Kill Your Darlings is a look at the young people who would go on to start the most famous literary movement of the 20th Century. We talked to director John Krokidas about how he pulled off an intimate, relatable period piece that feels completely current.
Basically an "origin story" about the Beats, Kill Your Darlings, which opens today, follows a few young writers - Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and one Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) - in 1940s New York as they attend Columbia University and try to find their artistic voices.
Radcliffe anchors the film as Ginsberg, seen here not as a the demonstrative poet with the expressive beard, but rather an insecure kid just trying to make some cool friends upon arriving at college. Theres something touching about seeing such larger-than-life literary legends reduced to human scale, but Kill Your Darlings pushes against the expectations of a more traditional biopic by Krokidas stylistic ambitions, which cover a gamut of film noir, French New Wave, and 90s music-video influences, forming an intoxicating melange that makes the film as vivaciously aggressive as the drugs its characters are perpetually ingesting.
Keeping things tense, Krokidas introduces a (true) element to his narrative that is often unremarked-upon in the larger narrative of how the Beats came to be: that Lucien Carr, who brought many of the movements figures together, was engaged in an obsessive and potentially dangerous relationship with an older man named David Kammerer (played by Michael C. Hall).
Combining mystery and suspense with a bildungsroman, Krokidas has created an arresting debut that seems bound to receive some recognition come awards season. I had the chance to sit down with Krokidas recently and discuss the film.
Tribeca: Whats the history of how the project came to be?
John Krokidas: My best friend and college roommate, Austin Bunn, was a short story writer and playwright. Right after I got out of film school he told me that he had the best idea for a play - the story of this murder that inspired the Beats to start their revolution. I had never heard the story before. As he told it to me I was seeing flashes of the movie version in my head, and so I used my evil powers of manipulation to convince him that it would make a horrible play but a wonderful movie, and that we had to write it together.
Tribeca: Whats it like, writing a story with such larger-than-life characters? To what degree are you trying to maintain fidelity to the mythology of these figures?
John Krokidas: We heavily researched this movie. We started off not just going through the biographies and the New York Times records of the murder back in the 40s, but we also went to the Ginsberg Archives at Stanford and even got into Jack Kerouacs old college apartment - the Columbia students living there didnt even know it used to be his place! So we got to really experience the feel of what their lives were like.
But it comes to a point when - you know, theres so much biographical information about these guys, we decided to not be overwhelmed and feel that we had to show who they would become in life. We wanted to just focus on the awkward phase that everyone goes through when theyre 18, 19 years old. We decided to cut the story off at 1945 and not do "Allen Ginsberg" with a double-underline.
As you get older, you realize its the artists you worship in high school and college that stick with you forever.
We wanted to look at a kid named Allen Ginsberg from Paterson, New Jersey, whose father was a poet and whose mother was emotionally ill, a kid who got into Columbia and didnt know what he wanted to do with his life until he met Lucien Carr. I even had these moments with the actors, because Jack Huston was like, wow, Im playing Jack Kerouac, and I said no youre not. Youre playing a guy named Jack whos at Columbia on a football scholarship, but he wants to join the Merchant Marines so he can travel the world and get life experience for his new book. Its an origin story.
Tribeca: What was the impact of the Beats on your life, personally?
John Krokidas: I was a closeted gay kid in the 90s in suburban Connecticut, and I remember the reaction to someone anonymously coming out to the school newspaper was, "Whos the fucking faggot? Were going to kill him." I knew I had to just pretend, I wasnt able to fully be who I wanted to be, and I was hoping that one day I would go to college and be able to be who I wanted to be then.
I remember someone mentioning Allen Ginsberg in a derogatory way, and I thought, who is this guy? So I went to the local bookstore and checked out his poetry for the first time. He was so brave with his sexuality and his passions and his politics, and I remember wishing I could be that brave myself. As you get older, you realize its the artists you worship in high school and college that stick with you forever. When you need that comfort music, you go back to those three albums you were obsessed with back then. So these guys have always held a special place in my heart.
Tribeca: The opening sequence of the film - the way you insert the title of the film in such a stylized fashion - was quite a grabber. In general the film has a freewheeling stylistic approach. What was your stylistic approach like?
John Krokidas: Well, I remember listening to the Criterion Collection commentary on The Ice Storm, and the DP Fred Elms was talking about how he made a huge fifty-page book about the 1970s in order to do the film. Everything from color palettes to fonts. I did that with the 1940s. The year that this movie takes place - 1944 - was the year Double Indemnity won Best Picture. Its the year of Laura and Gilda. Its the high point for American film noir. In the writing process, I turned to Austin and said, why not structure this
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Kill Your Darlings is a look at the young people who would go on to start the most famous literary movement of the 20th Century. We talked to director John Krokidas about how he pulled off an intimate, relatable period piece that feels completely current. 
