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The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Page 128 of 1086

Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … The Art of the Miniature Golf Course

 

‘Like football, the origins of miniature golf (geometrically-shaped minigolf courses made of artificial materials) is a hotly contested subject. Some say it can be traced back to 9th century China, whilst others claim it was the Dutch a few hundred years later. The French say it evolved out of a game called pallemail, popular in the 15th century. The Scottish, meanwhile, claim its origin as The Ladies Putting Club, established in 1827 and attached to St. Andrews golf course for the sole use of women.

‘The concrete facts of the matter, though, only began to occur in the early twentieth century. The earliest documented mention of a course is in the 8th June 1912 edition of The Illustrated London News, followed by the first standardised minigolf course entering mass-production in 1916 in North Carolina. But it was in 1922 that the game was revolutionised when the artificial green – a mixture of cottonseed hulls, sand, oil, and dye – was invented, meaning it could be played anywhere, and in any weather. It could even be played on rooftops, and by the end of the 20s there were more than a hundred in New York City alone.

‘Minigolf struggled to find a footing on the West Coast, though, where bigwigs in Hollywood were getting concerned that it was becoming too much of a threat to cinema audience numbers – so much so that it’s said they included specific clauses in the contracts of their film stars forbidding them from being photographed playing the game. The onset of the Depression, however, put everyone’s putting plans on pause, with nearly all existing courses closed and demolished before the 30s had come to an end.

‘The first minigolf courses were not as we imagine them today. They were much more ramshackle affairs. The Depression led to old bits of piping and repurposed dirt being used as obstacles, and courses were often strategically placed nearby billboards or well-lit areas so people could continue playing into the night without course owners having to foot the bill. The rooftop courses themselves came about largely due to the fact that they could utilise the unused and unwanted real esate at the top of buildings. Halted construction sites were another favourite haunt of the adventurous minigolfer, who could incorporate left over building materials into unique combinations of obstacles. Even upscale restaurants got in on the action when their dining customers dried up, replacing tables with an altogether different course than they were used to serving. Minigolf was for many a means to make a little bit of money to help them get through the aftermath of the 1929 crash, adopting real estate that had lost its market value into so-called unreal estate.

‘Putting away remained all the rage throughout the 60s and into the 70s, even becoming a respectable sport with its own elite players raking in large sums of prize money (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.) Miss Putt-Putt beauty pageants became a thing. But towards the end of the 70s the game was becoming less of an attraction for serious golfing adults and more of a hangout spot for local teenagers and a day out for families. And then the interstate system came. Under construction since the 50s, the number of travellers using local highways was dwindling and roadside miniature golf courses began to fall quite literally to the wayside.’ — Freya Bainbridge

 

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Further

Mike Perry Has Always Been an Indoor Kid
A Couple of Putts
Aesthetics of Mini Golf: An Interview
Miniature Golf as Art
Q-and-A with Christina Vitagliano, Founder of Monster Mini Golf
a typographic miniature golf course by ollie willis
Build It And They Will Come: A Review of Minigolf Designer
Course Work: A Look At Innovative Miniature Golf Course Design
Architects design fantastical crazy-golf courses for Turf exhibition in Los Angeles
The Funeral Parlor With Mini-Golf
The Psychology of Mini Golf Course Design
Zaha Hadid and Paul Smith design holes for crazy golf course in London’s Trafalgar Square

 

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Extras


Miniature Golf – on the Atari 2600


Turn Your Backyard Into A Mini Golf Course


WEIRDEST MINI GOLF TOY EVER!


America’s Treasures – The story of Miniature Golf

 

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Aesthetics of Mini Golf
an interview with Tom Loftus and Robin Schwartzman

 

Jehra Patrick You’ve both also been to mini golf courses all over the United States. Are there areas where mini golf thrives more than others?

Tom Loftus Mini-golf is definitely most popular in warmer climates and dense tourist areas (i.e. Wisconsin Dells, Jersey Shore, Orlando). The mini-golf capitol of the US is Myrtle Beach, S.C. They have about 50 courses there and we’re planning to visit soon.

Patrick You have more or less a 5 star rating system, but what criteria do you look for in a good mini golf course?

Loftus I like unique holes or courses where all aspects of the design are well executed. We run into courses that are poorly maintained or they look nice but make for boring play all the time. You can tell which courses consider all aspects of the experience whether it’s a net to recover your ball from a larger water hazard or unique signage for each hole that is related to the actual play of the hole.

Robin Schwartzman For me it’s often about the details. Signage, overarching themes, waterfalls and rivers, ice cream and creative scorecards, just to name a few. But I agree with Tom – the course has to be well-maintained in addition to having a unique variety of plays.

Patrick I think that most mini golf goers enjoy that kitsch factor. Are there other ‘aesthetics’ for mini golf?

Loftus I appreciate courses that have less of a “real golf” feel. Numerous courses try to be a miniature version of a golf course. There are some cases in which it is pulled off so well and the play is challenging that can make the play and overall experience worthwhile. Unfortunately, there are many courses end up resembling the more stuffy and less engaging elements of your average golf course. It’s no surprise that a lot of those types of courses also include golf pro shops and driving ranges. I respect the game of golf but the reason I like mini-golf is that it more inclusive. It’s inexpensive to play but more importantly, mini-golf accommodates all ages and levels of play.

Patrick Can we talk about animatronics?

Schwartzman Many courses use motors for moving parts (windmills, doors, ferris wheels, etc.). As far as animatronics that move and talk, we’ve only really found these at the very touristy courses where there is a lot of local competition. Duffer’s has a crew of singing pelicans that greet you at the entrance, as well as a giant shark on the 19th hole. But the animatronics we’ve encountered just add decoration rather than interfere with the play of the hole.

Patrick Artist-designed mini golf has come a long way, what happens when artists and designers enter this traditionally kitsch territory?

