William Never Married

The sole line of writing I contributed to this Open Five 2 entry was a parenthetical caption that speculated on whether I just like any ol' movie with a dirty windshield. I'm also inclined to like movies with fireworks.

William Never Married begins with fireworks, and then a medium shot of a person with fireworks behind her,

and then a closeup of the person with fireworks behind her.

(It was easy for me to double-check this sequence because, as of right now, the full feature is available online and for free.)

Fireworks strike me as excellent material for cinema, 'cause their size and color "work" visually, and 'cause they can connect a person with a reallife memory that's likely to be positive and special. So right away I liked William Never Married, directed, co-written, and co-edited by Christian Palmer, who also stars, because it began by gifting me with a cinematic treat. Sometimes you can watch an entire lowbudge movie and not receive a single cinematic treat.

The reasons I like dirty windshields are unrelated to the reasons I like fireworks, and it's their nonrelation that's important, vital -- these things feel like good launching points for discussing cinema and reality and the way reality interacts with cinema.

To summarize, basically, unrelated things (or dissimilar things, like reality and artificiality) can end up complimenting each other and achieve a cinematic harmony, if the person making the movie wants to do this.

Like many conversations about cinema, this one has precedent in a quote by Jean-Luc Godard, who said "the cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't."

Whether one wants to call cinema art, it's a thing someone has to create for it to exist. Cameras and editing and maybe other things are used to create cinema. Conversations about reality and artificiality in relation to cinema are sometimes kind of confusing, 'cause one sometimes feels that these lines are arbitrary, and ideas about "limited manipulation" and "artistic emphasis" can become fuzzy, and overwhelming, and sometimes the conversations are frustrating because a person can try very hard to steer the conversation one way or another, and anyway maybe sometimes one doesn't want to have the conversation. So instead of that conversation, I'll talk about William Never Married, while secretly talking about this. Or maybe I'm talking about this and secretly talking about William Never Married. Anyway,

by beginning with fireworks, I feel like Palmer began with specialness, and that specialness is related to consideration (if it's selected, which these fireworks were), and that cinema takes special consideration.

In this movie, which can lean toward the poetic (e.g. fireworks), the characters are the dirty windshields,

the thing that might not exist in a movie that attempted to clean material in order to deliver it germ-free to the audience. The lead in William Never Married is a depressive alcoholic whose sufferings are sometimes external and always internal.

The character's depression and alcoholism have the melodramatic gravity they do in real life -- they can seem ridiculous, unnecessary, too much. Obviously wrong. One sortof wishes he'd "snap out of it." I felt uncomfortable sometimes.

In this way, William Never Married has the open-eyes open-heart quality that I like in cinema. I like when a movie is faithful to its characters first, and I like when the cinematic machine is used to mine something out of the character, and help the audience discover the substance of the character.

During a movie like this beautiful collisions can occur between cinema and its reality. A thing can be shown in a special way that enhances the emotional comprehension without subtracting from the reality of the moment, such as the above shot, a god's eye pov. Here the technique doesn't damage the sense of reality.

There's a funny thing about productions -- it seems like with lots of resources and time a moviemaker can go further in crafting reality, but one knows or senses the large apparatus controlling the reality, and with limited resources and time the reality can be automatic or pre-supposed, and one knows or senses the tininess of the apparatus.

However tiny the apparatus is, it exists, and why should it be disregarded, if it can't be dispensed with. Some lowbudge movies seems like they're saying "this was just happening and we stuck a camera there, believe it. BELIEVE IT." For example Snow on Tha Bluff, a movie I like for many reasons, forces a framing device that I feel kindof cheapens the movie, 'cause I don't understand why a moviemaker would have to insist that what's happening is reality (and like, if that's supposed to help you imagine the movie is reality, why use the imagination in such a limited and duplicitous way).

Instead, it seems better to insist that the person in the movie is feeling this thing or that thing, and that what's happening on screen is the best possible representation of a multi-layered reality of living moments.

A moviemaker can't dig more truth out of reality, which just is what it is, but a moviemaker can add truths to reality, I think.

Open Five 2

(think I like any movie with a dirty windshield)

"There is a degree to which I don't have older people in the movies because I don't want there to be an easy relation point for everyone. Like sorta, okay, so -- you're an older actor, if you see an older person in these movies you sort of see his perspective, or her perspective, and you think 'oh, I can find my way into this.' But if you don't have that, you're sort of left adrift. That's an interesting experience for me. You're sort of having to go through this world and not be -- like, you don't know anybody at the party, okay so, you have to go talk to somebody, that you don't feel comfortable with, or you have to just leave and go home. Both are reasonable responses, but I think that's an interesting kick off."

"As far as themes, I don't work with themes until the editing. And very loosely in the editing. I try to steer as clear from themes as possible. I don't think that they can be reduced to a theme. Um. I don't even know what the theme would be. I think they're about relationships, and trying to build a comprehensive view of my relationship and my friend's relationship -- not entirely comprehensive, but just trying to come at it from different angles."

"I don't always want to make films this insular. I realize that there's issues outside of myself. And, um. But. I think, that that stuff will come, and I'm not in a rush to change the subject, to change the world that I've spent a couple years trying to establish, and I'm not in a rush to create something else, or to get outside myself. But I will. But I don't think insularity cripples the films, and I don't think they come and go so quickly, I don't think that these films -- I think they'll be around."

(quotes from)

St. Nick

St. Nick strikes me as a kind of folk movie, in that it draws from its own self, and seems faithful to itself  above all. Like, it sings a song of its own soul, with the voice of cinema.

The narrative evokes thoughts and feelings about self-searching and urgent discovery, and the speed of the movie is true to its characters, children (who are gifted with a mostly clockless existence), and its settings of fields and rundown homes and other outskirts of civilization.

It's sort of off the grid, minding its own, and unhurried by unseen troubles.

Is it a children's movie? In every wonderful way: its content is child friendly, its main characters are children, and most important to me, I felt like a child when I watched the movie. It has the sensitivity of a child and somehow -- a product of its art -- the movie vibrated with mystery and wonder, like the world does for a child.

The movie is fluent in the language of cinema. David Lowery (writer/director/editor) and dp Clay Liford demonstrate such good taste that was I reminded of the classic Hawks quotes about "three great scenes, no bad ones" and that a good director is "someone who doesn't annoy you."

St. Nick is a warm and lyrical movie that's essentially faultless.

A thing that's difficult to demonstrate in this format is Lowery's skill for cinematic grammar. The narrative is essentially a wallless series of drifting vignettes. Events occur late in the movie to help provide an overall context, but the bulk of the structure exists inter-sequence, emotion to emotion.

Cinema, from the inside out.

Doctor Detroit

"there is no doctor."
"there is if you believe in him brother."

argentine writer césar aira has this idea he calls "flight forward" that basically means he never allows himself to feel stuck as a writer cause at any point he can invent something to unstick himself. seems like this concept has always existed, but i like that aira cherishes it to the point that it's gifted a name and implemented as a central feature.

doctor detroit, directed by michael pressman (tmnt ii: secret of the ooze) is a silly fun movie that ignores the weight of reality in order to allow the imagination flight.

a character in doctor detroit making a face one might make while watching doctor detroit

basically the entire movie is a "flight forward" cause it's the telling of the creation of a character invented by another character at the story's beginning. what happens is this pimp can't repay his business partner (named mom) the 60k he owes, and so invents a person named doctor detroit, who then must be made real. associate professor clifford skridlow (dan aykroyd) is the person trapped into this role, which role is mostly the opposite of his normal everyday role, although the plus side is the task allows him to access parts of himself previously unrealized.

the invention of doctor detroit prompts a series of problems which in turn require more inventiveness. the movie, thankfully, often uses fun as an ingredient of invention.

to me its value seems to be not so much an examination of an interior self or the root of human problems, but a stimulation of the human animal's creative faculties and a reminder of infinite possibility.

Dispatch from AFI: Post Tenebras Lux

the greater los angeles area has over 17.9 million people, a stat which i think makes the area endlessly fascinating and surprising. one interesting city and an OK place to live i think.

but fact is, because we're all different from each other and live our lives in at least slightly different ways, there are 17.9 million+ great los angeles areas, because each person creates their own metropolitan area through personal experience and perspective.

carlos reygadas, director of post tenebras lux (after dark, light)(FYI), has proven in each of his four movies that the spectrum of human experiences exist within each person regardless of geographical location or network size. 

each person, to the toppest highs to the lowest lows, contains the full ingredients. and only a moviemaker like reygadas, who seems to care in a deep and earnest way about each person he places in front of the camera, is able to make this point. 

i feel like reygadas might possibly lol at the idea of a "supporting character," or in other words a person whose perspective is a narrative or structural obligation. i feel like reygadas wouldn't insert a character in order to insert a character. i feel like reygadas cares about his characters in a way that suggests a person who cares about people too much to reduce them to narrative ornamentation. he's a moviemaker who holds on characters for extended periods but with shots so cinematically hypnotic and captivating and compelling that his longest shots feel short. any cinephile in 2012 can tell you how rare that quality is. you don't hold long to hold long -- something lives in the duration of a shot, in pure duration (which itself is a symbol of the human condition), and reygadas, i feel, knows what lives in the light, in the shadows, in the space of time, and elsewhere.

he probably doesn't know, of course. but he's curious. and i think the curious are brave. i really do.

The Gate ('87)

This prequel to Sofia Coppola's Somewhere stars Stephen Dorff as Glen, a little boy who's afraid of black magic and demons and flies into hysterics over every bad or scary thing that happens and makes repeat demands that on-vacation parents be called and sobs in front of people and feels shame about over-emoting in front of people so hides in his room. Basically, it's a close cinematic match to my personal memories of being a boy.

Glen is such a fucking kid, which I think means Dorff was a good child actor,

AND GLEN IS TOTALLY JUSTIFIED, by the way, in being terrified by the evil-seeming world. There is evil in the world,
the evil is in the backyard.
!!!!!!!!!
Yaaaaay :)

There seem to be a high number of 80s genre movies that promise to deliver fantasy and fun and then deliver those things. I like how inventive they feel -- maybe a lot of contemporary multiplex movies feel less inventive to me because they're not original stories but remakes and adaptations and well you know.

I kept waiting for The Gate to run out of steam. It does not run out of steam FYI. The script is by Michael Nankin, who co-wrote and co-directed the cult-classic Midnight Madness. The script is often sharp and playful, and crisp, and pops. Popcorn dialogue.

Glen has a nice arc about discovering his capacity for courage, and also I like his friend Terry (Louis Tripp, whose career it seems never quite took off), who also feels naturalistic and fleshed-out: he's a nerd/occultist/heavy metal fan (which nears my perception of IRL heavy metal fans) who grieves his mother's untimely death.

One might make the case that The Gate has subtext, but that subtext exists only though subjective interpretation, in some Todd Haynes-type semiotic deconstructionist pov, concerning maybe suburbia and fear of the unknown, if one wanted to make that case. It'd be interesting I bet. If any of that makes sense it's true, I swear.

But overall I think it's the kind of movie that it's best not to overthink. I sat back and experienced the movie and was rewarded with surges of pleasurable adventure. I'm happy to say director Tibor Takács, whose other work is unfamiliar to me, has a sharp eye for cinematics.

I like it as a black magic movie because I don't think black magic is serious. As a godless person I dislike religious black magic movies, like Catholic horror movies, because they're too serious. There are some exceptions, like Alucarda, which treats the devil in the way I think he works: as an absurdity.

In summary, good job here everyone. The Gate is good. Good job :)

Barbara Kopple Accepts Academy Award for Harlan County USA

Taxi zum Klo

"You see, I like men. I'm thirty and a teacher by profession. Otherwise I'm your normal, jaded, neurotic, polymorphously perverse teacher. I radically separate my job from my private life and pleasures."

Frank Ripploh directs himself in Taxi zum Klo, a confessional autobiography.

It's like Half-Nelson if Half-Nelson was about sex not drugs, and if it'd been directed by the I Am Curious (Yellow) director.

The density of Ripploh's admissions -- the extent of his insight into himself -- creates cohesive and lush textures and vibrant emotions and

light, poetic details. It's like if Weekend had been made by the Little Fugitive people and this was one person.

This movie has most of my fav qualities, it's: earnest, candid, humorous, warm, curious, passionate, creative.

Lots of sex. Gay sex. Ripploh is a gay swinger -- I care about judging this lifestyle about as much as he does. Which is not at all. There's a no-limits feeling, like Ripploh is willing to expose every part of himself. This Is How I Am Human, without barriers. In America right now we have people like Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow who make movies that are admissions of normalcy, and I think they do the same kind of thing, except they tend to take me places I've already been. Their narratives are kind of boring I think. Their lives are kind of boring I guess, it doesn't seem like they try to enlarge one's perspective of the world, it seems like they accept the world as it is and try to be mellow and not piss anyone off. I don't know, maybe they should try to shake things up a bit some time, maybe, I don't know. Just saying I'd rather hang out with Ripploh.

