The Venice Film Festival is well underway and while the Beat Generation drama “Kill Your Darlings” isn’t in competition, it is screening at the festival before it takes a trip to Toronto, and ends up in theaters this fall. If you can’t wait for that, you can get an early peek at the movie right now.
The compelling true story of a crime, a friendship, and the nexus that spawned a cultural movement, “Kill Your Darlings” is directed by John Krokidas and features a cavalcade of young and established talent including Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, Ben Foster as William Burroughs, Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac plus appearances by Elizabeth Olsen, Michael C. Hall, David Cross, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyra Sedgwick and David Rasche. The movie centers on a young Allen Ginsberg and how he and the members of the Beat Generation are transformed when they meet the older, alluring poet Lucien Carr. Here’s the long form synopsis:
While he is attending Columbia University in 1944, the young Allen Ginsberg’s life is turned upside down when he sets eyes on Lucien Carr, an impossibly cool and boyishly handsome classmate. Carr opens Ginsberg up to a bohemian world and introduces him to William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Repelled by rules and conformity in both life and literature, the four agree to tear down tradition and make something new, ultimately formulating the tenets of and giving birth to what became the Beat movement. On the outside, looking in, is David Kammerer, a man in his thirties desperately in love with Carr. When Kammerer is found dead, and Kerouac, Burroughs, and Carr are arrested in conjunction with the murder, the nascent artists’ lives change forever.
We’ve actually already seen it so you can read our review from Sundance here, but for stateside audiences, “Kill Your Darlings” arrives in theaters on October 18 via Sony Pictures Classics. A new clip and new photos below.
