Five days ago firstshowing.net‘s Alex Billington posted a new Howl photo — Aaron Tveit and James Franco posing to imitate a semi-famous shot of lifetime companions Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg. Two days ago Awards Daily re-posted the shot alongside the original still (provided by Joao Mattos) of Orlovsky and Ginsberg in the mid ’50s. Then I came along and decided to emphasize the symmetry by recropping, etc.

(l. to.r.) Tveit, Franco in Howl; Corso, Ginsberg.

Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Howl is basically about the obscenity charges that Ginsberg had to face in ’57 following the publication of his seminal poem (i.e., “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night“). Howl has no distributor and wil probably, I’m guessing, turn up at the Toronto Film Festival. Gus Van Sant is the exec producer. Whoever acquires Howl probably won’t open it until early 2010.