Jack Kerouac, daddy of the Beat Generation, grew up in the small industrial town of Lowell in Massachusetts. Fans come to Lowell every year for the 'Lowell Celebrates Kerouac' festival to be taken round the places he wrote about in his books and to listen to readings and jazz. It is a kind of hero worship with a sour taste if you think that Kerouac's fame was also his destruction. He wrote 'On the Road' , the book which would make him an Icon of the Beat Generation, in 1951. When it was finally published in 1957 he was he was championed as leader of a new literary genre and became a living legend – while he had only wanted recognition as a writer. The portrait Movin and Rasmussen have made of Kerouac is built up round this yearly festival in Lowell. It is a sound documentary in which poems and street scenes alternate with interviews. Lawrence Weiner tells about New York nightlife in the fifties and sixties, about hitting the jazz joints with Alan Ginsberg and James Baldwin and about the thirst writers had for alcohol. Kerouac's girlfriend, Joyce Johnson, ventures a psychological analysis telling how the bursts of creative energy, helped along by goodly amounts of speed and alcohol, were followed by periods of deep depression. The poet Anne Waldman tells of his innovative writing, of how he could put his stream of thoughts straight to paper and write poetry that sounded like jazz improvisations. The tragedy of Kerouac, whose talent was greater than he could bear, resounds throughout this piece.
– Lies Holtrop
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Text: Lars Movin, Camera: Steen Møller Rasmussen, Music: Morphine, Nille Hovman, Dog God, Life Saxophone Quartet, Morten Øberg, Bent Lundgaard, Sound mixing: Niels Plenge, Editing: Lars Movin, Thomas Therchilsen, Jonas Drehn–Knudsen, With: Roger Brunelle, Phil Chaput, Mark Hemenway, Joyce Johnson, Paul Nason, Conrad Rooks, John Sampas, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Weiner, Foto's: Robert Frank, Production: Lars Movin/Danish Film Institute Workshop
Lars Movin ° 1959, Odense (Denmark)
Steen Møller Rasmussen ° 1953, Copenhagen (Denmark)
Live and work in Copenhagen (Denmark)
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