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Allen Ginsberg
MAIN
PHOTOS
VIDEOS
NEWS
CREDITS
BIOGRAPHY
AWARDS
FANSITES
FORUM
BIRTHDAY
June 03, 1926
Newark, NJ
DIED
April 05, 1997
RECENT CREDITS
Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of...
(FILM)
Nov. 25, 2011
Pull My Daisy
(FILM)
Sep. 25, 1998
Superstar: The Life and Times of An...
(FILM)
Feb. 22, 1991
Berkeley in the Sixties
(FILM)
Jan. 1, 1990
Heavy Petting
(FILM)
Sep. 22, 1989
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Allen Ginsberg Credits
BIOGRAPHY
Widely proclaimed as the preeminent "underground" American poet of the postwar years, Allen Ginsberg (together with his colleagues Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, et al.) not only defined....
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Widely proclaimed as the preeminent "underground" American poet of the postwar years, Allen Ginsberg (together with his colleagues Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, et al.) not only defined and epitomized Beat literature but vocalized the long inchoate yearnings of 1950s and '60s counterculture youth. An unrepentant rebel and an unabashed celebrator of stream-of-consciousness literature, mind-altering substances, homosexuality, and Marxism, Ginsberg carried an irrepressible spirit and a seemingly boundless humanism, only equaled by his contempt for war and the CIA. When Ginsberg died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 1997, fellow authors flocked to eulogize the author, paying unbridled homage to his contributions to the American literary canon.
Though it is often forgotten in light of his enduring poetics, Ginsberg actually enjoyed a fascinating onscreen film career during the 1960s, typically as an actor in the low-budget films of New York's avant-garde. His cinematic appearances began with a turn as himself in Robert Frank's 28-minute "Beat" film Pull My Daisy (1959, a picture that also featured Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and Ginsberg's lover of 30-plus years, Peter Orlovsky). After cameos in Andy Warhol's "do anything" experiment Couch (1964), and in Peter Whitehead's "Beat performance film" Wholly Communion (1965, a motion picture that documented the first joint public performance of American and English alternative poets), Ginsberg played, alongside William S. Burroughs, Ravi Shankar, and others, one of the hallucinogenic figures in Conrad Rooks' psychedelic mind-trip Chappaqua (1966). Ginsberg then re-teamed with director Frank, appearing as himself in the documentary Me and My Brother (1968), a cinematic exploration of Julius Orlovsky's bout with schizophrenia. After a cameo as himself in Robin Spry's May 1968 docudrama Prologue (1969), Ginsberg and Norman Mailer appeared together, protesting the Vietnam War, in American indie legend Jonas Mekas' "compilation" film Diaries, Notes and Sketches (1970). In 1978, Ginsberg read "Kaddish" in Bob Dylan's ill-advised, three-and-a-half-hour performance film Renaldo and Clara.
This more or less marked the extent of Ginsberg's avant-garde cinematic work, but he continued his filmed appearances during the '80s and '90s, this time in a far more conservative vein; most of the efforts were nostalgic documentaries about the 1950s and '60s counterculture that featured Ginsberg as an interviewee. These included Burroughs (1983), Kerouac (1984), Berkeley in the Sixties (1990), On the Road with Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats (1994), Jonas in the Desert (1994), and (in a posthumous appearance) Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles (1999).
~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
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Headlines
James Franco Howls!
Feb. 20, 2009
Franco will play Allen Ginsberg in 'Howl,' a film about the obscenity trial into the poet's eponymous Beat Generation work. Set to go into production on March 16 in NYC, the film will be produced by Werc Werk Works and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
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Recently Worked With...
David Byrne
Heavy Petting
Released: Jan. 1, 2001
David Amram
Pull My Daisy
Released: Sep. 25, 1998
John Coplans
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol
Released: Feb. 22, 1991
Mario Savio
Berkeley in the Sixties
Released: Jan. 1, 1990
Reed Bye
It Don't Pay to Be an Honest Citizen
Released: Jan. 1, 1985
R. Buckminster Fuller
Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family
Released: Jan. 1, 1971
Marianne Faithfull
Don't Look Back
Released: Jan. 1, 1966
Gregory Corso
Couch
Released: Jan. 1, 1964
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