Loftus The intersection of artists/designers with mini-golf is very exciting. It offers a fresh approach to a realm that can be a bit conservative and repetitive at times. Different elements of kitsch can be brought in to update your standard windmill, loop de loop or bridge.

Patrick Are these playable, or do they just look cool?

Schwartzman I think it’s still a mix of both. There are certainly artist designed holes that are super successful in terms of playability and creativity. However, there are still many that would never make it in a commercial course due to a lack of practicality and durability.

Loftus Problems arise when the play is not considered at all. The basic premise of moving a ball from a starting point to a hole has to remain in the back of the mind of the artist or designer.

Patrick What are pitfalls for design? Does Design with a capital ‘D’ ever compromise playability?

Loftus Design can comprises play and complicate the experience. A hole can be challenging and involve a lot of steps but it shouldn’t be confusing. One should know where each hole begins and ends. Fashion over function shouldn’t result in the lack of a hole or design flaws that prevent the possibility of getting the ball in the hole.

Schwartzman We’ve played some holes designed by architects at the National Building Museum course. While they were certainly unique, abstract and aesthetically interesting, many of them just didn’t play well. Surface has a lot to do with this. One hole was a fiberglass labyrinth. Its surface was so smooth that the ball wouldn’t stop rolling, making it impossible to score under par. Another hole was comprised of hundreds of small wood blocks cut at different heights with tiny gaps between them, which made for a highly irregular and uneven surface. Sometimes the ball would just stop between gaps and you couldn’t get it to roll smoothly.

 

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Show

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Can Can Wonderland Mini Golf (St. Paul, MINN)
The name is a nod to the building’s history, which once served as a sprawling complex that manufactured metal food cans for Carnation, Campbell’s Soup, and Del Monte, as the largest tin can factory in the country – American Can. Chosen from a pool of 200 proposals, each hole was designed by a local artist. The course begins with a State Fair-themed hole No. 1 and moves into a natural disaster hole, complete with a ground-shaking earthquake and floor-to-ceiling spinning tornado. From there, patrons putt through crazy obstacles ranging from Grandma’s 1970s living room to a giant hot pink wooly mammoth who arrived via Hot Tub Time Machine. Not to be without a Prince tribute, the course finishes with “The Mini-Golf Hole Formerly Known as the Longest Hole” which is, of course, purple.’

 

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Lost Duffer Miniature Golf, Charlotte, NC
The Lost Duffer Miniature Golf Course is one of the most unique facilities you will EVER visit! Did you know that at one time there were over 80 actual operating gold mines in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area? It’s true… and you can get a taste of the first U.S. gold rush just by visiting this fun, family-friendly golf course. The course meanders through a replica of a 19th century mining camp complete with water wheel, and finishes up in the abandoned shafts of an old gold mine.

 

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Unknown

 

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Around the World Miniature Golf, Lake George, NY

 

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Unknown

 

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An exhibition called Adventureland Golf that has just opened at the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool features crazy golf course obstacles created by artists who include David Shrigley, Gary Webb, and Jake and Dinos Chapman. Can you guess which of them is responsible for a lifelike statue of Hitler’s head and torso, its arm poised to rise in a Nazi salute every time the ball goes through a hole between its legs? Take a bow, Chapmans. In a bit of national publicity that must be welcome to any exhibition opening in the middle of August, Michael Samuels of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has condemned the Chapman brothers’ piece, calling it “tasteless” and declaring that it has “absolutely no artistic value whatsoever”.

 

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Smash Putt Miniature Golf Course, Seattle
Smash Putt is the brainchild of two ex-Burners who took over an old warehouse in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood for a month and turn it into a 21-years-and-older indoor miniature golf course with some twists.


Shooting a golf ball at high velocity down the firing range. By using an air compressor-powered golf ball bazooka, we aimed for one of the three “holes in one”: either embed your ball in the far wall, clang off one of the hanging saw blades, or knock over 2X4s without ricocheting off the piano below. The plywood and green VW Bug front hood is for some protection from the ricocheting balls.


This ferris wheel revolved while we tried to get the ball into one of the hooked “seats” by either rolling the ball up a ramp or else landing on a small hole that then levitated the ball into the air through the wonders of an air blast. The ball would then circle around the wheel and be dumped onto a metal track (on the left) which wound around and down into the final hole.


This one was a challenge: hit the ball across the upper level while traversing two astro turf-covered record players that were spinning at 33 1/3 that also had either a crushed beer can or a microphone on the turntable to knock your ball into the “moat” below.


The “hole” here is the castle in the background. We putted our golf ball a certain distance up onto the catapult and then – in a team effort – someone else tapped a pedal with their foot and launched the catapult. If you made it over the ramparts, you were in the hole.



After arcing the ball along a curved alley, the ball then bounced randomly down an inclined pachinko peg board. Each of the three holes led to a separate power tool that ate away at the ball with its own unique style… Your random pachinko run resulted in being funneled through either the grinder, the router, or the circular saw. The balls would fling out at high speed, all chewed up around the edges.


And then to ensure the ball was truly “Smash Putted”, on the final hole 18 the ball was funneled down into a drill press, where the ball was held in place as a drill came down and cored the ball to destruction before flinging the ball out so we had a mangled souvenir to take home.

 

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Art Deco Mini Golf, Wilshire Blvd. and La Cienega Blvd. c. 1922, Los Angeles

 

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Subpar Miniature Golf, Alameda, CA
‘Each hole is designed to resemble a San Francisco Bay Area landmark; Golden Gate Bridge, Napa Valley Winery, Oakland Taco Trucks!’

