Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' to be film

David Strathairn, Alan Alda, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker and Paul Rudd will join the cast of the film "Howl," according to today's Hollywood Reporter. Actor James Franco has already signed on to portray poet Allen Ginsberg. The roles of the new cast members — lawyer, judge — indicate that the film will highlight the 1956-57 obscenity trial against publisher City Lights.

Franco completed his degree in English literature at UCLA earlier this year. The 30-year-old actor had started college immediately after high school, but his career got in the way. Entirely normal. Not like the madness of "Howl," which begins:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz ...

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Allen Ginsberg, left, will be portrayed by James Franco, right.

Comments

[Dale]

This is exciting news. But the obscenity trial is probably the least exciting part of the whole span of Ginzberg's life from NY Beat to SF Hippie.

aftrlife

[Cal Godot]

There is little more exciting in the span of Ginsberg's life than the creation, publication, and trial of "Howl." The first public recitation of this poem is an indelibly important literary event, comparable to the Sermon on the Mount This is the moment after all that the Beat Generation came into fruition and the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance was born.

Let's hope that this cinematic effort is not as lackluster as previous efforts to capture or translate beat literature into narrative film.

[frankg]

Growing up Italian-Catholic in the 50's and 60's in SF meant deli shoping in North Beach after Mass, eating an Italian dinner and finishing off the evening with a visit to the Cafe' Trieste. (First coffeehouse on the West Coast.)
The clientele would be considered primarily "beatnik." The comings and goings of the world's free-thinking literary world were regularly mentioned in the local papers.
Steps away was the City Lights bookstore, nexus of the free speech world.
As interested as was I as in reading, I only pressed my nose to the window. Maybe someboy famous? Who knows? I could have been that nine year old kid passing Jack Kerouac at his table?
I expect the production to film at the still-existing locales.

[jojo]

ok. amerikan neoCON fascist impression here (they will show up eventually)

alien ginsberg was a liberal with a liberal mindset whos liberal ravings amounted to no more than a moranic liberal screed of liberality and libertinism. Now if you'll excuse me i have corporations to bail out!"

America? When will you look at yourself through the grave? -A. Ginsberg

Soon Allen. Soon. -me