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Your Custom Haunted House

 

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1. Molar Manor
$175,000 SOLD

This Custom Package Includes: Five year lease ending September 2006, Present monthly lease payment is $4,672.94, Option to renew lease contract for additional 5 years, 5,000 square foot warehouse, Two large swamp coolers, Air Conditioning for upstairs party room and offices’, One bathroom, Security Gates front and rear entrance, Telephone service to unit

20 Themed Areas:

Egyptian Tomb
Castle Area
Graveyard – Central Theme
London Backstreet
Alfred Hitchcock Room
Laboratory Tomb
Scientific Laboratory
Laboratory Torture Chambers
Slum Alley Backstreet
Haunted Victorian Front Yard
Victorian Haunted House
Victorian Foyer
Victorian Library
Victorian Fireplace Area
Victorian Music Room
Victorian Hallway
Victorian Kitchen
Victorian Pantry
Church Façade Entry
Church Drop Elevator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15. Scarevania
$95,000

After 11 seasons, we have decided to permanently close our haunted house. We started as a hobby business and for enjoyment. We have grown both our attraction and attendance over the years but due to family and career conflicts, we have chosen to make 2024 our final season.

We are open to two options for sales currently. One for the haunted house business, in its current location with the property, all props, intellectual property, etc. We also are open to selling all contents, intellectual property, etc without the property.

-SALE OF ALL INCLUDING REAL ESTATE-

Our haunted house is located in a town of 5000-6000 per year in central Indiana. We are located about an hour drive from large metropolitan areas. Our attendance has varied between 1000 and 1500 in the past 5 years with minimal advertising efforts. There is growth potential in our market. Our nearest competitor is of comparable size and about 15 miles away.

We are currently occupying 3300 SqFt with another ~900 SqFt under roof that has been utilized before and could be utilized again.

We are more than willing to give you a tour of our current operation and storage areas to view the items for yourself. Also, if you purchase, depending on your location, we may be able to come onsite for 1-3 days to answer any questions that you may have.

All items will need moved but cannot be moved until after 10/31/2024 as we are operating until then. We can assist some with tear down / carry-out / loading of the items, this will be the primary responsibility of the purchaser.

We would like to see a haunted house remain in our community so will work with a buyer. We are not interested in a contract sale though. We would be willing to provide assistance and guidance in setting up and operating for the first year if the buyer was interested.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. So I’m finally able to announce that ROOM TEMPERATURE will have its World Premiere at Los Angeles Festival of Movies (LAFM). The festival runs from April 3-6. We don’t yet know the date, time, or specific venue of the screening, but I’ll let you know once I do. Tickets go on sale on March 10. Here’s a write-up on the festival at Variety if you’re interested. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. ‘Sparta’ got caught up in a big controversy about the underage character aspect, so that might be why it’s hard to see there. I don’t know if we’re capable of a publicity blitz, haha, I wish, but we’ll be doing our utmost. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I think you’d like his films. They’re very dark and funny among other things. The general premiere is announced! We just don’t know the details yet. So, yeah, here we go. Green Day, I had to look that one up. I realise I only know a couple of their hits. Here’s a good one … I love the dead before they rise, No farewells, no goodbyes, I never even knew your now rotting face, While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave, I have other uses for you, darling, G. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Well, he’s scared shitless to get off. He knows it’s going to be very hard, and he doesn’t want to face the struggle. I don’t know how you convince someone to go through that. It usually takes a hard crash, and even then you have to get them in rehab lickety split because they’ll get scared again right away. Ugh. Gosh, I hope you get to continue working remotely. Such an insane mess. ** James, Not so much like Wes Anderson. Closer to Roy Anderson or Todd Solondz, but darker. Good stuff. I didn’t know there is a movie called ‘Laugh Clown Laugh’. I only know the saying. If everything was scary you wouldn’t be scared anymore. You’d be very cynical probably. I don’t like The Killers, but, yeah, I was just meaning their blah name. One reviews art shows depending on the venue and audience. I’ve written user friendly reviews and brainy as fuck reviews. It’s all over the place. I had better than 20/20 vision for most of my life, and then suddenly my eyes gave out and reading glasses joined my arsenal, which sucks when you have to give public readings because you’re stuck looking professorly whether you like it or not. Jeez, buddy, the back pain. I’ve had lower back hell/problems since I was a kid. It’s the worst. Poecilia had wise words for you. (Thank you, Poecilia.) I hope you’re at least 50% less pained today. Dare I ask? ** Steeqhen, Battle of the Bands! What did they win? Why did whoever won win? Luck with the poem. Sounds interesting, natch. Dildo machine fucking on film leaves me cold or I guess blank. Who knows why? I have a friend who really gets off on guys sucking themselves off on film. And, again, I don’t get it. We all have our little taste things. The songs Carole King co-wrote pre-‘Tapestry’ can be pretty top notch. GbV is fucking god, man. Go for it. Join us knowers and believers! ** Tyler Ookami, Thanks for being a pioneer of kawaii themed extreme metal bands. You make it seem like the water there is temperate at least. For me, Zappa’s ham-fisted, yuck-yuck lyrics worked okay at the beginning when he was parodying hippiedom. And then he thankfully stopped being such a lame comedian for a few years and got more interested in complicated structures, in the ‘Uncle Meat’ era, but then he went full on Adam Sandler after that forever. Thanks for the field guide. That’s super useful. Haha, right, gotcha on the Deathcore bands. I’ve dipped, just barely, but I think sufficiently. Thanks a bunch! ** Steve, Thanks. We’re very happy. We think it’s a really good fit. Let me know how it goes at the hospital, and I certainly hope they nail the whatever it is and start murdering it. Interesting, I was going to ask you if you saw the Markey film. I’m curious about it, obviously. Well, that’s bad news. I knew Bill Bartell just a little. White Flag wasn’t bad. Did you ever hear Vaginal Davis’s band Black Fag? They’re weren’t good, but oh what a good name. ** Lucas, Hey, buddy! I’ll be in LA through the first two weeks of April, but then I’ll be back. The Premiere is announced! Right now readying the film is life 24/7 because there’s a lot to do and time is running out. I’m not doing much of anything else. Excited to hear more about your projects in-progress when you’re ready. Enjoy Thursday! xo. ** Darby𓃰𓃰, Thanks, pal. You are so right. I only just peeked at the video, and I adore it. It makes porn seem like a Hallmark card. You are also so right about the related post. Let me see what I can do. Your new cassette player sounds very dreamy. What did you end up launching it via? I was young and malajusted, and it ended paying off by making me a weird and increasingly confident adult. You’ll see. It’s better to grow into regularity than start regular, I think. Wow, cops, yikes. You’re tough. They’re just too unimaginative to realise that. EyeHateGod, wow! I saw that they were playing around. How was it? Nice, envy. I love writing that looks like a crushed soda. I seek it out. So, no, thank you! ** Diesel Clementine, Well, hi there. New flat, nice, right? Whats it like? How is it different? I hope it has secret passages in its walls. Your illustrated chapbook sounds extremely intriguing. Want to see it when it’s real. I like the cover a lot! Um, I don’t know about that effect you ask about? Hm, I’ll think about it. It might be a very subtle effect for me? I’m fine, just really busy finishing the film and getting ready to present it, etc. A bit crazy. I’m very excited but also, of course, nervous about the premiere. Time to find out if our big confidence in it means what we hope it will. Lovely day to you! ** Bill, I think you might quite like his films if you don’t know them already. Based on my experiences with festival submissions, they’ll be relieved to only have to watch a trailer. Plus, they might actually watch it. At least with films, I think they watch the first ten minutes and then stop, which is deadly when you make complicated film. Best of all luck with that. ** HaRpEr, My friend is, like me, both a Blanchot devotee and a gigantic amusement park fan. I seriously wonder if she has really thought her proposal through, or whether she’s just just trying to chase her obsessions simultaneously. But we will see. That’s seriously gross about the Didion. It’s like the opposite of Bresson’s widow’s extreme stinginess. Haha, thanks about my bon mots. I sort of can’t imagine the giant chore of rereading myself in this context. Maybe I can hire an intern. Maybe I can find some way to afford an intern. Anyway, … thanks. I think you would be glad to try Seidl’s films. I do like the Elephant 6 bands, and I’ve even been curious to see that doc. And I will. Thanks a bunch for the tip. ** Dev, Hi, Dev! It’s very lovely to see you! Thank you about the premiere. I hope everything is going amazingly in your world. ** jay, I would try out his films, for sure. They’re what they are, but what they are might be your what. Whenever I come across a fucking machine video, it’s just watching paint dry, as they say. I like the mechanical, but that’s too monotonous, or something. When your legs misfire, do you just have to wait and let them remember how to fire? Or can you retrain them somehow? Dude, I don’t like that you’re in pain. ** Okay. Today is, I fully realise, a pretty niche post that may be only user friendly to people like myself who dream of owning a haunted house attraction but lack the funds to buy one and the room to situate it. But maybe the rest of you will charmed by it for some reason. Hope so. See you tomorrow.

 

‘These films aren’t for everyone. Case in point: I would call myself an admirer and I’m not sure they’re for me. With a tar-blackly comical spirit, Seidl depicts a modern universe that is bleak, crude, confrontational, mundane, explicit, and bracingly real. This content will surely be easier to swallow for some, but even taking that into account, one must give credit where credit is due. For Seidl doesn’t just blur the line between documentary and narrative. He erases it. He does this so confoundingly well, in fact, that the question of “is it fact or fiction?” becomes utterly irrelevant when discussing his work. While many filmmakers also toe this line, no one does it with nearly quite the same subtly demonic gusto.

‘Though he is greatly interested in the line between Eastern and Western Europe and how that invisible divide manages to maintain such rigid cultural differences, Seidl’s overarching directorial mission is to present a nearly hellish vision of modern life at its most grotesquely mundane. Rather than setting up more traditionally artificial climaxes and confrontations, he chooses instead to depict scenes from everyday life—some dramatic, most not—in which characters resort to depraved behavior out of what appears to be either boredom or a historically ingrained sense of purposelessness. If this all sounds pretentious and punishing, it isn’t. For Seidl’s ace in the whole is his acerbic sense of humor, which keeps his films from tumbling down a drain of complete and utter hopelessness (though for many, this splash of irreverence will only add to the distaste).

‘Taking all of that into account, it seems impossible to say this, but it’s true: Ulrich Seidl is a humanist. His work is more Dostoevsky than Von Trier. For as punishing and cruel as many of his scenes get, there exists a feeling that he isn’t out to simply punish viewers and make them feel miserable. He’s out to elicit a reaction, yes, but he appears to be more jovially amused his characters than anything else (he certainly doesn’t hate them). Watching these films, with their strange mix of the stylized and hyper-realistic, the sorrowful and the humorous, one cannot deny Seidl’s rightful place in the upper tiers of the world cinema canon.’ — Michael Tully, Hammer to Nail

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Ulrich Seidl Official Website
‘Border Zones: The Films of Ulrich Seidl’
Ulrich Seidl @ Slant Magazine
Video: Ulrich Seidl Interview in English @ DShed
‘Staring into Hell: Ulrich Seidl’ @ Indiewire
Ulrich Seidl interviewed @ Little White Lies
Nine Questions for Ulrich Seidl @ Leisure Time
Introduction: Ulrich Seidl @ Mubi
Buy Ulrich Seidl’s films on DVD

 

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Portraits

ZFF Masters 2014: Ulrich Seidl

VICE Meets Director Ulrich Seidl

ULRICH SEIDL – A DIRECTOR AT WORK

 

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Interview
from GreenCine

 

You’ve long seemed to favor tableau images, with a focus on their geometry and symmetry. Do you see a specific power or purpose in this aesthetic that has made it versatile throughout your filmmaking career?

Ulrich Seidl: Maybe my tableaux are an attempt to describe the world in one picture. Life is frozen for a few moments; the people are often frozen but breathe the pictures. It is a type of magical moment that is transferred to the viewer. The glances meet and one looks each other in the eye.

