for 45 thousand to paddle 474.” An Edith Wharton letter goes for only $800. Bargain. Musta been a crummy letter. “Went for a walk, love Edith.”
“Lot number 305 — Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, one of only 12 orange paper copies like it, inscribed by the author, opening with a tie bid at 15 thousand dollars, somebody want to break it? Thank you, 16 thousand dollars, 17 thousand…” etc. Goes to 60,000 in 60 seconds.
Part III — The Bidder’s Song
Then comes, “Lot number 307. The Lot a lot of you have been waiting for…” (Ha-ha, a little auctioneer’s humor.) “Jack Kerouac’s original typescript scroll of On The Road, shown here before you on the screens. I’ll start the bidding at 650,000 dollars on this…” (I’m out.) “650,000… 700,000… 750,000… 800,000… 850,000… 900,000… 950,000… 1 million dollars over here, one million dollars in the front row, 1,100,000 dollars… (pause) 1,200,000… 1,300,000… (pause) … 1,400,000 (over the phone) then quickly 1,500,000… (pause)…” And all this time it’s Brinkley’s buddy who’s flashin’ up his white paddle #479 as soon as anyone else bids anything — the old Instant Paddle Flash Routine — then after a pause the front row finally bids again. “1,600,000… (then quickly) 1,700,000… (pause) 1,800,000… then Boom 1,900,000… (extended pause)…” It’s totally silent in the room, of course — you could hear a dream pop. “We can wait a little bit,” the animated auctioneer allowed. “1,900,000… (long pause)… The bid is 1,900,000 with the gentleman… 1,900,000… Anybody say 2 million?” He looks down at the front row and says, “No, I’m sorry, 2 million’s next… 1,900,000… 1,900,000 then? In the third row at 1,900,000… (pause) Is there any further advance at 1,900,000? (pause) Fair warning at 1,900,000…” He raises his little wooden gavel stub and slowly begins to bring it down. “Last call… (suddenly —) 2 million!” he exclaims and points to the front row! Whoa! Then instantly — “2,200,000.” The whole crowd whoops — huge tension release — laughing, clapping, but all the way pinning-the-needle then totally quiet again in about 2 seconds — flying by fast as be-bop! “Anticipation!” says the auctioneer, articulating the air of the collective moment. “2,200,000… 2 million 2… (pause) At 2,200,000, in the third row. Are we all done at 2,200,000? (pause) SOLD! At 2,200,000!” And the whole room just explodes in applause! Huge release — K’BAMM!
And just as the applause is dying down, the auctioneer steps up again. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d just like to announce that that is a new world record for a literary manuscript at auction.” And another round of cheering and whooping!
Then, in The Funny Beat Thing Dept., as soon as the final clapping dies down, some guy yells, “Corso lives!” and throws his fist in the air. This might not have worked in the middle of the auction, but it was pretty funny in the weird million-dollar-air-void afterwards to hear a voice hollering through the twinkling cosmos, “Corso lives!” He certainly does.
And 2 million dollars says, so does our man Jack.
It was all decided in under two minutes. And as soon as it was over, I bolted up front, and the first sign I had that everything was okay was Doctor Doug grinning so wide I thought his face would snap! Brinkley beamin’ like a baby was all I needed to see. If he’s happy, I’m happy. This must be a good thing!
I said a quick hi to Michelle Esrick and Casey Cyr, the only two other groovers who were at both the downtown On The Road show that I’d just produced at the Chelsea Commons on the 50th anniversary of the scroll’s birthday and also at the uptown auction where it finally would get its wings and leave its New York home for the first time. Jack’s tracing paper science project has outlived him. When I spoke to David Amram on the phone afterwards he was getting kind of choked-up about it — that Jack died with $83 in his pocket, and now just 30 years later, the notebook in that same pocket was worth more than he was.
And it turns out that the striped-suited football player who’d walked by earlier was the guy who bought it! He was all red-faced and excited and stunned — and he wasn’t goin’ anywhere. So I walked over and there was an AP reporter there asking him questions — but it’s about … football … ?! Huh? It’s so weird to think there may be something bigger in this guy’s life today than buying the On the Road scroll for two million bucks. At least that’s what the AP guy was opening with. He was talking divisional realignment with the retractable-dome blues again, and it was like — Weird Scene Channel Surf. Where’s the remote? Switch back to the Jack Epiphany Channel, eh? Sudden click and Irsay’s laughing, “Yeah, it’s been a busy day.” And while he’s laughing a few other reporters surround us, then some big cameras, other people, boom mikes floating in overhead ….
How does it fee-eel?
Part IV — The Acquiring Mind’s Song
“Well, ya know, it’s just… it’s exciting. Ya know, I look at it as a stewardship. I don’t believe that you own anything in this world. It’s dust to dust. It’s something that I take as a responsibility, being a writer myself, knowing the sweat and the blood that went into creating something like this, and knowing how much people love the piece — that’s all very important to me. Having the football team, how our fans love and cherish that. It’s the same thing with something like this. It’s great for Jack, right now, wherever his spiritual vibes are floating around, that he can be fulfilled, because as a writer, there’s always this seed of doubt you have. You know, is it good enough? Is it worthy? Can it stand up with others? And a lot of times great artists end up dying before they ever find out what great artists they were. In his case, obviously this got published but it left him a little bitter over some of the rejection, and so what a great honor for him that he and the manuscript can be celebrated today.”
“What would he think of his work coming out of storage and selling for a record amount?”
“I’m sure he’d be just flabbergasted. It’s exciting for me — that my grandparents got off the ships from Hungary and Poland right here at Ellis Island with nothing but the clothes on their backs — and you know, that’s what this country’s all about. And I think he would be amazed. These days, people — more so than 50 years ago — if you think you have some talent, you don’t throw anything away. Like John Lennon, you know, I’m a big Lennon fan, and he used to curse his aunty, ‘You’ll regret throwing my drawings away. They’ll be worth something someday.’ So now of course everything is kept and treasured. I think there’s a lot of great intrigue with this, tying in the Beat Generation and Cassady, Burroughs, Ginsberg, those guys had a huge influence on the cultural revolution in the sixties, and people like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, they had such a big influence, and to me that’s really exciting — to be able to rub shoulders with the seed planters. The flowers are always beautiful, but the people who planted the seeds, the people who, in their time, had a way of looking at things differently, and having the courage to talk and to write and to live about it, that’s what changes the world.”
“Will you publish it?”
“A couple of things are planned. Sometime in the next coming months, somewhere in Indiana, I’ll probably put it on display at a museum. We’ve talked to a couple of people about that. In 2007 I’ve thought about having the 50th anniversary of the actual publication where maybe we’ll do a tour. We’ll follow the actual book’s journey and have the scroll do the tour of the country and kind of mirror that journey. We have Dr. Douglas Brinkley here who is involved. He’s the authorized biographer for Jack and he and I’ve discussed some various things. I actually tried to have Hunter Thompson in here today, I almost had him on the plane but then he turned back.” (laughs.) “I thought that would liven up things a little bit.” (louder laughter, then he looks up at the cameras) “Hunter, if you’re out there, we miss you.” (and laughs again)
“Why did he turn back?”
“I don’t know, it was a late night phone call and it just didn’t happen. I think he wanted to watch the Laker game,” he says laughing.
