Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three now playing! (somewhere)

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-elder9dec09,1,2398650.story

STYLE & CULTURE
Kerouac script revived as play

By Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune

Jack Kerouac, who fathered the Beat Generation with the novel "On the Road,"
wrote only one fantasy novel, "Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three," a metaphysical
ode to pulp characters of the 1930s. Doctor Sax, the dark protector of
children, was inspired by the Shadow and horror movies of the time — so much
so that Kerouac wrote a screenplay adapting the book, long thought lost until
his nephew Jim Sampas uncovered it a couple of years ago.

Sampas, who produced the tribute album "Kerouac — Kicks Joy Darkness,"
discovered the manuscript while examining the author's archives. He has also
assembled a cast of poets and musical artists including Robert Hunter, Jim
Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Graham Parker to perform the script as a
radio play, now featured on two CDs accompanying the manuscript called "Doctor
Sax and the Great World Snake" (Galley Six, $24.95). The collection features 72
illustrations from artist Richard Sala ("Evil Eye"), whose style echoes '30s
pulp magazines.

"I didn't really have to adapt anything at all," Sala says. "A lot of it had to
do with that pulp style, when horror movies were discovering German
expressionism. There was this embracing of nonlinear stories … a lot of Dutch
angles, and shadows."

Now that the project is finished, Sampas says he'd like to shop the script in
Hollywood. "I definitely want to get it made into a film, but I see it as an
animated film," he says.