Author: DC (Page 567 of 1085)

 

‘This diary, written in Tim Dlugos’ first six months in the City That Never Sleeps, is a record of his immersion in the downtown poetry scene and a gay lifestyle that was then relentlessly promiscuous. From the very beginning, when he “gobbles up” some chocolate mints left behind by Joe Brainard, Tim is like Alice eating a cake that changes her size; he’s off and running in a Wonderland of art openings and late-night escapades at the baths. In the forty-four years that have elapsed since Tim wrote this diary, the world has changed several times over: AIDS, 9/11, Coronavirus. The New York that Tim captures in these pages is long gone. While it gives us a few precious glimpses of that lost world, his diary is a reminder of how quickly a world can disappear.’ — SRP

You can buy the book here

 

“Like a prose version of a chatty Frank O’Hara poem, Tim Dlugos’ New York Diary is dense with the goings-on of a crush of proper names we normally might not care much about. Yet—again like O’Hara—Tim, in his accurately super-speedy rendering of the summer and fall of the now-historical year of 1976, makes them and theirs magical, intimate, and fully alive.” — Brad Gooch

“Tim Dlugos was one of the smartest, wittiest, most socially dynamic presences on the New York poetry scene of the 1970s and beyond. And these diary entries capture his voice at its most intimate and perceptive. As well as displaying the deep delight he took in being a gay man and an out poet at a time and in a place where that was finally seen not as transgressive but as celebratory. Well, a little of both. As with New York poet and predecessor Frank O’Hara, many of Tim’s friends thought they were his best friend, I certainly did. He had the ability to make you confess things to him and look for his approval. Which usually meant his matching your confession with his own. Everyone I know who knew him loved him, and many of us adored him. These glimpses into his life and mind show why.” — Michael Lally

“The Frank O’Hara of his generation.” — Ted Berrigan

 

Tim Dlugos’ books

1973

1977

1979

1982

1982

1992

1995

2011

 

Media

Tim Dlugos & Brad Gooch reading 8/18/77

Ry Dunn -reading Tim Dlugos’ “G-9”

jwdenver reads “Great Art” by Tim Dlugos

Gowri Koneswaran reads Tim Dlugos’ “Poem After Dinner”

 

Tim Dlugos (1950-1990)
from literarydc

 

Tim Dlugos (born Francis Timothy Dlugos) (August 5, 1950 – December 3, 1990) was an American poet. Early in his career, Dlugos was celebrated for his energetic, openly gay, pop culture-infused poems. Later, he became widely known for the poems he wrote as he was dying of AIDS.

Tim Dlugos was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and raised by adopted parents in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and Arlington, Virginia. In 1968, he joined the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order, and entered their college, La Salle College, in Philadelphia, the following year. At La Salle, Dlugos became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and started writing poetry. He left the Brothers in 1971 to openly embrace a politically active, gay lifestyle. Less and less motivated by academic life, he dropped out of La Salle in his senior year, eventually moving to Washington, D.C.

Dlugos immersed himself in the Mass Transit poetry scene in Washington, regularly attending readings at the Community Book Shop in Dupont Circle. His friends during this period included Ed Cox, Tina Darragh, Michael Lally, Bernard Welt, and Terence Winch. His first chapbook, High There, was published by Some of Us Press in 1973. Dlugos worked on Ralph Nader‘s Public Citizen newspaper, which led to a successful career as a fundraising consultant and copywriter for liberal and charitable organizations.

In 1976, Dlugos moved to Manhattan, where he became a prominent younger poet in the downtown literary scene centered around the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. His poems were praised for their innovation and wit, their appropriation of popular culture (as in his crowd-pleasing “Gilligan’s Island”), and their openly gay subject matter. Dlugos’s friends during his New York years included Joe Brainard, Donald Britton, Jane DeLynn, Brad Gooch, and Eileen Myles. In 1977, he began a correspondence and friendship with Dennis Cooper, then based in Los Angeles. Dlugos published two books with Cooper’s Little Caesar Press: Je Suis Ein Americano (1979) and Entre Nous (1982). Of the latter, critic Marjorie Perloff wrote, “This is poetry of extraordinary speed and energy that fuses fact and fantasy, dream and documentary. Tim Dlugos’ every nerve seems to vibrate.” Dlugos also edited and contributed to such magazines as Christopher Street, New York Native, and The Poetry Project Newsletter.

Dlugos tested positive for HIV in 1987, and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1989. In 1988, he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he was enrolled in Yale Divinity School. His intention was to become a priest in the Episcopal Church. He died of complications due to AIDS on December 3, 1990, at the age of forty.

Dlugos is widely known for the poems he wrote while hospitalized in G-9, the AIDS ward at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, and is considered a seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic. His long poem “G-9,” in which Dlugos celebrates life while accepting his mortality and impending death, was published in The Paris Review only months before Dlugos died.

Two decades after Dlugos’s death, his friend David Trinidad edited A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, which won a Lambda Literary Award.

In 2011, “At Moments Like These He Feels Farthest Away,” an exhibition of paintings by artist Philip Monaghan based on Dlugos’s poem “Gilligan’s Island,” was held at Fales Library at New York University, where Dlugos’s literary papers are archived.

 

Book

Tim Dlugos (David Trinidad, editor) New York Diary by Tim Dlugos
Sibling Rivalry Press

‘WHEN TIM DLUGOS MOVED TO NEW YORK in June of 1976, he had already received acclaim as a poet in Washington, D.C., where he was a regular participant in the Mass Transit poetry scene. New York was the big leap, a way of raising the stakes and proving himself as a writer, and he would soon make a name for himself there as well. This diary, written in his first six months in the City That Never Sleeps, is a record of his immersion in the downtown poetry scene and a gay lifestyle that was then relentlessly promiscuous. From the very beginning, when he “gobbles up” some chocolate mints left behind by Joe Brainard, Tim is like Alice eating a cake that changes her size; he’s off and running in a Wonderland of art openings and late night escapades at the baths. During the subsequent months, he meets a great many people; he has a good deal of sex; he absorbs a great deal of culture. In early August, as he notes his twenty-sixth birthday, one realizes he is just a kid—a precocious one, but a youngster nonetheless.’ — David Trinidad

 

Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. I’m very happy that my blog gets to act as one of the entranceways through which public awareness of this spanking new and fantastic book is happening. Tim Dlugos was a great poet/writer, so there’s that, and this book also offers a super addictive and fun portrait of life in the red hot poetry, art, etc., scene in NYC at the the dawn of the 1980s. Tim was one of my best friends, and he was always at the center of everything, and here’s the proof. Very highly recommended. ** Dominik, Hey!! Cool: the post alignment. My mom was so generally weird and kind of awful a lot of the time that the past life ceremony thing was kind of sweet relatively. And interesting too to be able to hallucinate like that without LSD, which was already one of my brain’s pals at that point. Yeah, ‘Goofy’, the name. It was a bit too on the money. Aw, thanks, about my book, and of course i would have been a bit more shy and hesitant to put love in it had I known. Ha ha, if your love was love, I think I would be careful not to fall into it too often. Love like Darby Crash winning the current season of ‘Csillag születik’ in a landslide, G. ** David S. Estornell, The same to you, buddy. ** David Ehrenstein, I think I like films I have to chase. Francois S. is still so mad at me for humiliating him in that scene (which was improvised) that he stares daggers at me whenever I see him on the street. The French press really attacked Christophe re: ‘Homme au Bain’ because they thought using Chiara Mastroianni for her role in that film was an abuse of her talent.She didn’t think so, and she won an acting award at Cannes for her performance in his most recent film. ** _Black_Acrylic, Curious what you’ll think. ** Daniel, 👍 ❤️ ** G, Hi. Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m happy you like the post though. I think that interview must have been in French originally because Christophe’s English is not that great. The Honore film that Golshifteh Farahani is in is kind of odd and sweet, a kids’ movie but with an experimental fringe. Mm, I think maybe my favorites of Christophe’s films are ‘Dans Paris’ and ‘La belle personne’. Have a swell day. ** Sypha, Oh, right, yeah, about your mirror thing, I remember now. If I’d grown up in some place that had actual winters rather than a winter that consists of occasionally cloudy skies and temperatures in the 60s, I’m sure I would feel differently. Okey-doke about the post, cool, thanks. ** ae, Is it possible to read your political theory stuff or poetry anywhere? Maybe you can compromise and do the beast justice in a prose poem. Thank you a lot about Zac’s and my films. That was a fun scene to shoot, although poor Rico, who played the spoken word artist/victim, had broken his shoulder a few days before (you can see the sling on his arms in a couple of shots), and we had to make it as careful a sexual assault as possible. He’s a trooper, that Rico. When there’s not a pandemic, I spend a lot of time in small venues watching electronic and noise gigs. That’s almost my favorite thing. And, man, do I miss it, as I’m sure you do too unless you’re actually open again where you are. That’s interesting: I just restored an old post that’s coming up soonish that has ‘Funeral Parade Of Roses’ featured within it. Great film, yeah. I’ll check my email, cool, thank you. Damn, I wish I could sit at your dinner table. But my pal Zac made me a big vat of my favorite food in the world (cold sesame noodle) as a late b’day gift, so I’m good. This week: ‘praying’ the govt. doesn’t announce re-confinement tonight, finish a draft of this new fiction/novella thing I’m fooling around with, go look at art and hang with my friend Stephen O’Malley (I’m imagining you know his work — Sunn0)) and tons of solo and collaboration work), and … don’t know what else. Enjoy the beginnings of yours. ** Steve Erickson, Christophe’s ethos is clearest in his earlier films, from ‘Ma Mere’ up through ‘La Belle Personnne’, and then he started to diverge quite widely, but, if you know his thing, you see it in the later films too. I don’t know if I would do the acting thing again. Yeah, it would depend on who asked. No one else ever has. Well, actually, ages ago Gregg Araki asked me to play the psychiatrist in ‘The Living End’, but I said no. Eek, that does sound dangerous — open restaurants — but … who knows. ** Bill, Work going okay, or, I guess, you doing okay in its midst? ** Jack Skelley, Ha. Climb down off that beanstalk, Jack! Right, Robert Mitchum, now my bell is rung. I too confuse those two guys. I think that must be not uncommon. Weird. So, there are two new art districts. One is out on the fringes of Paris, and one is walking distance from me. We went to the fringe, and the Scharf show is in the other one, but, you know, walking distance … so as soon as it stops raining. Yeah, Christophe directs operas and theater stuff more than he makes films these days for whatever reason. Versatile. Big day, I hope, man. ** Right. Get with Mr. Dlugos’s book, thank you. See you tomorrow.

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‘I wouldn’t say my films are in the style of the New Wave. It is increasingly difficult to raise money for independent films in France. So we’re in the same situation as the New Wave films made in the 1960s. We can either wait two or three years to get all the money we need or you film fast, with actors you like, in the street. You make films the way you write a love letter. There is a return to ‘Frenchness’ in French films – something I don’t like. It’s a very bourgeois, very formulaic. I want to put the sheer joy of filmmaking at the heart of my films. I am a grandchild of the New Wave, so I can afford to be more arrogant, light-hearted and playful with the legacy.’ — Christophe Honore

‘Of all the relatively young European directors of the last few years, Christophe Honoré is probably the one with the most ambivalent, divisive and sadly underseen filmography. The peculiarity of this filmmaker is that the reaction to his movies, mostly positive in France and rather indifferent in the rest of the world, is often reduced to critics comparing him with old French cinema, some whining about the persistence of such passé filmmaking and some others lauding Honoré’s modern vision of the nouvelle vague. In short, Honoré is a young director who is divisive not because of controversial cinematic choices, but rather because he’s too enamored with the past and tries to bring it back at all costs. So what to make of this kid who wants to be an enfant terrible by looking at enfants terribles from fifty years ago? The answer lies perhaps in the way one looks at his movies. Too fond of their own bond with the past? No. Too explicit in the way that bond is formed? Sure. Manneristic in the most absurdly obvious way possible? Absolutely. But is all Mannerism bad? Not at all. It’s very difficult to call stale or repetitive – as some critics have done – this research of the glorious past of French filmmaking that, in Honoré, has the same erratic flavor that the original nouvelle vague had. There’s something lively, exciting, with a fluid quality, in the way the stylistic and emotional reality of nouvelle vague is brought back to life in the works of this strange auteur. He is, probably, the only director of the last twenty years who has managed to truly capture the fleeting quality of nouvelle vague, a quality that is both visual – the swift camera movements, the beautiful and ballet-like way the characters move – and thematic, in the way feelings, relationships and the primary concepts of life and death are explored.’ — International Cinephile Society

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Christophe Honore @ IMDb
Christophe Honore page @ EVENE
Christophe Honore @ Facebook
Christophe Honore on adapting George Bataille’s ‘Ma Mere’
Christophe Honore DVDs @ CDUniverse

 

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General

Christophe Honore discusses ‘Homme au Bain’

Transversales Christophe Honoré episode 1

Louis Garrel invité d’honneur du festival Paris Cinema 2010

Christophe Honoré à propos de “Le Rayon vert” d’Eric Rohmer

 

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Interview: Christophe Honoré & Louis Garrel

You said in a previous interview that French cinema has lost its sense of adolescence. What did you mean?

