Underground films celebrated unknown beats rather than aristocrats

Evidence

A 16mm film of indeterminate length made by Ron Rice, The Flower Thief starred the poet Taylor Mead traipsing through San Francisco along with a cluster of North Beach habitues. Pull My Daisy consecrated a Beat aristocracy. Rice—a decade younger than Kerouac and Ginsberg—was more like the unknown beatnik, raking over the coals of the dying North Beach scene. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 147