Finding the Beat

James Franco penned an essay in Vanity Fair about how he became Allen Ginsberg in the upcoming movie, Howl.

From the piece...

Young Ginsberg—the Ginsberg who went to Columbia, whose work was read by Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren, who was kicked out of college (and institutionalized) in part because he was gay—is not a familiar character. Everyone has an image of the large-bellied, bearded, balding Buddha figure that Ginsberg became. But to play the young Ginsberg, you, the actor, must be slim and clean-shaven and must dye your hair black—your full head of hair. You must wear thick-framed glasses. You must apply prostheses to your ears to make them stick out.

To play the young Ginsberg you will be required to read his poems in character—and will want to catch the distinctive New Jersey accent (he was from Paterson), and the determined lilt that varies in tone from ironic-tragic to wryly comic. So you will need to listen to recordings, and listen to them a lot. There is little film footage of Ginsberg from this time, but there are plenty of audio recordings. Notice how on the earliest ones his delivery is staid and serious—he even tells hecklers to shut up. On the later recordings, 35 years on, he is loose and funny, a practiced performer. If you are going to play the young Ginsberg, you will want to meld a variety of these readings. If you are completely faithful to the early ones, your performance could be flat. Use the early readings as a model for the scenes where Ginsberg is just starting out. Use the later ones to provide a sense of Ginsberg’s evolution. Regardless, listen to all of the recordings, every day, for months. Walk around New York doing this. Put the recordings on your iPod and walk. Get your voice in tune with his. Don’t worry about people looking at you. In New York, this is not weird.

There are 8-mm. home movies of Ginsberg taken on the Jersey Shore, but they show a boy too young for your needs. The closest thing to the period you want will be the film Pull My Daisy, by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. It came out in 1959, only three years after Howl. There is no sync sound on the film, only a voice-over by Kerouac, so you won’t hear Ginsberg speak. But you’ll see how he sits. You’ll see his jaunty movements when he walks, dances, moves his arms. The other valuable piece of footage for your purposes is an interview with Ginsberg, filmed at the City Lights Bookstore, in 1965. Granted, this material is more than 10 years after the period you wish to depict. But the gesticulations are the same. Ginsberg loved to talk with his hands.

All of this is the external work on the character.

Here's a trailer: