Italian filmmaker Matteo Scarfò had the very good fortune of working, as a member of the crew, on director Joe E. Goodavage’s The Last Gamble in 2009. It is there that he met Nick Mancuso and John Savage and over the next six years they discovered that they shared a common interest in the life and times of Beat Poet Gregory Corso.
They reasoned, why not make a film about Corso, whose life was more than fascinating. Indeed, he spent most of his teenage years in prison, where he became self-educated in the classics and found that he had a gift for writing, especially poetry. He would meet Allen Ginsberg in 1951 and they would became life-long friends. Through his poetry, and relationship with Ginsberg, it wasn’t long before he was hanging with Jack Kerouac …
By 2015, Mancuso and Scarfò had put their bio-pic/documentary plans into motion, with Mancuso onboard to play the adult Corso. As Scarfò would describe his vision for the film, “Corso was irreverent, ironic, crazy, often homeless, burdened by both great inner pain and sadness.” Mancuso was perfect as the force to capture that.
The pair would shoot their film when time allowed — a true labor of love — and in 2017 the film, titled Bomb! Burning Fantasy, hit the festival circuit, with its debut at Toronto Independent Film Festival. Other venues would follow, but the story of Beat Poet Gregory Corso remained largely unseen.
This all changed this past week as Bayview Entertainment will be bringing Mancuso and Scarfò’s Bomb! Burning Fantasy to Blu-ray on Dec. 27!!
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