The Observer‘s Tim Cooper apparently gets to fly out to LA, hang with a gang of lapsed Mormon Utah filmmakers who’ve crossed the line from sketchy to audacious by sneaking their no-budget film’s press kit into studio executives’ offices, and call it work.
Entertaining read, at once inspiring and distasteful. And yes, I know what BRT means; it’s why Nu-Skin is based in Provo, Utah.
Category: Uncategorized
On Two Things in Texas
But not the two things I’ve heard are in Texas: Austin Chronicle Editor Louis Black talks with Tim McCanlies, the man behind the smartly written, wonderfully animated and woefully underrated The Iron Giant and the just-opened-in-Austin Secondhand Lions.
And Marc Savlov talks with Elizabeth Avellan, the quiet sane-sounding producer behind Robert Rodriguez’ films, including the recent Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Note: she’s also his wife. [via GreenCine]
Supply Side Jesus
[via BoingBoing] Al Franken’s book includes a comic strip of Supply Side Jesus, which is now online at Buzzflash. It’s pretty hilarious, but, in the grand SNL tradition, it peters out toward the end (and I don’t mean St Peter, either).
I’ve heard Franken shilling for the book on the radio; sometimes, he’s hilarious, sometimes, he’s only nominally funny. He’s certainly funnier than James Woods, but the left still needs some better humor to break out of its little pity party. Less O’Reilly idiot-bashing, more of the geniuses who gave John Ashcroft his own soundtrack.
When you really want to write
Last weekend, at the Newport wedding of some art world friends, almost everyone at our table turned out to be a writer of something: novels, non-fiction books, plays, screenplays articles (PowerPoint doesn’t count). Other writers:
Clare Morrall, whose fifth novel was the first one published (by a tiny press, in a first run of 2,000), has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Louisa Young tells how she gave up her journalism career to become a novelist after an inspiring encounter with Johnny Cash. “”You have to be what you are,” Cash told her. “Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”
The New Yorker Festival is this weekend, about which Roger Angell states, “Writers should not sit alone and tremble in the dark.” The Festival, of course, features writers sitting together, on stages, trembling in the dark, and guiltily enjoying their sojourn in fandom.
Alternate Side Parking just got easier
NEWS FLASH: At least it’s news to me. Just a few minutes ago, this guy changed the alternate side parking sign outside my window. Turns out the no parking period has been cut from three hours to 1.5, which, frankly, rocks.
According to 311, the Dept. of Sanitation is in charge of Street Cleaning Regulations, and last month, they started rolling out 90 minute streetcleaning. So now, they’re in place in Canarsie and the upper east side. Go figure.
Movie Passions Betrayed
[via GreenCine] Wim Wenders’ official 4h45m version of Until the End of the World will be released on DVD next spring. David’s excellent, slightly ecstatic discussion of the release annoucement betrays a diehard fan’s passion about this almost-mythical cut of the film. (For the rest of the world: Wenders’ epic-to-be was subjected to drastic and problematic guts/cuts that rendered it a disappointing and confusing, both in terms of story and box office. Wenders and his editor spent a year of their own time, after the film was released, “finishing” his version, which has been seen only rarely. Until next spring, anyway.)
[via my site logs] Greg.org’s first TypePad referrer links come from Persistence of Vision, a smart new weblog about independent film, evidently created by a fellow New Yorker who doesn’t explain much about him/herself onsite, but betrays an obvious passion and familiarity with the film world. Welcome (and thanks for the link).
Lost in Transition
[via Travelers Diagram] At the Guardian, Jonathan Jones stages a virtual exhibition (we used to call them “articles”) of great lost, stolen, or missing art. Included in the list: the Gardner Museum’s Vermeer, the recently stolen Scottish Leonardo, and Ryoei Saito’s van Gogh Portrait of Dr. Gachet. The latter is probably lost like the Ark of The Covenant is lost: it’s in some crate in some bankrupt Japanese company’s warehouse somewhere.
But Jones ends, inexplicably, with Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty: “Since its construction it has vanished underwater as the level of the lake has risen. Films have been made, stories told about attempts to rediscover it (the British artist Tacita Dean is one of those who have gone looking). Recently, it is fabled, the spiral has started to resurface.”
A FABLE?? Don’t get me started, Jonathan. I don’t know why, but September is the month for Spiral Jetty deniers. Last year, I took Artforum‘s Nico Israel to task for pretending the Jetty was unfindable, even though we’d just visited it.
This year, the lake level is so low, I was told (and I saw the pictures, JJ), you’re able to walk the entire length of the Jetty. WMD’s are a fable, Jonathan. Spiral Jetty is real.
LOL. Burningman Bingo
On BoingBoing (Never let it be said I don’t link to Xeni’s posts), BurningMan Bingo, which apparently relates to Hipster Bingo, something I’ve never clicked on.
This quote, however, is unignorable fun:
“Numerous BoingBoing readers have e-mailed to ask why John Perry Barlow’s head was selected to represent ‘A Bad Trip’ (shown at left) That is not John Perry Barlow‘s head. That is Chuck Norris‘ head.”
