Howl
A young Allen Ginsberg battles personal demons and societal censorship as he fights to defend his revolutionary poem *Howl* in a landmark obscenity trial that becomes a catalyst for the counterculture movement.
“The Obscenity Trial That Started a Revolution. The Poem That Rocked a Generation.”
Synopsis
Set in San Francisco in 1957, *Howl* dramatizes the trial of an American literary landmark. The film interweaves three narrative threads: the personal struggles that shaped Allen Ginsberg's emergence as a poet, the public controversy surrounding the obscenity trial of his work, and animated sequences that reflect the poem's innovative style. Together, these elements form a hybrid film that captures a turning point in cultural history—the rise of a counterculture movement.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 22
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Jake PushinskyShot by Edward LachmanScored by Carter BurwellDesigned by Therese Deprez
Box Office
2010 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.2× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$1.2M
Opening week (7-day): $72K
Peak 6 theaters
Also known as
- Howl - Das Geheulde
- Urloit
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Cast & Crew
22 unique people credited
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Directors
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4Other crew
8Parents Guide
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