Stop and Go Enlightenment

Lynchian

2011-11-14T23:29:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not be aware, David Lynch has been the master of his own personal brand of style for over 30 years now. I'm writing this, fresh from a screening of Blue Velvet, and feeling positively coated in his thick and highly viscous aesthetic, which generally results in a renewed respect for bright red lips and nails, and a distinct desire for black coffee and slices of diner pie.

I remember going to a party once where "Candy Colored Clown" came on at one point, and it was all I could do to keep myself from unabashedly demanding all attention by lip-syncing while gazing at the party-goers from under heavy-lidded eyes. I restrained myself, and regret it to this day. What a surreal way to sing a love song to culture - by letting culture sing its own song while you put a new face on it. That song plays a very real role in Blue Velvet (as does the song the film is named for, among others) and shows how effectively communicated one's impression of a song can be. The villainous Frank Booth is undone by the Candy Colored Clown every time, and it becomes even creepier to like a song that you can watch a sociopath liking. Yikes.

But what Lynch does in that film, and Lost Highway, and Twin Peaks, is important because it shows that loving something (a time-period, an architectural style, a film) can result in a work all its own, while remaining ever-respectful and always acknowledging the source of inspiration. He has shown me that it's alright to love something to such an extreme that you can't help but incorporate it and let it inform everything you do.

My feelings about what Lynch does is part of the reason why I think it's so important to be patient and knowledgeable about the context in which his work was first released. When Blue Velvet came out, it was innovative and racy and like nothing else that was out there: he took things he loved and crafted a story (albeit a remarkably twisted one) around them. So when I heard people tittering in the audience, obviously unaware of what these scenes meant when they first burst on the scene, I was angry because it cheapens an experience to write something off as dated, and therefore silly. I can't imagine things our culture has to offer - Angry Birds, T-Pain, and Puss in Boots in 3D, just to name a few - won't be met with misunderstanding chuckles in the future.

[ ] Degrees of Separation

2011-11-13T17:11:00.000-05:00

So in light of the recent screening of Taxi Driver, I feel compelled to mention a realization. In addition to the imagery, bang-up acting, and most masterful editing and directing I think is possible in filmmaking, the music in Taxi Driver was written by none other than Bernard Herrmann. Yep, the genius behind many of the scores for Hitchcock's films, including the iconic Psycho themes.

Cue inspiration.

A piece of mine (Self Portait, or The Road to Fairvale) was directly inspired by Marion Crane's ill-conceived journey into the unknown in Psycho. She is apprehensive of what lies ahead, and about what she's leaving behind as she hurtles herself down the highway with a purse full of stolen cash. Unfortunately, she decides to rest her weary bones at a little, out of the way place; the one-and-only Bates Motel.

Well, as she wrestles with her decision, we have Hermmann's music underscoring the tension. Is this right? Should it be this easy? Where is she really headed? All of these were [are] questions that I have asked myself about what I do with pre-existing images. Is it still artwork if you take things which someone else created and re-contextualize them? Is it fair to claim rights to these things? Where does this work actually take me? What is to be gained?

Needless to say, I've thought long and hard about this, and Herrmann's music never stops playing in my head. I don't know if it's better to feel more akin to Marion Crane than to Travis Bickle (this seems like a very distinct lesser-of-two-evils scenario), but I think it's worth nothing that the genius behind multiple, outstanding films can continue to inspire new, solid work, nearly fifty years later.

The Right Stuff

2011-11-13T16:33:00.000-05:00

If ever you're looking for the supreme example of masculinity, look no further than The Right Stuff. Bravery, heroism, innovation, patriotism, love, spirituality, and a sense of adventure are just some of the things I would use to describe the men in this movie. While making no attempts at being egalitarian, or even equal about the sexes, it is an excellent portrait of the emotional spectrum that was run in America during the space race in the early 1960s. Taken as both as both an historical document and artistic exercise, it is an excellent film.

I first encountered this movie when a local video store (remember those?) was going out of business and I, at 13 years old, couldn't stomach the thought of all those hundreds of videotapes of all those hundreds of movies going the way of the 8-Track, the clip-on earring, and land-line phone. I laid claim to as many as my tween-sized wallet could handle. Among these was the two tape set of The Right Stuff. The cover was reason enough to invest. Seven men in shiny silver suits? Yes please.

After I had effectively judged the book by its cover, I actually watched it. Oh. My. God. It's a fantastic example of how intelligent narrative filmmaking, paired with just a little bit of unconventional artistry can produce something memorable and profound. There are hints at the search-for-victory, cum the search-for-meaning in what the astronauts of the early 60s were doing by rocketing into the skies only to plummet back to earth. Abstract segments of color and lights, seen from the cockpit perspective, have informed my personal idea of what the search for God, in a very real, physical sense, might look like.

The Quiet; The Upright; The Brave; The Strong; The Charismatic--they're all there, represented in each, and all, of the astronauts in this movie. They are awe-inspiring, as is how much I find myself wanting to be them... or at least in their suits.

Taxi Driver Blow Out

2011-11-13T15:00:00.000-05:00

On the heels of being lucky enough to see a new print of Taxi Driver on the big screen in my favorite theatre (Willard Straight, home to Cornell Cinema), I went and rinsed that satisfied aftertaste out of my mouth and replaced it with the bitter, shallow flavor of Blow Out. Okay, DePalma has done some things of note (Scarface, Carrie, and Mission: Impossible, specifically), but what ever possessed him to try to combine Coppola's The Conversation with Antonioni's Blow-Up is totally beyond me.

