20 July 2016

Richard Lerner and Lewis McAdams's What Happened to Kerouac?: The Jack Kerouac Story (1986)

This 96-minute documentary film is another of my chance discoveries, and features a huge number of people connected to Jack Kerouac, among them:

William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Ann Charters, Gregory Corso, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,  John Clennon Holmes, Herbert Huncke, Jack Kerouac, Jan Kerouac, Michael McClure, Edie Kerouac Parker and Gary Snyder.

Here we see Kerouac reading his work which seems more like poetry, Kerouac drunk on TV, Jan Kerouac talking of the time her father admitted (well, more or less) that she was his daughter, Kerouac's biographer Ann Charters on being at Six Gallery, San Francisco, on the night and on his relationship with his mother, Kerouac – being a Catholic – not being able to directly kill himself so just drinking to great excess and dying before fifty, and much more. There are shots of Lowell so familiar to him, and of course his iconic grave so many people still visit in big numbers. A fascinating film.

My other Kerouac links:
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Jack Kerouac's Lowell
Jack Kerouac's Grave

No comments: