Hollywood fenced with the work of Jack Kerouac 20 years before this in The Subterraneans. This is a biographical look at part of the life of this leading light of the Beat Generation, not so much heartbeat as downbeat and deadbeat, as writer-director John Byrum falls over backwards to underline the squalor that begot Kerouac's writing. Drenched in brown and gold by ace photographer Laszlo Kovacs, strongly cast in the persons of Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, Ray Sharkey and John Heard as Kerouac; one just wishes Byrum could have made it a bit more interesting.

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