The Coen brothers have been very open about the various influences behind their new film, Inside Llewyn Davis. Most prominent, the film’s titular character is inspired by legendary folk-musician Dave Van Ronk. The Coens mined Van Ronk’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, for details, but — despite some minor similarities (his album cover for Inside Dave Van Ronk is identical to Llewyn’s, and inspired the film’s name) — Van Ronk’s personality and career were very different from those of Llewyn. To find out what else in the Coen brothers’ world rang true or false, we consulted two people who lived through the real thing — Terri Thal, Van Ronk's first wife, and Sylvia Topp, wife of Tuli Kupferberg, author, poet. and lead singer of political-rock band the Fugs.Both women lived in Greenwich Village during the time the film’s events take place, and both were deeply...
- 12/11/2013
- by Katie Calautti
- Vulture
Is the new film about Allen Ginsberg and the Howl obscenity trial a little too sane?
Allen Ginsberg, who set out to change the world so that he could fit into it, was admitted to the Columbia Psychiatric Institute, in upper Manhattan, in 1949. He was 23. On his first day there, he met Carl Solomon, two years younger but already bearing a history of mental imbalance. Solomon was well-read, with a special interest in the French symbolist writer Antonin Artaud, who had died in a lunatic asylum the previous year, and who Solomon believed had appointed him his representative in America.
The two psychiatric cases sized each other up. "I'm Prince Myshkin", Ginsberg said, alluding to the gentle anti-hero of Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot. The reference would have escaped most inmates, but Solomon got it. "And I'm Kirilov", he replied (from The Possessed). A friendship had begun, which would be immortalised in a declamatory,...
Allen Ginsberg, who set out to change the world so that he could fit into it, was admitted to the Columbia Psychiatric Institute, in upper Manhattan, in 1949. He was 23. On his first day there, he met Carl Solomon, two years younger but already bearing a history of mental imbalance. Solomon was well-read, with a special interest in the French symbolist writer Antonin Artaud, who had died in a lunatic asylum the previous year, and who Solomon believed had appointed him his representative in America.
The two psychiatric cases sized each other up. "I'm Prince Myshkin", Ginsberg said, alluding to the gentle anti-hero of Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot. The reference would have escaped most inmates, but Solomon got it. "And I'm Kirilov", he replied (from The Possessed). A friendship had begun, which would be immortalised in a declamatory,...
- 2/12/2011
- by James Campbell
- The Guardian - Film News
By Christopher Stipp
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
Sanctum and The Mechanic - Advance Screenings
I haven’t heard anything about these films.
Whether the buzz is great, whether the buzz is tepid, I couldn’t tell you. That’s exactly why I’m looking forward to sending some of you guinea pigs to see the latest from Jason Statham on Tuesday, January 25th at 7 p.m. at Harkins Tempe Martketplace and then on February 1st at 7 p.m. at Harkins Tempe Marketplace as well.
It’ll be a 2 for 1 if you like or, if you so choose, you can pick one or the other. Either way, you’ll be seeing either the latest from the brawniest Englishman this side of the Atlantic or the latest creation blessed by the wizard himself,...
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
Sanctum and The Mechanic - Advance Screenings
I haven’t heard anything about these films.
Whether the buzz is great, whether the buzz is tepid, I couldn’t tell you. That’s exactly why I’m looking forward to sending some of you guinea pigs to see the latest from Jason Statham on Tuesday, January 25th at 7 p.m. at Harkins Tempe Martketplace and then on February 1st at 7 p.m. at Harkins Tempe Marketplace as well.
It’ll be a 2 for 1 if you like or, if you so choose, you can pick one or the other. Either way, you’ll be seeing either the latest from the brawniest Englishman this side of the Atlantic or the latest creation blessed by the wizard himself,...
- 1/21/2011
- by Christopher Stipp
By Christopher Stipp
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
The Dilemma -Advance Screening
After all the brouhaha concerning whether Vince Vaughn’s character could say whether a car was or was not “ghey” (spelled the way the Internet intended) the movie is finally here to say once and for all if a vehicle is capable of having a sexual preference. Yes, I know, these are probably the same radicals who think that censoring Huck Finn of its nasty n-words was a good idea. It isn’t and it’s a form of censorship and good for Ron Howard for keeping the joke in tact. In fact, I may even buy a ticket just for pushing aside those who think he should have excised it from the film.
For those of you...
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
The Dilemma -Advance Screening
After all the brouhaha concerning whether Vince Vaughn’s character could say whether a car was or was not “ghey” (spelled the way the Internet intended) the movie is finally here to say once and for all if a vehicle is capable of having a sexual preference. Yes, I know, these are probably the same radicals who think that censoring Huck Finn of its nasty n-words was a good idea. It isn’t and it’s a form of censorship and good for Ron Howard for keeping the joke in tact. In fact, I may even buy a ticket just for pushing aside those who think he should have excised it from the film.
For those of you...
