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Title: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Daniel Radcliffe | ... | Allen Ginsberg | |
| Dane DeHaan | ... | Lucien Carr | |
| Michael C. Hall | ... | David Kammerer | |
| Jack Huston | ... | Jack Kerouac | |
| Ben Foster | ... | William Burroughs | |
| David Cross | ... | Louis Ginsberg | |
| Jennifer Jason Leigh | ... | Naomi Ginsberg | |
| Elizabeth Olsen | ... | Edie Parker | |
| John Cullum | ... | Professor Steeves | |
| Brenda Wehle | ... | Permissions Librarian | |
| Erin Darke | ... | Gwendolyn | |
| Craig Chester | ... | Businessman | |
 |
Lenore Harris | ... | DA Secretary |
|
|
Mark Ethan | ... | Campus Guard |
| Zach Appelman | ... | Luke Detweiler | |
In the early 1940s, Allen Ginsberg is an English major at Columbia University, only to learn more than he bargained for. Dissatisfied by the orthodox attitudes of the school, Allen finds himself drawn to iconoclastic colleagues like Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Together, this gang would explore bold new literary ideas that would challenge the sensibilities of their time as the future Beat Generation. However, for all their creativity, their very appetites and choices lead to more serious transgressions that would mark their lives forever. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
There is a great story to be told about the beat generation. This isn't it.
Kill Your Darlings (2013) is a biographical drama about the early adult years of the beat generation stalwarts Allen Ginsburg (1926-97), Jack Kerouac (1922-69), and William Burroughs (1914-97). For those of you who don't know the details, Ginsburg achieved much acclaim for his literary works, including a National Book Award for "The Fall of America" (1974) and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for "Poems 1986-1992" (1995). He was famous for his support of homosexuality and his opposition to the Vietnam War. Kerouac is most famous for his classic "On The Road" (1951) and his later "Big Sur" (1962). Burroughs was a prolific author ("Junkie", "Naked Lunch") whose themes of death, drugs, and homosexuality can be seen in their beginning phases in this film.)
The whole idea of the beat generation was that if you could dismantle the structure of communication and still have some worth, then anything was up for grabs. If poetry could give up rhyme and still have substance, then sex could give up its hetero prefix and still have love, and society could give up its mores and still find order. To such a message, the dull and plodding structure of standard film school does no homage. Nor do the film makers even seem aware of the message of the beat generation, putting in scenes of jazz, sex, drugs, and English class without seeming to understand their inter-relationships.
There is a great story to be told about the beat generation. This isn't it.