8.29.2005
gus van sant's last days (by way of andy warhol)
andy warhol was always saying things like: "if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning." he documented a dissolving empathy-- his paper-thin jackie-o returns to the tabloid from which it was pulled. she is a document of a cultural event, and little more. "meaning" follows the logic of the above quote-- warhol repeats images, standardizes them, pulls things to the surface, and so forth. gone are the brooding conceits of wannabe picassos, leaving something slick and lifeless and homogeneous in their place.
and, for all of that, i love it:
what's most alluring about warhol comes after this stereotypical equation (image-repetition-entropy). his best work produces a remainder. stripped of all entryways of an "inner experience," the warhol portrait still bears a certain sting. if the final gaze is one of detached formalism, a strong wind marks the spectatorial distance enabling it. the "sting" of a warhol looks neither backwards nor forwards. it does not lament humanizing connections, nor does it foresee a beautiful future. it is a raw space of dumb gawking. a "duh" space; a blank stare. a strange conflation of glamour, repetition and death mobilizes it-- but it refuses to make such sophistications manifest. a painted warhol head will never grow a brain. it is "deeply superficial," like the man who brought it to life.
gus van sant's film last days speaks a similar language.
it finds its tabloid routes in the death of kurt cobain, with the usually insufferable michael pitt as its "superstar." but beyond that, it dismantles most of its movie-ness. it is the cinematic shell of a well-hyped tragedy, leaving all attempted profundity behind. the suicide at its center is inevitable and elusive. it finally occurs off-screen. there are several half-hearted attempts to generate meaning throughout the film, but each seem to erode explanation further. dialogue embodies the uselessness of speaking.
pitt (cobain) centralizes the film. he is a kind of negative space-- his affective corelessness points to his parameters. van sant avoids close-ups for the most part. pitt becomes an indexical figure, leading to several landscapes. we look at the handsome, woodland decay of his northwest estate. we watch the attractive, vacuous hangers-on who never seem to let him be. and we watch pitt himself-- with his golden hair and seductive, wounded physique. his body is both a tabloid surface and a self-perpetuating desire machine.
which possibly brings me to one of the film's strangest elements. last days doesn't simply invite one to look, it invites one to continue to look. the film finds its starting point in warholian entropy. we've seen this story before, we're tired of it, etc. and with no ideology to offer, the film moves forward regardless. even the camera work has a keen blankness to it. the showy lyricism of elephant (which i posted about here) is gone, and all traces of commentary fade with it. a deadly, compulsive movement sets in. last days is a forward march; a literal "death drive."
van sant's eroticism is raw and self-sustaining. stripped of its usual veils, it emerges in all its hypnotic boredom. it refers to no morality. when pitt's strange ascension to heaven becomes an opportunity to check out his ass, there is no necrophilia. democratic eroticism-- no gaze is better or worse than the one that came before it. an even, permanent appetite floating toward death. a spooky experience that left me feeling both brainless and meaningful.
and, for all of that, i love it:
what's most alluring about warhol comes after this stereotypical equation (image-repetition-entropy). his best work produces a remainder. stripped of all entryways of an "inner experience," the warhol portrait still bears a certain sting. if the final gaze is one of detached formalism, a strong wind marks the spectatorial distance enabling it. the "sting" of a warhol looks neither backwards nor forwards. it does not lament humanizing connections, nor does it foresee a beautiful future. it is a raw space of dumb gawking. a "duh" space; a blank stare. a strange conflation of glamour, repetition and death mobilizes it-- but it refuses to make such sophistications manifest. a painted warhol head will never grow a brain. it is "deeply superficial," like the man who brought it to life.
gus van sant's film last days speaks a similar language.
it finds its tabloid routes in the death of kurt cobain, with the usually insufferable michael pitt as its "superstar." but beyond that, it dismantles most of its movie-ness. it is the cinematic shell of a well-hyped tragedy, leaving all attempted profundity behind. the suicide at its center is inevitable and elusive. it finally occurs off-screen. there are several half-hearted attempts to generate meaning throughout the film, but each seem to erode explanation further. dialogue embodies the uselessness of speaking.
pitt (cobain) centralizes the film. he is a kind of negative space-- his affective corelessness points to his parameters. van sant avoids close-ups for the most part. pitt becomes an indexical figure, leading to several landscapes. we look at the handsome, woodland decay of his northwest estate. we watch the attractive, vacuous hangers-on who never seem to let him be. and we watch pitt himself-- with his golden hair and seductive, wounded physique. his body is both a tabloid surface and a self-perpetuating desire machine.
which possibly brings me to one of the film's strangest elements. last days doesn't simply invite one to look, it invites one to continue to look. the film finds its starting point in warholian entropy. we've seen this story before, we're tired of it, etc. and with no ideology to offer, the film moves forward regardless. even the camera work has a keen blankness to it. the showy lyricism of elephant (which i posted about here) is gone, and all traces of commentary fade with it. a deadly, compulsive movement sets in. last days is a forward march; a literal "death drive."
van sant's eroticism is raw and self-sustaining. stripped of its usual veils, it emerges in all its hypnotic boredom. it refers to no morality. when pitt's strange ascension to heaven becomes an opportunity to check out his ass, there is no necrophilia. democratic eroticism-- no gaze is better or worse than the one that came before it. an even, permanent appetite floating toward death. a spooky experience that left me feeling both brainless and meaningful.
julio cortazar's cronopios and famas
cronopios and famas is a fun little book by julio cortazar. it is split into three parts-- an "instruction manual," a fairly aloof family memoir, and a series of short fables regarding the invented (?) characters from which the book takes its name. each part reads more like a "prose poem" than a narrative, rendering the reading experience refreshingly free and unstructured.
first and foremost, cortazar is funny. he insistently stresses the nonsensical, and does so via everyday life at its most insubstantial. the humor often arises out of the most basic re-evaluations-- how to cry, where to place a bicycle, etc. with the inviting grace of an italo calvino novel, he wages loving warfare against conventional mores. his humor reminds me a bit of kurt vonnegut's, but less venomous... cortazar's world is never quite doomed-- even when he describes it as such. it is a universe of endless accidental meanings, illuminated by a series of like-able, oddball characters. at its best, it has a richard brautigan-esque sense of surrealist joy; at its worst, it gets a bit cute. but it's nice to walk the cute line once in a while. i walk the literary path of doom and gloom all too often.
first and foremost, cortazar is funny. he insistently stresses the nonsensical, and does so via everyday life at its most insubstantial. the humor often arises out of the most basic re-evaluations-- how to cry, where to place a bicycle, etc. with the inviting grace of an italo calvino novel, he wages loving warfare against conventional mores. his humor reminds me a bit of kurt vonnegut's, but less venomous... cortazar's world is never quite doomed-- even when he describes it as such. it is a universe of endless accidental meanings, illuminated by a series of like-able, oddball characters. at its best, it has a richard brautigan-esque sense of surrealist joy; at its worst, it gets a bit cute. but it's nice to walk the cute line once in a while. i walk the literary path of doom and gloom all too often.
ten good things
10. celebrities that sneak around my store on the down-low, but get recognized regardless.
9. watching kinsey with my mom. now, i won't lie-- enduring endless statistics about males masturbating 700 hundred times a day (in a hundred million sordid ways) was no picnic, being next to the woman that birthed me and all... but it enabled a nice dialogue when it was over-- one that speaks well of the film's mature handling of troublesome topics. the experience was a clear sign of how much my family has changed over the years... for the better.
8. senator barbara boxer. if you click on my petition posts, you might recognize that name. i get a lot of activism emails from her, urging me to support all sorts of decent causes. her commitment to mobilizing the progressive base of this country has a near-republican sense of diligence and organization (which are the only two fronts upon which "republican" should drum up positive feelings of any sort).
