Director
Chuck Workman, who documented the life of pop culture icon
Andy Warhol in his 1990 film
Superstar, here explores the lives, works and influence of four leading lights of the "Beat Generation" of the 1950s: William S. Burroughs,
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Cutting back and forth between archive footage of his subjects, readings of selections from the three authors by
Johnny Depp,
Dennis Hopper and
John Turturro (Cassady was an associate and inspiration to the Beats), and film clips that in both serious and farcical fashion document the impact the Beat culture had on American society, Workman creates a fast-paced collage of sounds and images that attempts to show how the Beats became the dominant counter-cultural movement of the last half of America's 20th Century. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide