If you haven’t read Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, you can read it or listen to him read it here.

I wouldn’t call the movie Howl a biopic. For one thing, I always want to pronounce biopic “bi-opp-ick” but that doesn’t seem to make as much sense as “bio-pick.” After all, I think it’s short for biography picture. I’m not entirely sure which one is correct. However, the better reason not to call it a biopic is that it isn’t one. The film weaves three very different parts together to tell the story of Ginsberg’s most famous poem: James Franco portraying Ginsberg, mostly in an interview or public-reading format; dramatized courtroom scenes from the Howl obscenity trial; and an animated interpretation of the poem with Franco’s voice over. It’s only about Ginsberg in so much as he wrote Howl and the film is mostly an adaptation of the poem.

Since it’s a movie about a writer, there are scenes of him at a typewriter. With little narrative outside the poem, there wasn’t room for scenes of him drinking or a montage of him being rejected. The trial is slotted in out of context, and the interviews are interspersed with one-dimensional interpretations of important moments and people in Ginsberg’s life. It’s kind of like they couldn’t make a documentary because everyone was dead, so they hired actors instead. The trial is fascinating (in fact, it could have been expanded upon for its own movie) and Franco really captured Ginsberg emotionally, even if at times he seemed to be doing an impersonation of him. I liked what they did, and I wanted them to do it more. More trial. More of Ginsberg’s relationships. Heck, even more groovy readings. There was only one thing I wanted less of, and it dominated the film: the animation.

I loved that we got to hear the whole poem. But usually the poem was accompanied by animation that just didn’t serve the film. It was distracting and embarrassing, turning a good idea into something I tried not to laugh at. Structurally, it’s innovative. And it almost works.  There are glimpses of the gritty, graphic novel style that could make for an edgy interpretation of Howl. The animator worked with Ginsberg on illustrated poetry books, so I can see the reasoning. But most of the animation kind of looked like a Hallmark card with the occasional wiener drawn on it.

Here is a sparkly saxophone man:

And here are zooming spirits:

And here is the wiener I promised you, but just the tip:

I couldn’t get a screen shot of it, but there is a part where someone comes down to ride one of the cocks in the flower-field of growing genitalia. For reals. Most of the computer animation looks outdated. I get the feeling that there was such loyalty to Ginsberg’s wishes and vision that it didn’t occur to anyone that they didn’t have to use 1990s animation.

The film lacked the obnoxious deference to the Beat Generation that seems to plague every discussion and dramatization of their lives and work. Instead of repeatedly telling you this was an IMPORTANT POEM, the film showed you. The appearances by Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and the gang were light to the point that I wanted more of them (and less of the damn animation). Did I mention I didn’t like the animation?

OVERALL RATING: C+

RATING IF YOU DON’T INCLUDE THE ANIMATION: B+

INSIGHT INTO WRITER: B

ACTING: A-

CLICHE SCENES OF WRITER BEING WRITERLY: C- (Meaning there weren’t a lot of them! More typing montages, people!)

Lots of writers are on Twitter. A good deal of them seem uncomfortable as they go through the motions of “social media” or so marketing-oriented that you kind of want to slap them. Margaret Atwood has found her own weird and totally awesome way to use Twitter. Her Twitter updates are genuine, personal … and often confusing. But some of her latest exploits on there are making me insanely happy (and a little jealous).

One Twitter user recommended Atwood’s books to a friend. Atwood replied with a “thank you,” which would be the end of it for most people. Well, you can see the whole exchange here … but it ended with Atwood designing superhero costumes for the person who recommended the books and her friend. What? That is the best in the world! You say you like some  books and then the author draws special superhero costumes for you. That is the BEST.

Here’s one of them:

Welcome to our new series where we review movies about writers. First up: Cross Creek.

Cross Creek is the 1983 film about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings as portrayed by Mary Steenburgen. Rawlings is the author of children’s classics like Jacob’s Ladder and The Yearling. I have never read these books because I am afraid they will traumatize me like Where the Red Fern Grows did when I was a child. I will never watch Old Yeller either.

Anyway, Cross Creek is an awesome movie. It is the awesome-ist. Which is not to say it is a good movie. In fact, it is a very bad movie. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it. You should! It has everything a movie about a writer should have, such as typing on typewriters, drinking whiskey, crying over rejection letters, and overcoming obstacles to a swelling musical score. It even has someone named Peter Coyote in it:

Also, Cross Creek has the single most awesome scene about writing that I have witnessed in a movie. I will get to that in a minute, but first, the plot:

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is an uppity woman. She is dissatisfied because she wants to be a writer, her soul yearns to be a writer, but she is not having any luck. The trouble is, she is writing gothic romances, which is a classic mistake of women writers in movies. As Jo learns in Little Women, in order for a woman to write well-received children’s fiction, she must write from life, not her private erotic longings. She must write what she knows.

