The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Graves, inhabitants *

* (restored/Halloween countdown post #10)
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Story: ‘”Bruges was desperately depressing at this time…that was the reason Hugh liked it so much…a mysterious equation established itself between his own spirit and that of the place. In the eternal fitness of things a dead town furnished the corresponding analogy to that of a dead wife. The bitterness of his desolation demanded an environment that harmonised with its poignancy. ..his longing was for an infinite silence…”, wrote the decadent French author Georges Rodenbach in his best known novel ‘Bruges-la-morte’. He is buried at Pere Lachaise in Paris, and his grave, in which he depicted pushing open the lid of his sepulchre, is much admired and visited, especially by Goths and latter day decadents.’ — The Guardian

 

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Story:Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him completely, but cut through the hanging rope instead. Freed of the threat of hanging, Mr. LeFevrier plunged into the sea. The sudden plunge into the freezing waters extinguished the flames and apparently made him vomit the poison as well. He was dragged out of the water by witnesses on the beach below the cliff and was taken to a hospital, where he died of hypothermia.’ — ssqq.com

 

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Story: ‘Organizers of an Indianapolis fireworks exhibit said Thursday night’s display included the ashes from a recently deceased pyrotechnician. The family of Meredith Smith, who died recently at the age of 74, said his ashes were included in a fireworks shell that was launched to conclude the show, the Indianapolis Star reported Thursday. Smith worked on the north side’s annual fireworks displays for nearly 40 years. Organizers said more than $10,000 was donated by local businesses and individuals to fund this year’s show.’ — UPI.com

 

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Story: ‘A Vietnamese man dug up his wife’s corpse and slept beside it for five years because he wanted to hug her in bed. The 55-year-old man from a small town in the central province of Quang Nam opened up his wife’s grave in 2004, moulded clay around the remains to give the figure of a woman, put clothes on her and then placed her in his bed. The man, Le Van, explained that after his wife died in 2003 he slept ontop of her grave, but about 20 months later he worried about rain, wind and cold, so he decided to dig a tunnel into the grave “to sleep with her”. His children found out, though, and prevented him from going to the grave. So one night in November 2004 he dug up his wife’s remains and took them home, Vietnamnet reported. The father of seven said neighbours did not dare visit the house for several years.’ — Scotsman

 

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Story:Pierre Clementi, the visionary film director and darkly handsome French actor who made a specialty of seductive and menacing roles, died on Dec. 27 in Paris. The cause was liver cancer, although his death is suspected to be AIDS related. He was 57. His final directorial effort was the short film ‘Soleil’ (1988), considered my many to be his masterpiece. Although he had quit acting and directing in the late 80s and was gravely ill at the time, he returned to the screen in ”Hideous Kinky” (1998), about the spiritual awakening of a young woman (Kate Winslet). True to form, he played Santoni, an elderly libertine.’ — New York Times

 

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Story: No one knows.

 

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Story: ‘John Milburn Davis came to Hiawatha, Kansas in 1879 at the age of 24. After a short time, he married Sarah Hart, the daughter of his employer. Her family did not approve. The Davises started their own farm, prospered and were married 50 years. When Sarah died in 1930, the Davises were wealthy. Over the next 7 years, John Davis spent most of that wealth on Sarah’s grave. The amount spent on the Davis Memorial has been estimated at anywhere between $100,000 and several times that amount. In any case, it was a large amount and included the signing over of the farm and mansion. This during the Depression when money was tight. Several reasons are offered for the extravagance including great love or guilt, anger at Sarah’s family, and a desire that the Davis fortune be exhausted before John’s death. The memorial began with a typical grave stone, but John worked with Horace England, a Hiawatha monument dealer, making the gravesite more and more elaborate. There are 11 life size statues of John and Sarah Davis made of Italian marble, many stone urns and a marble canopy that is reported as weighing over 50 tons. The last addition to the tomb was marble granite wall surrounding the memorial to keep people from entering.’ — kansastravel.org

 

