BEFORE: I'm once again plagued with technical problems - after getting that new (OK, not so new) DVR that holds more movies and thinking that it would still allow me to dub films to DVD. Well, the first film dubbed to DVD fine, the second one, not so much. I got an error message that told me that the second film couldn't be copied. Actually I got two different error messages, one after taping the film off of the recorded file from the DVR, and a different error message after taping the film from the OnDemand channel. The second error message read, "This content cannot be duplicated in video mode." OK, I'd never seen that error message before - does that imply that there is another "mode" under which it CAN be duplicated?
Perhaps - I checked the manual for my DVD recorder, and it said that for certain discs (DVD-RW instead of DVD-R) there are two modes, video mode and VR mode. I don't tend to use DVD-RW discs, but I could make the change, if it will still allow me to record films to physical media. I've got a few on hand, and I'm going to test it out tonight - when I insert a blank DVD-RW, I have to choose whether to record in video or VR mode, and apparently, theoretically, the VR mode will allow me to dub copyrighted content one time, if the manual is to be believed. If this works, I'm back in business, and if not, then I'm forced to convert to streaming, and/or deleting all movies from the DVR after viewing going forward. And thus I'll have to join the modern world, where movies are disposable, and everything then becomes pay-per-view.
Meanwhile, I was at my parents house over the weekend, and my plans involved watching "On the Road" via Netflix. I checked before leaving New York that this film was available on my phone, so even if I didn't have the film with me on DVD (and I didn't have time to work out the dubbing from the new DVR before I left) I could still watch it. But for some reason when I looked for the film on Netflix while in Massachusetts, it was gone. So technology got in the way again - every film that's on streaming services has an expiration date, and things are leaving Netflix all the time, with little or no warning. Oh, there are web-sites that will tell you "Here's a list of all the films leaving Netflix in June", which is fine - only "On the Road" was NOT on any of those lists. Not on the May list, either. So what gives? (I had such ambitious plans to watch "On the Road" while I was on the road - get it?)
Perhaps the available time period of this film just ran out, and it's so under-the-radar that it didn't make any of those lists. Which is fine, but then, don't tell me your list is ALL THE FILMS leaving Netflix when you clearly missed one. This is the dirty little secret of streaming services, there's a limit to how many films they can feature at one time, and so anything you want to watch could disappear without warning at any time. Hey, here's an idea, why not put a small banner on the icons of films that have, let's say, under 30 days left on their availability? That way anyone with a watchlist could properly prioritize the films they want to see, and have the opportunity to focus first on the films that are likely to disappear? Just saying.
This does not bode well for my planned "Summer Rock Concert" chain, since nearly half of those 45 documentaries are on Netflix. If any of them disappear between now and July/August, I could be in trouble. Having to watch 15 or 20 of those films on iTunes or Amazon instead could get expensive really quickly. Or worse, the chain linking all the movies could be broken.
But I knew this film was also available at home on Sundance's On Demand channel - that meant watching it with a few ads, and possibly a few edits for language/nudity, but at least that would be cheaper than getting it from iTunes or Amazon. But I lost another day, as this turned my Sunday film into my Monday night film. Fortunately I had 2 days extra built into the schedule, but now I've burned through those - which is fine, I'm still on track for both Father's Day and July 4, there's just no wiggle room right now for any more days off.
Kirsten Dunst carries over from "The Beguiled" - I've got a bunch more Nicole Kidman films, but I'll get to those in late October/early November if there are slots available.
THE PLOT: Young writer Sal Paradise has his life shaken up by the arrival of free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his girl, Marylou. As they travel across the country, they encounter a mix of people who each impact their journey indelibly.
AFTER: I'll be honest, before watching this I knew next to nothing about this book, or even the author Jack Kerouac. I thought I maybe knew the basics of the story (umm, guy goes on a road trip) but really, I had no idea what that entailed. For that matter, I've got a big blind spot in my literary knowledge about that whole era - Allen Ginsberg, J.D. Salinger, the whole Beat Generation (If there's time, I'll follow this up with "Rebel in the Rye" later this year and cover Salinger, too.) and also what all of their work is about - I've only been told second-hand that these works are somehow important.
