You may have read Allen Gins­berg’s final poem “Things I’ll Not Do (Nos­tal­gias)” when we fea­tured it last month. In it, the lead­ing Beat poet, near­ing the very end of his life, lists off all of the peo­ple, places, and things he knew he would nev­er see, vis­it, and do again. But a prac­tic­ing Bud­dhist such as Gins­berg cer­tain­ly would­n’t have viewed the event of his death with total final­i­ty. What, then, hap­pened to him after April 5th, 1997, when his offi­cial biog­ra­phy came to a close? Here we have one attempt at an answer by Lithuan­ian avant-garde lumi­nary Jonas Mekas (who, inci­den­tal­ly, hap­pens to remain active in this mor­tal coil today at the age of 91). Mekas doc­u­men­tary Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spir­it observes Gins­berg’s Bud­dhist wake and col­lects mem­o­ries and impres­sions from his friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors, Mekas him­self includ­ed.

The scenes occa­sioned by Gins­berg’s death slant, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, toward the artis­tic and lit­er­ary: musi­cian Pat­ti Smith, poet Gre­go­ry Cor­so, writer Amiri Bara­ka, visu­al artist Hiro Yam­a­ga­ta, and poet Anne Wald­man all make appear­ances. You can watch an excerpt of the film above and its 67-minute entire­ty on Ubuweb. (Also find the film list­ed in the doc­u­men­taries sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.) Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth, a kind of video diary as well as a memo­r­i­al state­ment, gives as much insight into Mekas’ per­spec­tive as it does to Gins­berg’s exis­tence. By the time of Gins­berg’s pass­ing, Mekas’s body of work includ­ed “two nar­ra­tive films and near­ly twen­ty years’ worth of pri­vate record­ings,” at which point he had “decid­ed to make fea­ture films from his home movies.” That descrip­tion comes from Aaron Cut­ler in The Believ­er, writ­ing on Mekas’ meth­ods of turn­ing into “oppo­si­tion­al cin­e­ma” records of his life spent immersed in the art world. Such a prac­tice cap­tures many impor­tant ques­tions, often inad­ver­tent­ly. In this case, one in par­tic­u­lar has left me think­ing: what on Earth would Allen Gins­berg have rein­car­nat­ed as?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Allen Ginsberg’s Poignant Final Poem “Things I’ll Not Do (Nos­tal­gias)”

Hear the Very First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing His Epic Poem “Howl” (1956)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Those who know the work of Stan­ley Kubrick know that the longer he made films, the more insis­tent­ly he demand­ed the best: the most flex­i­ble, var­ied mate­r­i­al to adapt to his cin­e­mat­ic meth­ods; the shots with the great­est impact among hun­dreds of takes each; the col­lab­o­ra­tors with the strongest and most use­ful visions, no mat­ter their depart­ment. That very need for high crafts­man­ship would, you’d think, have lead the direc­tor straight to the door of Saul Bass, the graph­ic design­er who lived and rose to emi­nence in his field dur­ing the same era that Kubrick lived and rose to emi­nence in his. They did work togeth­er on 1960’s Spar­ta­cus and 1980’s The Shin­ing, Kubrick­’s fifth and eleventh fea­tures, but as Empire’s fea­ture on Bass’ ear­ly work explains, “it wasn’t Stan­ley Kubrick who recruit­ed him to piece togeth­er Spartacus’s open­ing sequences.” Still, “Kubrick had been an admir­er of his fel­low New York­er from his ear­ly work with Otto Pre­minger,” pre­sum­ably includ­ing work like his still-strik­ing titles for The Man with the Gold­en Arm. 

When Kubrick took a first look at Bass’ sto­ry­boards for Spar­ta­cus, as visu­al­ly vivid as any of his movies them­selves, he must have liked what he saw. Now you can exam­ine them too, both at Empire and at Fla­vor­wire’s col­lec­tion of “Awe­some Sto­ry­boards from 15 of Your Favorite Films.” Those of you who have watched Spar­ta­cus over and over again will rec­og­nize the look and feel sketched out (not that sketched sounds quite right for images of such a solid­i­ty unusu­al for sto­ry­boards) by Bass. But when the film and the draw­ing part ways, they do so because the plans actu­al­ly came out less elab­o­rate than the final prod­uct, not more. We see in the sto­ry­boards, as Empire says, “an ellip­ti­cal sequence with the cam­era lin­ger­ing on frag­ments of the fight­ing” with “a row of shields here, a skew­ered legionary there,” “but in those long-dis­tant days when bud­gets went up as well as down, it was scrapped in favor of just recre­at­ing the whole thing lock, stock and flam­ing bar­rel” — very much a Kubrick­ian way of doing things.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.