Filmbook: "Kill Your Darlings" (2013)

I say, why shouldn't the Beats get their own "Heathers"?

When little Allen Ginsberg goes off to college at the beginning of "Kill Your Darlings," it's clear he's not going to settle in with the football jocks like his study-disdaining number-sweater-wearing roommate. ("Central Casting, get me the blondest dope you can find.") Instead, an older, more streetwise student named Lucien Carr takes him under his wing, giving him books to read and taking him to exotic downtown (and uptown) parties. Through him Ginsberg meets other people whose names you recognize by now like football hero Jack Kerouac and rich junkie William S. Burroughs. But Lucien also has a friend no one seems to like, named David Kammerer, who is always hanging around, helping him with his homework. What's his game, anyway? Is he in love with Lucien? Is it mutual? Wouldn't they all be better if they just dropped him for good?
 
I've been bending the rules again: Technically, this isn't a book adaptation, although it covers the same events at the same time as a novel Kerouac and Burroughs wrote together. This novel, called AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS, then sat on Burroughs' shelf until he died, at which point his literary executor decided to wait until Carr's death to publish it. How close does it ring to the true events? Hard to say, but it's more of an artifact than a great book, as I described when I reviewed it on its final publication in 2008.

Even if they didn't talk about it much, that fall would mark all of the men through their friendships and sometimes more -- and I give this movie credit for not straightwashing* the Beats' circle, as some may be tempted to do. However, for at least its first half "Kill Your Darlings" is exquisitely art-directed and completely boring. I was suffering and digging for a pen, though not a light because I am not a monster. The most entertaining thing about those 45-50 minutes was David Cross as Ginsberg's father (yes, really, Tobias Funke!) If you can make it to the library sequence, you're home free.

It's a shame, because Daniel Radcliffe is developing into a fine actor under America's nose and one day he's going to sweep up and steal that Oscar and everyone's going to be all, "But Harry Potter!" But Harry Potter nothing. There is a seriousness to his intent here that is adorable, but also very fine. In fact most of the major players here were reverent without being two-dimensional; Ben Foster as Burroughs was just weird enough and Jack Huston infused life into the second half as Jack Kerouac. And Michael C. Hall, "Dexter" himself, brought that freaky intensity right in to his role as Kammerer. (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Elisabeth Olsen were also quite good, but typically underused.) Dane DeHaan, as Lucien Carr, was more of an unknown quantity to me; it wasn't hard to see why everyone was captivated by him, but sometimes I detected a nonresponsiveness to his eyes. If anyone in this movie gets male-gazed at, it's him.

I also have to fault the film for the twist it gave the final scenes to suggest something about Ginsberg and Carr's relationship that wasn't true -- at least, not that we have documented. It seemed so cruel at the time, and the film seems to take a side just in that one sequence, when otherwise it was more evenhanded than I predicted.

Filmbook verdict: Unless you've seen all 8 HARRY POTTER movies or are a Beat completist, wait for Netflix. Late-night cable will probably chop it up too much.

*Out of curiosity, I Googled this term to see how frequently it is used and found this interesting, though oddly formatted article about biopics and straightwashing. It leads off with "J. Edgar," which I thought somewhat straightwashes Hoover but is such a soppy mess otherwise that who would be able to tell? Don't see that movie. Go read the back of a cereal box instead.

Old gossip

On Tuesday night I went to a lecture sponsored by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation about gay writers in Greenwich Village. The speaker, Christopher Bram, just wrote a collective biography of several gay writers including Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin, and he led us on a virtual walking tour of the Village by the places where these writers lived and socialized.

One of the sites he singled out was the bar where Gore Vidal and Jack Kerouac met before their maybe-one night stand uptown at the Chelsea Hotel. The confusion, as Bram explained, lies in the fact that Vidal wrote three different versions of that night - in his diary, in his memoir, and in fiction. And for his part, Kerouac told Allen Ginsberg one version (possibly to make Ginsberg jealous) and William S. Burroughs, Vidal's friend, another.

Writers are famous for their indiscretion in print, but maybe dating one of them is a way to maintain discretion. After all, only you know the real story. Seems like a way to cultivate the mystery without doing much work.

It was a great lecture and I'm looking forward to checking out EMINENT OUTLAWS, particularly for writers like James Baldwin who I didn't have much exposure to in my education. (Same with Vidal, actually; he seems to be one of the writers most referenced by the ones I read, that I haven't actually read.) The night ended with several men in the crowd volunteering their memories of the old Stonewall Inn, which for all its historic importance was apparently a little stuffy with a high cover charge for the neighborhood.

Tabs at the West End are going to be up this weekend

The Times has a neat slideshow of places where the Beat writers hung out around Columbia University. The West End, the bar where they held court, is now a Cuban restaurant called Havana Central at which I got terrible food poisoning, so I'd advise you stick to the generously poured mojitos.

Literary Stereotypes For Selling Shit

From a building wrap near Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY, June 2011. Also what?

Filmbook-to-be: He was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected

Trying to do justice to such a famous book is a really tough assignment, and no doubt some people will be furious that the “chick from Twilight” is involved. (One blogger said the main shot of Dean and Marylou, at the top of this page, looks like “a picture out of an Urban Outfitters catalog.”)

--Probably the most evenhanded take you will read on the forthcoming ON THE ROAD adaptation starring Garrett "Sort Of Josh Hartnett" Hedlund and Kristen "Oh, Her" Stewart. Coming next Oscar season!

The film also features the most random assortment of actors ever, including Amy Adams, "Uncle" Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst and Terrence Howard. I'm just shocked James Franco isn't involved in there somewhere. Sam Riley (breakout: Ian Curtis in "Control") is Sal Paradise.

Goodness. (Jezebel, via Autostraddle)

Spotted on the subway: Not Achewood

30something, balding in a blue sweater vest, engrossed in this edition of the Kerouac book. It reminded me of the popular webcomic Achewood but the artist is Jason, about whom I cannot find any information.

When I looked it up on Amazon, though, I saw this funny review: ...THE BOOK THAT RUINED MY LIFE!!!!!..........!