A Call To Arms (I Mean Movies)

I see a potential PdD dissertation in MoveOn’s efforts to use film
(particularly Hollywood film) as outright political propaganda:

Here’s how hosting works: you just need to set up a party online, and invite your
friends. It only takes a minute, then we’ll invite other MoveOn members to join (if
you open your party to the public).

We’ll recommend some progressive videos for you and your guests to watch and discuss—documentaries
like “The Corporation”, “OutFoxed,” and “Roger & Me,”
as well as feature films with progressive themes, like “Wag the Dog” and
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Or, if you know a film that others should
see, you can show that one.

These parties won’t only be about watching movies, they’ll also be about laying
the groundwork for upcoming actions. At these parties we’ll give you what you need
to form a local team, so it’s easy for you and your new friends to continue working
together. We’ll also give you materials for a simple action your group can do after
the party around a likely Supreme Court vacancy. We need to be ready to act quickly
to have an impact on who President Bush appoints.

Beating the Bush agenda and electing a progressive majority will take the help
of everyone who agrees that the Republican leadership is out of touch with America.
Help us fight the right by hosting “Progressive Movie Night”.

GapingVoid

I passed around a lot of my blogcards at Silverdocs.

Strange New Sensation:

The wind blowing through the hole in my nose piercing. A tiny current of air tickling my cheek.

Holden Chapel

I’m taking a summer class in directing and we meet in Holden Chapel (pictured), a tiny one-room building that I walk past every day and never noticed. It fascinates me, this 260 year-old building–it really is just one room. You open the door and you’re in the one room. It feels like an old schoolroom (or a um, chapel). Buildings so small just aren’t built any more, especially not with brick. So I looked up the history of its recent renovation:

The building now has air conditioning, plumbing, and fire sprinklers–all new additions. … It was the substructure renovations that delayed the building’s opening, however. Shortly after work began in June, human bones were found in an old basement cistern. Associate Professor of Anthropology Carole Mandryk was called in to examine the bones, which she determined were the remains of cadavers used for medical training during the building’s stint as Harvard’s Medical School in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Removal of the remains set the project back six to eight weeks.With the exception of some landscaping, the renovations were limited to the building’s interior. Completed in 1744, Holden Chapel has been used for many purposes over the years. It started out, true to its name, as a chapel. But Harvard Hall took over that function about 20 years later. Since then, the building has served as a storeroom, a chemistry laboratory, barracks for colonial troops during the Revolutionary War, a garage for the College fire apparatus, and most recently, as the office for the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.

Revolutionary soldiers, centuries-old human remains … how exciting. And how exactly did the medical school lose track of the fact that there were human remains in the basement? So when the Glee Club was practicing they had no idea that just below them was a cistern full of human bones. Creeeeepy. But how weird overall to be performing minute daily tasks in a room with such history. I guess that’s common in Europe but not so much here. This is nearly as old as it gets here.

Oswalt the Grouch

OK I promise this isn’t going to turn into the Patton Oswalt fan blog, but I really like his funny grouching about minutiae. He’s a funny grouch.

The
Aer Lingus flight I was on this morning never got to take off ‘cuz the
engine was full of shamrocks or some goddamn thing, so I got an
in-depth tour of Heathrow as I tried to track down where they’d
sent my bags (they’d buried them under a big “W”!) and then charm my
way onto an American Airlines flight. Did I say “charm”? I mean,
“whine.” There’s a heat wave in London right now, but the good people
of Heathrow set the airport’s thermostat on “steamy testicles”, so it
wasn’t like I wasn’t constantly chanting “fuck” under my breath.

(…)

I love visiting new cities, but there comes a time when new-ness becomes an assault, and I want to sit at home and watch bad reruns on TV.  That’s where I am now.

Blue

For
many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can
be seen, the color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything
far away. The color of that distance is the color of solitude and of
desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are
not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not at
the horizon but in the distance between you and the mountains.
“Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of
endless distances.” We treat desire as a problem to be solved, though I
wonder whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be
cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to
the human condition as blue is to distance. Something of desire will
only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition, just as the mountains
cease to be blue when you arrive among them, and the blue instead tints
the next beyond. Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are
more beautiful than comedies and why we take pleasure in the sadness of
certain songs and stories. Something is always far away.

