Beat | |
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Directed by | Gary Walkow |
Written by | Gary Walkow |
Produced by | Andrew Pfeffer Alain Silver Donald Zuckerman |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Ciro Cabello |
Edited by |
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Music by | Ernest Troost |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Lionsgate |
Release date |
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Running time | 89 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Beat is a 2000 American biographical drama film written and directed by Gary Walkow, and starring Courtney Love, Kiefer Sutherland, Norman Reedus, and Ron Livingston. The film focuses primarily on the last several weeks of writer Joan Vollmer's life in 1951 Mexico City, leading up to her accidental killing by her husband, the writer William S. Burroughs. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2000 and was entered into the 22nd Moscow International Film Festival.
In 1944 New York City, beat writers and students Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, and David Kammerer all become acquainted with Joan Vollmer, a student at Barnard College. Joan and William carry on a romance. Lucien murders David after David makes unwanted sexual advances on him. Lucien visits Joan and William at their apartment after and Lucien confesses to the murder, claiming David had an obsession with Lucien, and attempted to rape Lucien in a park. Lucien ultimately serves two years in prison for the crime.
By 1951, Joan and William are married and living in Mexico City with their young son, William Jr., and Julie, Joan's daughter from her previous marriage. Joan is unhappy with her life in Mexico, as William carries on an affair with a male lover, Lee, to her chagrin. William leaves to Guatemala to meet Lee for a romantic liaison, avoiding an impending visit from Lucien and Allen who are traveling from New York. Upon Lee and Lucien's arrival, Joan and Lucien visit a local bar together, where Joan expresses her unhappiness over her marriage to William. Joan, Lucien, and Allen plan a weekend trip to visit the Parícutin volcano. Meanwhile, William, having met with Lee in Guatemala, finds Lee evasive and unwilling to be physically affectionate with him. When pressed, Lee suggests he feels that William only uses him for sex.
Joan, Lucien, and Allen travel through rural Mexico en route to Parícutin, camping along the way. Allen tries to convince Joan to return to the United States with him and Lucien, but, despite her unhappiness with her marriage, she does not want to abandon William, as she sees his potential. Joan also adds that William fears returning to the United States due to a pending heroin possession charge there. Sexual tension quickly develops between Joan and Lucien on the trip, but she rejects his numerous advances. The three return to Mexico City from their weekend trip. Lucien and Allen implore Joan to return to New York with them, bringing her children along with, but she refuses.
Willam returns from his trip to Guatemala, and he and Joan discuss the possibility of separating. Lucien and Allen's car breaks down near the Texas border, leaving them stranded. Lucien hitches a ride back to New York City, leaving Allen alone until the car is repaired, as he has to report to his new job at United Press International. Meanwhile, Lee arrives in Mexico City and visits William and Joan at their apartment. After a dinner in which alcohol is consumed, Joan is outwardly passive-aggressive toward Lee. To entertain themselves, William suggests that he and Joan perform their "William Tell" parlor trick, in which he attempts to shoot a shot glass off the top of her head with a pistol. Joan perches a glass atop her head and goads William, who misfires the gun, shooting her in the head and killing her.
Shortly after, while Lucien is working at the United Press International office, he receives a telegram notifying him of Joan's death.
