• DANIEL RADCLIFFE
  • DANE DeHAAN
  • BEN FOSTER
  • MICHAEL C. HALL
  • JACK HUSTON
  • JENNIFER JASON LEIGH
  • ELIZABETH OLSEN

Kill Your Darlings

Synopsis

KILL YOUR DARLINGS is based on true events and characters.

For dutiful son ALLEN GINSBERG (Daniel Radcliffe), Columbia University is Mecca—a portal to art, intellect, culture, and freedom—everything hometown Patterson, New Jersey is not. When Allen is accepted into Columbia, his father LOUIS (David Cross), a working-class poet, urges him to leave his emotionally ill mother NAOMI (Jennifer Jason Leigh) behind and head to New York to go pursue his own creative dreams.

At Columbia, Allen finds stuffy tradition clashing with daringly modern ideas and attitudes—embodied by LUCIEN CARR (Dane DeHaan), whom he first encounters shouting a scandalous passage from Henry Miller atop a library study table. With his louche charm and androgynous blond beauty, Lucien is an object of fascination for shy, unsophisticated Allen, and soon he is drawn into Lucien’s hard-drinking, reefer-smoking, jazz-clubbing circle of friends, including WILLIAM BURROUGHS (Ben Foster), the dissolute scion of a wealthy family, and DAVID KAMMERER (Michael C. Hall), an older hanger-on who clearly resents Allen’s position as Lucien’s new sidekick. David apparently followed Lucien to New York, and now works as a janitor despite his showy intellectual pretensions. Lucien uses his moody charisma to pit David against Allen while never quite acknowledging his true feelings for either.

As their relationship deepens, Allen and Lucien realize they both share emotionally troubled pasts and a passion for poetry. Eager to shatter literary and social conventions, Lucien is full of grandiose manifestos—but it’s Allen whom he challenges to produce the work that will set the world afire (and David who slavishly writes Lucien’s school papers). While they’re busy competing for his favor, Lucien finds his interest drawn to JACK KEROUAC (Jack Huston), who’s older, tougher, and cockier—a working-class ex-football player who shipped out with the merchant marine, cohabits with sexy EDIE (Elizabeth Olsen) and—to really up the ante—writes like a wildman. Jack’s oversize persona could easily crush insecure Allen, but instead he encourages Allen’s poetry writing.

Along with toppling tradition, the “Libertine Circle”—Lucien, Allen, Jack, and William, with David Kammerer on the outside looking in—do their best to subvert authority with reckless adventures, enraging college deans and parents alike. For serious student and dutiful son Allen, it’s a liberating rebellion, but for obsessed, spurned David, to be excluded is devastating.

Devastating—and deadly. David angrily confronts Lucien, and by the next morning, David’s stabbed body has been found in the Hudson River. Lucien’s in jail, held for David’s murder. And Allen—begged by Lucien to help him compose his deposition statement—is struggling to piece together what actually transpired that night in Riverside Park. As Allen peels away Lucien’s story of self-defense, he faces a stark choice: to betray himself and lie to the district attorney, supporting Lucien’s innocence, or to write the truth—and condemn his friend.

A true story of friendship, love and murder, KYD recounts the pivotal year that changed Allen Ginsbergs life forever and provided the spark for him to start his creative revolution.



Kill Your Darlings

The Cast

Daniel RadcliffeAllen Ginsberg
Dane DeHaanLucien Carr
Michael C. HallDavid Kammerer
Ben FosterWilliam Burroughs
David CrossLouis Ginsberg
Elizabeth OlsenEdie Parker
Jack HustonJack Kerouac
Jennifer Jason LeighNaomi Ginsberg

Kill Your Darlings

Filmmakers

Kill Your Darlings

Production

About

Ginsberg. Kerouac. Burroughs. And Lucien Carr. The last name may be less familiar, but the real-life character was the linchpin who first brought together these three icons of American literary and cultural revolution in a galvanizing drama of murder and obsession. “People have been fascinated with these guys for the past 50 or 60 years,” says KILL YOUR DARLINGS director and co-writer John Krokidas, “But we wanted to approach this not as a biopic about these three legendary writers, but rather as a story of who they were as adolescents—awkward, still trying to figure out who they really were. In 1944, when Allen Ginsberg was 17 turning 18, when Burroughs was 29 going on 30, they still hadn‘t written a word. For us, what was fascinating was not so much the great men that they would become, but the insecure adolescents and young adults who were trying to figure out that greatness inside.”

In 1944, Allen Ginsberg was a nervous, straitlaced freshman at Columbia University. Jack Kerouac was a washed-up college running back who had lasted all of eight days in the U.S. Navy. William S. Burroughs was a medical school dropout, former door-to-door insect exterminator and budding drug addict, hanging on the fringes of the New York bohemian scene after following Lucien Carr and David Kammerer, friends from his native St. Louis, to Manhattan. But within months of their coming together to declare and pursue their ‘New Vision’ for art and literature, Kammerer was dead, stabbed in the heart by his former protégé and lover, Carr.

Shot from a script by director Krokidas and Austin Bunn, KILL YOUR DARLINGS features a compelling young ensemble that includes Daniel Radcliffe (the Harry Potter series) as the young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) as Jack Kerouac, Ben Foster (The Messenger) as William S. Burroughs, Dane DeHaan (In Treatment) as Lucien Carr and Michael C. Hall (Dexter) as David Kammerer. Rounded out by a supporting cast that includes Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Margot at the Wedding), Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) and David Cross (Arrested Development), KILL YOUR DARLINGS delivers a picture of the nascent Beat Generation that we‘ve never seen before, and tells the true story of the emotional crucible that shaped its voice and vision.

The Origin Story

As co-writer Austin Bunn notes of his friendship with director and fellow writer John Krokidas, “John and I were college roommates. We met freshman year at Yale University, and funnily enough a lot of our first-year experiences ended up in this film—which after all is basically a story about college.” Krokidas went on to the NYU Film Program and a filmmaking career, while Bunn established himself as a fiction and non-fiction writer after grad school at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Their shared fascination with the Beats led to the KILL YOUR DARLINGS collaboration, Krokidas’ feature film directorial debut.

Though the volatile relationship between Kammerer and Lucien Carr represents the pivot point around which the story revolves, the pair realized early on that Allen Ginsberg was the center of the film.

”It’s really Ginsberg’s coming of age,” notes Krokidas. ”He showed up at Columbia, 17 years old, the dutiful son of his parents—a failed working class poet and an emotionally ill mother whom he took care of. He came to school thinking maybe he wanted to study labor law, until he met a young man named Lucien Carr who put an idea in his head that he should be a writer, and that they were going to start a cultural revolution called ’The New Vision‘ which was going to change society. So what really resonated for me, thematically, was this idea of being 18 or 19 years old, leaving the nest for the first time and trying to find your own voice, and feeling that you could do something important with your life, that you could change the world, and really make a difference. And then of course, the end of the story being—they actually did.”

After three or four years of on-and-off work on the script, Bunn and Krokidas found their ideal producer: Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Boys Don‘t Cry, Happiness) one of the definitive producers of American independent film over the past two decades. “We always knew that Christine would be a perfect match for the project,” observes Krokidas. “She's had so much great success over the last 15 years in taking pieces that are true-life stories that often have dark themes involving murders—Boys Don‘t Cry is maybe the best example—and with rich cultural backdrops, and then finding the human story within.”

The Road to "Howl"

The team's first concern was putting together the ensemble cast, and particularly finding the actor to take on the central role of Allen Ginsberg. “We were putting together a list of all the great actors under the age of 30,” he recalls, “and I had one of those crazy midnight moments: What about Daniel Radcliffe? Because on just a thematic level, the character of Allen is someone who goes from being the dutiful son, the good boy, into revealing all of these feelings and thoughts that he's been keeping in for so long, and by the end of the story, finding a new voice for himself. Daniel probably has so much inside of him that he's not gotten the chance yet to show the world, and how great would it be if the arc of the character appealed to him and somehow felt to him like where he was at the moment?”

After growing up in public as the titular Harry Potter star, Radcliffe the actor was moving on from that persona with a broader range of theater and film work. His response to the character of Allen Ginsberg was immediate. “He's just desperate for someone to liberate him,” Radcliffe observes. “He's so ready for that at the beginning of this film, and he finds this incredibly charismatic guy, Lucien Carr. To be honest, that's the thing that attracted me to it most—it's a story about this first true love that ends very badly. I think we‘ve all kind of had some version of that relationship. Sure, people are going to talk about it as a gay love story, but it's basically just a love story. The gay aspect, to me, is sort of incidental—not that we shy away from it. They‘re simply two young men falling in love.”

Of course, turning a young man from West London who all but grew up on film sets into an insecure Jewish kid from Paterson, New Jersey posed its own challenges. Krokidas and Radcliffe undertook a rigorous regimen of training in the actor's spare moments away from his Broadway engagement in the popular revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Recalls Krokidas, “We spent six months rehearsing once a week because he was doing seven shows a week on Broadway. We’d have an hour every week to go through the script, to break down each scene, to find where he emotionally connected with the material, and then also do vocal and accent training.”

Finding the best minds of their generation

The casting of Radcliffe gave the project an initial burst of energy that sustained it throughout the rest of pre-production. The next piece of that puzzle was to find an actor to play Lucien Carr, a vivid and riveting figure who, despite his youth, exuded self-destructive brilliance.

“I knew that was going to be a tough role to cast from the beginning,” says Krokidas, “because it's someone who has to be so charming that they could convince three people—Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg—that they had something important to say, and that they should rebel against their university, rebel against their parents and the world to create a cultural revolution.”

To find the right match for the part, Krokidas, Vachon and Radcliffe auditioned exhaustively. “We auditioned almost every young actor out there again,” Krokidas confirms. “But in 30 seconds of watching Dane DeHaan he became the character I’d imagined in my head. He was real, he was honest, he was seductive, and yet there was a fragility behind those eyes that let you know that there was more than just what he was playing on the surface.”

DeHaan leapt at the chance not only to play such a multi-faceted, chameleonic figure, but also one about whom, comparatively, far less is known. “I just think he's an incredibly complex, interesting person,” says the young actor. “So much of his life is ambiguous. All of the other guys have a lot of historical information out there on them… even videos and all that stuff. With Lucien, it's much harder to find, not that it doesn‘t exist.”

Even without his later-famous cohorts, Carr's backstory alone might have been a compelling film in its own right. As DeHaan notes, ”his father left him and his mother when he was 4 years old. When he was 11 and in the Boy Scouts, David Kammerer was his scout master. And they formed a relationship seemingly right away. The actual details are historically ambiguous, but what's important is that David really introduced Lucien to the idea of broadening your horizons and learning what it really means to live. But David is also the one that, eventually, when Lucien grew older, drove him to… I don‘t want to say insanity, but to having to get rid of this force that was in his life.”

Making DeHaan's job more challenging was the fact that in the aftermath of the murder—successfully (and dubiously) defended by Carr as an “honor slaying” to stave off Kammerer's homosexual advances—Lucien Carr worked systematically to have his name erased from theorigin story of the Beats. “He always made it a point to distance himself from all this stuff,” observes DeHaan, “to really take himself out of the history of it. The original edition of “Howl” is dedicated to Lucien Carr, but he had his name removed from all subsequent versions.” An even starker fate befell the manuscript of the early Burroughs/Kerouac collaboration And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a noir-stylized account of the murder whose publication Carr had suppressed during his lifetime; it was finally published in 2008. But the irony isn‘t lost on DeHaan: “The very thing that he had to purge from his life really took over, in its own way, once he was out of prison. To approach a character that was so complex and also so open to interpretation was really exciting.” With the pivotal duo of Ginsberg and Carr in place, it remained for the team to fill in the other major players of the story—the hard-edged Kerouac, the visionary, elliptical Burroughs, and the morose, doomed David Kammerer. In Kerouac, Krokidas dealt himself a pair of Jacks, casting Jack Huston, the scion of one of the great families of American cinema, but the first to grow up outside the U.S.

“The script is filled with heavy hitters, Burroughs, and Ginsberg and obviously Kerouac” says Huston, the grandson of legendary director John Huston, son of Tony (the screenwriter of his father's final film, “The Dead,” adapted from the classic James Joyce story), and nephew to celebrated actors Anjelica and Danny Huston. “But I liked that it was Kerouac when he was younger. Although he had written a million words, he hadn't been published yet. So it was before the Kerouac that we know, the Kerouac who he would later become… the man, the legend. One could take a little bit of artistic license to make it one's own, without mimicking him completely.”

Radcliffe was particularly grateful to have Huston in the fold. “It was great to have another Brit on set,” he shares, thoroughly alert to the irony of having two towering American literary figures portrayed by native Londoners.

The project took another leap forward with the casting of Ben Foster as the darkly magnetic William S. Burroughs. Foster particularly relished the opportunity to showcase the importance of the writers’ fellowship on the development of one of his heroes. “Burroughs did not define himself as a writer until a year after the murder,” he explains, “when he started collaborating with Jack Kerouac. And what is so beautiful about this particular story, this angle that Austin and John took, is that these men became who they were through each other. Burroughs didn‘t find the courage to put pen to paper until he found union with his brothers.”

Michael C. Hall, as the obsessed David Kammerer, was no stranger to playing alienated outsiders, being a five-time Emmy nominee for his portrayal of conflicted serial killer Dexter Morgan in Showtime's acclaimed “Dexter.” Hall relished the chance to fill in the blanks of the character who is, in many ways, the most mysterious and troubled in the film. “When Lucien Carr was 11,” he notes, “David Kammerer was 25… a scout master and burgeoning academic. But that encounter started a life-long obsession with Lucien. I think that in David's mind, this meant a commitment to being his caretaker, his lover, his go-to guy. After all, Lucien's father died when he was 3, so it was a relationship dynamic that was ripe for this kind of development. And I think that initially, there was a real exchange of ideas, certainly an exchange of affection and enthusiasm, some sort of connection that neither found elsewhere.” “But it turned sour,” Hall continues. “In people like Ginsberg, certainly, and Kerouac, David recognizes younger people who, for Lucien, maybe bring as much to the table intellectually. And like all these guys, he has this sense or conviction that he's the smartest guy in the room, or at least one of them. But he senses a threat there, and I think he realizes that these people can offer Lucien everything he has been providing, exclusively, up to this point.”

Fearless Women

Though the principal roles among the cast are men, Krokidas‘ ensemble boasts a sterling collection of actresses in supporting roles, including Elizabeth Olsen as Kerouac’s girlfriend Edie Parker, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allen's psychologically unstable mother Naomi Ginsberg, and Kyra Sedgwick as Marian Carr, Lucien Carr's aristocratic and fiercely protective mother.

Olsen found the social milieu of the film particularly fascinating. “It illuminates the whole relationship between society and politics, especially toward homosexuals,” she shares. “It's important to have reminders of where our country was at this point. The only reason Lucien Carr didn‘t have to spend his entire life in jail was because he claimed that David was a homosexual, and Lucien supposedly wasn‘t… And the fact that it was actually called an ‘honor slaying’! That seems kind of insane, even for the 1940s. And in New York City, which we usually think of as the most progressive city in the history of our country.”

In landing his pair of veteran actresses to play the key maternal roles, Krokidas well knows how lucky he got. “Kyra Sedgwick is truly fearless. And we needed someone who doesn‘t hold back to play Lucien Carr's mother—after all, where did his personality come from? Marian Carr is a woman who went so far to protect her own son that she burned his admission papers to a mental hospital from a decade earlier. And Kyra can play that ferocity behind this Midwestern aristocratic façade.”

Of his Naomi Ginsberg, Krokidas observes, “Obviously, Jennifer Jason Leigh has shown that she can portray characters who are emotionally ill in a very honest and beautiful fashion. She’s so brave about revealing her own vulnerability.”

noir goes nouvelle

With the cast assembled, the script locked and the financing in place, the KILL YOUR DARLINGS team was left with the formidable task of shooting a New York period piece on a limited budget and schedule. To start the process, Krokidas lifted a technique from an Oscar-winning colleague.

“I stole this from Ang Lee,” shares Krokidas. “In his commentary on The Ice Storm, he mentions that when putting together that film, a period piece, he created a book—photographs from the era, contemporary styles for men and women, architecture, you name it. Basically, the book was history, a huge record of that time period so when you hire your cinematographer, your production designer, your costume designer, everyone can get inside your head and see how you took that era and interpreted it to fit the themes of the story.”

Assembling the book not only provided the team with common set of references and primary source material, but also had the added bonus of cueing a unique approach to shooting style. “When I started creating this book I began looking at the culture of the times. It 's 1944. Double Indemnity won Best Picture; Gilda came out that year. It was a high point in American film noir, and I said to myself ‘Wow, we‘ve got a movie set in 1944, it's based on a murder, what if we tried to create this as a film noir?’”

But the style inquiry didn‘t end there. “I realized that the French took hold of film noir and it became the inspiration for Breathless, for Shoot the Piano Player, for a lot of the early films of the French New Wave, where the camera went off the tripod, and people started breaking rules. It was a much more asymmetrical, jazzy, free-form approach to filmmaking, and that echoed the movement of the characters, going from a much more staged, trapped, symmetrical place in their lives to—as they found their collective voice—something much more jazzy and free-form. So the one-line version that I communicated to my department heads was, let's start at film noir and slowly progress to the free feeling of the French New Wave.”

Director of Photography Reed Morano (Frozen River, Little Birds) got on board immediately. “What I liked was that the movie was going to be very visually challenging,” she recalls. “John already had a very specific vision of how he wanted the film to look and it was actually an excellent, cool idea of combining the style of filmmaking from two different eras that were converging at the time that this story actually happened. Once Allen Ginsberg meets Lucien Carr, his whole world opens up, his true self can come out and he can be who he really is, that's where the film takes a visual turn to New Wave cinema, hand-held cameras, free-roaming, and more romantic, naturalistic lighting.”

Following visual orthodoxies of the noir style represented a new wrinkle for Morano. “All the other movies that I‘ve done have been very naturalistic, very much based in realism. The difference in this movie,” she continues, “was that it really challenged me creatively to be open to the idea of film noir, which more or less requires lighting that doesn‘t actually have to make sense. Some of it is motivated, but a lot of times you just have to put the light where it looks dramatic and cool and exciting. So we did a lot of that; even in the New Wave section, we still kept a little bit of that there. It basically made me get out of my comfort zone of wanting all the lighting to always be motivated. It pushed me to go a little crazy and do wild things that I never did before.”

“One of the reasons I hired Reed,” observes Krokidas, “is that not only had she worked on so many successful, low-budget independent films, but she has a natural instinct, a rhythm, a dance inside of her where she can anticipate where the actors are going to move, and what, emotionally, the next thing we needed to see was. Somebody says a provocative line? She knew exactly when and how to pan over to the reaction of the character who heard it. And I knew that she and I were going to have to be able to dance really fast alongside with the actors in order to capture every scene in this movie on our budget and time schedule.”

city lights

Of course, all the energy in the world couldn‘t turn the clock back to 1944, and the difficulties of shooting a period piece in New York became apparent early on. “During pre-production,” Krokidas notes, “you start confronting the realities of what you can see when you‘re doing a period film in New York City. Oh, there's a handicap access… oh, there's a stop sign… oh, there's a contemporary building right in the middle of that beautiful field that you found with ‘40s architecture around it.” The scenic necessities of the production ultimately had a profound influence on every aspect of the shoot, even down to the film's aspect ratio. “When Reed and I were first talking about what aspect ratio to use,” Krokidas goes on, “we realized shooting it 235:1, super wide-screen, would allow us, vertically, to frame out a lot of the high skyscrapers in Manhattan and focus on a much more narrower plane; it was much easier to find period details in, for example, horizontal or wide-access blocks, in which all of the buildings, the brownstones, were period accurate. But of course, if you tilted the camera just a little bit higher, you would see the contemporary New York skyline.”

Production designer Stephen Carter likewise had his work cut out for him. The tight schedule and working method meant that hard choices needed to be made virtually every shooting day. ”You don‘t have the money to create these huge, beautiful sets. You don‘t have the money to recreate 1944. You‘ve got to go search hard for it within the city, to find places that evoke the time period and the color scheme.”

To that end, the scouting team came up with some undiscovered gems. For the long centerpiece scene in which the characters sneak into the Columbia University library to “liberate” a selection of banned books (an episode drawn heavily from Bunn's and Krokidas‘ own college days), the team had hoped to shoot in the library itself. “Some things that we had hoped to shoot inside a number of the University buildings,” details Carter, “were just too problematic, logistically. So, for example, the library sequence we ended up shooting at the New York Academy of Medicine, which was actually fantastic. I think that was probably my favorite location discovery of the movie, because that was really like stepping back in time. It was a fun place to be, especially the stacks. It's rare to have a library allow you to film in such a collection of rare books. They were very gracious to let us do that.”

The production design staff likewise found economical ways of managing interiors to create a period feel. “We did a lot with printing,” notes Carter. “We printed a huge variety and volume of wallpapers, for example. Sarah McMillan, our set decorator, and Alexios Chrysikos, our art director, worked together very well, resourcing and researching period wallpapers. She would actually acquire old pieces of real, original, stock stuff, and he would boot-scan them, designing our own prints of them that could be added and taken out of locations within minutes.”

But ultimately, the most essential resource the film had at its disposal wasn‘t its operating budget, or even the savvy of its crew, but the boundless passion that every member of the ensemble brought, on both sides of the camera. As Krokidas describes the balance, “You pick two or three exterior locations that are going to sell that theme, to visually enhance the story, and focus on spending your money on those two or three places. And then you‘ve really got to inspire people to get them to kick ass, to work their butts off.” Cast and crew expressed kudos to debut director Krokidas for accomplishing just that.

Transformed, transforming

Ultimately, KILL YOUR DARLINGS isn‘t a film about the death of David Kammerer, or the birth of the Beat movement, but a personal and generational coming of age that's simultaneously highly specific and inherently universal. “For me,” reveals Krokidas, “at the heart of this movie is the inspiration of knowing that you can do something important with your life, but also the drama and the conflict of what you have to go through in order to become yourself. The fancy way of saying this is, it's about the emotional violence that comes with the birth of a self. For me, the murder is just a literal interpretation of that violence, of that death that needs to happen in order for one to be reborn.”

Certainly, the epochal reverberations of the incident are well charted, as Michael C. Hall observes: “It sent Kerouac across the ocean, and Burroughs to Chicago and then south of the border. Ginsberg, I guess, is the only one who stayed put but he certainly absorbed or sublimated it and moved forward with a creative explosion. It's a seminal event; it's wild that most people haven‘t heard that much about it.”

“I think every generation discovers the Beats anew,” muses Austin Bunn. “Funnily enough, when I was in college, I would go to the campus bookstore and read Allen Ginsberg poetry, just sitting there on the floor of the bookstore, transformed by the words I was reading. And now I‘m the guy who's telling them, “Hey, go find these transmissions, they‘re out there for you.’”

Kill Your Darlings

The Beats

Notes on Background Material and Sources by Austin Bunn (co-writer)

John and I started writing Kill Your Darlings in 2004 -- at the time, our primary source material were the news reports about the murder from 1944 and the brief mentions of Kammerer's death in the many rich and fascinating biographies below. It seemed unbelievable to us that no one had made a film about the murder — it had all the makings — but then, anxiety and paranoia can be a writer's best friend (and definitely kept those pages coming). By the time we finished our draft and went out to actors, Allen's journals from the period, titled The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 , were published and they provided a revealing look at our protagonist's own take on the murder in The Blood Song , the novella that Allen wrote for Professor Steeves's class which the University found "smutty" and nearly got him expelled.

Allen was a life-long avid journal-keeper — I wonder sometimes what his Tumblr might've looked like — and his prose had always impressed us with its searching honesty. Eeriely, Allen's novelistic telling of the events of that night matched our own dramatized version that we'd scripted before we ever read the novella. That's when we knew we were on the right track.

Given the dozens of biographies about the Beat writers, we established one rule for the actors: if they wanted to do research, they couldn't read past the murder in 1944. We didn't want these characters to seem like great writers they came to be; we wanted them to be young — awkward, arrogant, unsure, ambitious, with their futures up for grabs. Following is a gathering of the biographies that we read and shared for background and inspiration.

ALLEN GINSBERG BIOGRAPHIES

Three biographies stand out — the insider account I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (by Bill Morgan, Viking, 2006), the populist and wonderfully written Ginsberg: A Biography (by Barry Miles, Harper Perennial, 1989), and Michael Schumacher's exhaustive Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg (St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Allen's own journals like The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, (Da Capo. p, 2006), his GAY SUNSHINE interviews (with numerous journalists), and own intimate photography were instrumental to helping capture his voice and grasp the period and culture. My best friend Max Ross gave me Allen's journals from the 1950s when I was in high school, long before I knew about the murder. I had to look up peyote.

WILLIAM BURROUGHS AND JACK KEROUAC BIOS

It's hard to imagine either Bill or Jack having had a childhood — their adulthood and reputations so completely overshadow their youth. But Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times Of William S. Burroughs (by Ted Morgan, Avon, 1988), with its well-researched stories of Bill's private-school childhood in New Mexico and beyond, helped bring that aspect to life. Kerouac's lesser-known Vanity of Dulouz (Kerouac, Penguin, 1968) is a roman a clef about his youth and time in New York and included evocative (and likely fictionalized) elements about the murder. But it was one of the first longer explorations of the crime in the published Beat canon.

Kerouac may take the title as the most-biographized author in America, and if you're looking for details about his sex life, Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac (by Ellis Annburn, Macmillan, 1999) has them. Edie Parker's take on their relationship, You’ll Be Ok: My Life With Jack Kerouac (City Lights, 2007) was also powerful and revealing, considering the Beat mythology often excludes the presence of women. The more broadly focused Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America (by Dennis McNally, De Capo Press, 2003) is worth a look for a sense of the impact of the Beat writers.

MISCELLANEOUS

The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats includes many voices on the Beat culture and their literary legends, including the testimony of Lucien Carr's former lovers — an exceptionally insightful look at a man who, surprisingly, never wrote about himself. Not surprisingly, many of the executors of the Beat estates, editors, friends and archivists speak powerfully about the history. In this article, James Grauerholz, Burrough's editor and friend — who knew Carr personally — addresses the publication of And the Hippos and the murder itself.

Courtesy of Peter Hale (manager of the Allen Ginsberg Estate)

Kill Your Darlings

Gallery

Allen Ginsberg

Daniel Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe stars in three highly anticipated films and makes a return to London's West End in 2013.

In addition to KILL YOUR DARLINGS, the diverse films include: The F Word, a bright romantic comedy co-starring Zoe Kazan; and Horns, a thriller based on Joe Hill's supernatural novel, about a man who, while undergoing personal turmoil, experiences a horrific transformation. Back on stage in London's West End (June 8 - August 31), he stars in The Cripple of Inishmaan, Martin McDonagh's coming-of-age comic masterpiece, set off the west coast of Ireland. The play is part of an inaugural new season from the Michael Grandage Company.

Debuting last December was Sky Arts four-part mini-series A Young Doctor's Notebook—a wildly original comedy drama, based on a collection of short stories by celebrated Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. Radcliffe portrays the younger doctor, who has exchanges with his older self, played by co-star Jon Hamm.

Last year, Radcliffe hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in the thriller The Woman in Black. The supernatural story of vengeance was met with both critical acclaim and global box office success.

Entertainment Weekly voted Radcliffe “Entertainer of the Year” as the “most talented and original performer of 2011.” He also won two Teen Choice Awards and a Scream Award, as well as receiving two nominations for the People's Choice Award for Favorite Movie Actor and Favorite Movie Star Under 25.

Radcliffe is well known in the eponymous role of Harry Potter—the most successful film series of all time. Radcliffe has starred in all eight of the films. The film series was awarded the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema by BAFTA.

His other film credits include the Australian independent feature December Boys and the role of Jack Kipling in the true-life telefilm My Boy Jack about Rudyard Kipling's 17-year-old son, Jack and the devastating effect his death in World War I had on his family. The film also starred Kim Cattrall, Carey Mulligan and David Haig.

In 2011, Radcliffe starred as J. Pierrepont Finch in Tony Award winner Rob Ashford's production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, marking his Broadway musical debut. The show, which opened in March 2011, has garnered great critical acclaim with Radcliffe, receiving a Grammy nomination alongside co-star John Larroquette, as principal soloists. Radcliffe also received performance nominations from the Drama Desk, The Outer Critic Circle, the Drama League and The Fred and Adele Astaire Awards. In addition, Broadway.com honored him with the Audience Choice Award for Favorite Actor in a Musical as well as Favorite Onstage Pair (with Larroquette).

Lucien Carr

Dane DeHaan

Dane DeHaan has made a formidable impression on film audiences and is currently one of the industry’s most sought after actors of his generation. DeHaan starred in 20th Century Fox’s box office hit, Chronicle. Chronicle was released on February 3, 2012 to rave reviews. The film follows three teenagers who develop superpowers and chronicle their experience on video.

Dane was recently seen in Metallica: Through The Never directed by Nimrod Antal and stars Metallica. The film follows a young roadie for Metallica who is sent on an urgent mission during the band’s show. He also recently starred in the critically lauded film, The Place Beyond the Pines directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine). DeHaan starred opposite Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper as Gosling’s young son Jason. The Place Beyond the Pines was released by Focus Features earlier this year. Dane also starred in The Weinstein Company’s film Lawless, directed by John Hillcoat (The Road,) starring opposite Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clark, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce. The film, set in a depression-era, gritty Virginia, follows three brothers who are part of a bootlegging gang, illegally selling moonshine. Lawless was released on August 29, 2012.

DeHaan can next be seen starring in, Kill Your Darlings opposite Daniel Radcliffe. Directed by John Krokidas, Kill Your Darlings is loosely based on the life of poet Allen Ginsberg. DeHaan portrays Ginsberg’s friend, Lucien Carr, who documented their years together at school. The film tells the story of the 1944 untold murder bringing together a young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, played by Daniel Radcliffe, Ben Foster and Jack Huston. Sony Classics will release Kill Your Darlings on October 16th in NY and LA.

Dane will also soon be seen in the independent film Devil’s Knot opposite Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is based on the 2002 crime book by Mara Leveritt, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, about the 1993 savage murders of three young children and the controversial trial of three teenagers accused of the killings.

Dane recently completed production on The Amazing-Spiderman 2 in the role of Harry Osbourne, an old friend of Peter Parker. Directed by Marc Webb, DeHaan stars opposite Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Jamie Foxx. Sony Pictures will release the film May 2, 2014.

DeHaan also completed production on the independent dark comedy Life After Beth, opposite Aubrey Plaza. Directed by Jeff Baena, Life After Beth follows Zach (DeHaan), a young man who tries to continue dating his girlfriend Beth (Plaza), after her death.

DeHaan, most known for his portrayal of Jesse on HBO’s critically acclaimed drama series In Treatment, starred in the third season of the series alongside Gabriel Byrne. His performance was lauded as a “revelatory breakthrough” by Variety and “brilliant” by the Chicago Sun Times.

In 2010, DeHaan received an Obie Award for his performance the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production of The Aliens, directed by Annie Baker. A Rattlestick Theatre production, The Aliens was given the prestigious honor of “Play of the Year” by The New York Times. DeHaan made his Broadway debut in 2008 with American Buffalo.

DeHaan began his film career under the direction of two-time Oscar Nominee John Sayles and opposite Chris Cooper in Amig, released by Variance films in 2011. A graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Dane currently resides in Los Angeles.

David Kammerer

Michael C. Hall

Moving effortlessly from an uptight funeral director on Six Feet Under, to a serial killer on Dexter, to Beat Generation figure David Kammerer in KILL YOUR DARLINGS, Michael C. Hall continues to illuminate the humanity and intelligence in transformative, complex characters.

For his performance as the title character Dexter Morgan, Hall (who serves as an executive producer on the series) won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards in 2010 and the 2007 Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama. He also received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, five additional SAG Award nominations and four additional Golden Globe nominations. Additionally, the acting ensemble garnered SAG Award nominations for seasons three through six. Based on Jeff Lindsay's cult novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the series explores the mind of a sociopathic killer who targets criminals who have eschewed more conventional methods of punishment. Season seven of Dexter premiered Sunday, September 30 at 9PM on Showtime.

Hall also stars opposite Maura Tierney in Ruth & Erica a new series written and directed by Amy Lippman (Party of Five) that premiered September 24 on WIGS, the #1 scripted channel for drama on YouTube. Lois Smith, Philip Baker Hall, Jane Kaczmarek and Steven Weber co-star.

A formally trained stage actor, Hall made an indelible impression as younger brother David Fisher on HBO's groundbreaking series Six Feet Under. During the series‘ five year run, Hall received nominations for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and the AFI Male Television Actor of the Year Award. In addition, Hall and the Six Feet Under cast received 2003 and 2004 SAG Awards for Best Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, for which they were also nominated in 2002, 2005 and 2006.

Hall's film credits also include Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Gamer, John Woo's Paycheck and the independent features Bereft, Peep World and The Trouble with Bliss.

A North Carolina native and graduate of New York University's Master of Fine Arts program in acting, Hall has appeared in nearly a dozen major stage productions. He made his Broadway debut as the emcee in Cabaret, directed by Sam Mendes and also portrayed Billy Flynn in Chicago. Off-Broadway, Hall starred opposite Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett in Macbeth, directed by George C. Wolfe and Cymbeline with Liev Schreiber for the New York Shakespeare Festival, Timon of Athens and Henry V at the Public Theater, The English Teachers for Manhattan Class Company, the Manhattan Theater Club's production of Corpus Christi, directed by Joe Mantello and opposite Brian Cox in Skylight at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

William Burroughs

Ben Foster

Continuing to keep himself busy, 2013 will see the release of two films in addition to KILL YOUR DARLINGS: Ain‘t Them Bodies Saints and Lone Survivor, which Ben Foster completed in 2012.

In Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Foster's a small town Texas cop caught in a deadly love triangle with a local woman, played by Rooney Mara, and her former lover, an escaped convict played by Casey Affleck.

In Lone Survivor, Foster plays a member of a SEAL team ambushed in Afghanistan in Pete Berg's depiction of the true story based on the book by Marcus Lattrell. He stars opposite Mark Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana and Taylor Kitsch.

Foster's other film credits include Alpha Dog, 3:10 To Yuma, The Messenger and Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, which marked his 1999 film debut. On the small screen, Foster has appeared in Six Feet Under, The Laramie Project, Freaks and Geeks and Bang Bang You're Dead.

Last year, he teamed up with director Oren Moverman to form a production company. The film Rampart was their first joint project.

Foster currently spends his time between NY and LA.

Jack Kerouac

Jack Huston

Jack Huston's captivating portrayal of Richard Harrow in HBO's Boardwalk Empire elevated him from a guest star in the series‘ first season to a series regular in season 2. Huston remarkably depicts the severely disfigured war veteran-turned assassin, who is covered by a tin plate on the side of his face, with both a sense of sensitivity and apathy. The winner of the 2011 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama, the show's Season 3 premiered on September 16, 2012 and has been renewed for a fourth season.

Currently, Huston stars in Not Fade Away, the directorial debut of The Sopranos creator, David Chase. In this music-driven coming-of-age story, Jack plays an Italian-American teen who forms a rock band with friends in 1960s New Jersey. The film premiered at the 2012 New York Film Festival and was released by Paramount Vantage on December 21, 2012.

Most recently, Huston wrapped production in Portugal on Night Train to Lisbon, directed by Bille August. The film is based on the novel by Pascal Mercier and also stars Jeremy Irons and Mélanie Laurent. Additionally, Jack recently filmed Posthumous for director Lulu Wang. The dramatic comedy costars Brit Marling.

In 2012, Huston starred in the independent film Two Jacks alongside his uncle, Danny Huston. The film tells the story of famed Hollywood director Jack Hussar Sr. (played by Danny Huston) and his son Jack Hussar Jr. who struggles to follow in the footsteps of his father. The film also stars Sienna Miller and Jacqueline Bisset.

In 2010, Huston appeared as Royce King II in the third installment in the Twilight series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. That same year, Huston starred alongside Mena Suvari in Garden of Eden, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.

In 2009, Huston starred opposite his uncle, Danny Huston, in Boogie Woogie. The film also starred Stellan Skarsgaard and Gillian Anderson. Additionally, he appeared alongside Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams in the independent picture Shrink, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Subsequently, Jack starred in Bernard Rose's Mr Nice opposite Rhys Ifans, David Thewlis and Chloe Sevigny. The film appeared at the 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival. In 2006, Huston appeared in Factory Girl with Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce. The biopic about Andy Warhol's muse, Edie Sedgwick, was released on December 29, 2006.

In 2004, Huston made his television debut in USA's TV movie Spartacus and from 2009-10, Huston starred in ABC's supernatural drama, Eastwick based on John Updike's novel, The Witches of Eastwick.

Huston was born in London, England, the son of Lady Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley and Walter Anthony Huston. His paternal grandfather was director John Huston and his maternal grandfather was Hugh Cholmondeley, 6th Marquess of Cholmondeley. Huston is the nephew of actors Anjelica Huston and Danny Huston.

Huston currently divides his time between London, New York and Los Angeles.

Louis Ginsberg

David Cross

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, David Cross made his way to Boston to study film at Emerson College but quickly dropped out and started doing stand-up full time. He moved to Los Angeles to write on “The Ben Stiller Show where he shared the posthumous Emmy (it was given after the show was canceled) with the show's other writers.

Continuing in the sketch tradition, he created (along with Bob Odenkirk) the groundbreaking show for HBO, Mr. Show with Bob & David. The show ran for four years and garnered several Emmy nominations. He has also released two comedy CDs on the Sub Pop label, “Shut Up You Fucking Baby” and “It's Not Funny.” “Shut Up” was nominated for a Grammy Award. Both continue to sell exceptionally well and have garnered rave reviews. In 2010, Cross released the comedy special, Bigger and Blackerer, along with a companion CD of the same name. Additionally, Cross‘ first book, I Drink For a Reason, was published in August 2009.

Cross has appeared in such films as Men in Black (both 1 & 2), Waiting for Guffman, Scary Movie 2, Ghost World, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Curious George, Columbia Pictures‘ Year One and DreamWorks’ Megamind and Kung Fu Panda. Cross was also featured in Todd Haynes‘ rumination on the life of Bob Dylan, I‘m Not There. Cross was in Kung Fu Panda 2 and Alvin & The Chipmunks 3 as well as the first Alvin and the sequel.

On the television side, Cross appeared in the Emmy Award winning Fox Network comedy, Arrested Development, as Tobias Fünke. Cross produced and starred in the Comedy Central animated series Freak Show which was co-created by David and Jon Benjamin. He also had major recurring arcs on Fox's Running Wilde & ABC's Modern Family. Cross just finished the second season of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret which he created and stars in for IFC and Channel 4 in the UK.

Naomi Ginbserg

Jennifer Jason Leigh

Jennifer Jason Leigh first came to prominence alongside Sean Penn, Phoebe Cates and Nicolas Cage as the heartbreakingly innocent teenager, Stacy, in Amy Heckerling's seminal Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Six years later, she garnered the Best Supporting Actress Awards from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Boston Society of Film Critics for her portrayals in both Uli Edel's Last Exit to Brooklyn and George Armitage's Miami Blues.

Risky, complex, characters have become the signature of this actress who disappears chameleon-like into her roles. Leigh has worked with many of the most fearless, maverick directors of our time. She starred in two films for Robert Altman: Short Cuts and Kansas City, Joel and Ethan Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy, Barbet Schroeder's Single White Female, David Cronenberg's Existenz, Jane Campion's In the Cut, Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square, Sam Mendes's Road to Perdition and Ulu Grosbard's Georgia which she produced with the director, and for which she was honored again by the New York Film Critics Circle, this time with the Best Actress Award. Her performance also earned her The Montreal Film Festival Best Actress Award and her second Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Leigh's collaboration with Robert Altman continued when he selected her for the role of Dorothy Parker in his production of Alan Rudolf's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a performance which won her a Golden Globe nomination, the Best Actress Awards from the National Society of Film Critics, the Chicago Film Critics Association and her first Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Her other films include: Lili Fini Zanuck's Rush, Ron Howard's Backdraft, Chrisopher Guest's The Big Picture, Brad Anderson's The Machinist, Todd Solondz's Palindromes. In 2000, she won The Best Actress Award at Tokyo's International Film Festival for the dogma film The King is Alive.

Leigh made her writing and directorial debut in 2001 with the critically lauded The Anniversary Party which she co-wrote, co-starred and co-directed with Alan Cumming. The Independent Spirit Awards honored the pair with Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay nominations, and the movie garnered a citation for Excellence in Filmmaking from the National Board of Review.

Leigh's Broadway credits include Cabaret opposite Alan Cumming and directed by Sam Mendes and David Auburn's Proof. In 2006, Leigh returned to the New York theatre for the American premiere of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party for The New Group. The performance earned her the Drama Desk and the Lucille Lortell Best Actress nominations. She also starred in the radio play, Anomalisa written and directed by Charlie Kaufman at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles.

She starred in Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, as Pauline, Margot's estranged and soon to be married sister. The film takes a raw and intimate view of the achingly funny and savage nature of sibling dynamics. Leigh stars opposite Nicole Kidman and Jack Black. The film was produced by Scott Rudin and released by Paramount Vantage. She was also in writer/director Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener.

Her impressive and diverse career has been honored with numerous retrospectives, including the prestigious American Cinematheque, Telluride Film Festival, and the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York. In 2002, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented Leigh with its Young Friends of Film Honors.

Edie Parker

Elizabeth Olsen

Elizabeth Olsen is not only a vivacious and engaging young actress, but she is also a full time student at New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts.

In addition to her role in KILL YOUR DARLINGS, Olsen just completed production on the Spike Lee-directed film, OldBoy, opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Brolin. The film centers around an everyday man that has only five days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 15 years without any explanation. The film is set to release in October of 2013.

Olsen was recently seen in Liberal Arts in which she stars as ‘Zibby’ opposite Josh Radnor, John Magaro, Zac Efron and Richard Jenkins. The film follows a thirty-something guy (Radnor) and a coed (Olsen) who spark a connection due to their mutual love of books and music, though their age difference complicates their fledgling relationship.

Olsen had two films premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival: Liberal Arts and Red Lights, in which she stars opposite Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver, centers on a psychologist, and her assistant, whose study of paranormal activity leads them to investigate a world-renowned psychic.

In spring of 2012, Olsen starred in the independent film Silent House from Open Road Films. The film is the re-imagining of the successful Uruguayan psychological horror-thriller, La Casa Muda. Olsen also began production on two films; Therese Raquin and Very Good Girls. In Therese Raquin, Olsen stars opposite Glenn Close. The film is directed by Charlie Stratton, who also wrote the screenplay adaptation. In Very Good Girls, Olsen stars opposite Dakota Fanning in the Naomi Foner-directed film about two New York City girls that make a pact to lose their virginity during their first summer out of high school.

In 2011, Olsen received a Gotham Award, Critics Choice, and Independent Spirit Award nomination for Lead Actress for her performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene from Fox Searchlight. She has been nominated for her performance from the following critic associations: St. Louis, Las Vegas, Houston, FIND Spirit, San Diego, IPA, and Detroit. She won BEST ACTRESS from the Indiana Critics Association.

