‘Danish photographer Asger Carlsen began his career at 16 when he sold a photo he took of the police yelling at him and his friends for burning a picket fence to the local paper. For the next ten years Asger worked as a crime photographer before moving on to shooting ads for magazines. Then one day while messing around on his computer he created an image of a face with a bunch of eyes that led him to the distorted photographs he has become known for. His eerie and often humorous work makes you question what is human, and has been exhibited and published internationally.
‘The images of Carlsen occupy the hazy cloud-cuckoo land between analog and digital photography. His pictures maintain an interesting haphazardness, a truth-before-the lens aesthetic, which is combined with eerie digital manipulations. The apparent on-camera flash and black and white tones further heighten the disconnect between the “real” and the fabricated. Carlsen often employs the visual cues of snapshot photography to suggest a physical, temporal connection between the photographer and the subject. His images depict a version of reality that is both firsthand and dissembling.
‘Persons with prosthetic legs fresh from the wood-shop, or those who may be blessed with backward-bending knees are shown as ordinary as anyone else. One image, similar to William Eggleston’s photograph of a man touching delicately an orange United States Air Force craft, depicts a man kissing, groping a towering mound of otherworldly ectoplasm. Carlsen’s microcosm equalizes all disparate activity; lycanthropes and Janus-faced characters coolly inhabit scenes lit by the glare of the camera’s clinical flash. All of which suggests both the degree to which the camera normalizes and objectifies experience, as well as the reticence of viewers to accept as factual all forms of photographic vision. Carlsen grafts a truthful and authoritative aesthetic upon deliberately fanciful constructions.’ — collaged
I read in an interview that you were a crime scene photographer?
AC: People sometimes get that confused. I was a crime scene photographer, but that was when I was out of high school. So I was 17, and then did that for ten years.
Who did you work for? A police department?
AC: Newspapers. I was a full-on newspaper photographer. I started out as an intern, and saw how it was done. Then I bought a police scanner, and would respond to the calls. Car accidents and stuff. Eventually, I did photograph a bit for the police.
You’ll have to forgive me a bit here. My wife is a therapist, and my mother-in-law is a therapist, and now, being an interviewer, I’ve kind of morphed into this guy who tries to read the tea leaves. It sounds to me like there was a lot of darkness going on in your job, and in your head, and all of a sudden, it popped up out of the shadows, into this style that became yours.
AC: Certainly, there is an understanding of how those crime scene scenarios could look like. The work certainly represents my time as a newspaper photographer.
You can dig into that. You can see how I was standing in front of a car accident, photographing it. It’s just different objects.
I have some students, and we were looking at some work last week that was really super-digi. Over-saturated, hyper-real, hopped up, textured and degraded. I talked about that, and these are younger students, and they couldn’t see it. That archive that we have in our head, of the cinematic and celluloid look, they don’t have that baseline. Their baseline is digital reality.
They can’t tell the difference between the super-saturated color look on the screen, and what you see when you walk out your door. Their brains are just different now.
AC: They are different. Do you think they understand my work differently than you understand it?
Sure. I would think they have to. I showed “Wrong” to students last year, and they ate it up. Ate it up. I’m curious to see what happens when this generation of students, who has only grown up in the digi-verse, when they’re mature enough as artists to make shit that we can’t even imagine.
AC: I’m sure in ten or twenty years, the files being produced by these random Canon cameras, that’s going to be a style that people will try to copy again.
The sci-fi reference in your work are so strong, and I don’t even consider myself a sci-fi geek. What did you read or see that ended up percolating into your work.
AC: I was inspired by painters, different art movements and all these obvious classical references. There’s a certain awkwardness in the work, and maybe that’s my attempt to try to fit into a photography style. Part of the reason why I became a photographer is that there was a certain loneliness in it, a searching for something. I think the work is a bit about that as well.
Trying to find my spot. Maybe I am a dark person? (Thinks about it.) I am a dark person.
You certainly have it in there.
AC: I felt like an outsider when I grew up, for sure. There are certain things I’m good at, and photography is one of them. But I was not a success in school, not a success in many things, but there was this one thing I could do.
___ Show
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p.s. RIP Edmund White. ** _Black_Acrylic, Agreed! I don’t know that Madonna doc, but her trajectory certainly must be of real interest, and more power to her. I never really had a Madonna phase, but I’ve never thought ill of her songs either. ** Misanthrope, Probably. Interesting because my toe shit was seemingly caused by wearing my Timberline boots while in LA, even though I’d worn those boots for a year or something prior to that. Maybe my thing is gout too. Eek. *deep breath*, doctor. No, or I’m only vaguely aware that Roland Garros is going on. I’ll check in. Everybody here has been consumed by PSG’s pursuit and win of the European Championship, so I think that ate the news about other sports. Paris was festive when PSG won to put it mildly. ** James Bennett, He does seem like a good egg. He’s pals with my friend the great Lucy K Shaw who does Shabby Doll House and is assisting on that new literary fireball site Zona Motel. I suspect the Paris deep dish pizza will be woefully inadequate but worth a try. I have been known to both eat deep dish pizza with knife and fork and pick up the slab-like slices and force them into my mouth, but I think the former method is preferable. Great about the ‘welcome’ post. Just hit me whenever you’re ready. Book #2, and a booklet (!), nice. ** Carsten, Right, ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, I forgot. I’m not sure that the US method of teaching youths poetry is any more progressive. Hence the general boredom and antipathy towards poetry for generation after generation. I’d like to think French institutions are more up to speed, but who knows. I don’t know Tough Poets Review, but I’ll have a look. I can’t imagine any reason for you not to submit to them in any case. ** Darbz 🦇🏓 🦇, Your name emojis are like a haiku! Cool. I’ll have a listen to Green-House when I’m freed up. Thanks, pal. My weekend was alright, I think, let me think back … yes. Exciting about you angling for a semi-modular synth. I’ve always thought having a sampler would be a major accomplishment and a creative dream come true. Wow. Synthesising and drawing can easily go together like soup and sandwich, as my mom used to say. It sounds like your situation is pretty fulfilling. No situation is ever ideal, right? Sure, Amoeba Records in LA is a total sensory overload mecca. If I don’t go there with a list of what I want, I get very overwhelmed and confused by the huge volume of opportunities. I’m not up on Paris record stores because I don’t have turntable or even something capable of playing CDs. It’s sad, but my ‘record’ store is Bandcamp, basically. The bats are out and about come dusk, yes. No, they fly so extremely fast that they’re just blurs. I should film them with my iPhone and slow the footage way, way down if you can even do that. ** Hugo, Great, thank you for the link to your friend’s game info. It looks exciting at a quick glance, and I’ll pore over it when I’m out of here. Weird: there’s nothing about Guadningo’s films that would begin to make me suspect he likes Arto Lindsay. That’s plus in his favor, but not a corrective one. Luckily I don’t really have much unpublished work. I tend to eventually finish what I start and publish it. There’s my juvenilia, but hopefully whoever in the future will recognise its shittyness and let it rest in obscurity. Yeah, the post-humous Didion thing is objectionable. I think publishing Foster-Wallace’s ‘The Pale King’ before he finished it is gross too. Sometimes novels being slow is just circumstantial and their fate and ultimately unimportant, you know. As long as you don’t totally forget about it and lose track of what you wanted to do, it should be okay in the long run, I think. Two of my novels, ‘The Sluts’ and ‘I Wished’, ended up taking me about ten years each to finish. The best back to you. ** Steeqhen, I don’t remember Zac ever recounting a dream he’s had. I think he might be like me and almost never remember them upon awakening. Ultimately your body is your god, so if it wants to chill for a summer, I don’t know if you have any choice unless you want to force infuse it with cocaine or drugs or something, which is probably not wise? My mom watched soaps every day for hours and hours, and I think watching her sit there like a lump gazing at the TV which appeared to be full of overly orchestrated and acted life mini-dramas kind of put me off the form. Congrats on the return of your Ritalin. ** pancakeIan, Well, at least Florida is good for something, haha. Other than theme parks, I mean. Said by the guy who’s only been to Orlando. And, wait, to some coastal town on the panhandle where they famously filmed ‘The Truman Show’, I can’t remember its name. ‘Moonrise Kingdon’ is my favorite Wes Anderson too. With ‘Life Aquatic’ and ‘Rushmore’ in the runner up positions. But I love all of his films. ** Steve, Ultimately I’m sure having the whole estate resolution on your shoulders is worse than sharing the duties with a greedy, vindictive sibling like I did. We haven’t found a documentary idea that seems doable yet. Well, actually, we shot a lot of footage for a documentary we were trying to make at one point about the fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, but I don’t know if we’ll ever finish that. Long story. Curious sounding, that doc you mention. ** Uday, Yes, as you found out, I have seen that lovely Les Blank film. Beetles on my windowpane sounds craveable, thank you. I’m not sure they could climb all the way up the fourth floor (where I live), but … wait, some of them can fly, right? ** Right. Today I fill my galerie with the odd works of Asger Carlsen, all of them made pre-AI, by the way, if that matters. See you tomorrow.
‘In 1972, on the set of his rattlesnake-revenge film “Stanley,” director William Grefe desperately wanted one of his actors to swim in a pool of live rattlesnakes. The actor protested immediately, until Grefe offered this palliative:
‘”I told him he would wrestle rubber snakes instead. He was supposed to be panicked, though, so I threw live rattlesnakes in, anyway. He jumped in and shrieked,” says Grefe with a smirk on a recent Monday morning at his home in Southwest Ranches, pausing long enough to imitate the sound of a mouse squeaking. He continues: ” ‘Grefe, you son of a – !’ he says. I guess that’s where I got the name ‘Wild Bill’ on set. I do some mean stuff to actors for the sake of a good performance.”
‘To say Grefe earned his “wild” stripes because of a few antics behind camera is perhaps an understatement coming from the 82-year-old director of grindhouse exploitation films. Over 50 years of making Florida-set movies, Grefe has put into his low-budget, B movies stories written strictly for shock and awe, and certainly not for the benefit of big-budget studios.
‘”I’m not a Hollywood shill,” says Grefe, whose film “Stanley” will be screened Wednesday at Miami’s Sweat Records. “An independent movie is all about the number of days you have to shoot. I shot in 35 mm, which was expensive, so you’ve got to get it right in three takes or less. You hope you got it right, anyway. I didn’t want them to be comparable to Fellini or Bergman because I’m a mercenary. I didn’t make these moves for critical acclaim, I did it because it was right time at the box office.”
‘Grefe, who coaches young students about the benefits of indie filmmaking, says he cut his acting teeth at Florida State University and, later, summer stock before turning screenwriter. He wrote his first movie, 1963’s “The Checkered Flag,” about a car driver who competes against an older racer, but had to replace the film’s sick director at the last minute with little experience behind a camera.
‘Grefe says he learned filmmaking “by doing it myself, getting equipment prepared, driving it around and saving money.” “Stanley,” filmed around North Miami (and not in the Everglades), is one of his favorites because of how it was financed.
‘”I told the studio I didn’t have a script, but that it came to me in a dream. They gave me $125,000 for it, because they loved my sales pitch,” Grefe says. “If the studio ever found out about all the stuff I did with rattlesnakes, they’d put me underneath a jail.”‘ — Phillip Valys
BOSTON HASSLE: How did you get started in filmmaking?
