Issue of 2005-01-17
Posted 2004-01-10
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ FLOOD TIDE/ Hendrik Hertzberg on the response to the tsunami.
COLD CASE DEPT./ VISITING PREACHER KILLEN/ Jeffrey Goldberg remembers a trip to Philadelphia, Mississippi.
AFTER THE FLOOD/ THE THIRD “R”/ Akash Kapur on what follows rescue and relief.
WRONG NUMBER DEPT./ NOT DIRTY/ Michael Agger meets a man stuck with a rapper’s real name.
DEPT. OF INQUIRY/ STUMPED NEW YORK/ Rebecca Mead on the librarians at the New-York Historical Society.
ANNALS OF WAR/ Dan Baum/ Battle Lessons/ Officers learn what the Army couldn’t teach.
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Billy Frolick/ 1992 House
FICTION/ Lorrie Moore/ “The Juniper Tree”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ Adam Gopnik/ Renaissance Man/ The life of Leonardo.
BOOKS/ Hilton Als/ I, Me, Mine/ A new biography of Christopher Isherwood.
POP MUSIC/ Sasha Frere-Jones/ When I’m Sixty-Four
Aging rockers onstage.
ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ Women Gone Wild/ “Desperate Housewives.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Anthony Lane/ Go Fish/ “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
FROM THE ARCHIVE
THE TALK OF THE TOWN/ THE PICTURES/ Lillian Ross/ A visit to the set of Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums/ Issue of 2001-05-21
Author: greg
Your Dream Project, Our Nightmare
Caryn James barely scratches the surface with her article-cum-warning about directors’ dream projects: “Here is a basic rule of moviegoing,” she starts, “when you hear about someone’s dream project, run from the box office fast.”
On the list of dreamers and their flops: Oliver Stone (Alexander), Kevin Spacey (Beyond The Sea), Scorsese (Gangs of New York, AND Last Temptation of Christ), John Travolta (Battlefield Earth)… seriously, there’s a year’s worth of articles to write on this. I’ll leave the comments open for a while, so feel free to add your own favorites.
The Making of The Megaflop: Curse of The Pet Project [NYT]
Your Dream Project, Our Nightmare
Caryn James barely scratches the surface with her article-cum-warning about directors’ dream projects: “Here is a basic rule of moviegoing,” she starts, “when you hear about someone’s dream project, run from the box office fast.”
On the list of dreamers and their flops: Oliver Stone (Alexander), Kevin Spacey (Beyond The Sea), Scorsese (Gangs of New York, AND Last Temptation of Christ), John Travolta (Battlefield Earth)… seriously, there’s a year’s worth of articles to write on this. I’ll leave the comments open for a while, so feel free to add your own favorites.
The Making of The Megaflop: Curse of The Pet Project [NYT]
Marinetti, I know, but who’s Mussolini?
Jonathan Jones gives a brilliantly outraged review of a show of ‘Italian Aeropaintings,’ a Futurist subgenre which flourished in the 1930’s. The curators at the Estorick Collection say this work demonstrates “a passion for the new perspectives and vertiginous excitements of aviation – an innocent wonder we have lost in our age of routine civilian flight.”
What they don’t say, and what gets Jones so rightly worked up: ’30s Italy was ruled by fascists; the planes in the paintings are bombers; the Futurists–especially Marinetti–were friendly suck-up loyalists to Il Duce–who loved to fly and was photographed in his flight suit climbing out of a biplane. One 1937 painting, Aerial Mission, Jones deduces, may even refer to the bomber’s-eye view of the Luftwaffe’s Guernica carpetbombing experiment itself.
Yeah, funny how they forgot to mention all that. The Italian government is thanked for its deep and stalwart support of the show.
Birds of Prey [Guardian]
Fascism? What Fascism? [Estorick Collection]
To Do: Get Your Butt To The Reel Roundtable Monday
Remember? I’m turning the blog into a movie? Monday Night? Millennium Theater? 7:30 for chilling, 8:00 for starting?
Here’s the previously announced program, which will be musically, if not surgically, enhanced:
Coming January 10: greg.org – the movie
The Reel Roundtable site
Elizabeth’s IndieWIRE blog
All That And A Bag Of Chips
Who needs Vanity Fair? Sometimes a surefire pitch is just waiting for you on the side of the road: two Long Island women were arrested for selling hookups in the back of their hot dog truck, which they parked on the side of the Sunrise Highway.
“‘We’ve never seen hot dogs mixed with prostitution before,’ Deputy Inspector [and aspiring screenwriter, who’ll settle for story credit and a low-five option, I’m sure] Rick Capece said. ‘There are so many jokes, so little time.'”
‘Hookers’ Relish Wieners [NYPost]
Hey, It Worked For Kinsey
The must-have vanity project for 2005: your own biopic.
Andy Towle reports that the NY Post reports that W Magazine reports that Bill Condon’s developing a script based on a 2001 Vanity Fair article for Tribeca Films. The subject: Pepe and Alfie Fanjul, the socialite sugar overlords.
Which makes sense, because that NYT article a few weeks ago about Castro stealing Pepe’s painting seemed like such a brazen movie pitch.
Good Morning, Brother Worf
“As we discussed Beth’s bizarre ability to speak the Klingon language, it suddenly hit us: Why not translate the Book of Mormon into Klingon? It was just quirky enough to be interesting. So Beth whipped out her two volumes of the Klingon Dictionary and James pulled out his scriptures and we set to work.”
The Book of Mormon, translated into Klingon.
Bill T. Jones on New York’s Golden Age
It’s too bad it’s not online, becauseThe NY Times City section’s feature, asking 14 prominent New Yorkers when the city’s “Golden Age” was, makes for interesting reading. Counting the two who said, “Always,” five people said “Now”: John Leguizamo, Robert Stern, Laurie Anderson, Oscar de la Renta, and Yoko Ono.
But the choreographer Bill T. Jones said “Right after 9/11,” which, I agree, was a unique time that’s being lost and forgotten:
New York had a true reappraisal of itself at a tragic and introspective moment. New York had the attention of the whole world; it was a frightening moment. But the world was ready to follow, to assist.
It lasted a few months. We were vulnerable and open to the rest of the world, and we were ready for a change. There was a chance to ask questions, and it was a time when we were forced to do so.
But it didn’t happen. There wasn’t a true conversation about what America means to the rest of the world or about why New York was chosen. It was an opportunity. And then the politicians took it.
Glory Days [Thanks to Jason, a closer reader of the NYT, for the link]
Re-inventing the Lightbulb, 2/2: Stephen Flavin
img: Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights, 1961-1996
Stephen Flavin is the only child of Dan Flavin and his first wife, Sonja Severdija. Trained as a filmmaker, Stephen, who lived apart from his father since his parents divorce, began assisting his father’s company, Dan Flavin, Ltd, in 1992. His first efforts–producing the artist’s all-important certificates by computer (previously, they had been variously handwritten or typed) and converting the elaborate and disparate index-card-based inventory of works, which was split among several galleries, to an electronic database–have helped in efforts since his father’s death in 1996 to create a catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work.
Stephen Flavin has overseen the activities of his father’s estate since 1997. He is private and is generally satisfied to have others–such as Steve Morse, the estate’s studio director, or Dia experts such as Michael Govan or Tiffany Bell–speak publicly about Dan Flavin’s work. While my several attempts to contact Stephen before the article’s deadline were unsuccessful, he did call me shortly thereafter and graciously agreed to discuss his experience with the estate, his father’s work, and Dia:
Continue reading “Re-inventing the Lightbulb, 2/2: Stephen Flavin”
Re-inventing the Light Bulb, 1/2: Emily Rauh Pulitzer
Although they happened too late to make the article, I had some enlightening conversations with Emily Rauh Pulitzer, a collector and curator of Flavin’s work, and with the artist’s son, Stephen Flavin, who manages his father’s estate. They’re worth sharing here for the additional light they shed [sic] on Flavin’s legacy and the complexities and contradictions inherent in his deceptively simple work. I’ll post them separately, first Pulitzer.
Continue reading “Re-inventing the Light Bulb, 1/2: Emily Rauh Pulitzer”
A-Clips: Anti-Sponsored Shorts
This just in, in time to seal 2004 as The Year Of The Sponsored Short, is A-Clips, a series of aggressively unsponsored shorts:
A-Clip plays with the aesthetics of cinema commercials, which are reproduced, satirized or subverted. Each of them has a length of approximately 50 seconds and will be shown on 35mm film among the commercials at movie theatres, with the illicit co-operation of the projectionists and management of individual cinemas.
Among the advertisements for lifestyles products cinemagoers are surprised by short movies that contain critical messages and disrupts the linear narratives of the commercials that surround them. Each film comments on aspects of urban life from its own thought-provoking and subjective perspective.
Good luck finding them. Of course, if you’re a subversion-minded projectionist or theater manager, why not drop A-Clip a line from your Gmail account?
A-Clips [via coudal]
Previously: Amazon Theater, GettyImages, Interpol Shorts, Nike’s Art of Speed, or Commission A Short Film Portrait by Jeff Scher
Remember, There’s No ‘P’ In Architecture
KINKS: The way-finding isn’t working. By the second or third day, we had to put up signs to help people. The bathrooms needed signs coming out, instead of being flat on the wall. The library’s organization makes complete sense to us. But for the public, it’s not obvious. One portion of the seventh floor is six feet higher because it spirals around. So if it says something is on seven, what does that mean?
