The Beat Hotel, a new film by Documentary Arts, goes deep into the legacy of the American Beats in Paris during the heady years between 1957 and 1963, when Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso fled the obscenity trials in the United States surrounding the publication of Ginsbergs poem Howl. They took refuge in a cheap no-name hotel they had heard about at 9, Rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, Brion Gysin, and others from England and elsewhere in Europe, seeking out the freedom that the Latin Quarter of Paris might provide.
The Beat Hotel, as it came to be called, was a sanctuary of creativity, but was also, as British photographer Harold Chapman recalls, an entire community of complete oddballs, bizarre, strange people, poets, writers, artists, musicians, pimps, prostitutes, policemen, and everybody you could imagine. And in this environment, Burroughs finished his controversial book Naked Lunch; Ian Somerville and Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine; Corso wrote some of his greatest poems; and Harold Norse, in his own cut-up experiments, wrote the novella, aptly called The Beat Hotel.
The film tracks down Harold Chapman in the small seaside town of Deal in Kent England. Chapmans photographs are iconic of a time and place when Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Corso, Burroughs, Gysin, Somerville and Norse were just beginning to establish themselves on the international scene. Chapman lived in the attic of the hotel, and according to Ginsberg didnt say a word for two years because he wanted to be invisible and to document the scene as it actually happened.
In the film, Chapmans photographs and stylized dramatic recreations of his stories meld with the recollections of Elliot Rudie, a Scottish artist, whose drawings of his time in the hotel offer a poignant and sometimes humorous counterpoint. The memories of Chapman and Rudie interweave with the insights of French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, author Barry Miles, Danish filmmaker Lars Movin, and the first hand accounts of Oliver Harris, Regina Weinrich, Patrick Amie, Eddie Woods, and 95 year old George Whitman, among others, to evoke a portrait of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and the oddities of the Beat Hotel that is at once unexpected and revealing.
One God Universe
Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales
Jack Kerouac: Writing Lesson
Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose." I keep coming back to Jack Kerouac for inspiration. He was kind of a Buddha for the Beat Generation (except that he, uh, drank himself to death at an early age... oops). He cultivated both spontaneity and craft. He became an icon to thousands of young people with road fever but could have equally been a role model for the serious pursuit of any skill (pile of notebooks, endless revisions -- except for the, uh, methamphetamine part). Very Zen.
Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out 2011: The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out 2011: The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.9/29/2011 University of Texas at Arlington.
Allen Ginsberg - Stay Away From the White House
First Blues
Jack Kerouac- American Haiku
10,000 Maniacs - Hey Jack Karouac / Eat for Two
No comments:
Post a Comment