Then I asked him — “Will scholars other than Douglas be able to have access to studying the scroll?”
“Y’know, certainly. I’m very open-minded in terms of people who love it and want to have an opportunity to see it and be around it. That’s what it’s about. Like I said, I don’t view it as something I own. Someone else will have it when I’m gone, and someone else will have it when they’re gone. It’s for the future generations. You love to see the kids and people who are influenced by the book have a chance to get up and be near it. To me, trying to let fans see it and people who have an interest in it, I’m very much open-minded to try to do that.”
Then I asked a follow-up — “Would you expose the whole 120 feet when you did it in Indianapolis?”
“You know, that’s what I think has to be talked about. I really think one of the interesting things about this manuscript is the unique way that it was written, and the way that it’s comported, it’s the length minus the bit that the dog bit off.” (laughing) “It’s too bad they couldn’t auction off the dog collar of the dog — that would probably have brought in some good money here today.” (laughing)
“You’d have bought it, right?”
Laughing, “That would have been a good thing to combine it with.”
“What was the first Beat literature you ever read?”
“I would say, Naked Lunch, for me was, uh, and for me, I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan. I’ve had the honor to be with Bob several times and get to know him a little bit and you know certainly his writing and singing brought me to the doorstep of people like Jack, and people like Dylan Thomas who had a piece sold here.”
Then some guy asks him to sign a little rubber football, joking that it’ll be worth something in a few years. While he’s doing this the AP guy asks, “Jim, you said you were a writer. What do you write?”
“Poetry and songs. I’m a guitarist as well. I actually have an Elvis Presley guitar that he strummed — but for anyone out there, if you have a John Lennon, I would trade the Elvis for the Lennon,” he says (laughing again).
“You went awfully high on this; were you willing to spend more to buy this?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t important to me, I just wanted to make sure we kept it in this country, kept it in America, you know, just have the ability for people to be able to share it and enjoy it. I’m just a fan like anyone else of it, and to me it’s important to make sure it doesn’t get locked away somewhere or get taken away to a far distant place or something like that.”
“Did you walk in here expecting to spend a record amount for a manuscript?”
“Yeah. I was willing to spend a lot more!” he says, laughing loud, as does everyone else. “I won’t tell you what my max was ….” (laughing) “I have to keep that a secret. I have a feeling — unless my fellow owner Paul Allen was goin’ against me I think I woulda got it, but if Paul was here I must admit I would have been beaten,” he says laughing.
“Do you want to read it off the scroll?”
“Yeah, that would be — but we have a dog at home who’s very aggressive so we should keep that away from him,” and everyone laughs.
“How old were you when it was published?”
“I’m 41, so I wasn’t born. I was born in ’59.”
Then Rosebud Pettet perks up beside me and says — “This gentleman here,” and she points at me, “put together On The Road marathon readings a few weeks ago in LA and New York…” (and I’m thinking, No way — she’s talking about me!?! This keeps getting weirder!) “Are you planning, since you’ve got the scroll, to do any celebrations on Jack in your hometown or wherever you plan to keep it?”
“Sure, I’m open-minded to it. I think that Dr. Brinkley, as well as my publicist Myra Borshoff, you know, will have a say. I’m open to hear what people want to do with it. Again, just to be able to share it and have fun with it and celebrate it. Definitely that’s what it’s about, so I’m open-minded to any of those sort of fun things.”
Then the AP guy jumps in again, “Dr. Brinkley, I’d like to know what you think, as a scholar, the significance of this is now, the fact that this went for such big bucks, what does this all mean?”
Brinkley: “That Jack Kerouac’s become one of the writers that people care about. That he’s like Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Faulkner, and even more so from a cultural point of view. As Jim says, On The Road is a book that changed a lot of people’s lives. It’s a coming of age novel. And more than any other 20th century American literary document, there’s a greater interest in the history and mythology of this particular manuscript than any other one that anybody can think of. It’s unique, and it not only solidified the Beat Generation, but it also set into motion the notion of ‘First thought — best thought,’ spontaneity in literature, and then, as Jim said, it influenced so many people into the 60s. People like Thomas Pynchon who credits Kerouac’s On The Road, to people like Bob Dylan, on down today to the music world, people like Lou Reed and Tom Waits. It’s never-ending, Kerouac’s influence. And for people that love On The Road, it’s exciting that Jim has it, because he has this very open heart and wants to bring it first to the heartland for people to come see, and then have it tour the country eventually for the 50th anniversary of On The Road, so you couldn’t be doing any better than that.”
“What can you learn looking at the scroll that you can’t from reading the book?”
Brinkley: “A lot. It’s different than the book, all the names are in it, so you actually see Allen Ginsberg’s name, or Neal Cassady, the real people, there are no pseudonyms. And for people that enjoy Jack Kerouac — because he’s trying to get the words quickly out of him — you can see how his mind works. And I think, more than anything, what an extraordinary typist he was! He would just type and type. One of his great gifts as a writer was his quickness. When you’re trying to get your first-thought, best-thought out, being that quick a typist, as evidenced in the scroll, with so few changes and so many beautiful paragraphs — we were looking while we were sitting down, Kerouac writing about Indiana, coming in on a bus to Indiana with the corn husks piled up, and then necking with the girl all the way to Indianapolis. There’s hardly a city in America that doesn’t somehow make a cameo in On The Road, and that Kerouac doesn’t have something that’s spiritually poetic and apropos to say about it.”
Irsay: “Plus the paddle, Doug. The paddle was 479, Jack’s age, and 9, the year he died, ’69, so it’s 4-7-9, and Doug said that was a good omen right away.”
AP: “Jim, are you kind of an All-American boy?”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
Pause, stumble mumble bumble, “You’re so American, it’s unbelievable.”
“I guess I am then, you know?” (laughing) “It’s like George Harrison says, ‘I hope they don’t get time to hang a sign on me.’ It’s just a — a good thing to be called because I love this country.”
And then your friendly Beat Reporter chirps in yet again!
Brian: “Do either of you think there’s any preservation needed in the short term for it?”
Irsay: “That’s something that I’ve consulted some experts on, and that’s really important, to make sure that this thing can remain intact for a lot of years and be shown for many centuries.”
Since that wasn’t enough for me, I once again pushed the Follow-Up Button: “Was it the experts’ opinion that anything needed to be done? Is it in okay shape?”
“Just that it’s in real good shape considering the years. You know, the proper room temperatures and that sort of thing have to be looked at. When you start getting out there, 500 years, a thousand years, I think, you know, there’s some erosion, it’s inevitable, but we’re gonna find ways to protect it, obviously.”
Some new reporter announces himself and asks, “Jim, what does this purchase mean to you?”
“You know, it means a lot to really acknowledge people that stand and fight for the truth and what they believe in in their art, that ultimately it’s rewarded and celebrated. And again, there’s so many artists out there at this very moment that are working and some of them will die without ever really receiving any due for what they’ve done. But I think, anyone’s human spirit, since you go back to the days of the cavemen, it’s just expression, it’s self-expression. People want to be recognized for having a feeling and sharing that with someone else, and I think that’s what this acknowledges. And for me, it’s just a lot of fun. I feel blessed to able to be here, and have gotten the manuscript, and just look forward to having a lot of fun with it, and sharing it, and celebrating it, because it’s enjoyable. There’s so many difficult things that go on in the world, it’s nice to celebrate life. In the NFL we do that entertaining people. I look at this the same way as being able to do that. My next goal is to be able to sit the script next to the Lombardi Trophy, you know? That’s what you get for winning the Super Bowl, and we’re real close, you know, and to have those two things together hopefully maybe by the end of January would be great,” he says, laughing.
