Customer Reviews

What Happened to Kerouac? [VHS]

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Nothing happened to Jack Kerouac. He died like the rest of us eventually will. Jack Kerouac was a regular human being. Now you're problably saying "yea I already knew that, so what?". But what you problably didn't know is that Jack used literature to show how beautiful and ugly human beings can be. Kerouac was a man equally feminine as he was masculine (read Charter's biography about his relationships with Ginzy, N.C., as well as the women of his life.) All of this is touched on in the video documentary, which thrives off the somber emotion,and that sort of "grey sky comtemplation" of things, which seems to pervade all of Jack's work. The video moves through Jack's life in a fairly straightforward manner. We see him as a shy french speaking Mass. adolescent, a cleft chinned Columbia undergraduate, a rucksack wanderer,a chanting buddhist,an aloof catholic, who loved his mother and drank much too much Johnnie Walker. In "What happnened to Jack?" we see Jack as who he really was, a confused, tortured, disenfranchised,happy, unhappy writer who was very good at putting words together, which gave an honest glimpse of what was going on in his heart and his mind. There are many great moments in the video. Any beat "junkie" will love the footage of Jack and Allen coolin' it near Columbia, smoking cigarettes and shootin' pool. There's a clip of Bird and Diz blowing hot jazz, the beats in S.F. at the debut of Ginzy's "Howl", Mike McClure, Jack, Snyder and Ferlinghetti at Big Sur recitin' and writin' smooth synapses of the happenings there and around. There are countless anecdotes and picturs of all your "beat heroes", which portray them as strikingly regular and very un-heroic. The video as a complete work is very delicious, but the tastiest bits come when Jack reads "October in the Railroad Earth" to a montage of San Francisco images. When a debonair Jack reads "On the Road" to Steve Allen's bluesy piano in perfect phrasing and time. And last but not least there is the comical and strangely serious Greg Corso explaining genious, fame, and why he thinks the "Beat Generation" was a phenomenon. Kerouac would problably want you to see this video because it shows that he was not a fad, an icon, nor a saviour for a generation. He was simply a regular man trying to find answers to very un-regular questions and he used his writing talent to unravel those mysteries.

A near-perfect documentary on Kerouac, and the list of interviewees is...well, they are all here: Herbert Huncke,
William S Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1st wife Joyce Kerouac, daughter Jan Kerouac, Diane DiPalma, Carolyn Cassady, a short, but priceless b & w film clip of Neal Cassady at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco in the 1960's, much of the William F Buckley interview with Jack from 1968, Kerouac reading from On the Road on the Steve Allen Show, many of Jack's tape-recorded poetry readings with appropriate vintage footage from San Francisco, Times Square NYC, Jack's hometown, Lowell,MA etc., and an insightful interview with Gregory Corso, who seemed to understand, and put into words better than anyone else, the essence of Kerouac.

In a subject where "expert" commentary frequently brings to mind overused, deflated balloons or some flaccid, rubbery French pastry, this film is a nonpareil. Amazingly, MacAdams has drilled into a motherlode of material elsewhere untapped; sources include the fiercely protected estate of Kerouac (evident through a rare, outstanding recording of Kerouac reading parts of Dr. Sax high on tea; Tulane historian Douglas Brinkley is now sifting through all of it), Ken Kesey's Merry Prankster footage (live reels of Cassady!), Kerouac's later, soused appearance on Buckley's "Firing Line," and interviews with central figures in Kerouac's life and in the Beat movement: John Clellon Holmes, Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, Carolyn Cassady, Herbert Huncke, Joyce Johnson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and (best of all) Gregory Corso (watch for the explanation of "the classy spirit"). The film is simply produced but marvelously filmed, with picturesque footage of Lowell and video-style film of New York and San Francisco accompanying Kerouac recordings of "Lucien Midnight" and "October in the Railroad Earth." Ideas are developed shrewdly, craftfully with simple back-and-forths between different horse's mouths. There is no narrative voice-over or gaseous postulation. MacAdams achieves what any good documentary maker or journalist strives for: he turns on your radio, sets the dial to his station, then plainly broadcasts a seriously static-free, seriously hip FM song. Dig it.

I think there are two types of successful documentaries. Great films regardless of subject matter (ie: Ken Burns work, Woodstock, Errol Morris's films) and documentaries that exist because of their subject matter (most of Michael Moore's films, Supersize Me, almost every musician or film star doc). This second group does not necessarily need to be a work of art to be successful. If you're a fan of the subject, you'll almost inevitably like the film.

