The Source: The Story of the Beats and the Beat Generation

The Source was the first documentary I have ever seen on the big screen beside those huge IMax films. The Source was very enjoyable film. I have always read Kerouac and Burroughs w/ much enthusiasm and this film helped me to fall in love w/ their work all over again and some more. The Beats were an aquired taste, but if you are searching for yourself (and I believe most people are) these guys can help you start. They don't show you the way but they give you a good start. This film was very insightful into the lives of these life searching nomads. See this if you enjoy their work. Even if you never read any of their stuff, see it anyway.

They were called the Beatniks.The Source (1999) tells how Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac met at Columbia University in 1944, and started an era of the Beats then.Many others joined the group, like William S. Burroughs.Kerouac died in 1969, Ginsberg and Burroughs in 1997.There are three famous actors playing these three and speak the words of these geniuses.The legendary Dennis Hopper is Burroughs.The brilliant John Turturro is Ginsberg.And Johnny Depp, who's only the hottest actor today, is Kerouac.There are some great people talking about the Beat movement and seen in archive footage, like Steve Allen, Amiri Baraka, Lenny Bruce, Walter Cronkite, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Philip Glass, Billie Holiday, Bob Hope, Robert F. Kennedy, Ken Kesey, Martin Luther King, John Leguizamo, Norman Mailer, Steve Martin, Groucho Marx and Henry Rollins.There's a clip from Happy Days with Tom Bosley, Marion Ross and Ron Howard discussing about the whole Beat thing at the table.The Source is a fascinating documentary.It's also very educational telling you everything you ever wanted to know about the topic.So all of you that have some interest for the Beat, open your eyes and watch The Source.

Chuck Workman did a fantastic job recreating the beat generation, via old footage, and vignettes involving Johnny Depp as Jack Kerouac, and Dennis Hopper as William Burroughs. This is truly a "must see" little gem of a film.

No comment can make them alive again: they have gone some other place, some other time... Those crazy poets, wonderful wanderers, so human and so divine, so simple and still so far from the ordinary. They are the true spirit of the first pioneers, seeking an unknown unexplored space, inside! To have a glimpse of those gone lands, to scratch the surface of those lost moments, watch this and if you find yourself asking where those Beats have gone, you will find the answer.

The cuts are clean, the time of recollection is brought by silence, between words, between the frames. Very polite, and sincere, almost an apology. The longing remains. Can you still hit the road to enlightenment? No answer is given. And them survivors can still proclaim 'I'm still burning'. Them dead are still dead, their dry mouths wording without sound. The fire has spread, from lamp to lamp, and the trip has now some clear signs along the path. This is the witness bringing testimony to their uncommon greatness. Observe it!

The best (and seemingly only coherent) documentary on the Beat Generation and their affect on the world and modern literature. Its strength lies in the great plundering of archive material that doesn't restrict itself to the usual photos and clips. All three actors deliver amazing performances during the readings (esp. Dennis Hopper as Burroughs).

8/10!