Kill Your Darlings | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | John Krokidas |
Screenplay by | John Krokidas Austin Bunn |
Story by | Austin Bunn |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Reed Morano |
Edited by | Brian A. Kates |
Music by | Nico Muhly |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
Release dates |
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Running time | 104 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $5.6 million |
Box office | $1.6 million [2] [3] |
Kill Your Darlings is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Austin Bunn and directed by John Krokidas [4] 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, [5] and it had a limited theatrical North American release from October 16, 2013. [6] 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. [7]
The story is about the college days of some of the early members of the Beat Generation (Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac), their interactions, and Carr's killing of his long-time friend David Kammerer in Riverside Park in Manhattan, New York City.
The title is a reference to the often-misquoted advice of Arthur Quiller-Couch, that writers must be willing to edit out their most finely-written passages if they fail to serve the piece as a whole: "Murder your darlings."
In 1944, poet Allen Ginsberg wins a place at Columbia University in New York City. He arrives as a very inexperienced freshman, but soon runs into Lucien Carr, an unruly character who holds strong anti-establishment beliefs.
Ginsberg discovers that Carr only manages to stay at Columbia because of a professor who works as a janitor, David Kammerer; the latter writes all of Carr's term papers for him. Kammerer has a predatory relationship with Carr and is in love with him, pressuring Carr for sexual favors in exchange for assuring that he cannot be expelled.
As Ginsberg spent more time with Carr, he soon meets William S. Burroughs, who is far into drug experimentation, and the writer Jack Kerouac, who was a sailor at that time and expelled from Columbia. These ambitious people decide to start a new literary movement named The New Vision as a rebellion toward laws, institutions and Ginsberg and Carr's lawful professor Steeves. As Ginsberg spirals into the lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes with his newfound friends, he slowly starts developing romantic feelings for Carr.
Carr tells Kammerer he is done with him and recruits Ginsberg to write his term papers. Kammerer, in retaliation, puts Kerouac's cat into the oven only for Kerouac to discover and rescue it in the middle of the night.
After a while, Kerouac and Carr attempt to join the merchant marine together, hoping to go to Paris.
In a confrontation between Carr and Kammerer, Kammerer is killed by stabbing and Carr is arrested. Carr asks Ginsberg to write his deposition for him. Ginsberg is at first reluctant to help the unstable Carr, but after finding more crucial evidence on Kammerer and his past relationship, he writes a piece titled "The Night in Question". The piece describes a more emotional event, in which Carr kills Kammerer who outright tells him to after being threatened with the knife, devastated by this final rejection. Carr rejects the "fictional" story, and begs a determined Ginsberg not to reveal it to anybody, afraid that it will ruin him in the ensuing trial.
From Carr's mother, it is revealed that Kammerer was the first person to seduce Carr, when he was much younger and lived in Chicago. After the trial, Carr testified that the attack took place only because Kammerer was a sexual predator, and that Carr killed him in self-defense. Carr is not convicted of murder and receives only a short sentence for manslaughter.
Ginsberg then submits "The Night in Question" as his final term paper. On the basis of that shocking piece of prose, Ginsberg is faced with possible expulsion from Columbia. Either he must be expelled or he must embrace establishment values. He chooses the former, but is forced to leave his typescript behind. A week or two later he receives the typescript in the mail with an encouraging letter from his professor telling him to pursue his writing.
As of June 2020 [update] , Kill Your Darlings holds a 76% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 152 reviews with an average rating of 6.59/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Bolstered by the tremendous chemistry between Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan, Kill Your Darlings casts a vivid spotlight on an early chapter in the story of the Beat Generation." [8] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 65 out of 100, based on 36 reviews, indicating "Generally Favorable" reviews. [9] The film earned $1,030,064 in limited release. [10]
The Daily Telegraph granted the film a score of three out of five stars, stating that, "Unlike Walter Salles's recent adaptation of On the Road , which embraced the Beat philosophy with a wide and credulous grin, Kill Your Darlings is inquisitive about the movement's worth, and the genius of its characters is never assumed". [11] Reviewing Kill Your Darlings after its showing at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, critic Damon Wise of The Guardian lauded the film for being "the real deal, a genuine attempt to source the beginning of America's first true literary counterculture of the 20th century". Kill Your Darlings, wrote Wise, "creates a true sense of energy and passion, for once eschewing the clacking of typewriter keys to show artists actually talking, devising, and ultimately daring each other to create and innovate. And though it begins as a murder-mystery, Kill Your Darlings may be best described as an intellectual moral maze, a story perfectly of its time and yet one that still resonates today." Wise awarded the film four out of five stars. [12] Justin Chang of Variety wrote, "A mysterious Beat Generation footnote is fleshed out with skilled performances, darkly poetic visuals and a vivid rendering of 1940s academia in Kill Your Darlings. Directed with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story, John Krokidas' first feature feels adventurous yet somewhat hemmed-in as it imagines a vortex of jealousy, obsession and murder that engulfed Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac in the early days of their literary revolution." [13]
Ginsberg's "long-time confidant and secretary, head of the Allen Ginsberg Trust," Bob Rosenthal, argues that the film is "a superb evocation of young college students in the midst of World War II finding their unique means of expression in the world." However, he states, it also contains a number of inaccuracies: "The large fabrications in the film are not so worrisome as the small ones. In any case, when the truth is stepped on and the nuance of truth is denied, the message becomes moribund." [14] Caleb Carr went on to describe Kammerer as a sexual predator 14 years older than Lucien Carr, who first met Lucien when the latter was pubescent and had repeatedly taken advantage of the younger man's naivete and desperation for a strong male influence after being abandoned by his natural father. Furthermore, Kerouac, who wanted only platonic friendship from Lucien, provoked the jealousy of Kammerer. In contrast, according to Jack Kerouac's biographer Dennis McNally's account, Lucien Carr had always insisted, which William Burroughs (a childhood friend of Kammerer in St. Louis) believed, that he never had sex with Kammerer. [15]
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipients | Result |
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BFI London Film Festival | October 19, 2013 | Sutherland Trophy | John Krokidas | Nominated |
Chlotrudis Awards [16] | March 16, 2014 | Best Actor | Daniel Radcliffe | Nominated |
Dorian Awards [17] | March 9, 2014 [18] | LGBT Film of the Year | Nominated | |
Unsung Film of the Year | Won | |||
GLAAD Media Awards [19] | April 12, 2014 | Outstanding Film – Wide Release | Nominated | |
Gotham Awards [20] | December 2, 2013 | Breakthrough Actor | Dane DeHaan | Nominated |
Hamptons International Film Festival [21] | October 12, 2013 | Breakthrough Performer | Dane DeHaan | Won |
Jack Huston | Won | |||
Palm Springs International Film Festival [22] | January 5, 2013 | Directors to Watch | John Krokidas | Won |
Sundance Film Festival [23] | January 26, 2013 | Grand Jury Prize | Nominated | |
Venice Film Festival [24] | September 7, 2013 | The Venice Days International Award | Won |
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished in complete form until 2008.
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.
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.
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.
Howl is a 2010 American film which explores both the 1955 Six Gallery debut and the 1957 obscenity trial of 20th-century American poet Allen Ginsberg's noted poem "Howl". The film is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco as Ginsberg.
On The Road is a 2012 adventure drama film directed by Walter Salles. It is an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road and stars an ensemble cast featuring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Alice Braga, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen. The executive producers were Francis Ford Coppola, Patrick Batteux, Jerry Leider, and Tessa Ross. Filming began on August 4, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, with a $25 million budget. The story is based on the years Kerouac spent travelling the United States in the late 1940s with his friend Neal Cassady and several other Beat Generation figures who would go on to fame in their own right, including William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. On May 23, 2012, the film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The film received mixed early reviews after it premiered at the film festival. The film also premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Big Sur is a 2013 adventure drama film written and directed by Michael Polish. It is an adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same name by Jack Kerouac.
Killer Films is a New York City-based independent film production company founded in 1995 by film producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. The company has produced many acclaimed independent films over the past two decades including Far From Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo, Kids, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, Swoon, I'm Not There, Kill Your Darlings, Still Alice and Carol. Killer Films also executive produced Todd Haynes' five episode HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, which went on to win five Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
John Krokidas is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for his directorial debut film, the 2013 biographical drama Kill Your Darlings.