7. selma blair on late night tv. though i've pretty much eliminated non-movie-related tv time, i tend to eat my dinner in front of late night talk shows. and occasionally, a truly strange person will drop by for an interview. selma blair was on leno the other night, and she could best be described as a bumbling, bawdy mess. but an intelligent mess. blair seems aware of her messiness and amused by it, but not in a canned sort of way (even if bits of the dialogue were obviously pre-meditated). her conversations always digress... she tells stories that go gloriously nowhere... she makes the audience totally uncomfortable... she's awesome.
6. i've been telling everyone i know to see gregory la cava's 1937 film stage door, so i might as well plug it here too. la cava combines the memorable characters and crisp dialogue of a top-notch "screwball" comedy with the naturalistic, lyrical orchestration of a renoir ensemble pic. instead of formulaic basics like plot and conflict, stage door is essentially one long, over-lapping conversation. its feminist flavor is as irresistible as everything else, and harbors none of the virginal martyrdom crap that screws up progressive pictures of the time. ginger rogers flaunts the razor sharp wit of a groucho marx while maintaining the tenderness of a dimensional human being, and katherine hepburn is as charming as always, dahhh-ling!
5. the angels of light feature the work of michael gira, who is more famously known as a member of the swans. gira uses "the angels" to explore the sort of nouveau folk made popular by people like will oldham, jason molina, and his own personal discovery-- devendra banhart. but what separates gira from such comparative newbies is a pervasive and alluring sickness that (undoubtedly) carries over from the swans. his heartache has a distinctly bitter ring to it, and a different sort of urgency than that of recent indie fare. the arrangements are always strange and surprising, as are the variety of tones his albums tend to take. they have mood swings; they turn from violent to contemplative, and vice versa. the dude has quite a range.
4.
brad dourif in deadwood, not unlike marky mark in i heart huckabees, is a perfect, comic embodiment of the torture accompanying "the ethical life." i just finished the dvds of the show's first season (i am cable-less, so no spoilers please!), wherein dourif portrays the town doctor. deadwood is a show largely devoted to a series of unlikely "mother" figures, and dourif is my personal fave of the bunch. the town's hysterical need for his services puts him in the unpleasant position of one who knows everything. no clandestine act of bullying or embarrassing, venereal illness escapes his gaze, and he does what he can without huffy judgment. dourif, with his sleepless stare and gruff persona, appears plagued by the amount of info he has privy to. he sees the world in all its bountiful complexity, which drowns him in a diplomatic ambivalence allowing no relief. and awful as it sounds, it's hilarious. if there is a lesson to learn from his character, it is surely that being a good person will drive you completely insane. but his performance as an actor-- and the affection the show's writers devote to characters like his-- lets in a glimmer of hope once in a while as well. so you laugh instead of cry.
3. i am, as a rule, opposed to parents who go and "hipster it up" with their children, but:
... angelina jolie's mohawked son is so goddamn adorable that i have to make an exception.
2. fruit. it fills you up. it gives you energy. if you didn't get enough sleep, it de-zombifies you. i've been eating a lot of it. it's good.
(sidenote: i didn't make the above dish. google image search made it. it's pretty though, no?)
1. the roberta flack version of "hey, that's no way to say goodbye" is nearly as beautiful as the original (which i've decided is one of my favorite songs of all time). it's a lighter, hazier rendering-- told with a much different breed of melancholy than cohen's. the transformation is complete enough, however, that it doesn't interfere with the original. it compliments it, and it does so beautifully.
9. watching kinsey with my mom. now, i won't lie-- enduring endless statistics about males masturbating 700 hundred times a day (in a hundred million sordid ways) was no picnic, being next to the woman that birthed me and all... but it enabled a nice dialogue when it was over-- one that speaks well of the film's mature handling of troublesome topics. the experience was a clear sign of how much my family has changed over the years... for the better.
