Odd and unsatisfying selection of old material and new, nosing around the subject of the Beat phenomenon, but not pinning it down either as to period or locale, to the Beat people's situation then or now, in one place or another. Because the method is evocation rather than explication, it is essential for you to bring your own associations to the movie, as when a very young and unidentified Taylor Mead is shown wandering around the Venice boardwalk. Even the cognoscenti might need a few things spelled out a bit; might feel, for example, that Viva talking yet again about her Catholic upbringing is rather tangential to the subject at hand, if it is connected at all (is or was Viva a beatnik? is Catholicism more germane than Presbyterianism or Republicanism or the Boy Scouts of America?). The most entertaining and self-explanatory section is the excerpt from You Bet Your Life in which Groucho Marx trades lines with poet Stuart Perkoff, to whose memory this movie was dedicated. With Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirschman, Shirley Clarke; directed by Philomene Long. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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