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Story: ‘John Hobson is listening to a recording of conversations with his late mother, mostly small talk about family. The words are on a vinyl record, although this is more than a recording of memories. The ashes of Madge Hobson are combined with the vinyl, with a photograph and details of her life printed on the labels. “It makes the perfect family record, which can be passed down the generations,” says Jason Leach, 46, the founder of And Vinyly, which produced the disc. The firm is part of a fast-growing sector of the end-of-life industry. No longer need ashes be stored in an urn or scattered to the wind. Now you can wear, drink from, or display a little part of what is left of your loved one. Mr Hobson, a 69-year-old sculptor, says his mother, a devout churchgoer, would thoroughly approve of her record. “I had to weigh out a quantity of the ashes [which had been kept in an urn], and put a large teaspoonful into a number of small plastic bags, one for each disc,” he says. Fifteen records were pressed for family and friends. Says Mr Hobson: “I think And Vinyly has undoubtedly helped to keep the memory of my mother alive.”‘

 

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Story: ‘Matthew Stanford Robison was born blind, paralyzed from the waist down, and severely disabled. He was supposed to live for only a few hours, but despite what doctors said, Matthew did not pass away that day. Matthew surpassed the expectations of his doctors and lived until he was 11 years old. Tragically, Matthew passed away in his sleep at the age of 11. His devastated family held a funeral service at their church and published a heartfelt obituary. Still, Matthew’s father, Ernest, felt there was something more that they could do to honor his son’s young life, taken much too soon. Ernest had a gravestone created in his son’s memory that depicts a young boy rising from his wheelchair, free from disability and worry. The tombstone stands at Matthew’s burial place in Salt Lake City Cemetery.’ — boredom therapy

 

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Story: ‘Neptune Memorial Reef is the largest man-made reef ever conceived and, when complete, will have transformed over 16 acres of barren ocean floor. The Neptune Memorial Reef project is environmentally sound and is a member of the Green Burial Council. Boat activity at the site is brisk, with families chartering boats or taking their own to snorkel or simply be at the site. Some family members actually become dive certified, enabling them to visit the site, to see their loved ones and monitor the Reef’s growth. Many of our local families dive the reef on a regular basis to visit their loved ones, one family in particular has been out 5 times in as many months. “Mom was thrilled with the idea of becoming part of the Neptune Memorial Reef and forever swimming with dolphins,” says Ronald Hink of his mother Edie. “She accepted her passing with dignity and bragged that she would be forever living on ocean waterfront property. Her epitaph reads, ‘In Care of Dolphins and Angels’.”‘ — Neptune Society

 

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Story: ‘A life-size bronze statue of Victor Noir was sculpted by Jules Dalou to mark his grave, portrayed in a realistic style as though he had just fallen on the street, dropping his hat which is depicted beside him. The sculpture has a very noticeable protuberance in Noir’s trousers. This has made it one of the most popular memorials for women to visit in the famous cemetery. Myth says that placing a flower in the upturned top hat after kissing the statue on the lips and rubbing its genital area will enhance fertility, bring a blissful sex life, or, in some versions, a husband within the year. As a result of the legend, those particular components of the oxidized bronze statue are rather well-worn. In 2004 a fence was erected around the statue of Noir, to deter superstitious people from touching the statue. Due to the fake protests of the “female population of Paris” settled by a French TV anchor however, it was torn down again. So the deterioration of the statue continues.’ — VN.fr

 

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Story: ‘”Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” was sung by three year-old Sami while swinging the morning of May 2, 2006. Unfortunately, it was the last time. She loved swinging, Dora the Explorer, her dog Yeller, wearing her clothes backwards and picking up rocks of all shapes and sizes. She would even save gravel from the church parking lot and keep it in her purse. She had these very rocks and gravel in pockets when, later in the day on May 2, she rode her tricycle into the family pool and drowned.’ — obittree

 

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Story: ‘What really happened to Sterling Hallard Bright Drake? Some Walla Walla residents swear he suffered a radiation accident. Other locals insist he landed in the State Penitentiary. A few suggest the enigmatic former resident of Walla Walla simply up and disappeared. His tombstone gives only cryptic clues: (Front of headstone): An idealist and a dreamer, he died of loneliness and a broken heart, searching for a shrine he never found. LADY GWINAVIER – A loving and faithful friend, she believed in the dream. Born 2-28-1997, died 7-27-2005. It’s been said that man is the most evolved of all animals on this planet, or is he? I know of no other living creature that perverts what he knows, and destroys what he does not. (Back of headstone): A parting note for those who may pass by. If you quest for the line between truth and reality, you’ll find it in the “Hs” under honor, in the library of ambivalence. Sterling Drake 12-25-1998. (top of headstone): The saddest thing in life is wasted talent. The choises (sic) you make today will change your life forever.’ — whitman.edu

 

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Story: No one knows.

 

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Story: ‘David Alleno served as caretaker of La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires from 1881 to 1910. According to contemporaneous accounts, he was a man obsessed with choosing and controlling his last resting spot and spoke of little else. He seems to have spent his entire life first designing and then supervising the carving of a sculpture of himself to be placed on the small piece of land his brother purchased within the cemetery for the family. He was so focused on finalizing the sculpture’s construction and the plan to be buried at that spot, that on the day the sculpture was completed and arrived in 1915, he went straight home and committed suicide.’ — blok 888

 

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Story: ‘James Bedford‘s was the first of 300 bodies and brains currently preserved in the world’s three known commercial cryonics facilities: Alcor; the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan; and KrioRus near Moscow. Another 3,000 people still living have arranged to join them upon what cryonicists call “deanimation.” In other words, death.

‘Cryonics patients are no longer frozen, but “vitrified.” First, the body is placed in an ice-water bath. Then, ice-resistant chemicals are pumped into the body, taking the place of water in the blood. That way, in the next step, when the body or brain is cooled to well-below freezing using nitrogen gas, it hardens without forming cell-damaging ice.

‘Bedford’s preservation in the pre-vitrification days was a crude, ad hoc affair. He legally died in a southern California nursing home at the age of 73, after donating his body to the Life Extension Society, a group of early cryonics enthusiasts. Hours after death he was injected with the solvent dimethyl sulfoxide in an attempt to stave off tissue damage, packed in a Styrofoam box of dry ice, and eventually submerged in liquid nitrogen.

‘For the next 27 years, Bedford’s liquid-nitrogen-filled chamber was constantly on the move, as various cryonics companies folded or were forced to move for insurance or regulatory problems. The $100,000 he’d set aside to pay for his body’s long-term care evaporated as his wife and son faced legal challenges from other family members objecting to his unconventional resting place. From 1977 to 1982, frustrated with the high cost of maintenance, they appear to have kept his unit in a self-storage facility in southern California, occasionally topping off the liquid nitrogen themselves.

‘Bedford has been seen only once in the last 50 years. In 1991, Alcor moved him from his failing unit to a new storage tank. A report detailing the procedure makes for grim reading. The skin on his neck and upper torso was inflamed. His nose had collapsed. His chest had cracked.

‘To Alcor personnel fearing far worse damage to a man revered as a pioneer, he was beautiful: “I cannot describe the feeling of elation I had when I peeled back the sleeping bag that enclosed you and saw that you appeared intact and well cared for,” former Alcor president Mike Darwin wrote in an open letter to Bedford, to be read in the event of his return. “Whatever else has happened, you have remained frozen all these years.”’ — Quartz

 

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Story: ‘What do you do if your wives keep dying on you? If you’re Dr. Samuel Bean, you devise a near-uncrackable code to print on their joint tombstone. Bean, who was born in 1842 and lived in Ontario, married his first wife in 1865. Mrs. Henrietta Bean enjoyed her husband’s company for seven short months before passing into the great beyond. He quickly remarried to a woman named Susanna. Then she died, too. Both women were laid to rest in Rushes Cemetery, near Ontario. Distraught, Dr. Bean did the only thing a rational man can do when so tested: He commissioned a marble headstone with both women’s names and a 225-character grid that appeared to be a nonsense jumble of numbers and letters. Nobody could coax answers from Dr. Bean about the puzzle’s meaning. Then, during a 1904 vacation to Cuba, Bean fell off the side of a boat and drowned. The secret to his gravestone cipher perished with Dr. Bean. Decades passed. Drawn by the mystery of Susanna and Henrietta’s resting place, amateur codebreakers flocked to the cemetery. Nobody was successful until 1942, when the cemetery’s groundskeeper claimed to solve it. He refused to share the answer, though, and died suddenly before anybody could coerce it out of him.’ — OMG Facts

 

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Story: ‘Zachary Butler, a 38 year old resident of Boise, Idaho, died by suicide on 2014. In his suicide note, he expressed his last wish that his body be cremated and the ashes come to rest in an urn that would take the form of a realistic bust of his head. He had researched the possibilities and directed his surviving wife to contact a company called Cremation Solutions in Arlington, Vermont to construct the urn using of 3D imaging techniques. She dutifully fulfilled his request, which required a laser scan of his head and several representative photos of the deceased. The head urn was created in this way and mounted on a marble base. The urn is about 11 inches in size and cost $2,600. Luckily for his wife, Zachary did not specify how he wished the urn to be displayed, and it is stored away in a drawer in her living room.’ — cremation resource

 

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Story: ‘The Black Angel dates back to the early 20th century and stands watch over the graves of Teresa Dolezal and her family. Teresa moved to Iowa City with her son Eddie in the late 1800s. There she worked as a midwife until 1891, when Eddie contracted meningitis and died. The boy’s body was buried in Oakland Cemetery and a monument carved in the shape of a tree stump was erected to mark his grave.