Olsen is also very familiar to the stage as she understudied both on the Off-Broadway play Dust and the Broadway play Impressionism while attending New York University. Other workshops include Bottom of the World by Lucy Thurber (Atlantic Theatre Company), and The Living Newspaper (DRD Theatricals). Olsen has had formal training at Atlantic Acting School and Moscow Art Theatre School. Olsen currently resides in New York.

Director, Co-Writer, Producer

John Krokidas

John Krokidas received his B.A. in Theater and American Studies from Yale University, where he studied acting before attending New York University's Graduate Film Program.

He wrote and directed two short films at NYU. His first, Shame No More played at over seventy film festivals around the world and sold to ten countries airing on such channels as Arte and Canal Plus before becoming part of the short-film collection Queer as F**K and airing on IFC and PBS in the United States. His second short film, Slo-Mo premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to play Sundance before airing on HBO, PBS and the Sundance Channel. Sundance chose Slo-Mo to be part of their 20th Anniversary "Best of the Fest."

Since graduating, Krokidas has written screenplays for Universal Studios, Miramax, producers Bruce Cohen (American Beauty and Milk), Alan Poul (Newsroom and Six Feet Under), Michael Stipe's Single Cell Pictures (Being John Malkovich) and actress Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones Diary and Chicago).

Krokidas wrote and directed a PSA starring Jack Nicholson ("Jack and Hill") for the 2008 Presidential Election that was chosen by CNN as one of their "Best Political Ads of the Year." And in 2011, Krokidas was chosen by "The Advocate" magazine as one of their Top 40 Under 40.

Krokidas has taught filmmaking and lectured at the University of Southern California, New York University, the New School and Yale University. KILL YOUR DARLINGS marks Krokidas' feature directorial debut. He was recently named one of Variety’s Top Ten Directors to watch for 2013.

Co-Writer

Austin Bunn

Austin Bunn is a fiction writer, playwright and screenwriter. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Pushcart Prize and elsewhere. His plays have been produced or developed at The Actors' Theatre of Louisville, The Orchard Project, The New Harmony Project, Playwrights' Center, The Lark, and beyond. He is the co-author, with producer Christine Vachon, of the best-seller A Killer Life: How An Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters Far From Hollywood. Bunn is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He teaches dramatic writing and screenwriting at Cornell University.

Producer

Michael Benaroya

Michael Benaroya is the CEO of Benaroya Pictures which he founded in 2006. The company has developed, financed and produced several major motion pictures across a variety of genres and budget sizes. In January of 2012, Michael announced his founding of Also Known As Pictures. AKA will develop, produce and finance predominately action, thriller and horror films, with budgets ranging from $500k-$3 million. The founding of AKA pictures allows Benaroya to finance films of any size, while maintaining Benaroya Pictures' reputation for being involved in high quality, well cast, larger films, with both critical and commercial viability.

Benaroya's recent production, John Hillcoat's Lawless, based on the book The Wettest County in the World, stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, was released on August 29th, 2012 on over 2,000 screens. The film, which premiered to a 10 minute standing ovation at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, is set during the prohibition era and tells a mythic tale of three brothers, who, despite extensive efforts to prevent them, run a lucrative bootlegging operation.

Another Benaroya Pictures project, The Words, premiered at Sundance 2012 and was released by CBS Films on September 7th. The film features an all-star cast including Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, Zoe Saldana, Dennis Quaid, and Olivia Wilde. The Words follows a writer who, at the peak of his literary success, discovers the price he must pay for stealing another man's work.

In addition to KILL YOUR DARLINGS, Benaroya has recently completed production on The Rambler, a Calvin Reeder film starring Dermot Mulroney and Lindsay Pulsipher, which is a Park City at Midnight selection at Sundance 2013, as well as Parts Per Billion, an ensemble film from writer/director Brian Horiuchi starring Rosario Dawson, Teresa Palmer, Josh Harnett and Frank Langella.

Additional completed projects include Catch .44 starring Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker. Previous Sundance film The Romantics is another Benaroya produced and financed project, starring Katie Holmes, Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood and Josh Duhammel. The film takes place over the course of a weekend where old friends have come together for the wedding of two of their own. The catch, the groom is in love with the maid of honor. Benaroya also financed and produced New York, I Love You with an all-star ensemble cast including Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf, Bradley Cooper, Christina Ricci, Orlando Bloom and Kevin Bacon.

Margin Call, another Benaroya production which premiered at Sundance 2011, recently won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature Film. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, this Wall Street thriller takes place over a frantic 24 hours before the crash of the 2008 stock market. The film stars Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Stanley Tucci.

With numerous projects in development, and others already prepping, Benaroya Pictures intends to produce and finance at least 4 major motion pictures per annum.

Producer

Christine Vachon

Christine Vachon is an Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award winner who co-founded indie powerhouse Killer Films with partner Pamela Koffler in 1995. Over the past decade and a half, the two have produced some of the most celebrated American indie features including FAR FROM HEAVEN (nominated for four Academy Awards), BOYS DON'T CRY (Academy Award winner), ONE HOUR PHOTO, KIDS, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, HAPPINESS, VELVET GOLDMINE, SAFE, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, CAMP, SWOON and I’M NOT THERE (Academy Award nominated). In television, Vachon recently executive-produced the Emmy and Golden Globe winning miniseries MILDRED PIERCE for HBO.

In addition to KILL YOUR DARLINGS starring Daniel Radcliffe, directed by John Krokidas, recent work includes: AT ANY PRICE starring Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron, directed by Ramin Bahrani; MAGIC MAGIC starring Michael Cera, directed by Sebastian Silva; THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD starring Dakota Fanning, Susan Sarandon and Kevin Kline, directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer; and INNOCENCE starring Sophie Curtis, Kelly Reilly and Graham Phillips, directed by Hilary Brougher.

In 1994, Christine was awarded the Frameline Award for Outstanding Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Media. In 1996 she was honored with the prestigious Music Award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement by New York Women In Film And Television. For her work on FAR FROM HEAVEN, she was honored by the New York Film Critics Circle, and received the Producer of the Year Award from the National Board of Review.

Killer’s movies have received multiple awards and nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Emmy Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Independent Spirit Awards. Christine and Killer have also received special tributes from the South By Southwest, Cinequest, Provincetown, Rhode Island, Woodstock, Deauville, Locarno, River Run and most recently Stony Brook Film Festivals. On the occasion of Killer’s 10th anniversary in 2005, the company was feted with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Vachon is the author of two books: A Killer Life: How An Independent Producer Survives Deals And Disasters In Hollywood And Beyond (Simon and Schuster, 2006), and Shooting To Kill: How An Independent Producer Blasts Through The Barriers To Make Movies That Matter (Avon, 1998).

Vachon is currently teaching at Drexel University, and previously has taught at NYU, as well as leading master classes at other colleges and international film festivals. She is currently developing a Filmmaking MFA with Stony Brook University.

Producer

Rose Ganguzza

Rose Ganguzza is an American film producer with over 30 years of experience worldwide in the entertainment business. Growing up in New Jersey, her family owned a plethora of supermarket chains and department stores. The Ganguzza family business was considered a pioneer in retail, and their slogan was "National Brands at Discount Prices." Being surrounded by a surplus of labels gave Ganguzza a unique vision of the world when she received her PHD at Colombia University for International affairs.

After graduating number one in her class at Colombia, Ganguzza began her professional career in the 70s working for the Brazilian government. At that time, the president of Revlon asked Ganguzza to lead operations in Latin America, earning her the title of highest-ranking female executive in Brazil.

Ganguzza returned stateside in the late 70s as the US Bureau Chief of one of Brazil's top TV networks. Besides purchasing programming, she was responsible for a nightly international news feed. At this time, Ganguzza also began to negotiate foreign deals for TV Globo, the fourth largest network in the world, and promote the network internationally. She represented the TV giant on the International Emmy Committee, helped place its now famous novellas in the world market, and struck co-production deals. She produced documentaries about Michael Jackson, John Lennon, and she produced the first-ever documentary on AIDS. She also purchased foreign rights for a number of Broadway shows including A Chorus Line, for production abroad, especially in South America. As a result of this work, Ganguzza was asked to run the international operations of soccer great, Pele, based at Warner Communications.

In 1988, Ganguzza created a worldwide campaign with major athletes against AIDS (Kick AIDS 88). Because of this, Ganguzza caught the attention of QVC with the entry of Barry Diller. She was brought on to develop entertainment-related programming and to negotiate and execute the Telecompras network between Barry Diller, Televisa head Emilio Azcarraga, and Univision boss Jerry Perenchino.

In the middle of 1994, Ganguzza and Audrey Hepburn's son Sean Ferrer formed Hollywood for Children and The Audrey Hepburn Foundation. This charitable institution, which she directed for four years, counted over 200 major celebrities as part of its advisory board. Ganguzza also created a VIP program for children designed exclusively for The Plaza Hotel, the first of its kind in the luxury hotel business. The program, called Young Plaza Ambassadors, enjoys the support of over 75 retailers, cultural institutions, and major sponsors. She convinced The Plaza to open for the first time in its history an on-site Press and Media department that she led. Through encouraging production from all areas of entertainment, she quadrupled revenues in less than a year.

In 2002, Ganguzza created the "At The Movies" series. It premiered on A&E with a two-hour special called New York At The Movies, starring Meryl Streep. Her goal was to bring attention to major cities as a hub for filming. In 2009, she produced a storewide promotion for Bloomingdale's surrounding five short films. The campaign was called "Bflix" and premiered at the first ever "Fashion's Night Out."

Ganguzza has executive-produced a number of films in the past few years including Afterschool, The Guitar, New York, I Love You, The Romantics, Margin Call, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Wettest County in the World, and The Words.

Director of Photography

Reed Morano

Reed Morano was recently part of the prestigious Kodak OnFilm Series and was also the recipient of the Kodak Vision Award for Cinematography at the 2011 Women In Film Crystal + Lucy Awards. In 2012, Morano's work was featured in Indiewire's "ON THE RISE '12: 5 Cinematographer's Lighting Up Screens in Recent Years." She was named one of 2011's Variety's "10 Cinematographers to Watch" as well as one of IONCINEMA.com's "American New Wave 25". In that same year, Morano was featured as one of the five innovative cinematographers in ICG Magazine's "Generation Next" spotlight.

Prior to the 2013 release of KILL YOUR DARLINGS, Several of Morano's features were released theatrically in 2012: The Magic of Belle Isle, directed by Rob Reiner and starring Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman and Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen; and Little Birds, which premiered in competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, written and directed by Elgin James, starring Juno Temple, Kate Bosworth and Leslie Mann. A feature-length documentary about the band LCD Soundsystem that premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Shut Up and Play the Hits, and For Ellen, written and directed by So Yong Kim, starring Paul Dano, Jon Heder, and Jena Malone, a film that also premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the dramatic competition were released this year as well.

Morano's other work awaiting release in 2013 includes Free Samples, directed by Jay Gammill, starring Academy Award nominated Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Ritter, Jess Weixler and Tippi Hedren, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, the 35mm and 65mm drama Autumn Blood in the Tyrolean Alps in Austria; the film stars Sophie Lowe and Peter Stormare and the George Tillman Jr. feature, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, starring Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie and Jeffrey Wright.

Morano's earlier work includes Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be nominated for two Academy Awards and seven Independent Spirit Awards including Best Picture. Morano's work on the film was the subject of an article in American Cinematographer. She is currently in pre-production for several features, including Lonely Hunter, a biopic of the writer Carson McCullers, to be directed by Deborah Kampmeier (Hounddog), starring Jena Malone and Rob Reiner's upcoming psychological thriller, You Belong To Me.

Morano has been shooting narrative features for the past 15 years. A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she was honored with awards in cinematography, Morano was later chosen by the faculty to be an adjunct professor in the film department where she taught cinematography for two years. Morano lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.

Production Designer

Stephen Carter

Stephen Carter has previously worked as an Art Director, and is pleased to be continuing his foray into Production Design. Design credits include Forgiven, which competed at Sundance in 2006, Studios for NBC's Olympics broadcasts in Torino, Beijing, Vancouver and London, as well as commercials and theater. Art Director credits include Duplicity, The Bourne Legacy, The Adjustment Bureau and his personal favorite, Justin Bieber's Never Say Never. Carter played in various bands out of New York City, and has spent time over the last few years with his wife Kelly Miller and their two girls restoring a decrepit villa in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Otherwise they live in Brooklyn. He is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School/ Playwright's Horizons.

Editor

Brian Kates

Brian A. Kates, A.C.E. is an Emmy Award winning film editor whose feature film credits include Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik) starring Brad Pitt, which premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, Jack Goes Boating, the Oscar- nominated The Savages (Tamara Jenkins), the Emmy Award winning Taking Chance (Ross Katz) and Lackawanna Blues (George C. Wolfe), The Laramie Project (Moisés Kaufman), Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell), The Woodsman (Nicole Kassell), Nights in Rodanthe (George C. Wolfe), Shadowboxer (Lee Daniels), Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop (Danny Hoch & Mark Benjamin), and Trick (Jim Fall). He was Jonathan Caouette's co-editor on the groundbreaking documentary Tarnation. His television credits include the pilot episode of The Big C directed by Bill Condon, the HBO series Treme, and the NBC series Kings. He was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, and studied Film Production and Judaic Studies at New York University.

Costume Designer

Christopher Peterson

Christopher Peterson, whose work has been featured in film, television and theater, received a 2011 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Costumes for a Series, for his work with John Dunn on HBO's Boardwalk Empire.

Among Peterson's most recent collaborations are Steven Soderbergh's 2012 breakout hit Magic Mike. Previously Peterson had designed The Girlfriend Experience for Soderbergh, which featured Sasha Grey as an elite Manhattan call girl. His other motion picture credits include the Jesse Peretz comedy Our Idiot Brother, starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel; and Stephen Frears‘ Lay The Favorite, starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones, Rebecca Hall and Vince Vaughn. In addition, Peterson has designed Marc Lawrence's Did You Hear About The Morgans?, starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant and Joel Schumacher's Blood Creek.

The New York- based designer rose through the ranks as an Assistant Costume Designer, working with some the industry's most revered Costume Designers, including Sandy Powell on Martin Scorsese's The Departed and The Wolf Of Wall Street; Catherine Martin on Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby; Janty Yates on Ridley Scott's American Gangster and Body of Lies; Albert Wolsky on many films including Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate, Wayne Wang's Maid In Manhattan, Tony Gilroy's Duplicity, and Julie Taymor's Across The Universe.

In addition to HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Peterson's other notable television credits include the USA Network's Suits and HBO's Mike Nichols- helmed Angels In America, on which he served as Assistant Costume Designer to Ann Roth.