But this film ended up confusing me more than anything else. Perhaps it was a mistake for me to look at the IMDB cast list first, because it made me approach this film as if each actor were playing dual roles - the actor playing Sal Paradise is also listed there as playing Jack Kerouac, while the actor playing Carlo Marx also plays Allen Ginsberg, and the actor credited for Old Bull Lee apparently also plays William S. Burroughs. What the hell? Was I about to witness some kind of "Wizard of Oz" set-up, where one character goes to another dimension or a fantasy land, where everyone there looks a little bit like someone he knows back on Earth? Just how is this story going to work, with each actor playing two roles?
Well, that's not what happened here. This is the story of Sal Paradise, who I guess both is and isn't Jack Kerouac. I mean, I'm forced to conclude that Jack Kerouac wrote a (mostly?) autobiographical tale of his journey across America, and he changed all the names of the people involved, including his own. Or perhaps this was written as a thinly-veiled roman a clef story, and over the years the readers figured out who really stood for who, and so when we look back at the story from a modern perspective, we can take it on good authority that THIS character is really Ginsberg and THAT one is really Burroughs, etc.
A quick check of Wikipedia confirms that this is most likely the case - for the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, a new version was released where the characters' names were changed to the beat poets and authors that they most likely represented. And Sal Paradise is apparently the alter ego of Kerouac, Dean Moriarty is author Neal Cassady, and so on. But even this presents me with a logical problem, because the film adaptation is the story of Sal Paradise, and at the end of the film, Sal creates an impossibly long scroll of typing paper, and sets out to type his novel "On the Road" in one sitting, without stopping for anything except shots of whiskey and the occasional cigarette. (And you KNOW how incredibly NON-cinematic it is to watch an author typing his novel on the big screen...) So Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road", and at the end of "On the Road", Sal Paradise writes "On the Road"? That's confusing at the very least, and possibly a reality paradox as well. Within "On the Road" there's a written version of "On the Road" - that's a lot like those old Marvel Comics where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby drew themselves into the scenes, interacting with the superheroes, so within the comic-book reality there's a fictional Marvel Comics that's also publishing comic books?
Putting reality-bending aside for a moment, I was still confused by this story - perhaps because I'm not familiar with the historical references, the social significance of the events depicted, so they just sort of became these five random road trips. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Without a framework to hang anything on, the things that occurred in the film made about as much sense to me as the proceedings at the Hotel in "The Lobster". I didn't know why any of these things were taking place, why THIS character left his relationship with THAT woman to go have a relationship with THAT one. So freakin' what? Who cares? I felt like characters were being introduced only to be abandoned a few scenes later, and then the story never followed up to tell us what happened to them.
And as a result of this - combined with the fact that the story changed the name of everyone involved, I almost felt at the end that I knew even LESS about Kerouac and the other Beat Generation authors than I did before, which doesn't seem right. Now I've got to go study the plot summary on Wikipedia, with the knowledge of who is really who, and try to figure out what is fact and what is fiction. I don't know, it seems like a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to just remain in blissful ignorance?
Essentially, there are five road trips depicted in the book - and by extension the movie. But they don't completely line up in this movie adaptation. But here are the trips, according to the film.
TRIP 1 - Sal is out partying with his friend Carlo, when they meet Dean. Dean and Carlo leave for Denver, and Sal eventually joins them there. In Denver Dean is with Camille, a woman he's divorcing his wife, Marylou, to be with. Complications arise when Sal realizes Dean is also fooling around with Carlo. Sal dances with Camille, but soon leaves on a bus, where he meets Terry. Sal goes to work in the fields of California with Terry, but then remembers he doesn't like to farm and heads back to New York.
TRIP 2 - Dean arrives at Sal's sisters house in North Carolina, where Sal and his mother are celebrating Christmas (how Dean knew where to go, I have no idea...). With Dean are his ex-wife Marylou, and his friend Ed. Dean drives Sal and Sal's mom back to New York at high-speed, then they all party in New York for New Year's, before driving down to Louisiana, where Ed's wife is. (He apparently left her in Tucson, and I'm not sure how she got from there to Louisiana...) Sal and Dean visit Old Bull Lee (Burroughs) and Ed's wife meets them there. Sal, Dean and Marylou drive off for San Francisco, where Dean goes back to his current wife Camille, and Sal hooks up with Marylou, before she returns to HER fiancé in Denver. Sal visits Dean and Camille, but they stay out too late at a jazz club, so when they return home, Camille throws Dean out. (And in the book, Sal returns here to New York, marking the end of Trip 2. But in the film, it's straight on to...)
