MovieChat Forums > Kill Your Darlings (2024) Discussion > terribly inaccurate film (spoilers)

terribly inaccurate film (spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by King-Turtle
13 replies | jump to latest

if you're looking for historical accuracy, don't look toward this film. the movie is filled with all sorts of terrible representations. Mostly, Carr is completely misrepresented.

* There is zero evidence that Kammerer and Carr ever had a sexual relationship (read Dennis McNally and Burroughs on this matter).
* Kammerer did not write Carr's papers; Carr was actually an exceptionally capable student.
* Carr confessed to the DA without the assistance of Ginsberg, but with the help of Carr's mother. That entire bit about Ginsberg writing the confession, and turning it into his professor, and that being why he was expelled, and that the professor mailed it back to him....that's all completely fabricated. There was never any such document. Carr confessed on his own (with his mother by his side).
* Carr did not try to kill himself while in jail.
* Carr had a great relationship with his professor (Lionel Trilling).
* "Honor slaying" never appeared in any law or legal book.
* Carr remained lifelong friends with Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs. Carr edited their work, gave them advice, and used his power as a UPI editor to help promote their causes. For some reason, the ending of the movie implies he had a falling out with the Beats and never wanted anything to do with them again. Not true.

Smaller issues:

* Kammerer tried to hang Kerouac cat, not gas him.
* Kerouac's bail was $100, not $5000.

[–] Ambrosia-I 11 years ago

Thanks for your post, it's interesting what they changed. I thoroughly enjoyed the film and performances, but I think with any of these biopics there is a tendency to play a bit fast and loose with the truth probably in this case because it made for a more dramatic story.

[–] MWallace77 11 years ago

I read an article written about Kammerer by a man who knew him, he had nothing but good to say about Kammerer.

Do you think Carr's papers were good because other people wrote them?

[–] sizergh404 11 years ago

Kill Your Darlings is a based on an episode in Allen Ginsberg's life between 1943 and 1944 and is told from Ginsberg's point of view; the events covered and the characters involved are as he saw them at that time, the past lives and the relationships of these people would be unknown to him before he entered Columbia and any knowledge he has can only be based on his own observation or information received from others. His diaries and early writings can be found in 'The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice' which covers the years 1937-1952; the entry for 3rd Augut, 1944 (eleven days before Kammerer's death)is titled 'Essay in Charactr Analysis - Lucien Carr' and there are 'Dialogues' whch are the reporting of discussions between Carr and Ginsberg on, for example,'Aesthetics and Morality'. The researcher who has available journals containing the contemporary observations of the character through whose eyes the story is told is obviously going to make use of such material as a basis.

The film is not a documentary reporting all known facts gathered from as many sources as possible - it is an historical recreation, a story which has fictional elements included but, after seventy years, how else can a story be told to an audience unless it dramatises certain aspects of an event happening in the first half of the previous century to make it relate to to people living in the next?

[–] Bree_33 11 years ago

The film is not a documentary reporting all known facts gathered from as many sources as possible - it is an historical recreation, a story which has fictional elements included but, after seventy years, how else can a story be told to an audience unless it dramatises certain aspects of an event happening in the first half of the previous century to make it relate to to people living in the next?

Spot on, sizergh404

There are factual inaccuracies – as in any “based on a true story” film – but I preferred to gloss over those.

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[–] karmacoupe 11 years ago

I agree, and thanks for posting this. The multiple historical inaccuracies really bothered me as well — especially since the real story was so dramatic and interesting and didn't need fictionalization.

Here's a review that goes into some of the fabrications you mention, and several others as well ...

http://brianhassett.com/2013/09/kill-your-darlings-review/

[–] reb_vodka_042099 11 years ago

I also thought that the kiss Lucien and Allen shared probably never happened in reality. I can believe that Ginsberg had a crush on Carr at some point, but I don't think anything actually happened between them. However, I am only saying this from the little I know about the relationship between the two, so if anyone knows what actually happened (if there was any homosexual "play," that is) - it'd be nice to know.

Oh, and I believe it was Kerouac who told Kammerer where Carr was before Carr killed him, not Ginsberg.

[–] sizergh404 11 years ago

Try reading 'The Typewriter is Holy' by Bill Morgan. Written by someone who knew most of the Beats and was bibliographer and archivist for Ginsberg for the last twenty years of Ginsberg's life. You may well find some answers in there.

[–] kidjay83 11 years ago

Yeah this movie missed all those points it was like it didn't even care to touch upon them .It cared more about the fat then the actual meat of the story and its characters .

