Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's Bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results. Pull My Daisy is a film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration.
Direction
Frank and Leslie capture spontaneous Beat energy in controlled chaos.
Writing
Kerouac's improvised narration is pure spontaneous bop prosody.
Cinematography
Gritty black-and-white NYC that makes you smell the cigarettes.
Director
Alfred Leslie
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The entire film was shot in Leslie's Lower East Side loft in one weekend with a borrowed camera; the 'script' was three pages of scenario notes.
This is essentially the only surviving Beat Generation film featuring the actual core group—Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, and Kerouac's voice make it a time capsule of 1959 avant-garde America.
US
