Reading::Writing Drinking::Driving?

In the Casino resaurant, not the slightest impedance at all to getting in, no drop in temperature perceptible to his skin, Slothrop sits down at a table where somebody has left last Tuesday’s London Times. Hmmm. Hasn’t seen one of them in a while….Leafing through, dum, dum de-doo, yeah, the War’s still on, Allies closing in east and west on Berlin, powdered eggs still going one and three a dozen, “Fallen Officers,” MacGregory, Mucker-Maffick, Whitestreet, Personal Tributes…Meet Me in St Louis showing at the Empire Cinema (recalls doing the penis-in- the-popcorn-box routine there with one Madelyn, who was less than– ) —
Tantivy. Oh shit no, no wait–
“True charm…humblemindedness…strength of character…fundamental Christian cleanness and goodness…We all loved Oliver…his courage, kindness of heart and unfailing good humour were an inspiration to all of us…died bravely in battle leading a gallant attempt to rescue members of his unit, who were pinned down by German artillery…” And signed by his most devoted comrade in arms, Theodore Bloat. Major Theodore Bloat now–
Staring out the window, staring at nothing, gripping a table knife so hard maybe some bones of his hand will break. It happens sometimes to lepers. Failure of feedback to the brain–no way to know how fiercely they may be making a fist. You know these lepers. Well–
Ten minutes later, back up in his room, he’s lying face-down on the bed, feeling empty. Can’t cry. Can’t do anything.
They did it it. Took his friend out to some deathtrap, probably let him fake an “honourable” death…and then just closed up his file…
It will occur to him later that maybe the whole story was a lie. They could’ve planted it easy enough in that London Times, couldn’t they? Left the paper for Slothrop to find? But by the time he figures that one out, there’ll be no turning around.
– Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow p. 293

So I’m reading Gravity’s Rainbow, small, resonant details of which, I freely acknowledge, find their way into the animated musical screenplay. But when I mention Anthony Lane’s writing about Cannes one day and read this bit of Pynchon (set in Nice. !) the next, please understand –please, just don’t sneer– if Lewis’s post the next day about Cannes and the grisly fate of first-time filmmakers weirds me out just a little.
Not that I’ve been expecting a full-blown review for Souvenir in the New Yorker…but, maybe a smart little bit in Talk of the Town…

Marie Kreutz (FRANKA POTENTE) tries to understand why a French news story has upset Jason Bourne (MATT DAMON).

Post-script: A reader pointed out that using the mass media to send messages to the troubled protagonist is a plot point in The Bourne Identity as well. So what are you saying? That stealing ideas from Pynchon, the best I can hope for is to be Robert Ludlum? Or that I’m (un)consciously campaigning to have Matt Damon play me in the movie?

Sites not waiting around for me to anoint them

In case that doesn’t narrow it down enough:
Dublog, which has, among many other interesting things, this link about astronauts’ photographs or earth. Bears out what Thoreau said, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.
Purse Lip Square Jaw, a lot of interesting IA, A (architecture, that is), and culture. (thanks for the heads up, Peter)
Movie Poop Shoot, Kevin Smith’s worthy vehicle for online empire.

Actually, If You’re An Astrophysicist, The Rocket Scientists Work For You

The travails of the writer, indeed. While I type away in semi-obscurity on a screenplay for a musical cartoon, and while Anthony Lane (not Lewis, as a few readers pointed out. They just look so much alike, though…) puts aside his Mont Blanc to wrestle with publicists for Harry Potter tickets, there are people who not only write and publish, they contribute significantly to the expansion of human knowledge and our understanding of the universe.

Beginnings of a neutron star burst, NASA animation
Beginnings of a Neutron Star Burst, NASA Animation Still

One example from today’s issue of Nature: “Gravitationally redshifted absorption lines in the X-ray burst spectra of a neutron star,” by Drs Jean Cottam, Fritz Paerels, and Mariano Mendez. (The NASA News page is a little more colloquial: “Exotic Innards of a Neutron Star Revealed in a Series of Explosions”. See the final draft of the paper on astro-ph, the Napster of Astrophysics.)
Don’t ask me to explain it to you. When one’s wife is a high-energy astrophysicist, gravitationally redshifted absorption lines are just one more of the mysteries of women you hope to understand, some day. I do know, however, that she is made of rather exotic matter.

