"Bongo Beatin' Beatniks" at Oddball Films November 19, 2010

Event: “Bongo Beatin’ Beatniks!” Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare 16mm films and video clips from the Beat Generation: both the real deal and the parade of Hollywood exploitation flicks. Genuine artifacts include the cool template that is Jammin’ The Blues (1944), an astonishing, legendary Jazz short film masterpiece; The Interview (1960), Ernie Pintoff animation- super-square interviews jazz musician; Help, My Snowman’s Burning Down (1964), NYC beatnik surrealism set to a Gerry Mulligan soundtrack; The Calypso Singer (1966), bongo beatin’ beatnik tells the “Day-O” yelling calypso singer to cool it; Breaking The Habit (1964), John Korty animated anti-smoking short; Pull My Daisy (1959), the essential Beat film!; plus a specially prepared clip-reel featuring the best beatsploitational bits from The Bloody Brood, Beat Girl, Bucket of Blood, The Rebel Set, The Beat Generation, High School Confidential, Take Her, She’s Mine, plus The Munsters, Beverly Hillbillies and more!!
Date: Friday, November 19, 2010 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Beatniks_PR.pdf

“Bongo Beatin’ Beatniks!”
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, November 19, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare 16mm films and video clips illustrating both the sacred and profane portrayals of the Beat Generation. Few genuine historic articles were recorded for posterity, but Hollywood wasted little money and no time pumping out hilarious/ludicrous exploitation flicks soon after Herb Caen coined the term beatnik in 1958. True, the bearded, sandal and beret-wearing, poetry-spewing bongo beaters were ripe for ridicule, but the common thread of angel-headed murderers and sadists was strictly a Hollywood fantasy. Nonetheless, they are highly entertaining time capsules that coolly skewers the squares and riff on a real gone world that might have been. BYOB (Bring Your Own Bongos/Berets/Bottle of cheap Chianti). Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

Jammin’ The Blues (B+W, 1944)
Probably the most famous jazz film ever made- produced by jazz impresario Norman Granz, directed by Gjon Mili and featuring incredible performances by Lester “Prez” Young, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Illinois Jacquet, Barney Kessel, Marlowe Morris, John Simmons, George “Red” Callender, “Big” Sid Catlett and “Papa” Jo Jones. Nominated for an Oscar in 1945 and entered into the National Film registry in 1955, this film simply must be seen by any serious jazz fan. Cinematography was by the later Hitchcock stalwart Robert Burks on his very first DP assignment. There is a noir ambience to the film and each scene has a formal elegance that is enthralling. Mili has total command of his form (his only film as director!), and the mise-en-scene and continuity are impeccable.

The Interview (Color, 1960) dir. Ernest Pintoff
Brilliant animated short by Ernie Pintoff has square interviewer befuddled by fictional hipster jazz musician Shorty Petterstein (voiced by Bay Area legend Henry Jacobs) during his residence in San Francisco, as the Stan Getz combo blows and riffs “off camera”. “Like, don’t hang me- I didn’t wanna fall up here in the first place!”

Help, My Snowman’s Burning Down (Color, 1964)
Academy award-nominated (and Oddball Films favorite) short by Carson Davidson starring Bob Larkin (later in the cult film Putney Swope). Beatnik lives outdoors on a boat dock off Manhattan with only bathroom furnishings and a typewriter. Utilizes great stop motion and surreal effects, and the original coolly swinging music of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

The Calypso Singer (Color, 1966)
Paul Glickman¹s animated version of legendary hipster Stan Freberg¹s parody of Harry Belafonte¹s top ten hit “Day-O” (The Banana Boat Song). Here a beatnik bongo player berates a Calypso singer for his high decibel delivery. Freeberg was famous for his early rock and roll parodies and went on to win over 20 Clio awards in the field of advertising for his wacky takes on pop culture. Hilariously weird.

Breaking The Habit (Color, 1964)
Directed by John Korty and produced by Henry Jacobs, this short anti-smoking film was nominated for an Oscar and features deadpan dialogue with a minimalist animation style. In 1964, Korty opened a studio in Stinson Beach and made three feature films before focusing mainly on documentary filmmaking- in 1977 Korty won the Oscar (documentary) for Who Are the Debolts and Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?, and his 1984 cult animated feature film Twice Upon A Time, produced by George Lucas, has recently seen a revival of interest.

Pull My Daisy (B+W, 1959, VHS)
Directed by legendary photographer /filmmaker Robert Frank (The Americans, Cocksucker Blues) and Alfred Leslie, Pull My Daisy is the quintessential Beat Generation cinema artifact. With improvised narration by Jack Kerouac and featuring Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers, Alice Neel and a brilliant score by David Amram (Splendor in the Grass, The Manchurian Candidate), the “plot” is based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his painter wife Carolyn- the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results. On VHS video.

PLUS: Hollywood sends up the Beat Generation- sadistic killer beatniks, ubiquitous bongos, seedy pads, espresso joints and gone poetry.

Video clips from the following masterworks:

The Bloody Brood (b+w, 1959) Peter Falk (of Columbo fame) stars in this beatnik murderer flick. Quote: “Did he die, or was he murdered by life?”

Beat Girl (b+w, 1959) English beat scene starring the devastating Ye-Ye singer Gillian Hills and Adam Faith. Quote: “Why can’t you sit up? I like floors!”

Bucket of Blood (b+w, 1959) The quintessential beatnik exploitation film by Roger Corman “burn gas, buggies, and whip your sour cream of circumstance”.

The Rebel Set (b+w, 1959) More murder and crime-committing beatniks. Quote: “When in Rome, do the Romans”.

The Beat Generation (color, 1959) Vampira recites poetry with a rat on her shoulder.

High School Confidential (b+w, 1958) Amazing clip featuring poetess Phillipa Fallon accompanied by Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from the Addams Family). Quote: “Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum”.

Take Her, She’s Mine (b+w, 1963) Bob Denver channels Maynard G. Krebs to serenade James Stewart.

The Munsters (1965) “Far Out Munsters” Poet Herman Munster – “That cat is deep!”

Beverly Hillbillies (1965) “Cool School is Out” and more!

Curator Biography
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Official Website: http://mim.io/38ff6