Leos Carax Day *

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘Leos Carax has ended up with one of the most blighted careers in movies. Seventeen years since his first feature, he has managed just three more films. Carax, who turns 40 in November, was hailed as the new Godard on the strength of his first two films, Boy Meets Girl (1983) and Mauvais Sang (1986). But then, in 1988, he hubristically embarked on Les Amants du Pont Neuf, building a vast Paris set in a field near Montpellier. Rumored to have cost 160 million French francs, the ecstatic romantic drama was a critical and commercial disaster that put Carax out of action for most of the ’90s. It remains an unsung classic—a paean to pure cinema that quotes Chaplin’s City Lights and Vigo’s L’Atalante (though Carax denied the latter’s influence).

‘In contrast, his most recent film Pola X is a threnody of self-pitying, self-destructive romanticism culled from Herman Melville’s corrosive 1852 Gothic satire, Pierre, in which an idealistic young writer becomes besotted with a woman claiming to be his sister. Guillaume Depardieu plays the château-dwelling literary star who takes up with Isabelle, a vagrant who says they have the same father. Played by the heavy-lidded Katerina Golubeva, she’s a refugee from the war in Bosnia and, perhaps, a ghost. He takes her to Paris, where brother and sister have sex and are consumed by the shadows of the past.

‘Even though Leos Carax’s work shows remarkable erudition and an excessive use of intertextuality, his are not films only for movie fans. References and quotes emerge compulsively. He quotes, not intellectually, but emotionally. He does not want us to think about the reference but evoke the feeling emerging from it. The quote in Carax is not between brackets, but articulated inside the sentence, without commas, without full stops, integrated without distorting the narration. He manages to articulate intertextuality in a way that appeals not to movie fans’ memory, but to human emotion.

‘Carax proposes a dispersed cinema, instead of a strictly directed one – to direct is inevitable, the issue is to not do it in a straight line. Especially in Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais sang, he opens up possible worlds to be inhabited for a limited time, with no need for a full understanding of whatever happens, as in life itself. It is not about avoiding any interpretation at all, it is about not trying to uncover the key, to reach the truth of the work. Interpretation is a game, not a tool for disentangling. It is not about taming the film, it must be free and independent. Poetry seeks the senses before it makes sense.’ — collaged from texts by Graham Fuller & Christian Checa Bañuz

 

____
Stills

 

_____
Further

Leos Carax @ Senses of Cinema
Leos Carax Discussion Forum
The Fall and Rise of Leos Carax
Leos Carax @ film reference
Leos Carax interviewed @ Artificial Eye
The Leos Carax Collection (DVD)
mp3: How to pronounce Leos Carax in French
‘Quelqu’un m’a dit’
Leos Carax @ IMDB

 

_____
Extras

Hommage à Léos Carax

Leos Carax interviewed by Philippe Garrel (1989)

Epstein, Cocteau, Godard… by Leos Carax

Screen and Surface, Soft and Hard: The Cinema of Leos Carax (II)

Leos Carax, The Opening Conversation with

 

_______
Interview
from Indiewire

 

This is your first feature in 13 years and certainly your most ambitious work. How did you expect people would receive “Holy Motors” when it first premiered at Cannes?

The film was imagined very quickly. I thought it would be really difficult, that it would be too strange for people.

Were you nervous?

No. I just thought, “There’s really nothing I can do right now.”

It’s no secret that you aren’t crazy about doing interviews and especially loathe being asked to interpret your work. But “Holy Motors” is a movie that forces people to try to understand it.

I mostly don’t submit to talking about my work because I would like another talk about real life. I don’t think men were meant to be interviewed.

But men have been talking about art ever since they created it.

Men talk about art, and artists make art, but should artists talk?

How did you get around the need to explain “Holy Motors” when you were in earlier conversations about the movie with investors and producers?

I started making films when I was young, and at the time it was a compete bluff. I had never made a movie. I had studied films but I had never been on the set of one. When I made my first film, I had hardly ever seen a camera before, and I was a young man when I arrived in Paris from the suburbs. At the time, I didn’t talk much. I was very shy, so the bluff served me. I was telling people that I had no money, and that I knew how to make films, but I had no proof. I was lucky to find people who believed in me. Very few filmmakers are good at talking about their work, very few artists are good at talking about their work.

Still, it’s impossible not to feel the need to interpret “Holy Motors” and get the sense that it’s being fueled by big ideas. When you watch it, are there ideas that speak to you that you feel are worthy of analysis?