Beyond +went+to+high+school+with+Ben+Affleck

Queries answered in this edition:
Q: “Why is Agnes Varda called ‘The Grandmother of the Nouvelle Vague‘?”
Q: “Matthew Barney Cremaster screening in Washington”
Q: “Greg’s Western Wear Online”
Q: “How much do producers spend making movies?”
Q: “In which films are the clocks stuck at 4.20?”
Q: “All Quiet on the Western Front symbols”

For a price, the small army of researchers and Jeopardy contestant manque‘s at Google Answers will answer your questions, things you just can’t find with Google the search engine.
In my site logs, I see your queries that bring you here. When what you’re searching for doesn’t immediately appear, sometimes it’s the search engine. but sometime it’s you. I’d certainly hope it’s not me. Along with fresh breath, customer satisfaction is a priority in my life. So I’m introducing greg.org answers, the information you thought you’d find on my weblog but didn’t. Until now. Let’s begin:


Q “Why is Agnes Varda called ‘The Grandmother of the Nouvelle Vague‘?”
A Because she tells you to, and you should generally do what great filmmakers tell you to do. From an Indiewire interview: “…because my first feature I made in ’54, five years before the New Wave, and I already had the freedom and the principles that they had. I hadn’t met with the Cahiers du Cinema. I never had any training. I wasn’t a cinebuff like they were. I wasn’t a film critic. So, they called me the Grandmother, because I started it, almost.”
Q “Matthew Barney Cremaster screening in Washington”
A It was Oct.31 and Nov. 1 at the Hirshhorn. You missed it, dude. Try London until Nov. 14, Paris, alongside the exhibit until Jan. 5. [I saw it, though, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt]
Q “Greg’s Western Wear Online”
A Greg’s Western Wear is a Central Florida western wear empire dedicated to “making wester wear shopping fun.”
Q “How much do producers spend making movies?”
A John Lee’s The Producer’s Business Handbook is a very useful reference for new or aspiring producers.
A The guys at Cyan Pictures clearly know how to spend money smartly, and it looks like they spent $42.5K on their nearly completed short film. I’ve spent a little more than half that on my short, Souvenir.
A How much you got?
Q “In which films are the clocks stuck at 4.20?” [from Yahoo UK, winner of the 2002 most proper search engine grammar prize]
A Huh. Uncharacteristically for an obscure topic related to smoking pot, there’s a looooong, excruciatingly detailed discursis about 420 on Phish’s site.
The rumor that the clocks in Pulp Fiction are all set to 4:20 is easily refuted. Only one is, apparently. (According to disinfo, Tarantino took his revenge on these baked rumormongers by killing each of the potsmokers in his next movie, Jackie Brown, at 4:20.
Anyway, disinfo also mentions a 4:20 clock appearance in Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician.
Q All Quiet on the Western Front symbols
A I’ll answer your questions, but I won’t do your homework for you. Watch the movie yourself. I hear there’s a book, too.

I See Harrison Ford As The Daring Writer…

Harrison Ford in a tuxedo Meryl Streep, Yale grad

Film critic Anthony Lane is writing the diary at Slate. So far, it’s been torrid accounts of the perils of writing. It’s pretty suspenseful stuff, journaling as a pitch/plea for giving Lane the Charlie Kaufman Treatment. (Kaufman wrote the screenplay adaptation of Susan Orlean’s book, The Orchid Thief, which became Adaptation, starring Ms Meryl Streep as Ms Orlean.) Vivid imagery, action movie material, even. Tuesday, rewrite day, for instance:

“If this [my Tuesday as a New Yorker writer] were an Indiana Jones movie, I would merely have proceeded to the next plank in the creaking, swaying rope bridge over a ravine. Below me, the crocodiles gape. One more pace, twice as fraught, will bring me to the fact-checking department, into whose miasmic maw writers far stronger than I have disappeared, their cries fading into the dark. Pray God that I come out alive.

(There’s much more of this in the book, Nobody’s Perfect: Selected Writings from the New Yorker. We should have breakfast about it. London? Fine. Tea.) I enjoy Lane’s writing. A favorite is his 1997 report from Cannes [Yeah, I got the book, hardcover. When you’ve been throwing out the paperback version every week, what can you do? Just buy it!]:

…at Cannes, unlike anywhere else, the act of waiting justifies what you are waiting for, and deepens your need to get there. I wandered around town for two full days in a tuxedo, feeling like the world’s most underused gigolo, for no other reason than to smooth my path into screenings of films from which I would normally run a mile.

Hmmm. Get me Richard Gere on the phone…

Richard Gere on the phone

Director’s Cut? That, My Friend, is TMI


Three clothing-optionalists and one writer on the set of Starship Troopers
On the set of Starship Troopers: DP Jost Vocano,
director Paul Verhoeven, star Casper Van Dien, writer Ed Neumeier

Yesterday’s NY Times Magazine is a veritable toolbox (and I use that word deliberately) for film, all you want to know, and more. First, what you want to know: There’s the Cinderella-story of indie director Joe Carnahan’s tremendous success on the Bel-Air Circuit, where Narc, his ignored-at-Sundance cop flick became the favorite film of (among others) Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford.
And the more: The “How to…” section provides expert opinion on potentially tricky subjects, all in a neat little package. Here’s a quote from Paul Verhoeven’s How to Shoot a Nude Scene:

When I did Starship Troopers, the cast was balking about going through with a group shower scene. So I took off all my clothes. And my director of photography did also. It worked, because everybody started laughing, and then they got naked. And we didn’t hear anymore complaints.

You can read reviews of Verhoeven’s piece at CNdb, the Celebrity Nudity Database.

Some Quotes and Links

“Asbury’s book is a tribute to the magical power of naming: long stretches of ‘Gangs [of New York]’ are taken up by lists of gangs and villains and even fire engines, and, like the lists of ships in the Iliad, they are essential to the effect…We read of Daybreak Boys, Buckoos, Hookers, Swamp Angels, Slaughter Housers, Short Tails, Patsy Conroys, and the Border Gang, of Chichesters, Roach Guards, Plug Uglies, and Shirt Tails, and we melt.”
— Adam Gopnik discussing Herbert Asbury’s cult-fave 1928 book in the New Yorker
“What you really are afraid of is that you’re competing against somebody who is rich and irrational. I mean, it used to be a given, a saying in the industry: Don’t ever bid against Rupert Murdoch for anything Rupert wants, because if you win you lose. You will have paid way too much.”
— media mogul John Malone, in an interview with Ken Auletta at NewYorker.com
“Just as Italians don’t translate Johnny Cash as ‘Giovanni Soldi,’ and we don’t take Federico Fellini and rename him ‘Freddy Cats,’ so the term Arte Povera has to stand unchanged and unexplained.”
— Blake Gopnik, brother, writing (entertainingly but incorrectly) about the Hirshhorn Gallery’s latest show in the Washington Post
“Then sometimes you’re given the chance to make a memory for someone, give them a pleasant moment to remember, which is the greatest thing you can ever do. Keep the Oscar and all that.”
— Rod Steiger, Oscar winner, on Jon Favreau’s Dinner for Five on IFC
“We’re a little tired of the thin-skinned whining, which is much of what we get from north of the border…
— Pat Buchanan, defending his comment about “Soviet Canuckistan” on the CBC’s As It Happens [Pat’s about 12:00 into the stream.]

Holy Saint Francis, What A Change Is Here!


some

Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is on. [Dig that vintage website. Can you imagine anyone–besides me–putting so much text on a film site?] It’s been a while since I’ve seen it; remembering how good it is. It was from more innocent days, just before Leonardo DiCaprio became Leo. It has a gang of excellent performances: John Leguizamo, Harold Perrineau, Paul Sorvino, Diane Venora, Paul Rudd, Dash Mihok, Miriam Margolyes… but it’s Luhrmann’s ecstatic vision that conquers all. One thing I didn’t anticipate, though: the degree to which audience perceptions and expectations can change over time. Romeo + Juliet‘s like freakin’ Ozu compared to Moulin Rouge.

So Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

Sometimes I get fed up with the course of human events abroad and I wonder if it isn’t better to just forget all that annoying international conflict for a while and just pay attention to what’s going on at home. You know, focus on what’s nearby. In my town. My community. My neighborhood. After all, it worked 30 years ago when my neighborhood was Sesame Street. There’s even a guy who makes short films about the people that he meets when he’s walking down the street; it’s called Neighborhood Films. New York’s not really known as a get-to-know-your-neighbor kind of town, but hey, I’ll give it a shot. I walk around the block.