“Did you buy it individually, or did anybody go in with you?”
“No, just individually.”
“How old were you when you read On The Road?”
“I read it about ’77, and what it meant to me just being a teenager in the 70’s, you know, freedom, rebellion, the things that a young person looks at in life, which is just — the journey — the excitement of the journey, the search for truth and meaning and the thrills of life. It’s like Bob Seger said, ‘I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then,’” and he laughs again. “You gotta study that line hard to get the true meaning of that,” and he laughs even harder.
Then he says, “Well guys, thank you very much.” And I say right to him and very soberly, “Thank you!” and make serious direct eye contact. Something great had just happened.
There’s a lot more that went on. What’s above is the complete post-purchase impromptu news conference, minus the opening NFL realignment stuff, and a bunch of um’s and you-know’s. Afterwards, I surfed around and talked to John Sampas and asked if they were going to publish the text of the scroll, and he answered, I believe the word was, “Absolutely,” but for sure I remember the look, which was like, Duh, dumb question, what do you think?
Then here’s some random snippets overheard from Irsay’s sit-down interview with the New York Times:
“I’m a very big Dylan Thomas fan.”
“When I saw this piece come available it really did grab my attention and I really wanted to seek it out and find out where this piece stood in the 20th century, in the context of the pieces that are out there, what others felt about it. There are people like Dr. Brinkley who professionally deals in this, he’s a writer himself, and just consulting a lot of friends, it feels like it appeals to a lot of different people.”
“I’m originally from Chicago. My influences came a lot from rock music, particularly Bob Dylan and the Beatles, and you start going behind the situation and finding out who influenced them. Paul McCartney’s worked with Ginsberg. Dylan, obviously, taking his name from Dylan Thomas, and coming to New York City in 1961 and his experiences, and through that, that’s where the interest really came. I think people are influenced by the Beat Generation, and by Dylan, in ways that they don’t even know. They may not even know of the individual, but society’s been changed so much by them.”
“Thanks a lot. I was a broadcast journalism major, so I’m a big fan of the New York Times.”
“We’re going to take good care of it, and we’re going to make sure the fans enjoy it — that’s the main thing.”
Okay, this is Brian, signing off from basecamp at Mount Kerouac. Back to you.
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Here’s when I performed part of this auction piece with Kerouac’s principal musical collaborator David Amram & his Trio in Jack’s hometown of Lowell during their annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival . . .
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For an excerpt from my book about the ’82 Kerouac Conference in Boulder — “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” — check out Meeting Your Heroes.
So, I get to the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto at 7PM for a 9:00 show (on Sept. 6th) and there’s already a whole scene. It’s the World Premiere of the new and forever “On The Road” — the first-ever screening of the director’s revised and final cut.
There’s a line of black VIP shuttle cars. News trucks with their satellites up. Fans behind barricades. A red carpet. Security. Orange-shirted volunteers by the bucketful. And a line that goes all the way down the street and around the corner. And same as the London premiere, there’s way more yin than yang.
So, I’m scouting it as usual, and the long and the short of it is, I end up weaving my way into the photog’s pit along the red carpet. And I start talkin to this girl from the Daily News — yeah, New York! And along the ground under the rope line are these numbers about one foot apart and that’s where each news person gets to stand. And we’re hangin, and as it gets closer to “showtime” I realize nobody’s really been stepping on the number right next to her, so I do! And now I’m number 28 along the rope with some TV show called “Red Carpet Diary” on my other side. Then suddenly this stern-faced female General appears marching down the line in front of us demanding of every soldier who they’re with. I blurt out, “RockPeaks and LiteraryKicks,” and she goes “Okay,” and keeps movin’ on to the next guy. :-0
So there I am, leaning on the rope glad-handing director Walter Salles and movie stars Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst!
And they end up staying out there a really long time alternating between interviews and answering the screams of fans on the other side — signing autographs and posing for pictures and totally workin’ the room. Turns out they were having technical projector problems inside that were being worked out, so they just had the Stars stay out and keep the slight-of-hand distracting.
And of course my road brother Damo’s found me by this point and he too scams his way into the pit on the rope-line like the magician he is. Then he’s the one who spots they’re finally letting people into the theatre behind us, a cue we’ve been watching for, and we’ve had enough face time with People Magazine so we book it into the room and scootch right up to the Reserved Seats, and I notice there’s a two-spot Reserved on the aisle right behind the main taped-off rows. Thought that looked interesting, so we cop the two next to them, and no sooner do we sit down, than James Franco comes and sits right next to me!
This guy was the greatest Ginsberg ever on film in “Howl” and I tell him so, “You’re gonna go places — I predict!” And he’s got this great laugh and smile, even though he’s all slouching down in his seat and wearing a baseball cap and looking like a scraggly skateboard bum so as not to be recognized. And I ask, “How come you’re not in this?” and he says they talked about it but it just never worked out. And I’m opening smuggled beers and takin’ copious notes and he’s laughin n noddin at crazy compulsive-efficient Brian.
And of course the place is packed and it’s a bit of a wonderfully boisterous late-show TIFF premiere audience, and director Walter Salles comes out for a little howdy-do. He talked quite accurately about this city being one of the great film capitals of the world, not only in the making of films but in the sophistication of filmgoers, and how he was so grateful to have this film debuting to this audience. He talked about how the film was partially shot in Canada and how it was very emotional for him to be back here now. And about how everyone on the crew were co-authors of the film. And how they covered 60,000 miles in the making of it in order to get the right locations. Then he quoted Gary Snyder as telling him one day, “We would drive a thousand miles for one good conversation.” 😉
Then the preview shorts start and the audience is cheering or booing or laughing at the little ads. And one comes on for this James Bond exhibit they’re having at TIFF, and as it ends to dead silence, some guy yells, “Come on, it’s James Bond, people!!” and everyone laughs and applauds. And then some little notice appears about copyright infringement and everybody boos. And I’m thinkin, “This is a great audience!”
Okay, so . . . the new version —
It’s totally different, and totally great!
The entire prior opening is scrapped, and it’s just BOOM right into Dean parking cars in New York like he was a car. And then zoom into the West End Bar with Chad King telling Sal and Carlo that this guy from Denver was in town. 🙂
You would have liked the longer version — but you’re gonna Love this version!
It’s way faster paced, it’s way more focused, it’s way more fun, its way more exciting.
It’s more about the writer’s journey of discovery of his voice and vision and less about all the side stories. It’s more Tom Wolfe than Thomas Wolfe — more poetic zip, less prosaic lag — more broken Benzedrine inhalers and less counted coffee spoons.
The first time, I was so busy following the story and the novel and all the sources and thinking — this time I was more open to the incredible landscapes, visages, car shots, and time-period time-travel. You’re so there, 1947-to-50 New York City – San Francisco – Denver – and on the road, baby. And for instance there’s this killer shot of a misty mountain roadside and you can hear Jack singing his roadsong, and before long out of the white nothingness comes Jack amblin’ along, rucksack on back.
