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Joan Vollmer (February 4, 1923 – September 6, 1951^[2]) was the most prominent female member of the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College, she became the roommate of Edie Parker (later married to Jack Kerouac). Their apartment became a gathering place for the Beats during the 1940s, where Vollmer was often at the center of marathon, all night discussions. In 1946, she began a relationship with William S. Burroughs, later becoming his common-law wife. In 1951, Burroughs killed Vollmer by shooting her in the head in what was apparently a drunken attempt at playing William Tell.

Early life and education[link]

Joan Vollmer was born in Loudonville, an affluent suburb of Albany, New York. She left her upper-middle class family to attend college in New York City in the early 1940s, and soon afterward became married to Paul Adams, a law student who was drafted during World War II, and therefore overseas during most of the early Beat years. Vollmer met Edie Parker at the West End Bar and the two moved in together in the first of a series of apartments in New York's Upper West Side that they shared with the writers, hustlers and drug addicts that later became known as the Beats. These included: William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, Vickie Russell (a prostitute and addict who appears as "Mary" in Burroughs' novel Junkie), and Hal Chase, a Columbia University graduate student from Denver.^[3]

Paul Adams divorced Vollmer upon returning from military service. Reportedly, he was appalled by her drug use and group of friends. In 1945 Jack Kerouac introduced her to Benzedrine, which she used heavily for many years. Early in 1946, she began a long-term relationship with the predominantly gay Burroughs. The match was initially set-up and encouraged by Allen Ginsberg, who much admired Burroughs’ intellect and considered Joan his female counterpart.

Several years later, when Vollmer and Burroughs were living together in Texas, Ginsberg encouraged Burroughs to break up with Vollmer, believing that Burroughs could never return her total devotion. Nevertheless, Burroughs ignored this advice and evidence suggests he and Vollmer had a passionate affair.^{[citation needed]} Once they were arrested for having sex in a parked vehicle. Vollmer became a mother for the second time after William, Jr. was born in 1947. Julie, her first child, was born during her marriage to Paul Adams.

In 1946, Vollmer had been admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City due to psychotic episodes as a result of excessive amphetamine use. At this time Burroughs had been convicted of prescription forgery and was sentenced to return to his parents' care in St. Louis, Missouri. Immediately after completing his probationary order, he traveled to New York to retrieve Vollmer from Bellevue. From that moment until her death, she called herself Mrs. William Burroughs. She lived with her common-law husband and two children. Although the two were never formally married, they had a son, William Burroughs, Jr. Due to trouble with the law for drug abuse, drug distribution and lewd behavior charges, they relocated several times, moving first to New Waverly, Texas, then to New Orleans, and eventually to Mexico City.^[4]

Marriage to Burroughs[link]

Burroughs initially tried to support his family by farming cash crops in the Rio Grande River valley. When this failed, he moved Vollmer and their children to New Orleans. While living there he was arrested for heroin possession, during which time police searched Vollmer's home, unearthing letters from Ginsberg discussing a possible shipment of marijuana. The resulting criminal charges were grave — upon conviction Burroughs would have served time in Louisiana's infamous Angola State Prison; he fled for Mexico City. Once he was settled, Vollmer joined him, along with her children.

In her son’s novel Kentucky Ham (1973), Vollmer is remembered as a gentle and considerate mother who was meek and deferential to her husband's parents. Yet she is also depicted as being prone to wild bouts of self-destructive behavior. The book recounts a reckless, almost deadly drive down a mountainside road in Mexico. Joan's battered appearance and unpredictable behavior alarmed Ginsberg when he visited with Lucien Carr in 1951. During their visit she expressed some bitterness and hostility toward Burroughs' lack of affection and continued drug addiction. In fact, at the time of Ginsberg's visit, Burroughs was away in Guatemala with a young man he pursued unsuccessfully.

According to research by James Grauerholz, a petition for divorce was initiated in Mexico by Burroughs, Vollmer, or both, about a year before Joan's death despite the fact that they had never been legally married; however, the application was later withdrawn by their Mexican attorney. The divorce was likely required due to Burroughs' stated desire to take custody of their son upon dissolution.^[5] From the same source, there is some speculation that Vollmer was romantically linked with several men while living in Mexico; nevertheless, Ted Morgan describes her in Literary Outlaw as a woman suffering from serious drug and alcohol addictions which had aged her noticeably. Her face was swollen; she limped due to a recent bout of polio.^[6]

Death[link]

Three days after Burroughs returned from his South American trip, Vollmer was balancing a water tumbler on her head as her husband aimed a handgun at it. When Burroughs fired, the bullet missed the water tumbler and hit Vollmer, who died later that day from a gunshot wound to the skull, aged 28. Vollmer's death was ruled a culpable homicide, after Mexican police investigated and Burroughs gave several contradictory versions of events. He initially claimed he accidentally shot Vollmer during a William Tell act, but changed his story, possibly after being coached by his Mexican attorney, Bernabé Jurado. The day after in court, Burroughs claimed he accidentally misfired the gun while trying to sell the weapon to an acquaintance.

Burroughs was held in custody on murder charges for two weeks before being released on bail after his brother arrived from St. Louis to dispense thousands of dollars in a variety of legal costs, which may have included bribes to Mexican jailors. Vollmer was buried in Mexico City and her two children were taken back to the United States. Her daughter Julie was raised by her father, Paul Adams, and his family; her son was raised by her in-laws. For a year, Burroughs reported every Monday morning to the jail in Mexico City while his prominent attorney worked to resolve the case. However, when Jurado fled the country after accidentally shooting and killing a trespasser on his property — a child of a government official — Burroughs re-entered the United States, where he was fortunate that Louisiana had not issued a warrant for his arrest on the previous narcotic charge. In absentia, Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death. He received a two year suspended sentence.

In the introduction to Queer, a novel written in 1953 but not published until 1985, Burroughs states, "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan’s death ... [S]o the death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out". (Queer, 1985, p.xxii)

Significance[link]

Brenda Knight in The Women of the Beat Generation:

Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs was seminal in the creation of the Beat revolution; indeed the fires that stoked the Beat engine were started with Joan as patron and muse. Her apartment in New York was a nucleus that attracted many of the characters who played a vital role in the formation of the Beat; ... Brilliant and well versed in philosophy and literature, Joan was the whetstone against which the main Beat writers — Allen, Jack, and Bill — sharpened their intellect. Widely considered one of the most perceptive people in the group, her strong mind and independent nature helped bulldoze the Beats toward a new sensibility.

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, the Life and Times of William S. Burroughs (1988, Henry Holt, ISBN 0-380-70882-5)
• Jack Kerouac, The Vanity of Duluoz (1967–1968, Coward-McCann, ISBN 0-14-023639-2)

External links[link]

• Vollmer Literary Kicks.
• The Death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs: What Really Happened?, James Grauerholz's article published by the American Studies Department, University of Kansas
• Web page by Joseph M. Brenner about Vollmer's presence in Beat Generation literature
• Joan Vollmer site - includes a reprinted newspaper account of Vollmer's death as well as Allen Ginsberg's poem by the same name
• Shooting Joan Burroughs - William Burroughs at home in 1997

Walter Salles
Salles in Paris
Born	Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. (1956-04-12) April 12, 1956 (age 56) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Other names	Waltinho
Occupation	film director, producer and editor
Net worth	US$ 2.6 billion (2011)[1]
Spouse	Maria Klabin

Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. (born April 12, 1956) is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence.

Life, family and education[link]

Salles was born in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of Elizinha Goncalves and Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and ambassador, and the brother of João Moreira Salles, also a filmmaker. Both, along with two other brothers, banker, Pedro Moreira Salles and eldest brother and publisher, Fernando Moreira Salles, were heirs to the bank Unibanco, one of the largest and richest in South America, which merged with Banco Itaú in 2009-10.

Salles attended the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.^[2]

Film career[link]

Salles's first notable film was Terra Estrangeira (Foreign Land), released in Brazil in 1995. Locally, it was widely acclaimed by film critics and a minor box-office hit, and it was selected by over 40 film festivals worldwide. In 1998 he released Central do Brasil (Central Station) to widespread international acclaim and two Academy Awards nominations, for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Foreign Language Film. In 2001, Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun), starring Rodrigo Santoro, was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Golden Globes. Both films were produced by veteran Arthur Cohn and had worldwide distribution.