Only when society changes will the culture change "

[–] denise1234 11 years ago

I would recommend reading Caleb Carr's response (he is the son of Lucien Carr and is also a well-published author in his own right) regarding the many inaccuracies he claims are in this movie.

To paraphrase (you can find the verbatim response online): Caleb C. says this film portrays Ginsberg more along the lines of how Ginsberg *wished* it would have been instead of what it really was -- he said Ginsberg had a crush on Carr that was not reciprocated by Carr as Carr was not gay; he talks about how a fatherless Carr was abused by Kammerer (whom he says was a predatory pedophile and stalker) from the age of 12, starting when Kammerer was his Boy Scout leader; that Kerouac played a much bigger and more influential role in Carr's life and in the circumstances surrounding the murder than portrayed but that Ginsberg was jealous of Carr's friendship with Kerouac (who was heterosexual) and so always tried to minimize Kerouac as much as possible when he spoke/wrote about those times, and instead interjected himself as a more central figure in Carr's life and in the situation, from his own fantasy and in reaction to Carr's spurning of his affections and Carr's close friendship with Kerouac.

Caleb Carr said he and other folks who have lots of information about his father and those days were not approached at all by the moviemakers because that info would have countered Ginsberg's version and the filmmaker's personal agenda.

And Caleb Carr isn't just blindly defending his father and trying to whitewash his father's history as he says that his father was abusive to people (including Caleb and his sibs), but he attributes that to the years of abuse his father sustained at the hands of Kammerer but never sought therapy for.

"I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book." ~ Bradbury

[–] radfreed 11 years ago

I read Caleb Carr's letter and it actually sounds like the movie was quite accurate then. In the movie Lucien and his mother certainly make the claims that Kammerer abused Lucien, the relationship between Ginberg and Lucien is definitely one sided, and only goes as far as Ginsberg kissing Carr. Ginberg is clearly jealous of both Kammerer and Kerouac and on the outside while Carr is very friendly with Kerouac. It is never implied that Kerouac is gay, he has a gf throughout. The only liberties they took were in connecting this episode to Ginsberg's expulsion from University.

The film makers do set out to tell the story from Ginsberg's point of view and based strictly on what was written and known upto that point in history. I think it was a bad decision to tell it from Ginsberg's point of view because he clearly wasn't central to the story if you were interested in the murder. It's the murder and the abuse as Ginsberg saw it rather than how Carr experienced it. But obviously Caleb Carr wasn't born yet either and so it's not likely that he knows what really happened either. It's rather sad and not surprising however that Carr was not able to have a better relationship with his son although he seems to have kept up his friendship with this group of writers throughout his life, but that letter just reinforces the movie's point of view that Lucien was something of a conflicted user who knew how to manipulate people - in fact, Caleb Carr says as much in the letter.

The Daily Caller - one of the worst right wing rags started by Tucker Carlson clearly has a homophobic agenda to promote here, but the actual letter from Caleb Carr rather than the editorializing actually supports the movie's point of view. He says that Lucien didn't realize that he was in an abusive relationship at the time, that he knew how to manipulate gay men, that Ginsberg had a crush on him etc. etc.

[–] denise1234 11 years ago

radfreed^

Very astute observations and agree with much of what you say :)

Certainly Caleb Carr wasn't born yet, but that doesn't mean that he did not 'know' much about what happened, at least so far as from his father's accounting and from other contemporary acquaintances of his father.

So far as the inaccuracies: Caleb C. seemed to take most issue with the presentation of Kerouac as more insignificant than he actually was in his father's life and regarding the murder, that the jailhouse 'Judas scene' was invented including Lucien Carr's demeanor throughout those events, and that his father was serially abused and greatly harmed by Kammerer starting from around the age of 12 and Caleb C. did not like 'the revealer of truth' in the film (as he puts it) to be Ginsberg, especially in light of Ginsberg's past forays with NAMBLA.

Also, why the slur toward the publication in which the letter was published? The letter speaks for itself. I am not a team player for either a 'right' side or a 'left' side, and I agree with Caleb Carr's (and Madison's) quotes at the end of his response.

Cheers!

"I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book." ~ Bradbury

[–] karmacoupe 11 years ago

I thought the Carr letter was a great addition to the discussion and Beats Studies in general.

It really seems like the filmmakers used / sensationalized the murder in order to tell a gay coming of age story. Carr and Kerouac weren't gay, so they twisted the facts to fit their agenda, and basically wrote the straight guys and their girlfriends out of the story.

It's such an interesting and historic tale, it's too bad they perverted the facts and presented it in this way.

[–] ducdebrabant 11 years ago

Go write a movie script based on actual events. I'm dying to read it. Sheesh. Amateurs.

Thrown away.