Seeing Scorsese's street lights and street walkers in the frame of the windshield and the lens of a cleansing rain made me afraid to blink for fear of missing something. Seeing DePalma's roughly-hewn characters in both close-up and long-shot made me miss the real thing; I wanted David Hemmings's tortured, soulful eyes searching for clues in grainy stills and Gene Hackman's tightly-shut eyes as he strains his ears to catch every inflection in a conversation. Instead, I got Travolta - still riding out the Grease character in both look and tone - getting worked up over some dame with the worst approximation of a New York accent this side of Hollywood. There was nothing graceful in the recollection of the two source films (Conversation, Blow-Up), and it became increasingly difficult to hide my frustration. Luckily, I was watching it at home and yelling and gesturing at the screen - verboten in the theatre, but sacred in the home - and my annoyance was duly noted with calming pats on the back and another beer. This behavior would not have gone over well in a public setting. But, in all fairness, neither would Blow Out.

In conclusion, here is a totally unfair pairing of images:

Viewing Diary: The Alloy Orchestra

2011-11-06T20:42:00.000-05:00

This weekend I was lucky enough to see the one and only Alloy Orchestra in concert for three separate, yet equally impressive shows. They are a group of three guys who devote their time to creating unconventional, driving scores to silent films, both classic and relatively unknown. Using keyboard, percussion, accordion, clarinet, a saw, and a rack of metal junk as their instruments, the Alloy has created a sound completely their own which has been hailed as some of the best live accompaniment for silent films around. I've seen them before performing their inimitable and hypnotic score to the latest and greatest restoration of Metropolis, and this most recent round of shows -- Man With a Movie Camera, Wild and Weird - a collection of early shorts, and the recently re-discovered German expressionist masterpiece, From Morn to Midnight -- was just as memorable. But anybody who claims to be any kind of film snob, design freak, culture buff, or music geek needs to have Metropolis on their To Do list, because it is unforgettable.

What I like most about seeing the Alloy in action is walking away feeling that I've just been privy to a new, private-turned-public interpretation of films which change with every new musical score. Silent films can bear the stigma of being boring or outdated, but that is only because oftentimes they are married with music that is there to support the visual and not necessarily stand on its own. The Alloy do something different. Their music is free-standing, and thereby only enhanced when paired with the film it was written for. When I watch a silent film by myself, I can use the music as an interpretive tool. But when I have the driving vamp on the piano, and clanging of metal junk, and the eerie strains of the saw to work with, there are two creative hard-hitters to work with.

The live-music-with-film event is a special thing which used to be commonplace. In cinema's early days, a film would be projected while a stock accompanist would play along, often improvising, on a piano in the theatre. There was an immediacy to the viewing and aesthetic experience which has become a rare thing in the age of the multiplex. The Alloy's scores effectively remind me of the fact that witnessing the performance of inspired creativity has become a privileged thing. Watching them watch the screen and taking their musical cues from visual events (I think) validates my adherence to viewing-as-creative-inspiration. Films act as my aural and visual soundtrack when creating artwork, and it's a treat seeing others actively share what the film has evoked from them.

Genuinely Cute vs. Terribly Tacky

2011-05-14T21:18:00.000-04:00

I am constantly treading a fine line between admiring things which are truly adorable in a genuine, unaffected way, and being drawn to things which are straying into the realm of unforgivable kitsch. The question I try to ask myself is, "would I be embarrassed if someone caught me actively admiring this"? If the answer is yes, I have probably crossed the boundary of acceptable levels of saccharine in covet-able objects and images.

Here is an example of a dilemma I encountered recently:

The above image is cute, but definitely has integrity because it is simple, understated, and comes from the Library of Congress image archives.

This image is initially appealing, but ultimately does not make the grade because it is something which (a) has been done, (b) I would not care to plaster on my desktop, and (c) comes from a website my computer told me was "Unsafe Territory!"

Zebra B was an image that I liked in concept, but could not ultimately get on board with. I think it acts as a good representative of art/imagery/stuff that only goes 80% of the way and quits before it goes the final stretch. It's easy to be average. It's also easy to plug relevant elements into photoshop and come out with something that fits a very fleeting, myopic bill.

So when I find myself admiring something with artificial rainbows, smiley faces, peace signs, or comes in lime green, let's just hope I have the wherewithal to Just Say No.

Media Savvy vs. Media Whore

2011-04-18T23:32:00.000-04:00

Where does the line between being in the know, on the ball, up to date and out to lunch fall? Should we be trying to be constantly keeping our fingers poised on the cultural pulse by trying to get in on the ground floor of the next viral sensation? Are we being cool by connecting our friends with the next big thing? Or are we missing the bigger picture?

I am constantly feeling conflicted between wanting to be hep, and wanting to be hip. Hep is knowing what everyone else is about to know; hip is the love of knowing what you're about. Tricky, tricky. While I would like to be the one responsible for actually creating the things which infect and infest our inboxes - I admit it; I want to go viral - I am, alas, merely self-assured and behind the technological eight ball.

The New York Times toed this fine line between being savvy and whorish, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/fashion/17TEXT.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26 and before this post - that is, when I wasn't blogging - I could confidently call myself the former.