Scholar Michael J. Prince notes that, in the film, "broad liberties are taken with the relationship between Lucien Carr and Joan, and much is imputed to Allen Ginsberg's unrequited love for Carr; lastly, Joan is portrayed as downright vindictive and insulting when chiding her husband about his sexual proclivities." [2] Comparing the film's treatment of Joan to that of David Cronenberg's in Naked Lunch (1991), he concludes: "Even though it ends tragically, [director] Walkow is doing for Joan what Cronenberg has done for William but without the saturation of so much of his own visual character... no one is shown writing more than her in the film... She is bright, alluring, and reflective." [2]
While the film depicts Vollmer leaving her two children behind during her trip to Parícutin with Ginsberg and Carr, in reality, Vollmer brought the children along. [3]
Principal photography of Beat took place in Mexico City in the summer of 1999. [4] The apartment building which Vollmer and Burroughs are shown residing in the film was located across the street from the actual apartment building the couple shared. Vollmer was killed in a nearby apartment building which also housed a bar, The Bounty, which Burroughs frequented. [5] Walkow had initially sought to shoot in the original apartment, but upon arriving in Mexico City to scout locations, discovered the building had recently been demolished. [6]
Originally, Walkow intended to structure the film chronologically into two separate acts, with the first documenting Vollmer and Burroughs' meeting in 1944 New York City, and the second on their life in 1951 Mexico City. [7] However, he instead decided to present the 1944 backstory in the form of flashbacks, with Ginsberg narrating. [8]
Beat premiered at the Sundance Film Festival [9] on January 29, 2000, and was subsequently entered into the 22nd Moscow International Film Festival. [10]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 57% of seven critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.3/10. [11]
Christopher Null of Contact Music wrote: "Judy Davis might have commanded the definitive Joan Vollmer role in Naked Lunch , but in Beat, Courtney Love makes a not-half-bad at reinterpreting the last weeks of her life... A loving portrait of the early beat lifestyle, Gary Walkow's ode to Vollmer is sweet and endearing, despite its tragic finale. The four lead players all imbue their characters with substantial flair, especially Sutherland's mannered and deadpan witticisms." [12] Dennis Harvey of Variety gave the film a middling review, deeming the dialogue pretentious and adding: "Modestly mounted feature has adequate production design by Rando Schmook and some pretty Mexican landscape lensing by Ciro Cabello. But staging, pacing, score, et al are uninspired to tedious." [1]
Film Threat wrote: "Generally fine performances help keep the film afloat through several tedious moments of angst-overdose, although Sutherland has a disconcerting tendency to play Burroughs as if channeling Jack Nicholson. Beautiful photography, aided by Mexico’s rugged beauty as natural set dressing, also help. In the end, however, none of these people, except, perhaps, for Ginsberg, come across as particularly likable, at least as written here." [13]
Ron Epstein of the website DVD Talk gave the film an unfavorable review, writing: "It's a shame that Beat is a bad movie. The turns from present to flashback are very stylish, and overall, the acting isn't bad. Hell, even Courtney Love does a pretty good job with what she's been dealt with. Unfortunately, the script doesn't allow for developed relationships between the characters; and feels very hollow when it's all said and done." [14] J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader criticized the casting of Love in the role of Vollmer, as he felt Love was too glamorous to portray "a plain, brunette bookworm and alcoholic." [3]
Lionsgate released Beat on VHS and DVD in 2002 featuring a shortened cut of the film, running 80 minutes [14] as opposed to the original 89-minute cut shown at the film's Sundance premiere. [1]
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays. Five books of his interviews and correspondences have also been published. He was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "shotgun art".
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
Joan Vollmer was an influential participant in the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College, she became the roommate of Edie Parker. Their apartment became a gathering place for the Beats during the 1940s, where Vollmer was often at the center of marathon, all-night discussions. In 1946, she began a relationship with William S. Burroughs, later becoming his common-law wife. In 1951, Burroughs killed Vollmer. He claimed, and shortly thereafter denied, the killing was a drunken attempt at playing William Tell.
The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by the Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with Alene Lee (1931–1991), an African-American woman, in Greenwich Village, New York. It was the first work of Kerouac’s to be released following the success of On the Road. The Subterraneans and its following novel,The Dharma Bums, both proved to be popular when released in 1958, and are now seen as important works of the Beat Literature. A Hollywood film adaptation would be released in 1960.
Herbert Edwin Huncke was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America. He was a member of the Beat Generation and is reputed to have coined the term.
William Seward Burroughs III, also known as William S. Burroughs Jr. and Billy Burroughs, was an American novelist. He bears the name of his father, William S. Burroughs, as well as his great-grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I, the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine. He wrote three novels, two of which were published as Speed (1970) and Kentucky Ham (1973). His third novel, Prakriti Junction, begun in 1977, was never completed, although extracts from it were included in his third and final published work Cursed From Birth.
Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, or Junky, is a 1953 novel by American Beat generation writer William S. Burroughs. The book follows "William Lee" as he struggles with his addiction to morphine and heroin. Burroughs based the story on his own experiences with drugs, and he published it under the pen name William Lee. Some critics view the character William Lee as simply Burroughs himself; in this reading, Junkie is a largely-autobiographical memoir. Others view Lee as a fictional character based on the author.
Queer is a 1985 novella by American author William S. Burroughs. It is partially a sequel to his 1953 novella Junkie.
The Town and the City is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Harcourt Brace in 1950. This was the first major work published by Kerouac, who later became famous for his second novel On the Road (1957). Like all of Jack Kerouac's major works, The Town and the City is essentially an autobiographical novel, though less directly so than most of his other works. The Town and the City was written in a conventional manner over a period of years, and much more novelistic license was taken with this work than after Kerouac's adoption of quickly written "spontaneous prose". The Town and the City was written before Kerouac had developed his own style, and it is heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe.
Lucien Carr was a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s and also a convicted manslaughterer. He later worked for many years as an editor for United Press International.
Joyce Johnson is an American author of fiction and nonfiction, whose writing has been closely associated with the Beat Generation. She was also a child actress and appeared in the Broadway production of I Remember Mama, which she went on to write about in her 2004 memoir Missing Men.
Edie Kerouac-Parker was the author of the memoir You'll Be Okay, about her life with her first husband, Jack Kerouac, and the early days of the Beat Generation. While an art student under George Grosz at Barnard College, she and fellow Barnard student and friend Joan Vollmer shared an apartment on 118th Street in New York City which came to be frequented by many of the then unknown Beats, among them Vollmer's eventual husband William S. Burroughs, and fellow Columbia students Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as well as Lucien Carr.
Desolation Angels is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, which makes up part of his Duluoz Legend. It was published in 1965, but was written years earlier, around the time On the Road was in the process of publication. The events described in the novel take place from 1956-1957. Much of the psychological struggle which the novel's protagonist, Jack Duluoz, undergoes in the novel reflects Kerouac's own increasing disenchantment with the Buddhist philosophy. Throughout the novel, Kerouac discusses his disenchantment with fame, and complicated feelings towards the Beat Generation. He also discusses his relationship with his mother and his friends such as Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Lucienn Carr and William S. Burroughs. The novel is also notable for being a relatively positive portrayal of homosexuality and homosexual characters, despite its use of words that were at the time considered homophobic slurs.
Orpheus Emerged is a novella written by Jack Kerouac in 1945 when he was at Columbia University. It was discovered after his death and published in 2000.
Reality Sandwiches is a book of poetry by Allen Ginsberg published by City Lights Publishers in 1963. The title comes from one of the included poems, "On Burroughs' Work": "A naked lunch is natural to us,/we eat reality sandwiches." The book is dedicated to friend and fellow Beat poet Gregory Corso. Despite Ginsberg's feeling that this collection was not his most significant, the poems still represent Ginsberg at a peak period of his craft.
Old Angel Midnight is a long narrative poem by American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac. It was culled from five notebooks spanning from 1956 to 1959, while Kerouac was fully absorbed by his studies of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. Kerouac initially experimented with Old Angel Midnight in 1953 in his diary titled "1953. Notes again." In entries dated from November 20 to December 3, 1953, he made notes on "Lucien Midnight" which was to be originally conceptualized in what he called "book movie" form, when he closed his eyes and projected onto paper a cinematic sense of what he heard. A bookmovie, he explained in Some of the Dharma, is a "prose concentration camera-eye visions of a definite movie of the mind with fade-ins, pans, close-ups, and fade-outs." Kerouac's notes on Lucien Midnight were written while staying in the Lower East Side where he initially heard sounds coming through a tenement window from the wash court below. He then heard voices coming from kitchens of the other occupants in nearby apartment buildings and a man named Paddy arriving home drunk, and even a junky stirring in his bed. Kerouac conceptualized an idea of developing a work based on James Joyce’s experimental novel Finnegans Wake where the “sounds of the universe” became the chief “plot” with all of its associated “neologisms, mental associations, puns and wordmixes” that stewed a plethora of languages and “nonlanguages.” Kerouac determinedly “scribbled out in a strictly intuitional discipline at breakneck speed” the fledgling prose that would finally comprise the finished book for City Lights's Pocket Poet series eight years later. Kerouac's one dogma was to compose Lucien Midnight strictly in pencil by candlelight. Lucien Midnight differs from his sketching method of writing because it is based upon an aural experience, and not visual. The bookmovie approach was abandoned in 1953 in favor of a different approach he had stylistically achieved by 1956.
Kill Your Darlings is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Austin Bunn and directed by John Krokidas in his feature film directorial debut. The film had its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, garnering positive first reactions. It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and it had a limited theatrical North American release from October 16, 2013. Kill Your Darlings became available on Blu-ray and DVD in the US on March 18, 2014, and then in the UK on April 21, 2014.
Haldon Chase (1923–2006) was an American archaeologist known for his research on several rock art sites in Colorado. Outside of archaeology, he was best known as part of the earliest Beat circle and inspiration for several characters in the novels of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.