Riding high: Kerouac centenary film duo's screen trip

Tom Knoff and Kurt Hemmer in conversation about their new short movie combining a stunning collage of images and a potent poetic tribute celebrating an important anniversary

In late autumn, I was contacted by the US Beat historian Kurt Hemmer about a new film he had created with collaborator Tom Knoff. He was interested in some pre-release comments about American Joyride, a sharp and smart 10-minute celebration of the forthcoming centenary of Jack Kerouac, born on March 12th, 1922. When I saw the piece, I told him that our own British commemoration of the 100th birthday Kerouac Lives! was happening soon and proposed that we show the short movie as part of our live event. On February 4th, the film, subtitled 100 Lines for the Kerouac Centenary, will enjoy its first public screening, a European premiere in West Yorkshire, UK. I spoke to the two-man team behind this short but perfectly formed tribute to a great writer…

Greetings to both of you from Rock and the Beat Generation. Tell us something about yourselves and your interest in the Beats…

KH: My favourite author is Jack Kerouac. I went to the University of Connecticut, Storrs to get my MA specifically to work with Ann Charters because she was the top Kerouac scholar in the world. I would have gone to UConn even if I had the opportunity to go to Harvard. As a matter of fact, UConn was the only MA programme I applied for at that time.

I was lucky enough to meet the filmmaker Tom Knoff at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, when I was hired as an Assistant Professor in 2001. I’ve been teaching Beat literature, making films with Tom about Beat poets, and publishing heavily in the field of Beat Studies for the last 20 years. I’m presently the new Secretary of the Beat Studies Association. We have made three previous award-winning films I produced with Tom about poets Janine Pommy Vega, Michael McClure, and Ted Joans.

TK: I was employed professionally in film, video, television, radio and audio production since completing my degree from the College of Communications and Fine Arts at Southern Illinois University in 1975. I retired from Harper College in 2015. I would also like to mention another film Kurt and I collaborated on called Keenan about the photographer Larry Keenan, friend and student of Michael McClure.

Pictured above: Tom Knoff and Kurt Hemmer

How did this documentary project come about. Clearly you have been friends or associates for some time. How was the labour divided on the project?

KH: I always assumed that the Kerouac centenary of 2022 would be an exciting year of travel for me. I wanted to go to as many celebrations of Kerouac as possible. With the world still in the midst of the Covid pandemic, I realised that travel would probably be difficult. I still wanted to do something in honour of Kerouac’s centenary.

My friend and collaborator for twenty years, Tom, came up with the idea of me writing a poem for the centenary and making it into a short video that could be shared electronically. I wrote the poem and Tom came up with the fabulous visual interpretation of it. I made a few suggestions to Tom and he made a few suggestions about the poem to me. We were both extremely happy with the result, which took several months of back-and-forth collaboration.

TK: That pretty much sums it up.

You have plainly made moving image texts before. What were the challenges involved in creating this visual, textual and musical montage?

KH: Tom and I haven’t worked on a project quite like this before. Our previous films were biographical portraits of our subjects. Tom will no doubt say more about the visual challenges. I just wanted to create a poem that Tom would feel excited to work with. The music selection, which I think is fantastic, was chosen by Tom, so he’ll be better as responding to that.

TK: I guess the challenge is to provide visual commentary to a poem that’s not in need of commentary and is more than capable of standing on its own. The only bar that I set for myself was to create something visually representative of Kerouac’s era and that, hopefully, supported the text without supplanting or detracting from it.

Tell me about the music you have used. It’s wonderfully atmospheric and captures the mood of the piece beautifully…

TK: All of the music was licensed from PremiumBeat and was edited using the individual loops that accompany a purchased licence. Since my earliest days in the business, I’ve been aware of the audience impact that can result from a good marriage of sound and image (Not withstanding those who believe cinema lost its reason to exist with the introduction of the soundtrack).

For this reason, I generally spend as much time on the editing and mixing of the soundtrack as I do on the editing and mixing of images. With American Joyride, my hope is that the soundtrack can stand alone with the listener conjuring their own image track if they desire. 

What were you aiming to do with this 10-minute feature? Give a sense of why you decided on the title?

KH: We wanted something short with a strong emotional impact. In our current cultural climate, it is easy to lose the attention of your audience. Our goal was to create something that had a punch. We’re also working with a limited budget and trying to create something that might not have a long shelf life. There is no guarantee that we’ll have an audience at all.

The title, American Joyride, came from me. It’s the title of my poem. I wanted to create something for the centenary that was a celebration of Kerouac’s achievement. I set for myself the restriction of using only 100 (because of the centenary) lines for what I wanted to express. So, the subtitle is literally what it says – one hundred lines written for the Kerouac centenary.

TK: Feature is probably not the right word, it’s a short. There are many filmmakers out there creating short films as interesting and significant as longer form films generally thought of as features. Most film festivals have a separate category for short films. Length does not a film make. That said, my primary aim was to create something that Kurt and I enjoyed watching, to find out if I could make it work. If others enjoy it as well, so much the better.

Is the 100 line text your own or do you borrow from Kerouac's writing to an extent? Your reading of the script is convincing: were you trying to capture some of Kerouac's voice in your narration?

KH: The poem was not written spontaneously, but it was not written without any books in front of me, either. My goal was threefold: write lines to explain how Kerouac influenced me, write lines that explained my interpretation of Kerouac to other readers and write lines that spoke to Kerouac as if he were my reader. All the lines, or pockets of thought, signify on something Kerouac and his friends said or wrote. But it all came from inside my head.

I wanted to create something that was visually, musically, and intellectually stimulating. I’d prefer if the readers/listeners of the poem interpret it themselves, but I’ll give you a sense of where certain lines came from. When I wrote ‘writing for eternity/wasn’t built in a day’ I was thinking of Kerouac’s genius quip to Timothy Leary after taking psilocybin: ‘Walking on water wasn’t built in a day’. Many of the lines I wrote have a very similar genesis. 

I appreciate that you are originally from New England, Kurt. Were you able to draw on your own knowledge of local accents to deliver the script? We have a young actor Malcolm Webb presenting readings by the writer in our show and he has also been trying to develop a Kerouac sound…

KH: I wasn’t thinking about accents at all when we recorded the poem. It was simply done in my own reading voice without any attempt to develop a sound that was like Kerouac. I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. My father is from Boston and my mother is from Worcester, MA. I was mainly raised in Seekonk, MA, outside of Providence, Rhode Island. But I haven’t lived in Massachusetts, other than family visits, since the mid-1990s.

After getting my MA at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, I went to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. I spent a year as an adjunct at WSU and lived in Moscow, Idaho. I started working at Harper College in 2001 and I moved to Chicago. For the last seven years I’ve lived in the Chicago suburbs with my family: my wife Erin and my kids Alice, who is 10 years old, Naomi and River, seven-year-old twins.

How far has this film been seen so far? Can we consider this to be a UK or even European premiere for the piece?

KH: We showed a handful of Kerouac enthusiasts rough cuts of the film to get their feedback. We wanted to know if we were on the right track. We only received enthusiastically positive feedback. Ann Charters absolutely loved it. So, we have the confidence now to present it to a larger audience. When you show the film, it will be the UK and European premiere.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

KH & TK: Thanks for taking the time to view our piece and giving us the opportunity to say a few words about it.

.

Links to films mentioned in this interview:

Janine Pommy Vega: As We Cover the Streets, https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/379458324

Rebel Roar: The Sound of Michael McClure, https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/380771248

Wow! Ted Joans Lives!, https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/379291536