Christophe Honoré: I get irritated by the lesson-giving aspect of some French cinema, where you feel like it wants to teach the audience something—usually clichés and platitudes. What I like best about the Nouvelle Vague films are their roughness, their teenage arrogance. They’d go from one thing to another without getting bothered by too much formality. I like that sense of something being unfinished, of films that search for themselves as they go along.

But your own movies are formally sophisticated.

CH: I admire directors who make internally consistent films. A Bresson movie impresses me, and at the same time I’m completely unable to work that way. If I stage a sequence I’m pleased with, the next day I’ll take a completely different approach.

I hear ‘Love Songs’ happened really quickly.

CH: Yeah, it was done quickly and on the cheap, which can make things complicated when you shoot in Paris. It made us a little anxious. The very first day, we had a permit to shoot on a particular sidewalk, and I decided to shoot on the opposite one. The police arrived within five minutes. We had to argue with them for an hour, and we were only on the other side of the street!

Louis Garrel: Plus, locals don’t really like film shoots in Paris. They are perceived as something done by privileged people, some show-business thing. People don’t welcome filmmaking, as if it wasn’t made for them. It’s perceived as something aggressive.

You had originally written Ismaël as being in his forties. How would that have impacted his relationship with the character played by Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, who’s in high school?

CH: It would have been more transgressive. What’s funny now is that the teenager picks Ismaël, who falls for it like an idiot. [Laughs] I like that character a lot. Normally in a French or American movie, there would be something about his coming out: You introduce a young gay guy, so he has to make a statement, whereas what I like about the way it is in the movie is that he doesn’t care—he’s already moved beyond that. All the characters have some kind of sexual freedom. It may be a little utopian. I hope it’s not too harmonious—I’m always wary of harmony in sexuality, like, people at ease in their bodies are a little boring.

Another connection with the New Wave is that you shoot fast: You just made three films in a year and a half.

CH: Godard used to say, “I don’t understand why you’d entrust a movie to a director who hasn’t done anything in five years. It’s as if you gave a plane to a pilot who hasn’t flown in five years.” It’s true: Filmmaking is about experience. You need to make a lot of mistakes to understand how it works.

Louis, is it the same for actors?

LG: I have this theory about acting: I try to apply in my work what I like in others’. I don’t enjoy seeing actors too often—when I see them in too many movies, it’s difficult to go along with their screen stories. So that makes it complicated for me, because I don’t want to be omnipresent.

CH: It’s important to be rare. On the other hand, it was really interesting when Depardieu would work with Bertolucci and [Marco] Ferreri at the same time. If you’re working with very different directors, it’s fine. What’s a pain is to see Isabelle Carré 20 times in the same movie. That’s terminally boring.

LG: When you make a movie, you put everything that happened to you in it: your memories, your thoughts, your gestures. If all you do is make movies, you recycle things you did on other shoots. It becomes a mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting a mirror. Life isn’t the main inspiration anymore.

 

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12 of Christophe Honore’s 16 films

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Seventeen Times Cecile Cassard (2002)
‘A visually impressive study of a woman, Cécile Cassard, who attempts to reclaim her life from grief after her husband’s death in a car crash. Kieslowski’s Blue is a narrative cousin, with Binoche’s muteness and unpredictable behaviour echoed in Dalle’s ascetic performance. However, with Cécile’s child still alive but effectively abandoned after her mother’s revivifying flight to the city, the film moves into its own territory, clear of that initial reference. Indeed, in its framing and deployment of space, The Red Desert, Antonioni’s compelling take on female alienation, seems a more telling influence. Sombre, fragmented scenes offer stations on the journey through a world that is effectively shot to appear by turns hostile and mysterious in its workings on the damaged individual.’ — Time Out (NYC)

Trailer

 

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Ma mere (2003)
‘Broadly speaking, films fall into two categories: those you watch for pleasure and those you watch to broaden your horizons. Ma mère is a film that assuredly doesn’t fall into the first category (except for those who have some very weird ideas as to what constitutes entertainment), but probably does belong to the second. It certainly pushes the boundaries as far as explicit sexual content is concerned. Definitely not for the faint-hearted, with images of a deeply disturbing nature, Ma mere is a film that is almost too shocking to watch – not because it is necessarily, from an artistic point of view, a bad film, but because the themes it deals with are at the very limit of acceptability. If the thought of a teenager wanking over his mother’s corpse is likely to offend, you’d be advised to give this film a very wide berth.’ — filmsdefrance

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Dans Paris (2006)
‘Dans Paris is writer-director Honoré’s fourth feature, following the sex-and-death Georges Bataille adaptation, Ma mère. With its tricky tonal shifts, Honoré is clearly onto something with his pacing; he allows time for the important scenes, but creates room for odd interludes—the father dragging a Christmas tree along a sidewalk, or Paul listening to an old Kim Wilde 45 as he lolls on his bed. It should feel distended, but the overall flow is right. One of the gifts of the New Wave was the idea that movies could convey the delight of making films, watching them, thinking about them. Since then, filmmakers outside Hollywood have become more skeptical about the use and power of cinema (as Godard was already in the early Sixties, but the fizz was still there). With Dans Paris, Honoré circles back to those pleasures. Dans Paris is an attempt to estimate joy.’ — Film Society of Lincoln Center

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt (w/ Spanish subtitles)

 

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Les chansons d’amour (2007)
‘As Louis Garrel effortlessly walks along the streets of Paris as a new Jean-Pierre Léaud (the resemblance is quite impressive), both careless and pensive at the same time, owning the world and yet fearful of being part of it, Les chansons d’amour tells a story that is almost irritating in its simplicity and captivating in its fluidity. Love, and by that I don’t necessarily mean romantic love, is taken for granted and then put at risk; it’s ridiculed and then elevated to something lyrical; it is lost forever and then found again unexpectedly. And it has the infinite and burlesque joy of nouvelle vague as three French kids walk around in the rain calling each other names at the sound of music; it has the deliciously spicy and sensual boldness of nouvelle vague as a ménage-a-trois is the starting point from which everything else takes form; it has the sorrowful passion of nouvelle vague as a woman remembers her dead sister and mourns her in song; it has the levity of nouvelle vague as a new love starts shaping up to a song that is sung through cellphones and accompanied by a graceful ballet that just happens, unplanned and gone in a moment.’ — icsfilms.com

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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La Belle Personne (2008)
‘Léa Seydoux is blessed with the sort of face that appears to convey a thousand different emotions without ever having to move a muscle. Her smile is beautiful but it almost feels like an intrusion, breaking the exquisite mystery of her passive, brooding expressions. Much has been written about her resemblance to Godard’s muse, Anna Karina, which perhaps inspired New Wave successor Christophe Honoré to direct her in this evocative drama. La belle personne (a.k.a. “The Beautiful Person”) could’ve easily been made in the ’60s. Within the walls of its claustrophobic school, hormonal urges and repressed desires materialize in the form of pointed glances and scribbled notes as opposed to Facebook posts. Gossip is spread the old fashioned way, without the assistance of a Twitter feed. Body language emerges as the primary tool of communication. When a tight embrace is mistaken for a kiss, it can lead to devastating consequences.’ — Hollywoodchicago

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Non Ma Fille, Tu N’iras pas Danser (2009)
‘The beguiling and deft new drama from acclaimed writer-director Christophe Honoré (“Inside Paris”, “Love Songs”) portrays a brave single mother struggling against her family of do-gooders. Léna (Chiara Mastroianni, in the performance of her career) is a young, unemployed mother of two who has left her partner and valiantly soldiers through life as best as she can. But she is as confused by her needs and desires while her family and friends seem certain of theirs. When she heads from Paris to her parents’ bucolic home in Brittany for the holidays, she’s thrown to the mercy of her supportive but oppressive family, who one by one begin to dish out unsolicited advice. Neither comedy nor tragedy, Honoré’s latest is a slow-burning, handsome saga, held together by the wonderfully drawn female characters, and marks the biggest success so far for the gifted filmmaker.’ — Cinema of the Worlds

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Homme au Bain (2010)
‘Christophe Honoré has made a series of critical favorites over the last few years, garnering enough praise to place him among the giants of contemporary French cinema. Popularity often gives artists room to play around, a freedom reflected in the relative smallness of his latest feature, Man at Bath (“Homme Au Bain”). Filmed with a shaky cam style and predominantly built around a series of sexual encounters, Man at Bath constantly shifts between Emmanuel’s aimless, philandering lifestyle in the Parisian suburb Gennevilliers and Omar’s trip to New York, which is seen exclusively through the lens of his camcorder. Although both men invest their energies in forgetting about the other, and neither gets a monologue to explain their feelings, leaving much of their turmoil up for interpretation. They express more through sexuality than dialogue.’ — indiewire

Trailer

 

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Les Bien-aimés (2011)
‘Christophe Honoré — director of bittersweet, entertaining pictures like Love Songs and Dans Paris — makes films that seem very, very French when you’re watching them in New York, but merely enjoyably normal when you see them in France. Les Bien-Aimés (Beloved), is a family epic — as well as a musical and a romance — that lasts nearly two-and-a-half hours. And in the Honoré tradition, it’s not afraid of overstating its emotions — like Love Songs, it blends musical numbers into the narrative a la The Umbrellas of Cherbourg — which isn’t the sort of thing that too many American directors would even attempt these days. That’s the way it is with Honoré: No matter where you watch his movies, he always gives you a little bit of l’amour fou to take home with you.’ — Movieline

Trailer

Excerpt

Christophe Honore interviewed about ‘Les Bien-aimés’

 

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Métamorphoses (2014)
‘Christophe Honore boldly takes Ovid’s classic narrative poem of the Roman gods and brings it into the modern world in a heady blend of lush cinematography, alluring erotica and dreamy violence. This new take on Metamorphoses follows young student Europa (Amira Akili) as she plays truant and meets the devilishly charming Jupiter (Sebastien Hirel), and embarks on a journey as she encounters timeless tales of gods and mortals and acquaints herself with Bacchus (Damien Chapelle) and Orpheus (George Babluani), going on her own voyage of transformation as she grows wiser from the lessons learnt from these cautionary and tragic tales. Honore has done an incredible job of bringing Metamorphoses to life, pulsating with an artistic energy that infuses the film with a synaesthesia struggling to break its way past the screen, as the audience feels every thrust, every tiny death, every pang of guilt that courses through its characters. One can almost feel their insides transforming into something quite different upon accepting the sheer force of unrelenting fate in the hands of the gods, and by the time the film ends, there’s a kind of numbing melancholy only the very best arthouse films instil in viewers. Christophe Honore has created a Metamorphoses for the times, at times quietly reflective, at others whimsically mischievous, but always delivering tragically exquisite scene after heartbreaking scene.’ — bakchormeeboy

Trailer

Excerpts, interview

 

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Les malheurs de Sophie (2016)
‘Sophie, a turbulent and imaginative girl, lives in a large castle with her mother, the sweet and loving Madame de Réan. Above all, Sophie loves having fun, especially with her cousin Paul, whom she adores and tyrannizes a bit. It was then that Madame de Réan learned that the family was going to leave France for America. The fate of little Sophie will definitely change: her mother disappears at sea. A year later, Sophie is back in France, flanked by an odious stepmother, Madame Fichini. A touching adaptation of the Comtesse de Ségur, served by the young actress Caroline Grant – revelation – of an exceptional temperament.’ — telerama

Trailer

 

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Sorry Angel (2018)
‘The specter of AIDS looms through “Sorry Angel,” the new drama from French filmmaker Christophe Honore, but to dismiss it merely as just another drama about the disease would do it a disservice. Instead, it is merely one component in this often engrossing drama about the relationship that develops between two men who come together when both are at very different points in their respective lives. Both sprawling and intimate, it tells a story dealing with life, love, friendship, mortality and, yes, AIDS, in a manner that is relentlessly and deliberately unsentimental in tone but which nevertheless proves to be quite affecting.’ — Peter Sobczynski

Trailer

 

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Chambre 212 (2019)
‘Ultimately, On a Magical Night (Chambre 212) is a fable about reconciling with your emotional baggage. It raises pertinent questions about love. With an impeccable production design (courtesy of Stéphane Taillasson) and charms galore, Christophe Honoré unofficially reimagines Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol as a French sex comedy starring a Chiara Mastroianni at the top of her game.’ — dmovies

Trailer
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hey, hey! My mother was a very complicated person. One of the complications was that she was very into mysticism, the paranormal, etc. When I was a kid she had me do a ‘past lives regression’ ceremony. Basically, she had me stand in a bathroom with the lights off and a lit candle by the sink then stare into the mirror for as long as I could while blinking as infrequently as possible. She said if I did that, I would see myself transform into the people I had been in my previous lives. And, yeah, I did see myself turn into a pirate and an Egyptian somebody and other things, but it was obviously just the candle light and my eyes hallucinating. So I think that’s my most memorable mirror association. I don’t avoid outer space films, but when there are scenes with spacewalks or astronauts stranded outside their capsule or whatever, I get very tense and stressed out and sometimes can’t watch. Yeah, it’s sad that Richey’s continued existence is so far fetched, but … yeah. I never was into Mickey Mouse for some reason. I liked Goofy though, I don’t know why. Ha ha, even playing Imagine Dragons once is grounds for murder. Love transforming itself into your favorite book, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Nice Cocteau quote. I’ve never heard of that James Whale film. He’s a goodie. ** David S. Estornell, Hi, D. I’m alright, thanks. Whoa, you’re rewriting a novel! That’s extremely good news. And you’re rewriting, which is my favorite part. I wish you ultra-great fun and luck getting it finished. If a quarantine isn’t announced this week I will be very surprised, ugh. Hugs back.** G, Hi. What happened to your mirror collection? What an interesting thing to collect. I’ve never known anyone else who did that. Good one. Huh, that’s strange about the Vimeo thing. It’s supposed to be available to watch everywhere but in the US. I’ll see if I can find out what the problem is. (Our producers set that up, not us.) You can buy the DVD. It’s a US import. but it has some cool extras on it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I actually checked to see if there was a gif featuring that Cerith Wyn Evans piece, but nope. ** Bzzt, Hey there, Quinn! Good to see you! I’m doing alright. Paris has an annoying 6 pm curfew, but it’s otherwise doable at the moment. Wow, yeah, that qualifies as a tornado of a time at the very least. What is up with what seems like it’s been a ridiculously long time of rough stuff in your life lately, Jesus? I’m so sorry to hear about all of that. I’m glad Ed and Michael are being a comfort. Honesty its a tricky thing. It should be the ultimately least tricky thing, but I guess it’s such a non-negotiable source and force that it ends things as often as it begins them. I guess the thing is figuring out how best to phrase one’s honesty? I don’t know. I’m so sorry, man. Maybe, hopefully you’ve hit that point where there’s nothing else to do but pirouette out of the wreckage. I like winter, I’m weird. I hate summer, heat, excessive sun (except in the desert). I think it’s because I’m from LA, and cold/gray still seems novel and exciting or something. I always recommend LA. Great place. Really, I hope things start looking up for you as soon as this very instant, and I hope to see you again soon. ** Jack Skelley, Jack the Wack! I … think that is Victor Mature’s eyes, yes! Now that’s strange: I was thinking about Robert Peters yesterday afternoon, and it’s not like I ever think much about him. I was remembering those kind of cool but also kind of really embarrassing readings he used to give at BB where he dressed up in that cheap costume and wig and performed poems in the persona of King Ludwig. What a character that guy was. My art trip got delayed until today, so Scharf is still in my near distance. Big up, bud. ** Sypha, You have a problem with mirrors, Mr. Champagne? Uh, maybe it was the Jung one. Sure, if you want to do that post, great. I don’t think I saw those writing tips on Facebook. I think that might have been during my general FB avoidance phase around the election-related outpouring shit. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. I try rather hard not look in mirrors. Or at a photographs at myself. I’ve never liked looking at myself. I don’t want to think about what I look like when I talk or move or whatever. Seems weird. Ah, yes, obviously, that’s a really great book, that Jackson. ‘Opening Night’ is good, but it’s the earlier Cassavetes films that are the great ones, particularly the films from the late 50s up through ‘Minnie and Moskowitz’ in ’71. In my opinion, obviously. No, one of the lingering post-covid issues Zac is dealing with is bad headaches, and he got whomped with one yesterday, so we’re tentative doing the art trip today instead. Hopefully your Wednesday and mine will be like physically distanced identical twins on acid. ** Okay. I’m presenting a Day about French filmmaker Christophe Honore today. Full disclosure: my single ever acting experience was in one of his films, and he was one of the producers of Zac’s and my first film ‘Like Cattle Towards Glow’. But he’s a fine, fine director and cool guy irregardless. Give his work your attention, please, and thank you. See you tomorrow.