Zark Street: Making Daisy

Greenwich Village, 1958.

Just found out there’s going to be a new movie and they’re making it right in our neighborhood! Something about a daisy, I think and they’re going to have a kid in it? Did they cast the kid yet? Sophie’s going crazy, jumping up and down that we have to get over there. But where?

She doesn’t have to ask me twice because it’s going to have Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg starring in it. Something about an artist mom sending her kid off to school and a bishop ?? First, I said, we have to find out where they’re shooting.

I’m guessing they already have a kid picked out or how could they start shooting? But Sophie is insisting we find them anyway and since Kerouac and Ginsberg are involved, she doesn’t have to ask me twice.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with Allen Ginsberg’s poem about a sunflower but that’s not a daisy, so I don’t see how it would. But if both these guys are in it, there would have to be some poetry and it would have to be THEIR poetry. In fact, I think the name of the movie is also the name of a poem Kerouac wrote with Ginsberg and their friend Neal Cassady.

It’s also not going to be like that movie Funny Face which was really pure Hollywood and has nothing whatsoever to do with real Beats (it was all about fashion instead). This new movie's going to be an authentic look at Beat life and it’s going to be improvised. That means people making stuff up as they go.

Sophie just came into the room and told me it’s called Pull My Daisy. She thinks she knows just where they’re doing it. Supposed to be this painter lady married to a regular guy who works at the railroad. And Kerouac isn't just in it--he narrates it. Now she’s pulling me out the door…

Sorry. Catch you later.