August 2004 Archives

Stephen Baldwin: "Stephen Baldwin doesnít feel that he has this mission to make Christianity cool...God made me [Stephen Baldwin] cool so that the youth culture would look up to me."

NY Mag: We hear youíre going to the Bush twinsí convention party.
Stephen Baldwin: "Yeah, Iím going to pop in there, and, uh, make my presence known. [Chuckles.]"

- NY Magazine, RNC Edition

Dr. Jed Hill: "You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God."
Tracy : "Ask God how many shots of bourbon he had before he cut me open."
- Alec Baldwin revealing himself unto Nicole Kidman in the 1993 film, Malice

Issue of 2004-09-06
Posted 2004-08-30

FROM THE ARCHIVE
U.S. JOURNAL: BREAUX BRIDGE, LOUISIANA/ Calvin Trillin/ Eating Crawfish/ Issue of 1972-05-20
U.S. JOURNAL: KENTUCKY/ Calvin Trillin/ Stalking the Barbecued Mutton/ Issue of 1977-02-07

On the 10-year anniversary of the re-emergence of Spiral Jetty and my first visit, and in keeping with our family tradition of visiting the Jetty whenever we attend a wedding in Salt Lake City, we popped on over Saturday in a rented Camry.

These new signs made finding the Jetty so easy, even Artforum could do it.

While we were in Japan, we made a detour to see the growing collection of contemporary art on Naoshima, a tiny island near Okayama, and within spitting distance of the massive Seto Inland Sea Bridge.

In explaining Naoshima, I've taken to calling it the Marfa of Japan, but that's only partly accurate. Benesse represents one collector's--not an artist's--increasingly significant attempt to create an internationally recognized destination for contemporary art pilgrims and to revitalize/transform a dying town in the process. I think it's mostly successful, and definitely worth the trip.

Benesse Art Site is the new umbrella moniker for four separate art projects: the just-opened Chichu Museum; Benesse House, a small museum/hotel; Seaside Park, a campground surrounded by outdoor sculptures; and Art House, permanent artist installations in abandoned 18th century buildings.

When we arrived on Naoshima, we headed first to Benesse House, which was designed by Tadao Ando. The staff was extremely helpful, even though we knew we couldn't stay overnight (the hotel fills up a year in advance). The building was impressive, with two or three of the sublime moments Ando's Fort Worth Museum has dozens of.

The work was all over the place; there's stuff from a collecting phase where money outstripped sense, then from the "let's open a museum" phase where sense caught up. Exquisite siting was a recurring theme. Hiroshi Sugimoto's Time Exposed seascape photos, installed in a courtyard overlooking the sea; Yoshihiro Suda's invisible Weeds, and Bruce Nauman's neon 100 Live or Die, which, by restrictions on how frequently it would be turned on, was transformed from sculpture to eagerly awaited performance spectacle.

A businessman on the ferry had boasted, "There's a $6 million Monet up there." [A Water Lilies diptych, which was probably more than that.] Meanwhile, the locals remain unimpressed by the $10 million early Johns hanging next to the Zen-like Pollock.

I've mentioned it before, but I'll post more on the Art House Project later.

The Iceland Review interviews Dagur K·ri, whose first film, >Noi the Albino, received wild critical acclaim in countries where it's been released [cough cough, US??] [via TMN]

The interview starts: "With his floppy hair, shaggy beard and frumpy red sweater, Dagur K·ri looks very much like a film director."

greg and the rest of the .org gang are on a bit of a trip this week, back on Monday. You can stare at the screen all you want, but there are no bloopers, and there's no silly coda after the Kodak credit fades.

Issue of 2004-08-30
Posted 2004-08-23

FROM THE ARCHIVE
OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS/ Eugene Kincaid/ The Original Olympiads/ Eugene Kinkead writes about the first Olympics, and his visit to the site, in Greece, where they took place./ Issue of 1984-07-09

Sharon Waxman has a report from the set of Team America: World Police, a $32 million puppet action film being directed by a couple of reluctant, foul-mouthed punks pulled from obscurity by Paramount.

Somehow the pair of college buddies, named Matt Stone and Trey Parker, got their pitch--a 3-minute clip of The Thunderbirds with new dialogue dubbed over it--to producer Scott Rudin, and Paramount to greenlight it immediately, even though the guys have no previous puppeteering experience.

Now enduring weeks of 14-hour days shooting, "with three weeks of production to go, the filmmakers found themselves in a warp-speed work schedule of shooting all day, editing half the night and rewriting on the weekends. 'Every shot is problem solving,' Mr. Parker explained."

When they're stumped, the pair follows one article of faith aspiring action filmmakers would do well to remember, WWJBD? What Would Jerry Bruckheimer Do?

INT - NYC Friday, 7:30AM

A groggy mid-30's MAN with bedhead and a 4-day growth of beard crawls into the t-shirt, khakis, and flip-flops dropped the previous night along the trail to his bed. Alternate side parking.

Sitting in his car, he figures, why not go to this Costco he's heard of, get those Pampers, that baby formula, maybe a rack of ribs. He crosses the 59th st bridge, drops into LIC, and pulls into the Costco parking lot. When the store finally opens (at 10) he enters, and is stopped by an ATTENDANT.

ATTENDANT

Membership card, sir?

MAN

Umm, I guess I need to pick it up.

ATTENDANT

To your right.

The man wanders to the membership desk and shells out more than he would have saved on his baby gear. Guess he'll be coming back here again.

MEMBERSHIP DESK CLERK

Step to the end of the desk for your picture.

MAN

I need a picture? What for?

CLERK

It goes on your membership card.

MAN

I just-- Had I known, I would've gotten all dressed up.

CLERK

Would it be that much better?

Todd Gibson's posting an extensive first-hand account of his recent visit to the Spiral Jetty, which, because of an ongoing drought, is now completely out of the water.

That's fast. Some friends went in early July, and it still had water around it, although the Jetty itself was entirely walkable. [via bloggy]

Faithful pilgrims of contemporary art will also appreciate Gibson's account of his visit to the Lightning Field. He does get around.

Related: Other Spiral Jetty and Smithson posts on greg.org
Post about a show that included the intriguing backstory of the official photographs of Lightning Field.

WP art critic Blake Gopnik is wants calling for DC's bigwig art collectors--capitalists all, who else can afford a Richter?--to go communist, and open a collective to share their hoard with the contemporary art-starved DC public.

It'll never happen, but not for the reasons Tyler Green thinks. If Miami's experience is any indication, hyper-competitive, status-hungry collectors who open exhibition spaces have less than a 1 in 4 chance of not embarassing themselves.

[When I first did the rounds of the big Miami collections five years ago, I realized four people had--independently? in competition with each other?--bought nearly identical Oldenburgs, the original of which is at the National Gallery. In DC. And when I was introduced to one as a 'fellow collector,' her first question was, "Do you collect Gursky? Struth?" Which is unbelievably tacky art world shorthand for "Do you have over $10 million? or do you make over $2 million a year?" The only possible answers, by the way, are "Oh, not any more." or "Who?"]

Basically, I worry that most collectors would be too self-important, possibly too clueless, and almost certainly too thin-skinned to be able to pull something like this off.

If Blake's determined, though, he should get in touch with the Rubells, whose Rubell Family Collection put the pressure on their Miami peers in the first place, and who bought a hotel in Washington last year.

The UK Observer does a trend story on guerilla media, that starts with grafitti and small-house publishing, but is mostly a mashup on underground bands--kids playing gigs on the tube, for example--and indie filmmakers--like Outfoxed's Roger Greenwald, and Chris Jones and Genevieve Joliffe, authors of The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook.

According to the Observer, J&J "managed to cast Harrison Ford's little-known brother Terence as the male lead in The Runner," their 1992 sci-fi? thriller? horror? flick. Considering how hard he is to reach these days, I'm sure the Observer means "then-little-known."

Art Attack [Observer-UK]

Philadelphia Enquirer photographer David Swanson and reporter Joe Galloway have created a powerful report on the Marines of Echo Company, which has lost more soldiers in the Iraq War than any other unit so far.

Swanson accompanied the Marines, part of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Company, on many of their battles in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi. The report is based on his journal, and interviews with the "families, friends, teachers, girlfriends, and ministers" of the fallen Marines.

Echo Company, a Special Report from the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

Knight Ridder was "almost alone" in pre-war reporting of official and expert skepticism on WMD [AJR]
"Now They Tell Us," Michael Massing's scathing review of pre-war news in the NY Review of Books

You've gotta see Errol Morris's commercials for MoveOn PAC, the unaccountable special interest division of MoveOn.org. Morris took the "Switch" concept he used for Apple, and shot ads of Republicans who discuss switching their vote to Kerry. Morris's straight-on interviewing style and deft editing manage to convey real peoples' nuanced, complex, and sincere perspectives. The word that sticks with me most: Betrayed.

Of course, MoveOn's populist, anti-war-energized donors voted to run the ad about WMD lies, which strikes me as the ad they most want to show Republicans rather than the ad that's most likely to sway Republicans to switch.

Each ad may elicit its own rebuttal--or, at least there are automatic administration retorts of varying degrees of accuracy/effectiveness; I see the William Harrop ad as vulnerable to criticism of "sour grapes," and the economic thesis of the Brady Van Matre ad doesn't make sense. But the cumulative effect of so many Republican voices of discontent is quite powerful.

As a registered Republican (Yow, where'd that come from??) my top picks are Rhonda Nix, Kenneth Berg, and Sid Hasan.

Related:
Philip Gourevitch reports from the set: context, insightful comments from Morris, spin from MoveOn's Wes Boyd, and a bit of "we're politicians above all" from the Kerry campaign.
"Confessions of A Republican," Johnson's powerful 1964 ad, which was entirely scripted. [from AMMI's The Living Room Candidate]
My interview with Errol Morris

Despite the unmitigated embarassment of his last three directorial forays, the actor Kevin Costner still felt qualified, nay, compelled to let fly with the advice on the set of his current film, Untitled Ted Griffin Project. After wrapping for the day rather than engage in a duel-to-the-death on jet skis, writer/first-time director, Ted Griffin, got the axe. A Fly on The Wall has a gory report from the set [via Defamer]

Now tell me first-time directors, what hurts more:
1) Getting fired from your first film, which you wrote the script for, and which is still named after you?
2) Getting fired by the Patron Saint of First Filmmakers, the man you wrote Ocean's Eleven for, Steven Soderbergh?
3) Getting replaced by Rob Reiner? I mean, come on, what's he ever done?? [Okay, you're not helping here...]

[via archinect] Mies van der Rohe gives a rare interview to BBC Radio. (They've gotten even rarer since he died; this one's from 1959.)

With the sole exception of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, no movie has provided as dead-on accurate a depiction of war as David O. Russell's Three Kings. Now, in an example of cautious "I told you so" prophecy-checking, Russell is co-directing a documentary that revisits aspects of his 1999 film about the first Gulf War.

Sharon Waxman reports that the $180,000 film is being rushed out for both a new DVD and an unusual theatrical re-release of the original film.

In collaboration with with Juan Carlos Zaldivar and Tricia Regan, Russell interviews Iraqi refugee extras from Three Kings (which was shot in California and Mexico, not the mideast, btw) and veterans of both GWI and II. In at least one life-imitates-art moment, a soldier who got the nickname "Clooney" for his involvement last year in attempted looting from Saddam's hoards of cash.

I probably shouldn't even link to the old DVD at this point, but in case they replace the good commentary tracks...

Related: Bloghdad.com/Three_Kings
Partying with David O. Russell

Issue of 2004-08-23
Posted 2004-08-16

FROM THE ARCHIVE
BOOKS/ Andrew Ferguson/ Running Scared/ A review of "Going Negative"/ Issue of 1996-02-19

Unsurprisingly, next to this store, which I dubbed, "Jen," was a food court where you could buy a sweetened crepe with bananas, gelato, custard, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and powdered sugar.

This ramshackle building was next to our Circle K. I didn't think much of it until we walked by it at night, when it was open, and the upstairs was hopping.
The next day, looking at its inventive, case study-like I-beam construction from across the street, I came to like it.

Until I see them standing side by side, I'm going to assume that "Jessica Coen" is really Choire Sicha indulging his "breast-wielding, 24-year old D-girl" side. I mean, it's not like he needed an excuse to read WWD...

Or waitaminnit, maybe Nick is the Remington Steele to Choire's Laura Holt... or maybe Nick is Remington and Ana Marie is Laura Holt, and Choire is just that other guy, who got booted after the first season...Or maybe Skyler and Raven had to leave Port Charles when [...]

[next day update: ok, maybe not LaToya and Michael.]

