‘Steve Buscemi doesn’t loom into view. He’s not a looming kind of guy. On an overcast day in June, as I waited on the designated corner of Union Square to meet him for the first time, I called his assistant. “He’s late,” I said. “Where is he?” Buscemi, it turned out, was standing thirty feet away from me. Round-shouldered and wafer-thin, in a gray work shirt, black chinos, and a weathered denim jacket, with a baseball cap pulled tightly over his forehead, he was virtually invisible in the crowd.

‘Five feet nine and forty-seven years old, Buscemi could be almost anybody-or everybody. Give him some tattoos and a mane of shaggy hair, and he’s the squirt-gun-toting heavy-metal doofus in Airheads (1994); put him in a blue sequinned dress, a red pageboy wig, and high heels, and he’s the world-weary transvestite taxi-dancer in Somebody to Love (1994); slick back his hair and give him a pair of brown loafers, like the ones he wore as Tony Blundetto in The Sopranos, and he has the gaunt, retro lounge-lizard look of the director John Waters. (In fact, the likeness is so uncanny that Waters used Buscemi’s image on his Christmas card one year.)

‘Nothing about Buscemi’s physical presence suggests the poetic lineaments of masculine film glamour. He is pale, almost pallid-as if he’d been reared in a mushroom cellar. In a certain light, he can look cadaverous. His eyes are large and bulgy, with a hint of melancholy. When he smiles, his mouth displays a shantytown of uneven, uncapped teeth. And yet that unprepossessing ordinariness is what makes Buscemi captivating as a performer. It gives him the unmistakable stamp of the authentic, and it helps to explain his emergence over the past two decades as an icon of independent films. (Buscemi himself understands the value of his rumpled looks. When his dentist suggested fixing his teeth, he told her, “You’re going to kill my livelihood if you do that.”) “Steve is the little guy,” says the director Jim Jarmusch, who cast Buscemi in his 1989 film Mystery Train. “In the characters he plays and in his own life, he’s representing that part of us all that’s not on top of the world.”

‘Buscemi’s persona is understated, opaque, bewildered, ironical. “You seem a little stoned. What are you on?” someone says to his character in Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2000). He is in the hospital after having been betrayed, humiliated, and wrestled to the ground in a grocery store. “High on life,” he replies. “Steve’s a visitor in the world,” the director Alexandre Rockwell, who has worked with Buscemi on five films, said. “His body, his face-everything around him is whirling, but you always feel in Steve a stillness, almost a calm.” This stillness plays variously as anxiety, disconnection, and threat. Sometimes, a single character draws all three into a sort of trifecta of tension, like the silent hit man Mr. Shhh, in Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995). Buscemi’s look is deadbeat; his sense of humor is downbeat. He can play loss for laughs-in The Impostors (1998) he was Happy Franks, a suicidal cabaret singer sobbing his way through The Nearness of You — or he can play it for real.

‘All the characters whose stories Buscemi chooses to tell in his films share the same predicament: they are stuck in a purgatory from which they may or may not escape. The narratives compulsively return Buscemi to the unhappiness of his blue-collar youth; at the same time, they are a reminder of his triumph over it.’ — John Lahr

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Steve Buscemi @ IMDb
Disney Princesses with Steve Buscemi’s Eyes
Video: Steve Buscemi Responds to the “Buscemi Eyes”
Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 @ The Criterion Collection
The Steve Buscemi Tribute Page
fuck yeah steve buscemi
’24 Times The Internet Professed Its Love For Steve Buscemi’>/a>
‘America’s Worst Tattoos: A Flat Steve Buscemi’
‘Steve Buscemi and Elvis Costello Went Trick or Treating’
‘Brief Encounters: Steve Buscemi’ @ Film Comment
‘Steve Buscemi no fan of city’s 25 mph speed limit’
‘Steve Buscemi Can Juggle’
‘Steve Buscemi Movies List: Best to Worst’

 

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Extras

The Many Deaths of Steve Buscemi

Dinner with Vampire Weekend & Steve Buscemi

Henry Rollins – Steve Buscemi

Steve Buscemi’s sequence in ‘Paris Je T’aime’

Grimes Gives Steve Buscemi The Brush Off

 

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Interviewed by Quentin Tarantino
from BOMB

Quentin Tarantino Now, explain to the people how you came into acting. You were a fireman. When did you know you could quit firefighting and start acting full time?

Steve Buscemi It wasn’t until after Parting Glances came out and I was able to get an agent and then start to make a living.

QT You took a leave of absence and then decided not to go back? You put all your eggs in the same basket?

SB Yeah, my time was up and I had to go back, and the movie hadn’t been released yet, but I thought I just can’t go back. I really felt like Parting Glances was an important film. The character I played in that was probably the best character I will get to play. I just couldn’t imagine that this film wouldn’t get attention.

QT That happens in a lot of these independent films, especially if you have never heard of the people who are in them, they make the directors known, but the actors don’t get anything. No one’s ever seen those guys who were in She’s Gotta Have It again. No one’s ever seen anyone else in Parting Glances again.

SB That’s not true. Just because you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they’re not getting work.

QT You’ve worked in low-budget independent films and big budget commercial films. In the Soup, cost $800,000 to make, but when you were actually shooting the budget was $300,000. And you had just come from doing Billy Bathgate, which was this $50 million production. What was the difference between the two?

SB In Billy Bathgate, Dustin liked to rehearse on camera, so we’d end up doing a lot of takes. Before we’d even do the take, we might discuss the scene for a long time. The crew would be waiting around outside and we wouldn’t even be rehearsing the scene, just talking about it. Not like I had a lot to contribute to these discussions: I was a fly on the wall. Dustin Hoffman, Robert Benton, Néstor Almendros, it was fascinating to be there. They really took their time. Of course, the sets were elaborate, the food was excellent, the dressing rooms were nice. But, I don’t know if all that stuff makes a better film. It makes it all more comfortable, it’s nice to have the time to do it. In In the Soup, we tried to get things done in two or three takes. We did all our rehearsals on our own before we got there. We had to work long hours, there was no going back. When you are shooting a film like In the Soup, it gives you this incredible energy, this excitement that comes from knowing that we have to get this now. Sometimes the pressure of that bothers me. But other times it inspires me, you can’t stop and think, you are just forced to do the scene and do it right. You are forced to go on instinct more. To me, it’s a valid way to work.

