The Economist blog has a Q&A with John Krokidas, the writer/director of Kill Your Darlings, a film about Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Carr.Here’s an excerpt:
One of the criticisms of the film “Howl” was that it struggled to make the origins of poetry a participatory experience for the audience. How did you try to get around that?
Trying to dramatise writing has always been a struggle in cinema. We didn’t want just clichéd scenes of cigarette smoke and a typewriter. I wanted to show the moments in action that stuck with Ginsberg and led to his poetry: going to his first cool party and feeling intimidated and getting to know Lucien (played by Dane DeHaan). These guys did a lot of drugs too which helped the visual, obviously. Ginsberg tried out all these different drugs and wrote like a scientist about how they affected his brain.
Krokidas also has some insightful things to say about women and sexuality in the Q&A . The author cites other similar films about poets of the Beat generation:–Howl & On the Road–but finds Kill Your Darlings to be more successful at not glorifying the poets. Plus, the film stars Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame) as a young Ginsberg.
