Beat Angel

I'd like to meet:

I'm interested in what you're doing too--keep those cards and letters coming in!

Music:

Beat Angel has a mostly jazz soundtrack, created by terrific players like Michael Bisio, Reade Whitwell, Brian Kent, Dan Blunck and Ray Downey. These guys are amazing. You'll hear some John Phillip Sousa and Scott Joplin, too.

Movies:

review:
"BEAT ANGEL is a remarkable film done in a style that is as original and refreshing as the work of Kerouac itself."
by David Amram
Spontaneous and always communicative, the film tells a story that keeps you engrossed, thanks to the brilliant performances of all the actors, who always seem as natural as Kerouac's characters do when you meet them while reading his books.
Like those of us who played jazz during our era, and told our musical stories by using the harmonies of familiar songs to improvise new stories based on familiar material, this film is equally well structured.
It is a series of variations and improvisations based on the spirit of our era, and the flavor of Jack's work, seen by young people in 2004, rather than being a docudrama or dramatization of Jack's books.
There are hilarious sendups of poetry slams, stone hearted publishers and Wanna-Beats, balanced by moments of passion and reflection that are deeply touching.
This film will, like Pull My Daisy find its own audience and enter into the tiny repertoire of films made about our spirit and our Era that will last.
It will be shown and appreciated as long as people read our books, look at our paintings and listen to our music.
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers and I all made Pull my Daisy in 1959 in part to show our kids and grandkids someday that we were for real and able to enjoy life and one another, rather than being a soured group of stereotypical "Beats." Pull My Daisy reflected the fun we had together, as well as the hard work we did when alone.
Like Pull My Daisy and  Henry Ferrini's masterpiece Lowell Blues, Beat Angel is free of any Hollyweirdness and Post Modern gloom.  Instead, Beat Angel is full of soulfulness, joy, surprises, warmth and humor, always full of positive energy, all of which serve as a refreshing antidote to those who wish to incarcerate our spontaneous and idealistic visions of America into the academic tombs of a Penitentiary of the Beat Generation, to be squeezed drop by drop from a bottle of "Beat" Formaldehyde, rather than opening up the doors and inviting everyone to join us.
Beat Angel is a celebratory toast to Jack and all of us, with drinks on the house!!
David Amram is a composer/conductor/multi-instrumentalist and was Kerouac's principal musical collaborator 1956 until his death.  He has composed motion picture scores including The Manchurian Candidate and is the author of the book, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac.
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Our DVD sleeve art and poster were designed and set up by Marcia Guderian
Besides being a skilled graphic art designer, Marcia's also a super-talented musician and singer/songwriter--so whether you need professional graphics, or you're a musician looking to network, or a venue manager booking musicians, Marcia is a good friend to know.
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Television:

Books:

Here's a summary Kerouac list for your bibliographical convenience:

JACK KEROUAC
(Mar 12, 1922 – Oct 21, 1969)
drawing by Laurel Burke
PROSE:
Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings
An anthology of Kerouac's early work, published by Viking Press in 1991. Includes writings from Kerouac's high school years, poetry, short stories, essays and other previously unpublished works, plus an introduction by its editor Paul Marion with notes on the stories in the book. ISBN 0670888222
Visions of Gerard
1963 novel. Unique among Kerouac's novels, Visions of Gerard focuses on the scenes and sensations of childhood as evidenced in the tragically short yet happy life of his older brother, Set in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, it is a beautiful but unsettling exploration of the meaning and precariousness of existence. ISBN 0140144528
Doctor Sax
(Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three)
Novel published in 1959. Kerouac wrote it in 1952 while living with William S. Burroughs in Mexico City. ISBN 0802130496
The Town and the City
Novel published by Harcourt Brace in 1950, Kerouac's first major work. Less directly autobiographical than most of his other works. Written in a conventional manner before Kerouac had developed his own style, and heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe. ISBN 0156907909
Maggie Cassidy
1959 novel written about his times in Lowell, MA from 1938 to 1939. Chronicles Jack's real life relationship with teen age heart-throb Mary Carney. ISBN 0140179062
Vanity of Duluoz
(full title Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46)
1968 autobiographical novel describing the adventures of Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, covering the period 1935 to 1946. Includes his high school experiences in Lowell, education at Columbia University, WW II naval service, and culminating with the beginnings of the Beat movement. ISBN 0140236392
On the Road
Novel published by Viking Press in 1957, a largely autobiographical work written as a stream of consciousness and based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. Considered the defining work of the postwar Beat Generation. ISBN 0140042598
Visions of Cody
Perhaps Kerouac's most stylistically free and varied novel. Written in 1951-1952 and not published in its entirety until 1973; by then it had achieved an underground reputation. Since its first printing, Visions of Cody has been published with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg titled The Visions of the Great Rememberer. ISBN 0140179070
The Subterraneans
1958 novel, a semi-fictional account of Kerouac's short romance with an African American woman named Alene Lee in New York in 1953. In the novel she is renamed Mardou Fox, a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. ISBN 0802131867
Tristessa
A 1960 short novel set in Mexico City, based on Kerouac's relationship with a Mexican prostitute named Esperanza ("hope" in Spanish); he changed her name to Tristessa ("tristeza" means sadness in Spanish). ISBN 0140168117
The Dharma Bums
1958 novel semi-fictional accounts based on events occurring years after On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet, essayist and Buddhist Gary Snyder. Largely examining a duality in Kerouac's life and ideals: the relationship of the outdoors, mountaineering and hitchhiking, with his "city life" of jazz clubs, poetry readings and drunken parties. Ends on Desolation Peak. ISBN 0140042520
Lonesome Traveler
1960 compilation of Kerouac's journal entries about traveling America and various exploits. ISBN 0802130747
Desolation Angels
Published in 1965, written years earlier, one of Kerouac's most autobiographical novels. Picks up where The Dharma Bums leaves off. The opening section is taken almost directly from the journal he kept when he was a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state. ISBN 1573225053
Big Sur
1962 novel recounting the tale of a writer who borrows the cabin of a friend for a while, struggling to get over what might be a nervous breakdown, or alcoholism, or both. The writer lives a happy, contemplative life of simple pleasures until his craving for company drives him back to the city. An extremely dark book, and deals very directly and explicitly with Delerium Tremens. ISBN 0140168125
Satori in Paris
A short, semi-autobiographical 1966 novel of a man who travels to Paris, then Brittany, to do research on his genealogy. Relates his trip in a tumbledown fashion as a lonesome traveler. Little is said about the research that he does, and much more about his interactions with the French people he meets. ISBN 0394174372 (1966), ISBN 0802130615 (1988)
Pic
1971 novel written in a black dialect, the story of a small child from North Carolina. Pic's grandfather dies and his older brother appears and plucks him from his aunt's disfunctional home. They journey north to New York City, where Pic witnesses his brother's hard times, and they eventually try to hitchhike their way across the country. ISBN 0704311224 (1971), Satori in Paris & Pic, ISBN 0802130615 (1988)
Old Angel Midnight
Assembled from five notebooks, published in 1959. Called "a continuous prose poem," spanning 1956-59 when Kerouac immersed himself in Buddhism. ISBN 0912516966
Book of Dreams
A 2001 edition of Kerouac's "private dream diaries" presents the entire original manuscript, including some 200-odd dreams not published in the first 1961 selection. "In the Book of Dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about." ISBN 0872863808
Good Blonde & Others
Collection of writings published in 1993: Kerouac hitches a ride to San Francisco with a blonde, travels with Beat photographer Robert Frank, takes bus through the Northwest and Montana, discusses the beginnings of the Beats, "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" etc. ISBN 0912516224
Orpheus Emerged
Novella written in 1945 while Kerouac was at Columbia University; not published until its discovery by the Kerouac estate in 2002. Chronicles the passions, conflicts, and dreams of a group of NY Bohemians--Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr, et. al.--searching for truth. ISBN 0743475143
Book of Sketches
Collection of poems transcribed from journals Kerouac kept between 1952 and 1954, puiblished by Penguin in 2006. ISBN 0142002151
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
Unpublished 1945 work written with William S. Burroughs. Intended to be a mystery novel, Burroughs later dismissed it as "not a distinguished work." Kerouac and Burroughs were unable to get the book published, and only fragments exist today, some of which were published in the Burroughs compilation Word Virus (ISBN 080213694X).
POETRY, LETTERS, AUDIO RECORDINGS and other writings:
Mexico City Blues
