USA,
1959, 30 min
Shown in 1959
CREDITS
- dir
-
Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie
- scr
-
Jack Kerouac
- editor
-
Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Leon Prochnik
- mus
-
David Amram
- cast
-
Jack Kerouac (narrator), Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers, Delphine Seyrig
- source
-
G-String Enterprises
-
COMMENTS
Jack Kerouac in person.
OTHER
Although originally entitled "The Beat Generation," Pull My Daisy is not about the beat generation; rather, it is a beat experience on film. A free improvisation on a scene from an unproduced play by Jack Kerouac, recognized "leader" of the beat generation, it is a tragi-comedy, or tragi-documentary, about an evening at the home of a young villager named Milo (Larry Rivers) who is visited by some poet friends (Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky) and a "bishop" of unidentifiable religious faith. The film was shot silent. In the added soundtrack, Jack Kerouac speaks for all the characters, also commenting freely on their actions. Recorded without any preparation or previous study of the film, the commentary has the immediacy of Kerouac's poetic reality. "Friday morning in the universe" is his opening line. Pull My Daisy was awarded the first prize for Best American Experimental Film for 1959 at the San Francisco Film Festival.
—Pacific Film Archive
FACTOID #219
Daniel Talbot, editor of Film: An Anthology , was the first recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award in 1988. Later he cofounded New Yorker Films, a distribution company that introduced many foreign language films to North American audiences. The Mel Novikoff Award, named after the pioneering San Francisco exhibitor, is given to an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public’s knowledge and appreciation of world cinema.
