ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, Host:
And I'm Mary Louise Kelly.
SIEGEL: Unidentified Woman #1: (Foreign language spoken)
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "INSIDE JOB")
LOUISE KELLY: Well, our critic Bob Mondello says movie fact turns out to be more engaging than movie fiction, at least in this case.
BOB MONDELLO: Unidentified Man #4: Bear Sterns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, they knew what was happening.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "INSIDE JOB")
CARL LEVINE: What do you think about selling securities what your own people think are crap? Does that bother you?
MONDELLO: Unidentified Man #6: Excuse me, you can't be serious. If you would have looked, you would have found things.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "INSIDE JOB")
MONDELLO: Unidentified Man #7 (Actor): (as character) Picasso would have been proud on the manner in which the lines have been...
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "GERRYMANDERING")
MONDELLO: There's also the faux documentary "I'm Still Here," where actors play fictional versions of themselves.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "I'M STILL HERE")
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: (as himself) Phoenix, Joaquin; Phoenix, P. Diddy.
MONDELLO: And biopics, where actors play real versions of people not themselves, the young John Lennon in "Nowhere Boy."
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "NOWHERE BOY")
AARON JOHNSON: (as John) I'm going to start a rock 'n' roll group.
MONDELLO: And the woman who owned history's greatest race horse.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "SECRETARIAT")
DIANE LANE: (as Penny Chenery) Secretariat is not afraid, and neither am I.
MONDELLO: Unidentified Man #10 (Actor): (as character) Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "HOWL")
MONDELLO: "Howl" employs actors, including a spellbinding James Franco as Ginsberg to flesh out the poem and the court case surrounding it. It also uses animation to illustrate the poem.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "HOWL")
JAMES FRANCO: (as Allen Ginsberg) Supernatural darkness of cold- water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.
MONDELLO: Normally, you'd call "Howl" a biopic, not unlike "Nowhere Boy" or "Secretariat," but "Howl" was made by documentarians. And apart from the poem itself, it takes its script almost exclusively from court and interview transcripts. You might call it an acted documentary, not docudrama, more of a significant moment from a life recreated. A biomentary maybe. Whatever. It's a trippy portrait of a time when poetry mattered enough that some people worried it could rend the fabric of a nation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "HOWL")
FRANCO: (as Allen Ginsberg) There are books that have the power to change men's minds. The eternal war is here. Let there be no running from non-existent destroyers of morals. Oh, victory.
MONDELLO: I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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