For me, this film falls into the 2nd category. Obviously the subject matter is a no brainer. Most of Kerouac's contemporaries were still alive. His daughter and ex's talked on camera. Lots of footage of Jack himself (looking sharp and at his peak with Steve Allen; drunk, sad and near-death with Buckley). There is also lots of photos and audio of Jack with friends, fellow poets and contemporaries. I'm sure the filmmakers had to whittle down their footage to a managable length.

Another way to judge a documentary is to ask the question: What if I don't know anything about the subject? What portrait does it paint? Does it make me want to seek out more info on this person, read their books, watch their films, etc.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I knew very little about Kerouac before watching the film. I gravitated more to the work of Charles Bukowski, which some feel (I don't) was part of the Beat movement. I knew about Kerouac and had thumbed through a couple of his books; I'd even read some of his contemporaries - a little Ginsberg - a lot of William Burroughs. But knowing little definitely qualifies me to say, yes, the film is very successful in presenting its subject in interesting ways. I will now have to dig out a copy of On The Road! What better complement can you give a movie of any kind!

The movie itself moves quickly. It has a great score (that is mostly jazz from Thelonious Monk with a little Charlie Parker) and all of the interviews are fascinating. It lacks a certain style that would have made it a great film, but the subject matter more than makes up for it. I believe that fans as well as the ignorant (me included) have an equal chance of enjoying the film.

Unfortunately there are no extra features (other than a trailer - not for this film). If any film seemed to cry out for extended interviews, complete segments featuring Kerouac or commentary from the filmmakers and even some of the personalities featured on film, this film certainly does! Perhaps its the age of the film (about 20 years) that prevented that type of material? However, the lack of features should not sway you from seeing the film.

I slipped this 1986 production in my DVD player a couple of nights ago after the wife and kids had fallen asleep, and while the trains to and from Tokyo roared by a hop skip and a jump away, and things were high-rise and pretty much all about the future outside my midnight window, I took a trip back in time to c. 1959 America. The first major point I want to make about this DVD is that it contains a young, electrifyingly handsome Kerouac doing his famous reading from On the Road. If this DVD contained only that clip, it would be worth the price. In fact, as the show proceeded, I found myself wishing that this clip was the only thing on the DVD, with options on speeding it up, slowing it down, listening only to the audio, perhaps having it simultaneously translated into Japanese (for friends who might drop by), French, Italian, and--what the heck--Mandarin too. The rest of the DVD outside of cameo appearances by a well-embalmed Huncke, an articulate Ann Charters, a righteous Diane di Prima, a super sound-byte by Creeley, an impressive Carolyn Cassady, a spookily laconic Burroughs, and a prim discussion by Snyder, was rather depressing. We see Neal Cassady a tick after his prime saying little but saying it quickly, a post-stroke Allen Ginsberg getting sly revenge on Jack's mother, and the trickster antics of Gregory Corso, gumming his words like an old drunk in your home-town bar, holding forth like (see previous), urged on to greater mental triangulations by the off-screen producer, and finally making a weird kind of sense. Joyce Johnson reminisces about Jack on the eve of his On The Road fame. One of Jack's wives tells it like it was (she couldn't deal with dirty bathtubs, so she went home), and the secret star of the show--Jack's wonderfully charismatic daughter Jan--also a writer--and beautiful--but doomed to die young--tells about compairing hand sizes with her pixilated dad while he watched the Beverly Hillbillies on television. Which brings up the painful parts of the video--almost as painful to me as watching a drunk Bukowski trying to kick his girlfriend in another DVD I saw recently--Jack being stupid on the William F. Buckley show, and Buckley egging him on, complete with snaky asides while a young, earnest Ed Sanders sits like an angel two seats down and is never really allowed to say much of anything. Jack comes across as a bully reeking of sweat and urine, hopeless, a soon-to-die wreck of what he was in the other clip. Gregory Corso at last fills the screen like the Fool in King Lear, however--wiser than his masters and mistresses--to really spell it out: success got Kerouac. All those people who wanted to tear off a piece of him for a souvenir, or buy him a gun to shoot himself with so they could say they'd done the deed later in case the camera crews came around, or buy him a drink, which was essentially the same thing as a gun--to kill his already gone beauty even more than it had been done in by much hard-living, drugs and many toasts to the moon. Yes, I was mighty depressed approx. 90 minutes later when the credits started to roll and Thelonious Monk (who also died young) began to play. But this was Japan in the year 2007, and out the window the Future was winking red and yellow lights.

Ignore all the other negative connotations regarding this dvd release and dig this.... this is the only release you need regarding Kerouac .. Corso is monumental.. Ginsberg waxing on ultimate reality alone is worth 3 times the price of this dvd. It has the Steve Allen footage in the best qualtiy available.. Snyder .. Creeley..etc.. if yr interested in Kerouac... this is the one to have...