-Deborah Jacobs, Seattle City Librarian, in the NYTimes, on actually using Rem Koolhaas’s ecstatically reviewed building
“A lot of employees are pretty upset that a lot of money was spent on the award-winning design but little was spent on things like water and restrooms,” said Stephen Beck, a consultant with the Professional Engineers of California Government union.
The 13-story, 716,200-square-foot structure has four drinking fountains, all on the ground floor. And at each end of each floor there are two bathrooms, one for women and one for men. The problem: only four urinals on each level.
-From the LAT article on complaints about Thom Maynes’ ecstatically reviewed Caltrans building.
Inside the year’s best-reviewed buildings [NYT]
Matt Howie’s photos of temporary signs at the Seattle Public Library [flickr, via waxy]
Building puts form over bodily function [LAT, via archinect]
greg.org: the movie, Coming January 10th
Or maybe it’s greg.org: the videoblog. It’s a veritable greg.orgy: everybody come! [uh…]
On Monday, January 10th, I’m presenting a program of short films (including one of my own), video art, scenes from features, and other stuff, as part of The Reel Roundtable’s Film and Blogs series.
But more than an elaborate excuse to show and talk about my own work (don’t get me wrong, it IS that), I’m interested in seeing how a weblog functions over time as a programming/editorial/curatorial venue. The program re-imagines the weblog as a movie, or as movie-like, an event that you experience in a movie theater.
There are several ways a weblog’s video/audio content could be transmitted as a program: as you find it (serendipitously, or chronologically, as you read it (reverse chronologically) narratively, categorically, or thematically. If this had remained only a production journal, it’d become a DVD extra. I took the thematic path.
I sifted through every film, short, animation, video, video art, and TV reference on greg.org, looking for common threads and recurring themes. I narrowed the list down to the ideas–and the works related to them–that I thought would make an interesting, entertaining, and representative evening. Maybe it’s not surprising that most relate to the site’s over-arching “making of” theme. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Film/Video Game Cross-Pollination: Sorry, no Matrix. I’m thinking more of the trifecta of Red vs. Blue, Gerry, and yes, Elephant.
an NYT interview with RvB co-founder Burnie Burns. an interview with Dany Wolf, Van Sant’s longtime producer previous mentions of Gerry and Elephant Artists Approach Video: aka, the making of video-based art. Methods vary from the self-consciously simple, like Gabriel Orozco’s “found” images, edited in-camera; to the bafflingly complex, like Christian Marclay’s minutely edited appropriations. There’s culturally literate/literal, like Jon Routson’s reconceived-for-TV Cremaster 4, and conceptual (like the artist whose permission I’m still awaiting).
Gabriel Orozco’s videos on Jon Routson and the future of video art Call it ‘Homage’: Or in my case, call it a substitute for film school. When I ran into “editor’s block” while cutting Souvenir (January 2003), a short about, um, well, about ironing, the solution was revealed while watching the Clooney/J. Lo seduction sequencein Out of Sight. Then on the DVD commentary, Soderbergh admitted he got the idea from a Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie sex scene in Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Shown here together for the first time, obviously…
Souvenir (January 2003) production log and related posts How a J. Lo sex scene inspires a movie about nostalgic ironing On watching Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now Surprise US Premiere (TBC): I’ve been working on it a while, and I’m hoping to have a special screening of a film that caught the attention of the media and filmlovers alike in 2004 (and no, it doesn’t involve Paris Hilton). Stay tuned.
There. That should be a decent couple of hours. So clear your calendars, and get on over to the Millennium Theater, 66 E 4th St, on Monday, Jan. 10th at 7:30PM.
And for details on the rest of The Reel Roundtable’s series, check out the site, or Elizabeth’s IndieWIRE blog.
With Thanks And Apologies To My Editor
There are some habits that are hard to break. For example, when I get lost driving, it’s usually because I’ve exited or turned too early, not too late.
In writing, meanwhile, my tendency is to overwrite. Reading back through scripts I’ve shot–those’d be Souvenir installments at this point–I find they lay absolutely everything out, with no insinuations or hints.
But then when I look at the footage, I see I’ve corrected for that, but then I still overshoot. I cover nearly the entire script, but with more restraint, more naturalism, less intentionality than the script contains.
It’s only when I edit that things get pared down, cut back, cease to be so didactic, almost, or overly melodramatic. I remember, for example, listening to some raw Bjork song while writing, thinking of it as the soundtrack while shooting, and then being repulsed by it during editing, where we replaced it with an almost-silent ambient drone.
I’m reminded of this because I turned in a draft for an off-site writing gig yesterday that was easily 2.5 times longer than I knew the final product would be. Which left my poor editor to crank on it in a day and give me back a version that’s only 25% too long, I’m guessing.
I feel/cause your pain.