Pull My Daisy (1959)

Robert Frank's half-hour, black-and-white short film Pull My Daisy has also been released under the title The Beat Generation, and for good reason. Featuring narration written and performed by author Jack Kerouac, the film presents an affectionate portrait of beat culture at its height through the jazzy retelling of a long, rambling evening filled with literary improvisation, philosophical discussions, and playfully foolish behavior. The fun begins when poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, who portray themselves, converge on the apartment of one of their friends for a day of beer drinking and poetic discourse. They soon learn that their friend and his wife are planning to host a young bishop and his family for dinner and decide to stay around until evening. As the day continues, a number of other colorful characters also drop in; when the bishop arrives, and the poets begin to goad him with their loopy yet earnest questioning of religion and other institutions, things take on the flavor of an impromptu party. The film was shot on a minimal budget and without sync sound, which serves to further place the emphasis on the film's true star, the rhythmic prose of narrator Jack Kerouac.