Conrad Rooks - Chappaqua

Chappaqua, the legendary 1966 film, written and directed by Conrad Rooks (Rooks not Brooks - sic), now available, in its entirety, on You Tube [2014 update - they come and they go, Chappaqua is no longer available in its entirety on You Tube], is this weekend's Allen Ginsberg Project focus.  

As Jack Sargeant, in his essential account in Naked Lens - Beat Cinema points out: 

"Rooks began to experiment with alcohol in his teens and later with drugs [a variety of drugs], to which he became addicted" [as he declares quite explicitly in the opening credits]. "As a result of his father's sudden death in 1962 [his father was millionaire, Russel Rooks, one of the founders of the hugely-successful Avon cosmetics company], "(he) was "shocked into the futility of an existence dependent on alcohol and drugs". (He) undertook a thirty-day sleep-cure at a clinic in Zurich, Switzerland [in the film, transposed to Paris], in order to free himself of his addictions. The experiences of this cure inform(s) the "narrative" of his film..while the possibility of relapsing into drug addiction create(s) an urgency which motivated (his) desire to finish (it), partly in order to avoid a possible regression. Chappaqua was financed primarily with Rooks' inheritance and money borrowed from his family and friends and the final budget was estimated at $450,000" 
- "a particularly expensive piece of occupational therapy", as the New York Times reviewer at the time wryly pointed out, but, apparently, a successful one ("Its author today [1967] is dry, straight and happy"). 

It is, then, semi-autobiographical (altho' the blurring of reality and fantasy is very much at the heart of what's happening here - psychedelic "flashback"). Rooks plays (not too professionally, it has to be pointed out), his thinly-veiled alter-ego, "Russel Harwick". The "plot", in so far as there is a "plot", is Harwick's journey to the sanatorium, his terrors and his hallucinations and his experience of the (finally successful) cure. What saves the film, in fact, makes it transcendent (one critic has called it "an underground jewel in film history"), is the ravishing cinematography (especially the black-and-white photography - altho' a whole smorgasbord of filmic techniques, notably multiple super-impositions, are used - the New York Times reviewer saw this, oddly, as one of the film's shortcomings - "the film's fatal technical virtuosity"). 

The two geniuses behind the film are Harry Smith and Robert Frank. The latter, (talking with Jack Sargeant about the idiosyncracy of Rooks and the experience of working with
(or rather, for) him):
"..the guy (Rooks) was interesting, he was a real... Yeah, he was a real nut ..but at least he was…he was completely out of everything, he had so much money to spend. It could have been a good film, a really strong film, but he wouldn't use the footage I shot of him and he was the story"… "he took out, you know, really strong scenes with him, which showed hin as a.. this extraordinay insane man that he really was."…" (it) was easy because I had, really, freedom to do what I wanted to do. I mean, he just said. "let's go and rent a chateau and get women in there and ice that steams up and makes "smoke", you know, pretty free. He would go.. every time it was over, he would go to Jamaica or India and he would always say afterwards "okay" and take out his big fountain pen and he'd write me a check and say: "You're a bastard! I'll never work with you again". Then he'd call me up after a month and he'd show up in India and say, "let's go to Ceylon", something like that.. He was a very unhappy man, he couldn't concentrate and pursue a thought. He'd open up a magazine and start to say, "oh, lets go to Oregon where the big trees are and get a bambi running around the trees".. he had this.. he was an interesting guy.. many people like that movie. I don't know…" 

The other hook of the film (it won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1966) was the stellar "counter-cultural" cast - cameos by Allen (dubbed "the Messiah", he and Peter (Orlovsky) are seen chanting at the very beginning of the film), William Burroughs ("Opium Jones", a richly ironic part), Ed Sanders and The Fugs (the memorable sugar cubes LSD opening scene - no coincidence that the song they're playing is "I Couldn't Get High") - not to mention,  Moondog (snatched from the streets of New York and flown out to Montana), Swami Satchidananda, (Rooks' subsequent guru, a pacifying figure, a figure of exemplary transcendent calm, in the movie), Ornette Coleman and Ravi Shankar 
        
The film's soundtrack, originally a commission for Ornette Coleman, proved to be so beautiful and stimulating  Rooks feared it might overpower/overwhelm the visuals and it
was jettisoned and released independently as a seperate album (a taste of that may be had here). The original soundtrack was composed by another of his mentors, spiritual guides and close friends, Ravi Shankar (that original soundtrack may be listened to here). 

