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| Corso: The Last Beat | |
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| Directed by | Gustave Reininger |
| Written by | Gustave Reininger |
| Narrated by | Ethan Hawke |
| Cinematography | Harry Dawson Richard Rutkowski |
| Edited by | Damien LeVeck |
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Corso: The Last Beat is a 2009 documentary film, with on-screen narration by Ethan Hawke and appearances by Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso.
The Beat Generation’s Gregory Corso became one of four in the inner circle of the Beats, along with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs. Corso grew up in foster homes, on the streets of Little Italy and Greenwich Village. Corso was sentenced to Clinton State Prison for stealing a $50 suit to go on a date; there, protected by Mafia inmates, Corso read his way through a three-year sentence and ended up at Harvard. He eventually met Allen Ginsberg at a dyke bar in the West Village. After Allen Ginsberg’s death, Corso goes "On the Road" to rediscover his creative Muse. From Paris to Venice, Rome to Athens, Mount Parnassus to Jim Morrison’s grave, Corso reflects on the early days of "Beats." In high humor he reveals how "The Beats" emerged in Europe, and paved the way for youth culture, the sexual revolution and even hip-hop. Corso interrupts his tour to revisit Clinton State Prison and inspire young inmates. Returning to Italy, Corso muses on his lost mother, who he believes is dead and buried in Italy. In a stunning discovery, filmmaker Gustave Reininger finds Corso's mother not dead in Italy, but alive in Trenton, N.J. Corso meets his mother on film and discovers she is the Muse he has been seeking. He also discovers that his mother left him to escape the violence and sexual abuse of his father, who lied saying she had returned to Italy. Healing from a life of abandonment, emotional deprivation and abuse, Corso finishes his road trip on the Acropolis in Greece.A revitalized Corso returns to Greenwich Village, only to discover he is dying. He faces his own death with pluck and humor, comforted by Ethan Hawke, Patti Smith and his newfound mother, Michelina.
Gregory Corso who unlike his compatriot Allen Ginsberg, avoided publicity and promotion of the "Beat" label, refused all film and biography requests. Allen Ginsberg introduced Corso to filmmaker Gustave Reininger, and after a lengthy quiz on Gilgamesh, Heraclitus, and St. Clement of Alexandria, Corso decided to allow Reininger to make a film. Reininger had made feature films and created network television but had never attempted non-fiction. Corso proved a challenge. Ginsberg offered to rein in Corso, known for his boisterous and confrontational antics, however a month after Corso agreed, Ginsberg became ill and died precipitously. Corso, with the loss of his best friend and literary alter-ego, became nearly catatonic. Beat fans would accost him, saying "Hey, You're the Last Beat" (Burroughs died shortly after Ginsberg). Corso, angered would always shoot back, "Is that your myth or mine." Reininger considered returning his funding for the film, raised privately, as Corso was non-responsive. Reininger though had an inspiration to take Corso back to Europe, Paris in particular, where the Beats had emerged, working in a small rundown hotel on the Left Bank, on rue Gît-le-Cœur. Corso named it "The Beat Hotel."
Once in Europe, Corso came alive and led Reininger and his film crew on a madcap tour of France, Italy and Greece. The film is shot in the verite style, without much exposition. Corso's street theater antics kept the film's serious tone light ironic. Corso's poetry is woven into the film, with different voices. Discussions are underway with Bob Dylan to read a Corso poem, "Destiny", and with Bono to read "At Oscar Wilde's Tomb."
From Paris, to Rome, to Florence, Delphi and Athens, Corso retraces the steps of him and Ginsberg and Burroughs as young self-proclaimed poets, (though unpublished.) In Venice, Corso muses about his mother who abandoned him, and Reininger proposed finding her grave in Italy. For a year, he quietly searched cemeteries, genealogical records and official documents. His search turned up nothing in Europe, and relentlessly Reininger considered that perhaps the story of his mother's return was a lie told by his father. The search resumed in America, where again from cemeteries, hospital records, church documents and anecdotal accounts, Reininger picked up the trail of the missing mother, which had gone cold 67 years ago. Relentlessly Reininger searched and found that she was not in Italy, and certainly not dead, but 85 and living all her life in Trenton, New Jersey as a waitress, married to a short order cook. Her abandoned son was a secret withheld from her husband and two children. Corso's on screen meeting with his mother had the potential to be explosive.
Corso, about a year thereafter, developed prostate cancer, and summoned Reininger to continue filming on his death bed. His last poker game bring great levity, a visit from Ethan Hawke, a lullaby from Patti Smith, and a final visit with his new-found mother mark the film's third act.
In addition to the film, Reininger commissioned a major bibliography of Corso's letter and holdings in various public and university libraries, conducted by Bill Morgan, the archivist for Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The goal of the Corso Project is to restore Corso to his literary place as one of America's premier poets and social revolutionaries.
Jay Weissberg for Variety felt the documentary felt out aspects in Corso's life such as his drug addiction. [1] Natasha Senjanovic thought its style was "somewhat uneven" but still considered it worth watching, "not simply because Reininger’s respect and love for his subject obviously run deep, but because the film is a moving portrait of an artist of unwavering loyalty to his artistry." [2]
It was the audience award winner at Italy's most prestigious Taormina Film Festival. At the Dubai international Film festival it won awards in World Cinema. It was heralded in at the Rome Festival, and a Festival Litteratura in Mantua where it won Best Film. It was received at the Glasgow International Film Festival and then show as a work in progress at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
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.
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 eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; 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.
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was one of the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.
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.
When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School is Sam Kashner's autobiographical account of his experience as the first student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which was founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in honor of their late friend, Jack Kerouac. As he describes in his book, Kashner was a disgruntled Long Island teenager in the 1970s who was obsessed with the poetry and prose of the Beat generation of the 1950s.
The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century.
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.
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.
Michael Andre is a Canadian, disc jockey, poet, critic and editor living in New York City.
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.
Sinclair Beiles was a South African beat poet and editor for Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press in Paris. He developed along with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin the cut-up technique of writing poetry and literature. He won the 1969 Ingrid Jonker Prize for poetry for his collection, Ashes of Experience.
Eddie Woods is an American poet, prose writer, editor and publisher who lived and traveled in various parts of the world, both East and West, before eventually settling in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where in 1978, together with Jane Harvey, he started Ins & Outs magazine and two years later founded Ins & Outs Press. He was born on May 8, 1940 in New York City.
Harold Stephen Chapman was a British photographer noted for chronicling the 1950s and 60s in Paris.
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.
Gustave V. Reininger was an American scriptwriter who was the co-creator of the NBC TV drama, Crime Story. The executive producer was Michael Mann. Crime Story was based on the Mafia in Chicago, or "The Outfit," and how it got off the streets and into the boardrooms of Las Vegas casinos. The show premiered with a two-hour pilot movie, which had been exhibited theatrically, and was watched by over 30 million viewers. Crime Story then was scheduled to follow Miami Vice on Friday nights and continued to attract a record number of viewers.
Naked Lens: Beat Cinema is a book by Jack Sargeant about the relationship between Beat culture and underground film. First published by Creation Books in 1997, the book has been subsequently republished in two different English language editions, by Creation Books in 2001 and Soft Skull in 2008. The book also features contributions from Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Stephanie Watson, and Arthur and Corrine Cantrill.
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.
Burroughs is a 1983 documentary film directed by Howard Brookner about the Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs.
Christopher Felver is an American photographer and filmmaker who has published several books of photos of public figures, especially those in the arts, most notably those associated with beat literature. He has made numerous films, including a documentary on Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder, released in 2013.
