This fall, James Franco will play the great poet Allen Ginsberg in the biopic, Howl. The new trailer embedded above gives you a taste of the upcoming literary event.

In 2008, we caught up with Howl‘s co-director Jeffrey Friedman, finding out what a 50-year-old poem can teach us today.

Here’s an excerpt: “We’ve been surprised by the number of young people who have told us not only that they are familiar with the poem, but that it means a lot to them. A generation accustomed to being bombarded with random sensational imagery will be able to easily keep up with our animated reinterpretation of the poem–a dreamlike world of madness and monsters, burning oilfields and cosmic orgasms.”

(Via City Lights Books)