Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet whose San Francisco–based City Lights bookstore and publishing house served as a springboard for the Beat generation, has died. His daughter, Julie Sasser, reported his cause of death as interstitial lung disease, according to The New York Times. He was 101.
The poet was known for stacking small fractured lines on top of each other in unique geometric shapes like Jenga towers, with each thought supporting the ones above it. His best-known collection of poems, 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind, presented vivid images in the language of his day,...
The poet was known for stacking small fractured lines on top of each other in unique geometric shapes like Jenga towers, with each thought supporting the ones above it. His best-known collection of poems, 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind, presented vivid images in the language of his day,...
- 2/23/2021
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
Iceage have dropped a new single for these dark times. Titled “Lockdown Blues,” the track was inspired by being in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Covid-19 Lockdown Blues/The only way out is through,” singer Elias Rønnenfelt sings over searing guitar. “Confined domestic quarantine/How the itching for lost touch is deafening.”
Proceeds from the song on Bandcamp will go directly toward Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) an organization that provides medical aid around the globe.
“We’ve felt the urge to touch base now that the physical touch...
“Covid-19 Lockdown Blues/The only way out is through,” singer Elias Rønnenfelt sings over searing guitar. “Confined domestic quarantine/How the itching for lost touch is deafening.”
Proceeds from the song on Bandcamp will go directly toward Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) an organization that provides medical aid around the globe.
“We’ve felt the urge to touch base now that the physical touch...
- 4/2/2020
- by Angie Martoccio
- Rollingstone.com
As guitarist and chief songwriter with the Band, one of the most influential groups of the 1960s and ’70s, Robbie Robertson’s legacy was established long ago. After its early days with blues singer Ronnie Hawkins and a tumultuous stint as Bob Dylan’s backing band at the peak of his near-hysterical mid-1960s fame, the Band began its own career in 1968. The galvanizing “Music From Big Pink” was an album so influential it rubbed off on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and inspired Eric Clapton to visit them in an unfulfilled hope that they’d ask him to join. At the center of the group’s fusion of blues, rock, folk, soul and other genres were Robertson’s cinematic songs, including “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which are filled with epic stories and unusual characters.
In the 40-plus years...
In the 40-plus years...
- 10/29/2019
- by Jem Aswad
- Variety Film + TV
On Thursday afternoon Variety partnered with Ifp for the first “10 Storytellers to Watch” event, and among the novelists, lyricists, podcasters, playwrights, graphic novelists and brand storytellers who were honored was the pioneering singer, poet and author Patti Smith. The legendary artist received the Impact in Storytelling honor not only for her formidable body of songs and poems, but also for her memoirs “Just Kids” and “M Train,” the former of which won the National Book Award and is universally regarded as one of the best books in the rock music canon.
In a 15-minute talk with Variety’s Steven Gaydos, Smith talked about the influence of the Beat poets, some favorite authors — she mentioned Roberto Bolano, Haruki Murakami and manga comics — and, perhaps most interestingly, her experiences hanging out with Bob Dylan and how she came to appear performing in the recent Martin Scorsese-helmed documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue,” which...
In a 15-minute talk with Variety’s Steven Gaydos, Smith talked about the influence of the Beat poets, some favorite authors — she mentioned Roberto Bolano, Haruki Murakami and manga comics — and, perhaps most interestingly, her experiences hanging out with Bob Dylan and how she came to appear performing in the recent Martin Scorsese-helmed documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue,” which...
- 9/19/2019
- by Jem Aswad
- Variety Film + TV
“Reality Bites” enjoyed a 25th anniversary reunion panel at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, and so did its soundtrack. Prior to a post-screening conversation about the 1994 Ben Stiller movie that helped advance the careers of a number of the cast members, Lisa Loeb surprised the audience with an unannounced performance of “Stay (I Missed You),” a song that made her a household name as well.
