After an interview, Jack Kerouac reads his reason for writing while accompanied by pianist Steve Allen. The original 7 minute appearance was from a portion of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show - Season 5, Episode 7 a two hour commercial broadcast initially airing Monday night, around 11 PM, November 16th, 1959.-This is a few minutes edited from the 112 minute documentary Jack Kerouac - King of the Beats. Several related scenes and simple transitional titleing effects to fill it out were combined to create a short film with its own identity. My regretful decision to leave out of the interview 3 scenes from other resources lasting about 30 seconds was due to my inexperience in resolving quality issues with editing software.-Theres a convoluted back story about whats actually being read during this presentation, and its the reason care was taken in the way the title and description were worded.-For example, near the end of the second to last scene of the final two scenes, the last paragraph of On The Road is being read verbatim, from So, in America [4:21] . [to] . [5:27] I think of Dean Mor-i-ar-ty. while the whole time reading from the front at the very front inside cover of the book. And prior to this, hes doing a mashup of other text with another work, including On The Road when speaking of the border in Colorado. From I was traveling west [2:16] . [to] . [3:04] report you well and truly., it appears hes riffing on a paraphrasing of, As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, Pass here and go on, youre On The Road to heaven. [Page 171, paragraph 7, chapter 1, part 3 in the 1985 Penguin 14th edition.]-Some insight into this interview with Steve Allen can be read in Kerouacs thinly veiled autobiographical account in Big Sur and the Paul Maher - David Amram book, Kerouac: The Defnitive Biography.Filmography:1959 Pull My Daisy or The Beat Generation A 30 minute silent film, written and narrated by Kerouac (Italian Subtitles), starring Ginsberg, Corso and others located at:<a href=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8994248541021504750 target=_blank title=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8994248541021504750 rel=nofollow>http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...</a>Bibliography:1950 The Town and the City A traditional novelization of his familys disintegration in Lowell, Massachusettes.1957 On the Road The friendship between Dean Moriarty [Neal Cassady, Jr.] and Sal [Jack Kerouac] during four cross-country round trips. This was written in 1951, constantly changed and finally published in 1957. There were probably five variations written in the late 1940s, On the Road being the final title of one of the three versions eventually published the other two being Pic 1971 and Visions of Cody 1973. The book is read the way the spoken word would sound, resembling a jazz composition, and is considered to be his masterpiece.1958 The Dharma Bums A search for enlightenment through Zen Buddhism.1958 The Subterraneans His confessional of a failed relationship with a black woman.1959 Doctor Sax A fictionalized version of Kerouacs childhood.1959 Maggie Cassidy A romance with his girl friend, Maggie.1959 Mexico City Blues Poetic Collections.1960 Tristessa His relationship with a Mexican prostitute addicted to morphine.1960 Lonesome Traveler Travel sketches and an autobiographical introduction.1960 The Scripture of the Golden Eternity1961 Book of Dreams Stream of consciousness fantasies. 1962 Big Sur A fictionalized reflection on his celebrity status as a leader of the Beat Generation.1963 Visions of Gerard Kerouacs childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts and the traumatic death of his older brother.1965 Desolation Angels Reflections as a fire lookout in the Washington mountains and his travels in the US, Mexico and Morocco.1966 Satori in Paris Kerouacs travels in France to research his family heritage.1968 The Vanity of Duluoz A Coming of Age autobiography.1971 Pic The first work to be published after his death in 1969 is about a black musician traveling from the South to Harlem.1971 Scattered Poems Underground literary works, including text variations of his 30 minute film, Pull My Daisy.1973 Old Angel Midnight1973 Visions of Cody A revision of On The Road, published after his death and originally written in the 1950s, includes an introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac had very seriously considered this version to be published as On The Road.1977 Heaven and Other Poems 19581991 San Francisco Blues 19541992 Poems All Sizes 19601993 Good Blonde and Others 19551995 Book of Blues1997 Some of the Dharma 19541999 Atop an Underwood 1930s2000 Orpheus Emerged 1945
Some excerpts from Jack Kerouacs appearance on William F. Buckleys Firing Line in the fall of 1968.The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word beat spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--Wed even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didnt gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes whod finally turned from the freedom machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the derangement of the senses, talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and whats more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--Wed stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -Wed write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new angels of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnets peace officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number.- Jack Kerouacpublished as Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generationin Esquire magazine, in March 1958
Silent footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and others in New York, Summer 1959. The location is in and around the Harmony Bar & Restaurant at E 9th St. and 3rd Ave. Others seen are Mary Frank (wife of film-maker Robert Frank) and children Pablo and Andrea, as well as Luciens wife Francesca Carr and their three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan. Does anyone recognise any of the others?
Fernanda Pivano, the translator of Jack Kerouacs books into Italian, introduces footage of her encounter with Kerouac in Milan, Italy, in September 1966. Jack had visited Italy to promote the publication of the Italian translation of his novel Big Sur.