And Garrett Hedlund really does give a pretty darn good performance here. I guess because we know the guys so well, and Marylou was such an enigma, that Kristen Stewart’s character really screamed to life for me the first time I saw it. With that now internalized — I was able to appreciate how electric and magnetic this Hedlund guy was as Dean.
And Tom Sturridge who plays Carlo is similarly engaging. I don’t know how Allen actually moved or spoke in the 1940s, and I don’t think this is really him, but it certainly is a vivid, loveable, endearing Carlo.
And the music is GREAT — the soundtrack is seat-bopping, and the surroundsound is booming! And the original music that runs all through it is super percussive (beat) and catchy and gets ya goin and I love it!
And there’s more voiceovers by the narrator-writer Sal, heard as moody remembrances of things past or excited updates on events present.
There’s no point in, or really way to, annotate all the things that were cut, because sometimes it’s just a line or few seconds of a scene. But then there’s all this stuff added, too — like Dean & Carlo on the bed staring into each other’s eyes and more, and this whole coda after the movie’s over that I won’t tell you about, but it wasn’t there before, and is very effective.
During the first viewing I noticed how much sex there was in it. This time I noticed they seem to be smoking joints in just about every scene! 🙂
And yeah, you Beat junkies, me included, are gonna wanna have both versions on DVD. They are two different Road trips.
So, when the film was over, TIFF Director Piers Handling comes out with Walter, Garrett, Kirsten and Kristen — to huge applause, and screaming, actually — for about a 15 minute Q&A.
Walter talked about reading the book as a teenager in the 70s in his native Brazil when it was under a strict military regime and there was censorship and this book represented all the things they were being denied at the time — “where all forms of freedom were possible. And it stayed with me for many many years. In fact, before making ’The Motorcycle Diaries’ I read ‘On The Road’ again because I wanted to be inhabited by the beauty of that transition between youth and adulthood. It was both what it was telling me, but also how it was written.”
Garrett Hedlund (Dean/Neal) was asked about his research and once again went on about how great it was to meet the Cassadys! “Making this movie was a wild journey, a wild life experience — being such a fan of the Beat Generation and Neal Cassady. And then being blessed to meet John — Neal and Carolyn’s only son — and being able to ask him every question I wanted and hear his stories about his dad. And meeting Michael McClure, and Carolyn Cassady in London, and to get to know this man through the letters and unpublished writings, it was so rich, learning about this person who inspired me so much, and so many others — other Beat writers, rock stars, people who were lost and wanted to go on their own journey to find something much greater than themselves.”
Kirsten Dunst (Camille/Carolyn) — “I read Carolyn’s book, and even though she didn’t love his lifestyle, I think at the end of the day, she really wanted ‘them.’ And she gave up a lot for this man, but sometimes ‘love’ takes you places you wish you didn’t go, to deeper selves. She was very enveloped in this man’s life. She got the short end of the stick in a way, but had the life that she wanted at times.”
Kristen Stewart (Marylou/LuAnne) — “The big question I had going into this was: How did she have the capacity to handle what she handled and still have the life she had that influenced so many people and not have the light go out inside her? And . . . bottomless pit — that’s the answer! There was no end to her giving. She would have been essential now. I know it’s taken a long time to tell the story in film, but she was ahead of her time, and even now, she’s really relevant. She had such an acceptance of others. I feel I got to know her so well that whenever I got nervous and wondered if I was doing her justice, not only did I just have to look up to Walter to know, but mostly I would look up and she was so so so fucking looking over me.”
And the Q&A ends, and the cast & directors exit stage left, and all along I’m thinking I’m totally fine with just being at the Premiere, and already had the red carpet surprise, and hadn’t arranged for any after-party, and Walter or the cast never came and sat near us, and now they’d disappeared behind the Wizard’s curtain, and people were leaving the theater, and I was cool with it all.
But still Damo and I are telepathically plotting our next non-leaving nefarious move, knowing where the rainbow came down and the pot of gold was hiding. Except there were security guards at the stairs to both screen-side backstage entrances.
Each of us at different times made a motion to give up and leave, but the other always made a counter-move to keep it goin’, keep hangin’ on for one last opening, letting the crowd disperse. And before too long it was pretty much only the TIFF staff cleaning the hall and it’s all dark and no one’s there, and all of a sudden I notice the guard at the door the cast exited through is leaving! Ah-ha! I watch her walk all the way up the aisle, and I’m, “This is it. I’m goin’,” and I just walk up the stairs like I live there, push the door, and it swings open! And I see a bunch of people in fancy suits down the hall.
Onward!
Boom! There’s Walter and Garrett and Kirsten and company.
A little awkward at first. We’re bustin in, nobody knows us. I think of a question about that new final coda scene, but as I’m starting to talk to Kirsten about it, the publicity people call out, “Kirsten, your car’s ready.” So that ends quickly. Then I start to ask Garrett the same question, and the same thing happens!! And now all I’m left with is Walter! And he’s talking to the Director of the Festival. But I’m stickin right there and making my presence known. And both of them look at me like, this guy’s not goin’ away. Because also, I don’t want that car thing to happen again!
So finally they start to slightly separate. There’s a pause and a glance, and I’m, “Hey Walter, I’m Carolyn’s friend who was with her this summer in England.”
And thus begins … a whole new adventure …
Big smile. “Oh, man! I’ve heard so much about you!” And we start talkin and sure enough right away the car call comes. And he’s like, “Okay, we’re going to the party. Would you like to join us?”
“Hold on, lemmi check my schedule.” :-0
And he puts his hand on the small of my back, saying in gesture, “Come on, you’re with me.”
And we walk out the stage door and it’s that scene I’ve only seen in movies, where you’re in the quiet inside backstage space and the 2 doors suddenly swing open to the screaming barricaded-off fans packing the sidewalk, and flashbulbs going off, and people reaching out with things to sign and calling, “Walter!” And James Franco’s comin out right behind us and they’re yellin at him too. And I stand center carpet as they each stop and sign a few things quite politely, and give legible signatures and all.
And then it’s into this spaceship SUV limo, and Walter gets in the row right in front of Damo and me, and leans over the seat and totally zooms in on us for the whole car ride even though there’s all these other (important) people in there. And right off we’re talkin’ Mississippi Gene and other one-mention minutia with ease. And Boom I tell him how great the Slim Gaillard guy was! And he says he was the #2 man in Kid Creole & the Coconuts, and how the guy (Coati Mundi) improvised his whole musical performance — and I’m sayin’ back that whole scene was so freakin’ great!!
And I ask him what his motivation was in making the new version and he said he was trying to focus more on the friendship between Sal and Dean. And we’re talking about the editing process — and he’s quoting the French poet Valery, “ A poem is never finished, only abandoned” — as we riff on a mutual love of tweaking, and how the scroll had all those penciled corrections on it, and all the other versions that came later, and we’re having this long nodding mutual-understanding conversation about the powers and joys of editing — while we’re at the celebration of Mr. Spontaneous Prose.