WILLIAM GREFÉ: Well, I wanted to be an actor. I did summer stock up in Woodstock, New York. A guy that was in summer stock with me was Lee Marvin. He was nobody at that time– he went on to be pretty famous. When the Korean War came along, I think I’d seen too many John Wayne movies, so I joined the military. When I got out and got married, I said, boy, this acting is not secure! [laughs] I went on [to join] the Miami fire department, and I had a lot of time when there’s no fire, so I’d write scripts. I wrote three or four screenplays, and I have the rejection slips to prove it! [laughs]
Finally, I wrote one called The Checkered Flag, which was about automobile racing up at Sebring. The fella that bought it had never made a movie before– he’d done some commercials– so we all went to Sebring, and I took a 30-day vacation from the fire department because he wanted me to be there for rewrites. The first day we were up at the races, he had a nervous breakdown and collapsed! The investors all panicked. There were no crews down here at all, hardly, and they brought this old cameraman out of retirement. We were at the hotel room at one in the morning, and they said, “What are we gonna do? We gotta get a director here.” And the old cameraman said, “Look, first you’d have to go to New York or California and hire a director. By the time he gets here, he’d have to read the script.” And then he said, “What the hell– the writer knows all about it. Make HIM the director!” So they drafted me at one in the morning in a motel room in Sebring.
The next day I started directing the movie. You know, directing a movie is half working with the actors to get the script on screen, and the other half is technical. And I knew nothing technically, so I relied on this old cameraman to help me. So that’s how I started directing. Fortunately, the movie made money. If your movie doesn’t make money you’ll never do another one. It made money, and that got me into directing.
Then, the second one [Racing Fever, 1964] came about. This is something writers and directors should keep in mind. I was at a big boat race with big hydroplanes, and there was an Italian driver named Ezio Selva who had an Alfa Romeo engine in his hydroplane. He was 57 years old, and he made an announcement: “This is going to be my last race. I’m turning the boat over to my son, who’s going to take the boat over and race it.” So he went out and he got going so fast the hydroplane flipped and fell right on top of him and killed him. And his son jumped off the pier and tried to swim out to him. I looked around, and there was a guy with a 16mm camera on top of a truck. I ran up to him and I said, “Did you get that shot?” And he said, “Yeah, I think I did.” So I got his name, and a couple of days later I came by, and he got the shot perfect, with that boat turning over and the guy falling out. So I bought that shot from him, and that’s the way I made Racing Fever, just based on that one shot and the experience of watching that race.
That led to Sting of Death. The guy who produced that had never produced a movie– he was a building contractor, and he wanted to be a movie producer! But he knew nothing about movies. Crazy stuff happened on that movie. At that time, all horror movies were released as a double [feature] at the drive-ins, and the distributor of Sting of Death couldn’t find another horror movie. So he said the magic word: he said if I could get another horror movie, [he’d] finance it. So I said, “Oh, yeah, no problem!” But the big problem I had was that you had to get movies [ready for release] for April 15, because that’s when all the drive-ins up north opened up, and they wanted double features. And this was, like, December, and back then editing and final mix and all that were a nightmare compared to today, where you just tap a computer and it’s right there. We had to work on Moviolas and use the actual workprint. So when he said the magic word, I sat down and made a timetable, because I had to get that thing in the theaters by April 15. So I said, “What can I write about?” So I took the age-old [story] of the Egyptian pharaoh: “If anybody disturbs my burial I’ll come back to haunt ’em!” And I made that into an ancient Indian witch doctor in the everglades, and that’s the way Death Curse of Tartu came about. I literally wrote that script in 24 hours, and filmed it in seven days. Have you ever seen Tartu?
BH: I have, actually.
WG: Well, at the end, Tartu drowns and goes under. But Tartu will not die! He keeps coming back! He was on Turner Classic Movies a couple months ago. [laughs] He just keeps living! I can’t get rid of Tartu.
BH: The “Do the Jellyfish” scene in Sting of Death is one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie. I’ve shown that to so many people. I’m curious, how did you get Neil Sedaka involved with that?
WG: Well, he was doing a nightclub act, and we went. Actually, I didn’t go because I was filming. The associate producer went and offered him some big bucks to write the song. So I really had nothing to do with securing him, but they just gave him some big money to write that song! That’s the way that came about.
BH: Where did your career lead you in the ‘70s?
WG: Well, you always try to see when a trend starts. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but it was one of the first animal movies ever made that started the trend [probably the 1971 killer rat film Willard –ed.], so I jumped on making Stanley. If you’re the second guy out on a trend, you’ll make money. If you’re the fifth or sixth guy out, you won’t. I was the second guy out with Stanley.
The way I got Stanley is sort of a funny story. Red Jacobs– I don’t know if you ever heard of Crown International? Crown was a distributor, and Red Jacobs was the head. He was a crusty old guy, with a cigar a foot long. He had released one of my movies. I was out in Los Angeles– I don’t know what I ate for dinner, but I dreamt Stanley. And I said, “Boy, this isn’t bad! Let me go see if I can talk Red into financing this thing.” So I called him up, and he says, “Okay, okay. Bring me the script, and I’ll read it over.” I said, “Uh, Red, let me just say it.” He said, “Come on, give me the script, I’ll read it over the weekend.” And I said, “I don’t have a script!” And he said, “Well, what the hell are you bothering me for? At least give me the outline.” And I said, “I don’t have an outline.” “You son of a bitch! Get the hell out of my office. What are you bothering me for?” And I’ll never forget, he had this whole box of Cuban cigars, and I reached in and grabbed one of his cigars. “Put that back! Those damn things cost me a buck a piece!” Which was a lot of money back then.
So anyway, he copped out, and his head of distribution and his publicity guy were in there, and I told them the whole story, which was in my head. And he said, “How much can you make this movie for?” I said I could make it for $125,000. He said, “I’ll tell you what. If you can deliver it to me by April 15, we got a deal.” As I told you, April 15 was a magic date because of the drive-ins. And I wasn’t about to turn the deal down, so I said, “No problem, Red! No problem!” So he shook hands with me, and back then his handshake was as good as 10 contracts.
So anyway, I said [to myself], “What the hell did I…? How am I gonna…? I gotta start shooting immediately!” Because it was December, and as I told you it was a nightmare to edit and do the final mix and all that. So I thought, “Gary Crutcher! That’s my answer!” Gary Crutcher was a writer I knew, and he was a pill-popper. All he did was live on pills. So I says, “Gary! That’s who I gotta get to write the screenplay.” So I called him up, because I knew he would pop pills and stay up for three days and write the thing. So I called him up and said, “Meet me at the LA airport. I gotta take the red eye back to Miami.” So he met me and I sat down with a yellow pad. I wrote the scenes, and when does this happen, and these are the characters, because I had it all in my head. So I wrote the story how I wanted it. He did the screenplay, and stayed up for like three days. And back then there were no faxes or anything, so I said, “I’ve got to have this in Miami by Monday or Tuesday!” So he stayed up and he wrote the thing in two or three days and put it on a flight, which I picked up at Miami Airport.
Incidentally, Stanley opened in Los Angeles against The Godfather— the biggest, most expensive movie of the year. And in LA, The Godfather grossed $181,000 the first weekend. Stanley grossed $179,000. Only $2000 less! And Stanley cost $125,000– god knows how much The Godfather cost!
BH: I was familiar with your stuff from the ’60s, but I was surprised in a lot of ways by Impulse when I saw it for the first time. Is it safe to say that you were working with something of a higher budget than you had been before?
WG: Well, Socrates Ballis, who had worked with me as an associate, wanted to produce his own movie. He went over to Tampa and he was able to raise some money, and when he raised the money he hired me to direct the thing. The interesting thing is the way we got Shatner. Socrates and I were going to California to try to get some name actor, and we were walking through the Miami Airport, and I looked and said, “Hey, look! It’s William Shatner! There’s Shatner!” And we stopped him and gave him our pitch, and he sat down and glanced through the script, and we made a deal right in the Miami Airport. We never went to California! That’s the way we got Shatner.
BH: What was it like working with Shatner to create this character? This seems like sort of a departure from some of his other roles.
WG: I got along really good with Shatner. I’ve heard more people say he gives directors a lot of hassle. In fact, there’s something on YouTube where some director tried to tell him how to read a line and he drives the guy crazy. [But] Shatner and I always stayed real close. I just had a big birthday party, and Shatner sent me a nice thing on Facebook– he filmed it and said happy birthday. And I got a really nice note from Quentin Tarantino. I’ve got a big poster that Quentin Tarantino sent me. He said, “To the man who put Stanley on Whiskey Mountain! Your fan, Quentin Tarantino.”
BH: That’s amazing!
WG: He knows all my films. He’s really a historian of film.
____________ 13 of Bill Grefe’s 20 films
____________ The Checkered Flag (1963) ‘The alcoholic wife of a rich car racing champion persuades a young driver to kill her husband. To all the actors out there, The Checkered Flag also features a great demonstration of how NOT to play drunk.’— Letterboxd
the entire film
____________ Sting Of Death (1966) ‘Released in 1966, well into the countercultural shift which would be reflected in Grefé’s later exploitation films, The Sting of Death feels out of time as a pure 1950s schlock B-movie, replete with preppy teens, a dubious monster, and a bloke who is treated as the biggest freak known to man because of a… minor eye deformity? You’d think that audiences in 1966 would be tired of this by now. Another monster movie? What is it this time? Jellyfish?… Well at least it’s in colour.’— Planktologist
Trailer
Excerpt
Do The Jellyfish by Neil Sedaka
______________ Death Curse of Tartu (1966) ‘So, Death Curse of Tartu. Grefé needed to make a movie quick and he had the funding so he took the old story of the mummy’s curse and transplanted it to the Florida Everglades, changing Tutankhamun to a more Native American-sounding Tartu. Grefé wrote the script in 24 hours and then shot the whole thing in a week on a budget of $27,000. So the only response to complaints about how awful it looks is “What did you expect?” Or as Grefé himself puts it on the commentary track: “You know when you read some critics they’ll compare a movie like this with a fifty-million-dollar horror movie and you know my saying is let the guy who directed the fifty-million-dollar film and had six months, let him try to shoot a picture in seven days and see how good he does on $27,000.”’— Alex on Film
Trailer
the entire film
_______________ The Wild Rebels (1967) ‘Man for a movie called Wild Rebels they sure sit around and get high for a long time before doing anything Wild. I like how our hero immediately thinks the three bikers covered in Nazi regalia are trust worthy and a good place to get some extra cash. Of course any biker Nazi enthusiast is always made up of a charismatic leader, an unhinged violence craving guy, a man with brain damage and a woman who just wants to tag along for, and I quote “kicks”. Ultimately boring but the soundtrack is good at least. The final scene with the spiral staircase did have a decent shot with a dummy.’— EdgeyBerzerker
Trailer
They Kill for Kicks: Making Wild Rebels
_____________ The Hooked Generation (1968) ‘The whole world’s a freakout on one outrageous trip in this Psychoactive Time Capsule of homicide, hypodermics, and hippies-gone-bad! Three scary specimens of THE HOOKED GENERATION-Daisy, Acid, and Dum Dum-want to be big-time drug dealers, but have the collective IQ of a pack of rolling papers. Still, they decide to score a boatload of narcotics by killing Cuban smugglers, massacring members of the Coast Guard, and making hostages of two do-gooders who stumble on the scene. But when the gang learns that the drugs are too hot to unload, they scurry to the Everglades as the FBI closes in! Sick fun proving once and for all that swamps and syringes just don’t mix. THEN: Father John accidentally drinks a soda spiked with LSD and trips his brains out to become THE PSYCHEDELIC PRIEST. Setting off across America on a journey of self-discovery, he falls in love amidst hippies and heroin until hitting rock bottom on skid row. Originally titled Electric Shades of Grey, this unique dose of acid-fueled nostalgia is almost worth missing Sunday chuch for. Say amen, somebody!’— Image Entertainment
Trailer
the entire film
_____________ The Naked Zoo (1970) ‘Love and crime in Miami’s Cocoanut Grove artist’s colony. Swinging young writer Stephen Oliver has a falling-out with benefactress Rita Hayworth in the wake of a wild LSD party. Rita foolishly tries blackmail after Oliver’s reconciliation attempt leaves her crippled millionaire husband dead.’— Letterboxd
____________ Stanley (1972) ‘Unlike many grindhouse films, “Stanley” was almost devoid of humor. I was left feeling mostly sad and a little bit disgusted. Here, it was a reaction to the pathetic lives of the characters and, mostly, disappointment at the very real violence against not just the mice but the snakes. We see the baby snakes crushed with the butt of a rifle, we see a snake shot, and we see Tim swinging snakes around in a tantrum, smashing their bodies against the cabinets and floor in his kitchen, as well as onto the bodies of snakes moving around him on the floor. There is a higher snake body count than human.’— SHAAWANO.COM
Trailer
Excerpt
______________ IMPULSE! (1974) ‘An insanely committed, really-swinging-for-it William Shatner as a serial murdering confidence trickster is the bull in this film’s china shop, completely destroying everything in his path, abetted by some of Grefé’s more inventive photography.’— matt lynch
Excerpt
Excerpt
Excerpt
______________ Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976) ‘Richard Jaeckel in a rare lead role plays Sonny Stein, an outcast with a mystical connection to sharks. After a series of betrayals by fraudulent and immoral individuals, Stein’s fin-ship with dangerous fish comes in handy to lower the human population in a seaside Florida town. William Grefe’s uniquely off-beat do-over of his own WILLARD-influenced STANLEY (1972) ups the danger meter by diving head-first into the carnivorous waters to get striking footage of the apex predators. You won’t find major studio, JAWS-level thrills, but fans of Drive-in movies and the wild and weird side of cinema will find plenty to sink their teeth into.’— Cool Ass Cinema
the entire film
______________ Whiskey Mountain (1977) ‘Absolutely Bill Grefé’s crowning achievement, a not-infrequently nasty little bit of regional hicksplo trash. Whiplashes between comically padded and seriously harrowing, so its narrative lulls seem naive and its gnarly violence feels all the more unpleasant, and as usual he mines genuinely indelible performances from his entire cast. A real gem.’— matt lynch
Trailer
Quentin Tarantino on Whiskey Mountain
______________ The Psychedelic Priest (1971) ‘An intimate portrait of one man’s descent into the dark underbelly of the hippie counterculture, the film touches on themes of religion, the effects of drugs, racism, police brutality, teenage pregnancy – you name it, The Psychedelic Priest has got it. John Darrell gives a commanding performance as the titular priest, giving you the impression that he really could have been a star in his own right, if not for some unfortunate dentistry. A film so daring, so boundary pushing, that, maybe in the interests of public order, they didn’t dare release it until 2001. William Grefé himself took his name off the project, perhaps afraid of the power of his own creation. It remains his finest work.’— Planktologist
Excerpts & review
_____________ Consider Us Even (2014) ‘Sisters are kidnapped at gunpoint, tortured and interrogated. What happens next will make you think twice about your own daily decisions.’— IMDb
Trailer
___________ Thumbs (2019) ‘This is what happens when an 89-year-old man writes a film about young women, texting, the “net”, and thumbs.’— Justin Johnson
the entire film
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p.s. Hey. ** Lucas, Hi, Lucas! Good to see you, pal! I’m good, still mostly doing film stuff. I’m reading two books that aren’t going to be published until the fall, and they’re both pretty great: Laura Vasquez ‘The Endless Week’ (Dorothy) and Charlotte Northall ‘Practicing Dying’ (Pilot Press). Feel better or hopefully you are already. I’ll look for ‘Permanent Red’. Glad to get to talk with you! Stay great. xoxo ** Misanthrope, Give it a few weeks. Oprah gave him the big stamp of approval and fame is ensuing. I liked his poetry. I had problems with his first novel. I’m pretty sure I won’t read the new one. Me too, the two smallest toes on my left foot have been fucked up and painful for almost two months, but only when I’m wearing shoes, and I fear a doctor is in my immediate future. Luck with your culprit. And with your neck especially. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, I thought the whole mass outburst of happiness was really beautiful. Now real life and preternaturally reserved Parisians are returning. ** Carsten, Yes, indeed. I become ever more intolerant of conventionally built films with superficial ‘edgy’ turns that are heavily reliant on color saturation/ grading and score, and Guadagnino is way in that camp of directors. A good cannibal movie? Hm. I think a case could be made for Greenaway’s ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’. I think Pasolini’s ‘Porcile’ has some cannibalism in it unless I’m misremembering. The cannibalim exploitation movies like ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ have their charms. ** Hugo, Nice Sunday -> Monday. What’s your friend’s video game? Obviously that possible collaboration is promising. Wow, Guadaningo did a film about or employing Arto Lindsay? That’s quite a shock. I’ll look that up. I think AL is, among other things, one of the most exciting living guitarists, so that’s something. Luckily the early books of mine to which I was referring have never been sold anywhere as far as I know. They were in mini-editions, and I was nobody, and hopefully the few people who bought them never thought to preserve them. You have an excellent one. ** James Bennett, Welcome home, sir. I know Will Mountain Cox a bit. He lives here, I think, or I see him at bookstore events pretty regularly. Thanks about the Gluck interview. Yeah, it’s kind of my favorite interview with me, I think. My week: work on a new draft of our new film script, figure out the impending US trip to show ‘RT’ in SF, more film stuff no doubt, try this new deep dish pizza restaurant that just opened here, and who knows. Let me/us know when the site is up. So exciting about the impending publication date. If you’d like to do a ‘welcome to the world’ post for it I would be totally down, just let me know if you do. ** julian, Hey. Wow, about your brave parents. Oh, shit, the Emilia story was there twice? Mistake. I made that post years ago, so I don’t remember why or how I fucked up. Oops. I was too young to see VU live, but I have a strong memory of driving down the Sunset Strip with my parents and seeing ‘Velvet Underground and Nico / Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ on the marquee of this nightclub (The Trip) and feeling very left out. ** Steve, No, our only investigation into ghost-y stuff for the film was researching how ghosts have been depicted in movies so we would be sure not to replicate them. The post texts were generally credited at the bottom of the post. Happy to hear about the breakthrough with the death certificates. You’re an only child, right? I can’t remember. If so, doing all of that alone sounds so extremely daunting, although my experience working with my siblings on the estate settling was a nightmare. I know, shocked about the Arto Lindsay film too. I’m going to look it up. Everyone, Steve has some new reviews up for you to peruse, namely of Pulp’s new album MORE here, and of Matmos’ METALLIC LIFE REVIEW and Dalava’s UNDERSTORIES here. ** pancakeIan, Yeah, haunted dolls is a thing, a cult fetish or something. I can’t remember where the quote came from. I made that post, oh, seven years ago or thereabouts. Travolta came to the reading because he was shooting ‘Urban Cowboy’ at the time, and the director (James Bridges) was buddies with Isherwood. It seems possible that some gallery might show Henson’s work at the big Art Basel Miami Beach fair, but only maybe and probably not worth a trip to the totality. Yes, I’m pretty sure Disney never did anything with the ‘Arabat’ books. I was pretty surprised they were interested even back then. As was Clive. Nice dude, Clive. ** Steeqhen, Thanks. Happy to successfully provide. You probably just need the sleep, right? Zac can sleep for 18 hours at a time if left to his druthers, and it doesn’t seem to phase him. As always, ‘Dr. Who’ is an absolute mystery to me, but nice that it’s whatever enough to inspire obsession. ** Uday, Maybe on the zero budget thing. Maybe for a documentary, which we do want to make at some point. Our first film only cost 40k to make, and I don’t how we managed to make it for so little, but we did. An old woman as a pet. That’s a curious fantasy, obviously. Never heard of that before. Maybe you should go for it. Or make art about it or something. Could work wonders. As long as the moths are outdoors, that would be lovely, but I hope not to see the moths that keep magically getting into my clothes and nibbling. ** Right. Today the blog is celebrating the low budget movie maker Bill Grefé and his cultishly fun and sometimes even interesting works. See you tomorrow.
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