He counted Woody Allen, Joan Baez, poet Michael McClure, Clint Eastwood, Lily Tomlin, Bill Graham and numerous other celebrities among his friends.
He has made two television documentaries – The Maze and September Blackberries – and is featured in several films including The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese) where he reads from The Canterbury Tales; Beyond the Law (dir. Norman Mailer); and, most prominently, The Hired Hand (dir. Peter Fonda).
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Barry Miles famously referred to McClure as "the Prince of the San Francisco Scene".
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In 1968, actor Rip Torn directed a notable production at The Royal Court Theatre and it has most recently been revived at a smaller venue, the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 under the direction of Nic Saunders with new music by Terry Riley.
Productions included Di Prima's The Discontent of the Russian Prince, written for herself and Fred Herko, and The Pillow by Michael McClure.
Michael Jackson | Order of St Michael and St George | Michael Bloomberg | Michael Jordan | Michael Caine | Michael | Michael Palin | Michael Moore | George Michael | Michael Dukakis | Michael W. Smith | Michael Douglas | Michael Bolton | Michael Schumacher | Michael J. Fox | Michael Bublé | Michael Faraday | Michael Moorcock | Michael Kors | Michael Brecker | Michael Bay | Michael Nyman | Michael Phelps | Michael Ondaatje | John Michael Montgomery | St. Michael | Michael Landon | Saint Michael, Barbados | Michael Somare | Live! with Kelly and Michael |
The Caffè Trieste also becomes a convenient meeting place for Beat movement writers like Lawrence Ferlinghetti (still a regular), Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth and Neeli Cherkovski, who lived in North Beach in the 1950s and 1960s.
And they built a great community among the creative spirits of Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Anna Halprin, and Imogen Cunningham.
The new DVD, released on July 2007 by New Yorker Video, includes interviews with Bono, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Joan Baez, Michael McClure, Norman Mailer, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, William S. Burroughs, Anne Waldman and Timothy Leary - all of whom considered Allen a good friend.
The NYQ is widely known for featuring poems and/or interviews with writers such as Charles Bukowski, W. H. Auden, Anne Sexton, Ted Kooser, Franz Wright, Karl Shapiro, Macdonald Carey, Richard Eberhart, Michael McClure, and Lyn Lifshin.
Poets reading at spaces provided by this collective included Anne Waldman; Michael McClure; Gregory Corso; Robert Creeley; Gary Snyder; Diane Wakoski; Robert Bly; and occasionally fiction writers would appear as well, such as award winning mystery writer Edward D. Hoch; as well as regionally known writers from the western N.Y. area, such as Buffalo playwright Emanuel Fried.
An avant-garde and thoroughly modern writer, his poetry has been published in major Arab magazines and has translated W. S. Merwin, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, and others.