Month: November 2018 (Page 7 of 7)

 

‘Gazing at Ursule Molinaro’s shoes, now in a decrepit state from age and wear, memories come back to me of nights spent in her living room across from the old cemetery on East Second street. Ursule often expressed the desire to be buried there among the Calvinist worthies resting in peace. They would have turned over multiple times if her bohemian persona, nails painted black and rabidly on the left politically, moved in to join them.

‘For the last years of her life, Ursule referred matter of factly to her death, probably welcoming it as a surcease from the crippling arthritis she endured. She kept a coffin in her living room as nonchalantly as others might a piano or favorite knick knack. Although dressed in black before the fashion, I never saw her lie down in it. She merely circled around this conversation piece which occupied a prominent place in the room. Spotting the coffin, visitors stopped “dead” in their tracks.

‘Earlier in her career Ursule authored some minor best sellers. One popular one, a book on numerology, Life by the Numbers, garnered praise from both amateurs and experts. But later on Ursule could not find a proper literary agent or a mainstream publisher. I believe her disappointment at not achieving the public recognition her outstanding body of work deserved eroded her will to live. How many times she pronounced writing an “uglifying profession,” implying that the effort exacted too large a toll for the return received. As I take my own knocks in the literary game, now I can relate to Ursule’s observation that once sounded so peculiar.

‘Ursule, given to experiments with language, fashioned herself as a “writer’s writer” in the modernist mode. Craft came first and actively promoting her work did not suit the intellectual image she wished to project; however, she read from her latest releases at public venues for her coterie of admirers made up of academics and devotees of small literary magazines. Visiting professorships at various universities helped pay the bills.

‘Ursule taught one course at NYU and held a writing group in her home. Pet students were promoted to personal friends. They revered her for taking their writing as seriously as her own. And for her lightning quick ability to outline a plot on which to hang a short story or novel. Ursule’s thirteen novels, several one act plays and hundreds of short stories demonstrate her immersion in the subtleties and ironies of English–a language she mastered in her native France.

‘If provoked, Ursule’s tongue lashed with the ferocity of a sword. Her daughter and lovers knew to avoid subjects that made her large blue eyes narrow to slits: Charles de Gaulle, motherhood, children, pop art, crusades to ban smoking, etc. Fools, no matter what level they occupied in society, were shown the door after their shortcomings were pointed out to them.

‘Twenty-five years ago my college friend introduced us. That night commenced an interaction best described as a “learning experience.” This exquisitely spoken Frenchwoman dazzled me with anecdotes about European authors I was unfamiliar with. Fluent in several languages, Ursule translated a wide range of authors some of whom she knew on a first name basis. She captioned foreign films, specializing in French New Wave directors like Jean Luc Goddard and Truffaut.

‘In Paris she had lived in an apartment a few floors above Simone de Beauvoir whose writing she deconstructed mercilessly. Because she could not forgive him for being ugly, Ursule did not care for Jean Paul or his writing. Worse, he squinted, which she regarded as an indication of his sinister character.

‘Ursule Interpreted feminism according to her own idiosyncratic lights with no reliance on de Beauvoir’s tightly reasoned arguments. Puffing on a Gaulois cigarette as she stroked her iconic cat Mops, an ancient looking creature worthy of belonging to an Egyptian pharaoh, she orated on the merits of a matriarchy. Developing this theme, she brought up in conversation particular women whom she felt had been given a raw deal by chroniclers in their own time.

‘These discourses became A Full Moon of Women, my favorite book of hers. This feminist oriented compendium sketched out the lives of twenty-nine misunderstood heroines(in her view) from different times and places. With wry Urusulian twists she made martyrs like Cassandra, or murderers like Charlotte Corday who killed Marat in his bathtub, sympathetic.

‘Whether purveying a wicked trove of gossip about a fellow writer, or skewering the latest literary fad, Ursule inevitably chose the correct bon mot. In her presence I felt tongue tied because of holes in my literary education. Intent on filling the gaps, I imagined myself sitting at the feet of George Sand or such like in a Parisian salon. Ursule was a throwback to the days when witty utterances and elan vital were essential to make a splash in the world of letters.

‘On one subject she remained as silent as the cemetery across the street from her: the Jewish family she hid in her Parisian apartment during World War II–a courageous act which resulted in her arrest by the Germans. An old friend of hers from this period told me confidentially that the police tortured her.She never said a word of this subject.

‘At first Ursule’s love life, as unconventional as her opinions, shocked me. Especially when I first met her lover, by then in his early twenties. Via a trustworthy source, I heard that Ursule seduced him right before his fifteenth birthday. Muscular with wavy dark hair and a shy smile, he oozed sexuality. Ursule looked like her lover’s grandmother. Her dyed blond hair had become wispy grey, her skin texture like old parchment, and her hands a network of raised blue veins.

‘As they made love with their eyes and souls, a magical circle seemed to enclose them. How I envied these disparate lovers. While she painted, taking a holiday from writing, he read to her. Instead of her given name, he lovingly called her “bear,” a play on her astrological sign. Enthroned on her favorite Empire, damask chair she looked regal, reminiscent of a medieval queen permitting a knight to pay her homage.

‘Alas, I witnessed a disintegration of the relationship that appeared shatterproof. It descended from idyllic to a variant of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. When her lover became sarcastic Ursule’s friends were flabbergasted. Insults degenerated into serious arguments. I never found out what provoked this dramatic metamorphosis on his part. One night I went over and found him hastily packing up to leave for Chicago.

‘If a love affair of this magnitude could end, what certainties could one depend on? For a couple of weeks, I felt devastated. A month later the writer in Ursule processed the pain using it as grist for her creative mill. She turned this rejection into a short story without a scintilla of self pity. This gem is extremely subtle, yet it leaps off the page and bites the reader with a restraint the Greeks termed “deathly quiet pandemonium.”

‘Within a year Ursule attracted another lover, a female student she met at a writers’s conference. A trifle older than her predecessor, she moved in to take the departed’s place. A mysterious income that had something to do with gold stored in Switzerland, allowed Ursule to never cook a meal and eat in multi-star restaurants.

‘Perfectly groomed, Ursules’s clothes were from established designers. Beauty parlors and cleaning ladies were necessities not luxuries. About five feet, yet she appeared to tower most people. In old age her features remained as sharp as an eagle; her laser beam eyes penetrated one’s vitals. No one, not even her daughter, was privy to her exact age. Meanwhile Ursule put great stock in birthdays.