 

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Steamboat Landing Miniature Golf, Naples, ME
Steamboat Landing is Maine’s premier miniature golf course. We are located in a shaded, woodland setting. A trip to Steamboat Landing is like taking a tour through the Pine Tree State and experiencing “…the way life should be.” This challenging course is based on theGolf photos rotating history of the area and includes many landmarks from around Maine. Our holes include a classic New England covered bridge, historic Fort Western, a scenic lighthouse, typical of the many that line Maine’s rocky coast, and a Maine Black Bear, sporting his trout catch between his teeth!

 

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Molten Mountain Mini Golf, Myrtle Beach, SC
Follow Lava Louie through the heart of the special effects filled Volcano, playing the most unique and challenging holes ever designed. Enjoy 2 levels of play while Lava Louie guides you along the path inside the active Volcano. Journey through the volcanic villages, lava pools, smoke stacks and ancient tribal artifacts.

 

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‘Church officials at England’s second oldest cathedral have provoked outrage after installing a nine-hole mini-putt golf course in the medieval nave. Officials said the idea was to attract more visitors to Rochester Cathedral, founded in 604 AD. Damian Thompson, former editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, tweeted, “St John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, went to his death rather than watch his cathedral fall into the hands of greedy iconoclasts. I suspect he would rather see it lie in ruins than experience this fate.” Fisher was beheaded in 1535 after being found guilty of treason by not recognizing Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England.’

 

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Big Stone Mini Golf, Minnetrista, MN
‘After his hometown turned down his idea of a public course, Minnesota artist Bruce Stillman created a one-of-a-kind artist mini golf experience in his “front yard.” Between 2003 and 2012, Stillman built Big Stone, a 14-hole course on the Minnetrista property a little over 30 minutes west of Minneapolis near Lake Minnetonka. A mix of stone, metal, turf and other semi-organic materials form a course that looks nothing like the tourist town and seaside mini golf courses you might be familiar with. And not all of the obstacles stay still—any point, your game may be briefly interrupted by chickens roaming the course.’

 

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Lost City Adventure Golf, Nottingham, UK
‘The Lost City is an adventure for everyone and challenges you to ‘putt’ your skills to the test in our Inca-themed rainforest. Challenge your team to play amid a thunder and lightning storm on our “carpeted” greens, avoid the crush of our venomous 23 foot animatronic snake, risk the jaws of our snap happy alligator, and witness talking idols and rumbling walls.’

 

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Swingers, London
Set in an old warehouse near Old Street, Swingers London pop up concept brings with it two cocktail bars, mobile pizza making vans, macaroni and cheese, and 9 holes of golfing fun.

 

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Our hole, “Take Out the Clowns”, is comprised of space brain monsters who are harvesting the funny fluid of human clowns. And the effect this has on the gravity of circus peanuts. Amidst all of the chaos, the albino shouting gorilla is running amok, throwing banana peels at everything! Below the fairgrounds looms the space brain’s crystal cave, a kind of wine cellar of funny fluid. There are 3 ways to navigate this chaos. The first option is to go up the quarter-pipe and into the mother-ship to defeat the brains. and return to earth via a spiraling space beam. Or perhaps you’d rather take the secret passage through the quarter-pipe, and through the geo-dome. in pursuit of the escape albino gorilla. Or finally, you could take the ramp through the crystal cave. for a quick meal of moon-shine and circus peanuts with the hobo.

 

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Lexington Ice Center & Miniature Golf, Lexington, KT
The Lexington Ice Center & Miniature Golf features 54 holes of bible themed golf created in 1988. First 18 are Old Testament: first seven holes recall the seven days of creation (Seventh is easy, because on the 7th day God rested), then the Garden of Eden, Pharoah’s Frogs, and Noah’s Ark. Rugged Mt. Sinai is the toughest Old Testament hole. Next 18 are New Testament, starting at the Star of Bethlehem, and moving through the Last Supper’s Upper Room. 16, 17 and 18 are Faith, Hope and Love. The last 18 are the toughest — miracles, including Jesus feeding the multitudes, parting of the Red Sea, the pillar of smoke and fire, and the burning bush.

 

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Medieval Adventure Golf, Tamworth, UK
‘An 18-hole game of medieval-themed adventure golf.’

 

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Crazy Golf at Sutton Fields, Runcorn, Cheshire, UK
When we arrived we thought the visit was going to be another to add to the ‘unplayable’ files, or worse the course may have been completely removed. We spotted three of the holes and then, through an archway in the tall hedge spotted other holes. As the course layout looked unlike anything we’d seen before we had to have a game on it. We spoke to the man there, Mike, who told us about the site and that we were welcome to have a game. The course itself has obviously seen better days, but was still playable.

 

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Novelty Golf, Chicago

 

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Eindhoven collective La Bolleur will construct a mini golf course in Zona Tortona in Milan this April. The nine-hole course will be constructed from wood and include a clubhouse with bar.

 

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Cancun Lagoon Mayan Adventure Golf, Myrtle Beach, SC
The biggest mini-golf eye-popper in Myrtle Beach is the 50-foot-tall Mayan pyramid at Cancun Lagoon. It’s topped with frescoes of feathered priests hoisting putters over their heads. Unnaturally blue water spills from terraces amidst palm trees and stone heads. The structure is supposed to be the ancient Mayan Temple of Ek’-Wayeb-Chak (or Chak), the god of lightning and thunder. This hot-tempered god who can only be appeased by playing the ritual Mayan game — of miniature golf. Twin courses weave in- and out-of-doors, and every half-hour a thunderstorm erupts inside the pyramid, a manifestation of the god’s impatient wrath, which drenches the golf course and the players.

 

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A mini-golf course atop a Tianjin, China train station.

 

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Coal Country Miniature Golf, Fairmont, WV

 

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Indoor miniature golf course c. 1935, YMCA, Warren, PA

 

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Rube Goldberg contraption cooked up by the owner of Lilliputt mini golf course in Grand Lake, CO.

 

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Various holes designed by visual artists

 

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‘Noodle Delight, one of the signatures holes on a new fantasy miniature golf course at Mission Hills in China, will see players attempt to hit a green surrounded by a noodle-style hazard complete with chopsticks.’

 

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Lake George Mini Golf, NY

 

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Unknown

 

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Goofy Golf, Panama City Beach, Florida
Lee Koplin built his masterpiece, Goofy Golf, in Florida; it opened in the summer of 1959. It was miniature golf, but it was also a crazy visionary art theme park. Lee advertised Goofy Golf as “A World of Magic.”

 

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Mayday Golf, North Myrtle Beach, SC

 

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Fantasia Gardens, Orlando, FLA
‘The Mini golf place is located on the other side of the road that the water taxi drops you at the swan hotel you must walk past the pool and small beach and across the road once you are past the pool you will see signs showing you how to get to Fantasia mini golf. We did not have reservations and we had to wait about 30 minutes.’

 

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Unknown

 

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Turda Saltmine Miniature Golf, Romania
‘Descend an astonishing 120 metres to the Turda Salt Mine which adds new meaning to the phrase a ‘hidden gem’. Opened to the public in 1992, get up to all kinds of activities here from riding the world’s only underground Ferris wheel, to playing a game of mini-golf across 6 trails.’

 

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KISS Monster Mini-Golf, Las Vegas
In addition to 18 holes of rock-’n’-roll-themed madness, the venue boasts scarily accurate animatronic versions of the band, the world’s largest KISS memorabilia store and a wedding chapel.

 

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Rosies Diner Mini Putt, Michigan
‘Rosie’s Diner was originally known as The Silver Dollar Diner, located in Little Ferry, NJ. It opened in the 1940’s and became famous as the backdrop for the 1970’s Bounty Paper Towel commercials that featured the character Rosie the waitress. The original owners, Ralph Corrado and his son, Ralph Corrado, Jr. renamed the diner after the commercials aired. In 1993, they built the diner-themed mini golf course behind the trio of diners.’

 

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Par-King Skill Golf, Lincolnshire, Illinois
Par-King comes off as a Disney World attraction that somehow landed in the Midwest. Beautifully rendered hole features include a looping rollercoaster that gives balls a crazy ride, a replica Willis Tower inside of which balls ride an elevator to the top, and two giant, nonstop spinning roulette wheels.

 

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Unknown c. 1924, West Palm Beach, FLA

 

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Dino Park Mini Golf Phuket, Thailand

 

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Bompas and Parr Crazy Golf, London
Each hole is a London landmark made out of a cake or jelly looking material. Sadly you won’t be able to take a bite of the gherkin or munch on Big Ben but you might just get a hole in one. You can book ahead for the golf (£6 a pop) or just turn up during the day.

 

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I ran a quick workshop with some folks to integrate the PicoCricket robotics kit into a cardboard putt putt course. We built some creative holes that brought in the audience via interactive robotic additions.

 

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Justin Bieber playing mini-golf in a Slayer t-shirt


 

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Ahlgrim Acres, Chicago
It’s the secretly infamous, miniature golf course Ahlgrim Acres, in the basement of Ahlgrim Funeral Home. Originally built for their kids back in the 60s, the 9 haunted holes (complete with spooky music) are open to the public; when they’re not conducting services, that is.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Oscar 🌀, Howdy! It must have boomeranged back here again because Paris is clear, chilly, and no sight of watery clouds. Paris is a big rain magnet too. Cool, I’ll look for your email when it slips in. Even though I’ve been a Francophile since I had workable brain cells, and even though I’ve lived here for ages now, my French is gruesomely terrible, so, no I’ve never read Rimbaud in French, which is embarrassing. Or rebellious, to put a positive spin on it. Thanks about the film. It’ll get done. Where are you in Scotland? I’ve only been to Glasgow and Edinburgh, so I’m a basic. ** _Black_Acrylic, Well, thank you very kindly, sir. ** Charlie Zacks, Hi, Charlie. Really good to get to meet you. Yes, sure, please about the literary magazine. I’d love to read it. If you mean send by post, I can give you my mailing address if you write me at [email protected]. Thank you so much for the really kind words. I … don’t know if I’ve ever seen a nude horse hoof, but I’m having an interestingly edgy time trying to imagine it. Thanks a lot for coming in here. Best of the best. ** Charalampos, Hi. ‘Absences répétées’ might be my favorite of his. I had a dream of being a filmmaker in my teens and that did happen in the far future, so chase that dream, but I guess be patient. Hi from the imminent Olympics site Paris. ** Bill, Hi. He’s very interesting, Gilles. Worth the time. Yes, it’s been a very long time since Hugo Blame popped in here. I have no idea what’s become of him, and I don’t have any means of contact either. Let me know if you discover anything or find him. I think the only Yang film I’ve seen is ‘The Terrorizers’. I remember liking it okay but not much about it other than it not being what I’d hoped its title portended. ** Justin D, Hey, Justin. Thanks. I’m still not sure if I’ll get to talk with the friend of George, I hope so, but she sent me a couple of photos of him that I’d never seen, which is great. I think my favorite Gilles is ‘Absences répétées’. I really like ‘Wall Engravings’ too. What’s news with youse? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Planetariums have really good exterior charisma. Their insides tend to be pretty predictable. But that’s okay. Nothing’s perfect. I’m waiting to see if or, hopefully, when George’s friend will talk. It’s up to her. I’m just hoping it happens. Was it cheese stink? My refrigerator stink always seems to be trackable to cheese. Love going back in time and giving William Shakespeare a skateboard, G. ** Dev, Yeah, I’m even jealous of myself. I’ve meant to get ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’, and now you’ve closed the deal. Thanks. I’m excited. Maybe if you ever take a trip to Japan, which I extremely recommend doing if you haven’t, your Japanese will grow back at least a little. Whenever I go to Holland, I get this kind of Dutch language flashback, which is interesting. Thanks, pal. ** Steve, I’m glad that emergency got solved, shit. And that you’ve relaxed. Stay strong through what sounds some hard times ahead. Ugh, so sorry, my friend. ** Catachrestic, Oh, okay. Just to say that Siegfried and Roy IMAX thing was incredible, in 3D, primitive cgi up the wazoo, a serious acid trip of a ridiculous thing. I think there is still a concerted mission to save the manatees, it’s just not trending like it used to. As a literal child of the 60s, that makes sense. I had an X-Files addiction phase. I even went to an X-Files convention. The Smoking Man was the only special guest. I was really disappointed when he revealed that his cigarettes were clove. Marx as a pulp author: ooh, that’s a thought/premise. I’m percolating. Well, George’s friend has yet to commit to actually speaking with me. She said she was reading ‘I Wished’, and maybe after getting further into it, she was, like, Nope. ** seb 🦠, Well, hello, green blotched pal. I’ve been okay enough, thanks. The new boyfriends sounds both exciting and complicated, which is a combination I naturally chase, so congrats so far. Two books a week is very good. My hat’s off. And re: your knowledge of extremely obscure facts about space. If I was sitting across a couple of coffee cups from you, I’d ask you to spill. Related words, not the coincidental coffee. No, on the stills, I just google and grab and save them in a file and then upload/stack them up. Internet Archive is great for films. It’s really annoying for books/text. Your return was highly valuable, yes. The film is days way from being completely finished, and we’re just waiting for our fucking producers to greenlight the last work bit. All’s good. Big up re: seeing you. ** Uday, Ah, Gracie Mansion. That takes me back. Gilles’s films are hard to find. I think they’re on DVD here in France but with no subtitles. Based on how weird people get about my books’ interest in its characters’ internal organs and bones, I would say that’s not a general interest. Strange, no? No, I’ve never thought about how people put on their clothes but what an interesting to think about. I’m going to start doing that today. Wow, that could be very useful to write about. You’ve given me a ton to think about too. Mutual congratulations to us! ** Okay. I haven’t done a post about miniature golf in a really long time, so I made a post that considers their physical builds as possible artworks for you and me. See you tomorrow.

Guy Gilles’s Day

 

‘An unclassifiable filmmaker in 20th century French cinema, Guy Gilles is the director of a little-known body of work, melancholic and poetic, that combines nostalgia for the past with a haunting evocation of the present. His work was a passion of many of the most respected French actors and actresses, and it remains a favorite of film buffs, who love his films for their acute literary references and close attention to private emotion.

From Love of the Sea (1965) to Nefertiti (1996), Guy Gilles developed his films on the sidelines of the New Wave, his work sometimes colliding painfully with the contemporary trends, and often facing the indifference of a public confused by the precious uniqueness of his vision.

‘It is in precarious conditions – three years of work and a more than limited budget – that, in his first film, Guy Gilles turned to the sea for a romantic love story of two protagonists who do not live with the same intensity. Already, in the film’s many obsessions (thematic and aesthetic), we see the lifelong interests of its director. We meet for the first time the actor who would become his favorite (Patrick Jouane) and number of stars attracted by the enthusiasm of the young filmmaker. He will always convince stars to volunteer their contributions to his cinema: Jean-Claude Brialy, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliet Greco appear in his work repeatedly, contributing to their poetic strangeness a sense of timelessness that one can already see clearly in as early a work as Love of the Sea.

‘This atmosphere is also reflected in Au pan coupé (1967), starring Patrick Macha Meril Jouane, who created his own production company, Machafilms, in order to enable the film to be made. The charm of this sensitive film rests on the memory of a lost love. It shows none of the indifference of the work being made and celebrated at the time, by such as Jean-Louis Bory or Marguerite Duras.

‘While Gilles hoped to shoot his next film, Le Clair de terre (1969), in his native Algeria, he was forced by circumstance to do so in Tunisia. This delay forced him to replace Simone Signoret in the central role of the retired teacher. Edwige Feuillère accepted the role, and brings much to the film’s character and its imperial, faded elegance. Considered Gilles’s masterpiece, Le Clair de terre is a concentration of all of his art, lingering between nostalgia and modernity.

‘He would never again find this delicate balance, even in Absences répétées (1972), despite winning the Prix Jean Vigo for the film. Darker than his previous films, Absences répétées follows the deadly process of a young man isolating himself in a haze between drugs and a desire to commit suicide. Apart from the very impressionistic Jardin qui bascule (1974) starring Delphine Seyrig, Guy Gilles made no feature films for the next decade.

Le Crime d’amour (1982) is a flawed film situated between a police investigation and the story of a crazy and tragic love affair between a young man and an older woman (Macha Meril), and it exudes a strange and powerful latent homosexual drive. The film’s staging rarely succeeds in articulating these various levels. This failure is even more obvious with Nuit docile (1987) which was met with general indifference from both critics and the French public.

‘Although he was already very ill, Gilles then began to make the film Nefertiti, an ambitious international co-production that exhausted him and was considered a fiasco. In 1995, an unfinished version was shown very quietly on television. On February 3, 1996, Gilles Guy died from complications from AIDS. His brother, Luc Bernard, later devoted a documentary to Gilles’s work in 1999: Letter to my brother Guy Gilles, filmmaker too soon.

‘Parallel to his achievements in film, Guy Gilles was a prolific director for television. He directed a very highly regarded documentary about Marcel Proust (Proust, art and pain, 1971) and another successful documentary about Jean Genet (Holy martyr and poet, 1974). He was also a cultishly beloved photographer and painter, and he wrote several books, most of them as yet unpublished.’ — Cinematheque Francaise

 

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Further

Guy Gilles Website
Guy Gilles @ IMDb
‘Absences répétées’: A Guy Gilles Retrospective @ Cinematheque Francaise
‘(Re) découvrir la splendeur des films de Guy Gilles relève de l’urgence…’
Guy Gilles @ Ciné-club
‘L’Amour à la mer de Guy Gilles (1964) – Analyse et critique’
Video: ‘Guy GILLES sur GODARD et la nouvelle vague’
‘Les courts métrages de Guy Gilles’
Hommage à Guy Gilles
‘Je suis formaliste, mais la forme est l’expression de la sensibilité,’ Guy Gilles
‘Guy Gilles, Nouvelle vague proustienne’
DVD: 3 films by Guy Gilles

 

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Extras


Les films de Guy GILLES, 1958-1972


Guy GILLES, souvenirs


Marcel PROUST et Guy GILLES


Rétrospective Guy Gilles. Présentation par Marcos Uzal

 

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Une vision plastique du monde (1967)
by Guy Gilles

 

I fell in love with Henri Langlois, the Director of our Cinematheque, the day I heard him say to Henry Chapier, who interviewed him for the French Television, that the cinema was, you should never forget it, first and foremost a plastic art.

Great creators like Eisenstein, Murnau or Stroheim had opened magnificent doors on this road and, with the exception of Hitchcock and a few others, with their disappearance these paths were deserted.

I think that it is impossible to translate in other ways than the image and the plastic, cinematographic poetry, in the Wellesian sense of the word: “the camera is an eye in the poet’s head”.

Neither painting, nor literature, nor related to any other existing art, the cinematograph is a plastic vision of the world – this having nothing to do with aesthetics, because if I can not do even a plan, in a way other than that which corresponds to my visual vision of everything, it is the same way and above all, of course, impossible to film a feeling, an idea, which is in opposition to my convictions politics or with my heart.

A flower, a wall, a street or the face of Greta Garbo are, I believe, also “vehicles” of poetry and sources of emotion. It all depends on the gaze on them.

Author of my films, I take full responsibility. I believe in the importance of every detail, plan as well as word, framing as well as sound, scenery, choice of actors, music.

More than the title of director, I would like the one invented by Sternberg of “commissioner”. A true film author is responsible for everything, of which he must of course have deep knowledge. That’s why I wanted to be able to be my own cameraman, my own director of photography and I would like, like Chaplin, to know how to write the music of my films.

I believe that a film creator must have an idea and the science of each element of the film: script, dialogue, image, cutting (sound, words, sounds and music) editing. (Resnais, Bresson, Melville or Godard for example).

The rest being, as François Truffaut puts it, a question of balance to be found, of the dosage of all the elements and, finally, of that inexplicable something that makes the mystery and the beauty of the cinematograph.

From there, if I am very strict with myself, I am on the contrary very free and very open to the work of the other men of cinema. We can, as François Truffaut still says, draw his plans as Eisenstein or Hitchcock, or shoot in 16mm and color with a crazy camera like some young American filmmakers, the important thing is the film. A beautiful movie is a beautiful movie.

Since my first short film in 16mm and in black and white, Sun off, until the Pan Coupé, as in TV shows that I made for my friend Roger Stéphane, there is not a single idea or an image that I have turned according to my heart. To resume the beautiful article by Sylvain Godet (about a film Rouch), I also believe that it is necessary in this hard and beautiful job of cinema “to win the right to film the sunset or the sunrise” , and I will try to deserve it, and to forget those who are on the side of the chromos …

The sunrise and the sunset, these enchantments, are the heart of the beating nature, and the trace of time.

 

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19 of Guy Gilles’s 54 films

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Au biseau des baisers (1959)
‘Algiers, summer, Sunday. A young couple in love goes to Tipaza: strolls on the beach, seeing the dancing, ride scooters. Imperceptibly, there is the initial crack in their harmony. “When kissing the years pass too quickly; avoid, avoid, avoid the broken memories” (Aragon)’ — guygilles.com


the entire film

 

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L’Amour à la mer (1965)
‘Waltzes between youths displaced from their country characters, feelings of confusion and Daniel Guy, sailors return to France after the war in Algeria, and Genevieve, also moving between Paris and Brest , young people troubled by their dreams of freedom and hesitations between Paris seductions and sunny beaches of summer … ‘ — collaged


Trailer


Excerpt

 

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Ciné Bijou (1965)
‘All too brief a documentary by the director Guy Gilles, and just in this short poem of a film I could see a poet of the cinema at work. His voice is heard as he recounts the loss of local cinemas in Paris, and the sight of this loss and the fragments of posters on desolate walls outside one specific cinema brought tears to my eyes. The abandoned cinema was about to be converted into a garage, and his filming in black and white evoked memories of the many films of the past not made in colour and in 1965 when this documentary was made colour was almost a necessity in the larger cinemas in Paris. All of this is seen through a teenage youth’s eyes, and I realised this was Guy Gilles recalling his own former years and the attachment he had to such lost places of ordinary cinematic entertainment. To be found on YouTube, and I hope like me viewers will want to hunt down more of this poet of the cinema’s work. The youth in the film is Patrick Jouane. I believe he is in other films by this extraordinary director.’ — jromanbaker


the entire film

 

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Song of Deeds (1966)
‘Guy Gilles walked through Paris and in the countryside with his camera and took the familiar gestures of passers-by, craftsmen, workers, beggars, and peasants. Ballet of familiar gestures that the author has managed to embellish with a particular and original perspective.’ — MUBI


Excerpt

 

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Pop Age (1966)
‘Report on the young people of the yéyé period and pop music. Jerk at the Palladium, Beatles, press clippings, questions about the impact of fashion (long hair and accoutrements) and modernity, youth, change, freedom.’ — Letterboxd


Excerpt

 

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Un dimanche à Aurillac (1967)
‘A whole day in Aurillac, on a rainy Sunday. Angling, shooting range, little ball, walks hand in hand on the roads around. Coffee at the station, the places, the faces and the time that elapses are captured in an impressionist way, without dialogue or comment.’ — unifrance.org


Excerpt

 

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Wall Engravings (1967)
‘Guy Gilles’s film Au pan coupé (Wall Engravings, 1967) instantiates a complex interweaving of poetry and cinema, as much in its form as in its content. Gilles’s poetic film calls for a closer analysis of how both media are entangled, reaching a state of photogenic intensity (Jean Epstein) that evades narrativity and denies conceptual categories, ushering in what the authors, drawing on Yves Bonnefoy’s theoretical texts, call Gilles’s cinepoetics of presence.’ — Marion Schmid, Hugues Azérad


Excerpt

 

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Au pan coupé (1967)
‘A boy and a girl meet in a cafe in  At the cutaway. They love each other. They will separate, however. There is in Jean a lack, a revolt that makes him powerless to live. To redo the world in its own way is to be free. To Jeanne who wants to understand him, he tells of his troubled adolescence, the prison of children, the runaways and always the desire to break rank … One day he disappears. Jeanne searches for it and discovers the impossibility of forgetting and, in turn, the strength of “lack”. At the Cutaway is the second feature film by Guy Gilles, with a taste of first film. There are two types of films to be made, explains Guy Gilles, the composition film that explains open, free situations. Let’s say that the camera follows people who leave from given points, cross various places and meet other people. Then the inspirational film that is done in an intimate story and revolves around specific characters. The cutaway is an intimate film, but both forms of interest interest me.’ — guygilles.com


Trailer

 

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Le Partant (1969)
‘In the Saint-Lazare metro and station, a young man dreams of getting away from the dullness and everyday life. Colored snapshots of postcards, metro stations or signs, symbolizing distant destinations, mingle with black and white images of reality in a sort of invitation to travel.’ — Letterboxd


the entire film

 

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Le Clair de Terre (1970)
‘Pierre Brumeu, a twenty-year-old young man, leads a drab life in Paris with his father, a man he does not understand very well, and his friends Michel and Sophie. Father and son live in the memory of Pierre’s mother, who died too early. One day, Pierre decides to go to Tunisia, the sunny country where he was born…’ — IMDb


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Cote cours, coté champs (1971)
‘On the Champs-Elysees, between windows, cars, passers-by, various characters cross each other. An old lady in Rolls, a young house painter, a young couple. From their fugitive appearance, the montage of sounds and images describes the course of a day on the main avenue.’ — guygilles.com


Excerpt

 

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Absences répétées (1972)
‘Guy Gilles knows how to show the thousand and one flashes of the daily spectacle and memory. Series of flashes mounted alive, crumbling the real fast notations – which does not prevent the sharpness of the observation nor the precision of the memory. With this swarm of lights and reflections, faces seen in the flash of a glance and objects a second elected by attention or memory, Guy Gilles composes a symphonic pointillist, true poem enriched a soundtrack, music, sounds, words, mounted with as much skillful sensitivity as the images.’ — Le Nouvel Observateur


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Le Jardin qui bascule (1974)
‘This is an interesting film that the public and fans of Delphine Seyrig should seek out. She is given a substantial role and makes the most of it. The film is genuinely odd in that it feels like two unrelated tales; Karl (a hit-man) dispatches his victims coolly. Then he enters the tranquil world of Kate and falls in love, with tragic consequences. The film is beautifully shot and well observed, its complex characters interacting and developing. For no apparent reason Jeanne Moreau appears and sings a song by Stephane Grappelly. There are shades of Rohmer and painterly influences. The French countryside has rarely appeared lovelier. At times the camera simply lingers on a tree or glass which creates an atmosphere. The performances are terrific, Guy Bedos, usually a comedian, plays it straight here with great success. However, the film belongs to Seyrig, one of the most totally underrated and truly great actress’ of theatre and cinema.’ — IMDb


Excerpt

 

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La loterie de la vie (1977)
‘The real museum in Mexico City is the city, it’s the street. To grasp the impalpable, Guy Gilles decides to tell Mexico by questioning the value of images and sounds, far from tourist clichés.’ — La Cinémathèque française


Excerpt

 

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Le crime d’amour (1982)
‘A young man (Jacques Penot) finds a woman’s dead body and admits to having committed the crime. He is bisexual, mythomaniac, a bit masochistic, but most of all, he wants to read his name in the headlines of the newspapers.’ — IMDb

Watch the film here

 

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Un garçon de France (1985)
‘The action takes place in Paris in 1959, with some backtracking. A teenager looking for a mother he did not know enters the age of man and discovers love.’ — guygilles.com


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Nuit docile (1987)
‘Jean is a successful painter who leaves his mistress, though he stops intermittently to phone her with explanations. Sometimes she is responsive but other times hangs up on him. Meanwhile, a 16-year-old male prostitute with whom Jean had a brief homosexual affair stalks the painter.’ — Letterboxd


Extracts

 

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Dis papa, raconte moi là bas (1993)
‘The times however are hard and it is only five years after The crime of love that he manages to film Nuit Docile, with Claire Nebout and Patrick Jouané, perhaps his most personal film. It is then a new homecoming, with a documentary: Dis Papa, tell me there, where Richard Berry interprets the role of a blackfoot father who explains to his film what was his Algeria.’ — guygilles.com


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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La lettre de Jean (1994)
‘Guy Gilles’s final film. With Maria Schneider, Luc Bernard.’ — IMDb


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. I’m okay with the Cannes thing, it was totally expected, but thank you. Ditto re: social media. The new Pet Shop Boys isn’t bad if you’re in the mood for them, imo. Bear hug from here’s near center. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I like the round surround screens at planetariums. I like that you have to look up. Yes, about Cannes, it doesn’t seem surprising. I’m kind of amazed we got as far as we did given how non-normal our film is. Tough road ahead, obviously, but I’m not worried. Dislike would definitely be easier. There are only two people I personally know that I truly hate, which doesn’t seem like an excessive amount. I wouldn’t have recognized Khloe Kardashian from Adam, but Yury was watching some YouTube show about her a couple of days ago, and I paused long enough to get her dreadfulness, about a minute, as I recall. Well, yes, those things should be free, shouldn’t they? Love feeling grateful that a woman who was friends with George Miles just read ‘I Wished’ and contacted me, and we’re going to talk (about him), which was one of the big goals of writing that novel, so whoa, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, yes, you lads have a fair number, I believe. Dundee’s looks very classical. His band’s new name, while hardly a page turner, is an improvement, yes. Nice goal. And by a Dutch dude. Heel lekker! ** Dev, Hi. I think the first time I went to a planetarium it was for one of those silly laser light shows they used to splash on the ceilings of planetariums with Pink Floyd soundtracks back in the … 80s? N.O. makes sense to me. Awesome about the French preschool. For a while I lived next door to a French school in West LA, and hearing those little voices chirp in French all day was a real pick-me-up. Amazing you knew Japanese. What a dream. I like John Prine a lot. I must admit I mostly know his early work. Is the later work great as well? I saw him live a number times back in the 70s. Yeah, he’s fantastic. I love his voice too. ** Steve, Jesus, the scammer. There’s a special place in hell, etc. No, I don’t think animation will be a route. We’re trying to write this film so it will be as economical to make a possible so we don’t have go through the major four+ year hell to raise funds that we had to do with ‘RT’. Alright, I will do a concentrated dig into Aaliyah. I have to admit, I would never have imagined. ** Justin D, Hi, Justin. Me too, obvs. The June pub. date is just a thought/rumor at this point, but it does seem possible. We can do a double birthday celebration of some sort. Yeah, I feel like, pre-internet, pop stars were still kind of mysterious, and available only fleetingly in magazines and so on as opposed to having their faces and beings avalanching at you all the time like now. I don’t know. But, yeah, that might be it, although that doesn’t seem to stop people all around me from being lust-crushed about the current crop. Interesting. Festivals are very political animals, to generalise obviously. Like everything else these days, yes. There needs to be a new underground, or else we need to locate it. ** Jeff J, Hey there, pal. Great to see you! I’ve had Mayrocker in ‘books I’ve loved’ posts. I should do a spotlight on her, it’s true. I was sad when she died fairly recently. Lord, your body owes you so much compensation for all this misbehaving. I’m so glad you’re really upswinging. Awesome you got to Big Ears. And, of course, very good news that the three novels are moving along! We’re about to submit the film to two big festivals. Maybe three, I can’t remember. No, the short fiction pieces are all things mostly written in the last ten years, and I was just editing and refining them. Right now my brain is focused on the new film script. But I’m open to a new novel idea, for sure. Yes, Zooming soon would be great. xo. ** Harper, Hi. Okay, interesting. I’m a real morning guy. I generally write in the mornings and then try to keep the energy going into the afternoon, but for some reason by the evening I’m too distracted, but I don’t know by what. I wrote all of my novels by hand until ‘The Sluts’, and then I got seduced into typing them from the outset, although I still jot stuff down in a notebook when I’m out and about. Your method doesn’t sound crazy at all. I write novels in really unorthodox, overly complicated ways. I totally get the virtue of making a thing impractically. It’s terrible to have to edit out things in a work for practical reasons. But, like, I’m about to put out a book of short fictions, and a couple of them were parts of novels I had to discard and which I reworked later to be stand-alone pieces, so at least there’s a way to possibly keep them valuable. Gotcha on the length. My novels take a long time too. And, heck, our new film took more than five years to make. So, no sweat. Fingers very crossed from me indeed! ** Rafe 🌝, A tent! With seemingly excellent WiFi! I almost envy you. I haven’t been to a planetarium in ages, and I guess I figure they must’ve upped their visuals given technology’s advancement and all of that. But maybe the primitivism is their lure now. Like the vinyl revival or those theaters that proudly only screen movies on film. Mm, I don’t think I get tired of reading and movies, but I should say that I give myself total freedom not to finish things. I actually rarely read a whole book, I guess because I don’t care about stories and characters very much. So reading long enough to get a sufficient taste of what a book is and what its value is and then bailing on it seems like a totally fine approach to me. Same with films, actually, But I’m weird. ** Uday, Aw, thanks. Hm, I don’t know Hujar’s Jute Harper work, and I honestly never knew that he worked under a pseudonym until you just told me. Huh. That work isn’t just included in the books of his main work? Ha, no, I didn’t know that Flaubert quote before, but it’s a good one, yes. No, I just always wanted to know what technically was responsible for and behind the scenes of attractive people’s looks, I guess? I always thought that was a natural curiosity, but I guess not. ** Darbyyy🥛, There you are, and with just the milk today. Do you drink milk? I don’t. Milk makes me a little nauseous, which is weird since I love cheese and ice cream and stuff. No problem about complaining. I do the same thing. People I know IRL must be so tired of hearing me complain about the problems surrounding our film since I’ve been kvetching about them for years. You should have the best friends. Friends on your level. Friends who dazzle and amaze you while being dazzled and amazed by you. It’s highly possible. Jeez, thanks for finding and removing that from my brain. And I don’t even have a scar! Jar will do, yes, please. ** Catachrestic, Hi. I went to an Omnimax once. I can’t remember where. In LA? I saw a IMAX film there about Siegfried & Roy. It was genius. I’m not kidding. Do they still exist, those Omni-things? Happy, what, Thursday! ** Okay. Today I invite and urge you to look into the oeuvre of the wonderful and underknown, at least outside of France, auteur filmmaker Guy Gilles. So why not take the opportunity, eh? See you tomorrow.

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