Howlin

Bob Dylan with Allen Ginsberg at Jack Keruoac's grave

Howl is coming and it had better come to Norfolk. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival to a packed crowd. Telling the story of Beat writer Allen Ginsberg's highly influential poem, Howl, and the censorship controversy surrounding it, I anticipate this film will have important parallels to today's indie culture.

James Franco (aka: My Favorite Actor Today) is playing Ginsberg. He's done the historical character before (James Dean movie and Milk). He's also a UCLA graduate in English who is now in duel graduate programs at NYU and Columbia. He won't be frivolous here. He's got enough education to understand the significance of the story.

pic: 4.bp.blogspot.com

Think hipsters are specific to the 2000s? Wrong. The Beats were the original hipsters.

From "Howl":

"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"

This is pretty much the same as what Modest Mouse's "Black Cadillacs" is about, without all the "fuck fuck fucking around." And speaking of f-bombs, if not for trailblazers like Ginsberg, the rest of us wouldn't be able to say or sing the right words for the moment sometimes...well, unless you're on the Oceanfront.