We surprised the #Tribeca2019 audience at our 25th anniversary reunion celebration of Reality Bites with a special @LisaLoeb performance of “Stay,” the iconic song that closes @RedHourBen’s Gen X touchstone. Check it out: pic.twitter.com/oYJofbChvU
— Tribeca (@Tribeca) May 5, 2019
In addition to Loeb and the crowd had gathered at a special screening to mark 25 years since its Sundance festival premiere and theatrical release a month later, cast members Stiller, Winona Rider, Janeane Garofalo and Ethan Hawke all joined in the celebration.
Not present was cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki,...
We surprised the #Tribeca2019 audience at our 25th anniversary reunion celebration of Reality Bites with a special @LisaLoeb performance of “Stay,” the iconic song that closes @RedHourBen’s Gen X touchstone. Check it out: pic.twitter.com/oYJofbChvU
— Tribeca (@Tribeca) May 5, 2019
In addition to Loeb and the crowd had gathered at a special screening to mark 25 years since its Sundance festival premiere and theatrical release a month later, cast members Stiller, Winona Rider, Janeane Garofalo and Ethan Hawke all joined in the celebration.
Not present was cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki,...
- 5/5/2019
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
In 1961, Shirley Clarke finished directing her first feature film and debuted The Connection at the Cannes Film Festival to much acclaim.
Previously, Clarke had begun her creative career as a dancer before moving on to direct many well-respected short experimental films, such as 1958’s Bridges-Go-Round. Clarke had always aimed her sights high with her career and, despite the improbability of a woman directing an independent feature film in the early 1960s, she accomplished just that.
The Connection was originally a play written by Jack Gelber and performed by New York City’s Living Theatre in 1959. The plot revolves around a group of junkies waiting around one afternoon for their drug dealer to arrive.
Clarke had seen and loved the play, but it was her brother-in-law — theater critic Kenneth Tynan — who convinced her to make a film of it. Money was raised through Lewis Allen, a theater investor who wanted to move into producing films.
Previously, Clarke had begun her creative career as a dancer before moving on to direct many well-respected short experimental films, such as 1958’s Bridges-Go-Round. Clarke had always aimed her sights high with her career and, despite the improbability of a woman directing an independent feature film in the early 1960s, she accomplished just that.
The Connection was originally a play written by Jack Gelber and performed by New York City’s Living Theatre in 1959. The plot revolves around a group of junkies waiting around one afternoon for their drug dealer to arrive.
Clarke had seen and loved the play, but it was her brother-in-law — theater critic Kenneth Tynan — who convinced her to make a film of it. Money was raised through Lewis Allen, a theater investor who wanted to move into producing films.
- 9/9/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Broadway salutes Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard on August 2, 2017 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In 2010, I attended a dress rehearsal for Sam Shepard's A Lie Of The Mind, directed by Ethan Hawke. Alessandro Nivola, who took on the role Harvey Keitel played in the Eighties, told me that Sam "started offering up new dialogue."
Sam Shepard shared bird rescue and Gregory Corso stories. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Shepard in 1969 provided a text for Kenneth Tynan's Broadway musical/revue Oh! Calcutta!, which also had contributions from Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and Jules Feiffer. True West came to Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in 2000. Gary Sinise and John Malkovich played the brothers in the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production which was filmed for television.
Buried Child won a Pulitzer in 1979 and the play with Lois Smith was directed by Sinise in 1996.
Fool For Love starred Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda...
In 2010, I attended a dress rehearsal for Sam Shepard's A Lie Of The Mind, directed by Ethan Hawke. Alessandro Nivola, who took on the role Harvey Keitel played in the Eighties, told me that Sam "started offering up new dialogue."
Sam Shepard shared bird rescue and Gregory Corso stories. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Shepard in 1969 provided a text for Kenneth Tynan's Broadway musical/revue Oh! Calcutta!, which also had contributions from Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and Jules Feiffer. True West came to Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in 2000. Gary Sinise and John Malkovich played the brothers in the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production which was filmed for television.
Buried Child won a Pulitzer in 1979 and the play with Lois Smith was directed by Sinise in 1996.
