howdy folks. time to start posting again. i know it's been forever, but i have been really down lately, & i don't really know what the cause is, but last year when this happened i started trying to play the guitar, & that seemed to help. this year, me & felton are going to try to make a movie (or nine -- we can make nine before we die, right? cat people.)
honestly, a strange confluence of events has caused me to try to re-invigorate my interest in film-making. first off, i saw "no country for old men" & realized that film is NOT lost in this country. it may be the best movie i've ever seen when it came out (apocalypse now i missed, because i was seven, but i remember my parents returning home from the Thruway Shopping Center "Multiplex" [TWO screens = multi in 1979], but i saw "redux" in the theatre, still not the same). anybody out there notice that there was no music in the entire film that didn't come from a source within the film itself? anybody else notice that those coens filmed a movie that was set in 1980 that is more currently relevant than anything else i've seen in a long time? only in the novels of thomas pynchon (& yes, cormac mccarthy) have i seen someone take on so many grand-level issues: generational interplay, the place of violence in society (which i know everyone is sick of, thanks to the kids that watched tarantino & then went to grad skool, but wait'll you see what joel & ethan have to say about it), constructed morality vs. inherent morality (can't find my kant or nietzsche right now), not to mention post-modernism & the death of capitalism, for what kills capitalism faster than having the proletariat come into some money that they never had to work for? or kill for?
then, there is chris marker, who i have already talked about on this blog once. david & i are going to try to make a short movie, an homage to any number of things, but specifically to marker's film "sans soleil," which really is the most amazing film i've ever laid eyes on (ask felton, he works at the regulator & loves visitors -- ask him how he feels about various duke university literature professors whose last name start with "L"). so, we were gonna make a movie about pool (work what you know, yes?), but then i came up with a title -- "avec la lune" -- & called felton at 4 am with the good news that our project had shifted. now, we also want to have pool in the film, but we also want to create a bit of an homage to durham itself (land of the beautiful people, neh?). the themes i've always wanted to work with are time, identity, memory; the interplay of the self with the ubiquitous Other (or others, in the case of society); the inexorable jack-boot in the face of common humanity, courtesy of "The State;" & of course always the little man against insurmountable odds. sometimes those odds come from inside, sometimes not.
david & i really have no plan, as of yet; the idea is to let the ideas flesh themselves out as we use each other as stimuli to get something done. if anybody is interested in helping out, especially if they would like to portray a pool player in a short film, please let one of us know. hopefully, this blog will become a place where i can try to bring some things up & get some external opinions. maybe we could even post bits on youtube as we film.
anyway, hope everyone is having a fucking ridiculous new year. anybody else realize that the student revolutions in europe in '68 are gonna be 40 yrs in the past this year? sheesh. there's sure a doc in there somewhere.
and, on one final note, if you want to see a little snippet that sums up some of how i feel about "technology" [did i forget to mention that in my themes list?] then you should go here
in order to see how david lynch feels about the iPhone (courtesy of Dave Felton, again).
happy '08, folks. . . only one more year of a quasi-fascist megalomaniac being the figurehead of these fine united states.
Recent Comments