The Beat Generation

"On the Road" author Jack Kerouac was disturbed that his friend, author John Clellon Holmes, managed to get his "Beat Generation" novel "Go" into print before his own was published ("Go", in which Kerouac is a main character, was published in 1952, while "On the Road" was not published until 1957). Kerouac was worried that Holmes was plagiarizing him, although Holmes was careful to credit Kerouac with creating the term "Beat" for their generation, and much of the material was common among them and other writers of their circle, such as Allen Ginsberg. Ironically, producer Albert Zugsmith outfoxed Kerouac by copyrighting the term "The Beat Generation", which he used as the title of this egregious exploitation film, which was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1959. A year later, M.G.M. released a film of Kerouac's novel "The Subterraneans", made by with top talent: It proved to be a major disappointment as it grossly misrepresented the scene (as well as Kerouac's novel). Ironically, "The Subterraneans" probably is the premier contemporary movie about the Beats, as so few "Beat" movies were made (until Sur la route (2012)), the phenomenon occurring during a time of strict screen censorship in the United States. By the time censorship was lifted in 1967, the Beats had been supplanted by the Hippies.

Featured in Vampira and Me (2012)