1960 was the year when Hollywood would attempt to make a serious film about the beat generation and an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's book "The Subterraneans was it. Set in San Francisco and starring George Peppard as Leo Percepied and Leslie Caron as Mardou Fox. The film didn't go over too well, audiences weren't impressed with the melodrama and Kerouac was pissed as well. In the book, Mardou Fox is a black girl. Hollywood producers, however, not yet prepared to tackle subjects like inter racial love, decided that making her French was enough of a culture shock for the moment. That was pretty much the end, as before, the beats went back to being the subject of exploitation material.
This the story of a new Bohemia...where the young gather to create and to destroy. In all times, in all cities, for good or for evil, the young bohemians have been the makers of the future. They are foolish and they have genius. You will find them on the left bank in Paris, in London's Soho, in Greenwich Village and here in San Francisco, in the area known as the North Beach.
"I haven't made any friends yet, mother. I'm still looking for them. I'm 28 and I'm still looking for someone to talk to. I look in bars, on banana boats, working on railroads, running all over the world, searching for friends, one friend, a woman."
"Medusa !!"
"Come to never never land, a mile or two beyond morning and a turn to the right."
"Don't touch me."
"I'm not touching you."
"You are...you are. You're eyes are touching me."
"We are subterraneans. We live in cellars, in bars, in dark rooms. We live underground, but we are looking for the light."
"where did the spaghetti come from ?"
"It's free ! That's why it's so precious. The poet and painters mission."
"Don't you ever get tired of painting your own face?"
"Why should I. It smiles at me from time to time, the rest of the world only frightens me."
"The only sanity worth having lies on the other side of madness !"
Dancing in the mission
"It's daylight...and that's the worst. All night is magic, even the lights are gay, for a while, at least, things shine in the dark...and then daylight comes...it's hard to fool sunlight, you can't fool it."
"there's only so much time, you know, and it's never enough. It's like trying to eat everything in the world in just a few minutes."
"He's a writer. Maybe you don't know what writers are. They watch themselves live with a cold, deadly, analytical eye. Now I'm in pain, the writer says, now I love. What are my reactions ? How will I write them down ? when he finishes the book, he finishes the love affair...I hate writers."
"And now we'll have a reading of his latest poem by Tyler Doone."
"Hydrogen...is a gas!
I went down to the city, it glowed in the dark."
"Hey! That's my book. Don't you dare throw that book at me! I put all the truth into that that I knew, it's only this that keeps me from being an ant, a fly, a nothing...it doesn't sell, but it's mine."
The Gerry Mulligan Quintet
