"It's that and plenty more" I dare say Balestri asserted. "I'd wager they'll do that and they'll also buy the DVD with an excellent writers' commentary and also a 30 minute film of the stage show and a couple deleted scenes, and they'll enjoy it so much they'll forget all about the wanker stood front of them in the queue for Borat saying about the night he got drunk and wrote a novel there and then just nearly like Kerouac, and would've had it published, too, except it was just too personal."
Balestri and Tabbita enlisted the help of director Randy Allred and writer Bruce Boyle and lo and behold, there it is, Beat Angel, A Film About The Spirit Of Jack Kerouac, and also, conveniently enough, The Film About Which I'm Talking.
Beat Angel is a curious affair, and I'll tell you why here and now whilst I remember for I'd be a man fond of a digression if given half a chance. It's a curious affair because it seems to capture with right alarming clarity The Essence Of Jack whilst also being devoid of a good chunk of what that Essence had to do with.
To wit; Style.
Kerouac's writing has plenty to say about this and the other, and both of them articles are often worth a good fourteen or fifteen minutes-worth of contemplation far-side of a read over, but he also marries that substance with an incredible style. You might've heard tell of such things in one of the eighteen million and seven articles written about Kerouac's style in the past week. You might've came away from them with a thought in your head about how right enough, there's no doubting that the man had a wicked style about him.
Beat Angel, as a motion picture, has plenty of substance. A man can scarcely skip from one frame to the next without hitting his shins the fuck off of a great wadge of substance sticking up out the floor-tiles. What it doesn't have is very much style, and what style it is in possession of is that of a trailer for a 1978 Abel Ferrara film about a man who has no style wandering stylelessly about a street nobody can find because it looks like a crap cardigan.
It's oft-times stagey, the performances are somewhat eccentric of occasion, i.e., some of them aren't very good, the sound leaves a lot to be desired and visually, it's none too appealing at all. Whilst some folks, the aforementioned Mr Ferrara there amongst them, have made a virtue of such an aesthetic drought, Randy Allred oft-times seems like he's shrugged his shoulders and figured to blazes with it, the substance'll carry us through.
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Cerebral panty-weep indeed. Holy garbanzo beans! You've out-diddly-diddled yourself with this essay, my man.
2 - El Bicho
[with both hands snap out a rhythm of your chosing]
Duke, pay no attention to those faux elitst bastards, I say. They show how dim and phony they truly are because any true literary snob would know that instead of "you've never heard it read 'till you've heard it read on acid," they should be saying, "you've never heard 'On The Road' read 'till you've heard it read on Benzedrine," or "you've never heard 'Naked Lunch' read 'till you've heard it read on junk with a naked young man in your bed."
Regards,
A former reader of "On The Road" and "Howl" and I don't care who knows it.
3 - Duke De Mondo
Ha! Damn right, El Bicho. I dare say my bitterness was heightened somewhat on account of knowing full well the joy of hearing, say, ol' Will reading Junky through that fugg of a cracklin', slurrin' throat. But a man can hardly let anyone hear tell of it in public anymore.
by god, maybe it's time to reclaim the beats? and whilst we're at it, we'll reclaim Dylan and Revolver by The Beatles (the record most sorely put upon by those fiends) and maybe even some of Timothy Leary's scribbles. Certainly it's high time The Doors Of Perception by Aldous Huxley was plucked back out the hands of the Morrison Heads.
i smell a revoloution... A revolverlution. Isn't that a Public Enemy song? i dare say Chuck D's heard many's a man tell him about reading Heaven And Hell on Peyote.
And Jon! I'm altogether very glad you dug it, man! thank you!
4 - Howard Dratch
Your Review Card is safe, is surely good for a time more. It is, I think, a special edition of Review Cards honored for entertaining and finding something lost.
The Ms. Gillian knows her stuff, too, and makes me wish I was young and somewhere near Ireland, she does.
"I think you should watch it" she says. "You love Jack Kerouac. You dig the purple parpin' of a bop-fried trumpet of an evening. You're pretentious and self-obsessed. Go for it."
This story of the writer-poet of the Fifties sounds interesting and I will put it on my list of "bop-fried trumpet(s)" (a special, Irish dish, I presume), but I fear I might like the review better than the reviewed.
It is the reviewing of the reviewed that charms and "by God it has a right savage way with the words".
5 - Duke De Mondo
Mr Dratch, i am very pleased you found this screed to be pleasing to your eyes and ears. now, i must say, i think you might well enjoy yourself a right giddy while if you give that particular motion picture a go, and i can reccomend with no fear of comeuppance that you put it on one of thoes netflix lists or whatever folks do nowadays instead of heading down the VHS Dive of an evening.
And as to Beautiful Ms Gillian, it took manys a month and year of wandering to uncover the like, and so for this reason i will say nowt to her of the sophisticated lad by the name of Howard who sung her praises just this afternoon.
ach, i will indeed say, but i'll have a fine witticism waiting far-side of it so as she doesn't go bounding off for Mr Dratch!
thank you again, sir
6 - ms gillian
wonderful! as always! :)
7 - Fearon
I have read Howl thrice or more over and am amidst on the road and have naked lunch ordered as I intend to read everything that generation has to offer myself