QT You have worked with a whole slew of directors, let me throw out some of their names and you give me little takes on them. Let’s start with the guy who more or less discovered you on film, the director of Parting Glances, Bill Sherwood.

SB Bill was a funny guy. He would give me very specific directions, almost line by line. And then say, “Steve, can’t you have a little spontaneity?” (laughter) Then we’d do another take and I’d be seething. It worked for that character. I don’t know if he was manipulating me intentionally, but it really did work.

QT Okay, Abel Ferrara’s King of New York.

SB I was the last guy cast for that. I remember calling the costumer to go over what I was going to wear. I said, “What do you have in mind for me?” and she said “Well, we had in mind that you were black.” I was like the token white. I would try on all these hats and Abel would come in and say, “Try on another hat, that’s not working.” We finally came up with something, but I don’t believe that he was ever really satisfied. As a consequence, I think he would position me in the back of the room.

QT Wasn’t there one shot in King Of New York that you didn’t know you were being filmed for?

SB Yeah, Christopher Walken’s character was just out of jail. I thought Abel had placed me on the side of the room so that I was out of the frame. I don’t even remember being in character. And then I saw the film and I was like, “Oh my God, I was seen that whole time?” (laughter)

QT How did he direct you and Larry Fishburne and choreograph the action?

SB He lets you feel it out for yourself. He says, “What’re you gonna do here? What’re you gonna do?” “Well, I thought I’d do this.” And he’d say, “Yeah, yeah, all right. Good, good. Do that, do that,” or, “Don’t do that. Do that other thing you were doing.” He’s always moving, he’s like a kid on the set. He gets excited. He says, “All right! This is gonna be great!” I mean when he first called me about doing the movie, I was on my way to LA to see what was happening out there. I had my ticket; I was leaving like the next day. He called me the night before and I hadn’t read the script. He described to me that first scene and that’s what made me want to do the movie. (laughter) It’s just the way he is. He’s just fun to be around, you know?

QT You’ve worked two movies with the Coen Brothers: Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink.

SB I auditioned for Miller’s Crossing twice. The second time they said, “Well, you still say it the fastest.” And I was hired. (laughter) They’re really fun to work with. Joel always gave the first direction. But Ethan is right there and adds to it.

QT Does Ethan talk to you or does Ethan go through Joel?

SB He tells it to me with Joel there. The two of them are always together. I didn’t feel like I was getting conflicting information. They really complement each other. They get such a kick out of actors. In Barton Fink, I was doing this scene where I was picking up the shoes to put on the cart, you know, and then like I hear a noise and kind of stop, and then continue. They had me do that six or seven times because they enjoyed that scene: (laughter) “Well, we got it but let’s do it again.” And after that, “Let’s just do it one more time.”

QT Martin Scorcese.

SB I felt like I had already worked for him because on Last Temptation he brought me back four times. He had already cast that movie but there was a question of whether all the apostles were available. Each time he had me reading a different apostle. Then I did New York Stories. He gave me a lot of room. When people see New York Stories, they assume my character, a performance artist, is an asshole because of what Nick Nolte’s character says about him. But I didn’t play it that way at all, and neither did Scorcese. That whole monologue I did was something I wrote. I wouldn’t do my own material in a film if I thought it was going to be made fun of. It was funny, I never quite knew where Scorcese was on the set. I would hear him yell, “Action!” but I could never find him. He’d come over after each take and maybe say something and then disappear. Next thing I knew, “Action!”

QT Okay now, Jim Jarmusch.

SB He used to come see my partner Mark Boone Junior and I perform at these small performance spaces and clubs.

QT So you were already friendly with him?

SB Well, we weren’t really friends at that point. But he would come to the shows and we would hang out. Working with him on Mystery Train, I got to know him a lot better. He would make up scenes that weren’t in the movie for us to rehearse, to explore our characters. Stuff would happen in those improvisations that he would incorporate into the film. He trusts actors and casts people because he wants them to give more. He wants that input. Even on the set, we would do the takes as written and then sometimes have a take where he’d say, “All right. If there’s a line you want to change or something you want to add, do it.”

(read the entirety)

 

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22 of Steve Buscemi’s 132 roles

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Bill Sherwood Parting Glances (1986)
‘Parting Glances was the first movie about AIDS, made before Longtime Companion but around the same time as the television movie An Early Frost. But I never saw Parting Glances as an AIDS movie, just as a great character-driven New York film whose characters happened to be gay and living with AIDS. I didn’t see it as risky, because it was a wonderful part. I can’t see why anyone would turn it down just because the character, Nick, was gay. Nick is in a state of denial and shock about what he’s going through, and he doesn’t want to alter his lifestyle. It’s very important to him to keep working and not be treated as a sick person by his friends. At the same time, he feels his mortality and wants to re-establish that connection again with his former boyfriend, Michael, and let it be known that he loves him. This was an independent film and Bill had the creative freedom to do it as he wanted. Hollywood would have watered it down.’ — Steve Buscemi

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Jim Jarmusch Mystery Train (1989)
‘Like Jarmusch’s previous films, Mystery Train enjoyed a warm reception from critics. This was particularly evident at Cannes, where the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or and Jarmusch was commended for the festival’s Best Artistic Achievement. It was nominated in six categories at the 1989 Independent Spirit Awards: Best Picture, Best Screenplay (Jim Jarmusch), Best Director (Jim Jarmusch), Best Cinematography (Robby Müller), Best Actress (Youki Kudoh), and Best Supporting Actor (Steve Buscemi and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins).’ — collaged

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Abel Ferrara The King of New York (1990)
‘King Of New York was released during the most productive part of Abel Ferrara’s career so far. Arriving a year after 1989’s Cat Chaser – a filmmaking experience Kelly McGillis found so dreadful that she shaved her head and vowed never to act again – and the infamous Bad Lieutenant in 1992, King Of New York ranks among the best of Ferrara’s movies, and undoubtedly one of the most interesting gangster pictures yet made. King Of New York also arrived at a unique time in American filmmaking. It was among the earlier (but by no means first) movies to prominently feature a hip-hop soundtrack, and appeared in US cinemas a year before Boyz N The Hood and New Jack City – movies which dealt with similar themes such as crime and drug dealing to a much more lucrative effect. Aside from the obvious draw of Christopher Walken in the lead role, King Of New York is noteworthy for its extraordinary supporting cast, including Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishburne, Steve Buscemi and David Caruso – all of whom were largely unknown before this film, but would later go on to forge hugely successful careers.’ — Den of Geek