‘On these occasions she would give me, as well as other friends, one of her whimsical paintings on wood. Approximately fifteen years ago after a party, she motioned me into her bedroom, an inner sanctum only a select few penetrated. She wanted to give me something? Ursule flung open her ultra-neat closet to extract a pair of shoes in an eighteenth century style, although she’d bought them at Saks in the fifties. Since she wasn’t wearing high heels anymore, she passed them on to me–a logical choice. Shoes of every color, heel height and style are jammed into my closet, secreted under furniture and stuffed into nooks throughout my small apartment.

‘Unfortunately, Ursule’s shoes gave me blisters. With persistent application my writing improved considerably, but neither her genius nor her ability to bridge genres rubbed off. Discomfort aside, hoping for the transference to occur, I wore these torture boots to literary events until they could not be mended anymore.

‘In Vermont, summer of 2000, a friend called to inform me of Ursule’s death. This sad event brought back the night years ago when Ursule criticized my writing harshly enough to make me consider weaving instead. Upon reflection, I agreed with Ursule’s view of my early efforts. Her example taught me to carve my words and use adjectives sparingly.

‘Meanwhile, she left me a tangible legacy: her shoes! I cannot bear to fling them in the garbage. Should I donate them to the French Institute, build a Greek style altar in my living room and set them atop it, an incentive to toast her with champagne on her birthday? Or, bury them with appropriate ceremony near a Parisian cafe on the Left Bank?

‘Ursule’s departure has left a void in my life no material object can fill. Hats off, or should I say shoes off, to the bohemian Frenchwoman who taught me the refinements of the English language. And she soared beyond the realm of fashion to enter the precincts of style–a leap few make these days.’ — Barbara Foster, Evergreen Review

 

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Further

Ursule Molinaro @ Wikipedia
Ursule Molinaro; Wrote Novels and Plays
Top Stories, No. 16: Secret Cheat of Freedom, Analects of Self-Contempt
Ursule Molinaro @ Kirkus
Ursule Molinaro: Encores for a Dilettante
A Christian Martyr in Reverse Hypatia: 370 – 415 A. D.
Ursule Molinaro @ FC2
Review of Contemporary Fiction: Italo Calvino / Ursule Molinaro / B. S. Johnson
The Abstract Wife: A Play in One Act
Analects of Self-Contempt: Sweet Cheat of Freedom
‘Thirteen: Stories’ @ goodreads
Buy ‘Thirteen: Stories’

 

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Other books’ covers

 

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Interview

Ursule Molinaro reads “Eating Melons in Marseille.” Later she is interviewed by host Tom Vitale.

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Ursule Molinaro: a look back
by Alexander Lawrence

 

I first discovered the works of Ursule Molinaro in a used bookstore in San Francisco during the summer of 1990. She was a big mystery. On the cover of all her books, you couldn’t see her face. In one picture, you saw the back of her head. I think the first book I saw by her was Thirteen Stories (1989). Both my girlfriend and myself were very much into this book. I was attracted to the uniqueness of her books and the original way in which she wrote. She seemed like a writer that came from nowhere, and was totally a self invention.

As I read some of her other books, I learned more. I read The Autobiography of Cassandra (1992) and Power Dreamers (1993). Molinaro took classical works and themes and re-made them. Even though her own past was a mystery, she went back to the earliest works and gave her own touch on them. Her work often dealt with feminism and being an individual. I read almost all of her books, but preferred the ones that came out in the 1980s and 1990s.

I found out that she had translated some books, including ones by Herman Hesse, Nathalie Sarraute, and Philippe Sollers. I saw some French films, by Jean-Luc Godard, where she had done the sub-titles. In one of her early books, it had said that Molinaro worked for the UN. She had lived in Paris at one time, but this was rarely mentioned in any of the novels. Like Nabokov, Molinaro had started writing in English, and when she moved to New York in 1949, she had become a new person.

Molinaro was also a painter. Much of her work was on the cover of her books. That fact also gave her books a unique look. Ursule Molinaro, her name suggests something of Italian and French decent. But when my friend Eurydice met Ursule, I found out that she spoke Greek too, as well as French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English. After a few years, I got up enough nerve to write a fan letter. She wrote me back and after a few more letters, we decided to do an interview.

I called her up one day. I asked her some questions about her latest book Fat Skeletons (1994). At the end of the interview, she asked me “if I interviewed male authors too?” I thought that was weird. She told me about her friend Bruce Benderson, who had a novel coming out. I contacted Bruce. It turned out that he was coming to San Francisco to do some readings for his book User (1995). Bruce and I became good friends and we hung out a lot in New York when I moved there a year later.

In 1996, when I moved to New York City, Ursule was one of the people who I wanted to meet. I don’t think anyone knew how old she was at this time, but I am guessing around 75. She lived on 2nd street near First Avenue. She told me to meet her at her apartment. She would be waiting outside. Ursule was very fragile. She was waiting outside her apartment. She told me to call a cab. One finally came by and I helped her get inside. We went to Café Jacqueline on the other side of town, in Greenwich Village. Mostly we just talked about every day things. We probably talked about Bruce. Everything was very present tense. There was never any mention of the “good old days.” I think that I brought a few books to her to sign. I told Ursule that I had a book coming out soon. She suggested I should call myself “Laurence Alexander Laurence.”

I probably saw Bruce a few times after this. I met up with him and Ursule, and another French couple, and we had some food on Second Avenue near St Marks Place. Of course, this time, it was mostly in French, and I struggled to keep up. Ursule seemed annoyed with me. I saw a movie called “My Father Is Coming” that featured Bruce Benderson and Lynne Tillman. If you look at the end of the film, Ursule is there holding a Chinese umbrella. It looks like it was filmed outside her apartment in the East Village.

For about two years, Bruce would give me updates on Ursule. She became anti-social and it was more difficult for her to go out. I had heard that she had died in the summer of 2000. There was a wake and celebration of her work at Poetry Project that fall.

There was about twenty of so people. Her publisher, Bruce McPherson, was there. Some other writers like Janice Eidus and Joseph McElroy spoke about her. Bruce Benderson spoke at the end. He gave an irreverent speech. Bruce said that Ursule would have disapproved of such an event. I had known Ursule Molinaro for a few years, and I had spent some time with her, but she was still as mysterious as before. Who she was? Who she was before she came to America. Her personal life could only be patched together by those who knew her. And even for Bruce, who knew her as well as anyone, Ursule was a stranger. She truly disappeared in her art and her writings.