‘After Eddie’s death, Teresa moved to Oregon where she met and married Nicholas Feldevert. But Feldevert was not long with for this world, either; he died only a few years later in 1911.

‘Stricken by two losses so close together, Teresa returned to Iowa City and commissioned the construction of an eight-and-a-half foot tall bronze angel from Chicago artist Mario Korbel to memorialize her loved ones. When Teresa Feldevert passed on in 1924, her ashes joined those of her late husband. Curiously, no death date was added to Teresa’s name at the base, fueling the statue’s mystery.

‘What’s more, the Black Angel statue had turned from bronze to black by the time of Teresa’s death. Local legends sprang up to explain this phenomenon, with most centering on Teresa’s past. Some claimed that she was an evil a mysterious woman, and that the statue changed its color to warn others to stay away from her grave. One particularly dramatic telling told of a thunderstorm on the night of Teresa’s funeral. A lightning bolt struck the angel statue, scorching it black.

‘With such a reputation, it’s no wonder the Black Angel statue is now said to possess sinister powers. According to one tale, any girl kissed in the shadow of the angel’s wings will die within six months, and anyone who touches the angel on Halloween night will die in seven years. Kissing the angel directly, meanwhile, will cause a person’s heart to stop instantly. One variation states that only a virgin can survive touching or kissing the statue without being struck dead.’ — The Line Up

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. JW was a character, that’s for sure, god love him. Everyone, Mr. E’s notorious FaBlog takes on … well, the entry’s title says it all: Hunter Biden and All That Jazz. ** Misanthrope, Oh, no problem, didn’t expect you to track that down. Of course ToT will be fun, it’s just how, a matter of degree, etc., right? What, you think if you and I started a band it would be better than The Shaggs? I think not, speaking only of the quality of my own theoretical contribution. Muscle memory is a curious thing, but, yeah, it happens. ‘Kick Out the Jams!’ Now you’re talking/playing! Nice goal. And I want to hear you belt it out while you’re playing. Oh, you tracked down JW? Cool. Glad he’s good. Very talented fella. ** Misanthrope, Ha ha, I did have a moment of wondering if I should tag that post as a Halloween themed one, but I decided it was just very teenily far afield. Teenily. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. JW Veldhoen was a character for the interesting ages. But scavenger hunts can be fun? (Trying to put the best face on it). And getting lost definitely can be. If getting found afterwards is a guarantee, I suppose. There’s this huge, gorgeous famous building here called the Grand Palais — outside, inside — where, as part of art week — there are a bunch of art fairs, events, etc. right now — one event is a scavenger hunt in the Grand Palais where the big prize is an artwork by the famous Japanese artist Takashi Murakami that is hidden in the building somewhere, and people will pay something to go on a mass hunt to find it, and the person who finds it gets to keep it. I notice that they carefully don’t say it’s a big valuable Murakami work, and I suspect it’s probably some print from an edition of 100s that’s worth about $1000 if you’re lucky, so I’m skipping that one. Not sure why I went off about that. Oh, yeah, scavenger hunt. Well, I hope your corn maze has some eerie surprises up its sleeve. Oh, wow, that’s a big question about Bresson. Well, ‘Au Hazard Balthazar’ is incredible. As is ‘L’Argent’. I think you could start anywhere, but I wouldn’t recommend starting with ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ or maybe ‘Un Femme Douce’. People often say ‘Pickpocket’ is a good place to start because it has all of Bresson’s Bressonisms in a very consolidated fashion. I started with ‘Lancelot du Lac’, and it’s the one that permanently blew my mind, but I suspect starting with any of the films would have done that. I personally love the later color films the best but that’s not a hugely popular opinion. So, basically, if you start with either ‘Balthazar’ or ‘L’Argent’ or most of the others, you’ll be good. And, well, ‘Hausu’ won’t steer you wrong on an entirely other planet, as I’m sure you know. Enjoy whatever it is you choose. Fine day to you all around. ** Steve Erickson, Ah. Everyone, new song from Mr. Erickson: ‘I’m not sure how well this song works, but it was an attempt to write anxious and jumpy but relatively quiet music. I sampled more ASMR videos, as well as Tangerine Dream’s score for SORCERER.’ ** Bill, Hi. Misanthrope seems to have tracked him down remotely and reported that JW is doing okay. Uh, 6 volumes, 400 pages each, uh … maybe not for me, ha ha. I’ll give it a gander at least if I see it on a shelf. I’m going to angle for my long planned manga store trip for late this week. Bon day! ** Sypha, Hi. Oh, it’s a recently written memoir. I don’t know why I thought it was something from your history. I like your you-as-FBI agent horror meets New Narrative idea partly ‘cos it sounds like a good idea and partly I can’t fathom what that crosshatch would result in. Encouragement, iow. ** Right. I brought today’s post back from the dead in honor of Halloween’s approach, and I hope you’ll agree that was the right move. See you tomorrow,

