Tuli Kupferberg Reads Sports Illustrated: In Honor of the Baseball Season

About the Film

Bio Tuli Kupferberg

Tuli Kupferberg was a cult figure in the 1960's Beat movement. In 1964, he and Ed Sanders started The Fugs, a music group at the psychedelic forefront who can safely be called the first ever underground band. Appropriately enough, the band was a brainchild born in a New York East Village bookstore. The Fugs are a product of the Beat Generation literary movement and Kupferberg is immortalized in Allen Ginsberg's Howl – as “the person who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge”. Anti-authoritarian politics, anti-war initiatives, free sexuality, and drug experimentation were interests that tied into the Hippie movement. Fugs singer Tuli Kupferberg penned some of the Fugs' best and funniest songs: “Supergirl”, “CIA Man”, “Nothing”, and “Kill for Peace”. Prior to his musical career he was known as an activist and book author. “Beating” was published in 1959; “1001 Ways to Live Without Working” appeared in 1961. His legendary “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft” (with Robert Bashlow) became one of the most amusing, yet important, anti-Vietnam War critques to be written. Other books by Tupferberg have noteworthy and witty titles such as: “I Say to Masturbate is Human, to Fuck Divine”, (1966) and “When I Hear the Word 'Culture' I Reach for My Gun”, (1994). Tuli Kupferberg was a peculiar rock icon. When the first Fugs' album came out Kupferberg was already over 40, easily the oldest of any famous rocker at the time. Back then, the world of rock was purely a pursuit of the youth. Rock pensioners (like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney) weren't yet part of the scene. That generation's well-known sentiment 'You can't trust anyone over 30 (let alone 40)' set the tone for the whole era. Be that as it may, Tuli Kupferberg was treated with respect, taken seriously, and was much admired. 'Nuff said. «Work is what you get paid for or have to do, recreation is everything else. Some people don't get paid for work they have to do, like housewives or slaves. Some athletes get paid for 'playing'. » – Tuli Kupferberg