Anthony Lane on Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s documentary, Lost in La Mancha: “For anyone who suffers from the wish to make movies, or who fears that this terrible condition may strike at any time, here is the cure.”
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.
Oh, The Artist Is A Person In Your Neighborhood
Puppy, Jeff Koons, $1,650
Jeff Koons just walked by in his overcoat and sweats (!), with a cute little white dog. (No, a live one.)
See Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet at Paula Cooper By Saturday
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
“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?”
About Chicago: One Man’s Sad Journey
Act II: Action
I went to see Chicago last night at the Ziegfeld (now a Pepsi theater, so no small sacrifice)
Act III: Resolution
IT SUCKED. Catherine Zeta-Jones’ (aka, my phone pimp) was alive, and Queen Latifah had one good song (ok, great). But the film was emotionally and narrative…ly? flat. Feeling nothing, not caring what happens to any character, and not getting any sense at all from the film of where we were in the story, I almost left several times.
Embarassingly, it was media hype of Richard Gere’s earnestly-studied tapdancing that kept me there, until I realized I may have already missed it (I hadn’t, and it wasn’t worth it). After the surprising turns by Ewan MacGregor, Nicole Kidman and Jim Broadbent in Moulin Rouge, the bar has been raised; “Wow! [Insert unlikely star name here] is singing!” just isn’t enough anymore. [Of course, Woody Allen proved it wasn’t enough before, either.]
Lastly, the editing. If Moulin Rouge‘s occasional 100-120 cpm (cuts per minute) were too much for some people, at least they held up as a creative choice. Some of Chicago‘s musical numbers reached at least 70-80 cpm, but to disjointed, not frenetic effect. A barrage of nearly indecipherable cuts might fit an orgiastic mob dance scene, but rapidfire cuts of two women dancing on stage seems just like a cheap attempt to liven things up (or, more likely, feeble cover for an actress’s less-than-sharp dancing).
Guardian: Can Art Stop A War?
Charlotte Higgins writes about art (theater, mostly) as a “powerful force for peace” during the Vietnam War and wonders if it can happen now:
We don’t know everything about the Iraq situation; in fact, judging from the past, one of the few certainties is that we are being deceived. And yet to amass facts about the past is to find a framework from which to assess the present, and the future. And, now, surely this is what really matters.
And so does art: I am the last person to doubt the transforming nature of drama, or the power of theatre as protest. But what I want, now, this moment, is not plays, not poems, not mythology, not art – but facts.
Higgins’ hook was “US Revisited,” screenings and discussions of Peter Brook’s 1966 play, US, which set off a firestorm of debate over British indifference to Vietnam. Another Guardian article quotes Brook:
To use a play to fight a war is taking a taxi to the Marne…We recognised that no finished, formed work of art about Vietnam existed: we knew you can’t go to an author, give him a sum of money and say, ‘We order from you, as from a shop, the following masterpiece about Vietnam.’ So either one does nothing or one says, ‘Let’s begin.’
In his memoirs, Kissinger credits US and similar works for hastening the end of the conflict, which ended just nine years later, in 1975.
Get Your War Protest On
Whatever’s wrong with San Francisco, you gotta admit: they know how to throw a protest. Check out Tenny Press’s gallery of protest signs from last weekend [via MSNBC’s Jan Herman, aka The Juice]
Quick Sundance Notes
From Indiewire.com’s excellent Sundance coverage comes the story of the screening of Open Hearts, by Danish director and Dogme groupie Susanne Bier:
In the middle of this witty, winning Dogme 95-sanctioned melodrama about infidelity and mourning, the Park City projectionist accidentally screened the film in the wrong order: after the mistake was determined, the audience voted passionately to continue watching and piece together the narrative in their heads. One happy viewer was rumored to comment, “It’s just like watching Memento.” [One hopeful filmmaker was rumored to comment, “Then offer me what you should’ve paid Chris Nolan, dude.”]
Buffalo on the Montana Plains, Albert Bierstadt
from the Collection of Ted Turner image:tfaoi.com
Just two things about emerging filmmaker Richard Linklater’s short film, Live from Shiva’s Dancefloor, about that megalomaniacal kook from that double-decker tour bus movie: If you want to put buffalo on Ground Zero, check with that far more impressive megalomaniac, Ted Turner; he’s got the biggest herd of in the world.
According to the National Bison Association, you’d probably max out at a rather sparse 2.2 head/acre, or 35 buffalo total, on the 16-acre WTC site. Not quite the inspiring herds we’ve been promised. Not that returning land to the wild is too far-fetched: the Buffalo Commons concept has been floating around the Great Plains since at least 1987.
In any case, if you’re gonna go there, try Michael Ableman’s farm idea, which he floated last month in the NY Times
Ted Turner bonus quote: “Just because you don’t hear him doesn’t mean he isn’t screaming,” says author Richard Hack.
Art Worth Crossing The Street For
Installation view, Anne Truitt, Danese Gallery (image:artnet.com)
Two shows of evocative new work by unrepentant minimalists are on 57th street at the moment, a moment when a pair of artists over 80 demonstrate the power and relevance of the minimalist mode, as well as the potential benefits of being in it for the long haul.
Yeah, Capitalism, or In Defense Of A Collector
Also at Slate Joshua Clover writes a clever essay (very or too, depending on if those are exhibition posters or actual paintings on your wall) about Richter 858, a luxuriantly produced ode– in book form, with specially commissioned poems and a CD (of Richtermusik, I guess) — to a suite of Gerhard Richter squeegee paintings. Retailing at $125 and co-published by SFMOMA (who have been promised the paintings from an anonymous donor), Richter 858 is a “classic fetish item, beautiful enough that everyone might want it but priced beyond the reach of the great unfunded.” And that’s not the worst of it.
Clover reveals that 858‘s editor, David Breskin, is an SFMOMA Trustee and “almost certainly” the donor of the paintings, facts which–despite a year of SEC reforms and disclosure scandals–go unmentioned in the book. “Whatever a given Richter painting, or a particular poem, might be about, Richter 858 is about checkbooks and culture–that is, it’s a book perfect for decadent modernism, where the art of consumption has replaced the art of production; it’s a book, finally, about collecting, that individualist art overseen by the twin muses ‘Dollars’ and ‘Indulge.'”
“Dollar”: Last time I checked, what a Richter painting’s about, is $400,000 – 1 million, depending on the size and the date. A suite of eight, then, is about, well, you do the math. By making the paintings a “fractional and promised gift” to the museum, our benefactor (let’s call him “DB”) gives a percentage of the title each year for a fixed term ( ex. 10%/year, 10 years), until they belong 100% to the museum. Why do this, O Muse?. “DB” spreads a large tax deduction out over several years, which is useful if his gifts exceed 30% of his adjusted gross income. “Indulge”: “DB” is able to keep the art for a period of time each year in proportion to his percentage ownership.
But there’s another muse’s fingerprints on this one. 858‘s not a catalog, it’s an experience Compared to the essay- and information-packed Richter exhibition catalog written by “The Brain,” (aka, former MoMA curator Robert Storr), Richter 858‘s multimedia melange is a work of the Heart.
“Heart”: SFMOMA says Breskin was “compelled by these works” to create this book. Talking about the project and his interactions with Richter, Breskin’s giddiness (“As a sequence, these hung together and swung in a musical sense,” “I wanted to create an alternative way of engaging with pictures.”) sounds less like a trustee and more like a groupie.
Trust me, that’s what some of the most passionate collectors are, art groupies. Going to concerts (openings), getting backstage (in the studio), obsessing over some lyric (work) and asking arcane questions that betray how powerfully a it inhabits your mind. Groupie? Check out Breskin’s 2-day interview with the Richter of 1987 rock-n-roll, Bono, for Rolling Stone. Breskin seems like the kind of guy–indulgent, clearly, but in a necessary way–who’s trying to live an art-centered life, not just an “art-owning” one. And by placing the Richters at SFMOMA, “DB” seems like the kind of donor who believes that indulgent art experience should always be available to the public (but who agonizes over letting the paintings go too soon).
And besides, 858‘s 30% off at Amazon. A serious collector looks for a discount.
Hence, Please Direct All Correspondence
to Greggy from the blog.
You Mean Tivo Doesn’t Work on The NY Review of Books?
“Get a Canadian friend to Tivo it for you in reruns.”
— an ain’t-never-gonna-happen plea from Slate‘s Virginia Heffernan, who’s taken on a thankless/hopeless/utterly quixotic task: stir up American interest in The Eleventh Hour, an earnest Canadian TV drama about “conscience-stricken producers” which plays like “a treatise by Susan Sontag.”
Look At The Camera: Cyan Pictures Developing
Now that S(J03) is locked and getting ready for color correction and film transfer, I thought I’d catch up with the guys at Cyan Pictures, who I’d been in only intermittent email contact with for the last few weeks. They’re both walkin’ the walk and talkin’ the talk, in that order.
Sundance Online: Vote For My Favorites
Breakbeat meets media hacking in Stephen Marshall’s S-11, which was made for GNN, Guerilla News Network. Where Norman Cowie‘s Scenes from an endless war (which screened last month before Souvenir (November 2001)) used FoxNews sampling to underline media complicity, Marshall’s S-11 is more powerfully and closely edited for musical and rhythmic effect, which enhances its criticism of the current administration’s entire approach to the terrorist threat.
From the Flash Filosopher, Billy Blob comes Bumble Being, the bee version of “the butterfly effect.” Blob also did last year’s Sundance-ruling Karma Ghost. (If you haven’t changed your life yet, see it before it’s too late.) It’s stylin’ and simple, even if it doesn’t have quite the impact (so to speak) of KG, but the Flash bio that accompanies it is hi-larious.
One, directed by Stewart Hendler (image: phantompictures.com)
Best for last: Stewart Hendler‘s film, One, is a stunningly beautiful short about the painful last moments of a young couple’s relationship. The hauntingly lit cinematography and fragmented, melancholy-tinged memories are reminiscent of the flashback scenes DP John Toll did in Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line, and I think we all know how things turned out for that guy… One was produced by Phantom Pictures; this was their first project. DP John Ealer, however, is a veteran by comparison. Watch this one full-screen.