Three months after Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman‘s Howl screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, a distribution deal has finally happened. Oscilloscope will release this absorbing semi-documentary in theaters and VOD on 9.24.10. Howl is quite an original thing — an instructive education as to the meaning of Allen Ginsberg‘s legendary poem. I was really glad I saw it. Why did it take so long to cut a deal?

On 1.21 I called it “an indie, artsy, half-animated dream-cream movie that’s basically an instructional primer for the uninitiated about what a wonderfully seminal and influential work Howl was and is.

“It’s brisk, condensed, in some ways florid, engaging, intellectually alert and stimulating. You know what this thing is? It’s a gay Richard Linklater movie, only deeper and more trippy. It’s an half-animated exploration thing that contains scenes of actors reading and ‘being,’ but in no way is this a movie that plays like a movie. It’s something else, and that’s a good thing for me.

“Howl is a ‘small’ film, but it’s rather wonderful and joyful in the particulars.

“Howl is not a narrative feature — it’s a near-documentary that says ‘stop what you’re doing and consider what a cool poem Howl was…in fact, let us take you through the whole thing and show and tell you how cool and illuminating it is.’ It uses Waltz With Bashir-like animation to illuminate what Howl was in Ginsberg’s head when he wrote it, and what the poem’s more sensitive readers might have seen in their heads when they first read it.

“James Franco ‘plays’ Ginsberg quite fully, particularly and well — he gets the slurring speech patterns and pours a mean cup of tea as he’s explaining a point to a journalist — but Franco, good as he is, is subordinate to (or should I say in harmony with?) the basic ambition of the film, which is to inform, instruct, awaken, turn on.

“For me, Ian McKellen‘s ‘Acting Shakespeare’ was a somewhat similar experience — an accomplished British actor explaining and double-defining the joy and transcendent pleasure of performing, feeling and really knowing deep down what Shakespeare’s poetry really means, and has meant to him all his life.

“I’ve read Howl one a half times, but only now do I feel I really know it.”

“In 2002, Stephen Baldwin had an experience that changed his life forever,” the narrator reads. “He became a born-again Christian, giving his life to Jesus Christ. Over the next few years he became very vocal about his faith, using his spotlight to boldly preach the gospel to millions of people. However, because of his convictions [which] began to cause him the loss of several jobs and a highly publicized bankruptcy, he has been publicly ridiculed and insulted…”

This video and the website from which it came — RestoreStephenBaldwin.org — are completely on the level, or so it would seem. Baldwin needs work and financial help, and is reaching out to people of his flock.

I don’t want to see anyone suffer economically, but let’s cut to the chase: Baldwin’s troubles have apparently resulted not from his becoming a born-again Christian or preaching the Good News, but from his becoming an arch-conservative and being known, fairly or unfairly, as one of the more visible right-wing uglies on the Hollywood political landscape. Why doesn’t the video admit that Baldwin’s troubles are as much political as religious, if not more so?

Christianity, of course, goes hand in hand with right-wing views. If you believe in Jesus, you believe in Teabagging, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, etc. I’m only half-kidding. There are left-wing humanist Christians out there, I’m certain — Jimmy Carter, for example — but probably not all that many. There is apparently something about accepting Christ into your heart that makes you vaguely racist and prompts opposition to Barack Obama and liberalism and health care and restraining Wall Street bankers.

I don’t know for a fact that Hollywood producers and studio chiefs have white-listed Baldwin because he’s a rightie, but the Baldwin video was clearly made with Baldwin’s approval so obviously he feels that way. If he’s correct, it would appear that some in the entertainment industry don’t like to hire righties if they can help it. This is not a myth. Some people in Hollywood do hold this prejudice. I wrote an article about this in 1994 for Los Angeles magazine.

Although I don’t share this prejudice in terms of actions and practices, I wrote in the summer of ’08 that if I was a producer I might tell Jon Voight to “eat cake” if he was looking for a role on my film or TV show. I might do that, I said, as a way of making him suffer for his ugly views about Barack Obama, and because it feels emotionally satisfying to someone like myself to bring a little pain and political persecution into the life of a rightie. As a notion, at least. Which is to say not actually.

“I hope it’s not a shock to anyone that people tend to hire according to whims and hunches, likes and dislikes, alliances and contretemps,” I said. “Producers hire or don’t hire people all the time because an actor is liked or disliked, because a friend thinks he’s an asshole or a good guy, because the actor and the producer go to the same fitness club or their kids know each other, etc.

