First Glimpse of Marketing Design for ‘On the Road’ Movie

Read the latest movie gossip about the adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” from indiewire.com

4 Responses to First Glimpse of Marketing Design for ‘On the Road’ Movie

  1. Dennis S. says:

    In the mid-1970s, while hanging out at Father Bourgeois Park on what was then Textile Ave., (the only park in the world between two buildings,) a man in a white El Dorado convertible with red leather interior, got out and asked us where Phoebe Ave. was. (It’s two streets over — runs from Sara Ave. to Bodwell Ave.)
    The guy’s face looked real familiar, although he was bald on top, he had long grayish-brown shoulder length hair. He said he was doing research on Jack Kerouac for a movie. He said he was looking for a woman who used to rent a room to Kerouac. I forget the woman’s name but one of us recognized it and gave the guy directions to her house.
    As he jumped back in his Caddy and started to drive away, it came to me. It was Wojo from Barney Miller. Max Gail, who obviously wore a hair piece on the show. My friends disagreed, but I know it was him.
    Nothing ever became of that movie.

  2. PaulM says:

    That’s right, Dennis. It was Max from “Barney Miller.” I remember reading a Mary Sampas column about his visit to Lowell. I have a vague recollection that there was a SUN photo of him on the bank of the Merrimack with a moody look on his face. He was researching for a possible movie or theatre role as Kerouac.

  3. Steve says:

    Yeah, I remember hearing that too, and being disappointed because I couldn’t see the casting. I didn’t see barney Miller much, but I seem to recall Wojo was a bit of a dope.

    I was in the neighborhood you mentioned one day Dennis, and thought I’d kill a bit of time looking around for J.K’s old house. I was re-reading Maggie Cassidy at the time, about a year ago. So I was walking around on Phoebe-a woman was out sweeping her steps, eyeing me curiously. “Do you know which one is Jack Kerouac’s house?” I asked her.
    “Well, I been here for thirty years and I never heard of him.”

  4. PaulM says:

    There ought to be signs or plaques or something in the neighborhoods that Kerouac lived in and wrote like concrete hyperlinks to the fact that he put those places into literature. Eventually, we’ll have a digital system that anyone can get on a smart phone or wiz-pad or whatever device is coming next. It’ll all be linked by global positioning and satellites. There’s a young guy building a prototype right now for key historical sites in Lowell. But the Kerouac tour is a natural for wireless. Even so, there should be physical signs or markers with quotations from Visions of Gerard and Doctor Sax and other books that live in the legendary streets of Lowell.