 Just saying.

 The fact that he's a teacher doesn't scare me. All people are horrible and some of them have to be teachers also -- I don't think Ripploh is particularly horrible and I don't think he "corrupts" the children. If my nieces had a teacher like Ripploh they'd be cooler, probably. They're pretty cool I'm just saying.

Ripploh can kick it with people who don't share his lifestyle. He's comfortable being himself and lacks obvious insecurities about his character or his sexual orientation. That's cool.

Ripploh reminds me of Portland. He reminds me of infinite possibility. He reminds me there's no mold -- and reminds me that those who ignore the molds are most interesting. He reminds me to be myself as much as fucking possible. He, I guess, helps me with my memory. His art is the type that connects with my sense of self and encourages me to expand and be fearless and honest and adventurous.

Good movie :)

The Brown Bunny

"i've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. i have everything in my life that i want. i'm not a walking publicity stunt. i'm not an anarchist, or bitter. i'm not trying to be subversive. i just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and i feel comfortable that way." vincent gallo

there's the story in the bell jar about the poet esther eats with at a fancy restaurant, where everyone but the poet is dressed a certain way, and the poet uses his hands to eat his salad, "one piece of lettuce at a time." and no one whispers or stares at him rudely. esther uses this story to communicate her belief that it's not one's knowledge of a table fork's intended use that's essential, but that the fork handler has confidence.

basically, i'm comparing vincent gallo with that poet in the restaurant. that's how i see him -- eating lettuce with his hands in a fancy restaurant.

a single restaurant couldn't be analogous to all of cinema, there'd have to be multiple restaurants, because it seems clear that not everyone wants the same cinematic food.

it's difficult to imagine a theater full of random people all liking and feeling positive about the brown bunny, based on people i know and movies that are popular. but because it doesn't appeal to everyone doesn't mean it wasn't made for everyone. this is important. gallo made his movie in a very specific way, but by all accounts (and i feel when watching the movie that) his intention was to make the movie for everyone. brown bunny doesn't operate on and isn't enriched by exclusionary cultural references or extraneous background knowledge.

the brown bunny exists as an unmappable curiosity, fine-tuned liked a person. its weight comes not from cinema, but from cinematic realness.

it wasn't a popular movie, with the audience or with critics. in the recent sight and sound poll, brown bunny received one vote: american moviemaker josh safdie (pleasure of being robbed), who also voted milestones, korine's julien donkey-boy, and a maurice pialat movie.

i feel deep and meaningful connections to the brown bunny, more than i do with the majority of movies i see (and i see so many movies) and i guess that means things that don't appeal to everyone have the same capacity for personal meaning as movies that appeal to a greater number of people.

two weeks ago or thereabouts, over a shared bottle of sake, i told my roommate a problem i had was i wanted to see a movie in the theater but there wasn't a movie in the theater i wanted to see. and again he became mad at me for not wanting to see the dark knight rises. it's his favorite routine. it's either the dark night rises or fincher's girl with the dragon tattoo or slumdog millionare or some other movie. i sense that he wants me to see these movies not because i might like them, but because he likes them so much.

amid my explanations for not wanting to see the dark knight rises, he accused me of not wanting to see the movie because it's popular. he was so off it startled me. we weren't having the same conversation. it took me a day and a half to figure out where the assumption came from. i realized there's this perception that the popularity of a movie has meaning -- that the numbers themselves have a meaning. this doesn't occur to me, not because i'm anti-numbers, but simply because numbers don't have the same meaning for me.

i like community, and i want it from cinema, but there are other things i want.

there are other things i want more.

based on my familiarity with the type of movie the dark knight rises is, and its maker, and based on its trailers, the movie isn't my bag. my specific bag. it's not the thing i die for. and i might like the movie, when and if i see it, i might be totally wrong. but nothing about it immediately sings to me, and don't we all follow the things that sing to us?

when a movie plays in the theater that sings to me, like solondz's dark horse, or hansen-løve's goodbye first love, the value isn't related to b.o. receipts or attendance. that stuff doesn't matter in an ultimate sense. and a lot of people talk about how it's the business end and a lot of people talk about how it does matter, but the truth comes to people when they sit alone in the theater and experience the movie.

only the movie matters.

while having domestic squabbles with the local multiplex i can sometimes forget there are these really wonderful american movies, and i think that's because some of the most wonderful don't play in multiplexes. many american movies i think are really wonderful aren't popular, for one reason or another, and by popular i mean they don't get mentioned in glossy magazines or chatted about too much on television and people don't go to see them and things like that.

i don't at all think the pure fact of them being underseen or unappreciated makes them important or unimportant, culturally or otherwise. that's like thinking the person who's talking the loudest or whispering the quietest has the most valid opinion by virtue of their speaking volume.

this doesn't apply strictly to independents either. when five-year engagement and the avengers were in the theater at the same time i asked my friend, who's a big alison brie fan, if the friend had seen five-year engagement, in which the supporting actors alison brie and chris pratt outperform the movie's leads, in my opinion. my friend told me he hadn't seen five-year engagement, that he doesn't go to the theater often, and that he chose to see the avengers because it was the more "culturally important" movie. well, i remember alison brier's wedding speech in five-year engagement better than i remember anything from the avengers. i took more from five-year engagement than the avengers. facts. but i don't blame my friend, i think the summer's first blockbuster, by a talented moviemaker with an exciting and huge cast of people, has many reasons for being seen, and i think a lot of blockbusters offer tremendous riches. prometheus was a pot of gold. abe lincoln vamp hunter had a lengthy action sequence that took place within, and used as weapons, stampeding horses, in 3d. snow white and the huntsman doesn't just have a magical godlike white unicorn that reigns over a lushly fantastical forest specialworld, the movie also uses this unicorn creature for a major dramatic beat. you can't not make this stuff up. skipping the dark knight rises i take the risk of missing riches. but you can't see everything, right, so we each make these little judgments about how we're going to spend our time based on the information we have about the thing and about ourselves.

we follow what sings to us. the voice that sings to me is weird and not the same voice everyone else hears, and sometimes i hate it for that, tell you the truth. and then in stronger moments i know and believe that if others aren't hearing it, i have more personal responsibility about remembering its song.

i'm arguing with imaginary people.

gallo, right, the brown bunny, right. right right right.

gallo does despair, as he does all things, without the traditional accompaniment of self-pity and self-consciousness. he doesn't apologize for having emotions.

the twisted confidence of his misery makes it a mini-miracle. if you've ever been around a person or people and had a bad feeling, and apologized to the person or people for having that bad feeling, there's a strength to be acquired through gallo and his art.

the brown bunny is about bud clay (vincent gallo) feeling miserable while driving across america to los angeles. and i think the movie, by its patience and focus, captures many shades of misery that are important.

both this movie and buffalo 66 have a lead collapsing inward on a very specific feeling.

until the movie's end one might not identify the brown bunny's central feeling as a specific emotion, (a large number of people would describe the movie through their own emotion, boredom,) but the attentive viewer senses an emotion hovering outside frame.

and car trips in general and the specific shots of this trip engender complex feelings about traveling -- the literal experience of traveling, reasons for traveling, feelings stirred by traveling, memories of travel, etc.

over backstreets, passing white-shingled two-stories in the middle of bug-splatters and gas stations and highways and days turned to nights, one senses a feeling chases bud, and one senses a feeling bud chases.

the first spoken word, "hi," comes at 6:27. bud to the country girl.

whom he ditches, promoting a feeling other than misery, or at least a compound misery. something like anger, disapproval, objection.

bud's misery takes the shape of its environment.

sometimes the movie doesn't feel miserable.

things other than misery take place.

i think the movie is actually a quiet war against misery.

or at least an investigation into misery.

its despair has a confessional tone that lends it a sense of earnestness. bud, a victim of tragedy, victimizes others, creating new tragedies. he's stuck in the cycle of humanness that pains him. he buzzes with pure and innocent fear. one notices his downcast eyes. his short replies. (his conversational goal seems to be to speak as little as possible without appearing rude.)

the divergent emotional textures have roughly each the same value in an eventless and drifting narrative. gallo doesn't emphasize emotions, doesn't suggest one is more important or greater than the other. this indifference is the indifference of a reality beyond the camera.

the movie makes me feel tender. i want to take care of buddy. didn't i begin this piece by defending buddy, by rooting for him? the movie draws it out of me, triggers my instincts to protect the weak. and that's because buddy's imperfections are as clear as his humanness and his frailty.

and i feel for him. for 93 beautiful minutes.