 

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Book

Ursule Molinaro Thirteen: Stories
McPherson

‘In an advance assessment of this collection of short stories, novelist Joseph McElroy remarked: “As erotic in their energy as they are poignantly unpredictable, these fictions challenge us to be as brave and free as any reincarnation we might imagine. They are mirrors and windows, reflecting a lifetime of dazzling invention.” Ursule Molinaro has written more than 200 stories which have appeared in scores of journals, including Evergreen Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Review, Bennington Review, Best American Short Stories and TriQuarterly. The stories collected here represent some of her most exceptional pieces from the past 20 years: An unhappily married woman compulsively eavesdrops on her neighbor’s daily trysts; a filmmaker photographs the brutal attack of her psychotic lover; a disincarnated spirit witnesses the charity sale of her worldly possessions; a rebellious slave is given his freedom–and a rebellious slave of his own; a sanguine young career woman ends her Hawaiian holiday in a violent collision with the local culture. These are 13 tales of intensely private worlds where the bizarre is a quietly insistent force – “an unbalanced, violent world,” writes Kirkus Reviews, “where the distance between people is always too wide for them to cross.’ — McPherson

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A story
from Bomb

Doomed Survivors: A Reconstruction in 2 Voices

I know I’ve come to Mexico to get myself murdered. By one or several of the local men I sleep or slept with. Whom I outrage when I demand the same one-sided fidelity they demand of me. Of any woman.

They’d be more outraged if they knew that I compare the length/diameter/coloring of their penises the way they compare the slits & tits of all the gringas whose fiancé they claim to be, for each turn of a screw.

My comparisons are more interesting than their boastful inventories. They’re better worded, & I write them down. Miniature profiles of Mexican society, based on parallels between these men’s treatment of me & other gringas & the attention they lavish on their instrument.

Spiced with a touch of humor. Which is considered blasphemy by the priests of phallus worship. They don’t know that I send amusing descriptions of my miserable love life off to friends in New York, but they sense my irreverence, & it fills them with a dark rage.

The same primal indignation that may have killed the much maligned Malinche, the native interpreter of Hernan Cortés. Who called her his “tongue.”

Perhaps.

Probably. What but a rub-out killing can explain the silence that suddenly cloaks her life or her death after she turns 24?

After nearly a decade of blatant news coverage.

Not by Cortés, who vaguely mentions una india in his careful letters to his king. Whose immense national debt he was paying off with the spoils from a devastated distant civilization. But Moctezuma’s reporters—her “own” people—depict her tirelessly. Standing beside or behind Cortés—taller and larger than Cortés, i.e. more important than Cortés; to them—pointing an interpreting finger toward intent Aztec messengers who stare at her from the gaping mouths of jaguar heads. Listening to her rephrase the many promises Cortés makes & the many reasons he gives for breaking them during his rodeo conquest of Mexico.

& her command of Spanish is tirelessly praised by the priests & abbeys who accompany Cortés on his Christian mission. & save the Christian conquerors from the mortal sin of copulating with heathens by hurriedly baptizing the native women who are given to them as appeasement presents. Or who are part of the spoils.

The future interpreter is one of 20 such appeasement presents, when he first lands. She is 14, & beautiful. & the only one who speaks Nahuatl (Aztec) as well as Mayan. She learns Spanish el lenguaje divino in two weeks.

I refuse to learn Spanish. Why should I learn it? I’m too old for that sort of thing. Besides, not speaking the local language makes me seem exotic. As well as open season.

I learned very proper English in America. After learning very proper French in France. I refuse to become trilingual to make monolingual macho fiancés feel more at home. They might respect me more—become more faithful?—if I could speak Spanish with them, but I’d lose my foreign-lady-traveler mystery veil. I’d become like their own less accessible women. It would accentuate my flaw.

Cortés has his interpreter baptized: Dona Marina. The eloquence of beauty, rising from collective memory on a giant seashell. A brilliant tongue riding an ear.

Perhaps Cortés had his tongue silenced by his faithful captain Juan Jaramillo—the lawful husband he assigned to her after he himself tired of sleeping with her—because he feared her eloquence at his trial in Spain. Before his now-again solvent, most Christian king, who was showing less gratitude than might have been expected. His “tongue” had witnessed every step of his laborious triumph. Every hanging he had ordered. Every burning alive. Every cut-off pair of hands &/or feet. Every gem in his loot.

—Perhaps even the alleged murder of his first allegedly asthmatic wife, whom jealous stay-at-homes rumored he had choked to death.

I was flawed as a little Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation of France. My mother walked out on me, into the ovens, after shoving me inside a closet when she heard boots coming up the stairs.

My father was out at the time. When he returned, he rolled me into a blanket, & walked with me for what seemed days, deep into the countryside, to the house of a peasant family who promised to hide me. Because: they said: I was beautiful, & bright, like the Christ child who had also been a little Jew.

Malinche survived the devastation of her country as the interpreter of that devastation. & has been accused of malinchismo ever since. A word coined for her alleged betrayal of “her own people” to an alien power-beast. A centaur with hair on his furrowed larva face, whose “whore” she allegedly became.

Who are your “own” people, Malinche? Dona Marina? The Aztecs who took Cortés to be a Toltec god, returning in anger, displeased with the Aztec brutalization of his worship? Which stipulated the number of cactus thorns to be pushed through the tongue of a sinner.

A returning god who killed populations in order to eradicate individual human sacrifice.

Your parents named you Malinali. Which your father caressed into Malinche. The name of your snow-capped northern volcano.

A name of respect which your own people extended to their conqueror, the man they always saw by your side. They called Cortés: Don Malinche.

& they called the Spanish soldier whom Cortés assigned to guard you your 24-hour jailer, who watched you sleep & wash & shit & menstruate; except when Cortés called you to his bed; which he didn’t do right away Juan Malinche.

It was winter. I caught a cold that developed into an ear infection. That made me scream so wildly, the peasants feared we’d be discovered. They silenced me with warmed-up gnole (onion brandy), while my father went in search of penicillin.

An illegal shadow, who would be scooped off to the death camps if spotted, trying to buy a scarce new drug reserved for the infections of the occupying conquistadores. By the time he returned, my infection had made a handsized indentation into my left cheek. I’m still beautiful on the right, & scarred & deaf on the left.

& very bright in between. Brighter than he was: my father kept repeating to me. To challenge my self-disgust with the obligation to “survive.”

You’re more intelligent than he was at your age: your father tells you. He wants you to study the administration of the land, in order to succeed him as a cacique. Since he has no son. & yours is one of the rare 16th-century communities that lets women be almost the equals of men. It also lets them do almost all the work. But then he walks out on your life, when he dies of a snakebite, when you’re 11.

Your mother teaches you to sew feather capes. The dusty smell of dead feathers nauseates you. She disciplines you for mismatching colors. Because she loves you, & wants to teach you her taste.

After your father dies, you feel like a stranger in the house where you were born.

Still, you’re shocked when your mother tells you that she has made arrangements to sell you into slavery. To which she feels entitled. She made you. You’re her property.

Meanwhile she has also made a son, with your father’s brother. A baby cacique, who is to succeed your father.

You’re flawless merchandise. A 12-year-old virgin. Ideal to have your heart cut out, & offered, still beating, to the sabre-toothed Chac-Mol.

However, human sacrifice is not practiced in your region. Paynala is far away from Moctezuma’s City on the Lakes. Where human sacrifice increases as the prophets announce the return of an angry Toltec god.

Your mother is not particularly religious. She is practical. She needs the cocoa beans she has been offered for you by a Mayan farmer, who is the

cacique of Tobasco.—Where the sauce comes from.

Your new owners welcome you. In Mayan. They tell you that they love you like the daughter they would have liked to have. You quickly learn what they are saying. You need to understand the masters of your life. You please the wife, sewing feather capes. She praises your subtle feeling for color. You please the father, whom you help with the administrative duties of a cacique. He praises your intelligence.

& your beauty, as you please him also in his bed. How can you refuse to please him? You are his slave.

You’re 14 now, & you also please your owner’s son. Who pleases you back. & wants to marry you.

Which does not please your owner. Who also owns his son, & sends him away to fight intruders from a hostile tribe. You wait for his return, until you hear that he has died.

You also hear that alien beast-men with hairy faces have landed on your shores. & that they may be messengers from a dissatisfied god.

The wife who loves you like the daughter she would have liked to have takes you to them. In secret. Behind her husband’s back. She’s giving you your freedom: she tells you: the rest of your life is up to you.

(cont)

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. KilometerKid asked me to thank you all very much! ** David Ehrenstein, Schnabel is a much better filmmaker than visual artist. Isaac Julien is one of the increasing number of interesting filmmakers who, given the current hostility in the official film world towards experimental work, are concentrating on making video and installation works for galleries and museums now. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Gordon and Parreno’s ‘Zidane’ was quite a success, at least here in Europe. And Sam Taylor-Wood’s films have made money, but they’re pretty awful. Clark’s films are still a biggish deal in France. Ha ha, well, your description of the Berger film works as charming for me, but I’m odd. I did hear a track of Senyawa’s. It seemed interesting. I’ll pursue them further, thanks. ** KeaTon, Sooner than you think, I reckon. I have a can of David Lynch coffee, and it’s worse than airplane coffee. Wtf?! Neurosis sounds ripe for an opera adaptation. Yeah, I literally don’t know shit about the Bible. Never read it. I might have pretended to. Too much plot for me. Ha ha, funny, the Fla. motto. I wonder if France or Paris has one. I’ll ask Zac. When I lived in Holland, there was a Dutch saying: ‘The French live to eat, the Dutch eat to live’. And it was true. Wow, I love your game, but I’m gonna need some hours and a ton more coffee to get my mind into illustrating it. That’s the problem with doing the p.s. in the morning. I’m unsharpened enough to blab, but that has its limits too. Cool. Consider it earmarked for fantasising. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. ‘Office Killer’ is pretty weak, sadly. Too much movie and not enough Sherman. Good, good, that chemistry is either make or break in a way. Yeah, sounds totally on the up. Exciting! Not to mention that it’ll squeeze a short story out of you. You have any ideas yet? ** James Nulick, Hi, blissed out tourist! Schnabel is increasingly known as a director who also made (and still also makes) overblown art that coagulated with the zeitgeist very, very luckily for him briefly thirty years ago, with good reason. My favorite of those films? Either ‘The Legend of Leigh Bowery’ or ‘Zidane’. Oh, wait, you asked KilometerKid. Apologies for butting in. Nice, nice, nice, all nice to max: your Tokyo wanderings. I will: the gardens. Tokyo has all these crazy, fantastic little fashion shops here and there run by young designers who display and sell the wildest clothes, and seeking them out was a highlight of Zac’s and my trip, they’re but probably things your dude would find too wack to wear, if I’m guessing right. Continue loving it all, you lucky, lucky dog. Love from here. ** Misanthrope, I agree re: farsightedness’s advantage. Hm, the Anderson book does sound a bit drowsy. I like Suede, but not enough to want to know what he was like prior Suede if he was just a nice looking non-hedonistic guy. Iow, yes, I think I know what you mean. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi, Corey. I agree, but there are numerous video artists who don’t see their work as movies but rather as imagery in motion that is free to occupy space adventurously and non-hierarchically and who don’t want or intend their work to be seen via the traditional rows of seats vs. screen set up. And then, just the other day, I was wondering aloud why Ryan Trecartin, who is easily one of the most genius video/filmmakers in the US, and whose works are often ‘feature length’, isn’t programmed in film festivals, and Zac explained that because his work is represented by an art gallery and sold to collectors in editions, re-contextualising it as movies would decrease its value dramatically, so, in that case, it’s not the artist’s decision — although I have no idea if Ryan would like his videos shown in theaters or not — but a market-based decision. So, based on my limited knowledge, there you go as to my thoughts re: ‘why’. Happy birthday, man! Whatcha doing, celebration/blow-out-wise? Or what did you do given the day-altering time change? I hope you have/had a gigantic one! ** Okay. Inspired by d.l. Bill’s recent mentioning of her, I put together a spotlight post about the weirdly overlooked fiction writer Ursule Molinaro, a writer so neglected that I had to use basically everything there is available about her online to construct the post. Please find out what the strangeness regarding the lack of fuss around her work is all about today. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Robert Longo Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

‘Johnny Mnemonic is frequently considered one of the worst sci-fi films of the modern era. It is not! In fact, it stands up exceptionally well after 16 years — especially if you’re drunk. (Seriously, alcohol really helps.) Roger Ebert said this movie “doesn’t deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis but has a kind of idiotic grandeur that makes you almost forgive it.” I’m willing to forgive Johnny Mnemonic, not because it oozes camp, but because the movie really meant to be better. The problem is, we’ve all been watching this movie the wrong way.

‘Johnny was directed by Robert Longo, a New York-based painter/sculptor most famous for his works in the late 1970s and early ’80s, part of a troika of artists-turned-filmmakers — with David Salle and Julian Schnabel — often considered the face of the yuppie art boom. Longo worked closely with William Gibson (the sci-fi author and coiner of the term “cyberspace”) on the film’s arguably tortured screenplay. Most famous for his ‘Men in the Cities’ series (which may or may not have inspired those iconic iPod ads), Longo played the brooding artist during the film’s production process in Canada, dressing in all black and offering reporters pithy bon mots like, “Artists are the last people left who can tell the truth.” Johnny was his first and last foray into film. …

(cont.)

 

Sam Taylor-Wood Nowhere Boy (2009)

‘When Sam Taylor-Wood emerged in the 90s as a photographer/video artist, her work was fixated on decay, madness and death. In Method In Madness, a man laughs, sweats and screams. In Hysteria, a young woman mimes hysterical laughter. In Breach, a girl sits on a floor and cries and sniffs in silence. These films don’t have a beginning, middle or end, and are all but unwatchable. In Brontosaurus, a naked man dances like crazy to classical music. In Knackered, a naked woman mimes badly to opera. Many of these films rely on visual puns and unlikely juxtapositions, and cry out for meaning where none exists. Some of the work is rather beautiful – in Still Life, a painterly bowl of fruit decays in time lapse; in Ascension, a man balances a dove on his head while tap dancing over a dead body; and in Pieta she cradles a Christ-like Robert Downey Jr on darkened steps.

‘Taylor-Wood is new to the movies. Nowhere Boy is her first feature. She has made one short film, about two schoolchildren who fall in lust to the Buzzcocks. The aspiring punks in Love You More chat coyly before snogging, gobbing and shagging with furious intensity. It’s a surprisingly explicit film – one that verges on the voyeuristic. As an artist used to calling the shots, Taylor-Wood was amazed by how many people get a say in a feature film. “The minute you go into certain realms and budgets… I don’t want to use the word control, but you lose control.” She smiles. She may not like to admit it, but she knows just how controlling she is. She is even controlling about the use of the word control. (For the shoot to go with this interview, she decided on the look, called in the clothes and chose the photographer.) …

(cont.)

 

Cindy Sherman Office Killer (1997)

‘“Cindy Sherman does not consider Office Killer to be part of her own body of art, since she was more of a hired gun to direct the picture,” writes Catherine Morris in The Essential Cindy Sherman. However, Sherman was not simply a “hired gun.” In the June 1997 issue of Art in America, Sherman herself acknowledges that the general idea for the story was hers, that she was involved in preproduction, that she gave specific instructions to the cinematographer and the actors about what she wanted, and that she played a direct role in the editing. She is officially credited in the film’s titles for the story idea and her role as director. Then the movie bombed, and everyone, including Sherman, stopped talking about it.

‘Part of the problem is that the movie isn’t really a horror film, or even a send-up of a horror film. It’s more of a dark “chick pic,” drawing on the tradition of The Women (1939), combined with elements of camp and satire. The relationships between the women (all the main characters are female) echo a Joan Crawford-led women’s picture from an earlier era, where the films—from The Women to Mildred Pierce (1945) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)—explored the complicated interpersonal dynamics between women and their struggles for men, power, and independence, the roles of the men often an afterthought in the narrative. There are numerous thematic and atmospheric parallels between Office Killer and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, another mix of horror and melodrama from three decades before. …

(cont.)

 

Larry Clark Ken Park (2002)

‘Larry Clark learned photography at an early age. His mother was an itinerant baby photographer, and Clark himself was enlisted in the family business from the age of 13. In his mid-teens, Clark began injecting amphetamines with his friends in 1959. Always armed with a camera, from 1963 to 1971 Clark produced pictures of his drug-shooting coterie that have been described by critics as “exposing the reality of American suburban life at the fringe and for shattering long-held mythical conventions that drugs and violence were an experience solely indicative of the urban landscape.” In 1993, Clark directed Chris Isaak’s music video “Solitary Man”. This experience developed into an interest in directing. After publishing other photographic collections, Clark met Harmony Korine in New York and asked Korine to write the screenplay for his first feature film, Kids which was released to controversy and moderate critical acclaim in 1995.

‘Film critics who do not find social or artistic value in Clark’s work have labeled his films obscene, exploitative and even borderline child pornography because of their frequent and explicit depictions of teenagers using drugs and having sex. In Kids, Clark’s most widely known film to date, boys portrayed as being as young as 12 are shown to be casually drinking alcohol and using other drugs. The film received an NC-17 rating, and was later released without a rating. Ken Park is a more sexually and violently graphic film than Kids, including a scene of autoerotic asphyxiation and ejaculation by an apparently underage male (although the actors are all 18 and older). As of 2008, it has not been widely released nor distributed in the United States. …

(cont.)

 

Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle (1994 – 2002)

‘Matthew Barney’s art presents a serious critical problem for me, one that borders on embarrassment, and may disqualify me from writing on it at all. It began almost the instant I set eyes on his work in a 1990 group show at the now defunct Althea Viafora Gallery, when I experienced what can only be called an epiphany. The art world was in crisis; everything was in flux. Suddenly, this 22-year-old appeared naked, in a videotape, climbing ropes, then lowering himself over a wedge of Vaseline and applying dollops of it to his body. Spellbound and flabbergasted, I thought, “Whoever or whatever this is, I need to see more of it—much more.” As with Wagner’s Ring, part of the fun of his most recent work, a quintet of films called the Cremaster Cycle, is immersing yourself and parsing its symbolism and themes. The optical force and intellectual sparkle of Barney’s work renders claims of obscurantism beside the point. Like all great art, Barney’s exists beyond language.

‘In the order that they were made, Cremaster 4, with its jerky cuts and relatively meager budget, is the rawest of the lot, and the one that hones closest to the original biological story. Cremaster 1 is my least favorite, perhaps because it’s the only one Barney’s not in, and I miss his considerable star power. Nevertheless, it’s growing on me; though the slowest, this part is still gorgeous, and shows Barney spreading his creative wings. Cremaster 5 is a magnificent operatic leap of artistic faith, ravishing in its use of crimson and black, and deeply melancholy. Cremaster 2 is stunning, complicated, lucid, and underestimated. The sprawling, majestic Cremaster 3 is my nomination for Best Picture by an Artist. …

(cont.)

 

Isaac Julien Young Soul Rebels (1991)

‘After graduating from St Martin’s School of Art in 1984, where he studied painting and fine art film, Isaac Julien founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1983–1992). Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001, and has had solo shows at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (2005), MoCA Miami (2005) and the Kerstner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2006). Julien is represented in the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim and Hirshhorn Collections. One of the objectives of Julien’s work is to break down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting these to construct a powerfully visual narrative. Thematically, much of his work directly relates to experiences of black and gay identity, including issues of class, sexuality, and artistic and cultural history.

‘Young Soul Rebels is Julien’s only foray into full-length fiction film so far. Set in the London of 1977, the film tells the story of Mo and Chris, DJs on a pirate radio station. When a gay man is murdered in a London park, Chris is arrested for the crime. Julien imagines the epochal year of 1977, when Punk Rock exploded into public consciousness and Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Silver Jubilee, in terms of its hybrid qualities. Most intriguing is the film’s examination of the popular cultural upheavals of ‘77 from the perspective of Black Soul culture rather than from the predominantly white, working-class Punk rock perspective. It’s an approach that’s partly justified by the time itself, given the centrality of race riots to the period, the overlap between punk and reggae and the solidarity between anti-fascist campaigners and musicians.

‘Young Soul Rebels might now be seen as the missing link between the impressionist, avant-garde fury of Derek Jarman’s films Jubilee and The Last of England and as a a crude, low-budget hybrid of My Beautiful Laundrette and Pump Up the Volume. One of the many things that the movie tries to be is a murder mystery whose plot twist is clumsily reminiscent of Antonio’s Blow-Up. Young Soul Rebels is at its worst when it is trying to be a whodunit. Early in the movie, it is quite clear who the murderer is. And the moments when the film tries to build suspense are clankingly overdone. At its best, the movie lays bare the schisms in London society in scenes of the local street life, where tensions are often on the verge of erupting into violence.’ — shadowandact

 

Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2007)

‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a cinematic collaboration between artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, in which 17 cameras (film and video) are trained on Algerian-born French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane for the duration of Real Madrid’s fairly important league match with Villareal in April 2005. (The film furnishes no context of this type or any other, but Real were chasing Barcelona for Spain’s La Liga title.) Not renowned as the chattiest of men, Zidane had nevertheless met with the directors and endorsed their project.

‘Gordon is perhaps best known for 24-Hour Psycho, in which he projected Hitchcock’s movie at two frames per second: clearly this is an artist intrigued by time-based media, and the degree to which images can be scrutinised more fruitfully outside of the whole. One wouldn’t then expect a Gordon ‘documentary’ to be stuffed with archive footage or talking heads. “We thought we could use ideas from the art world,” Gordon told the Guardian of his and Parreno’s intentions, “and combine them with popular culture.”

‘Zidane announces itself within seconds as an artwork – in the graphic design of its titles, and by a zoom into an abstracted extreme close-up of a television screen showing the match. Gradually, Zidane himself is centred on the screen within the screen, albeit as a blurred figure on a green carpet. The score – modal drones and meandering guitars by Mogwai – gets into gear, and then we’re off, transported into Gordon’s and Parreno’s multi-camera footage. The mystique of Zidane probably deserves a film as elusive and taciturn as Gordon’s and Parreno’s, one that polishes his enigma rather than penetrates it, now that he has trudged from the pitch and into the pantheon for keeps. …

(cont.)

 

Yoko Ono and John Lennon Rape (1969)

‘During 1960s Yoko Ono had written a few scripts to produce movies. Out of those scripts, Ono finally chose to produce ‘Rape’. Funded by her husband, John Lennon, she hired four film technicians and asked to follow a girl and record her day’s activities, importantly without her permission. The seventy five minute long film when released had generated heated discussions amongst the art loving public and critics who accused the artists-duo of violating the privacy of a hapless individual and subjecting her to the same tribulations against which the film was intended to produce effects. The girl who was followed by the filming team was Eva Majlata, an Austrian girl whose work permit in London had been over by the time the filming was taking place. The girl was set up for the shooting in agreement with her sister who had even given access to the filming team to Majlata’s rented room in London.

‘The film ‘Rape’ opens with Majlata getting caught by the film crew at cemetery where she goes to spend her idle time. Initially she is very flattered. Though she knows that she is not a film star or a celebrity, the sudden appearance of the filming crew before her makes her a bit elated. She plays up to the situation acting quite casually while trying to tell them that she is not a star. She does not speak English. Her working English fails after a few minutes of them following her with the camera. Slowly the tension mounts. Her elation gives way to anxiety and then to fear. She walks fast, hides and whenever the crew reappears before her she tries to reason with the men in French, German and a little bit of Italian. But the crew is determined to follow. The scene grows eerie as the viewers see not many people around in the locality. The cemetery is completely abandoned. Majlata searches for some names on the plaques and collects some flowers to hide her embarrassment and fear. But she is not able to do that. The stalking becomes relentless and the presence of camera though we are not privy to see the people behind the camera, becomes quite apparent. At one stage to make a deal with the filming crew she asks for light for her cigarette. They give light to her. Some people appear in the scene looks at her and the team with a fair amount of coldness and walk off. She walks out of the cemetery and hits the road. The gaze of camera follows her. She jumps into a taxi and reaches her apartment and even there she sees the filming crew behind her. She is now visibly tired and horrified. She makes a phone call to her sister and finally coils herself up and moves into the corner of her living room. The film ends there.

‘One could ask a question: had she been a migrant with valid papers and work permit to live in London, would she have reacted like a victim? The possible answer could be that still her gender would have made her to flee from the camera men. If she was intelligent enough she would have sought the help of the policemen or the people around. Or if she was arrogant and bold she would have smashed the camera and beaten up the men who were following her. She does not do either. Instead she flees from the spot as if her gender and social status were two crimes committed by her. Even in her illegal migrant status she could use her gender position to counter these camera men. But she fears that her gender itself is detrimental for her as it could bring her stringent punishment from the authorities. Yoko Ono calls the film, quite succinctly and metaphorically, Rape. In her film the protagonist is ensnared by the camera, the male gaze and is raped by it till she resigns to her fate of utter surrender.’ — By All Means Necessary

 

David Salle Search and Destroy (1995)

When David Salle emerged on the art scene in the early 1980s, his often oblique work was set squarely within the critical definition of postmodernism by virtue of its art-historical references and ambiguous combinations of original and appropriated imagery from both high and low traditions. Subverting the recognizable and allowing the familiar to become strange through odd juxtapositions, details, and illogical compositions, Salle’s pictures leave the viewer to develop meaning out of layered images and surrealistic disjunctions. His repertoire has included erotically charged representations of nude women borrowed from pornographic magazines, quotations from Théodore Géricault’s paintings of corpses, and actual pieces of furniture affixed to the canvas. A cinematic influence can be detected in Salle’s juxtapositions of vignettes that evoke filmic montage in which visual elements are arranged to produce meaning not otherwise present in the individual images.

‘In December 1985 Salle devised the settings and costumes for the play Birth of the Poet, by Kathy Acker. Though not heralded as his finest accomplishments, his set designs were better received than his cinematography directing debut – Search and Destroy (1995). “The idea of a painter becoming a filmmaker is an intriguing one,” John Petrakis, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “and perhaps someday modern artist David Salle will direct an enticing piece of cinema. But he’ll need a much better script than the one provided for him here by writer Michael Almereyda, based on Howard Korder’s stage play. To put it bluntly, this movie is a mess.” Though much ado was made about the opening and that this was his first attempt, little good was said about the production. Although it had infomercial hosts, closet scriptwriters – for slasher flicks, drug dealers, gangsters and a bit of love thrown in for good measure; some of the actors were “dangerously out of control, the tell-tale sign of a rookie director.” …

(cont.)

 

___________________

Neïl Beloufa Occidental (2016)

‘After moving out of his visual art comfort zone with a number of short films and one documentary hybrid feature, the 2013 Tonight and the People, French artist Neïl Beloufa offers Occidental, the closest he’s yet come to a conventional feature film. As is often the case with art-world figures and quasi-experimentalists who likewise go for the gold (cf. Isaac Julien, Ngozi Onwurah, Cindy Sherman), the results are mixed but never less than intriguing. Ostensibly the story of a very ’70s-looking gay couple (Idir Chender and Paul Hamy) who arouse suspicion upon checking into the honeymoon suite at the Hotel Occidental, Beloufa’s film is primarily a study in atmosphere and mise en scène. Although initially resembling late Fassbinder efforts, particularly Querelle (1982), look closer and you’ll see that the stilted, high-toned Euro-sleaze of Werner Schroeter is actually the presiding spirit here.

‘But despite the deep shadows, exotic gewgaws, and lacquered walls of avocado and taupe, Occidental cannot quite capture that sense of free-floating decadence that defines Schroeter’s cinema. In this regard, Beloufa joins other contemporary French auteurs like Yann Gonzalez, artists who present but a theoretical approximation of a now-lost moment, when gay male desire still exuded the thick, viscous ambiance of post-Genet danger. What Occidental offers instead is a collection of perplexing human relationships reducible to types: the pseudo-suave continentals, the uptight xenophobe with her own issues, the naïve sexpot, the Arab struggling to fit in with his adoptive country. For his part, Beloufa moves them around in predictable ways, generating abstraction by eliding much of the characterization that would produce recognizable realism. In this way, he allows the funky, fraudulent space of the hotel set to assert itself, filling in the gaps. As strategies go, it’s not a bad one. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to feel the auteur working the angles throughout the film, and the result is a bit like fucking on graph paper.’ — Cinema Scope

 

Julian Schnabel Miral (2011)

‘Just over two decades ago, Julian Schnabel was famed as the “bad boy” of the New York art scene, a notorious figure in the city who emerged from nowhere to dominate the inner circle of Greenwich Village’s most luminous modern painters. In the 1980s, he became an almost overnight artistic superstar, famed as much for his work as his eccentric and charismatic personality – he wore a dilettante uniform of pyjamas, slippers and a robe while he painted in his studio. His “plate paintings” – large-scale works set on broken ceramic plates – as well as his traditional Japanese Kabuki theatrical sets using velvet and animal hides, elicited divided responses from the art critics. Some were offended by his deliberate flouting of the conventions of “high art”, while others hailed his work as following in the best traditions of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock.

‘But Schnabel’s fame came from more than just his artwork. Some felt his popularity in the 1980s was synonymous with consumerism and that he exemplified the cold commercialisation of the art world that was tied to the economic boom of the era. His critics claimed that his eccentric, pyjama-wearing persona outshone his work. But the art-buying public loved him, and his exhibitions were nearly always sold out. A prolific artist who managed to produce a steady flow of new work, Schnabel is said to have once sold more than 60 canvases in one year. When his profile as a painter began to fade slightly in the 1990s, the ever-resourceful artist turned to the fresh medium of film, which he conquered with his distinctive biopics that have been winning critical acclaim ever since his debut in 1996. …

(cont.)

 

Rebecca Horn Buster’s Bedroom (1991)

‘Rebecca Horn is a performance artist-sculptor recently turned filmmaker whose art is widely recognized in Europe and New York. What is it about those multiple monicker occupations that immediately causes us to catch a whiff of the flaky poseur who does many things badly? And Horn’s roles are so contradictory. It seems all those slashes just mean we live in a society that can’t make up its mind. Which serves to remind us here in the land of the decreasingly free that they can do things a little differently in Europe. In the ’60s, Andy Warhol made considerable strides in busting the border between U.S. fine visual arts and the commercial film, but it didn’t take. But in Berlin and elsewhere on the Continent, it’s perfectly natural for a performance artist like Horn to know film people like Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders as part of a yeasty artistic stew that takes in writers and intellectuals as well. While we tend to specialize and commercialize, they can still hybridize for infusions of vigor.

‘Horn’s feature film Buster’s Bedroom‘s tone is set when we see the ingenue film student, Micha (Amanda Ooms), driving her convertible across the desert toward Hollywood, blindfolded. The impression she is a little nuts is reinforced by her habit of playing mumbletypeg very fast between her black-leather-gloved fingers. Her main obsession, however, is Buster Keaton. When she learns he was once incarcerated in an upscale loony bin called Nirvana House, she sets off on a pilgrimage. The slapstick-surreal plot unfolds to a somewhat murky conclusion where Micha may be dead, drowning or liberated. The cast, including Donald Sutherland, Geraldine Chaplin, Taylor Mead, and Mary Woronov, is unfailingly entertaining.

‘But Buster’s Bedroom’s flaws are serious and point an accusing finger at the director-writer. The film lacks cohesion–there’s too much air in it. Story points are dropped and symbolism often obscure. Special effects that are supposed to be magical are merely mechanical, so we’re unwilling to suspend disbelief, as in a scene where Chaplin chases Ooms in her wheelchair, cracking a bullwhip. Cocteau or Bunuel might have brought this off, but here we just realize the girl has nothing to fear, even before Chaplin falls in the swimming pool. For all its professional troops, Buster’s Bedroom still smacks of amateurism.’ — Los Angeles Times

 

Steve McQueen Hunger (2008)

‘Only a few artists, it turns out, have successfully crossed the line from art to cinema and back again, with anything approaching critical appeal. Steve McQueen, the 2008 winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Camera d’Or for his film Hunger and the U.K. representative to last year’s Venice Biennial, is the latest of the chosen or lucky ones. McQueen is an earnest artist committed to dense pictures with a sympathetic if predictable conceptual spine. Early works, like his videos Bear (1993) and Cold Breath (1999)—featuring, respectively, large black men wrestling naked and the artist irritatingly tweaking his own nipple—hewed to textbook postmodern concerns with the body and its transgression. A third video, called Charlotte (2004), upped the ante on McQueen’s meditations regarding corporeal discomfort. A steady closeup of the artist’s finger repeatedly poking the actress Charlotte Rampling in the eyeball, the video’s blustery inarticulateness—despite the artist’s later protests about critics putting words in his mouth—blurted out irascible volumes of associations, from penetration to torture to Rampling’s famous role in Liliana Cavani’s sadomasochistic The Night Porter.

‘While decidedly narrative, McQueen’s prize-winning first feature still bears the mark of his previous efforts. The story of the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, the film is constructed on frame after excruciating frame of actor Michael Fassbender portraying Sands’s racked and pustulant body, as well as repeated shots of beatings and shit-flecked walls. Though militantly ambiguous, Hunger proves more than just standard-issue video art. Not content to merely outline the abstract of endurance, McQueen produced a visual essay on human endurance itself. In his own words: “What I did before was like trying to be Beckett, containing everything in this very tight kind of minimalist ball. Hunger was more like trying to be Joyce.” …

(cont.)