Pakistan House, 8E65 India House, 3E64
The Pakistan U.N. Mission and Indian Consulate,
off Fifth Avenue, adjoining lots on the same block

Who are the people in my neighborhood? No one who’s gonna take my mind off things. Within a block there’s India and Pakistan, for example. In back-to-back Beaux-Arts townhouses. Can’t figure out which country bought first, but these two trigger-happy nuclear rivals have essentially replicated their sub-continental situation. Except they’re sharing their backyard fence peaceably, while enduring the same Upper East Side hardships we all face: dire shortages of video rental stores and cabs. (Wouldn’t you know, the Kashmiris still figure in somehow?)
Temple Emmanuel, 5&65th Palestine UN Observer Mission, Park&65th
Temple Emmanuel and The Palestine Observer to the UN, just down the street

Continuing around the corner of Fifth Avenue, it’s Temple Emmanuel, the “power synagogue,” as one friend put it. A nephew of a rabbi there, he also said, “it’s a great congregation if you’re looking for an apartment.” And just east of this Jewish holy site is the Permanent Observer to the United Nations for Palestine, complete with high-profile security. How’s this one working out? Well, you can see the Jersey barriers around the synagogue, and Palestine’s whole block was in lock-down for months after September 11th. No cars allowed, and residents only past the sidewalk checkpoints. Nearly drove 212, the eurotrash clubhouse/restaurant out of business. Hmm. Sounds like they’ve managed to replicate their home setup pretty closely, too. Just without the killing.
Giving up on giving up on the world’s problems for a while, I try instead to make some sense of it all. And? It’s all about location. Real estate, it all boils down to real estate. While it fuels bloody feuds around the world, the worst we have to deal with is the co-op board interview or getting the Landmarks Commission to approve your fiberglass cornice. What doesn’t differ between my neighborhood and the world: it’s all about having a good broker.

On Seeing Jackass: The Movie; Souvenir (November 2001) Press Updates


Whatever else it may be, Jackass is possibly the purest cinema experience ever. It is undiluted, unadulterated and unambiguous. It will make you run. You certainly don’t need me to tell you, though, if you should run toward or away from the theater; whatever your pre-existing inclination, you will do well to follow it. Jackass will not mislead you.
Hustled out to Queens to get press screening tapes of Souvenir (November 2001) to MoMA’s Film Department. Falling a little behind on delivering the printed press kits; it’s going to be a working weekend.

How Some Things Look New/Old, Even When They Are Old/New


Brick Kilns, Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis, George Catlin, 1832
Brick Kilns,” Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis, George Catlin, 1832

Painter/enthnographer/showman/lawyer George Catlin saw and captured a moment in culture and time–the rapidly changing/disappearing society of over 50 American Indian tribes on the cusp of westward expansion. The largest exhibit of Catlin’s work in 100 years is currently at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. Sanford Schwartz, in the NY Review of Books, describes the paintings wonderfully, but he doesn’t quite get a handle on Catlin himself. It’s work, though, with an honesty and immediacy, a pretty relevant, contemporary feeling.
The Circus, Verne Dawson, 2001
The Circus, Verne Dawson, 2001

Contemporary artist Verne Dawson‘s work is very much of this time. While apparently set in an idyllic pre-historic past (23,800 B.C. is the date in some Dawson’s titles), they sometimes include anachronistic civilization/technologies that can induce Planet Of The Apes-style post-apocalyptic pangs. Stylistically similar yet separated by over 160 years, both bodies of work feel very much of their own times.
Far From Heaven Still, Todd Haynes, 2002
Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes, 2002

Todd Haynes has accomplished something similar with his latest film, Far From Heaven. He didn’t simply approximate the look of Douglas Sirk’s 1950’s melodramas; he inhabited the entire aesthetic and moral structure of the genre to create a thoroughly original film. In Geoffrey O’Brien’s Artforum article, Haynes forefronts the utter intentionality of moviemaking. “Everything about film is always artificial. You can come to something far more surprisingly real by acknowledging how much of a construct it is first. It always feels so much more false to me when you set out to be real.”

On greg.org on Memorials

After posting my review and response to the Pentagon Memorial Competition, I realized that in addition to writing “about making films, about art,” I have written quite a bit about memorials. So I collected those weblog entries in one spot. Click here to read them. The entries include:

  • discussions of efforts to rebuild the WTC and downtown Manhattan
  • WTC memorials, including the Tribute in Light
  • other memorials, such as the Vietnam Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial
  • stories from shooting Souvenir (November 2001), my movie about WWI memorials, and
  • the experiences that inspired the film.
    Please Author gregPosted on Categories memorials

    • Kevin Smith Production Diary for Jersey Girls


    Ben, Jen, Kevin on the set of Jersey Girls

    On his illustrious entertainment portal Movie Poop Shoot, Kevin Smith is publishing a weekly production diary of Jersey Girls, his latest, which he calls “hands-down, the best movie we’ve ever made.” The dates are a little ambiguous. The Week One entry is dated July 12, and the Week Two entry isn’t exactly dated, but the original schedule had the 11-week shoot wrapping on November 1, er, tomorrow. It’s got Ben Affleck and Jen Lopez in it, who also star in the unofficial off-the-set production diary, E! Online. Bonus: There’s a big show tunes musical number in it.
    Since the eerie gap in this online production diary overlaps perfectly with the lag on Full Frontal (where it was Week 3 for two+ months), my theory is Miramax had some kind of summer web embargo, or fired their sysadmin and couldn’t do updates, or something.

    On The Competition for The Pentagon Memorial

    pentagon pre-9/11 aerial view, with memorial site marked by a red star

    In the 45 minutes between reading about it in the Washington Post and seeing the competition exhibition itself at the National Building Museum, I had designed a memorial for the Pentagon in my head. In fact, I debated going home to document it before seeing the 70+ designs–6 finalists and 60-something “semi-finalists” from both amateurs and professionals–submitted to the competition sponsor, the US Army Corps of Engineers. (See submissions of the six finalists at the competition website.) After making a movie that uses precisely this subject to explore how people–and places–deal with horrible events, I felt compelled. I still feel compelled, but for different reasons.
    In the Post article, Benjamin Forgey laments that while (Vietnam Memorial designer) Maya Lin’s influence is “mightily felt here” in the competitors’ attempts at “direct, highly charged personal encounter that Lin made possible with her dark, reflective wall,” “there were no Maya Lins in the competition. I found just the opposite: there were far too many Lins. The Vietnam Memorial’s combination of heavily programmed “experience” and minimalist form has become the default setting for memorials, at least in the US.
    Among these best designs, the vocabulary of contemporary art is widely used without hesitation or fear of high-brow backlash. One semi-finalist Rogers Marvel, rather beautifully and ingeniously uses the form of James Turrell’s Roden Crater, incorporating the Pentagon’s cornice and planes flying overhead en route to National Airport in ways that subvert the artist’s sought-after serene sublimity. Other semi-finalists quote or Tadao Ando’s churches with remarkable literalism. Lin’s memorial itself is mimicked as well, with names or photos carved on highly polished or translucent panels.
    The Post article didn’t prepare me for the large number of entries that marked the approximate flight path of AA77 and oriented themselves to the “point of impact.” My own memorial design was to address this overlooked (I thought) but crucial element of the attack. But while no design incorporated it like I would (i.e., “meaningfully”), I soon found out why it featured so obviously in so many entries; the path and the point of impact are marked prominently and clearly on the location plan that was part of the competition materials. While supposedly claiming no specific program, the Pentagon’s own documents actually “told” many people what to include in their design.
    A final observation on the competition finalists: The program for remembering every person killed has clearly reached some kind of conceptual endgame, to the overall detriment of the resulting memorial. Terry Riley, MoMA’s curator of architecture and one of eleven jurors in this competition, once said that the Thiepval Memorial to The Missing–a monumental arch with 75,000 names on its surfaces– was the first major example of a memorial to individuals lost in battle. Before that, memorials were to generals or battles, but not lowly soldiers. Inspired by this Memorial, Lin brought this powerfully inclusive idea into her design. But at least since Oklahoma City, memorializing each individual individually has become the norm. An overwhelming percentage of the designs called for 184 somethings: benches, pools, stone markers, glowing human-height columns, wind-chime-like reeds, trees. One finalist includes 184 “life recorders,” individual “black boxes”; another proposes 184 “memorial units.” Indeed, without dismissing the losses of these people and their families, such individually totemic shrines have become the devalued currency of tragedy, drowning out the significance of an event which means much more than the sum of the lives lost, and limiting the memorial’s audience unnecessarily.
    I’m going to go ahead and make some sketches anyway.