Kill Your Darlings

Some things,

once you've loved them,

become yours forever.

And if you try to let them go

they only circle back and return to you.

They become part of who you are.

"Or they destroy you. "

You can't show this to anyone.

- Then tell the truth, Lu.

- You weren't even there.

It's your truth. It's fiction.

You wanted him gone,

too. You sent him to me.

Please. You'll kill me with that.

Allen!

No. Allen!

Don't. No!

Don't!

World News Today.

American daylight bombers

were busy again today.

Our Liberators with fighter escort

have continued the air offensive

with another sock at German

coastal installations in France.

Mud and slush are

hampering the Russian armies

from Estonia to the Black Sea,

bu! the Germans report a big

new Red Army push toward Romania.

A dispatch from Turkey says the Germans

have begun another general offensive

against the Yugoslav partisans,

and, in the Pacific, American

troops on Los Negros fought a...

Any mail come for me?

Why? Are you expecting something?

No. No.

I told you it wouldn't work.

Mom?

You gotta get me outta here.

He nailed the window shut

while I was in the bath.

Dad didn't do that, Mom.

I nailed the windows

because you're not right.

He can hear you. He

got wires in the walls.

You have to rest, clear your head.

- Do you want to go back to Greystone'?

- You wouldn't dare put me back there.

Mom, Mom. Then listen to me.

He can hear you.

- Can he still hear me'?

- What did I just say?

It's all right.

Quiet down.

Don't ever leave me.

Were you gonna tell me that you applied?

I didn't want her to know.

"Love that is hoarded moulds at last

"Until we know, the only thing we have"

"Is what we give away"

"Is what we hand away"

Have, hand. It's consonance.

Give, is. Assonance.

Hey, I wrote the goddamn poem.

All right?

Why don't you go write your own?

Open it.

- I got in.

- You got in?

- To Columbia University.

- You got into Columbia.

Yes!

You don't wanna go down there.

It's the land of the fairies.

Head there, you never come back.

Luke Detweiler, Danville, Virginia.

Allen Ginsberg.

You're Jewish, right?

I'm getting good at telling.

The South Hall library is a church

and these are the sacraments,

original folios of the most

important texts in history.

Beowulf.

First Folio Hamlet.

The Gutenberg Bible.

These are among the

university's prized possessions.

Hands off the glass.

Let's hear a bit, shall we?

"On a Sunday afternoon,

"when the shutters are down

"and the proletariat

possesses the street

"there are certain thoroughfares

which remind one of nothing less

"than a big

"cancerous

"cock. "

- What is this nonsense?

- Henry Miller.

Get down immediately.

That book is restricted.

Which is why I committed it 10 memory.

Security.

What the hell are you doing?

Alert the press. Tell them

Lucien Carr is innocent.

That was highly unusual.

Campus is actually quite quiet.

Moving on.

The Victorian sonnet has

the balance of three tenets,

rhyme, metre, conceit.

Without this balance,

a poem becomes slack,

an untucked shirt.

Professor Steeves.

Then how do you explain Whitman?

Say more. Two more sentences.

Well, he hated rhyme and metre.

The whole point was

untucking your shirt.

What's your name?

- Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg?

Your father, perhaps, is

the poet Louis Ginsberg?

He writes with rhyming metred verse.

Why do you think he chose that form?

Because it's easier.

This university exists

because of tradition and form.

Would you rather this

building be built by engineers

or Whitman and his boys at play?

There can be no creation

before imitation.

Reports from the front say the Nazis

are wheeling up fresh

materiel and reserves.

Shut the books.

We're taking my brother

with us to the social.

He ships out tomorrow.

I can't. You see how much I have to do.

He's Navy. It's catnip for the skins.

You hymies are really

all about work, huh?

Brahms?

Finally.

An oasis in this wasteland.

So how come you're not at the social?

Only the most antisocial have to

go to an event actually called one.

- Libation?

- What, you drink in your room?

How does a horrible

bottle of Chianti sound?

I don't drink.

Freshman?

- Yes.

- Excellent. I love first times.

I want my entire life

to be composed of them.

Life is only interesting

if life is wide.

To Walt Whitman.

You dirty bastard.

How's your Yeats?

Have you read A Vision?

Never heard of it.

It's completely brilliant.

And impossible.

He says that life is round.

That we're stuck on this

wheel of living and dying.

An endless circle.

Until

someone breaks it.

You walked in here. You

ruptured the pattern.

- Bang. The whole world gets wider.

- Gets wider.

- How did you...

- it's consonance.

A reiteration of themes.

Are you a writer?

'Cause I've got a job for a writer.

No, I'm not.

Well, you're not anything yet.

Ginsberg.

Isn't that you?

- Ginsberg! What?

Phone call.

I'll be back.

Thank you.

- Hello.

- I found the wires.

He's trying to get inside my head.

Dad is not trying to get

inside your head, okay?

Put him on.

He's not here. He left.

Where'd he go?

Honey, I need you to come home now.

Mom, I can't come home.

Listen to me.

You have to look after yourself

I don't feel good.

- Are you going to the dance?

- Downtown.

- Now?

- Who are you talking to?

- No one.

- Is he there with you?

No, Mom, he's not here.

Look, I will be there as soon as I can.

I need you tonight.

I need you to promise me.

I promise. I love you.

Bye.

Coming?

Welcome to the edge of the world.

Allen in Wonderland.

- Do you know her?

- No, and I don't plan on it.

She tasted like imported

sophistication and domestic cigarettes.

Dave, where's the liquor'?

I'll be right back.

You are pinching.

- You are pinching.

- I'm sorry.

You okay?

What's that?

Nitrous oxide for narco analysis.

Know thyself and beshit thyself.

You ever done that?

No thanks. I don't do the cannabis.

Show me the man who is

both sober and happy,

and I will show you the crinkled anus

of a lying a**hole.

Allen, Willy. Willy, Allen.

Lucien, reefer.

Nice meeting you.

- Is he a criminal?

- He wishes he were a criminal.

The Burroughs family is richer than God.

- Well, he looks like a criminal.

- He's a Harvard man.

He's going to be an amazing artist.

His current medium is himself.

- What's that?

- It's bunk for school.

Come on. I want you to meet our host.

What we have, darlings and

demoiselles, is a circle.

Life is round.

Patterns, routines,

a wheel of self-abuse.

Margaret, don't even deny it.

- He sounds like you.

- Because it was me first.

Until the disruption

we long for comes along

and the circle is broken.

He used to be my guardian angel,

but he said I was too much work.

Take this unbloomed stalwart.

And you are?

Allen.

Allen.

Play nice, David.

- Who comes uninvited to my apartment.

- Actually, I invited him.

No one notices him.

Look at him. Why would we bother'?

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