‘The death of Jean Eustache shocked but it didn’t surprise. His friends said he was suicidal. He held on to life only by a small number of threads, so solid that one thought them unbreakable. The desire for cinema was one of these threads. The desire not to have to film at any cost was another. This desire was a luxury and Eustache knew it. He would pay the price.
‘It’s not much to say that he was born to cinema with the Nouvelle Vague, a little bit after it, but with the same refusals and admirations. It’s not much to say that he was an “auteur,” his cinema was mercilessly personal. That is to say, mercilessly tied up with his experience, to alcohol, to love. Filling up his life in order to make the material of his films was his only moral code but it was a moral code of iron. The films came when he was strong enough to make them come, to bring back what he made in life.
‘In the thread of the desolate 70s, his films succeeded one another, always unforeseen, without a system, without a gap: film-rivers, short films, TV programs, hyperreal fiction. Each film went to the end of its material, from real to fictional sorrow. It was impossible for him to go against it, to calculate, to take cultural success into account, impossible for this theoretician of seduction to seduce an audience.
‘The audience was with him once, when he made the most beautiful French film of the decade, THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE. Without him, we would have no face to set to the memory of the lost children of May Ô68: lost, already aging, talkative and old-fashioned. (Bernardette) Lafont, (Jean-Pierre) Léaud and especially Françoise Lebrun, her black shawl and her stubborn voice. Without him, nothing would have remained of them.
‘An ethnologist of his own reality, Eustache could have made a career, become a good auteur, with fantasies and a vision of the world, a specialist of some sort in himself. His moral code prohibited it: he only filmed what interested him. Women, dandyism, Paris, the country and the French language. It’s already a lot.
‘Like a painter knowing that he’d never quite finish, he never cased returning to the same motif, using cinema not like a mirror (that’s for the good directors) but like the needle of a seismograph (that’s for the greats). The public, one moment seduced, would forget this perverse ethnography that had the bad manners to keep coming. An artist and nothing but an artist (he didn’t know how to do anything except make films), he held to the contrary the speech of an artisan, simultaneously more modest and proud. The artisan weighs everything, evaluates everything, takes on everything, memorizes everything. Thus Eustache worked.
‘One year, some Moroccan friends had organized a complete retrospective of his work in Tangier. A strange idea. A brilliant idea. All the reels, the heaviness, the age, the rust, the incredible number of kilograms that THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE represents were put into a diplomatic case, crossed the sea and found themselves in front of assiduous Moroccan cine-clubgoers. Would Eustache come? It was difficult to make him leave Paris, we thought. But he came and remained two days. The projection of the Eustachian opus took place, outside of time, for this audience, unprepared for all these stories of sex and desire, of the French countryside and the fauna of Montparnasse, was disconcerted. Eustache would disconcert them even more. His mildness, his patience and his manner of responding to questions with an indecipherable mix of irony and gravity, surprised everyone.
‘Tangier wasn’t Paris nor the port cafes the Closerie de Lilas, but we searched for a late bar to have a beer and talk about cinema. Eustache spoke of his masters, with whom he didn’t compare himself, of Pagnol and Renoir, these other artisans who came before him. I will never forget the way in which he made them live again in his language, shot by shot, with his accent. It shocked but didn’t surprise. Eustache resembled his times too much to be comfortable. He ended by losing. Too bad for us.’ — Serge Daney (trans. Steve Erickson)
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Stills
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Further
Jean Eustache @ IMDb
‘Of Flesh, of Spirit: The Cinema of Jean Eustache’
‘Jean Eustache: He stands alone’
‘The Way We Are’
Jean Eustache @ mubi
‘L’invisible Jean Eustache’
‘Jean Eustache Retrospective Looks At A Bold French Filmmaker’
‘His Little Loves: The life and films of Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache @ strictly film school
‘No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache’
‘Que reste-t-il de Jean Eustache?’
Jean Eustache @ The Criterion Collection
‘Pourquoi les films d’Eustache sont peu visibles’
‘“THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE” REVISITED’
‘The List: Jean Eustache’
Harmony Korine on Jean Eustache’
Jean-Jacques Schuhl ‘Jean Eustache aimait le rien’
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Extras
Jean Eustache at Cannes, 1973
Les cafés narbonnais à travers les films de Jean Eustache
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Naissance du Cinéma Narbonnais : Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache – Interview (1966)
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Interview
from La Revue du Cinéma (1971)
You’ve made four films that to me seemed to indicate a personal path in our cinema. Now, you want to do something completely different. Where does this break between the films you directed before and the last one come from?
JEAN EUSTACHE: I decided to break with the films that I was making because they were suffocating me.
Why were they suffocating you? Wasn’t it a kind of cinema that had already broken away from the system, as much in terms of how it was made (production and direction) as by its choice of subject matter?
JE: Yeah, but as I was working more in an artisanal manner, I didn’t really feel like I was challenging the system. Instead, I felt like I was always doing the same thing but, above all, it’s less in relation to the cinema than in relation to myself that the problems were presenting themselves. Each film was making life more difficult. When I’d finished one, I was always thinking I was going to be able to see things differently, to live a little better, and it was the opposite that was happening, I was living worse and worse…
From what point of view? From a financial point of view or from the point of view of what you had wanted to make or express?
JE: Well, I was making films in a very egotistical way, to be able to free myself in some way and to try to live a bit more casually. In fact, I had, instead, a heavier and heavier weight on my shoulders. That’s why I was shooting so few films. I was thinking a lot and, between the films that I was making, a certain number of ideas would come to mind that I’d abandon along the way. I would only finalize one of them about every two years. And, each time, I didn’t manage to find a path that let me live and work at the same time because, for that, making a film that means a month or two of work every two years isn’t sufficient. And then, every time that I attempted something, I wasn’t managing to go further in the chosen direction; I felt like I had to change direction.
You mean you were disappointed with the results? Unsatisfied?
JE: But you’re always a little disappointed, you always hope to do better. You achieve something and, yet, you had hoped it would be better… Most of the films I’ve done have pleased my friends, have been pretty well liked around me, which cut off my need to make something else immediately. If I had only been met with incomprehension, I would maybe have insisted, I would maybe have fought. Since everything was going simply outwardly, since people liked them, each time I thought I’d achieved my goal, but, at the same time, by my own standards, I wasn’t very satisfied, however I told myself: since the main thing is fine, since they say so, it should be enough…
It seemed too easy to you that your films were liked without any problems?
JE: That’s it, I didn’t really try to do better. And, at the same time, as I was going to the movies less and less and I was very disappointed when I did go, I was very happy to be outside what was being done everywhere. In the end, I no longer felt like being a filmmaker, like making films. And the questions that I was asking myself for more than a year came to this: why do we make films? What is it for? I found myself in the most total confusion and I considered giving up movies. I had always enjoyed working on other people’s films more than my own. For what is in other people’s films, when I edited them, I felt like I thought more deeply about them, that I brought more to them. The work I’m most happy with in cinema is that which I’ve accomplished on other people’s films and not on my own ones…
What do you call “fun”?
JE: Fun? Well, there are people who feel the need to take a vacation or who have one of Ingres’ violins, if they work all week… Before, quite a while ago, I was seeing 3 or 4 films a day, I was going back to see the films I liked 7 or 8 times, and I could completely lose myself in these films, only think about them. Now, I can’t anymore, I watch films worse than an ordinary viewer. I have as much trouble seeing a film as reading. I think about other things. Sometimes, when you’re reading, you suddenly notice that you were absent minded and you have to start over. For films, it’s the same thing. I see something and I don’t know what I saw. I have to go back to know, because I have a vague impression of something, but nothing more… But, to go back to your question, if I tried to make films for “fun,” the actual direction wasn’t a part of the enjoyment, it was, instead, a considerable effort and, in fact, a lot more difficult than enjoyable. Above all due to the lack of money. The first two films that I shot, with actors, might have been very enjoyable to do but, for financial reasons, the undertaking was very perilous. Then, for the documentaries, I had less need for money. I shot La Rosière and Le cochon in a day each, but I still had to do an hour long film in a day. That requires effort, spending considerable energy in a short amount of time. I caught up with myself a bit while editing. Okay… But, still, I find that these films, whatever is interesting about them, come from a clear conscience. You’re very happy when you do the opposite of what others do, when you do better, when you think you do better or when people say, “It’s very good.” And, in fact, it’s demobilizing.
But, still, doesn’t anxiety let go of you?
JE: No, it moves a bit. Paradoxically, you notice that you’re not understood at all. I would have been better understood if they had told me that it’s bad or it’s worthless. Because I would have maybe tried to prove more, to go deeper. Instead I was thinking, “I’ve got a hell of a nerve and they’re still being fooled…”
Do you not think that in France, in 1971, you are practically alone against millions of viewers. There are friends who support you, morally more than anything else, but you’re alone in front of this mass because, at the most, everyone or almost everyone doesn’t take cinema seriously…
JE: I agree. But I defined my position as utopian from the start. I don’t know where I’ll go, but I know where I am. Whatever the price of my attitude, as there’s a financial problem – spend money making films and keep them without getting anything back – this position is, for me, the only one possible, and not even from a moral point of view, it’s my only chance of succeeding at something. I don’t have a choice. If I show it, I won’t earn more money and the film will be like dead, ineffective, whether or not it is liked. I want out. One of my films, Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus, was liked, according to what I could read and hear in film clubs and theaters where it was shown. The release of my films in theaters or underground theaters has cost me money. I don’t want to talk about money, but, still, you have to…
Absolutely. When you talk about cinema, you have to talk about money…
JE: You have to talk about that only. Okay. I’ve always been glad people like Le Père Noël. I said to myself, “Here, I didn’t do it for nothing, I tried expressing something and people understood it.” So, Le Père Noël was liked by certain teenagers, which really pleased me. Besides, this film was conceived from my own memories, I felt very alone, an adolescent, and I wasn’t finding myself at the movies or elsewhere: so I made this film out of this frustration and I was very happy when 16 or 17 year olds, who maybe didn’t know exactly why, found something in it. And then, there were also people my age who remembered their adolescence and even the oldest people sometimes, but there was, in the first place, those who it spoke to now. And that was a huge joy for me… But I’m not a “Good Samaritan,” I didn’t make this film to help others, but to live. I was delighted my film was liked this much, but I still need to live.
And to use pretentious language, while admitting that I brought something, no one brought me anything in exchange, in any case, so it’s like I was robbed and suffocated at the same time. I gave something until I was suffocated, until I was destitute, until I had nothing more to say and nothing to do. And nothing in exchange. It’s was like vampirism. I sucked my own blood. My blood was pumped out and that’s all, I was left there. So, I reacted, I don’t want any more, so be it…
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12 of Jean Eustache’s 14 films
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La soirée (1963)
‘Unfinished short film by Jean Eustache (1961, or ’63), with Jean-André Fieschi, Chantal Simon, Paul Vecchiali and André S. Labarthe. 7 minutes – No sound.’ — Koyaanisqatsi
the entire film
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Les mauvaises fréquentations (1963)
‘Two friends who are not letting their lack of cash get in the way of their attempts to chat up the filles de Paris. Settling their gaze on one in particular, they begin to woo her in tandem, until a rebuff sparks revenge. Shot in typical nouvelle vague style with unknown actors, the most striking thing is how much energy it has considering it is, for the most part, a study of ennui. Eustache keeps his camera on the move for much of the film, walking with the three main characters as they wander the district looking for a place to grab a drink, the men operating as a ‘charm-offensive’ tag-team with the woman – at least in their minds.’ — Spectacle
Trailer
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Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (1966)
‘Made with leftover film given to him by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Eustache interwove the stock from the former director’s ‘Masculin/Feminin’ with his own 52-minute study of a group of young men in a small French province and their attempts to earn money and meet girls. Jean-Pierre Leaud (who starred in both films) is Daniel, the protagonist/narrator. As in the Doinel films by Truffaut, Leaud acts as a sort of alter ego figure for Eustache. Desperate to buy a stylish winter coat, Daniel accepts a local photographer’s offer to dress up as a sidewalk Santa Claus to pose for photos with passerby. Once his identity is concealed in costume, Daniel discovers, the town’s inhabitants treat him far differently; namely, attention from the girls who’d earlier brushed him off.’ — Karina/IMDb
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Le cochon (1970)
‘Le Cochon, which Eustache co-directed with Jean-Michel Barjol, records the slaughter and dismemberment of a pig and the process of transforming the dead animal into various food products. It’s Eustache’s most beautiful film because it’s his most curious and graceful. He and Barjol filmed the movie over the course of a single day, shooting footage separately and then editing together; their purpose was primarily to observe, to record. There’s a great affinity between this film and the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman-a similar directness (there are no voice-overs, explanatory titles, or interviews) and a similar luxurious freedom from preconception or interpretation. Wiseman, passionately and with an almost missionary desire, shows us things neglected by almost all other filmmakers-the banal, allegedly undramatic daily experiences of cops, teachers, welfare workers, hospital workers, judges, soldiers, and so on (experiences that of course prove to be almost ridiculouslydramatic and full of interest). The same attitude radiates from every moment of Le Cochon – the delight of making a faithful record of an experience, both the experience of the filmmakers over the course of one day and the daily experience of the farmers. The movie begins with the slaughter of the pig, a wrenching thing to witness-but instead of passing judgement on the farmers, it opens out into something much more generous and understanding, a portrait of a way of life, an appreciation of physical work, of daily toil, of the process of transforming one thing into another.’ — Senses of Cinema
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Numéro zéro (1971)
‘Almost the entire hour and three-quarters of Jean Eustache’s 1971 film Numéro Zéro is filled with the director’s interview of his grandmother Odette Robert on Feb. 12th of that year. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production—the director himself is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call from a foreign firm that wants to distribute one of his early short films. Odette Robert had come from her home in the provinces to live with Eustache in Paris and help care for his son Boris (who is seen, at the beginning of the film, helping guide her through the streets of Paris—she had recently had eye operations and had to wear dark lenses, including on-camera). In the light of Numéro Zéro, Eustache seems like something of a cinematic archeologist, who looks into and through the images of his times to extract the living history in a desperate attempt to confront, honor, and exorcise it—and perhaps even to revive it, to the extent that, even in its agonies, he acknowledges the unlikeliness that life would ever be so full again.’ — The New Yorker
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The Mother and the Whore (1973)
‘The Mother and the Whore is considered Eustache’s masterpiece, and was called the best film of the 1970s by Cahiers du cinéma. It won the Grand Prix of the Jury and the FIPRESCI prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. The film created a scandal at the Cannes Film Festival, as many critics saw the film as immoral and obscene or, in the words of the broadsheet Le Figaro, “an insult to the nation”, while Télé-7-Jours called it a “monument of boredom and a Himalaya of pretension”. After gaining little public recognition despite receiving praise throughout the years from critics and directors, such as François Truffaut and other members of the French New Wave, Eustache became an overnight success and internationally famous after the film’s Cannes premiere. He soon financed his next film. The critic Dan Yakir said that the film was “a rare instance in French cinema where the battle of the sexes is portrayed not from the male point of view alone”. James Monaco called it, “one of the most significant French films of the 1970s”. Jean-Louise Berthomé said, “I am not sure that La mama et la putain, with its romances of a poor young man of 1972, doesn’t say something new.” Pauline Kael praised the film, saying it reminded her of John Cassavetes in its ability “to put raw truth on the screen – including the boring and the trivial”. The film’s reputation increased over time. In 1982 the literary magazine, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the film by publishing a series of articles on it.’ — collaged
Trailer
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Mes Petites Amoureuses (1974)
‘Eustache told Luc Moullet he wanted Mes petites amoureuses “to reconstruct [my] childhood: every wall section, every tree, every light pole.” But the film’s actual relationship with nostalgia is ambivalent. Much of it is a vision of adolescence-as-purgatory, with 12-year-old Daniel uprooted from his familiar, bucolic life with his grandmother to live in Narbonne with his mother (Caven) and her lover (that Eustache would become a trenchant critic of sexual permissiveness should be understandable—it apparently wrecked his childhood). The domestic existence he finds with her is an entombment; the “boyfriend” is a Spanish émigré farm laborer, José (Dionys Mascolo), who seems almost mummified by disappointment. Caven has a wet, waxen pallor and a mortician’s makeup job. The couple sit and tobacco-stain the gaudy wallpaper; the one time they leave the apartment together, they silently sit across the canal from the teeming life on the town’s main promenade and smoke. They’re afraid to be seen out: José’s divorce hasn’t been finalized, it’s explained. The film touches abstract, private feelings with in the most discreet of gestures: a pan over the reassuringly familiar objects on a mantelpiece; a first long train journey seen through dozed-off ellipses. The soft-edged, plein air cinematography—Néstor Almendros channeling Claude Lorrain—is crushingly picturesque.’ — Moving Image Source
Excerpt
Excerpt
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A Dirty Story (1977)
‘In this short film from Jean Eustache, a group of friends sit down and, with little prelude, listen to their friend (Michel Lonsdale) recite a story about when, as a young man, he discovered a peephole in the ladies toilet at a small cafe. He describes the etiquette surrounding this peephole for the resident perverts in the cafe, and relates how viewing female vaginas soon became his sole obsession, and, finally, how he overcame this obsession. His friends listen, discuss, and the movie ends. At least, the scripted portion does. Then we see the same story, with nearly identical dialogue, related by Jean Noel-Picq, for real. This second monologue is actually a documentary filming: the first monologue was actually filmed second, with professional actors this time. Naturally, hearing the exact same story twice in a row takes much of the edge off. At first, it’s a hilarious, oddly compelling story. The second time, we are subjected to it because, according to the introduction to the screening, Eustache wants to show that there’s no such thing as objective truth.’ — edwartell
Trailer
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The Virgin of Pessac 79 (1979)
‘Eleven years after the first La Rosière de Pessac, Jean Eustache filmed another documentary about his hometown’s annual coronation of a young woman of upstanding moral integrity. The differences between the ritual in 1968 and in 1979 are subtle yet telling: the selection process is slightly more fraught in ‘79 than in ‘68, while local leaders are more concerned with the current economic depression than wide-scale social upheaval. The ceremony also provides a stage on which progressive changes are made official, with a local order, the Fellows of Pleasant Pessac, inducting their first female member. Finally, this time around Eustache employs color photography to capture the ceremony, an appropriate choice given its verdant outdoor spring setting.’ — Janus Films
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Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch (1980)
‘C’est l’évocation qui fonctionne dans Le Jardin des Délices de Jérôme Bosch, confirmant l’importance qu’Eustache accorde à la parole. Mais, comme dans ses grands films, la parole se fait ici visuelle, picturale. Pour venir en appui des mots de Picq, il vient faire de fréquentes coupes sur le tableau lui-même, mais jamais pris dans son ensemble, plutôt abordé comme une sorte de chaos d’éléments étranges qui viennent presque heurter le calme du discours. Très belle idée d’avoir choisi un des tableaux les plus explosifs qui soient pour le charger d’une telle sérénité. Du coup, Bosch sort de ce cliché de punk du Moyen-Age auquel on le cantonne souvent : il devient un sage joyeux et concentré, élégant et finalement simple d’abord. Ce petit film qui ne paye pas de mine rend au final un hommage vibrant et subtilement intelligent à la peinture dans toute sa force d’évocation.’ — shangols
the entire film
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Offre d’emploi (1980)
‘Voilà le dernier film de Jean Eustache, celui qu’il a réalisé juste avant de se faire sauter le carafon, et c’est vrai que quand on le regarde on a quelques tendances suicidaires qui jaillissent. Dans la lignée d’Une sale Histoire, ce court-métrage pratique un humour tellement pince-sans-rire qu’il en devient privé d’humour, ce qui est remarquable. C’est juste de la colère, ou plutôt du désespoir, mais qui a encore le dernier sursaut de la critique politique. On suit le cheminement d’un homme qui postule pour un emploi, et Eustache dissèque soigneusement chaque étape de la chose : on souligne la petite annonce dans le journal, on a un premier entretien, on écrit la lettre de motivation, qui se retrouve entre les mains d’une graphologue, etc. Offre d’Emploi est assez mystérieux, sûrement trop court pour qu’Eustache parvienne à aller au bout de la critique acerbe qu’on sent poindre. Visiblement le projet est de démonter la déshumanisation complète des rapports entre offre et demande dans le monde de l’entreprise. A force de scruter avec des méthodes artificielles la psychologie des demandeurs, le processus devient monstrueux, privé d’affect. Le dernier plan, montrant un premier de la classe vanter les mérites de l’analyse sémantique des entretiens d’embauche, fait froid dans le dos. Le monde décrit ici est glacial, totalement désabusé, et Eustache met bien le doigt sur la monstruosité des rapports professionnels si aboutie aujourd’hui. La mise en scène est sèche mais inspirée (alternance de gros plans qui enferment les personnages chacun dans leur univers, un magnifique travelling lattéral lors du premier rendez-vous qui dévoile subtilement le malheur de ces chômeurs en attente), le ricanement est omniprésent, mais on aurait aimé que pour son adieu au monde, Eustache ait la possibilité d’aller plus loin, de montrer cet engrenage de dément jusqu’à son aboutissement.’ — shangols
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Les Photos d’Alix (1980)
‘Alix leafs through her photo album with a friend. She shows him the pictures and tells how and when they were taken. Gradually her comment becomes less realistic and her descriptions take on a more poetic and imaginative character. Eventually her comment bears no relationship anymore to the photographs. Les photos d’alix is a cinematic essay, with a light-hearted starting point, enabling director Jean Eustache to examine the way we represent reality. Photos and film may be able to capture reality, but reality does not have real meaning until the artist gives his interpretation of it. For Eustache the relationship between reality and its representation is the starting point for his total oeuvre. Therefore, the traditional dividing line between documentary truth and fiction is not really interesting to him. But as he was backed up by a positive response to his works he was never forced to make any concessions in order to make his feature films less ‘real’ or his documentaries less playful. Les photos d’alix was his last film. Eustache committed suicide in 1981.’ — IDFA
*
p.s. Hey. ** Malik, Hi. Right. Yeah, performing shouldn’t interfere with your writing, I can’t imagine. If anything they should feed each other interestingly. Exciting! xo. ** Mark Timothy Hayward, Well, hey there! I didn’t know about it either until Ben reared its mysterious head. You good? ** julian, Hi. Yeah, the Chicago thing will happen in late-mid September. Awesome if you can come. I have exactly your dream, or a dream in the exact same camp. My long time dream is to buy dark rides from traveling carnivals and old fashioned amusement parks and create a small town where every building would be a dark ride — private homes, city hall, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, etc. People could add things to the rides’ interiors — beds, tables and chairs, shelving, etc. but they would still be functioning dark rides, and tourists could visit and ride all of them. That’s my hopeless dream. ** Misanthrope, One relent is a start anyway. But, yeah, find something easier and worthy of you, for sure. Any ideas? ** Carsten, The last hurrah of the excessive testosterone set. I’ve never seen that Deren. I think I’ve seen every other of her films. I know nothing of the topic so it might be a gateway or something? ** Steve, Wait, so your new episode isn’t up? The link seems to work. I’m going to pass it along just in case. Everyone, Here’s Steve. ‘Listen’ up and get your fingertips angled accordingly. ‘The July 27th episode of “Radio Not Radio” is now up. Tune in for children improvising a lullaby on toy percussion, a song performed with human bones and skulls, gamelan, Ukrainian punk and Larry Levan remixes!’ Seriously, about the censorship thing? What is going on with the UK right now? They seem to be trying very hard to start some new Victorian Age or something. Were they willing to move your slot? ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you, sir! It seems to have reached far and wide. Oh, wow, about his son. How curious. ** Justin D, It’s a list addition for me too. Yeah, take the compliment, and I’ll remember not to hug you too affectionately (i.e. your teeth -> my throat) whence we eventually meet. ‘News from Home’ is beautiful, right? Chantal’s last triumph. ** Justin D, Nice Sontag quote, and interestingly not immediately Sontag-like in some way. Thanks, pal. ** politekid, Hey, O. Did he have a moment? In my neck of the woods, it feels like he’s been kind of forgotten. The UK porn thing … what the fuck. This might be truly neanderthal of me to say but using shame to control people seems so British to me somehow. Well, glad the blog has evaded the powers that be over there, but the slaves will be here in a couple of days, and I guess that’s when we’ll find out for sure. Awesome about the performance. No, I don’t know Crossness, but I’ll look into it. Whoa, now there’s a coincidence for you: Eustache -> Eustache! I can watch your performance. Holy moly, and I will when I’m freed of here. Everyone, Polite Kid is also Oscar Nearly, and Oscar Nearly is a brilliant writer/artist, and a recent performance he devised has occurred in the UK, and there’s a video of the piece, and you (and I) can watch it, and you so should! Go here. So cool! And about the ghost story. A perfect subject for you somehow even if I can explain why I think that. Great! I’m just in the world of getting our film out. It’s a very consuming job, I must say. I’m good though. We got rejected by the London film festival, no surprise, so we need to figure something out re: showing it there. We’re just so swamped, but we’re on it. Big up! ** HaRpEr //, Yeah, definitely chase the extant writing spurt as hard you can. I was in one recently when working on the script, and it was a heady, very upswinging headspace. I haven’t read that Peter Weiss: interesting. I’ll look into it. I love ‘Zero For Conduct’. Vigo’s best, I think. Comparing it and its offshoot ‘If’ is very interesting. ** chris dankland, Hey, Chris! I was hoping you’d find out that I raised your thing from the relative dead. So good to see you. People saw the post and were asking about you. ‘Room Temperature’ is gradually making its way out into the world. So far so good. And thanks a ton for hosting the related blab with Skelley. So appreciated. Paris is very nice. We’re quite freakishly hardly getting a summer here. Apart from two or ultra-hot days, it’s like April here. Weird and wonderful. I miss talking with you too, my buddy. Please do hang out whenever you have the inspiration and time. Biggest hugs for now. ** Alice, Hello there to you, Alice. My weekend was okay. Saw friends. Started trying to answer very piled-up emails. The Tour de France passed right by my building so my whole neighborhood was blocked off like a war zone. That was interesting. My guess is you’re radiating things that potential friends will sense without you even knowing it. The things one doesn’t know about oneself are legion despite one’s best efforts to fully self-identify. ‘Funeral Rites’, my favorite Genet, so I say go for it. Yes, I actually interviewed Jarman in person one time akin to the release of ‘Wittgenstein’ so I not only saw it but studied it too, although I can barely remember it now, which means nothing re: its values. My week’s a bit hazy too. But not for long, right? ** Hugo, Hi. I’m fine, thank you, and you? Crazy that your mom not only read ‘I Wished’ but didn’t reject it offhand. Cool. Thank you for infecting her with it. Yeah, that new UK law is madness. Jesus. Like I said to Polite Kid, I think the upcoming slaves post will be the test. Yikes. I trust you’ve woken up sans frustration. ** Steeqhen, I used to have a DS ages ago. I guess I still do in the back of a closet somewhere. Yesterday was Zac’s birthday and he got a Switch 2 as a present. So I think he’s now headlong into the new Donkey Kong. I would play a Wizard of Oz game in a heartbeat. I even own a Wizard of Oz pop-up book. It’s good. ** Nicholas., Well, now you sort of are a character even if I’m not constructing you myself, which is probably ideal. Uh, there have been zines with beaucoup sex stories in them but nothing as suave and focused as STH. Oh, I never think that newer people are missing out on anything by being newer. I always things are getting better and more interesting. So, I don’t think new people are missing anything, really, and they can look over the detritus of past cultural moments with their own eyes and even, if they’re lucky, hands if they really want to know. Nostalgia is one of my biggest enemies, and if you manage to rid yourself of nostalgia, everything is just out-of-date evidence that either maintains a certain power or doesn’t. That’s my theory. Haven’t seen ‘Superman’, no. It’ll probably be a plane movie. I usually save big movies to use as time passers on plane flights. I do hear it’s charming though. ** Okay. If you don’t know the films of Jean Eustache, here’s your chance. They’re worth your time, not that I know what’s worth your time, I know. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
I’ve heard back from the station manager, and he moved my show to midnight on Sundays. (That would be 7-9 PM Saturday evening, EST.) He told me that in the UK, radio stations can lose their broadcast license for playing music with explicit lyrics before 9 PM. (The FCC hasn’t fined a station for this in more than a decade, but much the same rules are in place in the U.S.) This worked out better than I expected. My latest show is indeed available at the Mixcloud link I posted, but it did not air on the radio station.
What could go wrong with people submitting their photo IDs and the data on them to a porn site? Surely, this info will never get hacked! /s
Thanks for using my translation of Daney’s obituary. The arrival of Eustache’s entire filmography on the Criterion Channel was a real event. Michael Sicinski wrote an excellent article for Cinema Scope magazine arguing that Eustache was basically an experimental documentarian.
Hey Dennis,
Ahhh tell Zac I said happy birthday (even though I’ve never actually met him haha). That new Donkey Kong is one of the main reasons I want the Switch 2; I have such a fondness for DK, and what I’ve seen of the game — it being a destructible Mario Odyssey — is right up my alley.
I think you told me about that Wizard of Oz pop-up book before. I remember because I thought that it was so cool and something I would be obsessed with. I’m sure I told you of my little task of reading/exploring (rather than ‘consuming’, I hate that word along with content) every Wizard of Oz book, game, and adaptation. I’m gonna take some notes down once I play through enough of this Oz DS game. I saw another Wizard of Oz game for the 3DS, and I’m gonna find whatever else is out there. The DS one I’m playing is honestly such a smart idea; each character of Dorothy’s party is also a part of your RPG ‘party’. I think my dream Wizard of Oz game would be some ‘open-world’ (to an extent) game that plays like Skyrim or Fallout, where you enter the world and can decide if you want to support Glinda the Good Witch, The Wicked Witch, work under Oz, or perhaps just live off in one of the small communities on the outskirts.