At the beginning of Cross Creek, Rawlings hasn’t learned this lesson yet, so she decides to leave her husband and move to the tiny town of Cross Creek, Florida. Her plan is simple: have an orange grove, which will finance her writing while she finishes her gothic romance, which she will then sell to famous editor Maxwell Perkins. What can go wrong?

A lot, it turns out. As soon as Marjorie arrives in Cross Creek, there are problems. Her car breaks down and she is surprised to learn that backwoods Florida towns don’t have taxis. Then a man (Peter Coyote) immediately falls in love with her, which is inconvenient and pisses her off. Also, she finds that the house that she purchased sight unseen is a broken-down shack. That last point is quite a blow to Marjorie. She does not have the time for a cheerful cleaning-the-house scene like in Snow White. She is not Snow White, damn it, she is Hemingway with breasts.

But Marjorie is determined to overcome these obstacles. I mean look at this woman:

Sourpuss? Yes, but also: focused. She will write a gothic romance. So Marjorie drags her typewriter onto the porch and begins to write. But people keep interrupting her. There’s the man who insists on being in love with her. There are the neighbors. And then there’s Geechee, a black woman who appears at her house and insists that Marjorie hire her as her “girl.” Marjorie is torn. She likes the idea of having someone clean up the mess, but she isn’t sure she can trust Geechee not to bother her while she writes.

Seeing her hesitation, Geechee makes a good argument. “If I don’t suit you, you can cut my thoat!” she declares.

Marjorie hires Geechee and settles into life at Cross Creek. When her orange grove doesn’t get properly irrigated, she goes out and digs a ditch just like a man. She socializes with the local people, enjoying their crazy ignorant folksiness. She allows the man who is in love with her to fix her car and then bakes him a pie.

And she drinks. This is the other thing I love about Cross Creek, the drinking. Boy, does Marjorie drink. She is constantly swilling moonshine out of tin cups or glasses, and she does it with such ladylike precision that it is just riveting.

In movies about writers, drinking always aids the completion of a manuscript, so Marjorie finishes her gothic romance in no time and sends it out to be published.

Now. I am going to tell you a spoiler. I have to tell you this in order to get to the most awesome scene ever, and I don’t see any way around it. Ready?

Maxwell Perkins rejects the gothic romance.

I know! Can you believe it? He writes Marjorie a letter explaining that she is a wonderful writer, but she should be writing from life, not about English castles that she has never been to. It’s a lot like in that scene from Anne of Avonlea when Gilbert tells Anne to write in plain English not “high-faluting mumbo jumbo” and Anne gets mad and stomps away and won’t talk to him for weeks as punishment. Marjorie reacts a lot like this, except that unlike Anne, she goes on a bender.

Here she is drinking moonshine while dressed in a white nightgown. It is raining and she is upset. Wrapped in a bathrobe, she goes outside to drunkenly wander in the rain. But then she has an epiphany. Slowly she turns back to the house, amazement on her face. The orchestration swells and she rushes back to her typewriter to write “Jacob’s Ladder,” her best-selling short story. Flushed with inspiration and booze, she types and types. She will not eat. She will not change out of her white nightgown. Geechee is concerned she is going nuts, but she does not care. She has a story to write.

Finally, she finishes Jacob’s Ladder and stands up. She stretches and finishes up her current glass of moonshine. AND THEN she hears the sounds of her neighbor’s pigs outside. They had been in her flower garden earlier in the movie and she did not like it. Now, wild eyed with drink and creative inspiration, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings grabs a gun, runs out into the rain, and shoots the pigs.

Yes! This is the scene!

It is just so awesome. Marjorie triumphs against all–rejection letter, flower-eating pigs, sobriety. In 24 hours, she has had an epiphany, written a brilliant short story, drank more than an entire college fraternity party, and still has energy left over to kill some animals that are annoying her. Feminism has barely started, and yet here is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, digging ditches, swilling booze, writing from life, and shooting animals. Like I said, Hemingway with breasts.

And that’s not even the end of the movie. Will Maxwell Perkins enjoy her story? Will Marjorie deign to marry the man who is in love with her? What will her neighbor think of her killing his pig?

You have to find out now, don’t you? Yes you do.

My short story “Swat” is up on Necessary Fiction. An excerpt:

I hate flies.

A day that begins with killing a fly is a good day.

I hate the way they sneak into bins and loiter around food. I hate the way they well up like thick, black rain. Their buzzing pollutes a room so that the air is bad to breathe. I hate how they rub their nasty little hands together, like they are plotting something. Or how they start to move when they think you aren’t looking.

Read the rest here.

Here is the recently rediscovered poem by Ted Hughes, “Last Letter,” where he talks about discovering Plath’s suicide. It’s curious to me that Hughes left this out of Birthday Letters, the volume of poems about Plath that he published right before he died, but I think I know why. It lets you into his head in a way that no other poem he wrote on the subject does. It is an interesting companion piece to the letter he wrote Plath’s mother right after the suicide.

I wonder what other lost things are going to turn up about this tragedy in years to come. Supposedly, there is still one more of Plath’s journals that hasn’t been accounted for. (Via Belladodie)