The other review on this page is great, and I don't have much to add except a second opinion. Gregory Corso is a 'hoot' in this video, grousing that the clip-on mic is messing up his coyote pin. Hee. A good all-around documentary, altho it does seem to focus on the chaotic side of the Beats. For fans of Kerouac and/or the Beats, it's well worth it. The Buckley interview is a bit painful to watch, however. You get a sense of a very shy man fame didn't treat very well. You get a great sense of camaraderie among the people interviewed: these people were friends, who just happened to be at the focus of a new movement in literature. And it sure sounds like they had fun.

A major element in determining the worth of a documentary lies in the quality of the evidence it presents, and, regarding Jack Kerouac, you can't do much better than what the filmmaker does here. The opinions of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder, Corso, Huncke, DiPrima, an ex-wife and daughter are proffered which gives the film tremendous weight and legitimacy. Their observations concerning Jack's character and personality are highly revealing. It is a sad tale, and, if one of the interviewees can be believed, this is a writer who did not believe in suicide so he resolved to drink himself to death which is exactly what he did. Personally, I felt pain gazing at the numerous clips from Firing Line which appeared about a year before he died. He appears to be about 15 years older than he was, and in such a stupor that one longs to hit the fastforward button. Of course, doing so would be dishonest and this documentary is anything but that.

This DVD had an impact on me that was similar to the first time I read "On the Road." The scene where he reads on the Steve Allen show made me cry... his beautiful sadness kept me enraptured.

I got into Kerouac by way of my interest in Neal Cassady, whom I can't really remember how I discovered. (I have yet to read "On the Road" but am familiar with Jack's prose style through spoken word recordings.) Anyway, I came to this doc more from an interest in the person than his work, which I think is common to a lot of people who love the Beats. Their personas are as much a part of their legend as anything they wrote.

That said, Jack looks like a troubled boy even in his best clips here, which are undoubtedly the earlier ones on the Steve Allen Show--probably in part because he was in what he perceived to be a sympathetic environment and therefore felt at liberty to indulge his playful and vulnerable side. He is in fact most touching as he reads excerpts from "On the Road". He is also a ruggedly handsome and charismatic figure, although his tendency for brooding and blustering is apparent even here. Far less flattering is his appearance on a later talk show, aptly titled "Firing Line" in which ,visibly drunk, he (understandably) reacts defensively and plays the fool to host William Buckley's cross examiner. This was only a year and a half before Jack's premature death from alcoholism, and he seems too beleagured with complexes to get out anything coherent. He seems to be trapped in a subjective hell wherein he believes everything and everyone to be part of some "organized effort to ignore him".

As a younger man however, his appeal--both personal and literary-- is obvious. He got American literature out of its stodgy rut, writing in bold, Hemingway-like strokes, blending narrative fiction with poetry off the top of his head in what was to be called "spontaneous prose". As one of his contemporaries points out in the interviews, this was a wildly adventurous choice to make in the fifties/sixties, from a man who could "write any way you want" but chose the road less travelled because that's where his passion was.

Neal Cassady is seen briefly in a clip filmed at A Different Light Bookstore, San Francisco in 1965. He appears with Allen Ginsberg, who is clearly enamored of him. Neal, as everyone knows, was Jack's muse/alter ego, the inspiration for the character of Dean Moriarty in "On the Road", and--according to many of his contemporaries--a kind of genius in his own right. However, nothing he says in this clip made any sense to me at all--and even Ginsberg seems at a loss to communicate with him. He too seems lost in his own head, trapped in some internal dialogue with himself. Still, it's easy to see how he could draw people in and inspire them. He had that alpha energy that makes things go. Mix it with good looks and charisma and you've got a cult! The cult of Neal. I think in some ways Jack was brooding because he wasn't Neal. Neal was the doer, and Jack was the observer/commentator, and one can never be the other, although each usually longs to be.

Carolyn Cassady--Neal's wife of 20 years, is unexpectedly good-humored and funny to listen to. Poor Carolyn was--for awhile, at least-- the anchor that kept Neal from floating into the outer stratospheres. Compared to Jack and Neal, her solidity and insistence on at least an operating level of convention make her a heavy in most books about the Beats, but it's clear from this interview that she was simply SANE. Pretty even in old age, with unbelievably beautiful blue eyes that still twinkle when she reminisces on Neal and her affair with Kerouac, she proves herself humorous, resilient and every inch their intellectual equal. She must also have been remarkably patient to deal with these two exasperating egotists, not to mention sporadic sexual meddling with her husband by Ginsberg. Somebody give this lady a medal!

In the end, this is a good doc for anyone interested in its subjects--it's a little heavy with talking heads and light on vintage footage, but all in all compelling, illuminating and worthwhile.