TRIP 3 - Sal and Dean travel to Denver, where Dean is searching for his lost father, last seen living as a hobo. From there it's back to New York, via a ride-sharing arrangement with a thin man who confides that he "doesn't like girls". So Dean has sex with him in exchange for money.
TRIP 4 - Sal and Dean drive down to Mexico (in the book this is apparently more complicated, Sal takes the bus to Denver, and somehow learns that Dean has left NYC with a new car, and they somehow find each other and head south) and in Mexico they find a connection for pot and also visit a whorehouse. Sal gets sick with dysentery, and Dean bails on him, back to his complicated set of wives and ex-wives. Sal recovers and returns to New York.
TRIP 5 - Dean makes his way back to Manhattan, where he finds Sal again. (In the book this is also more complicated, Sal was living in NYC with a new girlfriend, Laura, and the two were planning to move to San Francisco. Dean made plans to drive them there, so he came to NY, but arrived too early.) But Sal has concert tickets, a night out planned with his girlfriend and friends, so he brushes Dean aside. And that's apparently the last time they saw each other.
It's all just so very basic, and I'm left wondering what the big frickin' deal is. I'm also wondering, geographically, why drive from North Carolina to New York, only to leave for Louisiana about a week later? This doesn't seem smart, I mean, North Carolina is a LOT closer to Louisiana than New York is, so they were already like halfway there! Why not just put Sal's mom on a train and head out to Louisiana from N.C., wouldn't that make more sense? It seems like there were frequently much more efficient ways of doing all this travel.
But again, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? I feel like I have to go very far out of my way to read between the lines here, and assume that there's some American post-war angst or uncertainty that can only be cured by going on long car trips with strangers who then become friends and/or lovers. Is that right? Or maybe there's a cultural rejection of the nuclear family and the so-called Christian values in order to embrace alcohol, drug use and open relationships. Am I getting closer? Is there going to be a quiz on this later in the semester? Perhaps this is the missing link, so to speak, between the upright moral values of the 1940's/1950's and the hedonism, drug use and free love movements of the 1960's? Getting warmer?
Still, I can't help but feel that something got lost in translation here, because all this meaning comes from me bringing something TO the story, rather than the story presenting themes and meaning to me. I'm not sure why I feel that way, that there's not much to this movie other than what I choose to see in it - perhaps it's because they trimmed the story way, way down and omitted a lot of details from the book. Since I never read the book, this doesn't affect me one way or the other, except perhaps for the lingering feeling that this story is now much too simple. Maybe the story was meant to work only as a book and not as a movie, because it did take several decades to work out the best way to adapt it. But whether this adaptation succeeded or failed, I leave up to each individual viewer - I for one can't really tell if I missed the deeper meaning, or if it just wasn't there to begin with.
I know that Francis Ford Coppola bought the film rights in 1979, and he tried to develop this story into a screenplay on and off for many years. He came close to directing it in 1990 with Ethan Hawke, Brad Pitt and Winona Ryder, but things didn't work out. By 2001 Joel Schumacher was attached as a director, with Billy Crudup and Colin Farrell to star, and this didn't work out either, nor did a later attempt by Gus Van Sant. What's funny is that during all that time in development hell, the whole world sort of changed, to the point where a story that had two male characters in a sexual relationship became no longer such a big deal, so perhaps it was fitting that adapting the book into a movie took such a long time. Maybe the world just wasn't ready for it, and even though it's now a period piece, we can now look back on it and we have to try to remember a time when such things were shocking and in some circles, forbidden to discuss.
I'm going to earmark this as my nod to Gay Pride month, even though it's set during a time when that wasn't even a thing. I can't get to "Call Me By Your Name" until after July 4, so this will have to do.
Also starring Sam Riley (last seen in "Maleficent"), Garrett Hedlund (last seen in "Unbroken"), Kristen Stewart (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Tom Sturridge (last seen in "Like Minds"), Amy Adams (last seen in "Leap Year"), Viggo Mortensen (last seen in "Appaloosa"), Alice Braga (last seen in "Elysium"), Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "Truth"), Danny Morgan, Steve Buscemi (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Terrence Howard (last seen in "Idlewild"), Giselle Itie, Coati Mundi (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Sarah Allen, Kim Bubbs, Joe Chrest, Paul Dillon, Frank Fontaine (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Robert Higden, Daniel Kash, Joey Klein, Rocky Marquette, Barry Del Sherman, Madison Wolfe (last seen in "Trumbo").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Benzedrine pills
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