The movie received generally mixed reviews, although the soundtrack was met with critical acclaim. According to Box Office Mojo, its worldwide gross receipts were $954,046, making the movie a box office disappointment.
Plot
The film explores the love triangle of real-life characters Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and Carolyn Cassady in the late 1950s and the 1960s. It chronicles Kerouac writing his seminal novel On the Road, and its effect on their lives.
It was one of the first movies from the newly formed Orion Pictures.[5]
The film was produced by Orion Pictures, but was released by Warner Bros. Warner Bros. disliked the film and didn't consider it commercial enough. A marketing memo issued a strategy -- "Punt." The film was dumped into theaters with little fanfare, despite the earlier excitement generated by Orion's pre-production announcements and the much ballyhooed casting of Nick Note as his star was rising after role in the television smash hit "Rich Man, Poor Man."
Beat Legend William S. Burroughs visited the set one day, and wrote about it in 'Rolling Stone' magazine, feeling "the past hung in the air" due to the realism in the film. When sitting with Nick Nolte who played Neal, Burroughs "felt Neal sitting there in his cheap 1950s suit with the sleeves pulled up." [6]
[T]here were long stretches of Heart Beat during which I found myself wishing instead for a film version of On the Road... The movie's a triumph of art direction, all right; the locations, clothes, lighting, moods, music and whole tone of the performances are designed to lower a kind of nostalgic dropcloth over the story... This movie treats its events as so long ago, so finished and done with and bathed in a yellowing afterglow, that we don't sense the very passion and rebelliousness it's supposed to be about. What an irony for the first serious film about the Beats.[7]
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[8]
The score was composed by Jack Nitzsche, and included the song "I Love Her, Too" with lyrics by John Byrum and Buffy Sainte-Marie and sung by Aaron Neville. The soundtrack prominently featured saxophonist Art Pepper and other West Coast jazz musicians, with the soundtrack album released on the Capitol label.[9][10]
Track listing
All compositions by Jack Nitzsche except where noted.
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