Indie movie junkies and beatniks everywhere must have had a collective orgasm when it was announced that David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatim), Alan Alda (The Aviator), Jeff Daniels (Good Night, and Good Luck), Mary-Louise Parker (“Weeds”), and Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) were attached to join Spider Man‘s James Franco as the lead in Howl, a pic about the obscenity trial surrounding Beat Generation writer’s Allen Ginsberg’s book-length poem of the same name (source: Hollywood Reporter). The five stars will play key characters in the trial, ranging from the prosecuting attorney (Straithairn) to one of the defense witnesses (Rudd).
If you don’t know what “Howl” is, you must have either never gone through an “I just gotta be free, man” phase of your life in college, or you didn’t have a hippie English teacher in high school like I did. I will forever be grateful to Ms. Marjie Blevins for introducing me to Ginsberg’s work and encouraging me to think about poetry and the world in a non-conventional way.
The fact that it was also a way for me to get away with saying the words “let themselves be fucked in the ass” in a high school honors class was just a bonus, really.