Has he shrunk out of sight? Daniel Libeskind was notably absent from David Dunlap's NYT report of architects vying for the commission to design the cultural buildings at the World Trade Center Site. Maybe he's automatically in the running. After all, the museum images we all refer to right now are the cantilevered crystalline forms in Libeskind's original proposal.

But, in what is by now standard operating procedure for the Port Authority- and LMDC-run rebuilding effort, flaws and shortcomings are being found in yet another element of the master plan. Dunlap's article looks at options and challenges for moving the museums, now that obstructing a promenade between Calatrava's train hub and the Winter Garden, and looming 15 stories over the Memorial entrance doesn't seem like that great an idea.

Plan May Be Too Much of A Good Thing [NYT]

Dale Peck, writer/Hatchet man: will periodically leave Soho House to "commit civil disobedience as many times as possible." [via Gothamist]

Maer Roshan, magazine non-launcher/editor: will bombard and disorient conventiongoers with daily rundowns on the best plastic surgeons and spa treatments in town. Also, will depict attendees as big-hair-sporting, cowboy-hat-wearers. Not clear that this will be recognized as protest. [via Gawker]

Various anarcho-geeks: will ride around town on wi-fi- and gps-enabled bikes, hoping someone will text them. Ooh, you've got'em scared now, pal. [Eyeteeth, via waxy]

So which way does this go? I mean, I'm a pretty religious guy from a religious, hurricane-prone state, and I can't figure it out:

Does getting pounded by two history-making hurricanes mean God is displeased and punishing Bush and his supporters for their election year sins, OR

does it mean God's blessing him with several weeks of high-profile disaster relief photo-ops and FEMA-distributed largesse?

While looking at film directors who are more than dabbling in television, the Village Voice's Joy Press puts the current trend into context. Turns out indie-types like Miguel Arteta (Six Feet Under) and Neil Labute (The L Word)(What's that? Sorry, don't have Showtime.) aren't the first, just the latest.

It seems film auteurs have been happily trading "total creative control" for "a job that actually pays" at least since Robert Altman's days on Bonanza. No news there. And with the networks turning to blockbuster hacks, the only creativity seems to be on HBO. And Showtime. Again, no surprise.

What IS interesting, though, could be called Six Degrees of Barry Levinson. Turns out a whole crop of indie vets, including Arteta, Lisa Cholodenko, Mary Harron, and Whit Stillman (speaking of whom, where is that guy?) all got to work on Levinson's series Homicide in the early 90's.

So how's about letting a crop of indie punks loose on the set of Law & Order, then?

Even in the remotest backwater of Japan where we've been for the last two weeks, the popularity of tiny, square city-friendly cars is startling. Easily 25-30% of the cars on the road here in Shikoku are what's known as '1-box' or '2-box' models. 1-boxes have plenty of room for four people, and not much else, while 2-boxes often have decent storage/luggage space in the back. A couple are even minivan-like in their spaciousness.

I started calling these things toasters, but their shape--especially the 2-boxes--is more accurately described as bread-like. Loaves of Japanese bread are unsettlingly perfect cubes, with the heels removed.

The 1-box cincept isn't new, or even limited to Japan. 20 years ago, the Honda City started a micromini boom in Japan, and the excellent Mercedes A-class has been selling well in Europe for five years or so (and which I'd buy in a second). [The beautiful-to-me all aluminum Audi A2 hasn't done as well, but I used in my first short film anyway.] And of course, there's the Smart Car, which Trent Lott mocked on the Senate floor. [There are so many Smart-like cars now, it'd make Lott's blood run cold, if he had any, that is.

Still, except for the Honda Element and Toyota's new Scion/b,none of these cars will ever make it to the US, which is too bad. A surprise to me was how well designed the Daihatsu and Suzuki boxes are. Daihatsu's a 5th tier failure in the US, with their boring, personality-free, cookie cutter compacts, yet they're apparently pursuing a differentiation-through-design strategy at home. Why not become a quirky-cool alternative brand and leave the me-too Toyota-chasing to the Koreans?

I'll throw up some more pictures when I can. In the mean time, here's a quick spotter's guide, with links to the Japanese manufacturers' sites:

OK, do I shoot down that comparison in the first sentence, or later on? Starting with his sculpture and environmental pieces, and later with his video and photography, I've been a fan of Jonah Freeman's work for more than six years. But with The Franklin Abraham, his current exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery, I think he has reached a synthesis, a new mode that has implications beyond just his own work.

I put Gabriel Orozco and Matthew Barney on a rather arbitrary spectrum (Orozco because I just wrote about his documentary and videos a few posts ago, Barney because he's the apotheosis of something, at least). Actually, the comparison's not that far-fetched; all three artists, including Freeman, move easily between mediums, although at least Barney and Orozco consider themselves sculptors first. The two old mens' videos have something else in common; they can be controversially tedious to watch, especially if you're not in the mood.

Took a 3-hour tour, a 3-hour tour to Hiroshima yesterday for the anniversary of the US dropping The Bomb on them. While I'm sure it was much hotter in 1945, the wide-open, stone-paved memorial park seems designed to recreate the inferno-like aftermath of that oh-so terrible morning; there's not a shade tree in sight, and the most-sought-after Anniversary souvenir is a fan.

A memorial to a violent incident apparently needs a focal point, something concrete enough for visitors to connect with, latch onto. With the World Trade Center, it is (wrongly, I believe) the footprints of the buildings; with Hiroshima--and Oklahoma City in its wake--it is the moment of impact. A wristwatch, stopped at 8:15AM, holds pride of place in the Memorial Museum, and I overheard several people throughout our visit asking directions to "the watch."

As I was leaving the first floor of the exhibition area, I saw a distinguished man with a posse of expensively-but-poorly suited minions, talking through a translator with a Japanese guy. A couple of reporters hovered around, not asking questions, just taking notes. Turned out to be the Pakistani Ambassador to Japan.

Pakistan? Seeing as how they're next, he's got a lot of nerve coming to Hiroshima on the anniversary of the bomb, I said to one reporter, who nodded grimly. I stood and eavesdropped for a while, as the Ambassador ran through platitudes of defensive deterrents (nationalist pride-infused inferiority complex), developing country unable to afford a war (yet able to divert money from education and economic development to the bomb; offsetting costs with wholesale exports of nuclear technology), &c. Finally, when he talked about praying for the souls of those killed, I couldn't take it anymore.

As the group turned, I said, "Excuse me, but how can you talk about sorrow when, if the world sees another bomb used--whether by your military, Islamic terrorists, or North Korea--it'll have 'made in Pakistan' on it?" He didn't register at first, but a couple in the posse were surprised, and the Japanese guy froze. The ambassador stumbled for a bit, muttered no, no, and, looking toward a minion who was gesturing toward the elevator, gave me an ignoring nod and moved away quickly. A reporter trailing asked me my name and where I was from, and then I went to give the kid her bottle.

Just like when you think of the funniest comeback later that night, I spent the rest of the afternoon and my hydrofoil back to Shikoku thinking of what I should have said. And wishing I'd shaved, so I didn't look so much like a peacenik bum, peddling my way across southeast Asia.

Sure, you can speak truth to power, but more than likely, power will ignore your over-emotional, impulsive, sorry-looking ass.

Issue of 2004-08-09
Posted 2004-08-02

FROM THE ARCHIVE
ANNALS OF COMEDY/ John Lahr/ The Goat Boy Rises/ Profile of comedian Bill Hicks, who, along with Jesus, Brad Stine cites as an influence?/ Issue of 1993-11-01
A CRITIC AT LARGE/BRAINWASHED/ Louis Menand/ Where the "Manchurian Candidate" came from./ Issue of 2003-09-15
PROFILES/ Calvin Tomkins/ Good Cooking/ A profile of Julia Child/ Issue of 1976-12-23

from an ongoing series:

If his behavior on my flight to Ozaka is any indication, Billy will dress like a 40-year old cop trying to go undercover at a high school.

He will sport long, greasy hair, with a ponytail on top, a la Patrick Rafter circa 1998, and a t-shirt that reads BUllSHit in foot-tall red letters. The t-shirt will be tight enough to reveal that he hasn't been back to Equinox 76th street since he used to hit on my friend there in 1993.

He will emerge from first to walk repeatedly around the business class cabin, presumably so that we can all read his shirt. He will be careful to avoid entering the coach cabin. At customs, once he's thrust back into gen pop, he will don a giant pair of sunglasses and keep his head down and arms folded (over his oh-so-rebellious slogan).

He will not wait for any checked luggage, but take his carry-on and disappear with a Japanese handler, presumably to shoot a pachinko commercial or some other mortgage-paying gig.