Author: greg

Technically, It Has Been Worse

My daughter became very sad this morning as she tried to coax her day-old balloon up off the floor.
It was heartbreaking to watch, and we tried to console her, but then I realized that on some September 11th to come, I’ll have to try to explain far worse things to her about this date.

As Ronald Reagan Once Said,

Are you better of than you were four years ago?

Indeed, what’s most shocking is not any particular mistake that was made but how often federal officials were left to brainstorm or hash out on-the-fly just what the federal government’s responsibilities were, how to coordinate federal, state and local relief efforts, or even simply who was in charge.
Reading those passages of the article, there’s one conclusion I think any fair-minded person would have to come to. And that is that in the four years to the day since 9/11, the administration appears to have done little if any effective planning for how to mobilize a national response to a catastrophic event on American soil.
And given all the history that has passed before us over these last four years, that verdict is devastating.

Josh Marshall on the NYT’s report of the government responses to Katrina.

Donald Sutherland Naked On A Cold Day

I’m not the only one with a thing for the editing. Donald Sutherland tells the Guardian about what made that sex scene in Don’t Look Now so, well, sexy. Hint: it wasn’t Julie Christie. OK, it wasn’t JUST Julia Christie:

“About Don’t Look Now, we shot that love scene in a room in the Bauer Grunwald early one morning with Nick Roeg and Tony Richmond operating two un-blimped Arriflex cameras and a bunch of wires going to the technicians on the other side of the closed door. An un-blimped Arri makes a noise like a huge sewing machine. Two of them operating together are deafening. Julie and I lay side by side on the bed, Nick yelled instructions. ‘ZZZZZZZ Donald, kiss Julie’s breast, ZZZZZZZZZZZ Julie, tilt your head back ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Julie, come ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. That’s how it was for about three hours. What made the scene wonderful to people was the editing.

He goes on to tell why, and he’s right. But now I wonder when the sound editor gets his due.
Total Recall [guardian.co.uk, all the way down]

Editing, Art or Science? Movie or Website.

I find that I remake a movie at least three times: when I write it, when I shoot it, and again when I edit it. The one I didn’t realize–and that still seems wildly underappreciated to me–is editing.
Well, here’s hoping that EdgeCodes.com has a long, successful run at Two Boots Theater and beyond. From A.O. Scott’s review, this documentary about the history, theory, practice, art, and science of film editing sounds awesome.

Inside the Editing Room, Where Movies Are Built [nyt]
EdgeCodes.com [the name is the url!]
related: start with anything about Murch or Schoonmaker

Q: One Sheets To Get A Documentary Rolling

Turning from the descent of our country into unaccountable, repressive totalitarianism for a moment…
A reader emailed a question that I thought would be interesting to open up to other readers, too. He’s preparing to make a documentary on a band:

So now as I approach this project, which I intend to direct and shoot primarily myself, I am having trouble organizing my thoughts into the right style treatment for something of this nature. I am aiming for a “one sheet” that gets the point across and will be easy for the band/record company to read and comprehend. Do you have an example of something like this or know where I could go to find one? I would just love to get some ideas on how to format this thing.

Examples, not advice, necessarily, although I’m sure good advice/experiences would not be unhelpful. Send them in or point to them, and I’ll post the results here.
I’ve heard from TV show-pitching friends that people now want to see pilots and trailers more than treatments, little DV sketches of what a show’d actually look like. It reminds me of the pitch for Team America World Police, which consisted of a Thunderbirds episode overdubbed by Matt Parker and Trey Stone; it got the point across and conveyed the essence of what the film would be [or, in this case, should’ve been].
Still, it’ll be easier to get a record exec to skim a one-page treatment than to pop in a dvd, so so far, my advice is netting zero.

Sforza Shooting Katrina On A Closed Set

As with any big feature production, studio publicists are compelled by a primal instinct for the preservation of their own power to attempt to control any and all information coming from the set

At first the evidence was scattered and anecdotal. But now it’s pretty clear that a key aim of the Bush administration’s takeover of the NOLA situation is to cut off press access to report the story.

– Talking Points Memo
On the other hand, they do put out carefully crafted selections of promotional stills to keep the protests down. Looks like Gregory Crewdson has a fan at FEMA. [fema.gov, via robotwisdom]

Maybe Scott Sforza Should Be Running FEMA

sforza_gwb_mississippi.jpg
GWB: ‘Only you Republicans get to see
these here 6-day-old maps.’

Wes Anderson did it with Bottle Rocket, and it’s since become a classic indie scenario: you shoot the short in order to get funding for the feature. Turns out White House producer Scott Sforza’s latest short was Friday’s George W. Bush Does Too Like Black People, See?. German television crews reported that Potemkin food & aid distribution centers Bush visited were dismantled and abandoned soon after the mediapack following Bush moved on. And LA Senator Landrieu reported that Friday’s hive of emergency repair activity at the 17th St. levee was gone the next day.
But it tested well, and with the studio in desperate need of a hit, Sforza got the greenlight to make the feature–it’s more accurate to call it a mini-series, since it goes on all week, beginning yesterday. The cast includes all the usual suspects [sic], plus the biggest, blackest Republican they could find, Condoleeza Rice, who replaces little known HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who originated the role in the short [above]. Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett are writing the script.

