Category: Uncategorized

Apropos of nothing, (or everything but what this web log is about, to be more precise), this political analysis weblog, Talking Points Memo, is fascinating and engrossing. Fulfills the promise of the web of bringing to the surface news and information that media mega-outlets try to ignore. Living in DC can be exciting, it seems.

I’m listening to Studio360 on WNYC, talking about artistic depiction of the Holocaust.

For some odd reason, this poem by Andrew Marvell came to mind. Or more specifically, the first line: “Had we but world enough, and time.” I don’t know why, but it was interesting to reread the whole thing. Not what first popped into my groggy head, but quite nice in a different way.

At times, it seems like this web account should be subtitled, “Against my better judgment.” In the application for Director’s Fortnight, there’s a place make a “statement” or “message.” Here’s what I whipped out at the Les Halles Cybercafe:

The fact that I felt compelled to make this film by
the events in my hometown last year is unsettling. I
would normally be wary of any film created under such
personal circumstances of duress; who would want to
see something like that?
Well, in New York, where it was just reported that
tens of thousands of people have exhibited signs of
depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, we must
learn to live and deal with things that once seemed so
remote, foreign, far away, long past. I made a movie
about people living next to a crater for 80 years
because *I* now live next to a crater, and I need to
learn how to do it.
If this little movie can tune the eyes and ears of
anyone (especially my fellow residents of the US)
toward the people who have some experience and
resilience in the wake of horrible violence? I will
count it a success.

New York, Old computer: a nice combo. After dropping by a North Sea-side resort in the Netherlands (love that place, but the whole country smells like cows. Seriously.) for dinner (my wife’s there for a European Space Agency conference), I came back via Brussels, probably the single lamest airport in Europe. I’m sure there are worse ones in the US, but Brussels just SUCKS. Somehow they combine assaultive commercialism with an utter lack of any useful/convenient shopping (no music, books, electronics, or travel to speak of. As if people at an airport only want liquor, cigarettes, and perfume…); and you have to go through passport control TWICE; maybe one’s Dutch and one’s French. And I thought Canada was bi-culturally ghettoized…That reminded me of a 1999 Tony Judt article in the NY Review of Books that examined why Belgium even exists. At least the euro did away with their annoying Belgian Franc.

I watched Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog for 6/8 of the flight back to NYC [check for the DVD here](mostly subtitled with the sound off, since I couldn’t find a ((&(*^*&(* pair of headphones in the airport). It’s still brilliant. And remarkably understated, given Kieslowski’s lyrical/poetic leanings. Read Kubrick on Kieslowski. Read Ebert on Decalogue.

At the confluence of the film’s title change (adding “November 2001” to the original “Souvenir” after a dialogue edit left us wrestling with how to communicate the date/setting at the beginning of the film), an admiration for Dekalog, and the increasingly frequent question, “What’s next?” I’ve decided this movie will be the first in a series of “Souvenir” films–shorts of varying lengths, according to the stories–dealing with different aspects of memories, remembering, etc. This turned up first in the press kit, but I’m quite happy/excited/engrossed in it. Stay tuned and/or Author gregPosted on April 5, 2002Categories Uncategorized

Oy vey.

Where the hell have I been? Thursday night was a hectic rush to deadline, but we got the (interim) press kit pulled together, sans publicity stills, along with a 22-minute version of the movie dropped as-is onto VHS, out to the LA Film Festival in time. Note: the office in the Kinko’s location is a godsend. Now if they’d just get rid of the Pepsi…

Dialogue retakes went alright, quickly dumping sound from the Mini-Disc to the computer did not, however. We couldn’t get ANY computer (mac or pc) to recognize the MD player when we were done. Late night beating our heads, then we gave up, logging all the tracks by hand (into Excel), and scrambling to find an audio/video transfer house who could turn 5 hours of MD audio into 5 hours of CD audio.

Jonah’s proposal for The Public Art Fund is getting announced Monday (congratulations!); since he’s crazy with finishing his images, I took back the editing suite? kit? set? for the weekend, and have re-cut and re-ordered a lot. It now stands at about 21 minutes, with the final scenes still little more than piles of “raw material” shots, but the town scenes and the third, very info-heavy conversation got a complete makeover.

It’s a fascinating view of things, to be involved at so many stages of the story’s development. What works in the script–what’s necessary in the script, in fact–may be superfluous or a drag on the screen. The goal of editing is to craft the movie experience itself, while a script is arguably for driving the acting/production experience. If all this sounds elementary, it certainly feels like a revelation to me, if only because my interest/involvement doesn’t end with delivering just the script, the crew, the production, the money, etc.

On another note, Friday night was the opening of New Directors, New Films at MoMA. The opening feature was heartfelt and very well-produced, grace a HBO Films, and it had won a big award at Sundance. A. O. Scott wrote about the Project Greenlight movie, Stolen Summer, in today’s Times. His (painful to hear) quote of Bazin: “It is as difficult to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one.” Both Elvis Mitchell’s review and Scott’s discussion of “the System” and the “fight” against it to realize director Pete Jones’ vision seem a little beside the point, though. Whatever flaws may be attributed to the production and the System don’t really come into play when the story, the director’s vision is treacle to begin with. Those guys made exactly the movie they set out to make.

With no System to blame if my movie utterly (or lamely) sucks, I know the importance of the vision all too well.

Planes, trains and automobiles: Why can’t the six-month anniversary series on WNYC be more like this?

License plate spotted out and about yesterday in NYC: WTC TWIN

I got on the web in 1993. So what? In my almost nine years, I have never published an uglier, more bloated, less web-credible page of html than the one created by MS Office, the location & shot list, which originated as an Excel spreadsheet. This maps all the shots/scenes from the script to their respective locations. I’m using it to build the shooting schedule, which is tight. very tight. I may have mentioned that before.

10 downloads (and a few failed attempts. the link should work now.) And I just broke out a separate index for highlights from the short. New visitors, thank you for your confusion and comments.

Saturation Blogging:

While I’ve liked Tim Cavanaugh’s [note: courtesy link] work for years, I can’t believe I dare link to his article, “Let Slip the Blogs of War,” an insightful-and-meticulously-linked-up-yet-looong article about the weblogworld’s echo chamber. It’s a cogent examination of how easy-to-use weblog technology has creates a “million cable news war pundits on a million typewriters” effect on reporting.

Written in devastatingly accurate blogstyle, it (inadvertently?) shows the pressing need for easy-to-use tools for blog editing.

A sign that 2002 is starting out to be a great year: I was looking for rental cars in France (more about that to come), and I found the site for Voditi, a specialty car rental company near Paris. Through their partnership with Europcar, their cars are available at other major French destinations as well. So what? They rent Citroen 2CV’s, the world’s greatest car. Here is a link to a usenet discussion thread in 1996, which was a fruitless search for 2CV’s for rent. Ahh, I remember it well. (PS I finally bought my 2CV in 1996 on Minitel.)

So we have bought one car on ebaymotors, which I wrote about before. This morning, I surfed across the ad below while looking for our next vehicle, a Ford F-150 truck. My grandparents have gotten a new Ford truck every year or two for as long as I’ve been alive, and probably longer. We used my grandmother’s truck during our first location in August.

FOR SALE: 2000 Harley F-150
Sweet Truck, moving to dirt road, must sell. Asking payoff around $25,000 call or e-mail for current price. 22k miles, in storage.

It’s located in Michigan. Tempting, but unfortunately, even though the 2000 Harley edition has the desirable extended cab (vs. the 2001 Super cab, which is too big), the flareside short bed seems a bit too small, and–most importantly–it’s only 2wd. Did I mention I live on the upper east side?

Got back last night from a week in DC, sans video setup, in order to host an event at MoMA that turned out even better than I’d hoped.

The co-creators of Towers of Light, a proposal for an ephemeral memorial to the World Trade Center, discussed the project and its evolution. How it’s gone from independent, abstract ideas and visions springing from different needs and visions (restitution, ghost limbs, spatial composition and urban planning) to an emminently realizable, concrete and remarkably cohesive proposal.

The collaboration that has taken shape includes artists Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda; architects Gustavo Bonevardi and John Bennett; Creative Time; and the Municipal Arts Society. Given that I know all four instigators and have counted at least two of them as friends for years, I’m especially eager to see this powerful project happen. The Towers of Light link above has a place to share your comments and support (note: They don’t need money.)

Also, a photographer whose work I really admire, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, has had three shows, one in New York at PaceWildenstein [sorry, can’t find a good link], one in London at Gagosian, UK, and one in Paris at Galerie Almine Rech [flash prevents deep linking…], which was the first showing I know of of his highly influential (i.e., frequently copied) fashion photography work. Check it out.

Cold, drizzly Sunday afternoon=prime logging (and weblogging time). Here is some real-time video screening/logging before I run over to my in-laws’ apartment:

Tape 4: Closeups of my grandmother’s photographs. Jeff’s idea was to have her hold them rather than just to shoot them on their own, Ric Burns-style. Great images, nicely framed with her hands and sweater popping in from time to time. We can insert these cuts in her discussions of the various pics. One bummer: she’d tell some stories while we were shooting the photos, too (she was still miked up); some of these stories got cut off when Jeff’d stop taping a photo and request the next one. We weren’t aware enough of what we were getting, I guess.

Shooting along an irrigation ditch, the first one. It was concrete lined, so the water ran much more quickly. Jeff (the cameraman) was straddling the ditch. Several great shots, useful for voiceover, narrative breaks, whatever. Then he suddenly swears at the camera. He flips around, looking through the camera as the rubber eyepiece rushes downstream. “Sht, sht sht,” and then there’s me busting up laughing, knowing that this eyepiece, which never seemed to stay on anyway, wouldn’t be bothering us anymore. A slight, old guy with a straw hat and shaded clips on his glasses comes over to see what’s up. “That water comes out over to Center Street, if you want to go catch it,” he offers wryly.

First interior shots of one of the dry cleaners. A lot of tight, well-framed images of the various equipment stations, the clothes racks, etc. No people, really. (There were only two working at the time, and we’d made plans to go back the next morningto capture the hubbub.) Reminds me of shots from a smaller, less monumental Jane and Louise Wilson video.

gotta run.

A recently abused phrase: The terrorists have already won. Nearly 600 occurences on Google as I type, including at The Onion. I mention this at all because a neighbor and I were trying to figure out how The Daily Show had used it, and I just found the quote. From 18 October 2001.

“Let me get this staight, Jon.
Congress has been reduced to backing an 80’s novelty rap star (MC Hammer) on the steps of the Capitol?
The terrorists have already won, Jon.”

-Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show