Howl

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Poet Allen Ginsberg shares a joint with beat generation writer Jack Kerouac (0:11)

Ginsberg tells us writers should not neglect to about "their neuroses..." (0:17)

An animated character throws himself off the top of a building. A naked man with a tourniquet on his arm injects a drug, turns into skeleton, then burns to ash. (0:20)

Ginsberg talks about residing in a "cold water apartment filled with junkies and thieves. (0:23)

Ginsberg tells how he avoided arrest after a mishap: "The easiest way to get out of the whole thing it turns out was to just go to the Psychiatric Institute on 168th street. I was in the loony bin for eight months." (0:24)

Ginsberg tells us his friend "Carl was having problems because he was receiving shock treatment... and medication." (0:25)

Ginsberg's interviewer asks him, "Your mother was institutionalized wasn't she?" (0:26)

Ginsberg: "My mother Naomi was in and out of mental intitutions from the itme I was six. When I was twenty-one I had to sign the papers for her lobotomy. She died at Pilgrim State Hospital." (0:26)

Scene of staff placing on a patient electrodes and oxygen mask before a shock produces a seizure.
Ginsberg: "After I got out of the mental hospital I had a period of fear." (0:28)

The animated character jumps off the roof. (0:43)

Ginsberg "In San Francisco I had a year of psychotherapy with Dr. Hicks. He says he told Dr. Hicks what he really wanted was to spend his time among other things "smoking pot, and doing whatever I want." (0:46)

Ginsberg: "Peter and I saw Moloch one day when we took peyote... what drove my mother to madness..." (0:49)

Animation of his mother's treatment ECT "in Rockland" apparently referring to Rockland State Hospital.(0:56)

Ginsberg: "If you're a foot fetishist, you write about feet." (1:13)

electroconvulsive therapy | joint | mescaline | neurosis | psychiatric hospital | suicide

James Franco, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker 2010


Excerpts read from the poem itself are rich with references to psychiatry and substance use: