The Beats were a disparate bunch of Americans, a group of friends who were bound by their nonconformity and their love if words. Inspired by jazz, drugs and the open road, they produced some of America's greatest literature. But this dazzling flurry of artistic activity came with casualties. On September 6h 1951 William Burroughs shot and killed his wife, Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of William Tell.He would later cite this incident as the precipitating factor in his career as a writer. Ugly Spirit puts Joan centre stage, a mini-biopic that imagines her life at the very moment it ended.