Rebecca Solnit, in Harper’s, June 2005

How To Ruin My Jokes, Part 3

I have twice before lamented the ways in which my jokes have been ruined by others. First there was the lament over people not getting your jokes and thinking you’re the one who’s stupid. Then there was the problem of people not hearing your jokes and the inappropriateness of repeating them (can’t find it in my archives to link). Here, in part 3, we shall discuss situations where a person hears your joke, thinks it’s funny, and tries to add something to top it off, but the top-off is so lame it sinks, taking your original funny joke down with it. It happened twice last week at Silverdocs, but rather than incriminate any friends I will instead share a memorable example from a couple of years ago when I was on a tea date with my ARCH ENEMY.

My ARCH ENEMY is a funny guy of the stand-up comedian variety. A showman. I didn’t know him very well and this was only our second time hanging out and I was smitten and giggly. He was standing at the counter at Tealuxe and ordered our tea, and as I pulled out my wallet he said “I got your tea.” I smiled and fumbled to put my wallet away. Then he pulled out a $20 and said “Anyway I’m rich, I just robbed an old lady on the way over here. She yelled ‘Stop! Stop!’ but I said SHUT UP!” 

I saved this pseudo-joke by adding, “How rude of her.”

He laughed loudly, and so did the girl behind the counter, which made me happy, but unfortunately he couldn’t stop there. He added “yeah, I don’t know where these old people get off thinking they get to keep money.”

Thud.

Frigid Movie Theater, Anyone?

Today is the kind of day when you walk out the door brimming with energy and a list of errands you plan to run … until about 45 seconds later when you start mentally lopping off all but the most essential errands on the list as the humid air presses down on you. “I really don’t need those Q-tips, I’ll stop at Brooks another time …”

At least, that’s what I did.

New Hair, New Nose Ornament

How We Suffer For Beauty

I got my nose pierced. A little gold stud, for now. I’d post a photo
but right now it’s still a little too blood-encrusted to make a pretty
photo. I walked into the shop, picked out a stud, paid, sat in the
little waiting area, was called by the cute piercing lady, sat up on
the piercing chair, chatted a bit, and only when she pulled out the
needle did I think “Oh right, this is going to involve pain.” Until
then I was just thinking about how cute it would look. And oh yes it
did bring tears to my eyes, but only for a second and I’m glad I
“forgot” about the pain factor until moments before the piercing. Who
needs all that worry.

We’re Not Terrorists!

Here’s a mosque that sprang up in the middle of farmland near my parents’ house in Maryland:

When I took that picture the guy walking across the street yelled out “You takin my picture?” and did a little dance. Here’s a closeup of the sign in front:

Someone seems to be a bit defensive … considering the hick town my parents live in, I don’t blame them. I may think it’s silly that here in the Northeast I’m called a Southern Belle, but one spin around the radio dial tells you about the demographics of that town–mostly country music stations. Actually it’s about half country and half R&B, really not much else. Even the one alternative music station that existed when I lived there is now gone. It’s Merle Haggard or Isaac Hayes, not much in between.

Sorry if I have just insulted all you country music fans.

Silverdocs Wrapup, Revisited

I know I promised a final Silverdocs wrapup a few days ago but I have had trouble working up the enthusiasm to rewrite it after losing the whole thing through a crack in cyberspace. So I will just post a few points here.

• Shorts. I like shorts. Possibly better than features. Because the short format is so useless commercially, it means there are no constraints on the artist and they are free to be as creative/weird/different as they want to be. So you’re far more likely to see something exciting and innovative when watching shorts than when watching features. That said, my favorite short at Silverdocs was Jay Rosenblatt’s Phantom Limb. Have you seen a Jay Rosenblatt film? They are not easy to see, but if you can, see some. Especially The Smell of Burning Ants. But his new one, Phantom Limb, is just as disturbing and emotionally wrenching as his others. There is one scene that I will remember for the rest of my life. The film is a meditation on the guilt he has felt his whole life over the death of his young brother when he was a child. Their parents never talked about it, and he thought it was his fault because he used to tease his brother. The film is very heavy and oppressive…until the sheep-shearing scene. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a sheep sheared (I haven’t) but the sheep is sitting on its hind legs, held between the shearer’s legs as he bends over it and runs the clippers over it. The sheep struggles now and then. In the film, it is one extended take, in slow-motion, of the man shearing the sheep, as a woman in voiceover reads a long list of the stages of grief. It sounds simple, and it is, but I was sobbing by the time the scene was over. Sobbing. The shearing is certainly something the sheep doesn’t want done, but in this context, in slow-motion, with the grief stages being read in voiceover, it gives the impression of someone flailing and struggling with grief while someone holds them, caresses them, forcibly sloughs off their pain and baggage, revealing the pink and tender skin beneath. And the sheep finally totters off, naked and vulnerable, like someone who has been through a particularly gut-wrenching therapy session, newly sensitive to everything around him.

• My pick for best of the fest would be the same as the jury’s pick: Darwin’s Nightmare. It is an incredibly upsetting film that exposes the way Europe (and Russia, but there didn’t seem to be any Americans) exploits Tanzania for its fish. Perch, to be exact. Tanzania on the one hand is glad that the foreigners want their fish–it’s brought jobs to the area. But the Tanzanians are still starving, they can’t afford the very fish they catch and sell to the foreigners, and the film gets into all of the intricate ways the fishing industry is exploiting and destroying the area. It is a political film that focuses on the small, intimate details more than the big ones: the young boys savagely fighting each other for a handful of rice, in a town overrun by rich Europeans taking fish from their waters. The mother who is grateful for her job of airing out decaying fish carcasses (while standing in a pool of mud and maggots). The prostitutes visited by European and Russian pilots. The prostitute who was killed by one of them. The children in the alleys sniffing glue made from melted fish packaging. It goes on and on and on.

• A few tips from a panel called “Working the Festival Circuit”. First, and this was actually one tip I knew from working with the Boston Jewish Film Festival: don’t make a film that is 50 minutes to an hour long. It is an awkward length and is difficult to program at festivals. Make a short film or a feature. That said, festivals do often show some hour-long films, but it better be good if it’s going to be that length. A short film can be run in a shorts package or before a feature, but an hour-long film is not going to be run before a feature and is too long to be part of a shorts package. Something to consider. Another interesting point that came out of the panel was some concern among filmmakers that festival programmers get all their films from other festivals and rarely accept films that are blindly submitted, therefore when they send in their $50 submission fee, they are really only subsidizing the festival. This is a legitimate concern that was sort of dodged by the festival people on the panel. I spoke with a festival director later in the week, and he admitted that filmmakers should be concerned. But he added that every programmer would love to get a great film in the mail, submitted blindly. It just doesn’t happen often. This is an interesting issue to me because it is currently a controversial issue in the poetry world as well, where some poets are criticizing poetry contests that they say are “fixed”–you send in your submission fee but usually the prize goes to friends of the judges or well-known poets. There’s a whole website devoted to it.

• It seemed I gravitated toward foreign films at the festival, and among those there seemed to be a theme of divisions/walls/barriers. First there was Podul Peste Tisa, a Romanian film about a bridge between Romania and the Ukraine that was demolished by retreating Germans at the end of WWII and was never repaired, separating families for as much as 50 years. Some yell across the river to each other as their only form of communication. The film follows the saga of attempts to rebuild the bridge–so much red tape that the bridge, now built, is still closed and no one is allowed to cross. Another film about divisions/walls was Good Times, about the wall built by Israel in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village near Jerusalem. Again this is a political film that focuses on the minutiae: the old muslim women struggling to climb over the first incarnation of the wall which was short and crumbling, the Israeli soldiers haphazardly enforcing the barrier, at times joking with the crossing Palestinians, the shop owners who depend on business from people of both sides crossing the border, and, finally, the silence and desolation after a new 8-foot wall with no breaks is built to replace the old crumbling one.

• Grizzly Man. I have surprisingly little to say about this one. I was very excited to see him in person, but I was not bowled over by the film. Treadwell is clearly insane, but I was a bit irritated with Herzog’s treatment of him. Herzog acted as if he knew the man inside and out, kept comparing him to Klaus Kinski on the set of Aguirre the Wrath of God, claimed Treadwell was related to Aguirre–it was as if Herzog was claiming ownership, or paternity, and lamenting his child’s silly attitude about nature, an attitude that got him killed, and if he only were as smart as Herzog he would have survived. But in reality, Treadwell did survive for 13 years with the Grizzlies. That fact is not felt in the film. And he did know exactly how dangerous it was, he said it many times, he told loved ones that if he never returned, it was what he wanted. He had mental problems and couldn’t handle the world of people, and if he wanted to die with the Grizzlies, who is Herzog to say that’s wrong? Or worse, to claim that he didn’t understand the danger of his situation? Herzog’s pursuit of Treadwell and his claims to understand him better than anyone else (his exact words), to have a special bond with him, are much like Treadwell’s claims to know and understand the Grizzly better than anyone else. And both are equally naive, I think. Both overly romanticize their subjects. Treadwell studies and tracks the Grizzly, Herzog studies and tracks what Tarkovsky called the “holy fool”. The film is more like a letter to Treadwell than a work of art, a bit didactic and over the top, and not the mysterious work of art that Herzog’s older documentaries like Land of Silence and Darkness are. Maybe as artists age they don’t have time any more for subtlety.

That’s all I can muster for now, but I’m sure I’ll have Silverdocs spasms here and there in the near future.

More Patton Oswalt

I
know this is cultural suicide, for me to admit that I can’t stand the
fucking noise anymore. I have friends who are kissing their mid-40’s
who’ve decided, out of desperation and fear of death, that they’re 22
years old forever, and could ya turn it UUUUUPP??? Whoooo! They’ll
sacrifice clarity of thought and peace of mind and a lot of other shit
so they can fool themselves into thinking they’re still riding the
crest of the Youth Wave.

Fucking
idiots. I can’t wait to be an old man. And to speed that process along,
I’ve got my pair of Howard Leight earplugs and a pair of Bose
noise-canceling headphones. ‘Cuz I’m in revolt. ‘Cuz I DON’T WANT TO
HEAR IT.
…

Hey,
when you’re twenty, and still young and sexy, it’s a good thing to have
the music loud. ‘Cuz you’re not going to impress anyone by saying
something startling or original or truly funny. That’s the age when you
rely on your looks. Or, if you look the way I did at twenty, you become
a comedian, so you have a spotlight on you and a microphone in front of
your yap, so you have a fighting chance.

Comedian Blogger

Patton Oswalt has a blog. A real live frequently-updated personal blog. He’s the guy on the Comedians of Comedy tour with Brian Posehn and Zach Galifianakis (and also a regular on King of Queens). I learned of the blog when watching the film about them at Silverdocs, where in one scene Brian and Patton are poking around a comic book store in Portland, Ore., and Zach (who was not supposed to be in town yet) suddenly walks by. They ask him how he found them, and Zach says “I read Patton’s blog.”

I’m writing this in the van as we idle in the Comfort Inn parking lot, waiting for everyone to load up. Dave, Brian and Zach went out last night, but Ole Grandpa Oswalt was feeling sleepy-bye and went to bed. Not that I slept, since Comfort Inn fills their mattresses with random pipes, wrenches and geodes.

Later today I will have my final Silverdocs wrap-up post, assuming the Internet Gods don’t fuck me over again and eat my post.

*Gasp*

I just wrote a looooooong post about several films at Silverdocs and
the Internet ate it. Gone. Every word. I am bereft. I must sleep now.

Silverdocs Wrap-Up, Part 1

It was a great gift running into my old friend D at Silverdocs. Not only is it wonderful to have a companion for the week when you are expecting to be solo (especially one who says things like “Oh Ceerock, I’ve missed that laugh…”), but also because it turns out he is now well-connected. After we chatted a bit he stood up and said “Are you ready to meet a lot of people?” And he wasn’t kidding. I met many people and did much more socializing than I would have if I’d been on my own. But the way he introduced me was always amusing. He may be well-connected, but he is not at all wired. He is yet another of my friends who doesn’t understand (or care about) blogs. He introduced me to Eugene Hernandez of indieWire, for example, and I said to him “I’m a blogger.” Simultaneously Eugene lit up and said “Really? Which one? I love bloggers!” while D said “Oh don’t be so modest … she also writes for Cineaste.”

A theme that seemed to emerge at the festival, at least in discussions with filmmakers and film subjects, was art vs. commerce. I spoke to South African filmmaker Khalo Matabane (Story of a Beautiful Country), who told me he had just shot a TV commercial and felt ashamed at how easy it was, how little he had to care for it, and how much money he got for it. I said that many artists use these kinds of commercial projects to subsidize the art that they really care about, and brought in the example of John Cassavetes, the “father” of indie film, who pioneered that business model by taking crappy but well-paying acting jobs in Hollywood to finance his wholly self-made films. But Khalo would not be consoled. “It stamps my soul,” he said.

The next day, on the aforementioned comedy panel (which, in in addition to Brian Posehn and Zach the great, included Paul Provenza, Gilbert Godfried, Judy Gold, and Fred Willard), the discussion turned to the commercial success the comedians have had in sitcoms and other TV shows. Posehn (who was on Just Shoot Me and who is possibly the most well-adjusted comedian I have ever seen) saw no problem with the kind of schizo art/commercial approach to work. “You do stand-up to save your soul, and you take other gigs to pay the bills.”

And I previously mentioned Penelope Spheeris’ struggles with her commercial success. She even said in her keynote address that she hates money and doesn’t understand why anyone would want it, it’s only given her more headaches than she had when she was poor. She at times preached the “do exactly what you want and don’t think about money,” gospel, and at other times sounded like a Hollywood pro telling the filmmakers in the audience not to ever start a film before having the money and plan in place for distribution. But even though she seemed pained about her commercial success, the millions it gave her have now positioned her to make exactly the film she wants. Soul-stamp or no.

Silverdocs Winners

Here’s the list of winners at Silverdocs. I am very pleased that Darwin’s Nightmare won the jury prize–it’s a compelling and very upsetting film about the Nile Perch fishing industry and the way it exploits Africans. Though it made me glad to see that at least America isn’t the only asshole country in the world. Europe can be just as bad. More on this film in a bit.
Short Film Honorable Mention
GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA directed by Kimberlee Acquaro, Stacy Sherman
FLAG DAY directed by Kristy Higby

Short Film Award
POSITIVELY NAKED directed by Arlene Donnelly Nelson, David Nelson

Honorable Mentions, Feature
ROMANTICO directed by Mark Becker
HOME directed by Jeffrey Togman

Sterling Award
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE directed by Hubert Sauper

More Comedians

I’m just back from the Netflix party at Silverdocs, where I got to shake the hand of my man Zach. Here he is on the panel after the film. Blurry. Netflix provided some financial backing for Comedians of Comedy, so apparently they are getting into the filmmaking game these days. They also sponsored the party for the comedians, which took place at the Silver Spring Moose Lodge, which had authentic Moose members sitting around the bar intimidating all us youngsters. We were also greeted at the door by tattooed men who demanded we sign in to their guest book before entering. And while four of us were sitting around a table, a large man in a cowboy hat walked over to us and reached across the table–far across it–and put his cigarette out on the plate of the guy sitting next to me. Actually he put the cigarette out on a half-eaten pork rib on his plate. Right on the rib. He had finished eating, but that was definitely a marking-my-territory move. He had to reach over the whole table to get to the plate. Then he walked away, leaving the half-extinguished butt blowing smoke into my face.

I skipped the closing night film, which was a documentary about James Dean that I’m sure we’ll be seeing on A&E or some such channel eventually. But I went to the after-party for it, (separate from the Netflix party) which took place at Discovery Headquarters and had all kinds of caviar and cheeses and other fancy stuff I didn’t recognize. No tattooed pissing contests here. This has been a fantastic festival and I’ve met a lot of great people, one of whom is a blogger. I’ll be returning to Boston with many new contacts and some great memories and a lot of films to write about. More to come…

Silverdocs: Closing Night

Comedians of Comedy

I have a thing for funny guys. I always have. So I just watched a film that for me is like porn: The Comedians of Comedy. I am now in love with Zach Galifianakis, who is a fucking genius, and the kind of guy I know I should stay away from but which still unfortunately draws me like moth to fire, flies to honey, insert cliche here. He is at this moment sitting a few yards away from me on a comedy panel along with Brian Posehn and Patton Oswalt, whom I also now have crushes on. But Zach, oh Zach, he’s got the crazy charismatic magic. He does a bit dressed as a white-wigged 18th century dandy who has lines like “Is this thing on? What is this thing?” or “Am I the only one who’s sick of Ben Franklin? Electricity? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT?” I have pictures too, but they’ll have to wait until I can get home and upload them.

The film is no brilliant concert film–in fact I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t get into the darker side of comedy and of comedians. Zach a few times mentions that he thinks he has a mental disorder, that they all do, but the film doesn’t seem interested in getting any deeper than that. I don’t know if it’s because these are just very happy and well-adjusted comedians (there’s no such thing) or that the filmmaker just didn’t want to go there. Probably the latter. But as a showcase for some fantastic and really creative comedians, it’s definitely worth seeing.