Pull My Daisy

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Pull My Daisy
Directed by Robert Frank
Alfred Leslie
Written by Jack Kerouac
Narrated byJack Kerouac
Release date
  • 1959 (1959)
Country United States
LanguageEnglish

Pull My Daisy is a 1959 American short film directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation . [1] [2]

Contents

Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It features poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, art dealer Richard Bellamy, Delphine Seyrig, dancer [3] Sally Gross, and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's son.

Plot

Cast

Production

Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.

Originally intended to be called The Beat Generation, the title Pull My Daisy was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in Amram's jazz composition that opens the film.

In an interview with American Legends website, David Amram recalled of the chaotic production: "It was at Jerry Newman’s studio. I played the piano. Jack just sat down, saw the massacring of what he had written and did this phenomenal narration to make it look like what it was supposed to be. When you see Pull My Daisy, close your eyes and just listen to Jack talking. That’s the whole value of it right there. If Jack hadn’t narrated it, it would have been just another home movie." [4]

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece. It was filmed in Alfred Leslie's loft at Fourth Ave. & 12th St. in Manhattan. [5]

Leslie and Frank discuss the film at length in Jack Sargeant's book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema . An illustrated transcript of the film's narration was also published in 1961 by Grove Press.

Reception

Pull My Daisy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Allan, Blaine (1988). "The Making (and Unmaking) of "Pull My Daisy"". Film History. 2 (3): 185–205. ISSN   0892-2160. JSTOR   3815117.
  2. ↑ Glaister, Dan (2005-05-20). "'Lost' Kerouac play resurfaces after 50 years". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2018-01-04.
  3. ↑ Cohen, John (8 August 2008). "Is Pull My Daisy Holy?". Photo-eye. Retrieved 2 January 2009.
  4. ↑ "American Legends Interviews..... JACK KEROUAC AND LANGSTON HUGHES: SOUL BROTHERS". www.americanlegends.com. Retrieved 2025-09-30.
  5. ↑ Kerouac, Jack (1961). Pull My Daisy. Grove Press. p. 17.
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