I’ve been very quiet about my actual filmmaking activities of late, mostly because they’ve been pretty sparse. My efforts to re-edit Souvenir November 2001 have been stymied by Final Cut Pro for a while, and I’m coming to grips with the idea of re-building it from scratch. Well, from a late-stage EDL (Edit Directions List), actually, which is the cut-by-cut source code of the film. That’d mean dumping all 80Gb of my media, so it’s an irrevocable decision, which I’ve been avoiding making.
But this week, I’ve been invited to show and talk about my work in November (More details to come.), so it’s about time to pull the trigger. Of course, movement on that will also impel movement on the re-scoring effort, too. Sometimes a deadline can be a very helpful thing.
Beyond this non-working on film, I’ve been researching and began negotiating for the film rights of a novel. It took a while to trace the rightsholder (the book had been out of print in English for many years and was recently reissued.) and to fill in the backstory of the book’s creation. The writer’s estate is represented by a small but very sharp agency in Europe, so my very early mornings have been full of iterations on the contract points, a lot of phone calls, etc. Makes me feel productive, but exhausted. It’s very interesting and exciting, but not something I can really post about in realtime detail, you understand. As soon as it closes, you’ll be among the first to know.
But enough about me. (Heh. As if.) POV points to a new (to me) filmmaker weblog, Nyurotic, which is quite engaging. Ang Mito is a documentarian, whose film screened in the Work In Progress section of this year’s IFP Market to very positive reaction. Mito posts her rollercoaster experiences at the Market. Definitely check it out.
Discussing the WTC Memorial
The first rule of the World Trade Center Memorial Competition is don’t discuss the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. OK, technically, it’s the second rule, and it actually applies to publicly identifying your own design proposal, but whatever.
Many entrants and many more followers of the Competition are discussing it, though, on multiple venues online. Most voices are earnest; some are a bit weary or cynical. Some are pained, or painfully critical; some are self-aggrandizing to a disturbing degree. For my part, I try to stay engaged but circumspect (except for an occasional lash out at the hearts-and-minds-numbing involvement of a shill like Peter Max).
Here are some sources for unfiltered WTC Site Memorial Competition reading:
A recurring theme across all the boards: exuberant comments by one William Stratas, a web developer/Competition entrant from Toronto. For undiluted, effusive Stratas, check out his site, Planetcast.
Bloghdad.com/The_Making_Of
Excellent NYT discussion with Steve Young, the screenwriter of NBC’s Jessica Lynch TV movie, on how his script changed and took shape as the “definitive” version of Lynch’s rescue shifted underneath him.
Pentagon Memorial: S.N.A.F.U.
Peter Max, who presumably made art protesting the Vietnam war during his cosmic 60’s hippy days, clearly found alternate paths to self-actualization, paths which lead to becoming The Official Artist for any and every sense-free bureaucracy he could find.
With all the service he’s given the Federal Government–including the INS and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission–perhaps he was under the impression that he didn’t need to pay income taxes on that $1.1 million. [And when you realize Max’s sentence was teaching art to schoolchildren, you wonder who really paid for his crimes: the artist or the kids?]
Anyway, now that that pesky expert jury has disbanded, the talent-blind administrators of the Pentagon Memorial project got back to business as usual, namely, commissioning an Official Piece Of Crap from Peter Max. According to the WashPost, the Peter Max Pentagon Memorial Fundraising Poster will be available for sale at http://www.att.com/mil [Q: Isn’t that page’s title, “AT&T Military Headquarters,” exactly what Ike warned us about?], which is unusual, since Max’s most widely distributed recent work was the cover of a Verizon phone book.
The most annoying thing: At one time, the Military Industrial Complex did produce some amazing art.
[thanks, Tyler, for just ruining my day]
“Kieslowski Season!” “Tarantino Season!” “Kieslowski Season!”
To explain how I came up with my Souvenir series of ultimately inter-related short films, I went into an extended discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog with someone recently. Now it turns out Riverside Studios in London is screening the entire Dekalog starting Sunday as part of its Krzysztof Kieslowski Season.
It’s not like it used to be, when you could only see Dekalog in festival screenings. Now there’s a 3-disc DVD version available, marginally better than the 2-disc set released briefly in 1999. There’s also a boxed set of Three Coleurs out now. Still, Kieslowski’s films can be visually mesmerizing; see them on the big screen when you can. [Unfortunately, I’m getting to London on the 15th, three days after the Season ends.]
At the opening of his discussion of Kieslowski‘s work, the Guardian‘s Derek Malcolm reminds us that Pulp Fiction closely beat out Three Colours: Red for the 1994 Golden Palm at Cannes. What kind of world would we live in if Kieslowski, not Tarantino, had won? Hint: Tarantino describes his latest films, Kill Bill, as a “duck press of all the grindhouse cinema” he’s ever seen. If it’s all the same, I’m going with wabbit.
Australian Mall out, Architecture Mall in at WTC Site
A couple of weeks ago, the Port Authority bought out Westfield America’s lease for the retail areas of the WTC site, temporarily emptying one chair at the master plan negotiating table. The square peg mall developers from Australia just couldn’t accept that South Street Seaport, SoHo, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Lincoln Center were all the mall Manhattan needs right now, thanks.
But as the Observer reports, yesterday uber-leaseholder Larry Silverstein announced deals with three of the biggest brand names in the architecture business to “collaborate” in designing the office towers envisioned in Daniel Libeskind’s master plan. Norman Lord Foster, Fumihiko Maki, and Jean Nouvel will each design an office building, which will sit alongside Santiago Calatrava’s train station and the David Childs/Libeskind Freedom Tower, creating a veritable archipalooza of classy-ness. Larry’s bubba‘d be so proud.
There’s been alot of anxious hyperbole about what the WTC site will eventually look and feel like, how the process is going, and the supposed failures associated with Libeskind “losing control” over his “vision.” More and more, this process–and the proposed greatest hits list of architectural statements–reminds me of the master plan for Berlin’s historic hub, Potsdamer Platz.
Renzo Piano created the master plan, which was divided, charmingly, into the Sony Center and the Daimler Center (which Piano also designed). Related: An exhibit, “Planning Potsdamer Platz,” was at the National Building Museum (among other places) in 1999. And The Potsdamer Platz: Urban Architectures for a New Millennium, a book by Yamin von Rauch.
Fixing K Street
It’s the dialogue, stupid. (Or is that, “It’s the dialogue. Stupid.”?) After only three episodes, I’m getting fed up with the uncertain, equivocating, sometimes borderline incoherent dialogue that constitutes the majority of HBO’s K Street. I know it’s improvised, and that non-actors are supposed to be non-acting, but unless the unacknowledged agenda of the producers is to show that no one in Washington knows what the hell they’re talking about–ever–something needs to be done. Politicians are expected to deliver content-free platitudes or sermons on camera; everyone else (except for the vaguely metrosexual Californian) needs to have something–anything–to say.
Seriously, if these people are expecting to get paid to consult, they need to cough up some value-added, and I haven’t seen any since Carville delivered his one-liner to Howard Dean in Episode One. You don’t need full-blown scripts, but Sunday should be Googleday for the K Street crew, yielding some talking points for each character.
Why, even the most cursory surf of anti- and pro-RIAA sites and articles would’ve yielded a meatier discussion and plausible pitch for the RIAA’s business than the K Streeters put out. Ditto the Saudi thing this week. I hope “Nobody reads beyond the cover of Time magazine” is just a line, not a scriptwriting strategy. Even so, waving it around and calling it story is like putting your textbook under your pillow and hoping it’ll soak in while you sleep.
Some other suggestions:
1) If you want to play an inside game, play inside, fellas. For example, in the music sharing episode, why did Francisco make the appointment for the pitch? Wouldn’t it more intriguing if the stalker-y lesbian lobbyist knew someone at the RIAA? Or if she was expected to know someone, but she had to beg off because of undisclosed restraining orders?
2) Speaking of inside games, why not turn up the heat with some actual headlines? Check out Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall’s been posting up a storm about actual Republican lobbyists, who, like K Street star Mary Matalin, just left the administration, but who are setting up shops to help companies get sweet rebuilding contracts in Iraq. Nice work if you can get it, and you don’t have to worry about ratings.
3) Of course, you could combine #2 and 3: The Register reported in April that Hilary Rosen is rewriting Iraq’s copyright laws.
There. That’s five value-adds right there. Just call my people if you’d like some more.
On regime change I CAN support
Last week, I stopped by a party to celebrate the first issue of Artforum under its new editor, Tim Griffin, who I’ve known and admired for years, ever since he was edited the late Artbyte with ICA Philadelphia’s Bennett Simpson. (For some of their collaboration that stayed online, check out the great show they curated at Apex Art in 1999, too).
Combined with Eric Banks‘ impending relaunch of Bookforum, I think there’s some good art readin’ to be had. [Subscribe here or here.]
How can I be sure? Well, Tim started by putting a photo by my boy, Roe Ethridge, on the cover. Roe’s work rocks; I’m a huge fan, even though, in the headshot he did for my Souvenir press kit, I don’t look anything like Beck, Andrew W.K., or Fischerspooner.
WTC Plan Revisions revisited
Felix Salmon posted an admirable, in-depth, and probably a bit too optimistic review of the revised WTC site master plan. LMDC’s offering Libeskind’s whole 35Mb Powerpoint deck for download, so knock yourself out.
Then today, Felix tried to envision what the rebuilt site would look like from the ground rather than from the god-like aerial views we’re accustomed to seeing (Libeskind’s as susceptible to the god complex as any architect). Again, Felix seems a little optimistic. He rightly points out the difference between a master plan and an actual site plan.
But I still think Rafael Vinoly’s criticism of Libeskind’s proposal as “graphic design posing as architecture,” holds sway. I frankly fear the quality of the WTC site visitor’s experience is about as well planned as the peace in Iraq.
Meanwhile, over at TMN, Clay Risen elucidates some of the fundamental flaws and threats of the LMDC/PATH/Silverstein process. The primacy of maximum rentable square footage over city planning and architecture is not unique to New York. (As the mind-numbing sameness of Risen’s–and my, I should say–Washington DC’s built environment demonstrates.) But maybe it’s just understood that Real Estate rules in New York; Real Estate and Pataki. It’d take more than a terrorist attack to unseat that regime.
Advice for Shooting Authentically in New York City
Directors: If you are concerned when your writer proposes to populate your circa 2003 New York City streetscape with the following characters, please rest assured that these are not fantastical or implausible, but just the opposite. They are as real as real gets.
1) An older man in a yellowing undershirt and trousers carrying a large zither many blocks from the nearest zither repair shop or flea market.
2) A younger woman in an ever-so-slightly too-small Chanel tanktop and slacks, with large (Chanel, obviously) sunglasses on her needs-a-touchup blonde hair, Jimmy Choo shopping bags in the crook of her tanned arm, screaming into a tiny cell phone nestled gingerly between her french manicured nails and her made up face, “Well then I AM a bad dog mommy, because I still have to go to Barney’s!”
Looking at The Sun
You know how, on a cloudless afternoon, when you’re working in your orange grove, or driving your airboat in search of alligators, or maybe settling into lounge chair with a just-before-five cocktail on your unusually prominent, screened-in veranda–which the gal over in the developer’s office calls an “outdoor room,” but which, to the unindoctrinated northern eye, really looks like the marmoset habitat at the zoo, just minus the trees–and, for a fleeting instant, the glint of the sun reflecting off the belly of a jet flying north at 41,000 feet catches your eye and causes you to look up?
To a man on that plane, for a few minutes, anyway–at least three, but not more than five, it’s really hard to say when it began, since staring out the window is a somewhat novice, absentminded activity to which the man, a very frequent flier, rarely resorts, unless it’s a flight going into LaGuardia around magic hour, in which case he hopes the approach is across Brooklyn if he’s in A/C and up the Hudson if he’s in D/F (and yes, in addition to the Delta Shuttle, which offers but one class of service, there are planes where the first class seats are lettered A/C and D/F, so you can’t jump to the conclusion that the guy’s always flying coach, poor bastard, even if this particular plane is operated by an airline called Song, which is Deltan for “Southwest,” and which eschews a first class section for all leather seats in colors–plums, pumpkins, chartreuses and AOL blues–that signal “edgy” and “hip” and “out of the box” in the suburban Atlanta corridors of brand management power, corridors where the same self-defeating imperative to prove one’s corporate coolness explains locals’ fervor for “Hotlanta, which is a lot like New York. Really.” and the commissioning of flight crew uniforms from their daughters’ must-have bag designer Kate Spade, which are, with an enthusiastic lack of awareness, bespangled with Office Space-style “flair”), not that either side will offer a view this trip, what with his plane flying either over, around, through, or into a hurricane, a phenomenon which looks stunning from the international space station but which is turns the plane’s rows of windows into more than enough lightboxes to preview simultaneously every slide of every grandchild of every tanned, facelifted, tennis-braceleted busybody on this plane–that glint is revealed to be a perfectly round, white reflection of the sun itself, which pans across the dark green Evergladian landscape 41,000 feet below, like a helicopter searchlight on Cops, only much faster and wider and in daylight (by definition, duh), or like the moon, hanging low enough on the horizon when you drive along the unlit freeway at night that it ducks behind trees, warehouses, and billboards.
When four Soderbergh links in a week are not enough:
Get the greg.org e-commerce fire hose ready*. I’m wrapping up Soderbergh’s book, Getting Away With It, and I’ve rather liked it. Makes me want to see Schizopolis, one of the movies he angsts over in his journal entries. Trouble is, it’s only been available on VHS, until now. According to Amazon, Criterion will release Schizopolis on Region 1 DVD October 14.
* Just an update on the pressure the greg.org e-commerce fire hose exerts: Amazon showed three copies of Soderbergh’s book when I called “dogpile!” Now they show four. My endorsement appears to have caused someone to return the book. Now let’s see if we can strangle this DVD in its crib.
K Street: Pushing the Metrosexualist Agenda
A friend showed me a website for a DC spa that was so hilariously and transparently metrosexual, I almost posted it here last week (at the risk of either reigniting the whole tired metrosexual discussion, or, far more likely, being woefully behind the curve). But I resisted.
Until I saw the Grooming Lounge make a huge, sponsor-like appearance on tonight’s premiere episode of K Street. [F’rinstance, the Lounge pitches a manicure with this butched up rationale: “After all, your mitts are the first thing you offer a prospective boss or wife.”] Then within minutes, the character appears in Thomas Pink, the source of dandy’s shirts now that Britches is no more.
Forget all my speculation about Trent Lott’s cynical opposition to K Street: he’s just shoring up his rough-handed, unibrow-sporting anti-metrosexual base.
K Street: A Man with a Camera
HBO’s K Street is shot in DV and makes the most of the saturated blues (outdoor) or yellows (indoor) that come from shooting with available light. Even though the processes are very different, the photography is reminiscent of Traffic. That’s because director Steven Soderbergh used the same cinematographer–one Peter Andrews–on both projects.
On the Traffic DVD, Soderbergh criticizes Andrews’ work, wondering aloud why someone didn’t fire him. Still, Andrews is credited with the camera work on every Soderbergh film since then. Surprising? Hardly. Peter Andrews is Soderbergh. [FYI, Mary Ann Bernard, who edited of Solaris, is Soderbergh, too.]
This nameplaying is amusing but pales in comparison to Robert Rodriguez, who does (and credits himself with) seemingly every above- and below-the-line job on his films. But it takes on added significance for K Street. When Trent Lott warns ominously of “chaos if we have film crews setting up all over the place [aka Capitol Hill],” he’s essentially banning a man with a camera.
[The Times‘ Allessandra Stanley is unimpressed with the show. She tries to pre-spin it into irrelevance with a too-studied, too-jaded disdain for spin and fictionalizing that sounds about as believable as some of the show’s one-take, improvised dialogue.]
“The Real World: Washington” hits a snag
Apparently, only real lobbyists have unfettered access to the halls of power.
TMN points to a Roll Call story that the Trent Lott, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee has deemed shooting of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s new HBO series K Street a “commercial or profit-making purpose” and banned them from using any Capitol locations.
One solution: get the crew–and the talent– some press passes and slap some CNN logos on those cameras. The show’s on-the-run, “shoot and air it” schedule is designed to make it an influential voice in the real world’s political debates. If things go according to HBO’s plan, DC’s power elite would start spending their Sundays parked with George Clooney instead of George Stephanopoulos.
Or maybe the solution’s so obvious, it takes the subtlety-free Lott to point it out. After all, K Street is about lobbying, that dark hotel bar of an industry* where “politics as usual” chats up “commercial and profit-making” before they head off to bed together.
K Street features cameos from real politicians, including–according to the report–John McCain, Hilary Clinton, and Orrin Hatch–senators who were, coincidentally, the #1, 2, and 5 recipients of cable TV industry campaign contributions in the 2000 election year. McCain and Clinton each got well over $100k, and continue to get mad money from cable. Lott was #9, with $20,500, and he hasn’t gotten a dime since. You do the math.
Rather than a challenge unique to shooting in Washington, Lott’s disruption tactics are business as usual. If anything, they’re similar to problems the LA film industry’s already familiar with: extortion artists who follow film crews around with leaf blowers, angling for a few hundred bucks to go away. How’d they address that problem? By getting the Calif. state senator from Warners and Disney Burbank to introduce a bill that bans the disruption of location filming. I have a feeling this’ll work out just fine.
* The seduction scene between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Soderbergh’s Out of Sight is one of the greatest sex scenes ever. Read my posts about it here and here.