Not exactly a first look but the Sundance website’s preview for directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Howl” starring James Franco as poet Allen Ginsberg does reveal some interesting tidbits.
Firstly, the film will be scored by the proficient Carter Burwell who recently has scored wide range of films including “Twilight” to “Where The Wild Things Are” and is also always the Coen Brothers’ musical go-to-man.
The page’s synopsis for “Howl” then informs us that the film will feature a “mind-expanding animation” as one of three interweaving narratives. We’re just as puzzled as you are, but it sounds pretty ambitious and intriguing:
It’s San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. “Howl,” the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society’s reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment—the birth of a counterculture.
Rob Epstein and Jeffery Friedman navigate a seamless segue from their documentary roots to masterful storytellers. They expand the notion of how a “true story” can be realized on film by not simply relying on facts but enlisting cinematic vision to capture the Zeitgeist of an era. The amazing cast provides the extra passion and urgency that are sure to introduce Howl to the best minds of a new generation.
Also listed on the page is the fact the film has a running time of 90 minutes and will be color (duh) and black and white. Thematically speaking, could the narrative focusing on the young Ginsberg be in black and white? That would separate the film’s three threads up into a normal color segment about the Ginsberg trials, a black and white segment about a young Ginsberg developing as a poet and an animated segment bringing the poem to life — all interwoven into ninety minute feature film. Either way, it sounds like Epstein and Friedman are aiming for something unique with their feature film debuts.
Co-starring the likes of David Strathairn, John Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels, “Howl” premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21st.