[MAGIC TRIP screens Wednesday November 2nd at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art.]Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
I used to have an artist-girlfriend, an ardent feminist, who did not suffer fools gladly. That's why it's a used-to-be situation; I was the fool, obviously. Yet even as she found me repulsive, she was fascinated the "Beats" - Jack Keroac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, all those drunken-stoned-"Howling" poets who ushered in the counterculture, plus occasionally beat their women (hey, is that why they were called the Beats?) and shot their wives. These men, I guess, were her heroes all the same. Ain’t feminists wacky? Just about the only time she'd even let me in the door was when I had an advance review copy of the Beat Generation documentary THE SOURCE to give her. And I even possessed the coincident surname as one of the Beats, Neal Cassady. No other similarity or appeal, evidently. In short, unlike her, I never quite got the brouhaha about the Beats.