White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage [nyt]
As White House Anxiety Grows, Bush Tries to Quell Political Crisis
See the production blog [whitehouse.gov]

WH Heathers Give LA Gov The Katrina Treatment

Bush went to Louisiana again today to shoot some more footage of grateful evacuees. Governor Kathleen Blanco traveled with him, although she had only first heard about the trip from reporters. Seems no one from Washington bothered to coordinate the trip with her, or even let her know it was happening until this morning.
I’m sure it’s not politicizing anything. And I’m sure it’s not an infantile, petty, personal snub by the administration meant to punish an outspoken critic who they’re trying to deflect blame for their own failures onto.
No, it’s just that no one could have anticipated the need to maintain an open channel of communication between federal and state leaders in this kind of situation. To the White House’s credit, they apparently did try Blanco’s secretary’s office voicemail last night. Seriously.
“Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House reached out to Blanco’s office Sunday, but didn’t hear back…” [via CNN]

As If You Didn’t Have Enough Reasons To Evacuate New Orleans

“Not an hour goes by that we do not spend a lot of time thinking about the people who are actively suffering.”
– Michael Chertoff, DHS Secretary, in the aptly names White House Rose Garden. [As NYT: White House Anxiety Grows, Bush Tries to Quell Political Crisis]
“We’re making progress.”
-GWB, a million times on The Daily Show [blogcritics.org, anyone have the video?]
“I think about Iraq every day. Every. Single. Day.”
– GWB, a US-EU press conference. [transcript, whitehouse.gov]
“I want them to know that there’s a flow of progress. We’re making progress.”
–GWB yesterday at NO airport [whitehouse.gov]

MoMA-Hatin’ On My Mind, Nerves

Well, things could certainly be worse, but I’m pretty fed up with the achingly nostalgic, self-appointed populist heroic, knee-jerk MoMA-hating that passes for an enlightened, progressive cultural standpoint in certain quarters of New York these days.
James Wagner takes it personally and politically when PS1 won’t let him shoot images of the Greater NY show. The MoMA Man holding him down. Sure, it puts a cramp in your photodiarykeeping to not be allowed to take pictures, but please.
PS1 generally, historically–and GNY particularly, famously–is a seat-of-their-pants, chaotic circus. Photo release language in the lending documents–assuming there even ARE lending documents–is exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to slip through the cracks there. Little harm, little foul.
And as for those works being lost forever because you couldn’t snap’em? I thought the conventional wisdom about GNY was that everyone in it was already discovered, represented, and getting famous already. I thought up half a dozen artist names in the show and found images of their GNY work and more on their galleries’ websites. It’s more time-consuming than uploading from a digital, but that’s about it.
The one that really bugged, though, was critic/polymath Terry Teachout’s sob story of his visit to MoMA last Friday, how it’s a crowded mall now, not as good as Cleveland or as conducive to artviewing as the Met. Well, I happened to be at MoMA last Friday, too–I had a meeting there earlier in the day–and not only didn’t it suck, experience-wise, it was actually nice, and there were some revelatory art moments the likes of which Terry apparently couldn’t be bothered with, because he was bitching about the escalators too much.
1) The “mall” escalators are not a core element of the Taniguchi design, but they can be a core element of a visitor’s experience there if you choose them to be. First, they’re 1% the mall that Cesar Pelli’s escalators were. Remember those? Second, the stairs are not only less crowded, they’re highlights of the spatial experience. If you want a contemplative visit, leave the escalators to the tourists and take the stairs.
1a) In fact, the staircase Terry complains Diebenkorn has been shunted to is one of the most sublime elements of the whole Taniguchi building.

rebus_rauschenberg.jpg

2) Terry’s right about the Monets; they’re finally in a gallery where they belong. But he has not a word for what replaced them: giant Cy Twomblys that have never looked better than they do right now, alongside the Museum’s latest purchase, Rauschenberg’s giant Rebus. As an awestruck friend pointed out to me, Twombly and Rauschenberg were hooking up at the time Rebus was painted, so putting the two artists side by side again–and making you think about where that scribbling on Bob’s canvas came from, or as I rephrased it, “You’re wondering where Cy’s hands were?”–is at once hilarious and important. That painting, as my friend said, is “the best $30 million spent on art this year.”
to PS1: but they’re called the visual arts, aren’t they? [jameswagner.com]
One Big Blockbuster [about last night]

Finally, I Can Start Using Email Again

For several months in 1999, it seemed the only reason I even had an email account was for sending and receiving copies of this article from The Onion. Then the chain was broken, The Onion had no online archive, &c., &c., no need to bore you with the details. Now that the paper has made their entire archive available online, I have a reason to log back in to my hotbot account. Thank you, The Onion!

“I was at the Olive Garden by Woodfield Mall,” Koechley said, “when I noticed a small sign stating that the restaurant was one of over 1,500 Olive Gardens nationwide. I didn’t think about it at first, but later on it hit me: There are only about 40 of them in Schaumburg. Where are all those others?”


Schaumburg Man Dimly Aware Of Shadowy, Non-Schaumburg World Out There [theonion.com via waxy]

Richard Dreyfus’s Living Room Was Booked

A friend just told me she is going to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming for a screening of Close Encouters of The Third Kind. It’s part of a 21-day tour called the Rolling Roadshow that screens films where they were shot.
Films we’ve already missed: The Last Picture Show [Archer City, TX]; Once Upon A Time In The West [Monument Valley, AZ]; Planet of The Apes [the first one, Lake Powell, AZ]; and Repo Man [in LA somewhere, just yesterday].
There’s still time to see The Goonies, though, and the movie tourist-weary locals only delayed the Sideways screening not cancelled it. Gives you more time to kick your tacky merlot habit.
Rolling Roadshow 2005 [presented by Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema]