After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
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Best movie of this year hands down!
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
FRIED SHOES COOKED DIAMONDS documents a gathering of Beat Generation figures (Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Amiri Baraka, and more), plus some non-Beats such as Meredith Monk and Miguel Pinero, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. They give readings to audiences, converse with each other, and Ginsberg performs a couple of songs. They leave campus for an anti-nuclear protest at Rocky Flats, where they read more poetry.Naturally, this documentary won't be of much importance to you if you aren't interested in any of the figures involved. If you are a Beat Generation fan, you will enjoy the chance to watch them interact with each other, and hear their spoken-word performances. Conversations revolve around the expected topics, such as literary composition and politics. The politics are not monolithic, ranging from Baraka's opposition to capitalism to Burroughs's opposition to Marxism. Best of all is hearing the poetry performed aloud, really the way it was meant to be experienced, rather than just eyeballed on a page. Unfortunately, most of the Beats are no longer around to give readings, so we only have recordings and films like this to give us the full impact.FRIED SHOES COOKED DIAMONDS is nothing like a comprehensive overview of the movement; it is a documentation of a particular moment in time, when the writers were no longer young scandalizers but were beginning to find their niche in academia, and attract young followers of their own. It's under an hour, and hard to find as of this writing (I saw it on an old Mystic Fire Video VHS), but where else are you going to get to see Anne Waldman in a bikini?
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