The evening prior to Howl's one week run at Midtown Cinema, in a manner of promoting the film, I stepped up to the lectern at the cinema's weekly poetry reading and read Ginsberg's heady, revelatory poem to a crowd of (somewhat) unexpecting wouldbe poets (and I do use the term poet with the most amount of trepidation as one can). Now this was far from my first time in front of a poetry-hungry crowd (with over a hundred published poems to my credit, as well as being a past publisher of a local poetry mag called Experimental Forest and organizer of a slew of poetry readings and festivals, I could call myself a pro at such things) but I do believe it was the first time many of these (so-called) poetry fans have heard the poem.
Anyway, to get to my point, the film Howl was doomed to obscurity by its subject alone. Good or bad, Howl was destined to be a forgotten film, just because no one reads or listens to poetry anymore and therefore have no idea who the fuck Allen Ginsberg even is. Due to this sad fact, an inevitable one week run at Midtown Cinema was all this film was to get before bowing out. Oh well, enough complaining about the dumbing down of society (I betchya all these alluded-to neophytes know who has won every single Dancing With The Stars episode!) let's just move on to my goddamn review.
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