Mad to Live

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I'm still kind of shocked that anyone actually attempted this adaptation, and also surprised that it took so long. Whichever is correct, I'll definitely see it.



On the Road. Directed by Walter Salles
(The Motorcycle Diaries); out this summer.

Need vs. Want

Gagosian Gallery/Steidl edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, with photographs by Ed Ruscha. 228 page, leatherbound with slipcase, signed and numbered by Ruscha, edition of 350 copies. $10,000. Do I even need to say it? Want. Lottery-only need. More info here and here.

Image of the Day

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An Allen Ginsberg photograph of Jack Kerouac,
who died 40 years ago today at the age of 47.

Whether a Jukebox is Sadder Than a Coffin

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"Funeral - St. Helena, South Carolina," 1955.
Photograph by Robert Frank, from The Americans

I have posted several times about Robert Frank, so I won't go on and on about him now, other than to say that for people who are interested in photography, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans – the new retrospective that went up this week at the Met – is a must-see. By that I mean: the Met is pay-what-you-wish, and I wish to shell out $300 for a plane ticket to New York and go directly to the Met to see it. You might do the same – or if not, I recommend picking up the recent re-release of The Americans, available for $22 and change from Amazon, or wherever you buy your books. Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction ("After seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin.")

Photograph by Robert Frank, from The Americans

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans is at The Met through January 3, 2010. Visit metmuseum.org for more info. Also, I should say, this is not the first such exhibition – there's a similar one up through October 19 at MOCA in LA – but I guess I retain that NYC conceit that says it will be the best.

See also:
The New York Times: America, Captured in a Flash
The New Yorker: Road Show
(Both with slides.)

The Preakness

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Fictional newspaper by teenage Jack Kerouac, part of the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. More info

"This is on for your education...we're gonna re-educate you."

Via Jen Graves at SLOG, The Guardian has posted its list of the top fifty arts videos on YouTube. James Dean and Paul Newman screen testing for East of Eden, Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road, Nirvana practicing in an Aberdeen garage circa 1988, Marcel Duchamp's Anemic Cinema, Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul TV Special – the list is heavy. Here are two videos that make 1970s New York City feel like a small town:

Martin Scorsese's 1973 short on the inspiration for Mean Streets:


And Jean-Michel Basquiat on Glenn O'brien's TV Party, 1978:


48 more things to look at here.

Retrospect

I just ran across the Flickr page of photographer Tom Palumbo, who shot extensively in the 1950s and '60s for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, among many other publications. There are so many great photographers out there whose work sort of falls through the cracks (either that or I am just ignorant for never knowing his name—I do recognize some of the work). Here's a small selection:

Hammock IV (probably taken around 1959-1960)

Jack Kerouac circa 1956

And the girls get drunk...

An experiment with glass and graffiti

Smoke Curls

Anne St. Marie, Harper's Bazaar, 1957

Vogue, early 1960s

Outtake for Harper's Bazaar, 1958. Taken in New Jersey at some kind of industrial plant. I'm going to steal this idea for a shoot at Gasworks Park in Seattle some time.

Harper's Bazaar, 1954. Critical Mass fashion story, anyone?

Miles Davis. Palumbo's archivist notes that "The Miles Davis are remarkable because they show Miles laughing and smiling, something he never seems to have done later. Perhaps the reason the negatives were not printed at the time was that Tom knew that Miles would not have liked these pictures, which most definitely conflicted with that 'cool guy' persona that we see in most images of him."

More info at tompalumbo.com and on his Flickr page.