On Movies: Daniel Radcliffe goes back to school

J. Pierrepont Finch by night, Allen Ginsberg by day.

For much of the time that Daniel Radcliffe was busy in New York singing and dancing his way through the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, he was also working with John Krokidas, a first-time filmmaker, preparing for the role of the celebrated Beat poet: teenage Ginsberg, just accepted to Columbia University, where he gets caught up with the likes of William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. And caught up in a very real, very troubling murder. Kill Your Darlings - opening Friday at the Ritz Bourse and Carmike Ritz Center/NJ - is the result of Radcliffe's endeavors.

It's a long way from Harry Potter, but in a way, it isn't: Both the budding wizard Radcliffe played in the eight epic fantasy films and Ginsberg, the budding poet, left home to attend legendary institutions of learning. And both are transformed by their time there. The Potter franchise is just one mega, magic-powered coming-of-age story, and in Kill Your Darlings, the Jewish kid from Paterson, N.J., heads to the big city and discovers who he is - as a writer, and as a man attracted to other men.

"You know, a lot of the parts that I would be offered at this point in my life would be in things like coming-of-age stories," says Radcliffe, who is 24 now, but can easily do younger. "And that's a theme in so many movies."

But the rest of Kill Your Darlings, he adds, is "such a far cry. That's where the comparisons begin and end, because it gets very dark and challenging."

In the film, "Ginsy," as he is dubbed, takes up with Lucien Carr (Allentown's Dane DeHaan), a rich, reckless campus charmer. Ginsberg is smitten, attaching himself to Carr's coattails, the two of them buzzing around town in the company of the young Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Kerouac (Jack Huston). But Ginsberg is not the only one drawn to Carr: The older and wildly obsessive David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) can't understand why Carr won't see him any longer. He and Ginsberg become rivals for Carr's attention, and affections, until Kammerer's entreaties assume a menacing, stalker-esque aspect. Something must be done with this bothersome fellow.

And something is.

"This is a true story, which so few people know," Radcliffe says. "It was suppressed for a long time, but when you have an event that was this culturally significant, and significant in the lives of people who went on to become so famous, it seems incredible that nobody has ever told this story before."

(Literary footnote: Carr, who developed the tenets of the "New Vision" with Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac, and who would be charged with second-degree murder, was the father of Caleb Carr, the best-selling author of The Alienist.)

Radcliffe - who pulls off the boyish Ginsberg with physical similitude and serious conviction - wants to make it clear that while events turn grisly in Kill Your Darlings, the film goes to great lengths to document the rollicking adventurousness of the nascent Beats, too.

"I think if you're making a film about the Beats, you can't be too reverential, because they had so much fun, they were just wild, going around New York, having a crazy time. So we wanted to capture some of that energy and vitality and excitement. . . . Hopefully, there's a lightness to the movie, as well as all of the dark stuff."

Kill Your Darlings was one of three films Radcliffe had screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The determinedly busy actor, who was onstage in London earlier this year in a revival of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, had Horns and The F Word at the Canadian fest, too. Both titles are slated for 2014 theatrical release.

"Horns is a crazy movie," Radcliffe reports. "It was mad. I think it's got all the makings of a classic - to a certain group of people, that is. It's not for everyone. . . . As the film begins, my girlfriend has been raped and murdered months before, and the whole town has assumed that I've done it and has vilified me. Everyone hates me. So I'm living quite an isolated existence. And then one night, I get drunk and end up having a night of inappropriate sex with a friend, and I wake up the next day full of regret - and growing horns.

"And after that I realize that these horns are making people I interact with confess their deepest, darkest secrets to me. And I use that power to then figure out who really killed my girlfriend. So it's a whodunit-cum-absurdist comedy-cum-revenge horror- cum-love story."

Horns, with Juno Temple and Heather Graham, is based on the novel by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son.

The F Word, which puts Radcliffe opposite Zoe Kazan and Jemima Rooper, is, on the other hand, "a very sweet, very honest, very funny look at friendships between men and women and the complexities of relationships."

And not too long from now, Radcliffe will be starting work on a new production of Frankenstein, directed by Paul McGuigan. James McAvoy is Victor Von Frankenstein, Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay is the leading lady, called Lorelei, and Radcliffe is Igor, the good doctor's hunchbacked assistant.

"It's the most inventive, original script that I've read coming out of the studios since finishing Potter," he says. "I can't wait to get started."

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