Pull My Daisy (1959)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEMHM-DgtZI

“Early morning in the universe” begins the this rare film I found on YouTube in three parts. It's fun to watch when you have a little background info on the cast of characters. Shot in his Manhattan loft at 4th Avenue and 12th Street, painter Alfred Leslie directed and the footage was filmed by documentary photographer, Robert Frank. His book of photographs, The Americans was already famous and included an introduction by Jack Kerouac...To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.

The film is based on the third act of Jack Kerouac’s unpublished play The Beat Generation, based on true events of 1955 when he and Allen Ginsberg were invited to Neal Cassady's home in Los Gatos, California for a meeting with Bishop Romano. Cassady greatly admired the man for his openness of thought. Cassady peppered the Bishop with questions about Zen, but the gathering deteriorated, eventually driving away the Bishop and his entourage.

The Neal Cassady character, Milo, is played by the painter Larry Rivers. Actress Delphine Seyrig plays his wife. Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso were signed on to play versions of themselves. Art dealer Richard Bellamy plays the Bishop. Painter Alice Neel is the Bishop’s mother.

Allen, Peter, and Gregory thought it was wonderful to be paid eighteen dollars a day to clown around. While Kerouac was banned from the set for fear he would stir up chaos, Leslie later took the film to him and played it three times. Each time, Kerouac improvised a narration. In the late forties Ginsberg and Kerouac had composed a poem together and called it “Pull My Daisy," a slang term for the act of removing a stripper’s g-string.