I have a few DS’. My white DS Lite from 2006/2007, which is broken at the hinge and a sickly, gross white colour. My Mario limited edition DSi XL which I got once my DS was practically just a block. And my red 3DS from 2013. Unfortunately never got the 3DS early enough to get the free GBA games they gave to people who ended up paying the price before the price drop. And I never upgraded to a ‘New’ 3DS with amiibo functionality and a faster hardware. Still, I’m happy with my modded 3DS, which is basically the best portable console around and can run most games that should be played on a portable.
The UK porn thing has ‘kind of’ affected me, but I think it’s instead the EU age verification feature on websites like Twitter. Can’t look at Twitter porn which was normally my go-to whenever I wanted to look at porn, but maybe it’s for the best as I don’t like looking at Twitter. This whole movement seems to have come out of nowhere; I remember there being this porn game on steam about rape-play, which got removed, but there’s this group that have basically gotten hundreds of adult games removed from Steam and now itch.io. I could kind of understand the ban on that rape-play game, or more specifically Steam not wanting to host the game and removing it from their store, but this larger ban is very puritanical and obscene. It’s a weird time we live in, if there’s a future, I’m sure the 2020s will be looked back on in a very confused way and derided for being such a backwards time. Or we’ll be living in an AI neo-fuedal dystopia that started in the 2020s!
Got a medical card which means I can get my meds and any other prescriptions for free, which saves me about €80+ a month. The application process was a hellish experience — it took me about 2 years to finally get it as i gave up for a year. But I have it now, which is great!
hi dennis!
thanks for the follow on instagram!
i agree there are a lot of cool recent trans authors. the two that spring to mind for me are andrea long chu and johanna hedva (tho i’m sure there are others i can’t remember or am not aware of).
speaking of hedva, i recently finished ‘your love is not good’. fantastic book. a real page turner and very relatable in regards to its views on love/desire/art etc. and the suffering that they all cause. i really relate to that as someone who finds art/creativity an incredibly painful and taxing enterprise, yet still for some reason feels compelled to do it. my description of myself on my various webpages is always “i’m an artist (who wishes they weren’t one)”.
there definitely are cool queers around today (including in the literary scene). i also agree that queer spaces and scenes are a lot more diverse nowadays.
while i’m generally a very nihilistic/pessimistic person (i’m a terre thaemlitz and lee edelman kinda queer), i’m still interested to see what possibilities there are and where they go. if something good comes of them then great! and if they don’t then so be it.
Dennis, I’ve been looking, but there’s not that much out there in terms of comparable pay. We do get paid well here. Most jobs in the same salary range are quite specialized and required years of experience in those fields as well as education I just don’t possess. So I’m looking at a couple things. On the side, two of my coworkers and I are looking at starting our own proofreading/editing business. I’m still looking into the publishing business. On top of that, I’m looking into getting certified as a personal trainer eventually and maybe doing that. I am a bit of gym rat and I’d enjoy that, especially if it’s close by. Could always do my own personal training business, too.
I’ll keep looking, though. The first two things would be a labors of love and wouldn’t bring in any money right away. It would take a while.
Alex’s birthday is Wednesday, so that should be fun. I got him a couple things, and he’ll be going to his parents’ that day. We’ll do something here Thursday evening.
Hii Dennis!!! The UK porn thing is so crazy, I had no clue that was planned. My bf has a theory that it’s to stop people from the UK from engaging with politics (by hiding war footage content online), but who knows – to me, this seems like it’s going to get every single politically disengaged person up in arms, so I can’t imagine it lasting more than a week. I am also 99% sure it won’t affect your blog tomorrow, I think it’s only for sites that exclusively have porn – streaming sites with movies that have unsimulated sex haven’t been shut off, so I think you’ll probably be put in that category? I also know a few fetish sites are still up, at least the ones that don’t have nudity or sex, so I think they are floundering a little in terms of defining “porn”. It’s kind of fun from the outside though – reading Blue of Noon beforehand has made all the “social decay expressed through asexuality” very ironic and strange compared to the book.
Bataille has kind of been everywhere for me recently, for some reason. My boyfriend took me to a huge war-gaming event, and the acrid acrylic paint-stink combined with the sweat/BO smell really made me unsteady, in a sort of positive nausea-ish way. Plus most of the guys there were hugely my type, so I was sort of shocked by how intense my reaction was. I think I hadn’t really gotten his whole erotic abject/artificial fetish before, but that totally unlocked that aspect of his writing to me, which was kind of a revelation to me. Anyway, fingers crossed we can access you tomorrow. What an insane situation.
Will have to check out some of this Eustache material as he seems to be a man very much on my wavelength. Appreciate the availability of his films too.
My Mubi account is about to expire and last night I watched Irreversible for the 1st time. Had a big impact on my generation and is a major cultural touchstone, so I’m as well to be brought up to speed.
Dennis. I love your Dark Ride Town dream. It feels like a story. IF i had the time and your permission I’d steal the idea. xo Jack
As someone has mentioned, there is a section on the Criterion Channel focusing on Jean Eustache’s films. Remarkable work. I wasn’t aware of any issues in the UK regarding censorship. If that is true, it’s a real shame. It’s fascinating to sit here and realize everything is getting worse.
Which of these Eustache movies do I start with? The Mother and the Whore seems to be the most popular one on Letterboxd. I will definitely be in town when Room Temperature screens in Chicago. I look forward to being there! What kind of dark ride would you want to live in? Or would you rather just be the king of the dark ride town and still live elsewhere? I have all these drawings I made as a kid of different theme parks I wanted to build. There were two locations, “Wonderland” in San Diego and “Wonderworld” in New York. My parents still have the map of “Wonderworld New York” hanging on their fridge. Being the macabre kid that I was, the horror themed sections of the parks were always the largest and had the most attractions. If I were gonna open a theme park now, I think it would still have a generally sinister vibe, although it would be a lot more surreal, like if David Lynch were a Walt Disney-like figure and opened his own “Lynchland”. Now I’m wondering what a Twin Peaks or Inland Empire ride would be like, haha.
Was interested by your double reply to Justin D before I realised that one of the replies to them was a reply to me. Somewhat amusing. I’ve really just been struck by the idea of unbreakable but short and few strings connecting one to life from the opening paragraph. I really felt that. Maybe not so much with suicidal proclivity but just a general apathy or even distaste for life outside of these connections perhaps. So much to think about. Otherwise the punch still is just really well done. The punchee looks beautiful and angelic but the punch has clearly landed.
Yeah Eustache is not for me. Blame it on my allergy to indulgence & my deep lack of interest in love stories. I know, very subjective reasons, but a 3-hour-plus relationship study is something you’d pretty much have to force me to watch.
You’re right, if there’s one good thing about Woodstock 99 it’s that it torched & buried that chest-beating jock rock for good.
Re. Divine Horsemen: well Deren’s intent here was mainly ethnographic. What’s nice is that she had a deep respect for Haitian Vodou & even got personally involved in its practices. That respect is tangible. Ousmane Sembene once criticized Jean Rouch’s ethnography for “looking at us as if we were insects”. You get none of that from Deren. She clearly wanted to learn from these devotees & practitioners. So yeah, if you want a glimpse of the beauty of Vodou beyond the ugly, racist clichés of most (especially Hollywood) presentations, go for it. As a corrective to that misrepresentation it’s certainly valuable.
ayyyy eustache –> eustache!!! cosmic unconscious lattice of coincidence. these links are fantastic too, i can finally fill some gaps, thank you — which reminds me, an odd q but you seem the one to go to: do you have any recommendations for books or writing on the french new wave? esp. eustache, rivette, etc. i did a bit of a dive a few months ago but most of the stuff i found was, unsurprisingly, in french.
wrt ian hamilton finlay: maybe it was a very local moment, but i knew three different people doing dissertations on him and little sparta. idk, i guess there’s only room for one weird poetic gardener at a time and derek jarman’s got it right now.
wrt uk porn ban: ugh. you’re right, shame is the name of the game. also, as i discovered talking to my sister about it, it’s very easy for any criticism to be dismissed as one hoping that eight year olds will watch violent porn. it’s not like i thought the government would provide any security, it would just be nice to have a future where mildly transgressive art doesn’t require a tor browser to access. i think your blog will probably be fine though… or at least it will be a wordpress-wide problem rather than just you. i’d say it’s another reason to despise this country — cf. the film festival rejecting you, just gross shit behaviour, i curse them — but it’s _everywhere_ at the moment, as the other commentors are attesting.
a belated happy birthday to zac! & hope he’s enjoying his switch 2. i try to keep up but i rarely play games from later than like 2004, partly cos my laptop is too old and busted up to play anything more complex. plus at some point in my late teens, i developed some wicked motion sickness thing whenever i played first person/slick games for longer than an hour. i’m currently — though in minor spurts — playing an old super difficult strategy game called Desperados. a level will give you three people to command and you’ll have to get through a prison with fifty guards or so, and you fuck up constantly, so it feels less like big ok corral shootouts and more like you’re fiddling with a puzzle box really slowly. i’ve also been watching a lot of speedrun videos, which are endlessly interesting to me. i’m trying to incorporate speedrunning tactics into what i write, if that makes sense.
Hi there Dennis! Wow, that’s quite an interesting sight. I imagine that if I were near the streets of cyclists, it might be over-stimulating for me, haha. Regardless, I wasn’t aware that it was currently on. I’ve never really caught up with the Tour de France, but it’s something my family is interested in. I suppose you do have to be aware of it if you live very close to it.
I relate to what you observed from the social issues I mentioned. There are times when I’ll fall into a depressive spiral that can last either a few hours or potentially a couple of days. It’s tricky, but I struggle to view my circumstances with nuance and instead remain silent. In those moments, I picture myself as this continuous being that’s made of actions beyond my control. Of course, I have the agency, I doubt in those periods. Still, it does affect my confidence in expressing myself around others. Sometimes there’s a concern that I’m behaving “too esoterically”. It’s somewhat funny, given the factors I resonate with most within conversations.
Thankfully, I’ve worked past that mindset today. I spent a couple of hours with two of my friends today. There was a screening of Parasite in a local cinema, and we decided to watch that. It was the last film I watched in cinemas before the first COVID-19 lockdown occurred in the UK. The distance in time since then pushed the film to the back of my mind, so it was lovely to see it again. I quite like it, though I have some conflicts about how it concludes its central ideas. Regardless, one of my friends was ecstatic just to be able to engage in a discussion about a film we’d watched together. That’s the same friend who offered me her clothes. I’m glad I can help encourage that excitement. It helped heal some of the doubts I was facing the previous day.
That’s wonderful to hear that you had that interaction with Jarman. I think it was last year that I visited the Tate in London and observed some of the pieces they presented, made by him. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen them, but they were these works that utilised figurines to comment upon the many instabilities during the Thatcher era. They struck me, and it was that which encouraged me to start watching his films.
I have my first work shift in a while tomorrow. Afterwards, I’m going to screen a film for some friends within a group chat I’m in. This time I’m going with Gregg Araki’s Splendor, which I love but I find is hardly discussed even in circles that embrace his work. Doesn’t help that it isn’t very easy to access. Thankfully, I have a copy, so all should be good.
I hope things become fruitful for you as the week progresses. Take care!
I love Eustache! I think I generally favour the second gen Nouvelle Vague directors over the first, and even of the first gen, I think the 70s was when Godard particularly was making his best work.
I suppose I would say ‘The Mother and the Whore’ is my favourite, though ‘My Little Loves’ is another one of my all time favourites in general. In my eyes it’s not a very nostalgic film, though it does seem that way on paper. Do you like that one? I’ve also been meaning to see ‘A Dirty Story’. I’m intrigued about ‘Les Photos d’Alix’ too after reading this. Thanks!
As far as the UK porn ban is concerned, I believe that what’s happening is that you need to put your ID in to verify your age when visiting specific sites, but a vpn can bypass that. The current government is so concerned with moral grandstanding and pandering to the worst people, it’s so strange.
I think the reason for the ban is the popularity of that show ‘Adolescence’ about a kid who becomes radicalised online, and ever since its release parliament have been talking about how great it is and how kids shouldn’t have access to the internet, since that’s the obvious message of the show. It became a thing that they can latch onto to avoid doing the things they actually should be doing. If I didn’t have access to certain things on the internet as a kid I don’t think I would have been able to discover certain directors and writers and so on. I think queer kids will definitely suffer from this. I know this is probably a weird hill to die on seeing as it doesn’t affect me, but I think that all this will do is re-inforce taboos for the next generation. There’s also the theory that the whole thing is actually about surveillance and the id thing being used to track who’s looking at what, but that’s another thing.
Hey Dennis.
Well, I woke up less confused because I stayed up most of the night. Couldn’t sleep *AT ALL*, this usually happens cuz I have work in the morning, and I can never fit myself into something personable without a lot of worrying beforehand. Didn’t help that I couldn’t find anyone to talk to, or have the means to talk to anyone. I briefly considered deleting ten or so pages from my novel, but then held off on the idea. I think I would be willing to send it to you now. I think I’m distanced enough from it to not be so protective about it.
When I finally slept and woke up, I found a bunch of messages from a friend of mine in North Carolina asking me for advice because they were having some kind of depressing mystical experience from reading “Thomas the Obscure.” – I won’t share the full message, but I will share some quotes that give you an idea:
This book is so depressing
[06:30]
I keep reading and it’s getting more tragic
I stopped at ~60th page
[06:58]
Its becoming unbearable
I don’t know dude, all dis this metaphysical BS is too much for me, I’m a simple person, i live once!
They bother me at night, they seem so alive to me…
I don’t know what they meant by that last part because I made them change the subject since it seemed to be upsetting them in ways I can’t share here. Something was wrong with them, and they don’t seem eager to explain further to me now that they’re over it. This is all very strange. I finally slept a little and went to work in a kind of daze, just kinda wandering around a bit. Wrote a little in my notebook but didn’t do too much otherwise. Had a lot of British kids’ literature, miserable, moldy stuff, but was charming to flick through it all. I then had a nap back at home. I feel weird now writing this, but it’ll pass.
Belated happy birthday to Zac, hope he enjoys the new Donkey Kong game, I hear it’s great. I wish Rare still made actual games but o well. I hope yr own work is going well, and for the record, you haven’t fully infected my mum yet, she says she probably won’t like yr other work. (“It seems a bit much.”) — Really, I just feel kinda disoriented and confused today, but I end up always spurting out some work I can use later, which makes it feel useful I suppose.
Maybe I need to hold off on recommending books to people. Hope you aren’t too bogged down, I feel like I’m very easily overwhelmed by everything in comparison to everyone around me. I think. BTW, that clip from Mes Petites Amoureuses reminded me of the time I spent an hour walking in the Dutch countryside telling my friends a long story about Jeffrey Dahmer, I dunno, just a memory I didn’t know I cherished. I try not to replay memories too much; I feel like they can get overexposed until they mean nothing. Maybe that’s just me, though. Everything nostalgic to me becomes unpleasant if it stays for too long. I keep my distance from myself there.
idk what this is about, but I can’t be bothered to edit this paragraph further. Really hoping you have the loveliest Tuesday, even though Tuesdays are usually mediocre.
Peace.
Hey, Dennis! Maybe I need to give ‘The Mother and the Whore’ another viewing, as it kind of left me cold. I really like ‘My Little Loves’, though. I think you’ve mentioned that you’re anti-nostalgia, but have you ever given any thought to exploring nostalgia in a sort of an abstract/non-conventional way (for a film, I’m thinking)? I feel such a beautiful nostalgic warmth in your writing from ‘Flunker’ (From Here On), and in ‘I Wished’ (the chapter name escapes me, but it’s the night you met George at the school dance). Seeing that translated on screen just sounds so lush. As others have mentioned, Criterion Channel has a lot of Eustache’s films, so I will definitely add them to my watch-list. Which one is your favorite?
Hi I hope your weekend was great, the Primus concert was great, some guy passed out in the pit but it was like 90°. I am eating a fig bread right now very good. It’s very amusing imagining you impatiently tapping your fingers waiting for a 60 second rice to cook. You must be the person who elusively plucks the ingredients while cooking behind someone’s back?. Thanks for being kind even though It could possibly be hard to when very busy and uncertain and in this unique space. Although I think I had a breakthrough the other day with a close aquintance and their friends who were very kind. Drag show of all places. Alot of the frustration comes from the daily anxiety of activity. Just doing things is so crushing and exhausting, hard to explain without being too indepth Maybe I should pick up smoking again it does help.
I like this post and it’s very interesting that you watched La Cochon. There is a chance I asked you some very distance time ago this exact question but do you get queazy around animal deaths and meat preparation visuals in movies/ in general? The primus concert has a couple but t it wasn’t too drastic enough to be a bit sick. It’s an interesting to be vegetarian but also morbidly interest in the concept of slaughter factories and farms enough to want to make a short story about it(me! I’m doing this) and of course disease and parasites
I might watch that documentary if I feel like watching a horror movie. The other stuff seems cool i like. I’m going to check this out have a good week I have a job interview tomorrow so I’ll probably do great and make money soon so I can buy a keyboard and fix my laptop.✌️
Hi Dennis!! How are you? I haven’t been around in a while. Haven’t been doing anything particularly different, just been going to readings and writing things and so forth. Regular stuff.
I think last time we talked (corresponded?) you were going to an amusement park. Do you know which one I’m talking about? Do you go to amusement parks all of the time? Anyways, I’d like to know what you thought, because I’ve been idly wondering for a while but not commenting.
Best!
thank u for the introduction to eustache ! im gonna watch the mother & the whore this weekend.
i tried to find an english translation of the article that called the movie ‘an insult to the nation’ but i couldn’t find it. what do u think most of the controversy over the movie was about, at the time? like sex stuff? i feel like when french ppl hate a movie they hate it really hard.
there are so many french movies i want to see !
the interview should be up on xray by early morning, arizona time. thanks to u & zac over & over & over for yr time, it made for very interesting reading. i can’t wait to see Room Temperature ! the picture of the painted background of the castle with the skull floating in the dark window looks so cool…
have a good morning 🙂