Powell: Pointed Presentation


Pablo Picasso's Guernica; a tapestry version greets the UN Security Council. Except when the subject is Iraq. image: pbs.org
Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s painting of the horrors of war

At the UN today, Colin Powell’s PowerPoint deck is expected to pull back the curtain, not on the alleged threat Iraq poses, but on Iraq’s defiance of various Security Council resolutions. One thing you won’t see, however: the tapestry version of Picasso’s Guernica, which hangs at the entrance to the Security Council’s chamber. A gift of Nelson Rockefeller (who also donated the land for the UN headquarters), the paintings iconic protest imagery says “Abandon war all ye who enter here” to UN participants. According to the Washington Times, when Iraq is being discussed, Guernica is covered by a UN-blue curtain and clusters of flags. [Thanks to BoingBoing, who reads the WT for me. The NYTimes has a brief report, too. For pinkos.]
Not Afraid of Love, Maurizio Cattelan, image: artnet.com
Not Afraid of Love, 2000, Maurizio Cattelan, image: artnet.com

Of course, simply throwing a sheet over it doesn’t make it go away; the message can still come through loud and clear. Picasso captured public outrage at the beta-test of the Nazi’s then-new concept, aerial bombing, which destroyed a Basque village in a three-hour rain of terror. From that v0.9, we’ve moved to “shock and awe,” the Windows XP of aerial bombing tactics, which, according to Pentagon leaks, would shower 3,000+ missiles on Iraq in the first 48 hours of war. The elephant is still in the room, no matter what it’s covered with.
As it turns out, UN spokesmen in both Times reports say they’re covering Guernica, for logistical, not political reasons, no. According to the WT, when Colin Powell faces the throng of cameras outside the chamber, it appears there’s a horse’s ass behind him when he talks.
[update: If you wonder why your day went badly, check and see if you wrote the same thing as Maureen Dowd. If she didn’t include references to Maurizio Cattelan, there’s still hope for your night. (via Travelers Diagram)]

On WTC Site Designs

What I hope doesn’t carry through from the plans the LMDC selected from Daniel Libeskind and THINK Team:

  • Needlessly symbolic height (1,776 feet) Why not two 911′ high towers? Duh, because.
  • Single high-profile elements that completely draw attention away from the plan and architecture of the rest of the site.
    What I hope does carry through:

  • “The Bathtub” as part of the memorial (Read Edith Iglauer’s 1972 New Yorker article about its construction, as discussed here.)
  • Paul Goldberger’s called-for “Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century” (as discussed here.)
  • Memorials related/sited to the points of impact, an element of THINK’s World Cultural Center which (New Republic architecture critic) Martin Filler attributes to Shigeru Ban.
    What Filler calls such a concept, which I personally favor: “unquestionably the most provocative.” [I think he’s talking about the latticework as Ban’s, not the memorial. I like both.]
    Despite a lot of overwrought reaction, Filler wins the greg.org “smartest critic” award for agreeing with me on so many points: this memorial idea, the 1,776′ tower, and (finally!) the Eisenman-as-ruin-as-memorial-instigator analysis.

    • Washington, DC Is The Kind Of Movie Town Where

  • when someone sneezes during the movie, six people– from around the theater, as if in THX Surround Sound–say, not “SHHH!” but “bless you.”
  • when you ask to see the manager about the sound that, annoyingly, kept shorting out, he thanks you, chuckles, and walks off, thinking you were trying to make a helpful suggestion, not complaining and expecting apologies and/or restitution.

    • CDDb: The Carson Daly Database

    Carson Daly's voice will be selling you things FOREVER
    Carson Headroom, image:ap/nytimes.com

    The Axis of Radio Evil, Clear Channel, has assembled a Carson Daly database of sound clips, phrases, jokes and gossip, from which they construct city-customized versions of “Carson’s” top-10 radio show. Put down the vacuum cleaner, Mr. Astaire, and come out with your hands up.
    Read David Gallagher‘s fascinating/creepy article in the NYTimes.

    So Then Who Blew (Whom) At Sundance?

    From yesterday’s NYTimes:

    Editors’ Note, Sunday Styles
    The Age of Dissonance column last Sunday, about cozying up to celebrities, mentioned a report in The Daily News that guests at the Sundance film festival “had their shoes spattered” when the actor Tobey Maguire was taken ill. But the day the Times column appeared, The News quoted the actor’s publicist as saying that although Mr. Maguire doubled over at one point, it was not he who vomited.”

    MIMO: Movies In, Movies Out

    Here are the movies I’ve been gorging myself on this week as I go back to finish the script for the As Yet Unannounced Animated Musical (AYUAM). Discussion to follow, but one correction in the mean time: you know how I said the AYUAM is like Sound of Music meets Aeon Flux? What I meant was, it’s like West Side Story meets The Matrix. Short answer: (WSS, SOM, and Star Trek I (!!) director/Citizen Kane editor (!!!)) Robert Wise ROCKS.
    Here are the inputs:

  • West Side Story
  • Akira
  • Ghost in the Shell
  • The Matrix
    Note: Seeing Lost in La Mancha made me want to revisit a script, the script I’d imagined for years would be my first film. At some point, it grew several Don Quixote-like elements to it. It also made me want to bitchslap the producers on Terry Gilliam’s film. I can’t believe how much was not done/in place before they started, and while they were going along. Unconscionable. Also, seeing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind made me hate Chuck Barris and like George Clooney, so, mission accomplished.

    • Because You Keep Asking…

    Search queries answered this edition:
    Q: “The best This American Life”
    Q: “Buy Carambar online”
    Q: “Simpsons conservative fansites”
    Q: “David Gallagher Shirtless Pictures”

    I give you the 2nd edition of greg.org answers, wherein I provide the information you thought you’d find on this site, but didn’t.
    Q “The best This American Life“ (greg.org Googlerank: 3rd of 4 results)
    A I did answer that, last April (Conventions, with John Perry Barlow). But my weasely, equivocating prose (“perhaps the best TAL episode in my memory”) is about as slippery as, well, let’s just say “the case still needs to be made.”
    Alex Gediman, Tom Jones impersonator, from the music episode, image: thislife.orgStill, “the best” is tricky. The TAL Staff give their favorites, which hasn’t been added to since 11/01, so we’re missing about 15 months of judgment calls.
    When TAL won the Univ. of Georgia’s Peabody Award in 1996, the jurors cited three episodes from that year: The cruelty of children, When you talk about music, and From a distance. Ostensibly chosen to show TAL‘s range, these episodes–which include stories of gay teen anguish, a Tom Jones impersonator, and obsession with celebrity–actually reflect the “we’re the center of the universe!” ecstasy that overtook Georgia in 1996, when hometown girl, Ru-Paul, ruled the world.
    You could always buy the CD. Lies, Sissies, and Fiascoes: The Best of This American Life has 12 stories on 2 discs. Until Ira Glass starts taking my calls again, that’s the best I can do.
    Carambar, image: frenchfeast.comQ “Buy Carambar online”(Googlerank: 2 of 12)
    A “Always popular, Carambar is a chewy caramel baton-shaped candy,” the French cash register equivalent of chocolatey Ice Cubes and crack pipes with little roses in them. Sure, Donald Rumsfeld dismisses Carambar as “Old Europe,” but isn’t that what you’d expect the ringleader of the global aspartame conspiracy to say?
    Buy Carambar online from the excellent French Feast:
    box of 200 (1750g) – $25.00
    individual (8g) $0.15
    Saint Flanders, Christianity Today - Feb 2001, image: christianitytoday.comQ “Simpsons conservative fansites” (Googlerank: 5th of 9 results)
    A Since “Blessed Ned of Springfield” graced the cover of Christianity Today, the story practically wrote itself: Conservatives actually love The Simpsons. Clearly the article’s author, Mark Pinsky, is a fan; he wrote The Gospel According to The Simpsons. But he’s also a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel; are there any non-journalist fans?
    Simplistically equating conservative and religious, I found Noah Gradofsky’s The Simpsons Talmud and JVibe’s “Hey man, don’t have a leavened bread!” site for Passover ritual, The Homer Counter.
    Of course religious and conservative are not synonyms, unless you’re a godless communist. The #1 conservative Simpsons fan has to be National Review editor-at-large, Jonah Goldberg, who’s May 2000 article, “Homer Never Nods: The Importance of The Simpsons,” sets a thoughtful, hi-larious high bar for contemporary conservative writing. And UVA Professor Paul Cantor’s essay, The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family” in Political Theory, provides the intellectual foundation for conservative Simpsons appreciation. Still, I’d have to count these as professional fans.
    Q “David Gallagher Shirtless Pictures” (Googlerank: 106th of 376 results)
    A Dude. Do you know who this is? I had to look it up. It’s the kid from 7th Heaven. Cold comfort that he turns 18 in less than two weeks; any shirtless pictures are from when he’s a kid.
    I don’t know which is more disturbing, that you were looking for these pics in the first place, that you trawled through eleven increasingly irrelevant screens of Google search results before clicking on my site, or that what probably caught your attention on Google was the phrase, “shirtless Aryans,” (which I used in a discussion of contemporary art’s influence on film to describe the Bruce Weber-y American History X.)
    I’ve had enough for now. Two other answers must wait, I’m afraid:
    Q “eyeing each inert mien and artificial plan” (hint: it’s a quote from the Herbert Muschamp/Showgirls parody. I’m still looking.)
    Q “Matthew Barney Cremaster on DVD” this is by far the most-asked search that goes unfound here at greg.org. But don’t despair. I’m working on a very interesting answer for this one. Stay tuned.

