Tonight: Jerry Aronson appears with an Allen Ginsberg double feature

​When director Jerry Aronson screened his documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg for Ginsberg himself before the film's release in 1994, the iconic poet is said to have nodded his head and reflectively quipped, "So that's Allen Ginsberg." With good reason: Even all these years later, Life and Times is probably the most comprehensive look at Ginsberg ever released -- Aronson spent some 25 years compiling over 200 hours of footage for it -- and it'll screen tonight with an appearance from the director at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder.

It's accompanied by a screening of Howl, last year's pseudo-biopic starring James Franco as Ginsberg, which dramatizes and reconstructs Ginsberg's beginnings as a poet by sticking faithfully to the historical record (it also features some fabulous animated sequences by Eric Drooker). All told, it's going to be like six degrees of Colorado Connection up in there -- Ginsberg, of course, started the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa in Boulder; James Franco, who plays him in the movie, also played the Aron Ralston, the Colorado fellow who lost his arm, in 127 Hours; and Aronson (who has that spelling of "Aron" somewhat in common with Ralston) also logged 34 years as faculty in the Film Studies department at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

It screens at 6 p.m. tonight at the Dairy Center for the Arts; tickets are $10.

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