Lets just re-establish Burroughs` influence and significance, as it relates to this scene's genre and the Destroy film. Joe, you spoke of him earlier as a trail-blazer, who left his mark on so many aspects of 20th century culture, can you elaborate on what you meant ?
JA: Hardboiled fiction, hip hop, literary fiction, songwriting Lou Reed or Dylan-style, painting very much so, punk rock in a fundamental way, cyberpunk, comic art, experimental cinema, style, science fiction… these are just a few of the areas he touched.
The autobiographical nature of the Scene's artists and writers within their work was a significant step away from the writer portrayed as superhero, as was the convention previously. In what ways did this happen?
JA: Not just in their autobiographical work – and much of what Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg did was directly autobiographical. People like Huncke, Bowles, Ginsberg, and Burroughs allowed themselves to be interviewed a great deal, to be photographed, and filmed a lot. This is not necessarily part of the gig involved in being a writer.
Salinger and Pynchon, for instance, are writers who shared many intellectual interests with the Beats but who didn’t go along with the cult of the personality or play the game the way the media wanted them to. Laki Vazakas did this justly celebrated documentary, Huncke and Louis, which is an absolutely searing portrayal of Herbert Huncke during a very difficult time in his life.
Laki kept on filming when somebody came into a room in the Chelsea Hotel and told Huncke that his long-term partner, Louis, had just been found dead. You see Huncke breaking down and crying, quite inconsolable. I found this awfully hard to look at because I knew and liked Huncke very much. So did Laki, he was not some exploitative BBC-style documentary maker but a sympathetic pal. Laki is one of the good guys. Huncke never asked him to turn off the camera though he was being documented at his lowest point. This sort of chronicling was very much ahead of its time. Documenting the whole deal – good and bad, warts and all – is everything.
You obviously have a great deal of respect for the work and ethos of the Tangier Beat scenesters, can you tell me the influence it has had on your work?
FR: For me it is the production work I have done with Master Musicians of Joujouka that most closely links me to that ethos. I learned how to get around in Morocco from Hamri who imparted similar knowledge to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs in the fifties and sixties.
Article comments
1 - johnny boy
very stimulating
2 - paul hawkins
thanks, what did you find stimulating johnny boy ?