And we talked about how great it is to see the scroll in person, and how the guy who’s its caretaker, Jim Canary, is the coolest, and Walter says he looks like he’s in ZZ Top. 🙂
And he talked about how the audio mix took a long time, and I told him how Great it sounded in the house, and cited the psychedelically surreal Sal-sick-in-Mexico scene — and he and I both said the word “dizzying” at the same time.
Then I said, “Man, you did so much research, you so internalized everything, how come Sal’s not using the spiral nickel notebooks?”
And he said they used “both schools” of notebook, the spiral and the flat-topped, and it just turned out that all the scenes with the spiral got cut, and the scenes with the flat-topped made the final.
And we’re talking about the changed opening and how the flatbed truck scene is back in the sequence where it belongs, and I ask him about that hokey line he cut from the long version that wasn’t in the book anyway — “Are you goin’ someplace or just goin?”
“I guess I’m just goin.”
And he says it was in the book.
And I say, “No it wasn’t. And I’ve got the Scroll right here,” and start to pull the book out of my bag, and he goes, “No, it’s not said on the flatbed, it’s from somewhere else in the book.”
Ah-ha.
Which is just another confirmation of how this is pieced together from stuff all over the book and elsewhere in order to tell the cinematic story.
And I asked him about the cutting of the “respectability” line and the post Camille kicking Dean & Sal out scene with her getting ready for work the next day, and he said that Carolyn had pointed out she wasn’t a nurse and so it wasn’t perfectly accurate anyway, and that he was trying to zip the movie along and that was something that could be cut.
So, eventually we get to the party, and there’s this whole scene out front of this new club that hasn’t even opened to the public yet, and again I get the hand-to-the-small-of-the-back routine as he pushes me ahead of him behind the red ropes. I knew all along the only way I was getting into this thing was with somebody from the movie, but never dreamed it would be with the director!
And then as soon as we go behind the lines there’s another one of those photo-op backdrops and a line of photographers behind another rope, and they’re yelling “Walter,” and he says, “Okay, take me with these guys,” and enthusiastically grabs me on one side and Damo on the other and the three of us stand there arm-in-arm beaming, Road Buddies, just back from a trip and joyous and crazy and flashbulbs goin off like mad with those cameras that shoot pictures clicketty-click-click-click 20 shots in 10 seconds, zippity doo-dah, snap-snap-snap.
Then we walk into the mob of a party, and Walter leans to my ear and says, “You know the trick with these things? You stay for 8 minutes.”
🙂
And suddenly the publicity handlers are urgently like, “Walter, we have to get you to your spot upstairs.” And I spy this stairway on the other side of the room so I actually lead the crew through the crowd and up the stairs to the private party overlooking the main floor. And there’s the lady in white again, Kirsten Dunst, and the producers from Zoetrope and MK2 and all these other happening movie people.
And the crazy thing is, we’re there about an hour, and he and I talk for about 45 minutes of it! I’m sure one key to us connecting was that I knew this was not a movie about Jack and Neal, but about Sal and Dean, and how we were always talking about the characters and not the biography.
It’s a total replay of when I first met my ultimate hero Bill Graham backstage at a Santana concert in New York when I was about 19, and he and I fell right into this intense conversation about the philosophy of show production, and I could see out the corners of my eyes all these people standing there wanting to talk to Bill who is ignoring them all and just locked in on me as we philosophized for the longest with this crowd of burning eyes surrounding us but neither giving any quarter.
And so Walter and I just riff, nose-to-nose about an inch apart, both to hear and cuz it’s so crowded. And I ask him everything I can think of.
Right away we talk about the different versions of course, and how people are already writing on IMDb and elsewhere about wanting to buy the longer “director’s cut,” and I know what he’s gonna say, and he says it — “They’re both director’s cuts.” 🙂
And he tells me the longer version is for sale in France (starting Oct. 17th, called Sur La Route) and the dialog is Not overdubbed, it just has subtitles that you can turn off. And the shorter one will be out on DVD in North America next year.
I told him the new version was the single, and the other was the album version, and he beamed like Scotty.
And I mentioned how I loved the prior opening he cut where it was Sal singing the “On The Road” song from the Kerouac audio recordings (Rykodisc 1999) and how the screen slowly fades from black into Sal’s feet walking along the dirt road. And he smiles and twinkles and says he loved that, too. He didn’t say it, but we both know Faulkner’s lesson — kill your darlings. And he practices it on a big scale budget. Sometimes you gotta cut your favorite passage for the betterment of the story.
And I asked if there was going to be another edit, and he confirmed that No this was it.
And then some voluptuous blond VIP waitress in a form-fitting black mini-skirt comes around and asks if we want anything, and Walter has his water and says no, but I ask for a beer — and it turns out the party is sponsored by Grolsch! And she brings me one of those big wonderful freezing cold bottles with the resealable cap.
Road jar! 😉
And I asked him if anybody else was at both the long-version London premiere and the short-version Toronto premiere, and he thought a second and said, “Yeah, two people. One of the producers … and you,” and pokes me in the chest and smiles another crinkly-eyed beauty.
So I start telling him all about the outdoor Somerset screening scene he missed and Carolyn’s classic “letter of introduction” and how people brought their entire bedrooms and set them up in the piazza and how it was like seeing “On The Road” at a drive-in except people had blankets instead of cars, and he’s just beaming like a proud father at the visual recreation of his film’s U.K. premiere.
And we got talkin about the purity of interpreting the book, and he was sayin how the novel was free-form, the spirit was free-form, the life was free-form, and so the movie should be as well. And I’m nodding Yes, and chanced a quote from my London review, “It’s a helluva party condensed into 2 hours. It’s a road trip with old friends to familiar places. But you better leave the book at home and be ready for anything.” And he says, “Yes, that’s exactly it.”
And we kept riffin’ on the improv, and he tells me about the older Okie hitchhiker who sings the song about “we were once friends,
but it’s hard when you’re burning in hell,
and it’s hard enough to be in love,
and it’s hard, ain’t it hard to love what you kill,”
that resonates so painfully with Marylou, and he tells me that whole scene was improvised by the actor who just started singing in the backseat of the car, and that he’s an old Kerouac-head and knew the stuff inside out. But can you believe this guy got a bit part in the movie and then created a whole new scene on the spot that made the final cut?!!
I asked him if the “In Search Of On The Road” doc he’s been making for years with scads of interviews and Road research would be a separate release and he said that’s the plan … whenever he can get the time to finish it.
And he went into a riff about how the Beats were the catalyst for everything, and I asked if he’d seen “The Source,” and he rhymed, “Of course,” as we harmonized on how perfectly inclusive and expansive that doc was.
And we talked about the sex scenes, and he said, “Yeah, you can tell Carolyn there’s less now,” and we both smile. And he goes on about how great her writing still is, even in emails. And I say, “Yeah, and she’s still a flawless touch-typist,” and act out what she looks like typing away with all ten fingers while staring off at her giant Mac screen. And he goes into how much he loved her introduction to Neal’s “Collected Letters,” how she describes how painful it was for her to read all those letters, but that she includes them all to present the full picture of Neal and let others see for themselves the most accurate portrait.
And I brought up how I thought the casting was great, and he must be so happy, but how did he come to choose Sam Riley?
He said he tried out 200 Sals!! And he picked Sam because he could listen — that a big part of Sal is taking in what’s around him. He said James Franco tested for it five times and he’s great but it just didn’t work.