(1959) A poem composed of 242 "choruses" or stanzas. With this book Kerouac sought to write in a way consistent with how a musician would play jazz. Kerouac attempts to use all of his methods for creating spontaneous works and is highly successful. ISBN 0802130607
Scattered Poems
(1971) Published by City Lights. ISBN 0872860647
Heaven and Other Poems
Publisher by Grey Fox Press in 1981. ISBN 0912516313
Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road from SF to NY
(1998) Grey Fox Press. With Albert Saijo and Lew Welch. Haiku composed by Kerouac, Albert Saijo, and Lew Welch as they traveled from San Francisco to New York in 1959. ISBN 0912516046
Pomes All Sizes
(1992) City Lights. A fun body of poems: Mexican Loneliness, How to Meditate, The Moon, Skid Row Wine, Long Island Chinese Poem Rain, Silly Goofball Pomes, God, Bowery Blues, etc. ISBN 0872862690
San Francisco Blues
(1995) Penguin. Poetry, as only Kerouac conceived. ISBN 0146001184
Book of Blues
(1995) Penguin. With Robert Creeley. Eight long, previously unpublished poems written between 1954 and 1961, "limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they were written." ISBN 0140587004
Book of Haikus
(2003) Penguin. Over 500 poems, including an incomplete draft of a haiku manuscript found in Kerouac's archives supplemented by Regina Weinreich. ISBN 014200264X
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
(1994) City Lights. Meditations, koans, poems. ISBN 0872862917
Wake Up
Unpublished 1955 biography of Siddhartha Gautama.
Some of the Dharma
(1999) Penguin. Large tome (432 pages) started by Kerouac in 1951 as a journal of his Buddhist studies. Posthumously published. ISBN 0140287078
Beat Generation
A play written in 1957 but not discovered or published until 2005, in which year it was first produced, in England. (2005) Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1560257423
Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
(1996) Penguin. A prolific correspondent, Kerouac's letters fill 656 pages in the first volume. ISBN 0140234446
Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1957-1969
(2000) Penguin. Second volume, 656 pages. ISBN 0140296158
Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac
(2004) Viking Adult. From Kerouac's journals recording his progress on "The Town and the City," 1947 to September 1948. ISBN 0670033413
Safe In Heaven Dead
(1990) Hanuman Books. "Hanuman Book No. 42" -- Fragmentsof interviews with Kerouac. ISBN 0937815446
Conversations with Jack Kerouac
(2005) University Press of Mississippi. Includes interview segments from The Paris Review, The Village Voice, and a confrontation with Mike Wallace. ISBN 1578067553, ISBN 1578067561
Empty Phantoms
(2005) Thunder's Mouth Press, by Paul Maher. Transcriptions of printed, recorded, and filmed interviews of Kerouac, including ones by Mike Wallace and William F. Buckley. ISBN 1560256583
Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings
(2004) Thunder's Mouth Press. Fascinating reproductions of 50 paintings in color and 50 sketchbook pages by Kerouac, with text by Ed Adler and an introduction by historian Douglas Brinkley. Illuminates Kerouac's preoccupation with Catholic and Buddhist themes. ISBN 1560256214
Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation
(first issued 1959) Audio CD, Polygram Records. Kerouac reading his own words casts new light on his writings, from: San Francisco Scene, San Francisco Blues, Lucien Midnight: The Sounds Of The Universe In My Window, History Of Bop, The Subterraneans, Visions Of Neal (Neal And The Three Stooges). ASIN B0000047EY
The Jack Kerouac Collection
(1990) Audio CD (3 discs), Rhino / Wea. Extensive audio collection of Kerouac reading his work. Disc 1 contains 15 selections of the famous sessions with piano accompaniment by Steve Allen . ASIN B0000032RQ
Reads On The Road
(1990/1999) Audio CD, Rykodisc. Kerouac reads selections from On the Road. Some selections include musical accompaniment by his friend and collaborator, composer David Amram. ASIN B00001IVLG
Poetry For The Beat Generation
(first issued 1959) Hanover (LP #5000). Kerouac's debut spoken word album. Accompanied by Steve Allen on the piano. Recorded in 1958 and first released in 1959.
Blues And Haikus
(first issued 1960) Hanover (LP #5006) and (1990 re-issue) Rhino (Audio CD 3-disc Box Set, Selection # 70939). Kerouac reads more of his work: American Haikus, Hard Hearted Old Farmer, The Last Hotel/Some Of The Dharma, Poems From The Unpublished "Book Of Blues." Includes musical accompaniment by Steve Allen, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, and liner notes by numerous Kerouac associates including Wm. S Burroughs. Rhino UPC 081227093921
Doctor Sax & Great World Snake
(2003) Gallery Six. Illustrated Play Adaptation with Audio CD (2 discs). Based on the novel Doctor Sax. Voice acting: Robert Creeley: narration; Jim Carroll: Jackie Duluoz, Count Condu: Robert Hunter: Doctor Sax; Lawrence Ferlinghetti: the Wizard; Kate Pierson: Vamp Contessa; Graham Parker: Baroque; score by John Medeski. ISBN 0972973303
* * * Adapted from Wikipedia bibliography at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_kerouac and other sources. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
ISBN numbers usually represent a specific edition; other editions may exist.
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More about "me"

I joined MySpace mostly to tell people about Beat Angel but I must say it's been nice to get acquainted with many thoughtful, funny & talented people. Along with filmmaking and my longstanding interest in Kerouac and the ideals of Beatitude, I like to play guitar--mostly solo arrangements of old jazz ballads and popular tunes, but I also like to play rock and blues when I get a chance to jam with friends. I like all kinds of music---yes, even Country. In college I studied music and geography, I'm a history buff and I read a lot about current events. I'm a 49-year-old "hippie" who never got a real job and other grownup stuff. I live with my cat and have cool friends who tolerate my corny humor. I live pretty simply, I no longer own a car since I don't really need one and I think we should probably use less gasoline. I can be an opinionated boor but I try not to be too judgemental. I'm addicted to coffee and tobacco and I usually roll my own cigarettes. My favorite place to be is high in the mountains--that is, I love alpine backpacking--or at the ocean shore. I can see the argument for eliminating capital letters on the Internet but can't bring myself to do it. I hold to no creed but the primacy of the spirit. I like to express myself--somebody stop me!

Heroes:

the investors in Beat Angel, and my Beat Angel partners Bruce and Frank and Vincent Balestri. Oh, and people who buy the DVD, or just like the movie, you're my heroes.