Curt Worden’s new film One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur is an attempt to put the Beat novelist’s memoir Big Sur in perspective. Worden not only interviews people who knew Kerouac during that time but also musicians, writers and actors who cite him as an influence. Featuring songs by Son Volt’s Jay Farrar and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, the film is as much a beautiful tribute to the writer as it is a documentary about his life. It shows at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27 at the Cedar Lee Theatre and has just come out on DVD. Wurden spoke via phone from Los Angeles where he had just seen a concert in which Gibbard and Farrar performed the songs from the soundtrack.
Your film starts with the premise that if you think Jack Kerouac was constantly on the road, you don’t know Jack. Did you make the film in order to dispel assumptions about Kerouac’s life?
I think dispelling those assumptions is inherent when you start telling those stories in more depth. On the Road is not the book that is the end all and be all of what Jack Kerouac is about. Sure, it’s the one that once it was reviewed positively, ended up giving the Beat Generation moniker, but the reality is that there is so much more to the man.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2009.
