These 2021 Sundance Film Festival headliners became household names thanks to some unforgettable roles early in their careers.
Here are some well-known faces from Sundance over the years, as they brought their early movies to the festival.
Related lists from IMDb users
Title: Howl (2010)
Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| James Franco | ... | Allen Ginsberg | |
 |
Todd Rotondi | ... | Jack Kerouac |
| Jon Prescott | ... | Neal Cassady | |
| Aaron Tveit | ... | Peter Orlovsky | |
| David Strathairn | ... | Ralph McIntosh | |
| Jon Hamm | ... | Jake Ehrlich | |
| Andrew Rogers | ... | Lawrence Ferlinghetti | |
| Bob Balaban | ... | Judge Clayton Horn | |
| Mary-Louise Parker | ... | Gail Potter | |
|
|
Heather Klar | ... | Jack's Girlfriend |
|
|
Kaydence Frank | ... | Allen's Girlfriend (as Kadance Frank) |
| Treat Williams | ... | Mark Schorer | |
| Joe Toronto | ... | Sailor | |
| Johary Ramos | ... | Hustler | |
|
|
Nancy Spence | ... | Neal's Girlfriend |
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and animation that echoes the poem's surreal style. All three coalesce in hybrid that dramatizes the birth of a counterculture. Written by Sundance Film Festival
In admiration of James Franco and his portraying a literary person is why I wanted to see this film. Since I'd never read the poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (& I knew of Ginsberg in his later years as he was fairly renown as almost an elder poet statesman), I actually dug up a copy of "Howl" and read it before I viewed the movie. It turns out that it wasn't necessary to have read "Howl" -- the film sufficiently presents the poem and its complete text so that the viewer gets a good understanding just from the movie itself (at least I thought so...). This occurs in not only Franco's public reading of "Howl," it is brought out in the animation aspect of the film -- for me the animation was unexpected yet not intrusive. What is the film's major strength is James Franco's portrayal of Ginsberg. Franco's actual physical resemblance to the younger Ginsberg adds to his portrayal and his public reading of "Howl" is also quite good.
What is additionally satisfying in my mind is the evoking of a time and place (mid 1950s America) when a group of writers and quasi-vagabonds lived their lives on their own terms (& not in accordance to what was then considered the status quo) and wrote about it. This is brought out in depictions of Ginsberg's relationships and also in the court room obscenity battle about "Howl."