Fool For Love starred Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda...
- 8/3/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Our friend Steve Dalachinsky reports that Long Shot publisher Danny Shot says poetry scene icon Herschel Silverman passed away quietly today. Silverman, the least bohemian of the Beat poets, served in the Navy in World War II and the Korean war, then worked for thirty-four years at his candy store in Bayonne, New Jersey and raised a family, but also wrote and published poetry on the side after being inspired by Allen Ginsberg's 1955 poem "Howl." The candy store was named Hersch's Beehive, and Beehive Press was his self-publishing outlet, though he was also published in many magazines. A children's book about him, The Candystore Man, was written by Jonathan London.
The not-always-complimentary Ginsberg said of him, "There is inventive energy New Jersey beauty and charm in his compositions. This writing is marked by soulful perception of life around him and language as it falls from his mouth, it includes...
The not-always-complimentary Ginsberg said of him, "There is inventive energy New Jersey beauty and charm in his compositions. This writing is marked by soulful perception of life around him and language as it falls from his mouth, it includes...
- 9/20/2015
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
The Coen Brothers movie is immersed in the folk scene of the early 60s in Greenwich Village, where boho survivors still recall the glory days – and lament a few of the film's flaws
Fifty years ago, the tenements, bars and coffee houses of Greenwich Village were the centre of a hip, bohemian society of beatniks and folkniks. That society has long dispersed, most of its landmarks erased by the onslaught of chain stores and fast food outlets. But enough of the Village remains intact that, by squinting in the Arctic freeze last week, it was almost possible to picture a 21-year-old Bob Dylan with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, braced against the cold in February 1963 for the covershot of the great Freewheelin' Bob Dylan acoustic LP.
It's not unusual to see couples re-enacting that pose on the corner of West 4th and Jones Street, says Mark Sebastian, a neighbourhood activist, musician...
Fifty years ago, the tenements, bars and coffee houses of Greenwich Village were the centre of a hip, bohemian society of beatniks and folkniks. That society has long dispersed, most of its landmarks erased by the onslaught of chain stores and fast food outlets. But enough of the Village remains intact that, by squinting in the Arctic freeze last week, it was almost possible to picture a 21-year-old Bob Dylan with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, braced against the cold in February 1963 for the covershot of the great Freewheelin' Bob Dylan acoustic LP.
It's not unusual to see couples re-enacting that pose on the corner of West 4th and Jones Street, says Mark Sebastian, a neighbourhood activist, musician...
- 1/26/2014
- by Edward Helmore
- The Guardian - Film News
Alessandro Nivola, Elle Fanning and Alice Englert in Ginger And Rosa
In the second half of our conversation, Alessandro Nivola discusses his role in Ginger And Rosa, Sally Potter's directing style, what he and Ethan Hawke share with Sam Shepard, future film projects with Hawke, and Nivola's wife Emily Mortimer's creation with Paolo Sorrentino. Bird rescues with Shepard, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and a trip to August: Osage County complete the circle.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Last week at Monkey Bar, you mentioned the very different styles of directing between David O. Russell in American Hustle and Sally Potter in Ginger And Rosa.
Alessandro Nivola: Sally is a very different type of personality. Intellectually just so bright, she has a very particular aesthetic herself, a very keen eye for detail. The process of working on that film was really the opposite. We spent a long time rehearsing scenes and talking about them.
In the second half of our conversation, Alessandro Nivola discusses his role in Ginger And Rosa, Sally Potter's directing style, what he and Ethan Hawke share with Sam Shepard, future film projects with Hawke, and Nivola's wife Emily Mortimer's creation with Paolo Sorrentino. Bird rescues with Shepard, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and a trip to August: Osage County complete the circle.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Last week at Monkey Bar, you mentioned the very different styles of directing between David O. Russell in American Hustle and Sally Potter in Ginger And Rosa.
Alessandro Nivola: Sally is a very different type of personality. Intellectually just so bright, she has a very particular aesthetic herself, a very keen eye for detail. The process of working on that film was really the opposite. We spent a long time rehearsing scenes and talking about them.
- 12/19/2013
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Olivier Assayas looks back at the days following the events of May 1968 – and at his own youth – with a delicate wit
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
- 5/25/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Lana Del Rey released the video for her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" in the most Lana Del Rey way possible: with an all-lowercase tweet that read "new video."
"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet," Del Rey sings. "Giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street." As Billboard notes, Cohen wrote the song about Janis Joplin, but then later regretted that decision. From a 1994 interview with BBC Radio (via 1HeckOfAGuy.com):
There was the sole indiscretion, in my professional life, that I deeply regret, because I associated a woman’s name with a song, and in the song I mentioned, I used the line “giving me head on an unmade bed while the limousines wait in the street”, and I’ve always disliked the locker- room approach to these matters,...
"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet," Del Rey sings. "Giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street." As Billboard notes, Cohen wrote the song about Janis Joplin, but then later regretted that decision. From a 1994 interview with BBC Radio (via 1HeckOfAGuy.com):
There was the sole indiscretion, in my professional life, that I deeply regret, because I associated a woman’s name with a song, and in the song I mentioned, I used the line “giving me head on an unmade bed while the limousines wait in the street”, and I’ve always disliked the locker- room approach to these matters,...
- 3/28/2013
- by Christopher Rosen
- Huffington Post
Reviewer: James van Maanen
Ratings (out of five): *** 1/2
Do the names Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and William Burroughs set your heart aflutter? (My upstairs neighbor runs the other direction when he hears the roster.) For some, these are/were the kind of guys you love to read but wouldn't want to live with. You get the chance to do the latter, possibly as closely as you'd care to, in the new documentary The Beat Hotel that takes us back to the beatnik/bohemian Paris of the period between 1957 - 1963 and to the shabby (but hardly chic) little hotel where they, and others of their ilk, resided.
Ratings (out of five): *** 1/2
Do the names Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and William Burroughs set your heart aflutter? (My upstairs neighbor runs the other direction when he hears the roster.) For some, these are/were the kind of guys you love to read but wouldn't want to live with. You get the chance to do the latter, possibly as closely as you'd care to, in the new documentary The Beat Hotel that takes us back to the beatnik/bohemian Paris of the period between 1957 - 1963 and to the shabby (but hardly chic) little hotel where they, and others of their ilk, resided.
- 7/18/2012
- by weezy
- GreenCine
Feb. 7
6:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Two classic underground films from the 1950s are going to be screened back-to-back. First is Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour (1950) and second is Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959).
Pull My Daisy is a classic of Beat cinema and is based on an unfinished play written by Jack Kerouac, who provides the poetic narration. A working class husband embarrasses his wife when his unruly poet friends — played by real-life poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso — crash a dinner party being held for a bishop and his family. The film is based on a true story from Kerouac’s life.
The making of Pull My Daisy is covered extensively in Jack Sargeant’s essential underground film history book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, which also includes lengthy interviews...
6:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Two classic underground films from the 1950s are going to be screened back-to-back. First is Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour (1950) and second is Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959).
Pull My Daisy is a classic of Beat cinema and is based on an unfinished play written by Jack Kerouac, who provides the poetic narration. A working class husband embarrasses his wife when his unruly poet friends — played by real-life poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso — crash a dinner party being held for a bishop and his family. The film is based on a true story from Kerouac’s life.
The making of Pull My Daisy is covered extensively in Jack Sargeant’s essential underground film history book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, which also includes lengthy interviews...
