shave the baby

there is a scene playing in my head right now and it goes like this:

a man is running down a dark alleyway at night. he looks behind him and in front of him and left to right, short-winded and wide-eyed. he seems to be running from something--but what?

he dips into a dilapidated building underground. he removes his hat--immediately he feels warm. he knows he'll be sweating in a minute. it must be eighty or ninety--even a hundred--degrees.

an old man with the voice of william s. burroughs is sitting at an accountant's table reading out loud from steppenwolf by hermann hesse. there is one lamp on the table which provides the dim light by which the old man reads. it is the only light source in the room.

he takes this all in--the warmth of the room and the simple network of dark shadows and stark illumination--like a chiaroscuro painting. it seems from what he is able to see that he and the old man and the lamp and the desk and the old man's booming voice mixed with the incredible heat (which makes him think of holocaust-era gas chambers) are the only things filling this room.

he takes a few tentative steps forward--into the dark of the room. he imagines himself walking past the man and beyond, for surely there is something beyond what is ostensibly there; what is immediately visible in the strange light--or lack thereof.

he walks past the old man, bumping into the lamp on the way. the old man is unfazed by this--continues reading in his voice that is loud and full of authority but at the same time very dry and monotonous and comforting like the heat might be to geriatric patients on the verge of death and taking up space in the old folk's home.

ii

criterion update:

today i watched au revoir les enfants--another film by louis malle focusing on the turbulent nature of adolescence. this time, however, the turbulence was exacerbated by the film's setting, world war ii france.

i liked the movie. the lead actors were great, especially for being so young. the film was pretty depressing, though i kind of expected this much--most world war ii movies are. something about the bleak nature of war that contrasts nicely with the general minutia being portrayed on screen--a great formula for romance (something i've always felt). you can't have romance without danger or the hint of tragedy.

mission statement and a handful of reviews

i've decided recently for no reason in particular to attempt to watch every single criterion collection release. i know this makes me seem terribly, if not tragically so, hipster-ific. but: i'm resigned to my destiny. if nothing else, this will afford me the opportunity to see a few decent flicks.

so far (in the past week or so): i've watched five films. the following is a list of these films, accompanied by a brief review blurb.

revanche: german. understated (read: boring as hell). the film has a number of highly disturbing sex scenes involving ex cons and blubbery germans with moustaches. actually: there is only one mustachioed blubbery german ex con, but we see his unsightly dough-y physique so much that it feels like nothing else happens in the film. the film's one redemptive quality is the old man who plays the blubbery german ex con's father. i had trouble understanding exactly how this movie earned its prestigious (dubious?) honor as an official criterion title. apparently: the first first-run feature released by janus films (criterion's partner distribution company) in thirty years.

murmur of the heart: three-fourths of the movie is brilliant--an unflinching look at the strangeness of new-found adolescent sexual stirrings. then the director (louis malle) decided to become a freudian blowhard and ruin everything.

ratcatcher: i liked this m o v i e a lot. it's a scottish film. sparse dialogue. moody and atmospheric. somewhat perplexing, which i found refreshing. bleak.

amarcord: fellini. not his best, but not too bad, either. it had its moments.

jeux interdits: kristen had me watch this. it was very good. war-time melodrama, but insanely romantic at the same time. the epitome of depressing foreign art-films.

paris, texas: thus far, my favorite (of the films i've seen recently). the film is gorgeous. stunning light and set-design. a great story, told in an interesting way (unraveling slowly but never too sluggishly--just enough to keep the viewer engaged). the movie every slow-burning indie film tries to be. like revanche but better because it allows itself to stew in its own mythology.

the golden rule of writing: if you don't have anything important to say, keep your mouth shut and don't waste paper.

At some point in his career he was designated the unofficial figurehead for the booming Anti-Intellectual movement in America, a movement that he both had a hand in creating and nurtured from its inception. His philosophy was this: big ideas occur when little planning is involved. Simply writing is enough to carve out and establish an identity. Style over substance, because substance comes naturally--effortlessly.
His style was recognized as "profoundly, powerfully simple"--no frills; no fluff. He wrote as a means to expel the insidious thoughts inside his head, for fear that they may possess him entirely otherwise--voices that accumulate and collect, like lent-traps, day-to-day ephemera and threaten mental illness should the keeper of these voices refuse to translate the persistent obsessions onto paper. He was a prisoner of his own mind, though he liked to think of himself as a "free-thinking" spokesperson for the intellectually apathetic.

His whole life was a sham.

Perhaps the most famous quote attributed to him was from a book he wrote at the start of his career (which was widely considered "promising") but which he could no longer remember writing. The quote goes like this: "I try to be well-spoken. Itry to be well-read. But it somehow always comes off as well-rehearsed." This is the quote talking heads liked to bring up in television and radio interviews with him, citing it as the penultimate creed of the Anti-Intellectual--the three terse sentences that set the movement in motion.

To tell you the truth, he had no idea where this quote originated. He certainly didn't remember writing it, so he had only a vague idea of how or in what context it was used in his book. It seemed to him that it was a female character who said this, but he couldn't be sure. Maybe it was an old man. It didn't matter. Everything he wrote, he wrote because it felt right or looked right on paper next to neighboring ideas, images or words. A lot of critics liked to point out that such and such a book, passage, quote, idea meant something profound, usually in relation to some concurrent social issue or event, to which he would just shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, you think so?" And this is more or less how he went about his days--the apathetic figurehead shrugging his shoulders at the possibility of or provocation for deeper insight.

One day, he met a girl. She was very beautiful. He thought she favored his preconceived idea of what it meant to look like a "New York Jew," an idea--a look--he'd always been attracted to. He thought it would be offensive to tell her this, so he kept his mouth shut and simply told her that she was "beautiful" instead.

He kept his mouth shut about a lot of things with her. This is how he felt it was necessary to interact with her in order to maintain their peaceful, easy-going relationship. When she told him once that she loved him, he parroted the same affectation back to her. But what he really felt was that she was beautiful and fun to have sex with and easy to talk to. He knew he could find others like her but he didn't want her to know this. Saying "I love you" was a way for him to make their relationship sound exclusive and unique when, really, it could be replicated a million times plus. It was a very big secret that he felt he may blabber at any moment--thus, he stifled his natural inclination to talk openly and freely about whatever thought might manifest itself in his head.

on long drives, trips through the country, trips to the country, trips through familiar cities and strange ones, too, he kept his focus on the world outside the driver's side or passenger side window, depending on the arrangement. he would allow her to gush about whatever topic she chose because he knew she would never dare bring up something that might offend him. she may talk incessantly about things he only pretended to care about, but she would never say anything to intentionally hurt his feelings. therefore, he appreciated it even when she went on and on and on about back-stabbing co-workers or unremarkable (to him) childhood memories. he appreciated them solely on the merit that they weren't offensive or taboo topics, but things he could easily listen to and selectively remember.

once, she asked him about his work. they had stopped off at some mom-and-pop owned restaurant in the deep south with an adjoining old-time filling station. she complained that she was hungry and tired of driving--they'd been on the road for an extensive period of time, headed to florida, of all places, and although he wasn't hungry, himself, he complied because the prospect of an unfamiliar detour excited him.

she asked him if he'd run dry on ideas. he looked out the window, at a large yellow billboard with big bold black lettering advertising one of many anonymous smut shops that you find in growing numbers the further south you travel in America. he told her he didn't know. maybe he had. or maybe he'd stopped writing (a decision he made a few years back) because he felt an immediate compulsion to explore other facets of the human experience--travelling, relationships, food, etc.

you know what? she said. i think you're a hack. i think you've lost it. you used to be someone important--someone i gave a damn about.

he was obviously taken aback by this. this was one of the offensive things she never brought up around him. he looked at her, half-amused but mostly startled.

why do you say that? he asked.

you haven't written anything in years, she said. she took a nasty bite of her chicken-fingers, grease adorning the lower part of her mouth and chin like smeared chapstick. he found this funny. he laughed.

why are you laughing? i'm sick of supporting you--a writer that doesn't write. how am i supposed to be in love with someone who can't even afford to take me out for a fast-food dinner? i used to brag to all my friends that you were someone important, a notable literary figure. but now--you're nothing. you're just some poor loser, on his way to florida with his embittered girlfriend.

you're right, he said. if it bothers you, maybe we should break up.

and that's another thing. you don't even care. you don't give a damn. about anything.

there was a momentary silence--one that was tense and new. he found this exciting, though he was afraid to show it. finally, a little drama. a heated argument, the kind normal couples have. it was refreshing--he wondered why he'd been avoiding this sort of thing for so long.

you know what, he said. i was on a book tour once, in Thailand.

i don't give a goddamn about your stupid book tour, she interjected.

well--hold on, now. just listen, he said. i was on a book tour, in Thailand. my publisher sent me there, to do press for either my second or third novel, i can't remember which. i was told that the book was selling well in Thailand, and most of Asia. i was important enough, then, to be translated in languages that weren't my own. imagine that! have you ever had something to say that someone felt was vital enough that people on the opposite side of the world should hear it?

she wasn't amused.

anyway, as soon as i got there--i was running late--they rushed me to a local bookstore. they had a table set up for me and everything. i was supposed to be signing copies of my book from noon until four. then, it was off to the radio stations to do some publicity. the weird thing, however, was that when i got to the bookstore, no one was there. i mean: my pr people were there. but no fans. yet they'd convinced me of my celebrity beforehand. i mean, that was the reason i'd gone over there--because i was told i was famous enough to do so. i ended up drinking free coffee for about an hour at my lonely post--a rickety old aluminum card table dressed in red cloth--until i had this big epiphany. here, in Thailand, i meant nothing. i meant absolute dogshit to these people. i was just another stupid self-obsessed American trying to promote myself in a country that was better off or just fine without me. they didn't need to read my books. they didn't need my ideas. they were all ideas that they could and probably had come across already. who cares if i was the first one to document them in print. who even knows if that's true. here, i was no one. and it was great. you have no idea how liberating it is to see your own self-importance vanish so suddenly before your very eyes.
immediately following this revelation i called my publisher and told him that i was going to explore the country a little bit--the book tour be damned. i'd earned it. of course, he wasn't pleased with the news. but there wasn't much he could do. i was in a different country. i wandered the streets of Thailand all afternoon, all night and well into the morning until i felt no sense that i was in a foreign country at all but a place that very well might have been America had the cards been dealt again and certain variables reversed.


so? she said. what's your point?

he paused. he wasn't sure there was a point. or, if there was, he was having trouble making sense of it, finding the right words to articulate it.

honestly, he said. i don't know. i don't know if there is a point. it just sounded right. like something you needed to hear.

market strategy

i hate to beat a dead horse, here. i know this is something i've talked about extensively in the past, but it's so true and it's something i think about with great frequency. compelling art--great art--is about sucking the listener, the viewer, the reader, etc. into your own little world. it's almost entirely mythology--creating an entire universe that follows its own logic, its own set of rules, has its own feel, its own essential qualities.

a lot of times i'll hear a band and think: wow. these guys are really good. but they just don't have it--they don't have that all-elusive it factor that draws people in, that keeps people interested--that seemingly inexplicable quality that turns separates the important from the expendable. and i'm pretty sure what i mean by that is that they don't have that mythology--that idiosyncratic pull.

nirvana was a great band because they had that mythology. you know a nirvana song when you hear it. you've heard other songs that sound like nirvana songs but you'll always know the original when you hear it. they created their own little world--defined the seattle sound so that when people think of "grunge" they think of nirvana. they think of kurt cobain--the quintessential tormented artist--his cardigan--his addiction to heroin--his eventual suicide--all of these things add up to the nirvana mythology. they make the band stick out from the rest of the seattle musicians and subsequent imitators, so that they're able to stand entirely on their own.

the same can be said for any number of bands or artists i like. radiohead. the arcade fire. pixies. sigur ros. they all have that thing that people can point to and say (or perhaps not say because they don't think they can find the words): yeah, that's a sigur ros song. that sounds like radiohead. or: that is soooo the arcade fire. and this is ultimately what sets these bands apart from the pack. why it's so easy to get lost in the world of in the aeroplane over the sea vs. a spot-on imitation of neutral milk hotel. it's not just that these bands are innovators or that they're completely original. for one, i don't think that is entirely true. everything is derivative, in one way or another. these bands were just able to take different elements and reconfigure them into one exploitable and very definite sound or image.

at times, i think this is gimmicky or one-dimensional. but then--i'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing. i mean, that's what people naturally gravitate towards--things they find accessible, relatable, easy to pinpoint. so why shouldn't art be the same way? it's nice when things make sense. when things come in a neat little package. the illusion of order is so damned alluring. it doesn't have to be shallow, necessarily. there's always something deeper under the surface, but it's nice to have an attractive exterior to barrel through. i'd say both are vital to any great piece of art. you need depth but the appearance, no matter how deceiving, of organization is also important. it's like the ideal person: relatively smart, relatively attractive. brains and beauty. a good balance of both.

a letter

dear indie/art-film directors and screenwriters and anyone else associated with this now-corrupt (it had to happen sooner or later) movement (movement?),
pleez stop making the same "understated" melodramatic doggerel films--quirky characters and even quirkier soundtracks. the joke is no longer funny to me.
sincerely,
bored film-fanatic with no access to the necessary resources to remedy the sordid state of film