SFGN Profile : Rob Epstein & Jeff Friedman

If you ask the Oscar-winning directors of the films The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads and Celluloid Closet why their latest film is about poet Allen Ginsberg, they have a very direct answer.

"He was an incredible artist, incredible visionary, lived in an interesting time period which we never explored in our previous works and is an early gay hero," says Rob Epstein. "That was something we didn't understand until we started and came as a surprise to us. "

"I had one encounter with him in a circle of actors chanting before a performance in a living theater I was part of at the time. I was a teenager," Jeffrey Friedman adds. "Allen led the chant with his harmonium. It was a pretty standard chant. He was this kind of guru/ father figure. He'd been around and was somebody who managed to bridge the generations.

"He bridged the new counter culture I was part of and the literary counter culture he formed. He definitely felt like an ambassador. And he was even performing in the punk clubs in the 80s. Allen was someone who remained engaged and concerned about the world. That's what I think kept him connected."

Ginsberg made his name in the mid-50s as part of the Beat Movement, which also included such seminal literary titans as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was pretty much the first one of these authors to publish. His work Howl and Other Poems, published by Ferlinghetti's City Lights Publishing in San Francisco in 1955, caused an incredible uproar for its vivid imagery and subject matter. In fact, it caused such controversy, like Burroughs' Naked Lunch a few years later; it faced an obscenity trial in 1957.

Epstein and Friedman's new film, Howl, is an examination of Ginsberg and the trial. It stars James Franco as Ginsberg, John Hamm as defense attorney Jake Ehrlich and Mary-Louise Parker and Treat Williams, as two literary critics who are on opposite sides of whether the book should be banned.

Part of the controversy inside the work is Ginsberg openly declaring being gay, something that just wasn't done in the height of the sexually repressed 50s. Yet that was only one element of the entire work, it also shed light on the underbelly of American culture of the day. It is also a book that many are still trying to ban from libraries today.

"It is all that," Epstein agreed. "It's also a queer manifesto. That was the element that surprised us. When you really start to read and analyze the themes and notions, they are his declaration of being queer, and his love for Neal Cassady and Carl Solomon. Now his relationship with Carl Solomon was a platonic relationship but also deeply spiritual. The other thing about the gay aspect of it that's so exceptional for its time and even our time is while it is a declaration of gay sexuality, it's treated as just a part of the entire continuum of sexuality."

"It was something Allen talked about when he talked about Howl," added Friedman. "He talked about his coming into his own sexuality as part of his coming to terms with his voice as an artist."

"We also try to show in the film how each of three men-Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Peter Orlovsky--were very important to him and have some reflection in Howl," continued Epstein. "He used them to interpret the different kinds of love in his life."

More important, even in these current times of teabaggers and Don't Ask/Don't Tell, Epstein and Friedman found a very cooperative Hollywood community supporting them in the production of the movie.

"We shot the entire film in 14 days. That aspect went really fast," said Epstein.

"It was a matter of finding the actors we wanted to work with and handing them the material," says Friedman. "As it also turned out, there was a lot of overlap. There was a lot of material they responded to. They might have had some connection to the Beats. There was also free speech."

"It's the first project we had this kind of support from Hollywood," continued Epstein. "We've also been very lucky. Even if we didn't get the kind of support many films get out of Hollywood, our films have received a lot of honors from Hollywood. The Times of Harvey Milk got an Oscar in 1984. That was a very courageous thing for Hollywood to do at that time. Then there was our film Common Threads in 1989. We've gotten a lot of support and encouragement from Hollywood. With Howl, it's the first time where the industry, embraced the making of it."

"I think the subject we chose is something that arose in the culture of the moment," Friedman added. "We seem to be able to discuss things in a way that people want to hear. It doesn't feel like that's where the struggle is. The struggle seems to be getting any film made. "

As for the future, Epstein and Friedman aren't quite ready to say that's their next project, although IMDB states their next project is entitled Lovelace, and concerns the trials and controversy about former porn star Linda Lovelace.

"As they say in Hollywood, talk is cheap," Epstein explains bluntly.

Until then, Howl is playing at Coral Gables Art Cinema.