 

Charles Atlas The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2004)

‘Starting originally with super8, Charles Atlas moved over onto video in the early seventies when he worked on a ‘video dance’ piece with Merce Cunningham, getting to grips with the then new technology to produce a short film documenting and manipulating a performance from Cunningham’s dance troupe. As technology has evolved over the past thirty years, Atlas’ work has progressed with it. While digital equipment has allowed him to work live, and he continues to push forward how the technology is used, his pieces still manage to maintain the raw and definitely edgy feel of his early films.

‘Working through the 80’s and 90’s with figures from the club and performance scenes both in New York and London, the films Atlas made then stand as video works in their own right as well as documentaries of his friends and the scene. It was during this time that he got to know Leigh Bowery, who makes an appearance in a few of Atlas’ performance films. In Mrs Peanut visits New York, a six minute portrait of Leigh in full costume, Bowery walks the streets of New York dressed as his version of the Planters peanut logo Mr Peanut, and the feature length documentary Hail The New Puritan is a collaboration featuring Leigh and dancer Michael Clark.

‘After Bowery’s death, Atlas went on to direct the revealing documentary The Legend of Leigh Bowery, commissioned by ARTE France. The film gets close to the different sides of Leigh, and shows the lies, the extrovert behaviour, the kindness and the contradictory family background that made him up. The image of Bowery Mr. Atlas captures is an extraordinary one: a hyperstylized example of body art, a hilarious assault on the masochistic sentimentality of torch- song culture and a touching emblem of the intrinsic vulnerability of outrageousness.’ — Tate Modern

 

_________________

Laurie Simmons My Art (2017)

‘There’s a gentle streak of defensiveness built into the very title of “My Art,” a late-in-the-game debut feature from veteran artist and photographer Laurie Simmons. That possessive adjective acts as a kind of preemptive retort to any accusations of indulgence or inconsequentiality. A seemingly self-reflexive musing on the difficulties and irregular rewards of creating art later in life, Simmons’ petite, personal film makes no claim to a bigger picture: Starring Simmons herself as a solitary New York artist opening her creative process to others over the course of one tranquil rural summer, its wistful, whimsical neuroses aren’t especially universal ones. Short, sour-sweet and content to leave ideas and characters trailing in the summer breeze, “My Art” has evidently been made strictly on Simmons’ terms, however wafty those may be.

‘Viewers will know within minutes if they’re on the film’s very particular, precious wavelength. After a bright, droll credit sequence that follows 65-year-old artist and Yale lecturer Ellie (Simmons) through a varied series of exhibits — some vibrant, some vapid, though no judgment is passed — at the Whitney Museum, the film’s gaze turns swiftly inward. Ellie meets a former student (Simmons’ daughter Lena Dunham, in a shuffling cameo) and they wearily share their respective artistic plans for the summer, from rural creative retreats to Venice Biennale preparations. “I hope it’s not so overwhelming for you,” Ellie says to the younger woman, and perhaps there’s a streak of irony in the film’s seemingly earnest allusion to such first-world stresses. Perhaps not.’ …

(cont.)

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. A kind soul-cum-fan of this blog who has tagged herself KilometerKid asked if she could use this space to share her interest in artists-turned-filmmakers, and, sharing that interest as I do, I said ‘yes, thank you’ on behalf of you, trusting, as I do, that I am not alone. Enjoy, and please say hi or more to your guest-host. ** James Nulick, Hi. Well, I’ll venture that you might cut him some slack if you were to watch one or more of his curiously entertaining film performances? Or maybe not. I saw your email, thank you (!), and I hope to grab its loot and take a look this very day! Sweet that you and Paul met up and had so many things in common. Robert Siek, yes, a long time (though recently infrequent) denizen with bells on of this blog’s very commenting arena. I just received my copy of his new book the other day, and I’m all wracked with expectancy to read it. Wet shoes suck, wherever is the culprit, but in Tokyo, yes, that’s most unfortunate, and yet your heavy trooper component pulled adventures from that anyway. Yeah, but you can’t smoke walking down the street in Tokyo, and that’s charmingly novel but a drag on many occasions. Zac and I got to the gates of the Imperial Gardens but didn’t go in. I don’t remember why. Did you venture in? And what else? I’m good, thanks. Love, bisous, me. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, I haven’t seen the Berger doc. It has to have considerable charms. Nice, score, on receiving a smidgen of his wrath. Excellent news and congratulations to you and to all New Yorkers re: the Kamran Heidari fest! I’m going to go investigate his work, which I don’t believe I know. Great! ** KGeIaLtLoYn, Now that’s a helluva name or rather logo! I can’t remember what qualifies as a sin and what qualifies as a neurosis. When you’re a vegetarian like me you have to give up any completist dreams about food. No big. My wordage and Stephen O’s sonic mush have intertwined frequently, but not in the shape of Sunn0)))). Unless one expected the midterms to turn the US into a daydream — really sucks about Gillum, though — some good stuff happened yesterday, and onwards and upwards. If you see that frightful dead boy ghost again, give him my number. ** David Ehrenstein, Has anyone ever studied or written about what it was about Berger that made Visconti get obsessed with him? Because that is one curious fetish. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, shit. Fuck the ether. When I did that Artaud reading in London recently, the Napalm Death guy was one of my fellow performers. He made some electronic noise and shouted stuff over it. Nice guy. I think he’s better with guitars maybe. Oh, fantastic about the writing course! Are there assignments, or do you write whatever you want? How is the course set up, basically? ** Misanthrope, No, you did not tell me that. I’m far sighted too. I think maybe that’s the more preferable of the two options, but I do hate that when I do readings now I have to put on my glasses like a fucking college professor or something. Interesting: the title of that Brett Anderson memoir is exactly like what a Suede-ish idea of a title would turn into if it was intended for a book rather than a song. You’ll let me know how is, I trust? ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. Interesting. I suppose that’s true. One interesting thing about Berger is that, even when he was young and glamorous in his weird way and acting in the Visconti films, there was always something embarrassing about him and unmistakeable about his having been cast to play parts he couldn’t play convincingly. He doesn’t have the protections of the films now, which leaves him more exposed, but he’s the same plus and minus-bound guy essentially. Or something. I like your thinking and how you phrase it, and I ‘approve’ or relate even though our respective obligations differ. A party in the Alps, huh. Interesting. ** Right. Please use today’s post to think about the discrepancies between different forms of visualising or something. See you tomorrow.