The Source

"It was a whole bunch of people of all different nationalities who came to the conclusion that society sucked." So one observer sums up the writers and poets known as the Beats, who today live on in the poetry readings and "slams" that are enjoying a renaissance. The best minds of their generation, they howled against their stolid times in iconoclastic verse and disorienting "happenings." Director Chuck Workman breaks no new ground in this efficient documentary as he follows the rise and influence of the Beats, from the 1944 meeting in New York City between Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs to the establishment of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. But as the montages he assembles for the Academy Awards demonstrate, he knows his way around a film clip. You may have seen Kerouac read from his seminal On the Road on The Steve Allen Show, but dig Alfred Hitchcock introducing an episode of his TV show decked out in coffeehouse black, sporting a comical beatnik goatee. In addition to mini-profiles of the Beats' most influential voices, the films offers commentary and appreciation by Ken Kesey, Jerry Garcia, Terry Southern and other counter-culture icons, as well as excerpts from On the Road, Naked Lunch and Howl, read, respectively, by Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and John Turturro. Like, recommended, man. (K. Lee Benson)