Author: greg

SoHo Filmmakers Report #2: Spike Jonze

I have removed the identifying information from this email, after assuring myself of the writer’s veracity. If I can give the entertainment journalism world just one gift this Christmas, it’d be a sharp thunk on the melon of anyone who asserts that Spike Jonze is “the heir to the Spiegel Catalogue fortune”:

To: greg.org
From: [name withheld]
Subject: Spike Jonze is not a Spiegel heir at all
Body:My name is [snip] and I live in [a Midwestern city… I am the great-[grandchild] of Modie Spiegel Sr, the man who made the Spiegel company a nationally known enterprise.
I have become interested in my family’s geneaology, and Googled Edward Spiegel. Your post about Spike not being a Spiegel heir was one of the first listed. [Umm, yeah. Hope you’re not too upset about that “scion of my butt” comment. -g.]
You make a very good point in your post, and nearly everything you say is true, but I felt I should correct you on your errors and provide you with a few facts.
Spike’s great-grandfather Arthur was considered the “boy genius” of the family. It was actually he who came up with the idea for buying on credit, and the catalogue was basically his idea. He left Spiegel to form his own movie business.
Now here is where you make your most egregious mistake. Arthur died in 1912, and although his company fell apart soon afterwards, he had made it quite successful. Also, after his death, (of pneumonia by the way) his widow remained close to the family for many years, but it is true that none of her children were ever involved in the company.
You are correct that Spike is not an “heir” is terms of money. [Hmm. but if a ‘scion’ is also a ‘descendant,’ not just an ‘heir,’ does that mean he IS a scion?] Sidney left the company after a fight with Modie’s son Modie Jr., and Modie eventually gave the shares of the company to his four children: Modie Jr, Freddie, Polly and John [one of these is the writer’s grandparent. -g.]
Modie Jr. ran Spiegel Inc. for nearly thirty years after his father retired, and after it was sold to the Otto family, the money from the sale was split amongst him and his siblings.
I have no idea how the idea got started that Spike was an heir. I believe that he has denied it on occasion, but it still seems to get mentioned in every article about him. [no kidding. -g.]
Sincerely, [snip]

Thanks for filling in the gaps that resulted from my not rummaging through Spike’s quarterly statements.
Related: Spike Jonze: Scion of my BUTT

Tribeca Filmmakers Report #1: Quentin Tarantino

So after playing softball with his own corporate overlords the Weinsteins at a MoMA Q&A last Thursday, Quentin Tarantino chased some skirt on his flight back to LA. Read the dovetailing eyewitness accounts below.
[greg.org making wiggling-thumb-and-pinky-as-phone gesture and mouthing ‘I’ll call you’ to a fast-receding blackout Navigator.]
Shill Bill [artforum diary]
Tarantino’s Airport Pick-Up Service [defamer]
[update via GreenCine: Sheldrake publishes a complete transcript–or maybe you should call it a fanscript–at AICN. Yow.]

It’s Not Just Derek Jarman’s Blue

From Peter Wollen’s essay on Jarman’s Blue, recently published in Paris/Manhattan and quoted at length on In Search of The Miraculous, one of Brian Sholis’s millions of projects:

However, there were more specific reasons for Jarman’s growing fascination with Klein. Jarman always had an ambivalent relationship with film and particularly, as we have seen, with television. Towards the end of his life he made it clear that he was only interested in films which were deeply personal, which were about the film-maker’s own life. Blue is just such an autobiographical film, dealing with Aids directly as an experience lived by its maker. Blue was the colour Jarman saw when eye-drops were put in his eyes in the hope of alleviating his blindness. Paradoxically, blindness allowed Jarman to see, beyond the distraction of images, directly into the realm of colour, as Yves Klein had wished. Aids was too important to Jarman for it to be represented by images.

Peter Wollen on Derek Jarman’s Blue [In Search of The Miraculous]
Buy Paris/Manhattan in paperback or hardcover [Amazon]
Buy the soundtrack to Blue and stare at VIDEO 2 on your TV. [Amazon]
How odd. I wrote about Blue almost this exact day two years ago.

The Anti-Artforum Diary

From Steven Kaplan’s accounts of Art Basel Miami Beach, a report from the Rosa de la Cruz party:

Before discussing the highlights of the collection, I need to address some unseemly carping that emanated from other coverage of the evening. Regarding the traffic jam — countless limos, cars, buses and taxis — surrounding chez [how about casa, Steven? -g.] de la Cruz, which required certain august personages to walk a couple of blocks just to reach the house (the horror!)…Dispatch from ABMB No. 3

And concerning the Rubell Family Collection expansion:

Apparently the adjoining house, which is not quite ready for occupancy, already has its own installation of art, supervised by Alison Gingeras, who was in town. As I was not invited to the event that inaugurated the house, I cannot report further.
ABMB Dispatch Nos. 1

So what’s this about?