- 2/5/2010
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
We heard Abel Ferrara before we saw him. As the credits for his new documentary, Chelsea on the Rocks, ran after its premiere screening at the Jane Hotel, he bursted in with a 'And that's Gregory Corso,' citing the poetry that was playing over the scroll. 'Anybody got a poem in them?' 'This doesn't look like a question and answer group,' Ferrara noted in his mook-y New Yawker drawl (think Joe Pesci circa Goodfellas as a Tom Waitsian cool cat). 'These people are looking at me like they expect me to start singing.' For this project, the inimitable director took on his first documentary, collecting recellections from a variety of artists and interesting people - Ethan Hawke, Lola Schnabel, Gaby Hoffman, the delightful Miloš Forman, plus much more - who have lived in and experienced the Chelsea Hotel in its artistic heyday. I've seen documentaries of this type before,...
- 9/23/2009
- TribecaFilm.com
Anyone who's ever thrilled to Chuck Workman's film montages at the Academy Awards and other outlets knows that this filmmaker has a masterful technique of assembling archival footage for maximum effect. His talent is employed to excellent use in his second feature-length documentary, chronicling the history and cultural significance of the Beat Generation and concentrating on such seminal figures as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.
If Workman's style results in a film that never quite plumbs the full depths of its subject, there is no denying its comprehensiveness, nor its sheer entertainment value. "The Source" is receiving its theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum; it will certainly do well in the proper theatrical engagements, and should enjoy a long life on video and cable.
Workman, who made a film about Andy Warhol in 1991, is obviously an expert on pop culture. One of the more successful aspects of his latest work is how well it demonstrates the Beats' influence on the American scene in the '50s and '60s. The film boasts a wide variety of clips from films, television shows, etc., amusingly showing how the Beats were an object of veneration and satire.
That "The Source" was long in the making is demonstrated by its containing new interviews with the late Ginsberg, Burroughs and Timothy Leary, each of whom proves no less entertaining or irascible toward the end. There is also a wealth of archival footage starring Kerouac in his youthful vigor and final alcoholic decline, as well as home movie footage featuring Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in the classic "On the Road", in all his virile glory. Other familiar and not-so-familiar faces turn up in both new and vintage footage, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, Gregory Corso, Jerry Garcia, Philip Glass, David Amram and many more.
There are also extended segments featuring excerpts from the writings of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs, performed by John Turturro, Johnny Depp and Dennis Hopper, respectively. Although these samples of Beat literature are welcome and illuminating and the performers are well matched to the authors, the sequences nonetheless come off a bit stiff.
THE SOURCE
WinStar Cinema
Director-producer-screenplay-editor: Chuck Workman
Executive producer: Hiro Yamagata
Director of photography: Tom Hurwitz
Color/black and white
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
If Workman's style results in a film that never quite plumbs the full depths of its subject, there is no denying its comprehensiveness, nor its sheer entertainment value. "The Source" is receiving its theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum; it will certainly do well in the proper theatrical engagements, and should enjoy a long life on video and cable.
Workman, who made a film about Andy Warhol in 1991, is obviously an expert on pop culture. One of the more successful aspects of his latest work is how well it demonstrates the Beats' influence on the American scene in the '50s and '60s. The film boasts a wide variety of clips from films, television shows, etc., amusingly showing how the Beats were an object of veneration and satire.
That "The Source" was long in the making is demonstrated by its containing new interviews with the late Ginsberg, Burroughs and Timothy Leary, each of whom proves no less entertaining or irascible toward the end. There is also a wealth of archival footage starring Kerouac in his youthful vigor and final alcoholic decline, as well as home movie footage featuring Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in the classic "On the Road", in all his virile glory. Other familiar and not-so-familiar faces turn up in both new and vintage footage, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, Gregory Corso, Jerry Garcia, Philip Glass, David Amram and many more.
There are also extended segments featuring excerpts from the writings of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs, performed by John Turturro, Johnny Depp and Dennis Hopper, respectively. Although these samples of Beat literature are welcome and illuminating and the performers are well matched to the authors, the sequences nonetheless come off a bit stiff.
THE SOURCE
WinStar Cinema
Director-producer-screenplay-editor: Chuck Workman
Executive producer: Hiro Yamagata
Director of photography: Tom Hurwitz
Color/black and white
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 8/30/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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