the making of, by greg allen
No doubt after a euphoric and joyous walk through the park yesterday morning, and a group hug with the world, Daily Show writer Rob Kutner got back to work–making Gates jokes.
My favorite is above: “Shut UP Jen. I’m totally at The Gates.”
The Gates A Photo Essay By Rob Kutner [supermasterpiece.com]
Don’t get me wrong; I’m just as giddy as the next schoolgirl [sic] about The Gates, I just can’t see how they cost $20 million. That’s what the Christos say they cost, and it’s a figure which is dutifully reported in every story, but it’s something which I’ve never seen examined or analyzed.
Most discussion of The Gates focuses on their populism; this is not just public art, but an artistic experience given to the people. The back seat of a Maybach seems an unlikely spot from which to promote “art for Everyman,” [to use Michael Kimmelman’s phrase and Andy Towle’s picture] but for underlining the noblesse that comes with your self-proclaimed noblesse oblige, it’s just about perfect [even if it is borrowed].
I don’t think it’s being ungrateful to take a closer look at this $20 million figure. We don’t consider it an act of magnanimity when Paramount ponies up $200 million to provide us with the grand collective experience of Titanic. In fact, I believe the Christos’ consider the budget to be an important aspect of their work. The artists themselves make a big deal about how much their projects cost, how they don’t accept government financing, donations or sponsorships, and how they pay for everything themselves by selling related drawings, models and ephemera.
They also consider the sometimes decades-long process–materials testing and procurement, engineering studies, bureaucratic navigation and and political negotiations–as intrinsic to their work. Their website is full of factoids on fabric, hardware, topographic studies, and the corporate machinery and machinations that underpin their projects. [To see an example, scan developments for Over The River, a project-in-progress.]
Using the Christos’ own descriptions and published reports of the installation, I priced out The Gates. Let me just say that to get to $20 million requires some rather creative–maybe even artistic–accounting. Whatever else they may accomplish, Christo and Jeanne-Claude may have also created a unique approach to the subjective and often arbitrary exercise of valuing a work of art.
Art in General’s hosting a screening of Tarnation at 3, and Jonathan Caouette will be entertaining your questions while you all drink their wine at around 6.
Whatever you can get him to do in that mystical hour or so between when the movie ends and the reception begins remains to be seen.
3-6 PM Tarnation Screening
Jonathan Caouette interrogations (dress: Basic Instinct)
Art in General
79 Walker Street
East of Broadway somewhere, on the SE corner of some street
Art in General video program [artingeneral.org]
Jason’s got his photos of The Gates up, I’m sure the rest of the camera-equipped world will follow.
Albert Maysles talks on WPS1 about the 25+year-long process of making his film about The Gates, The Gates. Maysles is making this film with collaborator Antonio Ferrera for HBO, but he also made other Christo and Jeanne-Claude films over the years. [Actually, a lot of them at the time were just Christo films. I’ll let the gender studies art historians figure that one out. Ask Coosje van Bruggen about it, too.]
Maysles has switched to DV lately, and revels in being able to be even less obtrusive and more flexible than 16mm used to let them be.
Kottke-gate [kottke.org]
Maysles-gate [wps1.org]
Jason interviewed David Bernal, aka Elsewhere, the popping dancer who recreated Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in The Rain dance scene for a recent British VW GTi commercial: “…they had us watch the original Singing in the Rain scene so many times that I started unconsciously moving a bit like Gene Kelly. The director at one point even told me that I was moving too much like Gene and I needed to move more like me.”
Golf GTi Commercial and Elsewhere [kottke.org]
previously: Definition of “to be Jar-Jarred”
VW commercial shot on the same soundstage as Oliver!
Musical, Re-animated, with Xanadu references
First, I’d like to welcome and give a passionate cry to new greg.org advertiser Kinsey, an American Experience documentary airing Monday, February 14th on PBS. Psst, even though Kinsey’s work is half a century old, don’t tell the Secretary of Education.
Meanwhile, Daddy Types may sound like something Kinsey would’ve been into, but it’s actually a site for new dads. Check that one out, too.
I can’t quite say why, but I had a pretty intense Jon Jost phase when I first moved to New York. I saw his All The Vermeers In New York several times, lured in by the title, but kept there by the film’s demanding and precise construction, and its underlying art-vs-money themes. [That said, I don’t remember it too well; better add it to the rental queue.]
Anyway, I’m sure–pretty sure. kind of sure. hoping–that when the Whitney Museum put then-Vivendi/Universal chairman Jean-Marie Messier on its board in the late 1990’s, it was NOT it in the hope of adding one more Vermeer to New York City’s collection.
FBI looking at Messier as part of its investigation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, which netted someone a Vermeer and some Rembrandts [bostonherald.com]
All The Vermeers In New York[imdb.com, amazon]
FYI, New York’s Vermeers are at the Met [5] and the Frick [3]
I admit, a lot of Sundance went by me in a blur. No one I knew I knew was showing anything this year, and I knew non-film work would conspire to keep me out of Park City, so maybe I’m the only person who DIDN’T know about New York Doll. Well, in the last week, I’ve heard about it from three different people, each of whom called it one of the top films at the festival.
Greg Whiteley started shooting a documentary about his friend from church, Arthur Kane, when Morissey called [?!] and asked if his old band, the New York Dolls, would reunite and play for the first time in 30 years at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London.
Turns out Brother Kane, who may be more familiar to rock fans as Killer Kane, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the late 80’s, and when Morissey called, he was working in the genealogy library near the LA temple on Santa Monica. Imagining Kane fitting in in the Mormon Church, Blondie drummer Clem Burke said, “It would be like Donny Osmond becoming a New York Doll.”
It also turns out–and this is less of a surprise to music fans–that the New York Dolls were possibly the single greatest influence on glam-rock and punk in the early seventies, and were a key inspiration for everyone from Morissey to Blondie to the Ramones to the Sex Pistols. I’m not giving anything of the film away to point out that the Meltdown reunion–for which Kane dressed, not in feathery glam drag, but in a ruffled shirt inspired by the 19th c. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and which featured the three band members who hadn’t died of punk-lifestyle-related causes–was a star-filled, exuberant success. Additional tour dates were hastily set, then just days later, Kane died two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia.
The film includes interviews with the musicians who were inspired by the dolls as well as Kane’s bishop, who talked about the joy Kane was deriving from the upcoming reunion. Whiteley showed some of his rough footage at Kane’s funeral, then edited like crazy to get the film ready for the Sundance screenings last month.
As of right now, the film’s distribution is not decided.
Official Sundance info for New York Doll [sundance.org]
IndieWIRE email interview with director Greg Whiteley [indiewire.com]
Film details Mormon’s final wish: to reunite punk band [reno journal]
New York Dolls play SENSATIONAL comeback show at Meltdown [nme.com]
Arthur Kane, Punk Rock Bassist for New York Dolls, dies at 55 [NYT, via mills.edu]
No, these are just strange commercials, discussed on Design Observer by Momus.
Previously: The Suntory Commercials of Akira Kurosawa
‘Lost’ Swedish Soap Commercial Director Ingmar Bergman Finally Gets Recognition
In the NY Times today, David Pogue reviews Sony’s new prosumer (i.e., sub-$4,000) 3-chip, high definition camera, the FX1. Net net, it gets pretty high marks. It’s got a stunning, true 16:9 CCD, which can shoot HD30 or film’s 24 frames per second. One feature I’m eager to see in person is the pre-programmable settings with which you can automate changes in exposure and focus to match the changes in a shot–moving from a bright exterior to a dimly lit interior, for example.
Eeven so, it’s still saddled with one of Sony’s persistently annoying dumb-downs–no XLR sound inputs–meant only to protect the far more expensive professional market. They did this with their first 3-chip camera, the VX1000 as well, making people use add-on XLR adaptors until the PD-150 was introduced several years later.
Anyway, if you think you’re ready to shoot HD, the FX1 is for sale at Amazon. I’m probably not supposed to tell you the price, but I will say that if Amazon paid me a 10% commission–which they won’t–I’d earn $334 off of each one of you budding, shopping filmmakers.
Buy the Sony HDRFX1 High Def Camera at Amazon
Home Video Made To Watch on High Definition TV [NYT]
Microsoft has commissioned Alex Garland (28 Days Later, um, The Beach, but we don’t talk about that) to write a script for Halo–a v1.0, if you will–which will be offered to producers along with with the game’s film rights as a “turnkey” package.
This is a brilliant, precedent-setting move for a multitude of reasons:
Artforum’s gossip columnist Rhonda Lieberman wasn’t on the list for artfully poseurish artworld duo [Yvonne Force-Villareal and Sandra Hamburg] Mother, Inc.’s recent Fendi-sponsored CD listening party, so she traded a blowjob for entry. At least that’s how it reads.
A little context: Mother, Inc. started as backup singers for Fischerspooner. The title quote above comes from the oh-so-vigilant guards watching the sponsor’s display case.
Hot Commodities [artforum scene & herd]
What is it about bunnies and short films? First, the NY Times has a hi-larious, yet thoughtfully insightful interview with Jennifer Shiman, the creator of 30-Second Bunny Theatre. Then Chris Harding’s 50’s instructional film-style short for Hallmark features a hutchful of retro bunnies flogging greeting cards.
Spielbunny [NYT, oh wait, I wrote that. Not that that taints my judgment or anything…]
Classic films, re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies [angryalien.com]
Make Mine Shoebox corporate video [chrisharding.net]
Tony Scott gave Hirokazu Kore-eda and his latest film, Nobody Knows, a strong review:
Nobody Knows is not for the faint of heart, though it has no scenes of overt violence, and barely a tear is shed. It is also strangely thrilling, not only because of the quiet assurance of Mr. Kore-eda’s direction, but also because of his alert, humane sense of sympathy. He is neither an optimist nor a sentimentalist – like his previous films, Maborosi, After Life, and Distance, this one presents a fairly bleak view of the modern world – but he does keep an eye out for manifestations of decency, bravery and solidarity. These tend to be small and fleeting, and therefore all the more valuable and worth clinging to when his patient, meticulous eye uncovers them.
I found Distance–only available as a Region 2 DVD–to be so carefully hands-off as to be almost boring. And what Scott calls “impending doom,” Jonathan Marlow, reporting from Rotterdam for GreenCine, calls “relatively predictable.” And “unnecessarily long.” Maybe it’s a good thing Kore-eda’s doing a jidai-geki (period drama) next.
Abandoned Children Stow Away At Home [nyt]
GreenCine at IFFR [daily.greencine.com]
Also: Filmbrain’s take on the film, an IndieWIRE’s interview with Kore-eda, and an IFP article and the film’s production notes.
Previously: Kore-eda on greg.org [I mean, greg.org on Kore-eda]