The entry begins:Welcome to Painterland takes place in San Francisco just as the Beat movement was taking shape in the mid-1950s. Fifteen or so artists, poets, and musicians lived in and around the large, 4-flat apartment building that the poet Michael McClure dubbed Painterland, in the Fillmore neighborhood. Some in the community called themselves The Rat Bastard Protective Association, after the trash collection agency that had a monopoly at the time, the Scavenger Protective Association. The artists, especially, identified with the garbage collectors, as much of their work was made from cast-offs and detritus. These artists staged performances and exhibitions, they played in bands, and they ran art galleries--usually badly, but great art resulted. Their story includes the art, poetry, sex (gay and straight love affairs), drugs, and the music of Big Brother and the Holding Company, as drummer Dave Getz lived in Painterland.Learn more about Welcome to Painterland at the University of California Press website.
The characters making up the community in Welcome to Painterland are risk-taking, quirky, extremely talented women and men. The movie version would be a thrill to cast, as there are so many strong male and female leads. Wes Anderson, who lives in my old building in New York City and is therefore channeling some of the energy of Allen Ginsberg, who also lived in the building and appears in this narrative, should really make the movie.
If my book were a movie:
Wes Anderson would direct.
Bill Murray would act as narrator.
Adam Driver as...[read on]
Writers Read: Anastasia Aukeman.
My Book, The Movie: Welcome to Painterland.
--Marshal Zeringue
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