1996) -- Directed by Stephen Kay, Produced by Edward Bates and Louise Rosner.

`Pin Gods' (Documentary, US, 1996) -- Directed by Larry Locke, Produced by Jan Grzener.

*** Neal Cassady is still an American icon. He lived life like a locomotive at full throttle. He died in Mexico in 1968, and considering what he managed to pack in to his 42 years, it is not surprising that his heart gave out. Cassady was the child of an abusive, alcoholic father, and he developed that peculiar hustler's ability to be all things to all people as a result. Everybody loved him, everybody wanted a piece of him, and Cassady was usually happy to oblige.

Beat Generation writers idealised Cassady. He met Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg in New York City. Ginsberg promptly fell in love with him, and he became the "secret hero'' of Ginsberg's poem, `Howl'. Later, Kerouac and Cassady would jack-knife around the country in beat-up cars, high on speed and booze, vainly trying to make sense of Fifties middle-America. Cassady was the model for the Dean Moriarty character in `On the Road', and Kerouac used Cassady's charged way of talking as the model for his writing style.

The friendship with Kerouac fizzled out when the older man put on his bedroom slippers and drifted into premature middle age. Cassady had far too much pepper for this to happen to him, and he became a part of the Sixties scene.

As the driver of Further, a very brightly painted bus, he was a sort of kindly drug-taking uncle to Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, hurtling them around the country and sharing their electric Kool Aid. Time never did trap Neal Cassady.

In Stephen Kay's irritating, quasi-fictional film, `The Last Time I Committed Suicide', the place is Denver and Neal Cassady is 19. We see the young Cassady in relationships with people who have resonance with real-life friends he would not meet till later. He has an affair with a suicidal lover (Joan), gently fends off a man who looks like a relative of Alan Ginsberg (Benjamin), shoots pool with a man who might be Kerouac but looks more like Keanu Reeve's father (Harry). And all the while he wrestles with hope and desire. "The things I see in my dreams are things I know nothing about'', he says. They include picket fences, and a wife and kiddies. The remainder of the film deals with Cassady's narrow escape from this particular American dream, which, as Harry rightly explains to him, is not to be his destiny.

The idea for Stephen Kay's screenplay was what was left unsaid in Cassady's 1947 "Great Sex Letter'' to Kerouac. In the letter, Cassady told of a chance encounter with a suicidal woman on a long-haul bus ride. She so attracted him that he gave her "all the reasons she would need'' to love him. But when they arrived in St. Louis, instead of going to a hotel with him, she went home with her sister. He was forced to console himself with a 16-year-old virgin in Kansas.

Director/screenwriter Kay has used the wish-bone of this story for his plot; the suicidal Joan (Claire Forlani), the sixteen-year-old Cherry Mary (Gretchen Mol). But Kay has an end product that is essentially false. The polar tensions in a complex character like Cassady's could have been made into a grand film, but what we have is a postmodern pastiche. True, it moves well to a great bebop soundtrack. And the opening and closing sections bracket the story in smart black-and-white. But the dialogue is wooden, and sometimes comically laden with anachronistic references. One character actually has "a great notion'' about the California dream! (I assume this is something like a hankering).

In any film where style rules content, characters can easily slide into cartoon stereotypes. Here, as well as The Gaunt Suicidal Girl and The Jiggly Sexpot we have Her Hatchet-faced Mother and The Kindly Irish Priest. Worst of all is the portrayal of Cassady (by Thomas Jane) as a reactive nit-wit with nice doggy eyes (and probably a nice wet nose as well -- he certainly looks healthy).

Interesting, the directions taken in revising heroes in American culture. The Beats themselves have now become a virtual industry on-line, with one man in Brooklyn quitting his Wall Street day job to devote himself to their stories.

But for goodness' sake, revision or no, there is a whole lot more to any human being, and particularly to Neal Cassady, even in his proto-Beat period, than this facile film allows. Rapid-paced, well-shot, and attractive as it may be, it's full of. ..nothing much at all.

*** Neal Cassady was a substantial contributor to another American dream, that of freedom, which is still occasionally played out in that wonderful genre, the Road Movie. The next best thing is a Road Documentary, and if you love to travel other people's real-life journeys, go and see Pin Gods. It's sweet as can be.

Director Larry Locke follows the lives of three rookies on the professional bowling circuit. There's young Tony Rosamilia, a gutsy friendly plump boy who looks like a pug dog. There's Anton (Sonny) Pavelchak, who brags a lot about his ball control and quarrels a lot with his father, a man bearing close resemblance to the last Czar. And there's Bob Vespi, a natty dresser with a mortgage who is already on the way to making a career of this most middle-American of sports.

Touring the country in nasty weather, staying in Holiday Inns, pining for their families, these three very different men try to match the fancy footwork and unswerving eye of the reigning champion, Walter Ray Williams. The film is cut with archival footage of the famous (sic) Carmen Salvino and interviews with Salvino in a cocktail lounge today. I'm happy to tell you his positive attitude to the sport has not dimmed one bit over the years.

I loved this film, for the mysterious footage of weighing and waxing in mile-long alleys, for the chance to see the lights of Las Vegas, for the warm-hearted crowds in Erie, Pennsylvania, "Bowling Capital of the World'' (where the weather was so frightful you were surprised that people had not moved out altogether). But most of all, for the bowlers themselves. Rosamilia tells us, "This is the best thing that I do and I want to succeed''. In a very real way, he does -- and it's so great to see it happen.

SYLVIA SHORTO `Pin Gods' is at the Little Theatre tomorrow night at 7.15 p.m. `The Last Time I Committed Suicide' is at the Little Theatre tonight at 7.15 p.m.

A `Pin God' living the American dream