The Last Time I Committed Suicide

Director: Stephen Kay
Screenwriters: Stephen Kay

Institute History

  • 1997 Sundance Film Festival

Description

1946 Denver, U.S.A. Before Jack Kerouac immortalized him in On the Road; Before Dean Moriarty became the object of schoolgirl reveries and police persecution alike; Before Ken “Sir Speed Limit” Kesey tripped his busload of Merry Pranksters across the psychedelic states; Before the advent of cool; Before the rupturing of fiction; Neal Cassady was just a man pursuing an ever-elusive American Dream.

Inspired by an eight-page letter from Neal Cassady to beat icon Jack Kerouac, The Last Time I Committed Suicide is a breathtaking working of the young Cassady’s formative years. In his stellar directorial debut, Stephen Kay bursts through normative modes of storytelling, delivering a film alive with the fragmented pulse and imagistic splendor of Kerouac’s beat poetry. A film of vanquished faith and unfulfilled expectations, The Last Time I Committed Suicide points to the swerving, intangible destinies of the everyman and the icon. Stephen Kay’s feature debut is a grand achievement in style and subtlety.

— Rebecca Yeldham

Screening Details

Credits

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