Trailer

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Joel and Ethan Coen Barton Fink (1991)
‘Barton Fink won the Coen brothers the prestigious Palme d’Or when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. Starring John Turturro and John Goodman, with smaller roles filled by John Mahoney and Steve Buscemi, Barton Fink tells the strange tale of its titular character, a playwright who has just had his first major success on the New York stage, who reluctantly comes to Hollywood to write a script for a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Stuck in a dank room in an ominous hotel, he meets Charlie Meadows (Goodman), an insurance salesman who seems to embody the working class everyman whose story Fink is so anxious to tell, if not to actually hear.’ — examiner.com

Trailer

 

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Alexandre Rockwell In the Soup (1992)
‘In the Soup is a charming pipsqueak of a movie, a playful film of ragged and shaggy appeal. All its virtues are small-scale except for one, because inside this little picture is the year’s largest, most robust pieces of acting, a performance that no one can resist, Aldolpho Rollo least of all. Aldolpho (Steve Buscemi) is Soup’s would-be hero. A timid, idealistic, embryo film director, he lives in a low-rent, walk-up tenement in Manhattan, a poster from revered Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky on his wall and dreams of glory in his heart. Someday he’ll make his movies, someday tour buses will visit his apartment and a plaque on the wall will commemorate his scuffling days. Someday maybe even Angelica (Jennifer Beals), the beautiful girl next door, will do more than snarl at him. But for now, with his erratic landlords, the Bafardis, on his case, what he really needs is money.’ — LA Times

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Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs (1992)
‘Tarantino’s original plan was to make Reservoir Dogs on a minimal budget on 16mm film, using friends in the cast, with himself playing Mr. Pink and regular producer Lawrence Bender as Nice Guy Eddie. Tarantino was introduced to the late Tony Scott in 1990 by a mutual friend, one of the director’s employees, and Scott read both True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. Originally, Scott wanted to make Reservoir Dogs, but was told by Tarantino that he’d earmarked it for his own full directorial debut. Scott ended up buying the True Romance script for $50,000, which Tarantino planned to use to make Reservoir Dogs. However, Bender’s acting teacher’s wife was a friend of Harvey Keitel, and gave him the script. Keitel became interested, and ended up attaching himself to produce and star as Mr. White, enabling Tarantino and Bender to raise as much as $1.5 million for the budget. As a result, the young writer-director was accepted into the Sundance Institute in 1991 (see photo), and travelled there with actors including Steve Buscemi to perform scenes from the script in front of advisers including Terry Gilliam and Two-Lane Blacktop helmer Monte Hellman. Gilliam is, as a result, thanked in the credits, while Hellman was so impressed that he attached himself as an executive-producer to the film.’ — Indiewire

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Jonathan Wacks Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)
‘There are some actors who don’t have to try very hard to convince you that whatever they say is the truth and the things they do are not out of character. Steve Buscemi is an example of an actor with this ability. Regardless of whether he is playing Carl Showalter, Seymour, or Mr. Pink, one never doubts that he is a petty thief, a record collector, or a career criminal. In Jonathan Wacks’s film Ed and His Dead Mother, Buscemi plays a mama’s boy and we totally buy it. Buscemi doesn’t always alter the timbre of his voice or even his body language unless the role demands a complete transformation. Yet, he slides into his characters and makes it look effortless. Though I might not picture Buscemi wearing overalls and a red t-shirt on my own, he dons this very outfit at the end of the film and he doesn’t appear uncomfortable or incorrectly robed. He isn’t the only actor who is at home in his role. Ned Beatty and John Glover perform nicely as two individuals trying to influence Ed to the best of their abilities. With a strong cast and a “timeless” set design—half 1950s, half 1990s— Ed and His Dead Mother is an eccentric gem.’ — Film Threat

the entire film

 

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Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction (1994)
‘Buddy Holly the Waiter is a character in Pulp Fiction, played by Steve Buscemi. It is a cameo in which he plays a waiter in Jack Rabbit Slim’s.’ — wiki.tarantino

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Michael Lehmann Airheads (1994)
‘A desperate rock band looking for a break, holds a radio station hostage in this youthful comedy. All the three Airheads Chazz, Rex, and Pip really want is a chance to play their quirky music. While they play club gigs, they have yet to drum up interest from any record companies. No one will listen to their demo tapes. After Chazz is tossed out by his girlfriend Kayla, he decides that desperate times require desperate measures and plans to break into station KPPX and play their demo on the air. The break in is successful, but they receive a cynical welcome. This drives Chazz to the edge and he pulls out a large semi-automatic and hijacks the station. The hostages are unaware that the band’s weapons are simply water pistols. They attempt to play their tape but it is destroyed by a temperamental machine. After the police and media arrive, the Airheads finally get their brief moment in the sun. A bit of a mess, but one of Steve Buscemi’s best performances before hitting the big time.’ — collaged

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Tom DiCillo Living in Oblivion (1995)
‘I wrote Living In Oblivion in a state of mind teetering somewhere between homicide and suicide. After the dismissive release of Johnny Suede it was extremely difficult to get my next script, Box of Moonlight financed. And so one night, after getting plastered on martini’s at my wife’s cousin’s wedding, I stumbled into the Idea; a series of events taking place right on the set of a no-budget movie. All the things that could possibly go wrong actually do. The film is really a love/hate letter about the mechanics of filmmaking. I love this business but at times it really does feel that the entire process of making a film is designed to drive you into an insane asylum. Just when some miraculous moment is blossoming to life in front of you the camera screws up and that fragile, fleeting glimmer of beauty is gone. Of course the opposite is also true. But on a no-budget film the “unhappy accidents” can drop you to your knees.’ — Tom DeCillo

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Robert Rodriguez Desperado (1995)
‘With this sequel to his prize-winning independent previous film, El Mariachi, director Robert Rodriquez joins the ranks of Sam Peckinpah and John Woo as a master of slick, glamorized ultra-violence. We pick up the story as a continuation of El Mariachi, where an itinerant musician, looking for work, gets mistaken for a hitman and thereby entangled in a web of love, corruption, and death. This time, he is out to avenge the murder of his lover and the maiming of his fretting hand, which occurred at the end of the earlier movie. However, the plot is recapitulated, and again, a case of mistaken identity leads to a very high body count, involvement with a beautiful woman who works for the local drug lord, and finally, the inevitable face-to-face confrontation and bloody showdown.’ — IMDb

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Joel and Ethan Coen Fargo (1996)
‘Beautifully shot and wickedly funny, Ethan and Joel Coen’s warped homage to their home state earned nominations for everything from the Palme D’or to the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film (won) to Academy Awards (won two). The film is at times quiet as falling snow, observational; then suddenly bloody and hysterical all at once. With pitch perfect performances from Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi and a silent but deadly Peter Stormare, Fargo is everything you could ever want in a black comedy.’ — pajiba.com

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Steve Buscemi Trees Lounge (1996)
‘An impressive feature debut from indie icon Buscemi, a serio-comedy and character study of a barfly (played by Buscemi) and the entourage that frequents the same working bar day after day; John Cassavetes would have been proud of this film.’ — collaged

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John Carpenter Escape from LA (1996)
‘Once again, our hero does the government’s bidding by dint of an implanted ”timer” (explosives in the original; a disease here). Plissken has to rescue the President’s daughter (A.J. Langer, from TV’s My So-Called Life) and retrieve a black box the feds need (like the audiotape in New York). Once in the city, he befriends a woman who is quickly, randomly killed (Season Hubley in New York, Valeria Golino in L.A.). There’s another tough guy (George Corraface), aided by another turncoat techno-weenie played by a hip actor (Harry Dean Stanton then, Steve Buscemi now). Zonked-out Peter Fonda has the Borgnine role, as a surfer dude who helps Snake out of a jam. If not for some jibes at political correctness and a wild cameo by Bruce Campbell (Ellen) as the surgeon general of Beverly Hills, the movie could just as easily take place in Schenectady.’ — EW

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Robert Altman Kansas City (1996)
‘When I worked with Robert Altman on Kansas City [in 1996], he said he didn’t care if the film made a nickel. If he wanted it to be successful, he wanted it to be successful on his terms. And then he immediately corrected himself and said, “On our terms.” To me, it meant that he cares about the films he makes and he cares about the people he makes them with. It was a philosophy he had that I think is really good.’ — Steve Buscemi

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Joel and Ethan Coen The Big Lebowski (1998)
‘Even I thought it was a weird follow-up to Fargo, and I didn’t expect anything from it. I just thought, “These guys made a really fun movie, a great character, kind of, genre, you know, weird genres that kind of mixed, and that it was really fun.” It’s probably the film that I’ve done that people have seen the most. I mean the number of times people have seen it. And I guess that started happening about five years ago, when people started to come up to me—usually it was like college guys that would tell me that they and their friends would watch it every weekend, or they had seen it five times. And at first, I didn’t really believe it, you know they say five times… or seven times. But so many people would tell me that now I believe it.’ — Steve Buscemi

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Michael Bay Armageddon (1998)
‘At one point during filming, Steve Buscemi mentioned to Bay that he was going to get dental work done. Bay convinced him that he had a “million dollar smile” and that he shouldn’t change a thing. Say what you will about Bay. That was a great decision.’ — Film School Rejects

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Terry Zwigoff Ghost World (2001)
‘I wanted to hug this movie. It takes such a risky journey and never steps wrong. It creates specific, original, believable, lovable characters, and meanders with them through their inconsolable days, never losing its sense of humor. The Buscemi role is one he’s been pointing toward during his entire career; it’s like the flip side of his alcoholic barfly in Trees Lounge, who also becomes entangled with a younger girl, not so fortunately.’ — Roger Ebert

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Pete Docter Monsters, Inc. (2001)
‘Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film directed by Pete Docter, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton were the executive producers. It was co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and stars the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn and Jennifer Tilly.’ — IMDb

Monsters, Inc.’s Homage to Barton Fink

 

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Jim Jarmusch Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
‘Parents need to know that this movie is nothing more than people sitting around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and talking about various things. This film has no plot and no story structure. It’s a series of vignettes, short scenes that are like little slices of life. There is no violence or sexuality and some profanity, but the content of the film is based on conversation of rather mundane experiences.’ — Common Sense Media

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Tim Burton Big Fish (2003)
‘After walking through a scary swamp, Edward discovers the hidden town of Spectre, where everyone is friendly to the point of comfortably walking around barefoot. Their shoes can be seen hanging from a wire near the entrance. When he enters the town he is greeted by the Mayor and his wife. The Mayor has a clipboard that says Edward was meant to be in their town but he had arrived early. He also tells him of the poet Norther Winslow (Steve Buscemi) who was also from Ashton. While there Edward has an encounter with a mermaid. She swims away before he could see her face. Edward leaves because he does not want to settle anywhere yet, but promises to the town mayor’s daughter Jenny (Hailey Anne Nelson), who developed a crush on him, that he will return. He believed that he was fated to be there someday.’ — collaged

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Steve Buscemi Interview (2007)
‘Steve Buscemi’s career is an American spin-off of the sea change in acting wrought by Alec Guinness 50 years ago. Buscemi’s sourpuss “full-on human rat mode,” as Variety put it recently, ratchets down mythic-sized characters to everyday guys working their humdrum psychopathic cons in plain sight. His characters are the alchemy of turning tragedy into dark comedy. Buscemi stars in two new films, both of which premiered at Sundance this past January: Interview, which he also directed, and, 11 years after starring in Living in Oblivion, Tom DiCillo’s Delirious. Both films are about media corruption, with Buscemi playing journalists at opposite ends of the food chain. In Interview, a remake of the Dutch film made by Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a Muslim fanatic, he’s a serious journalist who’s been sent as punishment to interview a celebrity-fluff actress (Sienna Miller) and agonizes about being inside the room.’ — Film Comment

Trailer

Steve Buscemi on ‘Interview’

 

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p.s. Hi. I’m in NYC. I’ll be having a conversation tonight at 7 pm at the Museum of Modern Art with my collaborator the choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones and MoMA curator Thomas Lax if you’re there and want to come. If so, or if not, enjoy the restored Steve Buscemi Day.

 

Before there was AOL, Amazon, Groupon, Google, Facebook, Yahoo! or any of today’s other Internet titans, there was the Minitel: the boxy little terminal that allowed French clients to access a wide array of services – including, “bien sûr,” hot chat rooms – through a France Telecom phone line.

 

 

Minitel, France’s Videotex telecommunication system, was introduced experimentally in 1981 in Britanny and was rolled out nationally in 1982. It was implemented by France Telecom’s Teletel network. Designed initially to replace the expensive-to-print and distribute French telephone directory, it rapidly evolved and became a news-media/weather, booking, information service and online sex kiosk phenomenon. Minitel was distributed to households for free across the country and soon the French were using it to check exam results, apply to university, book trains and chat online, years before the Internet’s blogs or social networking.

 

 

At its peak, it was earning and sharing the equivalent of 1 billion Euros a year between its state -owned operator and those who sold services or provided content through it. All users had to do was dial up a number on the keyboard to connect to the database of the chosen content provider, then follow instructions that juddered out in black and white across the screen.

 

 

Customers were billed per minute to their phone bill, by the state-owned network operator which then passed subscription fees back to content service providers. It was a network of pay-walls similar to those used today by for example the Apple app store. It is generally overlooked that many of the ideas that formed the Internet were, first of all, tried out on Minitel. — BBC

 

 

By the time it hit its peak in 1994, roughly 20 million users were connecting to 25,000 services through 6.5 million terminals. Minitel had made online, rudimentary interactive, real-time navigation a daily part of French life at a time when few people had heard much about the World Wide Web.

 

 

But its earlier inception and popularity did not allow Minitel to keep up with the internet – whose super fast connections and multimedia sites left Minitel’s sluggish, text-only format looking seriously dated. Despite the fact that it had become obsolete Minitel still held on to life and in 2012 the year of its final demise an estimated 400,000 people were still logging into the Minitel. It’s main uses by then were for accessing the telephone directory, farmers exchanging information on cattle and doctors transmitting patient details to the national health service. — R.F.I

 

 

In 1994, 30% of French households had a Minitel terminal attached to their phones. In contrast, fewer than 6% of American households made use of online services during the same period. The Minitel had created in the French population a new way of thinking, an awareness of the power of information and the will to use it. “It is something to be used in daily life. It is easy. So much more simple than hooking up a computer and a modem,” a writer said speaking to The Inquirer newspaper. In the same article, an environmental engineer says he prefers using the Minitel for researching as opposed to the more sophisticated services available on his high powered Apple Macintosh.

 

 

A Minitel is not a real computer, just a terminal that responds to signals coming from a telephone line. It does not have a memory or computing capabilities. Despite its underlying technology being outdated to sacrifice modernity for simplicity, new Minitel terminal’s were equipped with credit card slots to facilitate home shopping. As a system that was initially implemented to give access to directory information, it gave birth to an entirely new $1 Billion-a-year industry of companies that sell their products and services over the Minitel.

 

 

There were caterers and sex-talk services, real estate brokers and travel agents, movie kiosks and weather bureaus, professionals from a wide range of fields from retail to psychics and meteorologists used the Minitel, plying their trades over the phone links. Availability of online banking and stock market quotes too made the system popular with businessmen and shopkeepers. France Telecom annually published a directory that listed nearly 23,000 different services that can be accessed through codes.

 

 

But unlike the Internet, which was developed by the International Computer Communications Network funded by a Pentagon computer network in the U.S, the Minitel could not be adopted to carry live video or sound. It is far slower and primitive compared to computer products in the U.S. “The Minitel,” said French Communications Minister “may be obsolete, but it has prepared people for what is to come in regards to the information superhighway.The Minitel has become a cultural habit.” — Inquirer, Sep 1994

 

 

Doc Introduction to diffrent uses

Publicity cartoon 1

Minitel Publicity general services

Minitel garage directory

Minitel handshake

Minitel fly ad

amstal computer ad

 

 

The Minitel rose

Indisputably the real stars of the Minitel were the world’s first electronic adult chat rooms, where people using pseudonyms patiently exchanged steamy messages that took what would now seem an eternity to appear on screen.

 

 

Several of today’s most influential media bosses made huge fortunes on the “pink messaging” services with their chatroom startup companies. Services advertised on billboards, with names such as Ulla gaining mythical status in France. Thousands of French households saw their telephone bills rise as men logged endless Minitel hours on hot-chat services (usually, it turned out, with male employees paid to pose as aroused and prowling women). Such erotic services were known collectively as Minitel “rose” became so profitable that traditional media outlets hired specialized companies to create libido-throttling platforms of their own.

 

 

The musician Gerome Nox told the newspaper Libération how he had worked on one of the services posing as a hostess called Julie to attract men and keep them online as long as possible. He compared the men replying to his messages to “starving piranhas, no bonjour, no pleasantries, it was direct and crude”. He said he decided to stop as “my Julie had become more and more disagreeable and hateful”. — Time

 

 

By 1989 the reputation of France’s Minitel “rose” had spread and in a news article entitled “Minitel: miracle or monster,” the L.A times called it a network of crime and prostitution, reporting on the lawsuit filed by The Federation of French Families which contended that it had transgressed into a service in which “anonymous video conversations take place between callers and prostitution networks that often involve children.

 

 

The complaint lists a series of serious crimes, ranging from child prostitution to murder, that has been linked to the system. In one well known case in Paris, for example, a 24-year-old call girl, Anne Trinh, was tortured and killed by a sadomasochist who made contact with her through one of the Pink Minitel message services. The Trinh murder was detailed in a book entitled “The Black File on the Pink Minitel” by journalist Denis Perier.

 

 

Ironically, the author notes, the Trinh case was also solved in part through the use of a Minitel. Using the sophisticated Minitel electronic telephone directory, a friend of the dead woman was able to locate Trinh’s dentist, enabling police to identify her severely burned body.

 

 

The lawsuit also cited the case of a 40-year-old man in Bordeaux who was using a Minitel service to “lease” the 6-year-old son of his common-law wife for sexual purposes. “Because of its huge potential audience and the anonymity provided by the government, the Minitel is relatively safe and effective criminal tool. And as with the introduction of the telephone more than a century ago, criminals have been among the first to exploit it.” — L.A Times

 

 

Demonstration operating a minitel

Shutting down and recycling the Minitel

Modern Websites like facebook, youtube running on the minitel

 

 

The Minitel serial killer

During the months of October and November 1990, Rémy Roy murdered three men he met through the pink Minitel. His criminal route begins October 11, 1990, with a 46-year-old insurance agent who went by the pseudonym of “hpoilu75.” He had many contacts and practiced sadomasochism. The day after their meeting he was found dead, his skull smashed.

 

 

Rémy Roy struck again a week later on the 19 October 1990. His second victim was an astrologer who appeared on television under the name Nathaniel Mage. His partner found him dead, lying naked on his bed, his head covered with a leather hood, arms folded and crossed in the back. He had suffered several blows to the head with a sharp instrument. He went under the synonymous of Daisy or Coralie on the pink Minitel network.

 

 

His third victim was discovered dead by his wife in their home with a bag containing sadomasochistic instruments.The fourth victim was a 32-year-old man who’s profile stated that he was possibly looking for love. When the man refused to partake in Rémy sadistic routine he was hit over the head with a stone lamp and fainted. He was found alive and taken to the hospital in a coma. He was able to recount to police what happened a few days later.

 

 

In the days leading up to his arrest, Rémy made purchases at two video equipment stores with stolen checks belonging to his last victim. The seller asked for ID and Roy used his victim’s driving license which he had doctored with a picture of himself. The seller made a photocopy of it. Hours later, he made another purchase at another video equipment store, where he is recorded on the store’s CCTV. Rémy was arrested soon after and cited homophobic motivations, which he claimed stemmed from having been the victim of sexual harassment and assault at the hands of other men. These claims were refuted in court. Psychologists said these claims stemmed from the killer’s sadomasochistic fantasies. Rémy also claimed in court to have been taken advantage of or tricked by all four of his victims.

 

 

In 28 June 1996, Rémy Roy gets sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 18 years. He was divorced and a father of two. He claims to have turned to using the Minitel extensively after depression which sprung from the failure of his video production company and over-eating.

 

 

Info or intox?

News program on minitel rose

Minitel Ulla demonstration

Minitel rose adverts compilation

3615 Lucky

Minitel rose online dating doc

 

 

The Minitel creates first online queer platform

With its capacity for email, chat, press reviews, news, forums and listings the Minitel enabled instant communication, group dialogue, and information access. It is widely overlooked in Gay cyber studies that the history of online gay activity and interaction began with the Minitel. Internet scholars claim that lesbian chat spaces only appeared in 1993 with the Internet when in fact lesbians were already interacting online on the Minitel nearly a decade before. The first Lesbian Minitel site “Les Goudous” was created in 1985 in stark contrast to the Gay male content service providers who were profit driven like the heterosexual service counterparts.

 

 

Les Goudous Telematiques (The GT’s) were more interested in political organization and listed the first ever gay orientated service directory. In an effort to convert their readership to using their Minitel site they published an animated advertisement in Lesbia magazine in 1986. The captions read: “Tell me, Annie, specialist of the Minitel,” sighs Charlotte, our imaginary user, “what key should I hit?” Annie explains: “You fold down the keyboard, you turn on the screen, you pick up the telephone, and you dial 3614 91 66. Suddenly; you’ll hear a dial tone. Okay? Now press on the key “Connect” and then hang up the phone.” Amazed Charlotte gasps: “It worked! Wow! I’m on the Minitel!”

 

 

Despite immense efforts and personal financial investment by The GT’s to form and keep alive an online community of politically minded lesbians on the Minitel, the enterprise was not successful. For a brief period of three years however Les Guides was exemplary in its anti-capitalistic stance and social activism, serving as a precursor of lesbian communities on the internet and provided “a safe space for lesbians to be out without having their sexuality commodified. By the end of the eighties, a plethora of lesbian sites premised on sexual entertainment was active on the Minitel. — Lesbians online, Journal of the History of sexuality, University of Texas

 

 

In France, The National Confederation of Catholic Family Association opposed the gay use of the Minitel “rose” disputing that it would result in France becoming the country most affected by the Aids virus. In the period when the virus was becoming an epidemic, it was disputed whether these services cashed in on and promoted promiscuity among men or created a safe space where sexual games could be played.

 

 

The Court of Auditors in France also warned that the Minitel network of erotic and other message services makes the government an unwitting accomplice in criminal acts from which it profits. Amidst the Minitel “rose” controversy and uproar that dismissed it as a tool for thieves and prostitutes, its defenders pointed out that new tools of communication have always been quick to be adopted for sexual purposes. In the beginning, the telephone in France was synonymous with prostitutes and some assigned the success of home video as being fuelled by the porn industry.

 

 

In 1983 the same year that the American Usenet internet service created its members of the same sex newsgroup (net.motss) the French gay male community recognized the Minitel as the new way to hook up. Within a year the popular gay male magazine Gai Pied set up its own Minitel site, and in record time was logging about a thousand use hours per day, ranking in an inexhaustible source of revenue.

 

 

By 1986 using the code 36 15 GPH users could access an online kiosk service where the latest issue of the magazine was summarized, along with horoscopes, latest movie outings, gay-related news aswell as an AIDS folder with advice from the Association of Gay Doctors. However, the main draw of its Minitel site was the gay chat room which had the capacity for 192 members to connect simultaneously.

 

 

“There’s a bit of everything,” Gai Peid explains in their January 1986 issue concerning their successful Minitel site: “hards, softs, masochists, the vulgar, the tender, and lonely.” Messaging is alive, the magazine reports, allowing others the opportunity to pass for what they are not. Even “straight slumming” happens. When all goes well during an online interaction, the anonymous participants end up exchanging phone numbers. Others, however, may disappear suddenly leaving the other correspondent frustrated. Gai Pied announced that from December 1989, members will be able to send their own picture to the magazine which will then be put online with the use of pixellisera. — Gai Pied n°198 (14 Décember 1985) and Gai Pied Hebdo n°261 (14 March 1987).

 

 

“Homosexuals found a new form of conviviality that suited them, a new sociability of desire. Sexual difference could be abolished; role playing thrived within a permanent carnival where masks were required. Cruising on Minitel, with its combination of secretiveness and invisibility – since it required the use of pseudonyms –allowed for every sort of transvestism. It replaced the personal ad. In every city, and often among people who did not acknowledge their homosexuality, it was possible to find at any hour of the day or night, someone for a brief encounter or for a lifetime. Minitel’s role as a meeting place was a major development in the history of homosexuals in France. A cruising place “outside of the ghetto,’” it allowed them to find companions. It put gays in touch with one another. In the provinces, the homosexual emerged from his isolation. — The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968

 

 

Smaller gay channels started competing against the popular content providers like Gai Pied with exaggerated descriptions of services offered and often abused the anonymous character of Minitel communication by passing on descriptions of illegal activities such as “12-year-old boy sucks off for a tenner.” In 1987 the police had their own Minitel installed and announced that all sexual content service providers falling under the wider name of Minitel Rose will from now on be under continuous surveillance. As a result, Gai Pied employed their own moderators to weed out the mimicry of minors, illicit intimacies, and illegal fantasies. — Gay Studies from the French Cultures Vol 25

 

 

 

 

The pink office

“SLT. H or F? I JH23”
“SLT. I F.21,Paris”
“Describe yourself”
“Blonde,1m71, 51 kg, 85-60-90. Student. You c. what?
“Meet. What are you wearing?”

Stephane was a super nice guy with long hair and a denim jacket with badges of bands like Slayer.It was in the early 90’s. He had a student job that required a Minitel and a calling card (it was called a Pastel card in those days) He was connected to the back office of a “pink” Minitel service and transformed into Mistress Caroline, Master JF, Soumise75, studentSC, jf69 and twenty other characters for a few nights a week.

“Slt. You like sandals?” – Spartacus

Stephane introduced me to his boss, Alain, who asked me to work for him. The office, where I became a cyber-dominatrix, was surreal and filled with big tables and Minitels and behind them mostly boys between 20 and 30 playing women and managing a dozen messages from anonymous male users at the same time. “With each exchanged message, our screen displayed the previous message and the connected answer with space for the next response. The screen also included a “memo” area which displayed the information of character you played as well as those of the other message operators in order to successfully distinguish yourself.”

“I’ll take you to construction sites..” *

“Some want to be on a leash while others want to be the CEO banging his secretary on his desk. Sometimes while your busy introducing the use of a big candle as SevereNatacha45a, you are also conversing with tourist types, cool guys, the type you could even be friends with.” Programmed dialogue was also implemented which was designed to lead the client through erotic scenarios. “In the beginning it was sometimes hard to keep up role play with men who wanted to be humiliated, it took discipline not to laugh and sneer at them, and to keep them online as long as possible while catering to their flabbergasting fantasies.” – “Bye fantasmeur!” Putthebraindown.com

“Your a dick garage..” *

“It was while working for a Minitel rose service that I first learned to type on a keyboard. It helped me to take my first step on the networks and getting paid to communicate. I was a facilitator and had four or five Minitels in front of me with which to converse simultaneously with as many users as possible. One Minitel was dedicated to naughty scenarios or general messages sent to all who were connected, and the other Minitel’s were used to interact with individual users on a one to one basis.”

“Fdujku =mpjsd”
“????????”*

“Many users addressed me as “little bitch” or asked “do you suck?” by way of greeting, which annoyed me. “Is that how you greet the ladies'” I often responded. Women operators on the Minitel “rose” in fact were rare. It was essentially a role assumed by men. People were less informed on the Minitel than on the Internet.” The test from suspicious clients would be the common question “what are you wearing?” A woman would answer the question convincingly and without faltering, men assumed. “Other’s merely ignored the deception,” says Stephane who worked as a facilitator from the age of 20 to 28. He remembers talking philosophy all night to one client phone sex. “On the human level, it was fascinating. It allowed me to see facets of human nature that people kept hidden. It is a very effective tool to drain perversions” — www.20minutes.fr

“T.M.C” *

*Quotes taken from Hot, hot Minitel. Gay Letters November 1994

 

 

 

It was a closed network, there were no click-able links or spam, you merely interacted with the specific database you accessed through your Minitel terminal. Legend has it that in 1982 the system’s emailing between-user-function was implemented after a user hacked into the real-time communication feature on an erotic service provider known as Gretel. This help function between a service provider and the user was hijacked by the user who was then able to chat directly with other users. Thus in 1982 direct online messaging between users was created on the Minitel. Although competitive technology was developed by Calvados and Apple Macintosh between ’82 -’86, online interaction between these Macintosh users did not happen on the same national scale as it did with the Minitel, which thrived during the 80’s and early 90’s. The boxy terminal with its closed system served as an alternative to the internet until its inevitable demise in 2012.

 

 

Minitel: further links and reading

A cultural battle: French minitel, the internet and information highway:
https://www.academia.edu/10229023/A_Cultural_Battle_French_Minitel_the_Internet_and_the_Superhighway

Minitel: The rise and fall of the France-wide-web: (BBC 2012)
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18610692

The politics of information: a study on the french minitel
Between communication and information vol 4 – Transaction Publishers 1993

Minitel, La grande aventure. Collectif. Edité par Larousse (1987

Minitel: miracle or monster: (L.A Times 1989)
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-24/news/mn-718_1_france-telecom/2

Minitel, the “French Internet” That Came Before the Web
(Internet history podcast)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqA6w6daq6g

How steve jobs was inspired by the minitel: mail online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170535/Oui-invented-How-Steve-Jobs-inspired-Frances-dial-Minitel.html

Tech savvy family from 1982 talks internet (France TV)
http://www.ina.fr/video/SXC00008471/l-informatique-a-domicile-video.html

Minitel 10 year anniversary: diffrent minitels displayed:(France TV)
http://m.ina.fr/video/RNC8910031053/les-10-ans-du-minitel-video.html

Institut national de l’audiovisuel
https://www.ina.fr/recherche/search?search=minitel

http://www.minitel.org

Justine, de Sade. Minitel adaptation made by JET7
http://cecileadam.alwaysdata.net/minitel/justine.htm

 

*

p.s. Hey. Our pal Ferdinand has put together this fascinating collection of info, insights, back stories, inside scoops, and visuals about the early French internet precursor Minitel, and it’s really something. Even residing here in France, as I mostly do, I had only known the very minimum about Minitel until Ferdinand filled me in, and, yeah, I think you’ll learn a lot and have a very fine time here this weekend, so please do. Thanks, and thank you ever so much, Ferdinand! Now, as prefaced yesterday, today’s post and p.s. will be your last new, fresh ones for the next 11 days. (Wait, amidst the upcoming revived dead posts, there will be two brand new ones, so never mind. ) I’ll be away from here and from home in the Eastern US where I’m doing two events, the first on this coming Monday the 7th at the Museum of Modern Art, and the second on the 16th at the New Museum in NYC. If anyone reading this is in or near NYC, please come to one or another of the events if you can and like. The blog will return live with me in charge on Saturday, Nov. 19th. Between now and then, as always, please feel far more than free to leave comments for me and hang out here to talk with each other. I will respond to every comment that’s directed towards me on the 19th. Thanks! ** Bernard, Hi, Bernard! A belated very happy birthday to you, old pal! Did your extrication happen and smoothly enough? I know, it bites hard indeed that we can’t cross paths in NYC. I promise to make that away time count if you do. ** Lee, Well, hi there, Lee! Not quite top of the morning, through no fault of ours, to you! It rained like mad here yesterday too. In this weird, un-Paris-like non-pausing way. Is stuff awesome with you and yours, I’m imagining? Have a great time while I’m seemingly having a great time over yonder. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks for the condolences. I feel quite sickened by it. The Shaye Saint John doc is finished? Sucks that they didn’t include you, the dummies. Still, I’m obviously very curious to see that somehow. I hope everything goes splendidly for you while I’m off, my friend. ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie! Yeah, the video situation is gross. It feels very much like we’re not being told the whole story. My only goal at this point is to not have done all that work for nothing. We really like the video, and I want to be able to show it to people, so I guess trying to get the powers that be to let us show it as some kind of unofficial video or something is the best we can hope for. I don’t know. But that’s definitely the first and last time that Zac and I will agree to make a music video, that’s for sure. I’m glad the Peggy Ahwesh post fed you stuff. We (Zac and me) leave for the trip early tomorrow morning. I’m excited about the GIF event at the New Museum. Discovering how all of those very interesting artists will choose to ‘read’ my GIF fiction has my imagination doing very interesting tricks. I’m glad your night with your singing friend went well. Gotcha, single mom with two kids, that’s tricky, timewise. Could you get around that by making her kids your back-up singers or something, ha ha? Or not ha ha? Thank you for the bon voyage, my friend. I hope your next 11 or whatever number of days it is are joy-packed, and I look forward to seeing you and mutually catching up ere long. Love quadrupled, me. ** Steevee, Hi. The problem isn’t that the video we made is too ‘Dennis Cooper’. It’s actually a very fun, bright, friendly, odd video. And the artist knew exactly what we were doing and seemed very happy to be filmed in the way we were filming him. It’s not like the video is not what we said it would be and what he knew it would be. I honestly don’t know what the problem is exactly. Everyone on that end is being very tight-lipped about the whys and what’s going on. Never again re: making a music video, that’s definite. I hope the med adjustment helps as much as your doctor suggests, of course. And have a lovely next week and a half, and maybe I’ll see you in NYC. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Well, we definitely shouldn’t have been given total creative freedom, and the artist shouldn’t have participated in what we were doing with full knowledge of what we were doing with apparent happiness and complete support, if they were then going to turn around afterwards and say that what we did is not what they want. Ugh. We figured out our in-between trip yesterday. We’re going to do this ridiculous thing and go to Orlando and spend five days blowing ourselves out on all the many amusement parks there. It’s pretty extravagant, but Zac and I are both heavy theme park enthusiasts, and neither one of us have ever been to those parks, so we’re going to go for it. So I’m excited. Plus, we’ll be traveling there on the day of the utterly terrifying US election, so hopefully that will prove to be a good distraction. I hope … well, I know … that you’ll have a great and productive time with your writer friend today. Gee, I hope everything goes really, really well with you while I’m away from this place, and do report here if you like while I’m gone because I will be checking in and reading the comments, and, in any case, I look forward greatly to catching up with you when I get back. Best to the best of you! ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, David. Yes, I’ve known about the Carax/Sparks film for quite a while because Gisele is friendly with Carax, and I’m very happy that it has been cemented enough to be announced. From what I know about it, it’s going to be wild. I read your Fandor piece this morning. Excellent! Major kudos to you! Everyone, Mr. David Ehrenstein has written a very, very fine and must-read piece for Fandor. Its title is ‘Evidence of Things Not Seen’, and it’s subtitle is ‘Why is it so hard to make a film about black lives that both critics and the public love?’, and I highly recommend it to you. It’s here ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I’m not mentioning the artist’s name because I don’t want this to become some widespread thing. I feel like I can talk a little about it here because all of us here are like family. It’s all very mysterious thus far in a very unpleasant way, and I hope that the mystery gets solved at the very least. Yes, they finally officially announced the Carax/Sparks film! Like I said to David, I know something about it due to Gisele’s friendliness with Carax, and it certainly sounds to be potentially amazing and very, very strange. ** Jeff Jackson, Hi, Jeff. You would think the artist should be able to push that through, yes, which begs the question. I don’t believe I know Andrei Bitov’s work, unless I’m forgetting. Huh, well, if he was put in context with those other writers, he definitely is worth investigating, and I will do that. Thank you a lot for passing that along, man. Yeah, as I told Dora, we’ve decided to go whole hog and do the Orlando theme park maxing out experience for five days, which is nuts, but … ha ha. Take care, man, and I’ll write to you on FB today. ** B, Hi! Thanks for the commiseration. No, we decided to do it even though what we were offered was far less than what it would cost to make it, and I think we just have to eat the self-imposed loss, as far as I can tell. Thanks for the safe travel wish. And I’ll hope to get to see you on the 16th. Have a fine week-plus! ** James Nulick, Hi, James! Welcome home! I don’t know if the artist has overriding power, and I don’t know if he’s exercising it if he does. We’re in the dark. That time change is nuts. I’m getting phantom severe jet lag just thinking about it. I’m so glad you had such a blast in Tokyo. It’s a very additive place if you’re susceptible to its glories. I miss it all the time, and I’m hoping and pretty much planning to get back there this spring after we finish shooting our new film, as I think I might have already said. Try to enjoy your re-ensconcing within the US, and hopefully we’ll all still be around in one piece after Tuesday, gulp. ** Okay. Again, enjoy Ferdinand’s shebang. And enjoy the next 11 or so day when I won’t have the privilege to speak with you. And please do hang out here and tell me and each other stuff while I’m in absentia. The blog will see you on Monday, as usual, and I will see you ‘in-person’ on the 19th. Take good care, everybody!