No less than three movies featuring Jack Kerouac are in the works:
On The Road, which of course you know about if you're a regular reader;
Big Sur, a movie treatment of Kerouac's novel of the same name; and,
Kill Your Darlings, about the Lucien Carr/David Kammerer murder story featured in Kerouac's And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks. It's so new that it's not yet on Imdb.com.
Are we ready for all the attention? Can't you just imagine all the superficial beat wanna-be's coming out of the woodwork, and we diehard longstanding Kerouacers channeling Barbara Mandell's song, I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool? I will admit that I came around to my Kerouac obsession pretty late in life, but at least it wasn't inspired by popular culture. It was inspired by my own Neal Cassady. But that's a whole other story for another time . . . .
Alas, I fear that anything popular culture inspires will seem antithetical to beat values. I just hope some respectful, meaningful attention gets paid to Jack and Neal and Allen and Bill and the rest. A resurgence of interest in reading the beat authors would be a positive outcome, as would an interest in poetry in particular.
Just as long as my book starts selling like hotcakes on Amazon, I'm down with the spotlight these movies will focus on the beat generation. Yair!
Awesome! I didn't know about the Hippos movie! And Big Sur is my favorite book. Walter Sallas is coming to Lowell to celebrate the release of "On the Road"... in case you guys were in the mood for a road trip yourselves!
ReplyDeleteWhen will he be in Lowell? Is there a date set?
ReplyDeleteThe hint to your "own" Neal Cassady makes me curious....in fact, I guess every man has some kind of Nea Cassidy in his life...
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