“I was just indulging in a feeling that I might have — a momentary ‘fuck Jon Voight’ impulse that I might feel or give voice to — if I were a producer. Admit it — it feels good to stick it to people you don’t like or strongly disagree with. (Again, I urge everyone to read Voight’s op-ed article — it’s certifiable.) As I said to an HE reader on the same page, ‘I didn’t say I had a shit list, or that I believe in the idea of one. I just said it feels good to think of shit-listing certain people, as a fun fantasy. Not that I think for a second that anyone would give a damn.

“My own view is that you always work with the best people you can, regardless of political affiliation. Stanley Kubrick was absolutely correct to hire Adolf Menjou as the cynical French general in Paths of Glory, despite Menjou’s reprehensible right-wing views that included supporting the blacklist. Because Menjou was superb in the part. He wasn’t just giving a performance as that guy — he seemed to ‘be’ him.

“And good for Cecil B. DeMille, that awful, sanctimonious, two-faced Bible-thumping vulgarian, for giving the liberal-minded Edward G. Robinson a job on The Ten Commandments. That was a good and compassionate thing DeMille did, even if he was a prick and a bully at heart.”

“It should always be about the work and the potential of this or that artist to be extra-sublime in the service of a movie, and not some political bullshit. At the same time we’re all human and prey to certain vengeance impulses from time to time.”

Naturally I never considered seeing Shrek Forever After, tonight’s opener for the Tribeca Film Festival. But the festival does start tomorrow in earnest, and will continue until May 2nd. I’ve already seen The Trotsky (nope), Get Low (yup), that reasonably decent Rush documentary that I despised and the admirable Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. I realize that I’m obliged to see Clio Barnard‘s The Arbor and Brilliante Mendoza‘s Lola, only I’d rather not on some level. I really don’t have a choice in the matter. I understand that.

I’m otherwise down for The Two Escobars, Alex Gibney‘s My Trip to Al-Qeada and Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film, Bjorn Richie Lob‘s Keep Surfing, James Franco‘s Saturday Night Live doc, Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s Micmacs (finally), that Serge Gainsbourg biopic, Jorge Navas‘ Blood and Rain and…whatever, I’m still poking through the book.

Listen to this rundown on the evils of super-banks by recently-arisen British political superstar Nick Clegg. The Guardian‘s Oliver Burkeman recently called him the new Obama, but when was the last time Barack Obama spoke the truth about fix-is-in banking practices as bluntly and plainly as Clegg says it here? Obama should aspire to be the American Clegg.

“A week ago, most people in Britain considered Nick Clegg, the ‘little-known leader’ of the Liberal Democrats, to be, by all measures, a long shot to become Britain’s next prime minister,” a 4.21 Huffington Post summary reads. “But that was before ‘Cleggmania’ swept the country.

“The origins of Cleggmania can be traced to last week’s televised debate — a first in Great Britain — in which Clegg was widely considered to have stolen the show from the leaders of Britain’s two largest political parties: current Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, and Conservative Party leader David Cameron. The headline the next day in the London Times read ‘Clegg comes of age.’ A poll taken after the debate led the Guardian to declare that ‘Clegg is now in contention as potential PM.’

“To top it off, the latest YouGov poll shows the Liberal Democrats to now be in the lead with 34 percent of the vote. The Conservative Party came in second with 31 percent. A week ago the Liberal Dems were hovering around 16 percent. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish referred to the poll result as ‘the earthquake in Britain.’ John Curtice of the Independent has called the Liberal Dems’ surge ‘the biggest shock to the electoral landscape in years.'”

Here’s an insightful, well-written piece about Clegg by the Globe and Mail‘s Doug Saunders.

In a chat with Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney indulges in moralistic musings while comparing the wick-dipping pathology of Eliot Spitzer, whom Gibney has made a new untitled documentary about, with that of Tiger Woods. The Spitzer doc will screen under the auspices of the Tribeca Film Festival this Saturday.

A mildly funny riff on The Blind Side, posted yesterday by “Rod” of The Editing Room. The tone is rather like those Mad magazine movie parodies of the late ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

“Is it just me, or is he extremely articulate when he wants to be?” I’ve seen Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low (Sony Classics, 7.30) twice now, and have felt soothed and stirred both times. In the lead role as an ornery old cus, Robert Duvall scores in a way that recalls, here and there, his Oscar-winning turn in Tender Mercies. But Bill Murray, as a low-key funeral-home operator, and Lucas Black, as his employee, are just as spot-on.

N.Y. Times critic Charles Isherwood more or less agrees with my American Idiot rave, which I posted on 3.31. His review begins as follows: “Rage and love, those consuming emotions felt with a particularly acute pang in youth, all but burn up the stage in American Idiot, the thrillingly raucous and gorgeously wrought Broadway musical adapted from the blockbuster pop-punk album by Green Day.

“Pop on Broadway, sure. But punk? Yes, indeed, and served straight up, with each sneering lyric and snarling riff in place. A stately old pile steps from the tourist-clogged Times Square might seem a strange place for the music of Green Day, and for theater this blunt, bold and aggressive in its attitude. Not to mention loud. But from the moment the curtain rises on a panorama of baleful youngsters at the venerable St. James Theater, where the show opened on Tuesday night, it’s clear that these kids are going to make themselves at home, even if it means tearing up the place in the process.

“Which they do, figuratively speaking. American Idiot, directed by Michael Mayer and performed with galvanizing intensity by a terrific cast, detonates a fierce aesthetic charge in this ho-hum Broadway season.

“A pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions — bring on the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, please! — only to transcend them through the power of its music and the artistry of its execution, the show is as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I’ve seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons past.”

I’m trying hard to be interested in the Weinstein-Ron Burkle-Miramax-Disney negotiations, but I’m just not feeling it. Okay, there’s one sentence that caught my attention in Anne Thompson‘s 4.21 Indiewire report, to wit: “It bears repeating that the Weinsteins themselves are not buying anything. Burkle is trying to acquire the Miramax library and will own it, while The Weinstein Co. will distribute the films.” Employees, in other words.

A cheap whiney punk (James Dean) vs. a conservative middle-class doctor (Ronald Reagan) in a 1954 live teleplay called The Dark, Dark Hours, about a couple of thugs doing a home invasion. A Desperate Hours-type deal. Dean’s emotional howl is similar to the one he used that year in East of Eden. Reagan doing the intro and outro obviously interferes with the suspension of disbelief.

There’s a 4.20 story on the Huffington Post claiming that “scientists fear tremors [from] the Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano could trigger an even more dangerous eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, creating a worst-case scenario for the airline industry and travelers around the globe.

“A Katla eruption would be 10 times stronger and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash into the air than its smaller neighbor, which has already brought European air travel to a standstill for five days and promises severe travel delays for days more.”

If Katla erupts over the next few days there’s obviously a chance that Cannes Film Festival flights could be interrupted or affected to some degree. It’s only 19 days away. Perhaps airlines will re-figure established routes from the U.S. to southern France. You know…fly in a more southerly direction (over Spain, let’s say) and avoid the Northern European ash plume situation altogether.

“There’s always a feeling of slight excitement as your jet angles down and over the Mediterranean and gets closer and closer to the sparking blue water with the hills of Nice in the distance and the white beaches and palm trees and oceanside condos and whatnot….it’s quite a vibe.”

So began an e-mail I sent this morning to a friend who’s attending the Cannes Film Festival — two and a half weeks off — for the first time. She’s never been to southern France or the Cote d’Azur, never seen the Mediterranean…nothing. And was asking this and that question.

“I’m flying straight to Nice from NYC this time — never done that before,” I wrote. “Eight and a half hours…awful. I usually fly to Paris and give myself a leg-stretch for a couple of hours before taking an Easy Jet down to Nice. I don’t know what I was thinking when I booked it. I hate flights that last more than five or six hours.

“Cannes is teeming with little cafes and restaurants. But I’ve made a point in the past of eating only warm paninis out of the food trucks (cheaper) and free party food. The only time I pay for a meal is the first night at La Pizza, and perhaps one other time during the festival. My 24-7 motto is cheap-ass, cheap-ass, cheap-ass.

“And it’s going to be worse this time because I’m not eating pizza as a rule, and bread is a general no-no, of course, so fewer paninis. And I’m drinking less wine these days — water, Diet Coke instead. Beer is out. Free cappucinos inside the Orange press room inside the Palais. But I always grab a double cappucino before the first screening of the day at 8:30 am.”