What Happened to Kerouac?
by Lewis MacAdams, Richard Lerner
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Fran Landesman, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Jan Kerouac, William F. BuckleyDirector: Lewis MacAdams, Richard Lerner
Brand: Uni
Producer: Lewis MacAdams
Editor: Nathaniel Dorsky
Producer: Nathaniel Dorsky
Producer: Eve Levy
Producer: Malcolm Hart
Writer: Jack Kerouac
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Shout Factory Theatr
Movie Reviews of What Happened to Kerouac?
Movie Review: "On The Road" And On The Sidelines
Summary: 5 Stars
I know Jack Kerouac. Oh no, not the way his many "beat" writer friends did , at least those still alive at the time of this film's production in 1986 that provided the main "talking head" commentary. Gregory Corso (then still a madman of a poet in his own right as shown here in his answers to an interviewer's questions about his take on the great Kerouac's demise), William Burroughs (of "Naked Lunch" fame) and super-poet Allen Ginsberg (of "Howl" and "Kaddish" fame) among others knew him back on those lonely, down-at-the heel, provocative post-World War II New York streets. That is the stuff of legend and well before my time, although I heard the echoes of that struggle in my own youthful efforts to break out of the straightjacket of the 1950s when my time came in the 1960s.
Nor do I know Jack Keroauc from being a latter-day devotee of his spontaneous prose writing style or his standoffish, sideline view of life and consciously apolitical lifestyle, as is embarrassingly emphasized here in a famous segment on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" public television show where he went out of his boozy way to dump on the counter-cultural movement ("hippies", okay) of the 1960s. From early on in my youth I was more likely to be immersed in reading things like "The Communist Manifesto" (if only to dismiss it out of hand-then) and had no time for reading a "beat" travelogue like "On The Road" although I was personally struggling along those same lines to `find myself' (sound familiar ?) . Later I would devour the thing (repeatedly) along with the rest of his major works like "Dharma Bums', Visions Of Cody". "Big Sur", "Doctor Sax" and others.
Here is how I do know Jack Kerouac. I know, like Kerouac did as well, as a youth painfully but now with a sense of deep pride, what being from the lower edges of the working class was all about. One does not easily shake off the slow incremental deathblows to the psyche of avoiding authority, avoiding challenges to the status quo, avoiding failure by being a non-starter and most of all avoiding negative public (read neighborhood) notice. I, moreover, know, physically and emotionally, the very constricted ethos of the old time New England mill towns and the working class quarters of Manchester, New Hampshire, Saco, Maine and in Massachusetts Waltham, Lawrence, Quincy and Jack's own beloved mill town of Lowell. Without going into great detail, after all this review is about Kerouac, I know in great personal detail the effects of that clannish French-Canadian and Gallic Catholic cultural gradient as it worked it way through the working class base of many of those mill towns. Some of that detailed knowledge of mine is directly linked to the city of Lowell that factors so much into Kerouac's life and writings (and death, the city has a small urban park named after him in the center of town and people, I am told, still go to visit his grave there).
Most of all, though, I know Jack Kerouac because a generation, more or less, after him I was, like a million others who formed the "Generation of `68", taking to the `road', some road, in search of personal destiny, greater consciousness, some political wisdom, the truth or just trying to get out of the family house. The previously disdained apolitical "On The Road" became something of a personal bible for me , as like Whitman before him Kerouac tried to do by interior monologue, but more importantly, by physically putting some space between the here of whatever was bothering him and the there of some inner peace (that he, at least, never found). The road I took then, or later, was not Jack's road. Or Dean Moriarty's road. But, thanks Jack for "On The Road", "The Dharma Bums", "Doctor Sax", "Visions of Cody" and a bunch of other books that got me through many a sleepless night.
But enough of that. We are, after, all reviewing a documentary that has as it underlying premise an analysis of Kerouac's retreat to the sidelines (which is the reason that word forms part of the headline for this entry), as "king of the beats" writer and as something more than a conveniently symbolic media celebrity. This one and one half hour production goes through the main events of Kerouac's life: the driven handsome athletic youth; the star-struck and searching Columbia University student: the budding frenetic writer who, luckily, very luckily I would say, met some kindred spirits like Allen Ginsberg, the "drugstore cowboy" William Burroughs, and a host of others in New York City in the mid-1940s and never looked back. Critically important also are the subsequent travels west hitching up with Neal Cassidy (the model for Dean Moriarty), Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
However, as many of the commentators in the documentary attest to, it was always about the writing for Jack, that compulsive need to put out as many ideas as his hand (or typewriter) could produce before exhaustion set in. That, ominously, meant keeping it fresh, keeping it real under the "laws" the spontaneous writing method. Once Keroauc got some notice, in short, when "On The Road" finally got published, and he, for good or evil, fell into the clutches of the great media maw of that day (nothing, by the way, from what appeared in this film compared to today's 24/7 blitz that would have really done him in earlier) he began to decline.
As media-proclaimed `leader' of the "beats" (and, in retrospect, he really was the most talented and original of the lot) all those old time mill town anxieties, drawing on generations of suffering ignoble anonymity, the wheels, driven as well by that old devil alcohol , came off. The effects of that cloistered, repressed working class youth, as surely as if he had spent thirty years in the mills, began to take its toll. Moreover, a recent re-reading of some of "Dharma Bums" gives at least some clue to what happened to this superior and innovative writer. He was, as the work that is remembered today will attest to, a young writer writing for the young about youthful experiences. There is only so much fresh inner-directed material that that market can absorb from one writer. The aging media celebrity Kerouac became, sadly, could not, or would not, face the fact of aging and shift gears. I have already given my kudos above for the youthful work of his. That will have to do here.
Note: For those who never heard, or hear, the `beat' of the "beats" the whole mood of this documentary puts you in a time capsule back to those times musically with some very evocative jazz of the period and visually with great footage of post-war neon lit New York and San Francisco (as well as footage from hometown Lowell with some street scenes of old time residents that only add to some of my points made above). Best of all are the segments of Kerouac reading from "On The Road" and other materials. They evoke the feeling of some smoky, boozy nightspot. These works were, after all, written under the sign of the burgeoning 1940s and 1950s jazz scene and with the idea of presenting the works orally as well as on the page. Nice, especially one segment with 1950s comedian and talk show host Steve Allen on piano.
Summary of What Happened to Kerouac?
What Happened To Kerouac? is a lively and revealing investigation into the personal history and creative process of Jack Kerouac - father of the Beat Generation, author of "On The Road" and pivotal figure of the fifties countercultural revolution. This portrait shows us what happened when fame and notoriety were thrust upon an essentially reticent man whose influence is still felt all over the world.Features Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Steve Allen, William Buckley, Charlie Parker, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure and Gary Snyder
Directed by Richard Lerner & Lewis MacAdams
Produced by Richard Lerner
Music by Thelonious Monk
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