8. senator barbara boxer. if you click on my petition posts, you might recognize that name. i get a lot of activism emails from her, urging me to support all sorts of decent causes. her commitment to mobilizing the progressive base of this country has a near-republican sense of diligence and organization (which are the only two fronts upon which "republican" should drum up positive feelings of any sort).
7. selma blair on late night tv. though i've pretty much eliminated non-movie-related tv time, i tend to eat my dinner in front of late night talk shows. and occasionally, a truly strange person will drop by for an interview. selma blair was on leno the other night, and she could best be described as a bumbling, bawdy mess. but an intelligent mess. blair seems aware of her messiness and amused by it, but not in a canned sort of way (even if bits of the dialogue were obviously pre-meditated). her conversations always digress... she tells stories that go gloriously nowhere... she makes the audience totally uncomfortable... she's awesome.
6. i've been telling everyone i know to see gregory la cava's 1937 film stage door, so i might as well plug it here too. la cava combines the memorable characters and crisp dialogue of a top-notch "screwball" comedy with the naturalistic, lyrical orchestration of a renoir ensemble pic. instead of formulaic basics like plot and conflict, stage door is essentially one long, over-lapping conversation. its feminist flavor is as irresistible as everything else, and harbors none of the virginal martyrdom crap that screws up progressive pictures of the time. ginger rogers flaunts the razor sharp wit of a groucho marx while maintaining the tenderness of a dimensional human being, and katherine hepburn is as charming as always, dahhh-ling!
5. the angels of light feature the work of michael gira, who is more famously known as a member of the swans. gira uses "the angels" to explore the sort of nouveau folk made popular by people like will oldham, jason molina, and his own personal discovery-- devendra banhart. but what separates gira from such comparative newbies is a pervasive and alluring sickness that (undoubtedly) carries over from the swans. his heartache has a distinctly bitter ring to it, and a different sort of urgency than that of recent indie fare. the arrangements are always strange and surprising, as are the variety of tones his albums tend to take. they have mood swings; they turn from violent to contemplative, and vice versa. the dude has quite a range.
4.
brad dourif in deadwood, not unlike marky mark in i heart huckabees, is a perfect, comic embodiment of the torture accompanying "the ethical life." i just finished the dvds of the show's first season (i am cable-less, so no spoilers please!), wherein dourif portrays the town doctor. deadwood is a show largely devoted to a series of unlikely "mother" figures, and dourif is my personal fave of the bunch. the town's hysterical need for his services puts him in the unpleasant position of one who knows everything. no clandestine act of bullying or embarrassing, venereal illness escapes his gaze, and he does what he can without huffy judgment. dourif, with his sleepless stare and gruff persona, appears plagued by the amount of info he has privy to. he sees the world in all its bountiful complexity, which drowns him in a diplomatic ambivalence allowing no relief. and awful as it sounds, it's hilarious. if there is a lesson to learn from his character, it is surely that being a good person will drive you completely insane. but his performance as an actor-- and the affection the show's writers devote to characters like his-- lets in a glimmer of hope once in a while as well. so you laugh instead of cry.
3. i am, as a rule, opposed to parents who go and "hipster it up" with their children, but:
... angelina jolie's mohawked son is so goddamn adorable that i have to make an exception.
2. fruit. it fills you up. it gives you energy. if you didn't get enough sleep, it de-zombifies you. i've been eating a lot of it. it's good.
(sidenote: i didn't make the above dish. google image search made it. it's pretty though, no?)
1. the roberta flack version of "hey, that's no way to say goodbye" is nearly as beautiful as the original (which i've decided is one of my favorite songs of all time). it's a lighter, hazier rendering-- told with a much different breed of melancholy than cohen's. the transformation is complete enough, however, that it doesn't interfere with the original. it compliments it, and it does so beautifully.