And then we fell into this whole talk about friendship, and how Jack and Neal drifted apart, and how that was such a sad part of the novel, and that Walter cried when he first read it as a young man. And then he went off on a parenthetical about how much he loved John Clellon Holmes’ “Go” and how Jack’s character and friendships are portrayed there. And I told him about my 85 days of Camp Carolyn dispatches, and how one of them was a riff on friendship, and losing it, and how it can be so intense and then can be so gone. And he’s nodding, “Yes, yes,” and saying it’s happened to him with friends in his life and that he understands and it’s sad but it’s life.
And I asked him about the dropping of f-bombs, and how that word wasn’t in the novels or letters or anything, and he understood my raising it, but that he felt they were little cues that he could use that would connect the story with a contemporary audience, that it’s not a documentary, and that they were used very judiciously, and he’s right. (But I’ll tell ya, the period sets and costumes and cars and locations are all transportively real!) And he said that in “Motorcycle Diaries” he also inserted stuff that wasn’t literally accurate for the time because it could help connect an audience in the present.
And we talked about the Jack & Carolyn dancing scene in Denver, and I asked about the famous line that’s not in the movie, when Jack said to Carolyn about Neal seeing her first, and he said that it wasn’t in the novel, and that he showed their love without using the words, and I’m thinking, “Boy, you sure did” — the attraction’s so evident in the faces in that scene.
And there’s this great moment where I remember, “Oh wait — I’m mad at you!” And I see his wonderfully wrinkling eyes scrunch up and white teeth shine through the darkness. “The San Francisco epiphany scene after Dean abandons Sal & Marylou on the curb — that was so much more flushed out in the longer version — the picking up of butts from the sidewalk, hallucinating his mother’s face in the store window …” And Walter’s smiling and says, and “Yeah, I loved that, too … but I was trying to make it shorter.”
“Why?”
“Cuz if we could get it down to 2 hours then theaters can run 4 screenings a day instead of 3. It’s gives it more of a chance and longer theater life. It’s good for the film.”
And he introduced me to the guy from Zoetrope who was the person who first connected “On The Road” to Walter — and boy did I thank him for that!
And we talked about the rollout and how it was going to all these film festivals first to have proper cinephile debuts in different countries all over the world. He started listing them all but I couldn’t keep track and hadn’t heard of half of them.
And he confirmed that the release dates and rollout stuff was not his thing, and he put up his hands saying something like, “That’s not my dept. I just leave that to them.”
And I complemented his choice of no title in the beginning — it just starts “New York, 1947” and Boom you’re right into the movie and on the road, and he twinkled, knowin’ he’d played the solo sweet.
And I mentioned how poetically beautiful the landscape shots were and he said they shot those on a long second unit trip across the country afterwards.
And I told him how great Viggo was as Bull/Bill, and how in the movie you first meet him over the phone and just hear his voice and how I thought it was a recording of Burroughs himself. And he went on about how great it is to work with Viggo and how he insists on flying coach on airplanes and always requests a compact car to pick up and drive himself, and how the whole time they were filming his scenes he never broke character even back at the hotel, and that in the mornings the crew would arrive at the location, and Viggo would already be there on this own in costume, sitting in Burroughs’ chair reading Celine.
And I let him know how much I loved the Steve Buscemi scenes, which got huge laughs in both London and Toronto, and him driving the car really slowly then calling it “a perilous journey!” And Walter said, “Oh, I’m so glad you caught that. Yeah, that was fun,” and he had a big smile on over those scenes.
And we also got personal. I got to thank him, actually twice, at length — how the Beat community is blessed that he was the man at the helm, that he was the guy to finally do this. And all the research he did, the complete emersion for 8 years. That we couldn’t have had a better man do it. And he was so grateful to hear this. And the whole time we’re standing eye-to-eye, inches apart, not even blinking, but staring into the depths of each other’s souls the way Neal and Allen do in the film.
And he went on about, “I feel like I know you after hearing about you all this time. It’s so great to finally put a face to what I was thinking,” as he leans back, holding up his hands and framing my face.
And he was so jazzed and thanked me, actually twice, for going to such lengths to see both versions — and that we could talk about the differences. And I could so honestly say how much better, more alive, faster tempoed, and more fun the new version is.
And we musta hugged in one way or another about 50 times during the night.
I still can’t believe I’ve seen this movie twice, been to two premieres, and seen both the long and short versions! And it’s still four months away from theaters!
For the London premiere Adventure in the outdoor courtyard at Somerset House — go here.
For the New York City premiere and afterparty Adventure — go here.
For video versions of this and other “On The Road” stories — go here.
For a complete overview of all the Kerouac / Beat film dramatizations including clips and reviews — check out the Beat Movie Guide.
For an excerpt from my book about the ’82 Kerouac Conference in Boulder — “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” — check out Meeting Your Heroes.
For more from the Boulder Beat Adventure Book — check out Who All Was There.
A very abnormal thing happens — it’s post-movies Wednesday night (August 15th) when Carolyn & I normally part ways for our own offices and computers, but by fortune we met up in the kitchen and started talkin about the movie premiere tomorrow night, and I’m tellin her how I’m all excited about being in this palace with 2,000 Jack people, but it’s sold out, and press is totally allotted for, and I’m telling her my elaborate plans for sneaking in, or scoring a ticket out front, but that I have to be there, and suddenly she’s, “Well, I should write you a letter to get in. I wanna know what you think of it.”
And I’m like, “Yeah.”
And she’s like, “Okay, I’ll do it now,” and I hand her a pad & pencil and she writes out a late-night plea for me to get into this thing as her eyes & ears since she can’t make it.
And then, by the time I get up in the morning, she’s handwritten a whole new killer “letter of introduction” for me to carry with as the revised Plan A!
So I go in to London. But problem is: the last train back out tonight is 11:38PM — about the time the movie’s ending. This is gonna be dicey. So, I time myself from the station. It’s 2:10PM at the Waterloo train platforms . . . and 2:17 when I’m at the doors to Somerset House — the palace where the film is to screen in the outdoor courtyard. 7 minutes walking.
I do a thorough pre-scout for getting-in plans B thru D, but have to remember it’s Plan A that must work and solve all. So I go to reception thinkin I can get somebody from the film fest to come down and between the letter and me, convince ‘em to let me in. But reception says, No Go. You gotta take any delivery to the messenger center, which is outside, down around the corner, down a dark dingy alley that hasn’t been cleaned since before the war, and it’s spooky old New York. And I get to the end of the dark tunnel where my letter’s goin nowhere, but then I bump into the messenger crew. And all my life, including at MTV, I could groove and work with the top executives and have all the mailroom guys who love me too. And so Boom — I’m back in Mailroomville, and groovin with the cats, and we’re talkin New York and New Orleans, and Assam is right into helping me, and brings me two different envelopes to choose from to put my loose letter in, and says he’ll take it right up.
I walk outta the dark tunnel back into the glorious sun over the Thames with the breeze and river air and head back to reception where I said I’d wait, and get up there and I know there’s gonna be nothing happening for gawd nose how long, so I go out on the terrace over the airy river, and no sooner am I out there than I see Assam again! And he’s already dropped it off and says they’ll come find me in reception. “Okay!” So I go back in, plop myself down in a comfy, pull out my Bible — the scroll version — and am just gawkin’ around when I see a smiling face seem to pick me out of the crowd. “Are you Brian?” she asks as I notice she doesn’t have a ticket in her hand.
“Hi,” I stand up.
“We’d love you to come tonight,” she says in the cutest English accent I ever did hear!
And I walk outta there at 3:10, an hour after I landed, with my name on the guest list.
😉
So the next problem to solve is the departure — and having beers for the post-movie writing thinking train ride home. I wanna be (close to) straight for the movie, but afterwards I wanna celebrate. And I check every store on the block and of course in this godforsaken regressive country you can’t even buy beers to go after 11. So, whaddya do?
Me, I go back into the venue and start talkin up the cool bar manager at the only bar inside as they’re setting up. I explain my situation. She’s sympathetic. And I’m like, “Kay, what if I paid you for two beers now — cuz I know you’ll be closed at T minus D-hour — and you keep ‘em on ice, and I’ll grab them as I’m running out the door for my last-train-outta-Dodge.” And she winks, and says, “Cool.”
Done.
Next: Make the scene. This is a one-time-only gig. In a big cobblestone courtyard. Oh yeah, so I buy one of the padded blankets they sell there, which turned out to be a total savior turning the ancient London cobblestones into a soft field. And I start talkin to all these girls. And this is the whole bloody point. There’s TONS of ‘em! I mean, mostly girls. I mean, way mostly girls. Like, at the start of the line goin in, there was maybe 5 dudes in the first 40 people. !! The total opposite of what we’ve always thought to be the Beat audience.
And I’m talkin to them and a bunch of them say “On The Road” is their favorite book! Huh?! Crazy, man.
And funny — Kerouac and Keith — you’d see these globetrotting hipsters coming through the portico into the courtyard and a very easy smiling question was, “You here for ‘On The Road’ or the Stones?” whose 50th year photo retrospective is also in the same palace at the same time. The Rock n The Road. Sympathy For The Dharma. 19th Nervous Beatnik.
After first scouting the empty yard for where I wanted to experience it from
— dead center, really close — I meet up with this girl I’d met literally last night on Facebook, and we’re yakin, and she’s near the front of the now really long line — in fact there were two really long lines “queuing” to get in.
I now know the security search routine — so I pick the fastest guy and the shortest line, and Boom suddenly I’m one of the first people in the naked courtyard, and just Zoom myself right to exact Dead center. And then all the girls catch up and I end up in the middle of this crew of 12 of them! and everything’s rollin right along.
And so we’re rappin the universe, and how they love the adventure of Jack’s books, and the language it’s written in, and the openness, and the road adventures — and not only is this crew from all over but they travel all over!
And we’re yakkin an’ jammin an’ yiffin an’ yeah-manin, and the whole time over the crystal PA they’re playing this great ’40s & ’50s jazz for the two hour party before the movie, and then — “Oh — there’s Al Hinkle!” Or at least the guy who plays him in the film. He’s no big movie star, and he’s not in it or the book that much, well he is, but he’s not that vocal, but he’s totally THERE, and pretty much the only other guy on the bus. And Carolyn remained really close friends with the Hinkles throughout the decades & madness they all lived through and I’ve recently gained a lot of respect for survivor Al — the only major character in On The Road besides Carolyn who’s still alive.
So I walk up to the actor — “Al Hinkle! I know you!” And he starts beamin’ while processing “Not only does this guy recognize me, and not only as the part, but as the guy behind the part.” And we’re talking about him meeting Al at the wrap party in S.F. and what a nice and still cogent guy he is, and how he taught the cast how to do the benzedrine inhalers, which they got first-hand-right in the movie, and of course we snap a snap in the crazy courtyard of some King of Somerset or whoever this palace was built for.
Oh, and before the screening a few of the actors came out for a little interview segment, and Al / Ed Dunkel, actually Danny Morgan, said, “I don’t really know why I’m here, I’m barely in the movie. I actually only did the catering on this.” 🙂 Then the host says, “Well, when Danny comes on screen we should give him a big round of applause.” Then the movie starts and everyone gets sucked right in, but about a half-hour later when Al / Ed / Danny gets his first scene a whole bunch of us remember and this silly applause breaks out all over the courtyard. 🙂
And, man, here’s the crazy part — we’re seeing On The Road …at a drive-in movie screen!!
Except there’s no cars, it’s blankets instead. But we’re outside with this giant screen and the breeze is blowin and people are munchin on munchies and they’ve brought in any manner of pillows and bedding and picnics and boxed wine, and there’s gay encampments, and loving hetro couples on pillows, and passels of girls like this is some chick flick.
And speaking of that — Kristen Stewart definitely wins the Most Improved Character From The Novel Award.
Okay, so here’s the thing about the movie:
“On The Road” is only the skeleton this film is fleshed out around. It is not simply the novel made into a movie. Director Walter Salles and screenwriter Jose Rivera WAY expanded it. For starters, they used The Scroll, not the ’57 edition as the working blueprint. And then all sorts of little touches were added from Neal, Jack & Allen’s letters, Carolyn’s book, the two different LuAnne interviews, “The Town And The City,” Jack’s audio recordings and articles and notebooks, Allen’s “Denver Doldrums,” “Dakar Doldrums,” and the “Martyrdom and Artifice” journals, John Clellon Holmes’ “Go,” and Gifford & Lee’s “Jack’s Book” — all noticed specifically. In other words, there’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the novel. But it’s all based on first-hand accounts, not solely Jack’s account as told in that one book, scroll or not.
And it also does not tell the novel chronologically. It jumps around — not in a bad way, cuz it’s all part of The Grand Duluoz Legend, and it’s all different refractions of the same light — but it’s not the novel On The Road as a linear film. It’s an interpretation based strongly ON that novel, but it’s not a literal filming of the storyline. It’s a work of art, its own work of art, a new work of art based on an old work of art.
There’s lots of cool things about it. I don’t want to “spoil” it for you, but many of the specific scenes in the novel that always stood out for me are in the film. And since it’s so non-linear, you don’t know what’s coming next. And it’s, “Oh wow! It’s this scene! No way!” It’s so funny-cool that way. Something that Jack might spend a couple paragraphs on in a 300-page novel could be 3 minutes of the 137 minute movie. And things he might cover over 20 pages aren’t included at all. It’s kind of a series of choice scenes portrayed.
And the cameos by Terrence Howard and Steve Buscemi are to die for! That two of my favorite actors are in this in such weird and wonderful ways is just great.
And Viggo as Bill Burroughs! Holy shit. Maybe the best part of the film.
And the music is GREAT. Yer gonna love it if ya love it.
There’s some problems, big and small, but I’m not gonna mention ‘em cuz maybe you won’t even notice ‘em. It’s its own work of art, its own statement, its own piece. It’s new and different and will stand (or fall) on its own. But the movie of “On The Road” now exists. And here it is. It’s more large than small. It’s more new than old. It’s more timeless than dated.
How this is gonna play for other people will be interesting to see. But here’s a wild example . . .
