If “House of Floyd in Big Sur” was Sven the Hippie’s “On the Waterfront,” than “Yack K” is his “A Touch of Evil.” (?)
Never before has Sven plunged to such murky, yet technicolor, subterranean* depths. Sven’s experience lends credence to the theory that to your mind must disintegrate before you can put it back together again. Very intense.
The film was created to celebrate the August 14th screening of “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur,” the fantastic collaboration between Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard. The move traces the origins of Kerouac’s “Big Sur,” which documented his not-so-pleasant retreat from Beat stardom while renting out Ferlinghetti’s cabin in Bixby Canyon. If “On the Road” was joyous and librerating, “Big Sur” is stiffling, uncomfortable, and tragic, as Kerouac speaks of his psychological meltdown in candid, impressionistic detail.
It is into this mythical narrative than Sven steps, seeking to attain satori and purge his Swedish soul of unspeakable – and as yet, unidentified – demons.
* That was a Kerouac pun.
Henry Miller Library 