Pop Culture Roundup

Garrett Hedlund (Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty in the book), Tom Sturridge (Allen Ginsberg/Carlo Marx), John Allen Cassady, Sam Riley ( Jack Kerouac/Sal Paradise) during the On the Road shoot in Montreal, August 2010. photo via Beat Museum

“I worked with my friend Tom Sturridge, and he plays Carlo Marx, who’s Allen Ginsberg,” Stewart says, excitement creeping into her voice. “And I would look over at him, and he’s doing this fucking full-on Allen Ginsberg crazy monologue in the corner of some thumping, raving party, and I’m dancing to bebop jazz, and I’d be like, ‘Tom, we’re doing “On the Road.” Just so you know? “On the Road.”‘”

Kristen Stewart, who plays Marylou (Carolyn Cassady) in Walter Salles’ upcoming film of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road in Backstage magazine, reminding us another celluloid evocation of Allen is forthcoming in 2011. The boyish Tom Sturridge as Allen. Really??

On The Road began filming began last August in Montreal and continued filming in Argentina. We’ll keep you posted.

Allen Ginsberg was “an old gasbag” according to Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in his just-published autobiography, Gasbag /Ginsberg – We know ol’ Keith was just being poetic!

Howl , in case you’re unaware, is getting the twitter treatment– one line at a time.

Remember Yelp? – Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg’s wonderful parody, that you might recall us alerting you to in March. Well, it continues to get noticed. It’s currently being projected on the walls of the venerable Guggenheim Museum in NYC as part of their ground-breaking You Tube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video presentation.

Beyond Howl: “Kcappy”, an ESL instructor in Japan, reads the collected works of Allen Ginsberg – One day, One Poem. He’s posting these on his podbean/podcasting page “State of Queer” and is now up to “Long Live The Spiderweb”, Spring. 1950, so he’s really just getting started. [2012 update, regrettably “Kcappy”‘s readings are now no longer accessible]

One comment

  1. Thank you for mentioning my project. Reading Ginsberg on a daily basis has been a great experience so far. I am hoping to hear back from listeners out there. I would love to hear what the world thinks about my interpretations of Ginsberg's poetry.

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