So, I gotta leave — it’s this whole trip. I time it out during the pre-movie layabout. Gotta be on the Strand by 11:30 to get a cab to the 11:38 last-train-outta-Waterloo. I need 5 minutes to find the bar manager and grab those road jars. It’s gonna take 5 minutes to get from where I am in dead-center of Woodstock to that bar. Plus a 5 minute buffer. No matter what’s happening in the movie — I gotta move at 11:15.
So, I execute the exit — and my girl’s in her closed bar with my two giant beers on ice like champaign. And I see the great final shot from the tunnel leading to the street while walking backwards, then turn around and run out onto the Strand but it’s late night Nowheresville in London and there’s no freakin cabs! Then I spot one but he cuts down a different split in the road, so I run across the street to where he’s heading and there’s this moped thing they all ride here right in front of me and with my left hand I’m circle-waving him to keep going past while my right hand is stretched out back flagging the cab. Perfect execution. In the door. “Waterloo Station.”
I’m thinkin I’m making good time, get to the steps under that great statue still thinkin I’m doin’ good, but look at watch and it’s 11:36! Bolt up the stairs nearest the platform the train always leaves from but for some reason tonight it’s at the other end of the freakin station! So I jog the entire length of Waterloo Station through the crowds, then fly through the gate, flash-confirming I’m getting on the right train.
You come in at the back of the train and of course all the seats are full, so I’m speed-walkin past it and luckily look up ahead and see Neal the brakeman starting to wave his flag and flash his flashlight just before he blows his whistle, and I go, “Shit,” and jump on, and before I’m out of the doorway the doors close! 5 seconds to spare! 10 if ya count that first door I walked past. Yet another close last-train exit execution!
And of course there’s no seats! Like, why don’t you run another frickin train after this one? Their economy sucks, and they force everybody to close up shop at 11:00! I don’t get it. Like, how old are children who have to be in bed by 11? Does this country not think adults live here?
So, I walk through the entire train … all the way to the end of the very front car to find the very last seat. Sit down, all crazy. I’m five minutes out of the movie, five seconds from missing the last train, and I’ve got an hour to write, and two cold ones to drink. Perfect. I’m write into it. Then after a few stops the nice woman next to me starts pickin up her stuff to get off, so I break from my reverie and say, “Were you in at something good in London tonight?”
And the woman goes, “Oh, I was just at this outdoor film that went on and on.”
:-0
Thousands of passengers leaving on hundreds of trains and I sit beside someone who was at the premiere!! “Wait a minute — were you at Somerset House?! So was I!” And we have a little “how funny!” as she’s standing up to get off — but the point is, she didn’t say, “I was just at this great movie.”
There’s gonna be the Beat world’s reaction, and then the non-Beat world’s. Beat people in general are gonna like it — cuz it’s On The Road and so much more — with a well portrayed Allen and Bill as well as Neal & Jack. People who have only read the one book and have it emblazoned in their brains may have trouble with how it’s been expanded, or edited by the limitations of the medium. I have no idea how non-Beat-familiar people will respond. Not a clue. I think if you were predisposed this way, you’d already be there.
Oh, and there’s a whole lotta sex in it. The things that are said and the things that are shown, for The Puritanical American Rating System, this is gonna be an “R” fer sure. I mean, there’s hand-jobs, oral, gay, straight, three-ways, you name it — and f-bombs, which actually were not in the casual vernacular of the time the way they’re used in this film, and certainly not in the novel. This is definitely an adult movie. Which, if you know your On The Road, was a very G-rated book, other than the subject — the sex is all off-page, and the language is clean. The movie — not so much.
I look forward to experiencing this many more times, under many different circumstances, in many different mindframes, with many different people, and how it’ll continue to reveal new colors and angles with each new Road adventure. It’s a memorable, expansive dramatization. It’s a helluva party condensed into 2 hours. It’s a road trip with old friends to familiar places. But you better leave the book at home and be ready for anything.
Paul Simon certainly exceeded my expectations last night!
He and his two bands only had a couple warm-up gigs in Dublin before bringing back “Graceland” in front of 50,000 people in the most famous park in the English capital of Europe.
A 2 hour show became 3 hours, and he started at 7:20 to avoid the power-cutting curfew that befell Bruce and McCartney the night before.
And speaking of that, it was wonderful that the Simon audience and all the opening acts were like a folk festival and not a rock concert in that it was easy to move around and there were very few drunk loogans.
Of course I experienced it from my standard 7-people from the front rail in front of the stage with 49,900 people behind me.
And as usual I unified a whole krewe of surrounding people, making friends and turning it into a large group party with Russians, Jamaicans, Americans, Dutch people with their Dutch cigarettes, and families-full of Brits.
The show was really expansive — Jimmy Cliff fronting Paul’s band for “The Harder They Come” and “Many Rivers To Cross” into Paul & Jimmy dueting on “Vietnam” and “Mother & Child Reunion.”
Ladysmith Black Mambazo opened their part with two a capella songs that were reverence-evoking hymns and had the place jaw-dropped and hushed silent.
And then Paul comes out to join them for the very Zulu “Homeless” — which came across not about street-people or tragedy but how we are all persons of the planet — not one location.
And the Graceland stuff is just RIPPIN’ ! “Diamonds On The Soles of Her Shoes,” “I Know What I Know,” “Boy In The Bubble,” “Crazy Love,” the wild energetic zydeco “That Was Your Mother” — and the whole 2 hour+ show builds to this monumental “Gumboots / Graceland” peak.
And in the middle of it Hugh Masekela comes out — the 73-year-old legendary trumpet & flugelhorn player from South Africa who does a “Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)” and then pretty-much steals the show with this riveting Beat-poetry meets scat-Zulu with Coltrane-sax and Miles-horn on “Stimela (Coal Train).”
And “The Sound of Silence” was positively spooky in how its sound made utterly silent this enormous crowd who had just been dancing in exuberant reverie for hours — but suddenly it was church-quiet except for the faint collective harmony of people whispering the hymn along with the preacher.
And dobro master Jerry Douglas came out for “The Boxer,” and bluegrass fiddle player Gabe Witcher from the Punch Brothers for “Dazzling Blue,” and all these special guest African women singers . . . it was just uber-special, and of course I was right in front of the stage with a killer world-beat krewe.
Oh, and the weather was just Perfect even though it’s been the rainiest summer in the history of the British Isles and had rained on every other big concert held there this month.
A month of rain in 12 hours
can’t dampen the Spirit
of a lifetime of experience
or the experience of a lifetime.
Two compatible souls a generation apart,
Somehow related, somehow unjaded, somehow not faded,
Still giggling unburdened, still freely unherded,
Two jazz cats still flowing, still riffing, still reading
the mind of the other.
Tis a play devoutly to be wished,
On Shaky Willie’s garden stage,
Halfway around the Globe,
In a comedy of the present and a tragedy of age
Where laughter is the direction and wine is the line.
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For a video tribute done for Carolyn’s Memorial on the one year anniversary of her passing — go here.
For the London “On The Road” premiere Adventure in the outdoor courtyard at Somerset House — go here.
For the New York City “On The Road” premiere and afterparty Adventure — go here.
For a complete overview of all the Kerouac / Beat film dramatizations including clips and reviews — check out the Beat Movie Guide.
For an excerpt from my book about the ’82 Kerouac Conference in Boulder — check out Meeting Your Heroes.
