Whistle Stopper - The Source

This look back at the fathers of the Beat Generation was filmed before Ginsberg was silenced by cancer in the spring of 1997, yet the poet functions as a spirit-guide not unlike Virgil in Dante's "Inferno." He gently takes us from the initial meeting of the three writers in 1944 at Columbia University to their inspiration by Neal Cassady through the '50s, the Jazz Age and into the '60s with the youthful interpretation of what they started and how it fomented a revolution.

Like Dante, we are left on our own for much of the documentary to sort through the barrage of incredible footage, interviews and huge cast of players, which Workman must have sold nearly a pound of his own soul to procure. The surreal nature of Burroughs loading his gun or watching Neal Cassady do a jig by a Volkswagen bus, plunges the audience even deeper into the past by humanizing men whose mythic importance is on the same level as JFK or James Dean.

It is these scenes that make "The Source" such a fine record of a lost age. Workman's labor of love is crafted like the best college history courses. We hear exactly what altered the state of the spoken and written word, and the writers' astonishment that they were being emulated and taken so seriously. Burroughs' contempt, Kerouac's confusion and Ginsberg's quiet acceptance of their fame are illuminating to those of us who weren't there or didn't pay close enough attention to the centers of culture.

Workman goes a bit astray with his use of reenactments, a decidedly MTV convention that, for the most part, serve only as a minor distraction. It's easy to buy Johnny Depp reciting bits and pieces of Jack Kerouac's works in what looks like a roadside bar, but Dennis Hopper's attempts at sections of Burroughs' "Junky," "Interzone" and "Queer" are terrible. It might be because Hopper is, in fact, a legend unto himself, and it's difficult to see him as another from the same period. (An excellent Burroughs can be seen in David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" starring Peter Weller as an amalgamated William S.). All is forgiven, though, because the fresh memory of John Turturro's visceral rendition of Ginsberg's "HOWL" outside the Rockland State Hospital in New York City is unforgettable and truly inspired.

However, much of the footage is painful, and Workman is determined to present this mythological period by picking at the scabs of time and the recent commercial deification of these people. Scenes of an angry and pickled Kerouac trying to discuss the essence of writing with talk show host Steve Allen -- and then if you can believe it, William F. Buckley -- are quite sobering and make it clear that theirs' was more of a struggle than a party.

Then there are the shots of Burroughs that are about as comforting as the cold sweat that lets the addict know he hasn't killed himself. He's young and dangerous, wielding a knife in one scene and a syringe in the next. And although there is a perverse thrill watching the world-famous junky shoot up for the camera, we also get to see the needles in his eyes filled with scorn for anyone unlucky enough to be on the other side of that camera. One can almost feel him looking through the movie screen, searching for the kind of people who will eventually frequent "art houses" to watch films about things that should be read in books.

Just when it appears that everything is getting too weird, Ginsberg returns. Wrapped in a blanket and looking so much like his Dantaen counterpart, he glides through the early morning light of New York -- with lines of his poetry materializing on a nearby movie marquee.