Carl Abrahamsson's "Conrad Rooks - Chappaqua and Beyond" (incorporating a long and revealing interview with the filmmaker (first published in 2007, revised in 2011) should, on no account, be missed, (extraordinary tales, an extraordinary life), and is, in fact, essential reading,  

Wholly Communion - Peter Whitehead (ASV5)

[Allen Ginsberg reading at the Royal Albert Hall, London, at the first International Poetry Incarnation, June 11, 1965 - photograph by John "Hoppy" Hopkins]

Wholly Communion, the filmed record of the First International Poetry Incarnation, as it was so dubbed, that took place, on this very day, 46 years ago, in London’s Royal Albert Hall, is a remarkable film, a remarkable document, and one well worth watching. It can now be seen in its entirety (broken up into four segments – the Ginsberg segment being the last of them – here, here, here – and here.

Beat film scholar, Jack Sargeant, gives the basic synopsis:

Wholly Communion opens with images of a statue, behind which fast-moving clouds part to reveal bright sunlight. On the soundtrack is an edit of words and phrases about the 'sun' taken from various poets' performances. This cuts to a view of the outside of the Albert Hall, which is accompanied by Allen Ginsberg's incantation. As the chant progresses the film cuts to the interior of the venue, with a brief edit of the assembled poets; finally the film cuts to Ginsberg, sitting on the low-level stage, singing and playing his miniature finger cymbals. The film then cuts to a series of brief extracts from performances by several of the poets: (Lawrence) Ferlinghetti stands to read "To Fuck Is To Love Again". This is followed by (Michael Horowitz) who reads "For Modern Man". Gregory Corso sits to read "Mutation Of The Spirit." Following Corso's introverted performance, the film cuts to (Harry) Fainlight, reading his poem written while on LSD, "The Spider". This is interrupted by shouting from the audience, and the camera spins around, zooming in to, and across, the collected rows of seats, trying to find the source of the disturbance [it is Dutch poet, Simon Vikenoog]. At the end of Fainlight's reading (Alex) Trocchi climbs on the stage, and the microphone worn around Harry's neck picks up their brief altercation, as Trocchi tells Fainlight, "You're not reading any more." To a combination of shouts and cheers Fainlight asks to read another piece, to which Trocchi replies, "Ladies and Gentlemen, hold on, hold on, this evening is an experiment and we're finding out what happens when you put five thousand people in a hall with a few poets trying to act naturally." Fainlight is allowed to read a second poem, "Larksong". (Adrian) Mitchell reads his Vietnam poem, "To Whom It May Concern" and his two-line "Stunted Sonnet", (Christopher) Logue reads his "Chorus (After Sophocles)" and Trocchi reads from his novel, Cain's Book. Following this (Ernst) Jandl performs his sound poem "Schmerz Durch Reibung" and - aided by Horowitz and Pete Brown - "Ode Auf N". Finally, Ginsberg - appearing to be drunk [certainly animated] - takes the stage and reads a translation of (Andrei) Voznesensky's poem "The Three Cornered Pear/America", ostensibly to Voznesensky who appears sitting in the audience. This is followed by a reading of (one of) his own poems, (the seminal poem) "The Change".. As the film ends and the titles roll, Ginsberg's voice is heard requesting the time, and then declaring that he has "lost his poetry book."

The cultural (counter-cultural) significance of the event (both for the time and its subsequent ramifications) can hardly be underestimated. Sargeant's contextualizing notes and his interview with "legendary" filmmaker, Peter Whitehead, explain a lot, revealing a great deal of the background. Equally useful is Stewart Home's first-hand recollections and retrospective review. In 2007, the British Film Institute released the DVD, Peter Whitehead And The Sixties, which featured Wholly Communion, coupled with Benefit of The Doubt, a film he made two years later (regrettably, it didn't include Tonight Let's All Make Love In London, another 1967 movie, featuring further glimpses of Allen and taking its title from one of his poems).

Paul Cronin's 2006 documentary, In The Beginning Was The Image: Conversations With Peter Whitehead can be viewed in its entirety at The Sticking Place.com, which also hosts a good deal of other Whitehead material. Whitehead's own website can be accessed here