Howl: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Weinstein
American literature and culture as we know it today would not exist were it not for the efforts of a relatively small group of writers bucking against convention and the law in 1950’s New York. While their names, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs amongst others may be familiar to many, it wouldn’t be unfair to argue that most people today underestimate the importance of these ‘Beat’ writers by opening the floodgates of honest expression in art and directly influencing the hippie and punk movements that would follow them.
Thankfully, documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are acutely aware of this history and have produced their first fiction film, Howl, to celebrate the legacy of perhaps the most famous poem of the Beat Generation and its author, Allen Ginsberg. Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories, Howl features James Franco as Ginsberg supported by an all-star cast including Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeff Daniels. Fusing black and white, color, and animation, the film follows Ginsberg through his infamous obscenity trial as well as celebrates the poem’s long-lasting power. Filmmakers Friedman, Epstein, and I shared a few words recently about their approach to this intriguing project and their own admiration of Ginsberg’s literary legacy.
IFQ: To provide some context, where did the initial impetus behind making this film, including focusing specifically on the case around Howl itself, come from?
Rob Epstein: Well, I have to say we didn’t come up with the idea of doing a film about Howl, we came up with the concept for this movie but the idea from Allen Ginsberg’s longtime secretary Bob Rosenthal. About eight years ago we got a call out of the blue from Bob, who was familiar with our documentary work and asked if we might be interested in a commemorative film for the 50th anniversary of Howl. We said, yes we would be and then spent several years trying to figure out an approach and concept that we felt would be complementary to the poem.
Jeffrey Friedman: As we got more familiar with the material, we got more excited about recreating this golden moment when this group of young writers formulated a new way of creating culture and really had an impact on the culture.
IFQ: Given that most of your previous works have been documentaries, how was the process of casting actors for these now classic individuals, especially given the time period you are setting out to portray and risk of caricature for some of these people like an Allen Ginsberg?
RE: Well I think the actors we got on board and we do have an incredible cast came on because it is a scripted film but based on documentary text; that it’s all based on the actual court transcripts from the obscenity trial back in 1957 when the poem was published and interviews that Allen Ginsberg did throughout his lifetime. So I think that approach was something that interested the actors.
JF: I think too that we just wanted to get great actors; we knew that the better the actors were, the text would come alive and the more we would then be able to work with them to bring it alive.
RE: Yes, and then we just worked with a wish list for each of the parts to find the perfect character to play Gail Potter, the English teacher, who is portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker and we were lucky because all the actors we approached all responded to the material and the script.
IFQ: How closely did you hew to the trial’s original court transcript in terms of crafting the script? Connected with that, how did you find the balance between historical accuracy and dramatic necessity?
JF: We worked from the original text, all of the dialogue from the trial is verbatim from trial transcripts. We did a lot of editing and restructuring to give it dramatic shape.
IFQ: how do you feel that this film fits into your overall series of work, i.e. links to sexuality & social change/reflection in other films like The Celluloid Closet, The Times of Harvey Milk, etc ?
RE: Well I suppose there is some through line there; I think with each of those films we were interested in taking on a particular piece of history and situate it with a particular figure within that time and to present it in a way that was accessible and people could experience it as cinema. This one is a departure in that it’s our first scripted film and the first time we’re working with actors. So we’re still relying on our documentary sensibilities but working within another form.
JF: And we really set out to break rules in this film. Howl was such a transgressive poem and created a new way of experiencing poetry really. We felt like we had to come up with something that would be new and exciting and different in terms of film language, that would do justice to the subject.
RE: Also for it to work for an audience that might know nothing, we had to contextualize the time. The time in which the poem emerged and Allen was writing, when these group of guys met each other and found inspiration from one another. And that was a really conservative buttoned down conformist era and they really broke the mold and everything that’s followed in their wake can really be sourced back to that particular time.
IFQ: One facet of the film that is intriguing to watch is the animation that accompanies the poem, how did you come upon the decision to bring that element into the film as well as how easy/difficult it was to integrate into the film itself & make everything work?
JF: In a way, it was Allen’s idea; Allen published a book of poems in collaboration with artist Eric Drooker called Illuminated Poems and it was when we discovered that book of poems and Eric’s work that we started thinking about using art as a way to create a visual, cinematic language as one of the ways of experiencing the poem. And we met with Eric and found out that he had a long creative relationship with Allen and that Allen had always encouraged him to do something with Howl. I don’t know that he ever thought of animating it but it seemed like a logical thing for us to do since we were making a movie.
IFQ: Also, what impact do you think Howl and Ginsberg would have had had he not been caught up in the obscenity trial and instead the poem slipped by. Do you think that it eventually would have gained an influential foothold in culture over time or did the trial really help “make it”?
RE: Well I think it gave him notoriety in the moment and he gives full credit to the trial for giving him his fame then. But I don’t think it would have lasted as a work of art if it couldn’t stand on its own. I don’t think most people who come to the poem today may not have any knowledge that this obscenity trial happened in 1957 so I think ultimately the work itself has to stand the test of time and it has.
IFQ: Looking back on the poem now, what power do you feel that Howl itself still does/does not have?
JF: I think it is still so alive and so relevant, so fresh and still has the power to shock and talks about things that are still very important. Themes in our cultural life that Allen was very prescient about and issues that we are still struggling with in terms of free expression of sexuality, authenticity, corporatization of the culture, the pollution of the planet even. All of this stuff that has become apart of the conversation was really announced in that howl in 1955 in that first poetry reading.
RE: And there are so many human themes in the poem that are eternal as well; what does it mean to love and to lust and to long and to find love and to lose it and to experience ecstasy, etc. All of that beauty of the human experience is within it as well.
To learn more about the film, go to www.oscilloscope.net