8 Comments

  1. _Black_Acrylic

    The artist Patrick Caulfield 1936–2005 has this nicely designed grave at Highgate Cemetery in London. When asked what his epitaph would be, Caulfield had simply answered: “Dead, of course.”

  2. Misanthrope

    Dennis, Okay, and you may know this, the stories no one knows are…the nice little things in here that make all the other stories shine.

    Yeah, I just did a quick Google search for JW and he’s still writing the blog for the place where he works. Has some recent posts there. So I’m assuming he’s doing well. Sad that he gave up fiction so many years ago.

    Hahaha, The Shaggs were a revelation. I can’t imagine we wouldn’t be better.

    I wasn’t familiar with “Kick Out the Jams,” so while I was learning it, I looked it up. I like it. Of course, I’d heard of MC5, had just never explored their stuff.

    So…there’s this little clip on YouTube with Bernard Butler going over how to play “Animal Nitrate,” along with him talking about what he was trying to do when he wrote the music for it. He goes something like, “Well, the first riff is quite simple…” and then plays it and…it’s anything but simple. He’s working those frets like a job! I’m like, “This is simple? What the fuck?”

    But yeah, I’ll get there someday. I’m determined. Plus it’s fun.

    Yeah, ToT…I think too it’s what you bring to it. Just be wide-eyed and open to some fun.

    Did you know the last haunted attraction I did was with you and Nicholas C. up in NYC all those years ago? Crazy, right?

  3. David Ehrenstein

    The grave’s a fine and provate place but many there indeed embrace — so long as they stay on top of the gravesites. That’s always been my experience. My father is buried in amilitary cemetery on Long Island. My mother is buried in the family plot in Celeveland. Never visited either of their graves after the funeral.
    James Toback, who cst him in “Exposed” opposite Nastassia Kinski, told me Pierre Clementi died of AIDS. His son, Balthazar (who can be seen naked riding an ide floe in Garell’s “Inner Scar”) is quite hostile to any notion that his father was bisexual and died of AIDS. A number of years back we had a nasty e-mail exchange about it. Pierre is one of the cinema’s most formidable creature.

    Here’s a great John Waters interview

    Meanwhile re the election It looks like it’s going to be a Joe Biden LANDSLIDE

  4. Sypha

    Dennis, well, the horror novel idea (which I actually came up with earlier this year, and which I want to call HOLLOW HILLS, after the Bauhaus song) was supposed to revolve around the dark side of fairies/fairy abductions… during our quarantine period back in March/April I paid a visit to my old childhood school and walked to the top of a hill out back that, when I was a kid, had a sinister reputation, and finally climbing this hill and standing at the top of it was a strange experience: it seemed normal at the top but at the same time there was a sinister aura hard to put into words: I could picture dark things happening there, and came up with the idea of an FBI agent investigating some sort of odd case related to the hill: and of course, once I thought of hills I started thinking of fairies. At the same time the subject’s been done to death so I was trying to think of a fresh approach… then when I read WRONG over the summer I began to play with the idea of using some of the New Narrative techniques for it, which, as far as I know, hasn’t been used in the horror genre all that much. But you know how the creative process works, oftentimes its a series of these disconnected notions that gradually form into a whole!

  5. Jeff J

    Hey Dennis – I don’t remember this graves post, so this resurrected form feels fresh. Wonderfully strange assortment of dwellings and dead dwellers.

    Great talking with you last week. And meant to thank you then for checking out the third Julian Calendar EP. Hopefully the last one in the series will be out in a few weeks.