I spent so little time imagining the film. The whole thing took two weeks. It was a race. I didn’t watch my dailies, I didn’t read exactly what I was doing. I only went over it at the editing table. Although I don’t make films for anybody, I do make films, therefore I do make them for someone: I make them for the dead. But then I show them to living people that I start to think about while I’m editing — who’ll watch them? So I start to get more reflexive at the editing table. Why did I imagine this science-fiction word? I did invent a genre that doesn’t exist. But I don’t have the real answers.

But what does the totality of the film say to you?

In this world I invented, it’s a way of telling the experience of a life without using a classical narrative, without using flashbacks. It’s trying to have the whole range of human experience in a day.

You mean the notion of life being a succession of different attitudes and tones. The film also deals with virtual reality in several ways. In the Internet era, identity has slippery definition.

I’ve always been interested in invisible worlds, and I like to visit digital worlds, you know, any world that’s imposed on us. I’m not against the virtual world, it’s fascinating, but I don’t like the way they try to impose it on us. It’s a thing imposed by rich countries. They want a new experience, they want action, they want to be responsible for our lives and be responsible for what we do, and to encourage every aspect in the republic, even for kids still in school. It’s a big political system. I have nephews who are between the ages of 12 and 25 years old. They have trouble experiencing life. The virtual world is not the enemy. The pioneers invented a world they believed in, but the followers must follow that world whether they believe in it or not.

It’s interesting to hear you talk about the film as science fiction since I know you have an affinity for the genre. In a recent profile in the New York Times, you expressed an affinity for “Chronicle.”

I don’t know, I’m not a cinephile. I watched a lot of films when I was young.

What sci-fi films appealed to you then?

I like tragedies, whether they’re sci-fi or something else, but I can’t say I know much about any genre in particular. My second film, “Mauvais Sang,” was science fiction. With “Holy Motors,” the way I imagined it, I had to go play with genre a bit because it’s supposed to be a sci-fi world. It’s not a real job. This character is supposed to go from life to life traveling in a limousine. I didn’t want every life to be the same degree of reality. Some are more fantastic and others are more realistic.

Denis Lavant plays so many different types of characters in the film. How did you get him to provide the character types that correlated with the images you had in mind?

Well, I’ve worked with him for almost 30 years now, although we don’t know each other in real life. We’re not friends or anything. We don’t have dinner together. We don’t really talk. I explain to him where he’s going to walk, how he’s going to dress. Although the film has been imagined for Denis, I didn’t have to know too many things. I imagined the film for him, but there were two or three scenes where I thought he couldn’t really play the part.

Which scenes?

Probably the father-daughter scene and hotel scene with the dying man and his young niece. He became a greater actor while I wasn’t making my films. I don’t know what happened to him in real life or in his work or both that made him an actor who could play any part, but now he can. When he was younger he was great but he was mostly physical — like a dancer, a sculptor — but now he can portray very human emotions.

I enjoyed seeing the Merde character that you first brought to life in the “Tokyo!” anthology film. But in that film, the character was very specifically meant to represent a certain kind of monster in that society. Initially you said you wanted to make a sequel entitled “Merde in USA.” Instead, you put him in “Holy Motors.” What kind of symbolic representation does he have here?

The only part of “Holy Motors” that predated the project was the part with Merde. It was supposed to be the opening scene of “Merde in the USA.” It was supposed to be here in SoHo, but it didn’t happen, and I wanted to work with Kate Moss again.

That part of the film does look like SoHo.

Well, I was going to create a post-9/11 feature, with all the kind of fear and silliness of it, and all the regression we all went through, down to everyone who was turning backs on babies — whether the government, Bush or Sarkozy — and also the terrorists themselves, how they managed to make us afraid of it happening again. I think it’s the first character who I see as equal to Denis: All the films I made earlier where Denis was called Alex were kind of imposed on him. I imposed these characters on Denis because I did it conventionally with language and cultures, but here we shared this character.

What about the other characters in the film? What sort of symbolic value do they have?

The first one [I imagined] was actually not Merde. It was the older woman, because I pass these women in Paris every day. That was an issue when I made “Lovers on the Bridge” because I was young and I didn’t know anybody in Paris. These old women were cross-eyed and were wandering down the street. Now, when I pass these women, I feel so amazing that they’re still alive, and there are a few of them. They all dress the same and look the same. Some of them are really sick. It’s impossible to think that anyone could be more foreign than these women living in this city, and that’s all that’s left of their lives. I thought at first maybe I’ll do a documentary on them and how could I relate to them. But then I realized I would never make this documentary because I would never be able to finish it. Instead, I made it a complete fiction. I made her played by Denis, and I put my words into her mouth. That’s how it started, and then the rich banker came after that. The rich banker transforms into a beggar. That idea of transformation was invigorating. I wanted to make this movie for a long time because people can be amazing: Sometimes they’re morbid and erotic and they want to be seen differently on the outside, and there’s kind of a virtual world there. It’s a life for rent for a few hours. That’s how it started.

I also found the structure of the film to be very operatic. All of your films have a close relationship with music.

I hope to make a film one day that will be music. I wanted life in music, that is what I wanted here.

Hence the accordion sequence.

Yes. I think music is the most beautiful part of life, but music doesn’t like me…

As a once-aspiring guitarist, I can relate.

I was one, too!

So we all know that there’s a reference to Georges Franju’s “Eyes Without a Face” in the film when Édith Scob puts on the same mask she wears in that film. When people ask you about this reference point or others, you try to avoid talking about it. But why? It’s such an explicit reference.

I don’t see it as a film of references. I mean, with the mask, I put it at the end of the shot, but it felt right because of the way the film was going. Towards the end of the production I made this mask that she put on when she says, “I’m coming home,” but I almost regret it now, because people keep asking me about it. I knew the things I was going to do with Denis, like I knew I was gonna do the thing with the treadmill and the virtual background. But the mask was the only thing in my film that was really explicitly arbitrary.

I know at least one 11-year-old who has seen the film and understood it. If children can understand “Holy Motors,” maybe it isn’t as much about film history as some have suggested. What do you think?

That’s the only good thing about traveling with the film. The film still exists in space and time. The further I go from home or from people who are obviously going to go see it, especially in New York and festivals or in Paris or a few other rich cities, people get the film. Most people get it. Someone says it’s so simple a kid would understand it, so bring your kid. but that’s the way I feel about my films: They’re very simple. If you’re looking hard, you can get lost in my films. But kids don’t get lost.

What kind of movie could you possibly make after this one?

I would like to make a superhero film. It takes years to do the superhero thing. You know, this guy suddenly has superpowers and he’s all of a sudden fighting the world. What’s nice in “Chronicle” is that when they do discover their powers, and they fly, they fly for a long time. When you have Spiderman flying, there are like two seconds of a shot, and it costs hundreds of millions for this one shot in 3D.

So Leos Carax is making a superhero movie?

Maybe. I don’t know if that will happen. I would like to make it un-American, but that doesn’t mean it has to be French, either.

You’ve said before that you don’t consider yourself a filmmaker. Has “Holy Motors” changed that?

No. I really don’t. It’s hard to call myself a filmmaker.

 

_________
14 of Leos Carax’s 15 films

____________
Boy Meets Girl (1984)
‘The revelation of the 1984 Cannes festival was this first feature by 23-year-old Leos Carax. In its fervor, film sense, cutting humor, and strong autobiographical slant, it suggests the first films of the French New Wave (there’s something in the arrogant iconoclasm that specifically recalls Godard), yet this isn’t a derivative film. Carax demonstrates a very personal, subtly disorienting sense of space in his captivating black-and-white images, and the sound track has been constructed with an equally dense expressivity. The hero is a surly young outsider who has just been abandoned by his girlfriend; as he moves through a nocturnal Paris, his adolescent disillusionment is amplified into a cosmic cry of pain. The subject invites charges of narcissism and immaturity, but Carax’ formal control and distance keep the confessional element in a state of constant critical tension. ‘ — Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

Trailer

Excerpts

Excerpt

 

______________
Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) (1986)
‘The second film in his so-called Alex trilogy, Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang might be the most ecstatic entry in the French auteur’s sparse oeuvre. A movie brimming with giddy excess and hopeless romanticism, Mauvais Sang makes no apologies for privileging sentiment over sense. The improbable sci-fi plot is perfunctory pulp; it’s nothing more than an excuse to string together exhilarating bursts of movie-drunk moments. As in the other installments of the trilogy, Carax casts the remarkable Denis Lavant as his lead and alter ego, Alex (Carax’s given name). Young and impulsive, Alex is the quintessential Carax protagonist: a brooding and romantic obsessive searching restlessly for pure — and hence, fleeting — love. Paralleling this obsession is Carax’s own passion for cinema. If his whimsy and earnestness are redolent of silent film, his exploration of the expressive possibilities of the medium recalls the early French New Wave. The movie’s elliptical cutting, stylized mise-en-scיne, and sound-stage look cohere into a lyrical, pop-infused view of the world. Perhaps no scene encapsulates the movie’s spirit best than a rousing musical interlude. Carax’s tracking camera follows Alex as he staggers, limps, and finally breaks into a sprint on a deserted city street to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” Anticipating a similar musical epiphany in his next film, The Lovers on the Bridge, the scene also captures the liberating audacity of Carax’s cockeyed romanticism.’ — Elbert Ventura, AMG

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

____________
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)
‘The 1991 film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) was one of the most expensive cinema productions ever undertaken in France. Building on the success, and the themes, of his two highly acclaimed films, Leos Carax set out to make a grand cinematic opus that would complete his work on the subject of love. It was beset by myriad filming difficulties, delays and funding problems, and then it flopped at the box office – effectively derailing his career for many years. To look back at the film now, or to stumble across it without knowledge of the catalogue of disasters that beset the production, is to discover a very different film. The photography is beautiful, and there are moments of divine pleasure scattered loosely throughout the film, such as the stunning fireworks display, and the water-skiing on the Seine. It’s such a shame the film hasn’t received its due credit. It really is an eccentric, stylistic, avant garde masterpiece.’ — suite101.com

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

____________
Sans Titre (1997)
‘In 1997, for its fiftieth anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival asked director Leos Carax for a short film; a visual postcard addressed to the festival in which the director could give news of himself and of his current project, Pola X. This official explanation almost suggests some slight, vaguely conventional documentary-like film piece, in which the filmmaker could pay lip-service to the festival organisers and discuss some of the greater trials and tribulations involved in getting his project off the ground. Instead, Sans Titre (1997) is a film that not only works in its own right – drawing us in with an enigmatic story presented in an entirely visual way – but also complimenting the themes and ideas behind the underrated masterwork that is Pola X, in such a way as to make it entirely essential.’ — Shorts Bay

the entire film

 

____________
Pola X (1999)
‘With Pola X, a noisy epic swirl of breast-beating, hair-tearing angst and portentous symbolism, the 39- year-old director Léos Carax captures the dubious title of French cinema’s reigning mad romantic. This sometimes intoxicating, often infuriating film about the frenzied downward spiral of a naïve young writer in search of ultimate truth was adapted from Melville’s 1852 novel, Pierre, or the Ambiguities. Like the replica of the Pont Neuf that dominated Mr. Carax’s last film, the notoriously expensive and hyper-romantic Lovers on the Bridge, the warehouse is this movie’s coup de cinéma. With its yard guarded by howling black dogs straining at their leashes, the place suggests a giant, festering Pandora’s box that harbors all the emotional, spiritual and political ills of the world. In the heart of this structure, connected to the outside world by a narrow metal bridge, a gaunt, wild- eyed conductor leads an orchestra in an ear-splitting symphony of industrial rock by the cult music artist Scott Walker.’ — Janet Maslin, NYT

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

____________
My Last Minute (2006)
‘Carax was asked for a one minute film, by the Vienna Film Festival. The last minute in a man’s life.’ — collaged

the entire film

 

____________
Crystal, by New Order (2005)
‘Alternate video for the song Crystal by New Order done by Leos Carax. This was sent as a joke to the producers.’ — Spotnik

the entire film

 

____________
Merde (2008)
‘One of the strangest anthology films of recent memory, Tokyo! unites the distinctive visions of three individualistic filmmakers: Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho. Each short explores Japan’s central metropolis through surrealist plots and alienated characters. Needless to say, it’s not your average tourist video. Leos Carax: Merde is not about Tokyo. I have no fascination with Tokyo. When the producers proposed that I write something very fast to be shot in Tokyo, I said yes, just to get back to work. The story didn’t have anything to do with Tokyo. It could have been any big city in the world. It’s not a filmmaker’s project; it’s a producer’s project. I did use some elements from Japan—that it’s an island, being repressed, having almost no foreigners. It’s a very racist, conservative country. It’s all about regression. Merde [the troll character] is a child. The whole society around him is childish. I think this came from a time of fear — of terrorism, of war, and how we all regressed around that to a bunch of children in the dark.’ — NYPress

the entire film

 

_____________
w/ Kenneth Anger, Asia Argento, Jonathan Caouette, Abel Ferrara, Rinko Kikuchi, James Franco, Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noé, David Lynch, Jonas Mekas, Zhang Yuan, Taika Waititi, Chan Marshall, Charles Burnett, Mike Figgis, Larry Clark, Tadanobu Asano, Sergey Bodrov, Brian Butler, Niki Caro, Yung Chang, Michele Civetta, Joe Coleman, Zachary Croitoroo, Chris Graham, Florian Habicht, Terence Koh, Lou Ye, Marcus Griffin, Ryan McGinley, Rajan Mehta, Chris Milk, Grant Morrison, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Dee Poon, Matt Pyke, Carlos Reygadas, Lola Schnabel, Floria Sigismondi, Mote Sinabel, Arden Wohl 42 One Dream Rush (2010)
‘A film series sponsored by Beijing Film Studios in which 42 directors were commissioned to create 42-second short films dealing with and hailing from the world of dreams.’ — Filmmaker Magazine

the entire film

 

_____________
Holy Motors (2012)
‘Making movies is like playing a musical instrument—it helps to stay in practice. That’s why it’s such a wondrous surprise that Leos Carax’s new film, “Holy Motors” (which opens today at Film Forum and Film Society of Lincoln Center), seems at once so precise and so freewheeling, so exactingly conceived and yet so spontaneous. It’s the work of a filmmaker past fifty who hasn’t made a feature in thirteen years, and who at the start of the film, he dramatizes his own isolation and reëmergence in a scene that shows his hesitant, discreet return to a movie theatre. Despite or perhaps because of the passage of time, Carax has made a film of an extraordinarily youthful vigor. It’s all the more astonishing in that his subject is age, along with its inevitable frustration, degradation, disappointment, regret, and loss. It’s also a paean to a life in the cinema—not one devoid of sentimentality, but one in which the sentimentality is intensely and precisely motivated, like old war stories, by the price it exacts. It’s a movie that arises after the end of cinema, a phoenix of a new cinema. Few films have dramatized as wisely and as poignantly the art that, like the two reels at each end of the camera and the projector, gives with one hand and takes with the other. And few films give so harrowing a sense of staring death in the face and so exhilarating a sense of coming back to tell the tale with a self-deprecating whimsy.’ — Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

_________
Gradiva (2014)
‘Galerie Gradiva, a swanky, new Parisian gallery, hired Leos Carax to fashion a promotional riff on Boy Meets Girl ahead of its opening on May 28th. Shooting within the newly furbished space, Carax crafts a cutely subversive portrait of man and woman as nude model (NSFW?) and legendary sculpture. Fed up with his status as gallery poster boy, Rodin’s “The Thinker” airs his grievances to his partner, as Carax animates the bronze with both dialogue and camera movement. The miniature of Rodin’s masterwork is just one of many notable pieces in the gallery that features Dali, Picasso, Kandinsky, Matisse and so forth.’ — Filmmaker

the entire film

 

___________
Annette (2021)
‘With book and music by Ron and Russell Mael, Annette feels like the culmination of several unmade Sparks cinematic projects, blending the comic absurdity of Jacques Tati (in whose unrealised Confusion the brothers were once set to play TV executives) with the gothically inspired visual invention of Tim Burton (with whom they hoped to collaborate on an adaptation of the Japanese manga Mai, the Psychic Girl). Yet it’s hard to imagine any director other than the reliably unruly Leos Carax having the chutzpah to pull off such an audaciously bonkers project without postmodern mockery or sneering cynicism. Yes, Annette is an extravagantly ridiculous affair, a pop opera (like Ken Russell’s Tommy, with a touch of Julien Temple’s The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle), shot through with the wry humour that has always characterised the Mael brothers’ music. Yet at the heart of its swirling strangeness lies something of real truth and beauty that left me unexpectedly crying at the sight of a marionette levitating above a vast crowd, operatically warbling her fairytale lament.’ — Mark Kermode

Trailer

Excerpt

Behind the scenes

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, it’s so very sad about Shane MacGowan. A great artist with the richest heart. My ‘Heat Death’ is waiting for me across town. I simply must retrieve it. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s strange when you’ve had a song sort of battering your mind for a few days and then it’s gone and there’s just the silence of thinking. I’d like to spend some quality time with your love of yesterday. Okay, one last … Please be hungry, love. I’m an emotional person, G. ** Darbyy🐻🐻‍❄️🧸, Boop his nose? Uh, are you sure because, uh, … ? Okay, I will practice my booping and aiming skills just in case. Thank you, whew. Am I still interested in owning your elephant picture? Need you even ask? I’ve got a spot all picked out for it where I can train my little desk lamp on it like a spotlight. Elephants can’t throw up? That is news. I’m not going to try to prove you wrong, that’s for sure. I … think I’ve tried to do a vomit post before, but I think maybe there wasn’t enough stuff to do a decent one, yet … I’ll try again. I will. Could be the best post ever. I do still want to read your chapter yes, of course. And I’ll even try to read it in a timely manner, which isn’t easy for me to do, but I will try. So, yes! And thank you. ** Jack Skelley, Call me Dennisio. Hi, Jock! The first three New Pornographers are so catchy they should be classified as deadly weapons. Do I know that or any GbV song? You can’t be serious. I know it by heart. I could sing ‘Chicken Blows’ to you right this second if blogs had microphones and speakers. I have to and will go find and read your ‘Short Takes’. What a good idea. Very happy to confer with you about publishing stuff. Should we zoom or something? Say the word. Exciting! And also that you went with ‘Myth Lab’!That’s a billion selling title if there ever was one. Love, me. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. Showing something you wrote to a film lunatic sounds kind of terrifying. You’re a brave screenwriter. Cool, your list. Happy to see the two Ann Quins in there among other things and things I need to track down for myself. Everyone, Master of so many forms and styles Mr. Tosh Berman has put together a list of his favorite books that he’s read in 2023 (so far), and it behooves you and he to go scour the booty. Here. ** Steve Erickson, I’m so, so sorry, Steve. That sounds so hard. Man, all the strength. Yeah, I’m so very sorry to hear that. I hope Beyonce whirls you away for a couple of hours. She seems capable. Hugs and love, me. ** Sypha, Hi. I do like statistics, I don’t know why. Even when I was a little kid, I subscribed to Variety and Hollywood Reporter so I could keep up on the film stats. And I used to be a big baseball fan, and that’s a sport that’s all about stats. For instance. I even like the sound of that game your dad and brothers play, to the point where I might even spring it on my local chums. Funny thing, our brains, you know? ** ellie, Hi, ellie. Your mom was an architect? How interesting. I have a probably very romantic idea of architects and how interesting their minds must be. Were her building designs ever built? Were they curious and interesting buildings that she thought up? Sorry to hear it/she went bad. Religion, ugh. I’m really not religious. There were aspects of my mom’s wackiness that were fun before she became a psycho alcoholic when I was in my teens. Like she believed there was a ghost in form of a large Halloween pumpkin that appeared above her bed every night and dictated poetry to her which she would dutifully write down in hundreds of notebooks. (They were just awful, dumb poems, unfortunately). And she was always seeing UFOs everywhere all the time. Yeah, I’ve always thought that if I ever got a tattoo it would be something completely mysterious and confusing. But then I thought about how tired I would get of people asking what it meant. Our film problems aren’t solved exactly, but we’re feeling less hopeless and more determined and confident at least. Ha ha, that is a good phrase. Maybe if was rapped or sung? Have a great one! ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. Oh, your favorite Cronenberg? Okay, I will definitely find it. I think my fave is the possibly overly obvious ‘Videodrome’. I used to be fascinated by Emo, not the music but Emos themselves and their world. And I found this message board/site — I think it was called Emocore — that was dead but had been really active for years before it died. And I spent months looking thorough it starting at its early days when it was packed with Emos talking about cutting themselves and their horrible parents and being bullied and stuff to its end where there were just a handful of sad Emos desperately looking for the remaining few other people who hadn’t stopped being Emo because the trend was dead, and it was a super rich experience going through all of that. The interview was just a general interview for this site called Allium. It was nice. The guy who interviewed me was cool. And the class thing last night was very interesting, at least for me, hopefully for them. Yeah it is interesting when you finally hear or see something that was so hyped that you avoided it, and then it’s, like, yeah, okay, understood. I had kind of the same thing with Lana Del Rey. I avoided her, and then one day I was driving around in a car, and a friend started singing songs loudly to himself in the backseat, and I was, like, wow, did you write those songs, they’re cool. And he said they were Lana Del Rey songs. And thus I gave in. Surprises? Mm, I saw a really great art show yesterday that I did not expect to be great. The horrible person in charge of our film surprised me yesterday by being even more horrible than I had thought he could possibly be. So, good and bad surprises. What about you? Love, Dennis. ** Okay. The blog’s old Leos Carax Day was in bad shape with technological expirations galore not to mention being way out of date, so I fixed it up and updated it and hereby present to you again years later. See you tomorrow.