Now It's Daniel Radcliffe's Turn to Play Allen Ginsberg
James Franco. Hank Azaria. David Cross. Ron Livingston. It's a broad range of actors who've been enlisted previously to play Beat icon Allen Ginsberg, none of them quite delivering the poet's intellect and spirit opposite the, er, best minds of his generation. Now comes the news that Daniel Radcliffe will take a shot of his own at Ginsberg in director John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings.
THR today followed up on news originally hinted at by MTV, confirming that the actor -- who's first post-Harry Potter role in The Woman in Black finally surfaces in theaters next month -- will star opposite Elizabeth Olsen, Dane DeHaan and Jack Huston. Set in 1944, it revolves around a murder that "draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs."
Radcliffe originally hesitated to commit to the project, but is enthusiastic enough. "It's one of the things that's on the table absolutely," he told MTV. "It would be amazing and I'm very, very enthused for that script and that young director. It's an independent film, it's welcome to the world of independent film — from one day to the next it could happen or not happen. Until I'm there on the set, I'm not going to say anything about it."
Too late! And here I thought Radcliffe would never wear glasses for a role again. Look for KYD in theaters in 2013, meaning a possible fall 2012 festival run. Developing...
[Photo: Getty Images]
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Comments
I'd like to see Paul Giamatti take on Allen Ginsberg, or some other actor who at least looks a little bit like him!
How about the zombie from Twilight?
James Franco in "Howl" was an interesting failure of a performance in a boring failure of a movie. David Cross in "I'm Not There" managed to pull off the Ginsberg look flawlessly in the only moderately successful segment of a fascinatingly ill-conceived experiment. For my money, though, nobody performed Ginsberg better than the man himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew6ef3nE-E4
Giamatti might do, as there's some personality, some depth there. But I think the point now is to blotch out the fact that people once were so personality rich and interesting -- way beyond our reach, but not so far beyond our recognition not to arouse anxiety. So we take them on and transform the singular into types.
That is very sad. Do you feel this way about all contemporary biopics, or are you just having a bad day?
I think I do feel this with all contemporary biopics, yes -- or at least when they're taking on greats like Freud, Hemingway, Stein, Ginsberg etc. "From now on we'll remember them and not the book," didn't bother me much with LOTR, but it does with much else since. These people were delving deeply into experience, and the mood seems to be to drift far away from it -- abstracted out.
This may just be a problem in general with making a film about a writer/abstract thinker/artist/etc. How does one synthesize a complicated life into 2 hours or less?
Just saw Soderbergh's "Che" recently, and that was certainly a noble attempt, though, again, I'm aware there is much controversy about the one-sidedness of that portrayal.
Personally, having met the man, I'd like someone to include some of the goofy side of Ginsberg in a film. Or even more interesting, to take on a woman poet of that time, like Anne Waldman (still living!).
Or from an even earlier generation, Adrienne Rich (still living!!). I guess my beef is more with the lack of female experience presented in biopics than with the lack of complexity in the films already made.
(That was in reply to Patrick's last comment.) Why are these Reply buttons so fickle?
[...] Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, an unhappy widowed lawyer who leaves his young son behind in London for a week to head out to the country, where he needs to wrap up the paperwork on an estate whose owner has recently died. His son will join him at the end of the week for a little holiday, though it quickly becomes apparent that that’s not such a good idea. En route by train to the village, Arthur meets one of the townspeople, Mr. Daily (Ciarán Hinds, whose half-jovial, half-haunted face was clearly invented by God to appear in just these sorts of ghost stories). Daily offers, a bit cautiously, to be of assistance. He also cautions Arthur that he’ll never find a local buyer for the house, and you can bet that termites or your garden-variety black mold aren’t the problem. [...]
I want to see Daniel Radcliffe in his next movie kill your darlings. I am big fan of daniel. I hope kill your darlings release in india (also in hindi language)