Kerouac's Big Sur [and you]

Anyone not too cool to still admit cherishing the Beat generation should really pluck up their ears: there is a new phenomenon called Kerouac Films and, if their first is any indication, they are in the process of actually enhancing the past.

One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur is a film that boldly reinserts not only the literary landmark, but its time signature with actual footage and commentary from nearly anyone related to these things, into the present. Guests include everyone from Tom Waits - who makes frequent & intimate appearances - to Grateful Dead (and possibly best-ever) lyricist Robert Hunter to Caroline Cassady and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Jay Ferrar of Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Sun Volt fame and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service created the entire soundtrack using lyrics from the actual text. In fact, the film draws heavily on Kerouac's words for its narrative.

The result is, in a way, an astonishing re-vision of the book. It is not told in chronological order, however, so we are presented with background information throughout. Because we're often taken on-location, the film has a behind-the-scenes feel to it.

For those who don't know, Big Sur is an honest and harrowing account of Kerouac's battle with delerium tremens. More than that, it's the writer's attempt to defeat fame that he did not ask for and a public image for which he was hardly responsible. Yet he very much had to take that responsibility, and in the end it killed him. Waits says the book always reminds him of "a chronicle of a man being eaten by ants. It’s like a snail crawling across a straight razor."

The film starts much like the book, with Kerouac hiding with bums in the alley, swilling booze, and then marching into North Beach to see everybody. Instead of the church playing "a sad windblown "Kathleen,"" as in the book, this duty falls on Jay Ferrar. The music, like the friends, family, agent, adds a certain depth to the film and yes, to the book. There is a commentary here, subtle but true. An evaluation and appreciation layered over present- and past-day footage of the scene in question. Today's artists weigh in and pay tribute. The context is expanded, rejuvenated, done justice!

I grew up not only to the Beats but in large part because of them. I was granted iconic figures with whom I could not only relate but into whom I could grow. Fact: I used to look into the mirror and say: "Jack-y boy. It's you." Kerouac became, as actor Donal Logue says, "the photogenic hipster face" of the Beat movement. His personna formed in resonse to a cultural demand for mass-consumption of the Beats. In my head, Kerouac and Kurt Cobain live in the same chapter. They were both unlikely icons who evolved from a counter-culture and ended by expressing themselves in ways no one ever had before. Big Sur ends with a 20+ page dictation of the Pacific Ocean crashing against the rocks at Bixby Canyon. Night after night Jack went there, even when he didn't want to, even though he admits it "probably" drove him mad. It reminds me of the scene in Gus Van Sant's movie Last Days in which Cobain is sitting at his desk and is not to be bothered by anyone for anything. The man was listening; his concentration and purity of conveyance were not to suffer interference. Whatever came out of their moments would reach so many people it would be a crime to obfuscate their perceptions. It would mislead humanity.

Never before - and never since - has a writer enjoyed/suffered so much fame as Jack Kerouac.

And I’m supposed to be the King of the Beatniks, according to the newspapers. So. But at the same time I’m sick and tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me, and pour out all their lives into me so that I’ll jump up and down and say Yes Yes, that’s right. Which I can’t do, anymore.

I’m watching this film again and again to let it sink in. People here in San Francisco say this whole city is Kerouac obsessed and to let it go and to move on. But of course we have moved on and of course we haven’t let him go. Why not?

Tom Waits: “The culture is so present at all times and it’s so, um, loud—you really do have to unplug it. Or unplug yourself from it. If you are gonna hear yourself think or hear yourself breathe."

Ben Gibbard: “I think that Jack has graduated to that point by the time that he’s at Big Sur that … every place he used to go and drink there’s just this barrage of young people who want to buy him drinks and want to take a piece of him with them, even though he’s already given them you know the most important parts of his life, which are, you know, these books.”

Aram Saroyan (amongst many other accomplishments, writer of the preface to Big Sur): "It’s like a goofy, holy man’s journal in this wonderful place. You know the first 40 pages or whatever it is of the book is just like a little kid exploring, you know, in nature. Who else dared to do that? You know because you had to have a big study and a literary career and everything. He just wasn’t buying it."

He was trying to get away from the city and everything it represented. He was trying, as Nietzsche would say, "to go under." Big Sur was his last shot to come up for breath. Ultimately, it failed him. But this book is a triumph completed despite his illness. Not many writers with an affliction this deadly are able to stick it out. Malcolm Lowry wrote what: two novels? One is fantastic (I haven't read the other, but hear it falls embrassingly short. Under the Volcano, however, is one of the best texts I've ever read).

If you haven't read Big Sur yet, do yourself a favor. Jack did way more soul-searching for this one than for anything else he ever did. And with the skills of a writer who had more than a dozen novels under his belt. Big Sur is a classic, and this film not only brings it back to life, but adds to it.

You can purchase a collector's copy, complete with vintage and professional photos, a copy of the book, and other valuables at our own Beat Museum (which I highly recommend). The film is also screening in theaters around the country. For a list of dates, click here.

If you just want to watch the film, get in touch with me. I'm not too anything to spend a night gushing about the combination of life and literature. In a very real way, no one has achieved this to the extent Kerouac did. Watching the film makes you want to sanctify a moment in your life the way anyone can—by going, right now, to express what you only get one chance to say, to feel personally what you have always wanted to proclaim.

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