Pull My Daisy
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Pull My Daisy is a 1959 American short film directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation.<ref name="Allan">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It features poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, art dealer Richard Bellamy, Delphine Seyrig, dancer<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Sally Gross, and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's son.
Plot
Cast
Production
Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.
Originally intended to be called The Beat Generation, the title Pull My Daisy was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in Amram's jazz composition that opens the film.
In an interview with American Legends website, David Amram recalled of the chaotic production: "It was at Jerry Newman’s studio. I played the piano. Jack just sat down, saw the massacring of what he had written and did this phenomenal narration to make it look like what it was supposed to be. When you see Pull My Daisy, close your eyes and just listen to Jack talking. That’s the whole value of it right there. If Jack hadn’t narrated it, it would have been just another home movie."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece. It was filmed in Alfred Leslie's loft at Fourth Ave. & 12th St. in Manhattan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Leslie and Frank discuss the film at length in Jack Sargeant's book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. An illustrated transcript of the film's narration was also published in 1961 by Grove Press.
Release
Pull My Daisy premiered at the 1959 San Francisco International Film Festival. It was then released theatrically by Emile de Antonio in 1960.<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/1960/04/10/archives/our-own-new-wave-local-film-makers-give-promise-of-more.html</ref><ref>https://www.nytimes.com/1961/10/15/archives/view-from-a-local-vantage-point.html</ref>
Reception
Pull My Daisy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
See also
References
External links
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- Pull My Daisy [1] on YouTube
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