How do you find your subjects, most of whom are non-professional, and how do you work with them to get them to act so naturally in front of the camera, which often shows them in intimate and unflattering positions?

US: The search for actors starts from scratch with every new film and is a very time intensive process. I don’t distribute scripts and I don’t work from a set screen-play. The most important aspect about my work is building relationships based on mutual trust and gradually making actors develop a feeling for my ambition and the atmosphere of the film. If I succeed the actors (professional or non-professional) face the camera with an inner self-awareness that enables them to act naturally and authentically.

Just like the photographer Diane Arbus was regularly criticized, some have questioned whether you exploit your documentary subjects by depicting them in unflattering conditions. How would you react if that was brought up in regards to the elderly patients, who arguably aren’t as self-aware as the internet porn actors?

US: Allegations of this kind have accompanied my entire filmmaking carrier to date. But who wants to determine what is permitted, what is not and who wants to set the limits? I know that as a director I take and accept responsibility for how I portray people. The question is whether I portray people in a way that allows them to keep their dignity. I think that I have accomplished that and have even given some of it back to them through my portrayal. Or are moribund people not worthy of portrayal? Are they too ugly and/or miserable? Those that think like this apparently have a bad conscience, are aware of the fact that they are responsible for it. What I showed in geriatrics, namely that all these people finally end up perishing alone and very lonely is a responsibility of society and therefore, the responsibility of us all.

When the recent imprisonment cases of Natascha Kampusch and the Fritzl family came to light, Austrians were quoted as saying that it is a particularly Austrian trait to turn a blind eye to what’s going on next door, to keep things functioning on the surface. You’ve been identifying this social disconnection in your films for quite some time, and as a result they’ve been quite provocative in Austria. Do you agree that this is an Austrian phenomenon, or are you finding this is the case elsewhere as you make films on a more international scale?

US: You have a point there. However, I am not sure if the tendency to turn a blind eye to certain issues can’t be found just as often in other countries. By the way, I am just preparing for a film with the title Im Keller (In the Basement) which will deal with this subject and with the attitude of Austrians towards their cellars.

What films or filmmakers have influenced your practice? And what outside of film influences you?

US: Regarding film, I have probably been influenced heavily by Jean Eustache, Luis Bunuel, P.P.Pasolini, Werner Herzog, John Cassavetes and also Erich von Stroheim. Regarding painting, I could name Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Alfred Kubin, the Austrian sculptor Fritz Wotruba and the British artist David Hockney as influences. When it comes to photography, it’s mostly Diane Arbus’s work that has fascinated me for a long time.

Is there such a thing as “too provocative,” an artistic boundary that shouldn’t be crossed?

US: I confront the viewer with certain realities, also or exactly because they are unpleasant. The viewers are responsible and I don’t want to keep certain truths from them. I do not want to make things appear nicer than they are in order to make it easier for the viewer. Fomenting unrest is sometimes the task of an artist. But apart from this, naturally boundaries exist for me. Boundaries for what and how I want to show something (there are some things that I am unsure I want to show). However, this is based on my own convictions and feelings regarding something and not consideration towards the viewer.

 

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14 of Ulrich Seidl’s 23 films

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Sparta (2022)
‘Ulrich Seidl is accused of creating an abusive atmosphere on the set of Sparta, letting children act under wrong assumptions. The biggest German news outlet came out with those accusations after conducting own research as they claim. Following that, Seidls film was uninvited to Toronto, premiered without him in San Sebastian and finally made it to Hamburg, where he – for the first time in public – took a stand on things. He was about to receive the Douglas Sirk award for his life achievement, but the ceremony was abandoned, his film was shifted from the biggest cinema hall to the smallest venue the festival has to offer. I got one of the last seats in the place.

‘So why does this attack on Seidl happens in this very moment, with this very film – one that, as outlined, is kind of the worst example for the critique on his style of filmmaking? My answer would be this: society is still not ready to handle the taboo theme of pedophilia. In times where moral judgements are cheaper to get than a bubble gum at the petrol station such a dark, ambivalent, distress causing topic is not able to be delivered in such a complex way for a mainstream (arthouse) audience. Child abuse has to be called out and is – so to say – „not negotiable“. period. Don’t bother with background analysis, historic accuracy or psychological explanations.’ — shookone

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Rimini (2022)
‘The Italian coastal resort of Rimini in winter is an eerie, melancholy place; Seidl shows it in freezing mist and actual snow. Refugees huddle on the street and some groups of German and Austrian tourists take what must be bargain-basement package vacations at off-season rates in the tackiest hotels. It is here that Ritchie Bravo, played by Seidl regular Michael Thomas, plies his dismal trade. He is an ageing lounge singer with a drinking problem, a cheery, bleary style, an Islamophobic attitude, a bleached-blond hairdo of 80s vintage and a spreading paunch. Ritchie makes a living crooning to his adoring senior-female fanbase, who show up in their coach parties to catch his act. He also tops up his income by having sex with some of the fans for money – truly gruesome scenes in the starkly unforgiving Seidl style.’ — Peter Bradshaw

Trailer

Excerpt

Watch the films (sans subtitles)

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Safari (2016)
‘Once you become accustomed to the icily grotesque world summoned up by the Austrian film-maker Ulrich Seidl, it is rare to feel anything other than a kind of jaded, subdued horror. But I felt something real in the course of this documentary about Austrian big-game tourists at a Namibian hunting lodge: unselfconscious rage and disgust. The sheer smugness and chilling lack of imagination of these people playing the Great White Hunter is mind boggling as they slay Impala and zebras with deafeningly loud and powerful hunting rifles – in controlled conditions which effectively disguise the fish-in-a-barrel nature of the experience they’re buying.’ — Peter Bradshaw

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Excerpt

 

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In the Basement (2014)
‘“Fassbinder died, so God gave us Ulrich Seidl,” wrote John Waters in Artforum in 2012. You can find obvious parallels between the directors; both are German-speaking iconoclasts (Seidl is Austrian; Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982, was from Bavaria), whose precisely arranged and shot films cloak worlds of odd and over-the-top individuals with a patina of intense, self-conscious color, supplemented with frequently incongruous, unanticipated music. At the beginning of In the Basement, a nearly catatonic man sits waiting next to a glass aquarium containing a tiny, frightened guinea pig and a thick, long snake that leers at its upcoming meal. As predictable as it is, the rapid-fire climax jolts the viewer out of passive mode. Completing the bracketing is one of the final scenes, which features a thick-torsoed, skimpily clad prostitute locked in a cage, attempting to free herself from captivity. It’s insignificant whether this depiction is documentary in the conventional sense or fully simulated — what Seidl terms staged reality.’ — Howard Feinstein, Filmmaker Magazine

Trailer

Watch the film (sans subtitles)

 

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Paradise: Hope (2013)
‘You can tell an Ulrich Seidl film by its rigorous form and seemingly digressive improvisations. It’s like a corral with mathematically precise iron gates that herd a human menagerie into striking configurations. The previous two sentences are the high-toned kinds of things critics have been writing about Seidl’s work since his early breakthroughs “Models” (1999) and “Dog Days” (2001), so I figured I’d get it out of the way. “Paradise: Hope” is the final film in Seidl’s “Paradise” trilogy, after the blindingly beautiful, wise “Love” and the quiet storm of “Faith.” The subject of “Hope” is Melanie (Melanie Lenz), the 13-year-old daughter of the first film’s protagonist and niece of the second film’s subject. All three episodes are about an Austrian woman (in this case a budding woman), seeking fulfillment in a partner. Melanie’s mother sought affection and appreciation from Kenyan boy toys. Her aunt sought it in the arms of Jesus. And now Melanie seeks an outlet for her surging sexual curiosity, finding a candidate even less appropriate than impoverished Africans or a Christ statue: The director of her weight loss camp, a doctor at least 40 years her senior.’ — Steven Boone

Trailer

Watch the film (sans subtitles)

Ulrich Seidl about Paradise Hope

 

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Paradise: Faith (2012)
‘Faith is taking a perverted form here. Over the course of centuries, Catholicism has suppressed sexuality, and of course, this triggered a counter-movement. While the Church is creating a taboo around sexuality, we all know about the terrible abusive things that are happening behind the walls. That is very scandalous, but it is as well a logic consequence. By oppressing sexuality, you cause the erosion of moral ethics. Besides, Anna-Maria is convinced that the media and the public are addicted to sexuality, and she castigates herself in the name of the people to do away with this malady. This, in turn, provides her with satisfaction. It is a thin line between pain and lust.’ — US

Trailer

Watch an excerpt here

 

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Paradise: Love (2012)
‘In its subject matter, though not its treatment, Paradise: Love is similar to Laurent Cantet’s 2005 movie Heading South: the well-off middle-aged white women who go on sex-tourist jaunts to developing countries to be with young men. Teresa (Margarete Tiesel) visits Kenya in search of wonderful sex and she meets Munga (Peter Kazungu); things proceed well enough, and poor Teresa even starts to think feelings might be involved – but the upshot of course is humiliation for everyone, especially during an unwatchably horrible and extended hotel-room scene in which a young man is derided by a group of women for failing to get an erection. Does this film tell us anything we didn’t already know about prostitution and globalisation? Arguably, yes: maybe the role-reversal aspect defamiliarises it, makes you see it afresh, and Seidl has formidable technique and compositional sense.’ — Peter Bradshaw

Trailer

Excerpts

 

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Import/Export (2007)
‘Near the start of Import Export, an unflinching, at times almost unbearably hard yet moral look at human exploitation, a woman trudges through a snowy landscape, a cluster of nuclear reactors belching steam behind her. The exactingly framed tableau, at once horrific and yet somehow spookily beautiful, looks so unreal that you might try to persuade yourself that this is science fiction, a vision of some imaginary hell, an aesthetic indulgence. No one lives like this, you find yourself hoping, even though you know otherwise. This kind of struggle to accept what you’re seeing is part of the price of watching Import Export, the second fiction feature from the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl. It is a price worth paying. A ferocious talent.’ — Manohla Dargis, NYT

Trailer

Excerpt

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Jesus, You Know (2003)
‘Jesus, You Know again mines the “insanity of normality“. The concept is brilliantly simple: film six God-fearing Viennese alone in a church praying. There is only one condition: the pious Austrians must say out loud that which they usually direct towards God in silent prayer. The results are astounding. Jesus, You Know – like Seidl’s previous films – puts the spectator in a bind. On one the hand, the “characters” in the documentary are genuinely ridiculous. On the other, one feels guilty for laughing at such vulnerable creatures. This is again a boundary that Seidl attempts to blur: “the border between something being funny and the moment in which laughing completely escapes us”.’ — Heaven & Hell

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Dog Days (2001)
‘Dog Days, Seidl’s feature film debut, represents much less a departure than a continuation of his narrative strategies, formal shapes and stylistic emphases. The film unfolds in a Vienna suburb over two hot, sticky days. The characters and their isolated, lonely lives are introduced much in the same way Seidl presents the characters in his documentaries: with a focus on daily, mundane activities that simultaneously lays bare the “insanity of normality”. There is the insanely jealous boyfriend and his meek lover juxtaposed with the retiree who spends his time tending to his immaculate lawn and weighing packages of sugar to ensure he hasn’t been swindled. Then there is the woman who walks from a session of rough sex at a swinger club directly into the main halls of the mall where children play. She lives in a huge house with her alienated husband; both mourn the death of their child, yet Seidl never betrays the details of this history. Dog Days is a disturbing suburban story told with irony, but it never pulls punches nor does it offer final redemption.’ — Film Comment

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Models (1999)
‘Models examines the hopes, fantasies, and finally the realities of young models. Although supermodels often figure as the heroines or at least vaunted objects of desire in our society, Seidl fixes on the rather banal everyday tics and predicaments from which the women suffer: cellulite, breast problems, the inability to be alone and the catty competition among them. With his unique blend of documentation and stylisation, Models portrays the models’ daily life and the monotonous application of make-up and hair gel that commodifies the body. It is a world of glamour whose shine and lustre Seidl rubs away.’ — CineGreen

Trailer

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Animal Love (1995)
‘Fellow fiction/nonfiction line mutilator Werner Herzog is famously quoted on the DVD box cover for this film saying: “Never have I looked so directly into hell.” He’s right. Animal Love features Seidl’s now signature style of inserting portraiture-like chapter breaks of subjects staring into the camera within his film’s casually unfolding “narrative”. In Animal Love, that narrative consists of watching several different pet owners trudge through their increasingly dour daily lives. At the beginning, even for someone familiar with Seidl’s work, one might innocently mistake this for a sweet-natured tribute to humans and their pets. Yeah, right. It isn’t long before Seidl’s disturbing reality emerges.’ — TFoUS

Trailer

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Loss Is to Be Expected (1992)
‘Loss Is to Be Expected begins with an arresting image: a village idiot undresses in front of the camera and performs a strip-tease to the barely audible static from a Czech radio station. Seidl maintains that this behaviour and the tolerant attitude with which the Czech villagers regard it are meant to serve as a contrast to Austria. There, just a few kilometres over the border, such a man would be locked away on the basis that he is disturbing the “image” of the community. This is an example of a tactic central to Seidl’s works: mapping two worlds that although located geographically close together are totally different from one another.’ — SoC

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Good News (1990)
‘Good News is a dialectic essay in which the squalid conditions of South Asian immigrants who sell newspapers in Vienna’s outer districts are juxtaposed with observations of well-to-do Viennese tabloid readers. Seidl’s camera captures the pathetic subjects in stylised tableaux, lingering within static frames for uncomfortable lengths of time. This technique, although still evolving in this film, marks Seidl’s later documentaries with ever greater effectiveness. Its roots are essentially twofold: (i) Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, a theatrical device in which an irritating distance between the actors and the audience creates a critical space and (ii) a tradition of “painterly” cinema, critically articulated in various forms from Münsterberg and Balázs to Bazin, which emphasises long takes and deep focus.’ — SoC

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p.s. Hey. ** James, Laugh clown laugh. I have moods where I want everything to look scary. Everyone’s faces, fonts, quesadillas, everything. Give me Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship over The Killers any day. I like brief cursory reviews. There used to be this cool website devoted to posting reviews of albums that couldn’t be longer than two sentences. I started my so-called journalism career by writing reviews of art shows. It was kind of fun. More fun than writing blurbs, for instance. I of course share in your fandom of that comfort and joy. Sunny here too. It’s reflecting on my laptop screen and making me have to squint to read you. Do you wear dark glasses?  I don’t. Never got in the habit. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Indecipherableness is best friends with godliness. Excited to hear how the new project proceeds. It’s super unique, I think. I’m itchy and admiring. We’re told the film premiere will announce in the next two days. Gulp. There’s lots to do. There are final, little things to do to the film that we have no money to do, so I don’t how we’ll do them. And a few contracts we have to make and sign with people. And finish the press kit, make a teaser poster, stuff like that. And then when it’s announced we have to start promoting/ announcing that, ugh. But it’ll be okay. I had a Frank Zappa period in my teens, but then his humor got too lowbrow and puerile for me. You don’t have to look at me, You don’t have to smile at me, You just have to love me ’til the sun shines, G. ** Misanthrope, I don’t know how it would work, and maybe it just wouldn’t, but it really seems like there needs to be some kind of intervention. Either that or let him spin out and hope he doesn’t die along the way. But I don’t know. Been there, and it’s kind of an impossible thing to know how to deal with. All the luck in the world. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, bud. I’ve been listening to some Dungeon Synth, and it’s kind of quite fun. Agreed. I just restored an old music post by you coming up, but Dungeon Synth it certainly is not. Except for the synth part. ** Jack Skelley, Hey. Saw the email. I’ll assemble the post and get back to you pronto. Thanks, buddy. I’m going to corner Mr. Salerno and get a copy of the Thomas Moore post-haste or rather pre-haste. Wait, or both simultaneously? Sleepin’ don’t come very easy in a straight white vest, Dwight Fry. ** Steeqhen, Indecipherability for President! Well, surely achieving not overachieving. We’ve submitted RT to a festival in London, but I don’t know what our chances are. Probably not huge given its seeming inability to play the game. ** Steve, Hey. Everyone, Here’s Steve, listen up. ‘I released a new single today, “Ice Fishing (naviarhaiku581)”. It was written for Naviar Records’ challenge to write a song inspired by a haiku. I tried to capture the mood of a chilly lake in winter. You must be feeling better to trek up to Lincoln Center much less sit through a Wiseman. Good. I’ll find that NTS dungeon synth comp, thanks! Tony Morris, no. Sounds pretty interesting. I’ll find that too. Thanks ever so much. ** Nicholas., Well, yeah, I like eating alone when I’m alone. Sometimes when restaurants have counter seating, sitting at the counter and eating alone while watching people cook is okay. I feel like getting fucked by a fucking machine on cam is kind of big deal these days, or else I end up in strange places. I’m excited/nervous to finally show the film to strangers who aren’t festival programmers, yes, but I hate parties, and the thought of the after-party fills me with dread. But I’ll go. Favorite fruit … hm, boysenberry. Yours? ** James Bennett, Good, and hopefully feeling even better this morning or afternoon or whenever you stepped in here. Like I said above, we submitted RT to a London festival, but our hopes aren’t gigantic, but maybe. In any case, it’ll get shown there somewhere for sure. Thank you! ** HaRpEr, Wow, that’s a great and true McCourt quote. Beautiful. ‘A Season in Hell’ is pretty unbeatable. Eek, about the Didion book. That seems really awful of whoever is in charge. Yikes. Your tribe might just end up being a very small one. Mine is. But it’ll accrue, I’m sure. ‘The Writing of the Disaster’, yum, obviously. A friend of mine was just accepted into Harvard on the basis of her proposal that she wants to write a big book-length essay that examines Blanchot through the filter of amusement park rides. I must admit I was a bit surprised that angle that swayed them. ** Bernard Welt, B! You know, guys come up to me not infrequently over here and pronounce my name non-accordingly, and I am understandably very grateful to be recontextualised phonetically. Def. can’t hurt to have the passport. Surely that documentation is extractable. Anyway, thank you for taking my bite which I never imagined you would notice much less take re: the dream interpretation fantasy regarding you. And your reads are so sensible. That’s why you’re the king. Huh. I hope the dreaming dudes looked meticulously enough at the p.s. to see your words and hence understand themselves better. Can laymen like ourselves peek into these talk Zooms you’re doing? Oh, wait … Everyone, The mighty and highly respect Bernard is offering you a golden opportunity, thusly … Bernard: ‘If anybody wants to try out an online dream sharing group, I do one 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month, 8 pm Eastern US time–one tomorrow–so write me at [email protected].’ He’s the boss. Hit him up if you dream and care about your dreams. You saw the flop ‘MWRA’? Um, you might have even met him? His initials are DM. (Although it’s possible he used a stage name, but I don’t think so.) Hm, alright, I’ll pick up a Poe and try again, I will. Hugs, pal. ** jay, See, when I look at them all I see is Pretty Butterfly Wings, so maybe your mind is diseased and mine isn’t? I think not. Me too, totally, about that information containment. I do know ‘ Breath of the Wild’, and I do know those puzzles you speak of. And feel the same fondness-meets-addictveness. ‘Elden Ring’, good to know. Oh, okay, gotcha it’s the leg, never mind. Just watch it inch towards the floor in a state of wonder and maybe put up a little cat barrier around it if you have cats. A-okay! Superb! Love from over here and me! ** Tyler Ookami, Haha, I realise I need to go check to see what bands fall into the Deathcore category because I feel like I’d only be guessing. Sad, though, because it’s not a terrible moniker as such things go. Vampillia is a nice logo, and, yeah, fuck the spoiler. ‘Possum’, no, I don’t think so. Hm, well, I’ll at least try to locate it and FF through it maybe. Lots to recommend, it sounds like. Super dumb, yep. ** Right. Are y’all familiar with the some say clear-eyed, some say cruel, some say provocative films of Ulrich Seidl by chance? If not, here’s your chance. See you tomorrow.