In 2003, Salles was voted one of the 40 Best Directors in the World by The Guardian. His biggest international success has been Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries), a 2004 film about the life of young Ernesto Guevara, who later became known as Che Guevara. It was Salles's first foray as director of a film in a language other than his native Portuguese (Spanish, in this case) and quickly became a box-office hit in Latin America and Europe.

In 2005, Salles released his first English-language feature film, which is also his first Hollywood film, Dark Water, an adaptation of the 2002 Japanese film of the same name. He also helped to produce the Argentine picture Hermanas which was a major success.

In 2006, Salles wrote and directed a segment in the French film Paris, je t'aime (French for "Paris, I love you") with Daniela Thomas. The film is a collection of 18 shorter segments made by different 21 directors and set in different arrondissements of Paris. Salles' segment called "Loin du 16e" (literally: "far from the 16th") and took place in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

In 2007, Salles took part in a similar project called To Each His Own Cinema (French: Chacun son cinéma) in the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. He made a 3 minute segment called "A 8 944 km de Cannes" (English: 5,557 Miles From Cannes).

In 2008, Salles wrote and directed the film Linha de Passe also with Daniela Thomas.^[3] It is a story about four brothers from a poor family who need to fight to follow their dreams. He was nominated for the Golden Palm and Sandra Corveloni won the best actress award for her role in this film in Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Salles is presently directing José Rivera's screenplay adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, with Francis Ford Coppola producing. The film will be released in 2012. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.^[4][5]

Awards[link]

[edit] Terra Estrangeira

Won 8 international awards, including

• Rencontres Internationales de Cinéma de Paris, Audience Grand Prize
• Film Festival of Bergamo
• Film Festival of Belfort.

[edit] Central do Brasil

55 international awards, including:

• Academy Awards nomination:
  • Academy Award for Best Foreign Film
  • Academy Award for Best Actress (Fernanda Montenegro)
• Berlin Film Festival
  • Golden Bear^[6]
• Golden Globe Awards
  • Best Foreign Film
• National Board of Review
  • Best Foreign Film
• British Academy Film Award
  • Best Foreign Film.

[edit] Abril Despedaçado

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association
  • Best Foreign Film (nominated)
• National Board of Review
  • Best Foreign Film (nominated)
• British Academy of Film and Television Arts
  • Best Foreign Film (nominated)
• Venice International Film Festival
  • Audience Award (Leoncino d'Oro)

[edit] The Motorcycle Diaries

• Hollywood Film Festival
  • Hollywood World Award
• Cannes Film Festival
  • Prize of the Ecumenical Jury^[7]
  • European Film Award (nominated)
• Academy Awards
  • Best Original Song (Al Otro Lado del Río), composed by Uruguayan Jorge Drexler.
  • Best Adapted Screenplay (nominated)

[edit] Linha de Passe

• 2008 Cannes Film Festivall
  • Golden Palm (nominated)
  • Best Actress (Sandra Corveloni)

Main filmography[link]

• A Grande Arte (Exposure, 1991)
• Socorro Nobre (Life Somewhere Else, 1995)
• Terra Estrangeira (Foreign Land, 1995)
• Central do Brasil (Central Station, 1998)
• O Primeiro Dia (Midnight, 1999)
• Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun, 2001)
• Diários de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries, 2004)
• Dark Water (2005)
• Paris, je t'aime (segment "Loin du 16e", 2006)
• To Each His Own Cinema (segment A 8 944 km de Cannes (5,557 Miles From Cannes), 2007)
• Linha de Passe (2008)
• On the Road (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Walter Salles at the Internet Movie Database
• Video interview with Walter Salles opening Cambridge Film Festival 2008 with "Linha de Passe" ITV Anglia
• Interview with Walter Salles at Cannes 2008 on "Linha de Passe" at IFC.com
• Walter Salles interviewed by Michael Ordoña for the San Francisco Chronicle