Trailer
Plot summary
The poet Allen Ginsberg gives his first public reading of Howl at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, where the audience grows enthusiastic. Two years later, City Lights Bookstore co-founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti stands trial on obscenity charges for publishing the poem as Howl and Other Poems, with Jake Ehrlich defending and Ralph McIntosh prosecuting before Judge Clayton Horn. The literary critic and book editor Luther Nichols and the radio personality Gail Potter are among the witnesses. In interviews Ginsberg describes his mother's mental illness, his friendship with Neal Cassady, his years of struggle with homosexuality before he embraced it, and his love for the poet Peter Orlovsky. Animated passages carry the poem's imagery, and Ginsberg calls the poem's theme freedom of expression.
Cast
- Todd Rotondias Jack Kerouac
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Howl (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shig Murao, the bookstore clerk who was actually arrested and jailed by San Francisco police for selling Ginsberg's "Howl", was left out of the film, a dismay noted by his biographer Patricia Wakida; Ginsberg was in Tangier and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Big Sur at the time.