- 1/7/2011
- by Christopher Stipp
Chicago – James Franco gave a riveting performance in Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” that is likely to earn one of the best actors of his generation an Academy Award nomination in a few weeks, but it wasn’t his only stellar turn in 2010. He also thoroughly delivered as the legendary poet Allen Ginsberg in the hybrid “Howl,” a film that’s part poem, part courtroom drama, and part history lesson. It doesn’t always come together but it’s worth seeing just for Franco’s work and the strength of the source material alone.
Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0
The name of the film refers to Ginsberg’s legendary 1955 poem, one that not only inspired an increasingly important cultural movement but nearly got its author thrown in jail. Over half a century after its release, “Howl” still has incredible power, something obviously recognized by writer/directors Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman as they eschew the...
Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0
The name of the film refers to Ginsberg’s legendary 1955 poem, one that not only inspired an increasingly important cultural movement but nearly got its author thrown in jail. Over half a century after its release, “Howl” still has incredible power, something obviously recognized by writer/directors Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman as they eschew the...
- 1/6/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Tuli Kupferberg is better off dead. My friend and counter-cultural icon had been suffering from a couple of strokes, hospitals, breathing tubes, feeding tubes, anemia, infections, blindness, catheter, hearing aids, wheelchairs, psychosis, memory loss, diapers, constipation, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, fatigue and a chronically bed-ridden life that seemed to be no life worth living. Tuli was a dedicated truthseeker, and I'd like to honor that quality with a couple of truths. There was a rumor that Philip Roth had lifted the onanistically obsessed idea for Portnoy's Complaint from a song by the Fugs -- a band on the cusp of rock and punk, named after Norman Mailer's euphemism for fuck in The Naked and the Dead -- but this notion was disavowed by Fugs leader Ed Sanders, who assured me, "Philip Roth did not plagiarize a Fugs song. He came to a Fugs show...
- 7/14/2010
- by Paul Krassner
- Huffington Post
Fugs co-founder Tuli Kupferberg, a social and political provocateur for decades, died yesterday at the age of 86. The longtime downtown-Manhattan resident, whose wife, Sylvia Topp, is a freelance copy editor for Vanity Fair and a writer, started out as a jazz-loving Beat poet but became best known for the underground group he formed with his friend Ed Sanders, then the owner of a Village bookstore, in 1965. Proto-punks, the largely untrained Fugs—whose name Kupferberg derived from Norman Mailer’s substitution (under pressure) for “fuck” in The Naked and the Dead—played their often ribald songs with exuberant abandon; they were a staple at anti-war protests, performing such songs as “Kill for Peace.” “We vowed to live from our art, to have fun and party continuously, and to get our brains on tape,” Sanders has written on the band’s Web site. With that vow, Kupferberg, then in his 40s, paved...
- 7/13/2010
- Vanity Fair
In 1955, Allen Ginsberg performed a poem about sex, drugs and race that became a battlecry for the Us counterculture. It also led to an obscenity trial. B Ruby Rich on a new film about the epic Howl
On 7 October 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg brought the house down with a performance of his hallucinatory new poem, Howl. Among other things, this epic work in four parts dealt with drugs, mental illness, religion, homosexuality – the fears and preoccupations of a generation. Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were both in the audience. Ginsberg was 29 years old. Also present was the future choreographer and film-maker Yvonne Rainer. A teenager at the time, Rainer still clearly remembers that night: "Ginsberg, quite drunk, clean-shaven, in black suit and tie-less white shirt, holding a jug of rot-gut red wine, intoning and chanting the poem." Back then, the beats were in thrall to...
On 7 October 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg brought the house down with a performance of his hallucinatory new poem, Howl. Among other things, this epic work in four parts dealt with drugs, mental illness, religion, homosexuality – the fears and preoccupations of a generation. Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were both in the audience. Ginsberg was 29 years old. Also present was the future choreographer and film-maker Yvonne Rainer. A teenager at the time, Rainer still clearly remembers that night: "Ginsberg, quite drunk, clean-shaven, in black suit and tie-less white shirt, holding a jug of rot-gut red wine, intoning and chanting the poem." Back then, the beats were in thrall to...
- 1/21/2010
- by B Ruby Rich
- The Guardian - Film News
Eighty-six-year-old Tuli Kupferberg co-founded The Fugs in New York back in 1964, when the city was cooler than any hopeless romantic could ever imagine. A poet, cartoonist, and musician, Tuli, whose wife Sylvia Topp is a freelance copy editor at Vanity Fair, was an influential member of the Beat movement. He was at the forefront of the anti-war movement during the height of the Vietnam war, and even wrote a satirical pamphlet titled “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft.” Kupferberg suffered two strokes, in April and September of 2009, and though he can speak clearly and is recovering, the medical expenses—which are not covered by Medicare—are an immense burden. So his friends and fellow musicians—among them Lou Reed and Sonic Youth—banded together to organize a benefit for Tuli. This Friday, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, The Fugs and special guests will play to raise money to help...
- 1/20/2010
- Vanity Fair
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