    Strictly (Sundance) Business

    First, rather than just say, “Called it!” (which I did, thank you), let me congratulate director Stewart Hendler and company (including DP John Ealer) for winning Sundance’s Online Film Festival with their short, One.
    Second, third and fourth, check out the following roundups of Sundance deal-making and film performance. The takeaway (sorry, Holly Hunter): Wo unto those who maketh their films for buzz, for verily, they have their reward.
    Mary Glucksman takes a thorough and incisive look at indie film and distributor performance in 2002 in Filmmaker Magazine. Last year, only eight festival-bought independent films grossed more than $1 million. (The population of acquisition execs who passed on the non-festival My Big Fat Greek Wedding is enough to fill Park City. In fact, it just did…)

    Zooey Deschanel and Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, image:filmmakermagazine.com.

    Glucksman picks apart seven 2002 Sundance deals to uncover the winners and losers, finding three-time Sundance vet Miguel Arteta’s The Good Girl to be the win-win deal of the year for all involved. Interestingly, Gary “win-win” Winnick’s Tadpole results in sweet deals for everyone but Miramax, who bought the film in a classic Sundance frenzy for $5 million (it only made $2.8 at the box office). [Harvey, if you’re overpayin’, I’m playin’. Give me a call.]
    Filmmaker also has a handy Sundance Box Office 2002 Chart, which you can cut out and put next to your editing station, to remind you of the financial folly you’re undertaking.
    In the Voice, Anthony Kaufman casts a (now understandably) sober eye at this year’s deals, calling bulls**t on both the supposed value of festival buzz and the overheated acquisitions it spawns. Or, in the words of Sony Pictures Classics prexy Michael Barker, “We’ve been burned before by the Sundance frenzy. In fact, we’ve had more success with films that we’ve revisited after the festival outside the context of sleep deprivation. And that’s what we’re going to do in the coming weeks.”

    Finding The Level Of The Room

    “She [Paris] has a cameo [presently uncredited, -ed.] in Cat in the Hat with MIKE MYERS. She called me yesterday from Universal at 11 and said: `Mommy, I’m tired. I’ve been here since 6:30, I think they’re going to keep me here till 1.’ She’d worked one half-hour all day. She said, `I’ve read two JACKIE COLLINS books, do you know who she is?’ I said, `Sure I do.’ `Is she nice? ‘ `Yes.’ Paris said, `I want to meet her.’ I said, `All right.’ “

    -Kathy Hilton, mom, quoted in the NYTimes.

    Herbert Muschamp: Think THINK!

    Herbert Muschamp, the Professor Emile Flostre of architectural empathicalism, gives his blessing to the THINK team’s proposal to build a World Cultural Center at the former WTC site.

    Think, Stan Reis Photography, via NYTimes.com

    There are several things to like about the proposal, not the least of which is to turn the emphasis from the overwhelming commercial interests on the site, which the market can take care of just fine, thanks. Think’s proposal most closely ressembles Paul Goldberger’s call for an “Eiffel Tower for the 21st century,” which would place greater importance on technological and symbolic marvel than on purely functional architecture (go ahead, tell me how many rentable square feet is the Eiffel Tower?). And I thought the WTC-WCC connection struck a powerful chord.
    Enough with the turn-ons, now the hang-ups: the awkward relation to the oh-so-holy footprints; the lattices’ form, too-close-to-the-originals evocation of the towers which, I think, will age poorly; skepticism of such a project’s survival in the pathetic, poisonous political environment of the rebuilding process.
    For my part, such open towers would make my own idea for a memorial possible: large, quiet halls in space (x,y,z space) near the points of impact on the original towers.

    So It’s Not Just Me and Brian Eno

    William Pfaff wins a free screening tape of Souvenir (November 2001) for his column in the Int’l Herald Tribune

    American commentators like to think that the “Jacksonian” frontier spirit equips America to dominate, reform and democratize other civilizations. They do not appreciate that America’s indefatigable confidence comes largely from never having had anything very bad happen to it.
    The worst American war was the Civil War, in which the nation, North and South, suffered 498,000 wartime deaths from all causes, or slightly more than 1.5 percent of a total population of 31.5 million.
    The single battle of the Somme in World War I produced twice as many European casualties as the United States suffered, wounded included, during that entire war.
    There were 407,000 American war deaths in World War II, out of a population of 132 million – less than a third of 1 percent. Considering this, Washington does not really possess the authority to explain, in condescending terms, that Europe’s reluctance to go to war is caused by a pusillanimous reluctance to confront the realities of a Hobbesian universe.

    See Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet at Paula Cooper By Saturday

    Video Quartet, Christian Marclay, image:artnet.com

    Last night I heard the artist Christian Marclay talk about Video Quartet, his enchanting, mind-boggling music/film work at Paula Cooper Gallery. It’s a 13-minute musical composition of nearly 600 separate film clips, on four simultaneous channels, projected onto a 40′-long screen. It was commissioned by a friend, Benjamin Weil, a curator at SFMOMA, where it was shown last summer to wide acclaim. [Naturally, Jason Kottke wrote about it then; so did Wired.com.] Rather than parrot or try to outdo other reviews, or gush about my own experience (I’ve now seen Quartet ten+ times), I think it’s worthwhile to look at how Marclay actually made the piece.
    Video Quartet owes its existence to the recent emergence of real desktop editing software, and the artist’s highly unconventional use of it. Amazingly, Marclay learned and used Final Cut Pro: “I sat in front of a computer for almost a full year,” he said. With the concept and an abstracted narrative structure in mind and starting with the films he knew, Marclay gathered scenes with music, performance, or sounds. He made bins for various categories (e.g., piano playing, singing, gongs, violins, tapdancing), hand-building a database of clips to work from.
    Then he started constructing passages or scenes and built “bridges” between them. (One thing he said he’d wished he’d done differently: start at the beginning and build it sequentially. Hey, no complaints from me.) Along the way, Marclay would search out additional films and pull from them “the right combination of music and image.” (Musical strike two for Richard Gere: Marclay wanted to use Gere playing trumpet from The Cotton Club, but the combo just didn’t work.)
    But how can you edit four video+audio channels in FCP, which plays multiple audio channels, (but only one video channel) at a time? By ear, apparently. He’d layer the four video+audio channels, set sound levels, and then adjust the timing of edits by outputting tiny animated versions, side by side. The result is exquisitely composed sound throughout, with absorbing images choreographed across four screens, flecked with just a touch of visual chance.
    Knowing the basics of Marclay’s method adds a layer of complexity to Quartet, a layer that deepens with even a little hands-on experience in Final Cut. The last time I watched it, I began seeing the clips on a timeline, picturing a. What had seemed impossible or magic before was now revealing itself as a complex creation, the product of arduous, inspired effort.

    Old Europe

    Bill Mauldin Cartoon, image: pstripes.com
    “Them buttons wuz shot off when I took this town, sir.” (image: pstripes.com)

    GI cartoonist Bill Mauldin dies the day Donald Rumsfeld apologizes for setting the value of drafted soldiers at zero (“no value, no advantage, really”).
    Then, Rumsfeld zeroes out “Old Europe,” (i.e., France, Germany, the 75% of the population which doesn’t want war), which sets off a firestorm of criticism.
    When I began Souvenir November 2001 a year ago, it was an attempt to underline a feeling of unity–of empathetic understanding, painfully-earned through suffering, destruction, sacrifice–that I sensed was on the wane even then. By making a movie of a New Yorker visiting a battlefield in France, seeking to learn from a war in which one in ten British men were killed (draftees, except for all the volunteers); where French, British and German soldiers died in horrific numbers, for no justifiable strategic or military purpose; where freshly dedicated WWI memorials served as shelter and vantage points in WWII assaults; where the psychological weight of the violence can still be felt, eighty years later; I imagined it could somehow be a sign, a marker, something even slightly useful for recovering and progressing from the September 11th attacks. As the chasm between the US and the civilized world widens, though, I sometimes feel like a naive, idealistic idiot.
    Then I read, of all people, Brian Eno’s comments in Time, and figure I’m not entirely alone in seeing a better way: “There’s a better form of security: reconnect with the rest of the world, don’t shut it out; stop making enemies and start making friends. Perhaps it’s asking a lot to expect America to act differently from all the other empires in history, but wasn’t that the original idea?”