    I got unexpectedly swept up in an opportunity to teach a creative writing class at a local liberal arts college. A teacher fell ill and they needed someone to cover the class ASAP. It pays well for adjunct work, so I spruced up my CV, did some quick interviews, and was thrown into the virtual classroom with almost no preparation. They’re doing everything via Zoom which adds complications. It’s been a whirlwind. The original teacher didn’t follow their own syllabus at all so that’s been confusing. I’ve been scrambling to create some writing exercises, assignments, and readings. Anyhow, I’m likely to be scarce around here until that’s over in 6 weeks.

    I have watched a few films. There’s a new restoration of the doc ‘Streetwise,’ something I’m guessing you saw when it came out in the mid-80s, yes? I thought it was very moving and wondered what you made of it?

    Saw the new Errol Morris doc ‘B Side’ which was minor for him, but still very worthwhile. Has that appeared over there? It’s from a few years back, I think.

    I watched the ‘Trial of the Chicago Seven’ too. Stephanie knows the case well and thought it was fairly accurate, as far as fiction films go. They pack a lot of info into the 2 hour runtime and the story structure is smart. It’s directed in a super hack way that feels straight out of the ’80s, down the free-frame ending of people standing and cheering in the courtroom. But the events themselves feel incredibly timely and retain a shocking intensity. Frank Langella as the fascist judge is quite good, Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden is terrible. If you see it, let me know what you think. I suspect you’ll find it worthwhile for the subject matter.

    Hope you’re doing well xo

  6. Steve Erickson

    I saw the new Borat film last night and was embargoed from expressing an opinion till this afternoon. I didn’t think much of it, but Giuliani’s creepy behavior left me numb at the time. Republicans get away with things like making passes at journalists who might really be underage girls. Now it’s a scandal on tonight’s network TV news!

    The new album by Ghostemane really suits a Grand Guignol Halloween mood, down to the overblown angst. It reminds me of the few high points of nü-metal (with Marilyn Manson and NIN thrown in.)

    I’d like to celebrate getting over a period of declining eyesight and difficulty dealing with it that began in July 2019 by hiring a makeup artist to simulate Lucio Fulci-style eyeball trauma on me and post the results on Instagram.

  7. Armando

    Hey,

    Nice post.

    Really? You’ve found your opinion on the later, color Bresson films is unpopular? I personally love them the best, with of course, ‘L’Argent’ being my Second Favorite Film Of All Time and ‘The Devil Probably’ being my Fifth. (I personally think ‘The Trial Of Joan Of Arc’ (my Eleventh Favorite Film Of All Time) is basically like one of the color ones except but for the amount of dialogue it contains, but that’s just my opinion…).

    Good day, good luck,

    Best Regards,

    A.

  8. Brian O’Connell

    Hey, Dennis,

    I love today’s post. These types of stories are like catnip to me. Some remarkably weird stuff in here. The ceremonial rubbing of Victor Noir’s bronze dick is kind of hilarious and strangely poetic. Less so about the cryogenically frozen septuagenarian (I’ve never understood the hype around these vaguely grotesque practices), the drowned girl immortalized in the creepy Jesus swing-set sculpture, and the eccentric who killed himself upon the completion of his grave; there is, however, something oddly sweet (if disturbing) about the Vietnamese man who sleeps with his wife’s preserved carcass. If I had to take the way of any of them, though, I think I’d be made into a vinyl record. I wouldn’t have any problem being remembered that way.

    Wow, the Grand Palais really is huge and gorgeous; and the scavenger hunt sounds really cool, even if I’d be inclined to agree with you that the prize is probably much less impressive than they’re making it out to be. Still might be fun to participate, though. I find it really fun about rambling around crazy buildings like that. Alas, I’ll have to make do with my corn maze.

    I wound up impulsively seizing “Diamonds of the Night” anyway, lol, but I’ll definitely be watching “Hausu” for Halloween and am taking note of your Bresson guidance. I checked the streaming service my film course uses as a resource, and they have both “Pickpocket” and “A Man Escaped”. I think, given your guidance, I’ll probably start with “Pickpocket”, if it’s emblematic of his general style. It’s short, too, so I’ll probably be able to squeeze it in between Halloween binging sometime this week. I’ll let you know, anyway. One day I will get to “L’Argent”…

    May your Thursday be filled with stimulating conversations and seasonally unsettling ambience, etc.

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