Dane DeHaan and Daniel Radcliffe in Kill YoUr Darlings Now Offering Vegan, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Options CONT pORARY Film revisits Allen Ginsberg's pivotal freshman year at Columbia. Michael Fox Special to the Jewish News W hen Allen Ginsberg left home for the first time, to attend Columbia University, the characteristics that formed his identity — dutiful son, frustrated caretaker, intel- lectual Jew, unacknowledged homosexual and aspiring poet — collided with life- changing force. As depicted in filmmaker John Krokidas' mesmerizing and propulsive feature debut, Kill Your Darlings, the catalyst was a worldly student named Lucien Carr, who became Ginsberg's first (albeit unrequited) love and introduced the wide-eyed freshman to a circle that included William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. The film portrays an unformed, social- ly awkward Ginsberg, movingly played by Daniel Radcliffe, buffeted by awakened hormones, literary inspiration, amphet- amines, Jewish guilt and anti-Semitism. "We didn't want contemporary audi- ences to forget the way things were back then," Krokidas said in a recent interview. 'And that includes the fact that a Jewish student would have his religion and cul- tural heritage brought up in conversation:' During World War II, Krokidas notes, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and even at Columbia, where a quota on Jewish students existed. "Kill Your Darlings is a story about an artist finding his voice, which Allen Ginsberg includes as not only his sexual- ity but his Judaism:' Krokidas declares. "I felt it important to make sure that we weren't whitewashing or ignoring that [anti-Semitism] was definitely one of the struggles that he came up against as a young Jewish man in 1944:' Krokidas was raised in a suburb of New Haven, Ct., where "the Jews outnumbered the non-Jews, and you knew how popu- lar you were by how many bar and bat mitzvahs you were invited to. So I never knew, growing up, that Jews were con- sidered a minority" His mother's mother was Jewish, and so was his stepfather; his younger half-brother was a bar mitzvah. Like Ginsberg, Krokidas grew up with an emotionally ill parent, and one deduces — in conversation and from the film — that this shared experience was one of his main motivations for devoting 10 years to writing, developing and mak- ing Kill Your Darlings. `Allen Ginsberg at that time in his life, when we did our research and looked at the oral histories and ultimately got to look at his adolescent journals, was an emotional caretaker; Krokidas explains. "He was the family member who took care of his mother (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh). Those of us with emotion- ally ill parents who took care of them know that that becomes somewhat a theme for life. Look who he falls in love with when he gets to school: an extremely charismatic and seductive yet most likely emotionally ill young man (Lucien Carr), whom he starts taking care of Kill Your Darlings excavates a forgot- ten footnote to the poet's biography that climaxes with obsession, betrayal and murder. While the first year away at col- lege is a period of exploration and growth for most people, in Ginsberg's case it was dramatic, traumatic and life-altering. The filmmaker, who wrote the screen- play with his college roommate and best friend, Austin Bunn, confides that Jesse Eisenberg originally signed on as Ginsberg. But after The Social Network, the actor decided not to play another Jewish Ivy League college student. Radcliffe, whose mother is Jewish, was subsequently cast and embraced the role with singular dedication, Krokidas says. "The danger that I worried about is I've seen when people tackle famous Jewish characters, they overdo the accents and it becomes a parody of the character:' Krokidas says. "So Dan and I worked really hard on listening to early Allen Ginsberg recordings. We didn't want to mimic who he'd later become. It's like a bad wig. It does more harm than good:' Krokidas was determined to avoid the cliches of dusty biopics and to make a visceral film that would connect with younger audiences, whether they'd heard of the Beats or not. Radcliffe's presence, as much as Ginsberg's reputation, will pre- sumably attract moviegoers receptive to the film's overarching theme. fi • ■ ••S 4 , JOHN american bistro bar 22726 Woodward Ave FERNDALE Reservations @ johndbistro.com or 248.398.4070 (after 3) AYV Herzog NOVEMBER Directed by Christopher Bremer Featuring: a;DCAGWEI G5amOlial attl nberg, &IQ ,Eloc; Seibert, Lydia Killibu adF2GEOC Willga;e1] After suffering a major loss while he was on a cross-country bike trip, 21 year-old Leo seeks solace from his feisty 91 year-old grandmother Vera in her West Village apartment. Join us as this inter-generational Odd Couple ride out amusing conflicts over everything from money to girlfriends. She is an old leftie and he is a laid-back, eco friendly new one, but the politics are just noise for the family drama. Racing over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other. 4000 Miles looks at how two outsiders find their way in today's world. 2012 Obie Award, Best New Play • 2012 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award 2012 Time Magazine's #1 Play or Musical ❑ Kill Your Darlings opens Friday, Nov. 22, at the Landmark Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak. (248) 542- 5198; landmarktheatres.com . 248.788.2900 JET is a professional, Actors Equity Association theatre that performs in the Aaron DeRoy Theatre in the JCC - Located on the corner of Maple & Drake Roads in West Bloomfield osenl bk. www.JetTheatre.org ANNIVERSAR Y JN 4 'SHUBERT FOUNDATION. November 21 • 2013 59