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Lowell native Bridget Driscoll always wanted to head out on the open road, but she never got past Dracut. So the former journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell did the next best thing: She made a documentary about renowned “On the Road” author, Beat Generation bellwether and Lowell native son Jack Kerouac. The finished product, “Remembering Jack Kerouac,” premieres at UMass-Lowell’s O’Leary Library on Wednesday and plays at San Francisco’s Beat Museum in May. “He really was out on the edge there, and this past year I felt a little bit the same,” Driscoll said. “It was a journey of self-exploration. I feel like I’ve been on the edge, but I would not give up.” Driscoll, who has a background in broadcast journalism and TV production, was teaching part-time until last December, when she switched gears to focus on the documentary as an independent project. She brought a rotating cast of about a dozen students along for the ride. The crew visited old neighborhoods and key landmarks, collected photographs and interviewed dozens of those connected to Lowell, Kerouac and the Beat community, with help from Professor Hilary Holladay, director of the Kerouac Center at UMass-Lowell. “A lot of it was just a snowball effect which we didn’t really have any set agenda for, which was a fun way to do it,” said scriptwriter and narrator Glen Doherty, a 47-year-old graduate student from Stoneham. “. . . We were working spontaneously, as he did.” The documentary actually began as an effort to chronicle the legendary “On the Road” manuscript scroll, which was on view at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell last summer on loan from its permanent home at Indiana University. From there, the film naturally evolved into a broader look at Kerouac’s life, though Doherty says it avoids the darker side. “We just tried to keep it on the celebratory level that coincided with the scroll coming to Lowell. We got into ‘what is it about the book itself that perennially brings in the fresh crop of kids every year?’ “We have a private joke running that he’s like the Ozzy Osbourne of literature,” Doherty added. “But instead of that built-in flock of kids that are born metalheads every year, they’re born ‘On The Road’ heads. . . It’s just got that charisma about it that keeps it perennially young, even though he’d be 86 this year.” “Remembering Jack Kerouac,” Wednesday at 7 p.m., Room 222 at UMass-Lowell’s O’Leary Library, 121 Wilder St., Lowell. Preview the documentary at millcitystudios.com. |