William Burroughs lived long enough to per­form on Saturday Night Live. Allen Ginsberg appeared in Gap ads. But one central figure of the Beat movement never moved beyond obscurity — Joan Burroughs, who died of a gunshot wound delivered by her own hus­band. Beat is the true story of the events lead­ing up to that fatal day.

Joan was the center of a circle of friends who would later become the Beats. They all lived on the edge, and they all shared a gift for falling in love with the wrong people. It is 1951, and William (Kiefer Sutherland) and Joan (Courtney Love) are living in Mexico City. The Burroughses' old friends Ginsberg (Ron Livingston) and Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus) drive down for a visit, but William has taken off to Guatemala with another man. Joan is feeling low but is captivated by the idea of a car trip to an erupting volcano. On the road, Joan and Lucien fall in love. When William returns home, there is a confrontation over the obvious flaws in their marriage, which ends in a drunken game of William Tell.