Location Scouting NYC’s Alleys

The Times has an enjoyable story, “
Creepy Space, With Rats, Just $10,000 a Day” about the recurring popularity among film and TV producers of the few photogenic alleys in Manhattan. But the story doesn’t hold up and even misses the point, but not because the $10k location fee turns out to be blustery indie producer hearsay or because it lacks data of production that the Mayor’s Film & TV Office could provide with a phone call.

“The dilemma in film and TV in New York City is that writers don’t come from New York, but where they come from, there are alleys,” said Brooke Kennedy, an executive producer and a director for the Third Watch television drama. “And we don’t have that many to choose from.”
Chuck Katz, the author of…Manhattan on Film, said the alleys were popular because there is nothing like authenticity.

So alleys are authentic, but the city really doesn’t have that many. At least compared to wherever the writers “come from.”
Unless they’re all palookas from the South Side, the writers come from leafy suburbs; and that loading zone behind the shopping center is not an alley. No, the alleys where writers come from are in the movies and TV shows they saw growing up. From the earliest film noirs to Kojak, Hill Street, and TJ Hooker, alleys are an archetypal literary and cinematic device: the source–sometimes real, of course, but more importantly, imagined–of looming trouble and danger, just out of view, mere steps away, right around the corner.

Movies I’ve Walked Out Of

I very rarely walk out of movies. If someone’s gone to the trouble of making a film–and I’ve gone so far as to decide to see it and pay for a ticket–I’ll usually sit it out. Unnervingly, I’ve walked out of 2/3 as many movies in the last two weeks as in the last 10 years. At this rate, by December, I’ll be walking out of more movies than I walk into.
Here are the exceptions (I might add to this list, but even after a 4-hour solo drive, I can’t remember any others):
Showgirls:
To be honest, I only went out for a few minutes, to chat with the old geezer at the concession stand and regain my composure. We went to opening night in East Hampton, and we were laughing so hard, it was offending the “serious” filmgoers. Can you imagine going to Showgirls and being more offended by something happening in the theater? You can? Then move to East Hampton.
Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil:
Kevin Spacey plays a queen with a thing for criminally minded hoodlums (there’s a stretch); John Cusack plays the invisible narrator, invisibly; and the court scene drags on for so long, you should’ve brought a book, or walk out. Hell, you should–and could–read the book in less time.
Dancer In The Dark
In an impulsive fit of slackness, I left a busy office for a noon showing. Within 15 minutes, I came to my senses, realizing I had a pile of stuff to do and didn’t have 3 hours to give over to Bjork and Lar von Trier at that moment. With empty hope, in my wallet, I still carry the emergency raincheck ticket the theater gave me upon my hurried exit. I’ve since seen this movie many times.
Hellboy
It was fine enough, but I just couldn’t care about the guy at all. And I had a splitting headache, a painfully empty stomach, and a harsh free-refill Diet Coke-induced caffeine/nutrasweet buzz going; I shouldn’t’ve gone in the first place.
Laws of Attraction
I know The Thomas Crown Affair. The Thomas Crown Affair was a friend of mine. (if only because I watched it on the plane every week when I was commuting to Paris for a deal). You, Laws of Attraction, are no The Thomas Crown Affair.
Actually, I saw this shameless chickflick for my other site, Daddy Types, at Reel Moms, a morning movie program with a thick-headed name for parents with babies. Parents who don’t care what movie they see, they just want to get out of the house.
[Update: I remembered another one. I left Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused early to make a NY Film Festival screening of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue. And because I was painfully Bored and Uninterested. Apparently, D&C became The Breakfast Club of its generation. Damn kids.]

Law & Artists: SVU

Jon Routson, Bootleg (Nashville) still, image: teamgallery.com


In the Times, Roberta Smith combines a righteous review of Jon Routson’s “Bootleg” series–video recordings of films Routson attends–with righteous indignation against increasingly draconian copyright legislation (like making possession of a camcorder in a theater a felony).

It does not matter whether you think that Mr. Routson’s work is good or bad art; it is quite good enough, in my view. It does matter that the no-camcorder laws may not do much to stem pirating while making it increasingly difficult for artists to do one of the things they do best: comment on the world around them.
Our surroundings are so thoroughly saturated with images and logos, both still and moving, that forbidding artists to use them in their work is like barring 19th-century landscape painters from depicting trees on their canvases. Pop culture is our landscape…
At once stolen and given away, Mr. Routson’s works operate somewhere between the manipulated magazine advertising images of the 1980’s artist Richard Prince and the keep-the-gift-in-motion aesthetic of 90’s artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose sculptures included large piles of wrapped candy, free for the taking, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose first exhibitions consisted of cooking curry and serving it to gallery visitors. [Nice company you keep, Jon. -greg]

Routson’s show runs through Saturday at Team Gallery.
Related, Law:
Theaters used nightvision goggles to bust the only man to record (or see) The Alamo (04.15.04)
“If camcorders are illegal, only criminals will have camcorders.” (11.21.03)
& Artist:
Jon Routson profile in Baltimore City Paper (with important-sounding quotes from me) (01.21.04)
Jon Routson’s edited-for-TV Cremaster 4 and video art bootlegging (08.18.03)

WTF Decorator Manque Auction Report

Not to get all Elvis Mitchell on yer ass or anything, but if auction reports were white cotton handkerchiefs, dry, practical, and folded neatly, dutifully, and boringly into the breast pocket of some print media outlet or another, Stuart Waltzer’s account of last night’s Whitney Picasso sale at Sotheby’s is a stunning, showy-but-inutile giant Hermes carre, silkscreened with a riot of intricate patterns, cascading like a technicolor waterfall out of the blazer of some too-tanned-for-January decorator at La Goulue.

Go See Derek Jarman’s Blue at Passerby tonight

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Derek Jarman’s last feature film, Blue is composed of a poetic/narrative soundtrack and 79 minutes of unexposed color film, which was printed blue. It rocks.
Tonight at Passerby at 8:30, Whitney video curator Chrissie Iles will explain how hard it rocks, and why it’s different from changing your TV to “AV INPUT 4” and playing a CD. [You can buy that CD at Amazon, by the way.]

Nabokov’s Library–and Butterflies– Sold

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Vladimir Nabokov’s son and translator Dmitri has sold his collection of his father’s books and memorabilia at auction. The Times has a poignant story about it. Many books contained marginalia from the author himself; most prized were those containing Nabokov’s expert and beautiful sketches of butterflies.
A few years ago, Roth Horowitz, a rare book dealer in New York, exhibited part of this collection. I bought a personal paperback copy of Pale Fire, one of the greatest books ever. No butterflies, though.

The New MoMA: Straight, but not Narrow

moma_garden_taniguchi.jpeg image: taniguchi & associates, nytimes.comThe Times‘ Sarah Boxer walks through Taniguchi & Associates’ soon-to-be-completed MoMA with Glenn Lowry. The early word is, it’s straight.
“…two huge windows, nearly floor to ceiling, face each other at opposite ends of the Sculpture Garden. Both are topped by anodized aluminum canopies. Both rise straight up from the ground level to the sixth floor. And in this case, Mr. Lowry noted, straight really does mean straight. ‘We designed it so that the facade has zero-degree deflection. There’s no bow.'” Walls, ceilings, joints, mullions, floors, all were designed by T&A to be crisp, rectilinear, minimalist, straight.
But not narrow, Lowry assures. With multiple doors, stairs, escalators and views, the straight new museum will offer a mind-expanding number of alternative experiences of the collection–and, by extension, through the history of art.
Evoking an unintentionally [?] Hitchcockian mental image, Lowry explained, “We don’t want people to feel they’re on a train.” Unless, of course, they’re into that sort of thing.

Try Explaining “Famous Bloggers”

That was my dilemma last night in attending Gothamisty NY Bloggers forum at the Apple store. Like everyone else, I went to drum up traffic for my own weblog.
Sure, some will act like they care about the Freddie Nick vs. Jason feud; a couple of MovableType geeks lobbied Anil to include their pet features in the next release; and of course, Lock & Loaded were funny.
But when the entire audience raised their hands in response to Anil’s cry of “bloggaz in da house!” it was obvious we’d all come prepared–just in case we were asked at the last minute– to fill in and flak our sites to 200 potential linkers. To wit: the blogcard that got shoved into my hand from Rosmania, a sort of Gawker-for-Detroit, whose posts have more circular footnotes than a David Foster Wallace novel.

The Birthday Boy from La Mancha

Marlise Simons reports in the Times on celebrations under way all over Spain to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote, the country’s “secular bible.”
Festivities included a marathon 44-hour mundo hispanico reading, which mirrors nicely my own weeklong marathon reading of the excellent new English translation on an otherwise painful cruise to Mexico.
If your schedule’s somewhat limited, try the hilarious fiasco doc of Terry Gilliam’s failed DQ movie, Lost in La Mancha. And if that’s too long for you, pop on over to First Sally, my production company site, where there’s a single image of Quixote and Pancho to stare at for a few seconds.

Walter Murch on Editing on DVD

[via Greencine, which is a kinja of filmblogs all by itself] Brian Flemming posts about Walter Murch’s blow-em-away lecture a couple of months ago at the LA Final Cut Pro Users Group. LAFCPUG has a writeup, too, and is selling the DVD of the presentation for $19.95. Well worth it, I’d bet.
From Flemming’s notes, Murch covers much the same territory as his book, In the Blink of an Eye, which itself was born from a lecture series.

Movie Mag Maven Mad for Mitchell’s Manic Metaphors

MMMMWAHAHAHA. Wendy Mitchell demonstrates why she gets the big pro blogger bucks. Like free sample day at the Whole Foods cheese department, she’s laid out bites of Elvis Mitchell’s ripest metaphors for you to sample with your little review-reading toothpick.
[For those about to knock, we dispute you. Try writing like that yourself. It’s like making a sculpture from undercooked pasta; it’s not hard, exactly, but you’re probably gonna end up with a sticky mess.]

Things to do and when to do them

cottam_dekooning_weekend.jpgIn helpful, 2×2 grid format:

  • Go to the Jim Lambie show at Anton Kern, which ends Saturday. Nice pants. (Roberta Smith agrees.)
  • Go to Momenta Art benefit auction at White Columns Saturday night.
  • Go to the deKooning show at Gagosian. (Roberta Smith agrees. Again. Stop following me!) The man was either a painting genius, or he had Alzheimer’s his whole life.
  • Read John Rockwell’s amused, largely successful attempt to conserve and convey an admittedly ephemeral artistic experience–in this case, NYU’s brainy panel discussion, “Not for Sale: Curating, Conserving and Collecting Ephemeral Art”– before the Times locks it up in its archives.
  • Try to see, literally, Benjamin Cottam’s one-man show of beautiful-to-look-at, aggressively hard-to-see portraits and drawings at Gasser Grunert on 19th St. We snapped up four of the fingernail-sized dead artist portraits as soon as we saw them, which, fortunately, was several months ago in the studio. (Roberta, where are you when we need you?)
  • Print out your treatment, and head down to the Tribeca Film Festival.
  • Go to Naoshima in Japan, either with a blogger or with a tourful of “journalling” middle aged artists (how do you tell them apart, you might ask? just look for the elastic-waisted batik pants.)