A tedious fifty-minute taxi ride from Miami Beach got us to the de la Cruz’s block just after midnight. Block, not house, because as we turned onto Bay Drive, we were greeted by a gridlock of limos, yellow taxis, Mercedes sedans (with drivers), and chartered buses that provoked even the relatively patient to hoof the home stretch.
Open Casa, by Alison Gingeras [artforum diary]

More On WTC Memorial Design

Very little pun intended.
The LMDC and its architects released details of the latest incarnation of the World Trade Center Memorial. Salient changes/evolutions: the giant waterfall voids seem reduced in size and scale. The space for the names of those killed, which is where visitors encounter the waterfalls, is rather low, almost intimate-looking. Conversely, the lower chamber, where footings of the (North) tower columns, at least, will be visible, seems much loftier. The skylit bathtub wall–resurfaced several times since it was exposed in the debris removal process–will loom over the space.
It’s an interesting (and a major) shift for Arad, who acknowledged as recently as September that “Bedrock is something that wasn’t too important to me at the beginning of design.”
What else: there’s a wall along West Street where the road slopes down and the plaza/park elevation stays level. Remember how the West St entrances of the North Tower and the hotel were a big story below the plaza level? Same thing.
Also, with the interpretive center/artifact space on the south side, it’s not clear where “memorial” begins and “center” ends. A mixed program reminds me of the Kennedy Center lobby, which happens to house a JFK Memorial, but who knew? I think/fear “memorial” in this case will be a highly programmed experience.
Renderings of the park/plaza level read as very unassuming, even conventional, while those of the memorial spaces–or the approaches to the memorial, actually, are almost exaggeratedly austere. The slate is still blank.
Memorial will preserve Twin Towers’ remnants [NYT, David Dunlap]
LMDC Press Release [renewnyc.com]
Curbed totally rocks on the WTC site posts, btw [curbed.com]
No Lack of Rhetoric at WTC Designers’ Panel [metropolismag]

Bush: There’s No ‘I’ In Social Security

ss_challanges.jpg

Or ‘U’, for that matter. Or Anybody.
And after Scott McClellan gets through explaining, America will think we’re the ones who’ve been misspelling ‘Challanges’ all these years. [thanks, Tyler]
Bush’s Social Security Phase Out Summit [Yahoo News]
Related: I thought Chas Bowie’s Scott Sforza piece for The Portland Mercury was hilarious and brilliant, and then I realized it was an interview with me.

Im Memoriam: Agnes Martin

amartin-untitled-1962.jpg

Untitled, 1962
exhibited in “Agnes Martin: Five Decades,” April 2003 at Zwirner and Wirth, New York.
Related:
“Agnes Martin: Five Decades,” Zwirner and Wirth
On the artist in Taos: Lillian Ross meets with Agnes Martin
Art worth crossing the street for
Agnes Martin: Homage to Life, what turned out to be her final show at Pace Wildenstein, where she broke with her traditional grid and painted geometric shapes that recalled her earliest work.
Normally, I’d say, “Thanks, Tyler,” but it doesn’t seem appropriate here. [Modernartnotes]

IP Documentary Contest Finalists

In a bit of tail-eating snake-ism, The Arts Project at The Center for The Study of The Public Domain at Duke sponsored a contest as part of this year’s Full Frame Documentary Festival [got all that?] for the best 2-minute or shorter film about intellectual property’s impact on art, specifically music or documentary film.
Well, the finalists are in, and you can view and vote for them online.
The Arts Project Moving Image Contest [Duke Law]

Ada Louise Huxtable on MoMA, Plus Contemporary Art

But we yearn for more than a cloakroom and gift shop in the cavernous entrance; the atrium cries for the really big gesture — even Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” becomes a decorous gesture that ceases to alarm. This requires a powerful, perception-altering work, a site-specific creation that deals fearlessly with the scale — something new, provocative and outrageous — a naughty newcomer that must wait to be judged worthy enough to be invited in. MoMA has never looked so uptight as in this stupendous new space. Something needs to turn that void into a connection between past and future, something that takes a chance on the transformational experience only art can provide. MegaMoMA is fail-safe and risk-free.

– Ada Louise Huxtable.
It’s odd, considering there are works by Eve Sussman, Chris Ofili, Elizabeth Peyton, Josiah McIlheny, Peter Doig and Jeff Wall literally within spitting distance of each other, not to mention a dozen other living artists a generation or two older, but I feel an absence of contemporary energy, of connection to the immediate practice of art, at the new Modern. I think Huxtable’s phrase, risk-free, is all too apt. Is it still too early to start taking some risks?
… In MoMA’s Big, New, Elegantly Understated Home [WSJ, via archinect]

Closing The Barnes Door After The Horses Already Left

Great art’s demands are more important than the wishes of the mere collector who bought it. The fabric of our culture has been rent in twain, and no one will donate to a museum ever again. I’ve heard it all already.
Frankly, I think they should have left the Barnes Collection where and as Barnes left it. It was the Barnes Foundation board that needed to be packed up and transplanted to the juvenile detention facility (conveniently, the future site of the Barnes Museum). Those inept, self-important idiots ran that place into the ground, creating unnecessary crises through decades of obstinate mismanagement. They have betrayed Barnes’ own legacy and wishes, and they keep on doing it.
Barnes was crazy, a crackpot, a rude, difficult parvenu, so what? He had a tremendous eye for art (yeah, sure, there are an awful lot of mediocre Renoirs, and even more portraits of fleshy nude women), yet he was snubbed royally and mocked by the Philadelphia establishment of his day. His Collection and the restrictions he placed on it were a reaction to this small-minded and snobbish mistreatment.
Decades later, the judge just handed Barnes’s legacy–which nobody in Philadelphia wanted during Barnes’s lifetime–over to the same names that once shunned him. If only Barnes had lived long enough to see Scarface–“First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.”–he’d have realized what step he was skipping.
Does it matter where this painting hangs? [Um, Yes, Roberta. NYT]
Tyler has a Barnes Newsraising [Modernartnotes]

Where’s the When NBA Fans Attack DVD?

“Brilliant! Best PowerPoint of The Year!” -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.
The Indianapolis Star has a play-by-play account of the investigation into the Pacers-fans brawl during the Detroit Pistons game Nov. 19. To announce charges against both fans and players, the prosecutor’s office in Pontiac, MI created an elaborate PowerPoint presentation full of witness quotes, video clips, and a breakdown of the incident.

My staff worked countless hours, and many nights past midnight,” Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said. “I don’t know how much it cost, other than it being a helluva lot.”

Dude, you put all that on the DVD, along with the game footage of the shot itself, and even 0.001% of the Sportscenter commentary, and you’ll recoup your production costs in NO TIME.
Elaborate PowerPoint presentation culminated extensive brawl probe [IndyStar.com, via fimoculous]

DVD Box Set Short(er)list

What, no Amazon links? The little red critics over at the Voice have put together their list of the best DVD’s and DVD collections for 2004, and then they didn’t add shoppertainment links. Here’s my distilled list:

  • The Alan Clarke Collection (includes the original The Elephant that Gus Van Sant was talking about)
  • The Martin Scorsese Collection, which includes the criminally inclined Goodfellas and Mean Streets, and the criminally underrated After Hours. Raging Bull‘s finally coming to DVD, though you’ll have to wait until Feb. 8… Still no date for Italianamerican…
  • The Ed Wood Box [no, that Ed Wood Box you get from Fleshbot Films]
  • Michael Apted’s The Up Series, It seems like just yesterday I was watching 35 Up at Film Forum. Time sure flies.
  • The Wong Kar Wai Collection . Hmm. This list may turn out to be in reverse order of preference.
  • John Cassavetes: Five Films. Yep, it is.
    The Five Distractions: Best DVD Sets of 2004 [VV]
    Another 10 [VV]

    • 2004-12-20 and 27, These Weeks In The New Yorker

    In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
    Issue of 2004-12-20 and 27
    Posted 2004-12-13
    THE TALK OF THE TOWN
    COMMENT/ INVASION VS. PERSUASION/ George Packer on the making of democracy in Iraq and Ukraine.
    THE DIPLOMATS/ JUST WHISTLE/ Ben McGrath on a scandalous peacekeeping memoir.
    LAB NOTEBOOK/ MEET THE BEATLES, AGAIN/ Nancy Franklin tests the physiological effects of acute Beatlemania.
    THE BENCH/ HIGH TEA/ Jeffrey Toobin on the legal plight of a religious beverage.
    THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ PUSH AND PULL/ James Surowiecki on how the market is shaping drug research.
    FICTION/ Ian McEwan/ “The Diagnosis”
    LIFE AND LETTERS/ Robert Lowell/ Dear Elizabeth/ One poet writes to another.
    FICTION/ Edward P. Jones/ “Adam Robinson”
    THE CRITICS
    BOOKS/ by Peter Schjeldahl/ The Painting Life/ Looking again at Willem de Kooning.
    A CRITIC AT LARGE/ Dave Eggers/ Sixteen Tons of Fun/ Eric Idle brings the Holy Grail to Broadway.
    THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ Troubled Waters/ August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.”
    THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ High Rollers/ “The Aviator,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Hotel Rwanda.”
    FROM THE ARCHIVE
    ANNALS OF LITERATURE/ Elizabeth Bishop/ The Art of Losing/ A set of correspondence from the poet/ Issue of 1994-03-28
    FICTION/ William Maxwell/ “Homecoming”/ Issue of 1938-01-01
    PERSONAL HISTORY/ John Updike/ Christmas Cards, an essay/ Issue of 1997-12-22
    FICTION/ James Thurber/ A Visit from Saint Nicholas (In the Ernest Hemingway Manner)/ Issue of 1927-12-24

    Get Me Bret Easton Ellis On The Phone Moto

    Over at TMN, “Rick Paulas has tips for turning your art-house script into big money.” The future? In one word: product placement.
    Of course, unlike, say, American Pyscho, which placed so many products it could’ve been a Bond film, [wait, didn’t American Psycho come first, so the era of Total Bond Sellout could’ve been a Bret Easton Ellis novel? But I digress.] Anyway, Paulas’s “art house script” sample sounds suspiciously–and promisingly–like a spec script for CSI.
    I think this boy’s got a hi-res future, Wednesdays at 9.

    Using Product Placement In Your Serial Killer Script     [TMN]