John Ashcroft Repudiates Ten Commandments
Attorney General John Ashcroft rose nice and early yesterday [Sunday] morning to check out the Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue NE in Brentwood a little before 9 a.m. An unnamed federal employee spotted him and his swarm of Secret Service agents as they pulled into the parking lot in a huge SUV. Clad in a dress shirt sans tie, Ashcroft was perusing the patio furniture in the garden area.
This bit of sabbath-breaking is:
a) an unexpected repudiation by the ostensibly hyper-religious Ashcroft of efforts by Christian activists in Alabama to worship a graven image of the Ten Commandments.
b) Ashcroft placing himself above not only man’s law, but above God’s law, too. [Cue Alec Baldwin in Malice: “You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”]
c) what those Bible verses about “judge not lest ye be judged” and “first cast the beam out of thine own eye” are talking about, Greg, you hypocrite [Of course, I’m only occasionally leaking my religious views on my weblog, not replacing the Constitution with them]
d) comforting, when you realize that deep down, John Ashcroft probably hates his sinnin’ self for skipping church (on the Lord’s day!) to buy patio furniture.
e) all of the above.
Related:
The Ten Commandments (including the 4th, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”)
Pharisees and Saducees, the ostensibly hyper-religious bad guys of the New Testament.
Official Assemblies of God doctrine on keeping the Sabbath day holy.
Patio Furniture from Home Depot, to ease you along your way. To hell.
Got a Gawker problem? Gawker’s got the answer.
Notice the Google Ads on this Britney Spears post (which I, um, happened to, er, click through to accidentally. Actually, as you can see, it’s an AOL version of IE, so it’s hardwired to load any and all Britney stories immediately).
What words in the story triggered these ads for drapery, I wondered? None that I could think of. Then, I remembered way back to 2002, before “gawker” meant Gawker.
Elizabeth’s out of town one day, and Gawker’s moving to the head of the service journalism pack.
Fly By Night
I got out of NYC yesterday afternoon–actually, I was on Long Island and apparently couldn’t have gotten back in if I’d wanted to–by flying Southwest out of Islip to Baltimore. It felt like we were the only people getting anywhere.
Of course, now NYC sounds so fun, we’re going back. Besides, I’m sure our fridge has defrosted all over the floor.
Where the hell am I
Apologies for not posting as much lately. I’ve been on the road a lot, without net access, in the day, and working on an editing deadline for an upcoming, non-greg.org gig. Stay tuned.
In the mean time, I still have to post about the meeting two weeks ago with Avery, who’s composing a great new electronic score for Souvenir November 2001.
For suddenly film-related reading, add Gawker to the list: Elizabeth‘s in LA, doing a driveby of the Mormon temple (as if Spielberg’d live below Sunset. hah.) and not pitching film ideas.
In the mean time, the animation on MTV’s Spiderman is pretty sweet. For all the attempts to coax more realism out of CG, it’s amazing how long it took for people to master the aesthetic benefits of simplicity.
What if you combined Gigli-bashing, a terrorist futures market, and never reading your own paper?
Yeah, it’s August, but someone’s really phoning it in at the Guardian. After spotting some headlines in the IHT about the twin critical flops of Gigli and John Poindexter’s terrorism futures exchange, Duncan Campbell straightfacedly proposes “a futures market in which we all bet on filmic atrocities.” [Note to Duncan: If you call it, oh, the Hollywood Futures Exchange, don’t be surprised to find your British arse sued by the positively ancient Hollywood Stock Exchange.]
This is an unusually daft article, and not just because HSX was repeatedly reported as an inspiration for the Pentagon’s policyanalysismarket.org. I mean, the Guardian already discovered the seven-year old HSX way back in January.
“The most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
That’s John Wayne, of all people, talking about High Noon, a vengeance-filled film he turned down. Depressingly, Burt Kearns, the producer of a documentary on the retired White House projectionist, says this is also the all-time favorite movie of American presidents, screened by all, including GWB. [The docu’s on Bravo, and it’s painfully shallow, full of “the magic of movies” homilies from president-spawn (Ike’s daughter) and demonspawn (Jack Valenti) alike.]
Triangulate John Wayne’s comment, “Bush Doctrine” author Donald Kagan’s view of the US in the 21st Century (“You saw the movie, High Noon? We’re Gary Cooper.”), and Jim Shephard’s Believer Mag rumination on laconic cowboy precedents for Rumsfeldian obfuscation (work with me here, people): it follows that Bush’s admin is “the most un-American” ever.
Euan’s baby announcement on Gawker
Congratulations to Euan and Lucy on their new baby, who’ll have a helluva time fitting his name into application forms for anything: Heathcliff Felix Alistair Euan Rellie.
As for the distinction of being the first baby reported on Gawker, well, that speaks for itself. To schedule a playdate with little Heathcliff, check out his Friendster account, or drop by the SoHo House nursery.