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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I worked on the film on Saturday then spent Sunday trying to catch up on everything I’m behind on. It was okay. I still haven’t started ‘The Shards’. It’s long enough that I think I have to wait until we’re finished with the film because my concentration is too swallowed right now. Playboy Carti is playing at this huge venue, and I never go to those kinds of shows, so that should be interesting at least. I was crazy about his last album, so I’m pretty excited. Ha ha, you’re beset with the talkative, I suspect. Surely love has a mute button in his arsenal. Zac and I are watching our new cut of the film this morning, so love just has to make it work as well as we hope so we don’t have to go back and redo it yet again, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes, he’s written really well about her work. I might’ve linked to one of his pieces, I can’t remember. ** Matt N., Hi, Matt! Welcome, and thank a lot for entering. I do like Nabokov, of course, yes. ‘Pale Fire’ is probably my favorite of his. I have a fondness for ‘Pnin’ too, which a lot of Nabokov-heads don’t seem to like so much. I’m not sure if I was thinking about him when writing ‘The Sluts’. Huh, thats a very interesting idea. Luckily we have a colleague who’s going to do a basic color correction for us for free. I mean for the festival submission version. We’ll hopefully have some funds to pay for a pro correction before we’re totally finished. How are you? What do you do, what are your interests, etc.? Really nice to meet you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Cool. Yeah, her ‘Peggy and Fred’ films are terrific. Here too, i.e. the heatwave. It’s supposed to start broiling today and keep broiling through the weekend. Fuck! Icy hugs. ** Misanthrope, Huh, I wish I had any time at all to watch the Open coverage. I’m most intrigued now, thanks to you. Whoa, add my crossed fingers to the bunch about Pizza Hut. Lil D’s about to become a respectable citizen at long last. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I look forward to your song, thank you. Everyone, Here’s Mr. Erickson. Listen/read up: ‘I decided to scrap the album I was working on this summer and start over with a new project. Here’s the first single, “Writer’s Block”. While the songs will be written in different tempos, time signatures (“Writer’s Block” is a waltz), and scales, they will all use similar instrumentation, based in bells and tuned percussion.’ If we’re very lucky, we’ll have a locked edit (for the festival submission version) in place by Friday, but that might be optimistic. We need to get the color correction and sound cleaning started next week if we’re going to meet our deadline, and the edit needs to be locked before that can happen. Thank you for asking. ** Zak Ferguson, It’s a really good festival. Okay, cool, I’ll go find your youtube channel. ‘Big stories’, wow. That’s a goal. Zac and I go for minimal stories manifested charismatically, I guess. Anyway, your work in progress sounds fascinating, of course. I think no budget is great, but I also get wanting to make a film that needs a kind of help that requires some money to implement. Zac’s and my new film cost much more to make than we ever envisioned it would, but we wanted to make the film we wrote/imagined, and that’s what it took, and we were barely able to make it even with the big/low amount it cost. That wasn’t spam whatsoever, dude. xo ** Ollie🐻, Do you generally look grumpy? I don’t how I look generally, and I don’t think I want to know actually. I personally agree close to 100% with your assessment of Burning Man. Your roommate is spooky. I wonder what’s going to happen to her. It seems like she has a lot of disappointment and unhappiness in her future? I never remember my dreams. Or I do sometimes for, like, three seconds and then they vanish. But when I do remember them they’re always about someone trying to kill me. Your mood is charm. ** Charalampos, Hey there. I think ‘An autumn afternoon’ is as good a place to start with Ozu as any. I like that title ‘Star Turn’. It’s very nice. Editing is relentless, and I think it’s going very well, but I’ll have a better idea once we look at our new cut of the film this morning. Thank you for inquiring. ** Corey Heiferman, Oh, great. Happy her work found a potential home in you and yours. Whew: suitcase reemergence. What did you buy? Hm, Markopoulos’s style. Kind of beautiful, kind of attractively humble, kind of a little pretentious? ** ellie, Hey, e. Even your level of French is enviable to me. My brain just won’t let me learn it. I often dislike what happens to French when I hear Americans speaking it, so that might be a subconscious resistance point. Cool you liked that thing in ‘PGL’. Yeah, I was happy that worked. I think in the new one the visual realisation of my writing goals is even better because we’ve figured more things out now, but we’ll see. Thank you a lot having the patience to repost the links. As soon as I get my next film editing break, meaning hopefully tonight, I can’t wait to see the goods. Thank you, thank you. You have an amazing day. ** Okay. I sort of really like this post today for some reason. I don’t know what you’ll think, of course. See you tomorrow.
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Hi!!
Yeah, that makes absolute sense – about “The Shards.” It’s a fairly long one, and it really takes you under once you start to read it. Or at least that’s my experience. I’m excited to see where he’ll take the story. Anyway, let me know once you get around to reading it – if you feel like it, of course!
Okay, I’ll listen to Playboi Carti’s latest album. Now I’m really curious. It’s been ages since I was at a huge venue, too, but now that we’re talking about it, I’m kind of craving those vibes…
What I wouldn’t give for a mute button on people, haha!
Did love help you out? What did you think of the new cut of your film? I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed!!
Love stepping onstage and freezing upon being hit by the audience’s wave of EXPECTATION, Od.
“Pale Fire” is ny favorite too. Nabokov is such a conundrum He claims to hte Thomas Mann, yet “Loliya” is clearly inspired by “Death in Venice: He had a gat brother who he both pobed ad hated A lot going on inside his eminent mindWildly fuced up
My former art school buddy Anna Orton is a super talented theatre set designer these days. She’s done stuff for the National Theatre of Scotland and the Bristol old Vic, and I have a few artworks by her in my front room too.
All the stage is a world… this post make my stagecraft nerd very happy! Did that DC zine arrive yet? We are working on new zines for Cookie Mueller and Kristian Hoffman. We can pop another in the mail if not. Lemme know 😉
In other news… I’m doing some fund raising for ‘California Sober,’ a sex-positive feature documentary about queer people in recovery from addiction by Greek filmmaker Konstantinos Menelaou. https://www.gofundme.com/f/california-sober-film-post-production
PNIN! It’s been years since I read that one. I’ve only read 5 Nabokov books, the other 4 being LOLITA, PALE FIRE, DESPAIR and INVITATION TO A BEHEADING.
Today we took a sojourn to nearby North Conway in New Hampshire to do some shopping, mainly gift shops and book stores (though I found nothing worth getting). We also hit up another mini golf place, Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf I believe it’s called, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves as most of the tourists have left for the season, what with Labor Day being past (also, it’s been unseasonably warm up here, sadly). This is the second time we’ve played here, the first being last year. I think I told you about it last time: it’s pretty lavish as far as mini-golf places go, being split into two 18 hole courses (though unlike last year this year we just did the one course, on account of the heat). The course is built on a multi-elevated landscape, and is designed around a pirate/nautical theme, with cannons, wastebaskets made to look like ship barrels, wooden bridges and stone staircases, artificial caves, waterfalls… hell, each hole even has a little sign with pirate facts and trivia (mostly related to Blackbeard: did you know he stood six feet 4 inches and weighed 250 pounds?). The highlight of the place is a big lagoon at the bottom of the waterfall, where they put a bunch of pirate statues shoulder-deep in the water. I never play very good at this place, however, because with all the flowers about, it attracts a lot of bees. True to form I placed last today, though I did at least get another hole in one.
Anyway we’re back at the cabin now. A few minutes ago I was reading WUTHERING HEIGHTS, a book I took along with me, and so far I have read almost 100 pages in it.
What beautiful photos. Sexy, dark, eerie, transformative and given their own unique spatial dimensions. Obviously I have a stage fetish. Comes from having a theatre director as a grandfather.
Hey Dennis,
“Pnin” is the next on my list. Or Ada or Ardor. That’s nice of your colleague (color correction is a part of post-production I really enjoy)… “Green Permanent Light” has very subtle colors, right? I like it. Curious to watch your next film, it would be good to see it in a festival here in Brazil! And I’m fine! Thanks for asking, what about you?
What do I do?… I’m a filmmaker here in Brazil… I find it very hard to talk about my interests but right now I’m very interested in Nabokov, Michel Chion’s books on sound theory, William Friedkin’s late films, fizzy juice and working out. Not really interested in music for some time now…
Speaking of Friedkin, do you like Cruising? I’ve rewatched it last month and I’ve been thinking that’s like a gay version of Shock Corridor…
Nice to meet you too.
Hey! Hm well sometimes I have a resting grumpy/cycnical look but I would say I try not to.
Do you have an interest in architecture and building/engineering? Based on a lot of ur posts, I think you do, which means we have that in common! I have a weirdly vauge memory of you posting about pneumatic tubes.
Today was disappointing, or maybe, I dont know. I really dont like it here. I want to move, but I still have to save up money. Everything hurts in like a very dramatic fleeting way that I think will be gone by next week? Im hoping to get that job! I think I will.
Have you ever worked outside of writing? Like, Oh no, should I say the forbidden word? No anything but….retail ahh! Becoming an artist can be sometimes financially unsustainable, or no? Was that ever a struggle 4 u?
I see this therapist Wednesday and I’m really looking forward to that! Internally debating this one kid I feel bad for and if having sex with a person out of sympathy/pity makes me a giving person. But sex never really felt cherishable/vulnerable to me, especially when you were born in the wrong body.
Sending love and…really good Hispanic food without the meat and without being cooked next to meat because that is something that bothers me but idk if it bothers u so i’ll just tell the chef to cook yours on the side in case it does!!
Hi Dennis.
How are you? Im doing ok. Very atmospheric post today. Love the look of the B&W stage with smoke next to it. My favorite examples of stages are in David Lynch films like Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive. I love what he can do on a stage. I like what I have seen of Futurama, but I’m much more of a Simpsons fan. You can never go wrong with early Simpsons I think. I think you’d love Pharaoh Sanders’ Karma. It’s trippy and relaxing. I listened to it all on a car trip and it was nice. Well today I listened to the Claude Channes song from La Chinoise all day and it’s lodged in my head. Would you recommend La Chinoise? The only Godard’s I’ve seen are Breathless, Band of Outsiders, Contempt, Vivre sa Vie, Alphaville and Weekend. My favorites are Vivre sa Vie and Contempt. Don’t really care for the others. Rewatched Texas Chain Saw Massacre last night. Still the scariest American horror film. Plans for tonight involve rewatching Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. Also, do you like lasagna, Dennis? Have a good one!
I thought I made a post here this afternoon, but it doesn’t show up on the page now. Weird.
As cursed as the production has been, having a locked edit by Friday is really exciting.
Dennis, I’ve always been a sucker for stages of all kinds. (And curtains too!) Hope your editing has gone well….really looking forward to the film!
Hi Dennis! Mhm yeah I can see that. Maybe the pressure would feel worse in France also, since you’re hearing the real deal all the time? I usually like accents for other people but I feel really inhibited about my own speaking, if it sounds so off I mostly don’t bother. Only reading feels different for some reason. Best luck with the editing! Thanks for taking a peek at my stuff. I’d love to hear what you think but only if it wouldn’t be very irksome. I’ve looked at the stages a bunch today, the Noh-ish one looks especially haunted. Hope you’re well. x