James Franco in a Film About Allen Ginsberg's Landmark Poem
If you have even a passing interest in English-language literature, you'll want to see Howl (2010), a film in which James Franco (127 Hours, Pineapple Express, the Spiderman movies) gives a fine performance playing poet Allen Ginsburg (1926-1997). Howl is about Ginsberg's poem of that title, first published in 1956. Along with a pair of novels — Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch — the poem "Howl" is one of the enduring exemplars of Beat literature.
The film approaches the poem mainly by intercutting footage representing three different historical occurrences. The first shows the 29-year-old Ginsberg (Franco) performing a reading of "Howl" before a small audience at a San Francisco gallery, and the words are often accompanied by animated footage. The second is of the 1957 trial of the poem's publisher, City Lights Bookstore proprietor Lawrence Ferlinghetti, on charges of obscenity. The third is a recreated version of interview footage of Ginsberg sometime after the trial, reflecting on the events that have catapulted him to fame.
All the dialogue in the movie is taken from historical records, and Franco speaks Ginsberg's lines in the poem reading and recreated interview footage. Also, a number of well-known actors appear in the obscenity trial scenes, including David Strathairn as the prosecutor, Jon Hamm as the defense attorney, Bob Balaban as the judge and Jeff Daniels as an English professor.
Howl isn't a great film, but it's a worthy tribute to Ginsberg's celebrated poem.
Supplementary Materials
The best DVD extra by far is Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" at the Knitting Factory in Lower Manhattan in 1995. The poet is about 68 years old at the time of the reading, and he's still exuberant as he reads words he wrote 40 years earlier. It takes him a little over 25 minutes to read aloud the full "Howl," including an appended section he titled "Footnote" that begins with 15 repetitions of the word "Holy!"
A couple of interesting things come up in the "Directors' Research Tapes." There's an interview here with Peter Orlovsky, who was Ginsberg's longtime life partner. Also, there's an interview with an attorney who reminds us that prior to the 1957 "Howl" trial, it was commonly assumed that obscenity wasn't protected by the First Amendment.
The DVD also provides the 40-minute "Holy! Holy! Holy! The Making of Howl," in which you can hear from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and the animators. In addition, there's a feature-length audio commentary by lead actor James Franco and the two directors.
Howl is packaged as a two-disc set — a DVD and a Blu-ray disc. Both discs contain the feature film and all the bonus materials mentioned above. In addition, the Blu-ray disc has Ginsberg reading "Sunflower Sutra" and "Pull My Daisy," as well as a Q&A with the film's two directors at the Provincetown Film Festival.
Release Date: January 4, 2011
Total Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated