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To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

Subject: Knives, The Third Day Comes and Love Streams

Dear Ray Carney,

I am writing you in the hopes that you might be able to help me find the three plays that Cassavetes put on at the Center Theater in the eighties (Knives, Love Streams and The Third Day Comes, by Allan). All three of them have been really hard to find, even The Third Day Comes. I was wondering if you might be able to point me onto the road to finding them. I would really love to find a way to put them on in a way of learning a bit more about Cassavetes and the difficulties in what he was trying to do, to help me find what I'm trying to do.

I wanted to say this first in the letter but I wanted to get right to the point off the back, but you have really helped me while I was going through school and learning what film was and is. Your books on Cassavetes, Capra and especially Dreyer really helped guide me to the right films to learn from and that could actually change me in a lot of ways. His films and life are really something to learn from in really unconventional ways. I've only just started going through the writing and interviews you've done about the Rowlands conflict and that Cassavetes documentary. Even that tension and denial has started to inform the way his work was reflected in the world and on the people involved in it in a really interesting way, in the way that all work exist in an inter-subjective time
frame/spiral/flow. But most importantly the lasting effects of a drive like his.

Anyway, I wanted to say thank you again for all that and all that direction I received from you and your books. I would really appreciate even the smallest response you could give to help me find these plays because I really want to learn what they have to teach me about the moment and Cassavetes' view of the moment and time. Thank you again and I hope to talk or hear from you soon.

Please feel free to contact me any way you wish (omitted contact information).

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Kevin Hooper

RC replies:

Subject: water and a rock

Kevin,

Good to hear from you. Nice to meet you, even via electron! I appreciate your kind words about my writing. I get many similar emails, you might imagine, but most don't understand the other, deeper point you are making about how the current states of "denial" and "resistance" (by Gena Rowlands, Al Ruban, Seymour Cassel, and others) to my discoveries concerning Cassavetes are actually very important in helping us understand his films and career in general. Yes, as Freud was not the first to observe, resistance is a very very telling fact. Or, as I put it in an essay somewhere: "The lies tell us much more than the truth ever could have." Cover-ups are very revealing. I have had some experience with that at my own university. Considerable experience. I am currently putting the final touches on a book about that by the way. But enough on that subject for now. Suffice it to say that Cassavetes' battle was an uphill one, a battle often waged against even those who might presumably be thought to have been closest to him in spirit and art.

As a point of information, connected with your inquiry: Keep in mind that Cassavetes wrote many other plays beyond the two you mention. You don't want to limit your search only to those titles. And, beyond the plays, he left many other unproduced film scripts behind at his death, many of them even more important artistically than the two plays by him and the one by Ted Allan you name. Here's a shopping list: She's Delovely (no relation to the dreadful Nick Cassavetes - Sean Penn movie), Friends and Enemies, Dead Silent, South of North, Begin the Beguine, Son, East/West Game, Woman of Mystery, the 16-years-later sequel to Gloria, and many many others. And many treatments and a few sketches or short short stories. And there is also the Husbands novel, of course. All 413 pages of it.

To your specific question: I have copies of all of the major works named above and many others (many of them gifts from the filmmaker) but as you can piece together from the accounts on the site about her previous treatment of me, Gena would fry me, destroy and ravage and ruin me (legally and financially speaking I mean) if I started distributing copies (which as you are well aware would certainly be published -- in violation of copyright laws -- on the internet or elsewhere within nanoseconds of being sent to all of the people who have requested them from me). Or, just as bad, put up for sale on eBay. (Ah, the lure of money. Who can resist it in our culture? Do you have a single friend you could really really trust not to ever xerox this material and distribute -- or sell -- it, if you sent it him or her? I'd be hard-pressed to name anyone even in my circle of friends. People are so weak. And the twin pull of money and popularity is so powerful, so morally compromising.)

I have practically begged Rowlands on bended knee to make these written materials (and other works, including the new works and outtakes and audio material I have discovered which I have not announced) available to researchers, scholars, and the general public. I have offered to contact publishers on her behalf. I have asked her to deposit the material in a scholarly archive. I have offered to advise her on the presentation and editing of it. Etc. Etc. Etc. In short, I have done more than you or the rest of the world will ever know to try to let others see these things. But, alas, I have gotten nowhere. Nowhere. At this point she refuses even to respond to my inquiries. Even the courtesy of a simple reply to my letters is now being withheld. So that's where Gena is on the subject.

So I'm sorry to say that that's how things now stand. I'm sorry I can't be more encouraging. Or more helpful. The works I have named above (less the two you are attempting to obtain than the others I have listed) have the potential completely to change our understanding of Cassavetes' life and work. But I guess the world will have to wait longer for that to happen.

All best wishes,

Ray

P.S. Oops. I forgot to mention a whole other group of material: The early drafts of the scripts -- e.g. the play versions of Woman Under the Influence and Faces, and the drafts of many of the films from Too Late Blues through Love Streams. These scripts are often completely different from the shooting scripts and the released films, and constitute, in effect, new and unknown works by Cassavetes.

P.P.S. I taught a course a few years ago that used a lot of this material. Click on this link to read the syllabus. It may contain information of use to you.

A note from RC: This arrived in my Inbox from Hisham Bizri, a former Boston University film student (one of the best ever to study in the program) who is currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. He wrote me, and we had an exchange about the difference between "Vermont wooden" and "Roman marble" winters and about the joys of teaching and being able to pursue new artistic interests throughout life and to forever keep growing. In my response, I also made a brief comment about the triviality of most films and most American film education (including the education offered to students at my own institution), and about the difference between the silliness of what passes for art in film and the true depths of artistic expression in older and more mature arts like literature, drama, music, and poetry. I wanted to share Hisham's brief reply to my comments, and especially his list of favorite films, which like everything else about him, is the product of a lot of thought and experience. (I invite readers to submit their own "top ten"lists.) -- R.C.

Ray

Yes, it is a wonderful thing to have the time to constantly grow.Film is increasingly in decline and becoming really silly.I keep making short films and I love doing it. I recently finished a silent film called SONG FOR THE DEAF EAR and I am working on a feature script and another short shot here in Rome. I am closer than ever to Brakhage and Max Ophüls.

I miss seeing you. You left a marvelous love for cinema in me. I am forever grateful to you. And by the way the longer I am away from you the more I understand what you were doing 20 years ago in the classes I took with you. Thank you.Enjoy the snow. Now all you need is a good Sirk film.

Love,

Hisham

I think you will enjoy my list of favorite films:

1. Arabic Series (Stan Brakhage, 1981)
2. Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
3. Gertrud (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1964)
4. Genroku Chushingura (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1942)
5. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1946); Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
6. Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
7. The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk, 1957)
8. Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
9. Schwechater (Peter Kubelka, 1958); Angel (Joseph Cornell, 1957)
10. Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)

Strictly for larks and laughs and fun. (However unusual the question she asks me, I love this writer's spirit and sense of humor!) -- R.C.

Subject: QUICK question!!!

Wow, I just came across your site.... YOU ARE A MANIAC!!!

AMAZING, so much to read and take in. I'm thrilled by your enthusiasm and desire to uncover and preserve the work and related information to Cassavetes' life and films.

NOW... don't worry - I don't have any longwided question about anything I can probably find the answer by reading through your site.The DEPTH and DETAIL you go into regarding all the information, the way you connect all of it and are so thorough in presenting it... this might sound weird but, I have to know - what astrological sign are you!?Sorry if that is weird or personal, it's not on Wikipedia. Me and my sister google people's birthdates and things like that often. I am no astrology expert but I want to take a guess... your extreme detail and passion for the truth, thoroughness and analysis makes me want to think you are a Virgo (also being one myself - I hope you are) BUT my backup guesses would have to be if not Virgo, you are a Gemini or Aquarius??

Please let me know! QUICK answer!!!

I could not find this on the internet.I don't know what other sign would devote this much time, effort and PRECISION on such a task and life work. I'm glad you exist and am excited to learn more about JC through your site and books. Time tryeth truth. Keep fighting the good fight.

Nicole

RC replies:

Dear Nicole,

I may be a MANIAC, but (based on the energy level of your email), I must say back at ya: SO ARE YOU, Nicole! And that's a compliment! All the best people are crazzzzzzzzy! It's the only way to go. Read what I say about God's love on one of the last pages of the Mailbag for more on that subject. All real love, real feeling, real existence is--as I recently told a friend who wrote to me about seeing extreme skiing on TV --extreme living. Why should the extremity be left to the athletes? Our lives should be LIVED and FELT and EXPERIENCED the way my friend's skiers went down the slopes. The problem with most people is that they live from their heads and ideas too much, and keep their emotions under glass. So, in short: Go girl, go! And stay crazy! (Above all: avoid plugging your brain into any fashionable "ideologies"--racial, gender, cultural, or any other. They are strictly for zombies -- dead-end destinations for the brain-dead!)

To answer your question: My b-day is Feb. 28 and that makes Pisces my sun sign. A tiny wriggly flowing frisking frolicking fishy. See? It's a water sign. That's the key to understanding Pisces: flow, flexibility, freedom, movement. (Read Emerson's "Circles" for more on the liquidity of the universe. It was a little joke to myself when I posted it. Click here to read it.)

Please tell me about yourself. What are your wishes and dreams? What are your interests, weaknesses, fears, doubts, hopes? What is your point of craziness? What is your enforced sanity? Those things are all more interesting to me than facts because they represent the inner life, not the unimportant outer. But look who's getting personal now. Don't reveal anything you want to keep secret. We're all bundles of black dark holes and it's ok that we're that way and stay that way. All of life is a great mystery. Praise be for that.

Cheers,

Ray

There is an ongoing if sporadic thread that runs through the last five or six pages of the Mailbag relating to audience responses to different kinds of cinematic experiences. Viewers can be so stupid sometimes -- so easily manipulated with cliches, or so easily frustrated or confused by anything a little different from what they are used to. To illustrate the point, the following notes about screening experiences came in from a student I recently had in a Boston University course on indie film. -- R.C.

.... I liked the posts on Rachel Getting Married. I also just saw Milk, and when I didn't love it as much as everyone surrounding me, I started to worry that I might have actually learned something in the process of getting my film degree. Milk had more nuance than a typical biopic, certainly, but I just felt like it was Hollywood latching onto an important figure in the hopes that the film would be important-by-association. I remember you talking about this a bit in the indie film class. There were moments when I could hear the audience laughing or crying or something, and it seemed like the movie didn't earn those reactions but it got them simply because it was a movie about someone who people care about. Kind of a scam.

Also just saw Happy Go Lucky and really enjoyed it. But what I enjoyed more were the row of people in front of me who actually walked out in the middle of it and said, and this is an exact quote, "This sucks. Let's go shopping." Wait, did I say I enjoyed that? I meant it depressed me horribly.
.... I would love to see a discussion of Slumdog Millionaire. (A note from Ray Carney: see the invitation for commentary on the film on the preceding Mailbag page 121.) Personally, I think it's a sign of just how unremarkable (or maybe remarkably awful) 2008 was for mainstream cinema that what is basically a super-glossy children's fairy tale is being lauded as the best film of the year while Rachel Getting Married and Happy-Go-Lucky are dismissed as "small." At the same time, at least it is a film sort of about human beings, unlike The Dark Knight, which I guess was Product Placement: The Movie.

Rob Turbovsky

American indie news: Andrew Bujalski's new and eagerly awaited film, Beeswax, will receive its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Advice to German site readers: Skip the glitzy parties, glamorous VIP events, and glittery movie star appearances, and fight for a ticket for this screening. The writer - director of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation is one of America's most important filmmakers and a new work by him is an important cultural event. He is taking the pulse of the young and the idealistic, painting a group portrait of what we can look forward to from the best and the brightest. Be there or be cubical. -- R.C.

Dan Schneider sent me the following quote that I wanted to share with site readers:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- George Bernard Shaw

I received an email from someone asking advice on getting his work shown at a specific film festival -- one of many I make programming recommendations to. Since I don't want to jeopardize his chances of getting his film accepted by revealing his name, I am only printing my reply (slightly rewritten and edited to remove references that would identify the specific festival). The advice may be of use to other young filmmakers. -- R.C.

Dear xxxx,

It's a terrific festival. I advise them on programming. But bear in mind like every fest (I know of no exceptions) they are very conservative. Aesthetically I mean. It's the kiss of death if something looks "amateurish" or "cheap" or if it looks like a "student film." I don't know about your film, but this describes most of the movies I've loved in the past ten years. Even the best of them -- if they are ragged, jagged, rough, or unkempt -- have been rejected from that fest, so don't take it too hard if yours doesn't make the cut. It's the old-fashioned desire to present "beautiful," "pretty," "well-made" art. The art museums got over it around 1910, but film appreciation is still in the grip of the 19th century cult of beauty and virtuosity. (That's why Cassavetes still loses out to the Coen brothers for the David Denbys and Tony Scotts of the world. Gorgeousness, prettiness always wins with Philistines.)

XXX is the person to write. I'm sure the address is on the site. If you send your disk in he is the one who will personally l look at it. But please, please---DON'T EVER SAY I said the fest. was aesthetically conservative! XXXX will just get mad at you and me both. That's the way the world of adults works. No one, not Bush and Cheney, or Bin Laden, or Hitler, or the people I work with can take criticism. No one ever thinks he or she is doing things wrong, has made a mistake, or is "conservative" -- in my metaphor. Humankind cannot take too much reality or truth. Write that backwards on your forehead and read it every morning in the mirror. It's the sad truth of the world and the human soul. Criticism is never acceptable no matter how constructive or noble its motives. Never!

Ray Carney

Received this in the mail the other day. I print the research request and my reply. To her credit, I must add that the researcher wrote back and said that she understood and, to some extent, agreed with my comments and did not take offense at them. That's one for the calendar. -- R.C.

Dear Professor Carney

This is an invitation for you to take part in an academic research study on Reality Television conducted by Cheryl-Anne Whitlock, a Master of Arts research student at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. The study is titled Is manipulation within the construct of Reality Television ethical? PURPOSEThe purpose of this study is to investigate whether manipulation of the narrative, in order to tell a more dramatic story, is ethical. The research will also investigate theoretical and academic pressures imposed on the genre and compare these to the practical production process. That is, how others think Reality TV should be made compared to how it is made. The research will investigate whether there is a gap between theory and practice and if there is, how this gap might be closed to the benefit of everyone who is keen to further the success of the genre. If you choose to participate, your valuable contribution could greatly help practitioners in the field understand more clearly the role that ethics can play in the construction of Reality TV programming.

RESEARCHERCheryl-Anne WhitlockSchool of Journalism and Creative Writing, Faculty of Creative Arts

I replied:

Best wishes on your research. But I think I'll take a pass.Some easy and quick reasons:

1. Virtually all television is immoral, if we understand immorality as wasting our time, cheapening our lives, distracting us from what matters (the world, life, personal experience, truth), debasing our understanding of and appreciation for the sacredness, the specialness of being human. That immorality applies to virtually all American television, including the network and cable evening news broadcasts, and all but a few PBS documentaries. All but a tiny fraction of them are immoral.

2. I've never watched a "reality show" TV program and don't intend to. See number 1 for the explanation. For the same reasons, I don't watch the network or cable evening news shows either.
See number 1 for the explanation.Cheers,

Ray

A postscript from Ray Carney to site readers: For more on the subject of the dumbing-down of America by newspapers, television, the internet, and the other mass media, I highly recommend an essay by George Saunders titled "The Braindead Megaphone." It's a scream. And very smart. (So absurd has mainstream culture become that the most valuable insights nowadays can only be expressed through comedy. As George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor understood, the truth is so different from our customary world-view that it plays like a comedy routine.) "The Braindead Megaphone" is the title essay in one of Saunders's recent books, which should be available in paperback in any well-stocked bookstore.

Subject: Slumdog Millionaire

A few colleagues and I recently went to a screening of Slumdog. Of them, I'm the only one that frequents your site, but I know that we all have a mindset similar to yours when it comes to art. I surmise from your wording (referring to whether Slumdog is "transcendent" or just a "flash in the pan") that you consider it art either way. I see nothing exceptional in this film to separate it from the mound of "oscar contenders." Nothing to lift it from those depths and allow us to rank it alongside even the weaker efforts in this medium. What would help its cause? Surely not the insistence on tension, coincidence, the future, and anticipation. Not the poor caricatures that Boyle tries to pass of as people, including the villainous talk show host and the generic lines of dialogue. Not the snippets of Mumbai's history on display, often obscured by action and excitement. Not the contrived American couple, giving young Jamil a taste of "the real America." Not the angular camerawork (a stylistic choice, but one I'm not a fan of). A few genuinely human moments of longing and love can not overcome anything, and even those are presented in an unbelievable manner.

Those are just my thoughts. I'd love to hear yours and the thoughts of your other readers, so please do commit a page to Slumdog.

Alex Landry

Subject: a belly laugher

thought you might "enjoy" this.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/jim-carrey

Kris Price

RC replies:

Dear Kris,

I agree, the Atlantic Monthly article is a howl. What a joke. What a sick joke. I'll never understand why Hollywood celebrities make most writers' brains drop out of their heads. What is it about being rich and famous that makes even -- supposedly -- smart people drooling idiots? And makes The Atlantic -- a supposedly smart magazine (supposedly) -- print this piece of star-struck sycophancy? Carrey as a great actor? Carrey as a courageous actor? Give me a break. What was it that George Orwell said? Something like: There are some things so stupid that only a professor (or an intellectual) could believe them.

Carrey could have been an interesting actor, but he chose to go for easy laughs and big money. So many potentially interesting American actors sell their souls the same way. Compare Nick Cage's or Christopher Walken's student work, their first films, with their work of the last decade. They sold out. Just like Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro did. And more recently Sean Penn is on his way to doing. Gotta pay for that big house in Malibu.

A confession: Because of the antiquated state of my home computer (and the complete absence of a computer in my office) I had to go to the library to read the article about Carrey in a hard copy of the magazine. But the result was a happy accident. While I was turning the pages, looking for the piece about Carrey, I came across an amazing article by Caitlin Flanagan about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga, the first in a series of books about boy and girl vampires. Don't laugh. It's a beautifully sensitive, wonderfully perceptive piece about the emotional lives of teenage girls, and about why Meyer's books might appeal to teens and pre-teens. The beauty of Flanagan's observations is that they break completely free from the feminist clap-trap disseminated in most women's studies programs and the hog-wash broadcast on TV by Oprah, Dr. Phil, and comparable mass-media superstars. Flanagan actually tries to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what it is really like to be a girl today, sans the stupid feminist/gender studies theory about the oppressiveness of men and the absurd descriptions of the world in terms of power and dominance. Flanagan has written a wonderful, moving essay about life as it really is lived by teenagers, and indirectly shown us how different that is from our ideas and theories. (Click here to read her piece.)

So I guess there IS hope for The Atlantic after all. As long as the authors are not writing about rich and famous movie stars!

RC

P.S. I'd note parenthetically that we seem to be in the midst of a revival of interest in vampire love stories. For another take on the subject of vampire-lovers, see an essay by Nina Avedon about Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One, a Swedish vampire film on this page of the site. For younger readers, I'd emphasize that the genre antedates "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by many years. Three films I have often shown in my classes: Vampire's Kiss (starring a young Nick Cage), Casual Relations (by Mark Rapport), and Carl Dreyer's 1932 Vampyr are as interesting as anything done more recently in the genre.

A note to site visitors: I recently posted a new and heretofore unpublished interview with indie garage band filmmaker, David Ball, the writer-director of one of my favorite films of the past ten years -- the low budget masterwork, Honey. (It says a lot about the meretriciousness of American critics and reviewers that his film is not better known.) The interview with Ball is posted on this site page. I highly recommend his thoughts about making art in modern America. He and his film are true originals. -- R.C.

Subject: Cassavetes question

Hello Mr. Carney,

Let me first say that your work has deepened my knowledge and understanding of the work of John Cassavetes enormously. I first encountered his films when I was in my early twenties (some seven years ago now) and they made an immediate impact on me and I felt a deep connection with his work. Then I bought the 'Cassavetes onCassavetes' book, which provided me with a wealth of valuable background information and insight. After this initial encounter I didn't revisit his work again for some time, except for screening of'A Woman under the Influence' for my friends acouple of times. Anyway, a year or two ago Itook LSD for the first time and that had angigantic impact on my life, especially in the way I seethe world around me and my own place in that world. So when I watched most of Cassavetes's films again and read your book 'The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies' I felt an even deeper connection with his work, it was like seeing his films for the first time. Especially your idea that Cassavetes's work promotes an ideal of openness, of interaction andpattern-breakingreally struck a chord with me,mainly because it's exactly in accord with my own ideas, which I have developed after discovering LSD. So, I wanted to ask you this:what wasCassavetes'sopinion about LSD or other hallucinogenic,consciousness-altering drugs? Do you knowif he ever used it? The reason I'm asking is, thatin my opinionthe philosophy ofhisfilmshas verymuch incommon with the philosophy of psychonauts. I think Mabel Longhetti is only the most obvious example, her entire condition seems to beexactly the same as when taking acid: her openness and responsiveness break down the walls of standardized behavior(which is the same state one reaches when taking LSD), but at the same time it makes her vulnerable to outside influences, which of course is the same with LSD, where the wrong setting can cause problems for the user,exactly because he misses his normal protection. In short, LSD eliminates the ego temporarily, enabling the user to experiencethe world freely and truly, but it also makes him vulnerable and it seems to me this is pretty much the same that happens to the charactersin most Cassavetes films.

I hope you'll find some time to shed your light on this matter, it would be greatly appreciated!

Best,

Maikel Aarts

RC replies:

Subject: The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment

Maikel,

Though I can imagine the scorn and mockery and condescension that your inquiry would receive from certain quarters and certain individuals (our culture is very brain-dead --fear always makes people stupid -- when it comes to understanding drug references and drug experiences), I want to reply by saying that your understanding of Mabel Longhetti is a very deep and important one, and is in fact much closer to the truth of what Cassavetes was after when he created her and the situations in her film than many of the fashionable "feminist" understandings of her character and situation. So, yes, she is what you say she is--and more! Much more. But she doesn't need drugs to do it, which is of course a crucial point.

With respect to JC's personal experiences: He was a man of another generation than yours (or mine), and, along with many others in that generation, had his own "drug of choice"--alcohol. He was not at all a drug taker (beyond the very rare joint given to him by Seymour Cassel or someone else) and was not in the least sympathetic with what is now called "the psychedelic revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s. But, as my first paragraph suggests, he didn't have to be. In many respects, he lived the drug experience without the drugs. And that should be your goal too of course. Drugs can provide insights; yes they really can; but they are not the answer. They are a crutch to be put down and moved beyond by learning how to live "high" without the chemical assistance. In other words, we must learn to live the life of God, to live the life God intended us to live, on our own, with our own hearts and minds, every hour of every day.

To say the obvious: the fear-mongering opinion-shapers, the paranoia-inducing politicians are closer to playing the role of the devil than to understanding the ways of God in terms of the preceding metaphor. That's why Mr. Jensen and the lady "with chains on her shoes" are in Cassavetes' movie: to show us how the fear, distrust, and narrow-mindedness of mainstream culture can destroy the soul and close-off possibilities of growth. The bureaucratic thought police exclude --or retaliate against -- anything they don't understand, anything that eludes being lassoed by their pinched, narrow world-view.

Read Emily Dickinson. "The brain is wider than the sky.... deeper than the sea.... just the weight of God." She knew whereof she spoke. Ah, if only people weren't so afraid of its energy and power......

Yours in truth,

RC

Maikel replied:

Hi Mr. Carney,

thanks for your response! It's much appreciated.Your point regarding that drugs provide insight and not answers is well-taken, it's in fact *exactly* what I feel. My LSD experiences have taught me an awful lot and shown me ways I couldn't have imagined before, but now they have done their job and do I try to find my way in life without them - which works pretty good so far. And yes, it's a real shame how many people are just not willing to accept any other experiences/thoughts than the ones they already know. It's actually the reason I dropped out of filmschool. But that, of course, is one of the reasons we value Cassavetes so much!

Keep up the good work!

Best,

Maikel Aarts

Subject: "Mountains Beyond Mountains and Rivers Beyond Rivers"

Ray,

I was just catching up on your mailbag page and noticed the remarkable words that end your 121st page. They were moving, passionate, and inspiration.

Whenever someone shoots their mouth off about you on the internet-- when they say that you're cranky or the like-- I sometimes wonder if they have ever actually read anything you've written beyond your occasional (and in many cases justified) denunciations of banal blockbusters and the celebrity mentality.

Thank you for those words about being a student of life; they are a source of comfort from which I drew strength, and from which, I'll wager, I will drawstrength from again and again.

All my best to you and yours,

==Tom

RC replies:

Thanks, Tom, for the "encouraging words" (as Buddhist teachers put it). My reflections on Mailbag 121 were prompted by the fact that I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a student. About how much humility it takes -- and about how important it is to stay open throughout life the way a really good student does in his or her courses -- and about how rare that openness is -- in life or in college -- human nature being what it is. It's very hard to stay receptive and genuinely open because it makes you vulnerable, and vulnerability is a state most people run away from as they move into adulthood. That's why they harden and rigidify themselves -- emotionally and intellectually. They build walls around themselves. They decide "who they are"and what they want and believe. (Read Charlotte Beck for a more eloquent discussion of this subject--about what happens to people as they "grow up." She's a genius and a beautiful soul, and explains it much better than I can.)

I've been thinking along these lines because I've been re-reading Shakespeare's two great "student plays" -- Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra. -- and thinking about my own life in terms of the two lead characters, though I have less in common with poor philosophy student Hamlet than I do with grizzled, old, troubled, former-student Antony, of course. My life -- and my thought process -- is much closer to the bewildered graybeard's; but both characters and plays speak very deeply to me. They are Shakespeare's personal tribute to the virtues of staying open and receptive, observant and wondering, remaining a student of life for all of life -- and about the dangers of deciding that you know who you are and where you are going; but they also both show how painful and wrenching it is to be a student in this way. It's always easier to be know-it-all Polonius or big-talking Laertes, to be legalistic, "smart" Caesar or cynical Enobarbus than to be Hamlet or Antony.
As to why my ideas are threatening to some people, it's puzzling to me too, but the feeling is not limited to Internet kids without a life. I encounter it all the time with students and faculty in my own university. And it's not unique to my ideas. It happens to any teacher who tries to move anybody into ways of knowing that go beyond the conventional and the expected. Every teacher who tries to do that encounters resistance. That's the nature of life and learning. (Of course, there are many teachers who don't attempt to do that -- the majority in fact -- teachers who merely recycle the conventional wisdom of the culture about itself.) Back on page 102 of the Mailbag, I include a letter I received from a teacher at another school describing the exact same thing. Click here to read it. I have received dozens of similar letters from other teachers about the same phenomenon. The only difference I can perceive among the accounts that have been sent to me is that film students, in general, seem to be much less willing to humble themselves than students in the hard sciences or students studying older and more established arts -- students studying jazz, classical music, poetry, drama, painting, etc. It's the arrogance of feeling that they already know what they are studying and what they expect to get out of it rather than approaching art with a genuine desire to allow it to show them completely new and unexpected things. Film, like politics, apparently attracts many people who are not really open to learning -- only to having their pre-existing prejudices reinforced. But there are exceptions of course.

Thanks for all, Tom. I really appreciate your friendship and support, even if we have never met.

Ray

Subject: Upcoming Screening of Wanda

Hi Ray,

Columbia University is having a screening of Barbara Loden's Wanda on 2/5/09. Details below:
AndrewBrotzman

===Columbia Women in Film is thrilled to start off our spring semester film series with a screening of the 1970 film WANDA, directed by Barbara Loden and shot and edited by Columbia University Professor Nicholas Proferes. WANDA was the directorial debut of actress Barbara Loden (wife of Elia Kazan) and sadly the only film she directed before her she died in 1980.

Winner of the Critics Prize in Venice in 1970, Barbara Loden's WANDA is often referred to as a "forgotten masterpiece." Though a critical hit, it was only released in one theater in NY and never shown in the rest of the country again. Do not miss this opportunity to see this rare gem and hear first hand about the making of the film from a key crew member, Nicholas Proferes!
***************************************Special Screening of WANDAThurs. Feb 5thColumbia UniversityDodge Hall, 116th St & BroadwayNY, NYDodge Building, Room 5117PMfollowed byQ&Aw/ DP/Editor Nicholas Proferes****************************************Please help us spread the word about this very special event by passing along this email or attached flier to your classmates and colleagues.

Hope to see you all there!

-ColumbiaWomeninFilm

Ray Carney replies:

Thanks, Andrew. Glad to share the screening info with my readers; but it is a bit late in film history for the claim that Wanda has been "lost," "forgotten," or that, after 1970, it "was never shown in the rest of the country again...." It's not true. It's great to hear that Columbia has finally discovered Barbara Loden's truly amazing movie, but I've shown Wanda (in 35mm) at least 10 times since it was released -- to students, faculty members, and the general public at Middlebury College, at Stanford, and at Boston University. (The syllabus pages on the site, see the top menu on this page to go there, list some of these screenings.) I even programmed it for a "women's studies" film festival one time many years ago. (And I also did an extensive interview with Nick Proferes about his role in making the film back when I was a young buck just out of grad. school.) But as I say, better late than never for Columbia. It's good to know that someone there has finally discovered Loden's movie and decided to give it a university presentation. Thirty or forty years behind the times is actually not bad for an Ivy League school. Most faculty members at that kind of school take a minimum of fifty years to begin to understand what matters artistically. (The Ivy League is soooo conservative, soooo backward-looking, aesthetically....) So I guess you could say that Columbia is actually ahead of schedule on Wanda!

Only half-facetiously,

Ray Carney

P.S. I have brief discussions of Loden's movie throughout my published writing and at dozens of points on pages of the site. To read excerpts from a cover story I did for The New Republic magazine that talks about the film, click here.

Site Search Engine Disabled / Rendered Non-functional by Boston University

A note from Ray Carney: In the past few months I have received approximately 1000 messages from all over the world noting that the site search engine has been suddenly disabled and fails to display search results. I have spent several weeks investigating the problem. All I can say right now is that changes Boston University made in some of their server code have had the result of "crippling" some of my site functionality (intentionally or unintentionally, I am unable to ascertain). I have made inquiries to senior administrators about the situation, and appealed to them to restore full functionality as soon as possible. Please stay tuned.

What follows reprints excerpts from an exchange with a very accomplished visitor to the site who wrote me a series of emails. I am including this material because her words so beautifully articulate many of the feelings of being an independent artist and writer. I have withheld the writer's name to protect her identity, and have suppressed the subject of her screenplay, the name of a famous person she has been in contact with, and several references to other personal events and facts, but, even with the omissions, I know that many of the feelings she describes will resonate with things that other readers of this site have experienced. (The writer and I have exchanged more emails than the ones included here, but the beginning of our correspondence is the part that I think will be of most potential help and encouragement to site readers.) -- R.C.

Subject: What great thoughts

Hello Mr. Carney,

Just read your ideas about film and art - wow! Do you ever give feedback on scripts? I wrote one, which took a few years. Then, I experienced the film world, and it was the next best thing to suicide -- so I pulled out and put my project on hold. My story is about XXXXX. In the end, XXXXX uses art to help free herself. It's a true story. (A famous script advisor and story-doctor) helped me edit in the beginning - he thought there was something to work with. (He) was pretty harsh, but I was grateful.
Well, I guess I enjoyed your commitment to vision and truth - a rare thing nowadays.

Best regards,

(name and web site url withheld)

RC replies:

Subject: Thanks

Thanks for the kind note. I really appreciate it. You have no idea how much.

I'm not sure though that I'm the right one -- the best one -- to read your screenplay. Over the years I have done that for a good number of Hollywood actors (at the Sean Penn and Brad Pitt level of integrity, though the names are confidential of course) to give them "notes" about projects they were thinking of doing (often very harsh and negative responses on my part!), and I still continue to do it on an occasional basis as time allows, but right now I am totally drowning in a heap of unread student projects and scripts (including students at my own university who have turned in work that is too good, too interesting, too complex, too original for their professors to understand), and, to tell the truth, probably wouldn't have time to do your work justice.

I went to your web site and was really impressed with what you have done. It's really wonderful. But I know that the professional film world can be unappreciative of good work. The better the work, the less appreciative they can be. I know it must feel lonely at times, but I want to tell you that it's so important to keep going in our own personal direction.... to stay the course.

Can I ask you something personal? Have you continued your work on (suppressed mention involving a completely different area of life)? I realize it's hard, but .... it's so important..... so important. You mention XXXX (the script doctor), and I saw his name on your site. I know him pretty well, you may or may not realize, even though we have very different views of film and screenwriting. Please don't let him change what you are doing, unless you are really convinced he is right.
If you are ever in the Boston area, please let me know.

I wish you well in your work.

RC

Dear Ray,

It was good to receive your email. Sometimes I throw out a line to the world, and sometimes - though rarely in this commercial world, does someone respond, as you did. Most seem to be on a mission to either sell or get, so unless I was rich and famous, or a convenient step on the old ladder, I really don't get many people needing me.

My (RC: I have suppressed a discussion of her other work) is the very most, most important part of my life. More than ever, I realize that my path is inward. I'm tired (and bored) of the extroverted, materialistic goings on, and it seems with every day, the world offers less and less in way of meaning. At times I thought living in this pretty isolated little nowhere was a draw back. Now I realize it is a blessing. I go to NY and XXXX sometimes to check out art fairs, but there is so little that attracts me in the art world.

(RC: More omitted discussion of her other work)

It was a long shot about reading my script, and I don't even know why I asked. XXXX (the script doctor) was pretty harsh with me, and pretty expensive, but he made me see the negative, whimpy side of my protagonist, who I knew personally, so it was hard not to keep her on a throne.

Well, thank-you for your email and for taking interest in my website. I am reaching out, hoping that I will find the odd artist who understands the importance of the mind, and of introspection at the deepest level. How can we lead, if we are ignorant? And as you say, artists have been gifted, and do have a responsibility. And if they are ready, maybe they should be careful not to mislead.
Do keep in touch, and let me know of the great projects you create or come across.

best regards,

xxxx

Dear XXX:

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I knew you were coming from a deep place, and your response shows it.

XXXX (the script doctor) is no slouch and may have given you some good feedback (even if it was harsh, which must have hurt), but he and I have very different views of film. I remember having dinner with him in Cambridge a while back and he told me something about how indie films had to be "faster paced" to succeed, and it suddenly washed over me how totally different our perspectives were. Not only did the idea of "succeeding" seem irrelevant or even ridiculous to me, but the idea of speeding up the film experience almost made me want to faint. Speed is the problem, not the solution, with most film. We drive by everything, we dash, we hurry, we graze and skim and surf too much already. I forget what I said back to him in the restaurant (or if I said anything at all, since I may have been too shocked or disappointed to reply), but that moment clarified for me the difference between his notion of film and mine. We have very different views of art.

(RC: Omitted discussion of the other area of the writer's life.)

There is one other part of what you wrote in your email that I have to respond to. It's the part about not knowing, or not being sure, and not wanting to lead until you are. (I don't have your text right in front of me, but it was something like that. I'm sure you remember.) I of course know what you mean. As Ritchie, a friend of mine, a student in a Zen monastery, once put it to me: You don't want to be in charge of deploying the lifeboats only to end up dropping them on top of everyone in the water. He meant that good intentions aren't good enough. You have to know what you are doing; it's not enough just to want to do it. That's what I take you to be saying about not being able to lead until you know more. And I'll say the same thing to you I said to Ritchie. Yes, yes, yes.... but (there's always a but, isn't there?) if we wait until we know enough, we will never act. Because we never will know enough. We never can know enough. We must run ahead in the dark without a map, dive from the cliff never sure if the water is deep enough to receive us, or if we will lose our life in the attempt. It's so important to understand this. Too many potential artists are paralyzed by their doubts and fears. We have to risk being wrong, being stupid, being not ready; and we have to act anyway. We have to drop the lifeboats the best we can -- even if we aren't sure we are doing it the textbook way. I would have never written any of my books if I had waited until I "knew enough." I would never have gone to grad school, if I waited until I was certain it was "the right thing." We must plunge forward into life. We must risk our love by giving it with insufficient, imperfect knowledge. That's the adventure of living. No matter how long we stand on the cliff and stare into the water below, we can never see what lurks in it. Or if it there are sharp rocks that will cut us to ribbons. We must dive into the dark.

With deep gasshos and gratitude for your inspiring words,

Ray

A note from Ray Carney: The final excerpt I'll quote from the exchange was written in response to a description I offered of a large-scale publishing project I recently completed, and of my expressions of doubt about its ultimate appeal or popularity. The writer's response to my statement displays the same sensitivity her previous notes do. Her words represent deep spiritual wisdom for anyone engaged in the arts. I recommend them to all artists everywhere. -- R.C.

.... it seems like you may have reached a stage in your life where doing monumental projects may become your next obstacle. I am speaking from experience. We have strange paths, and those who do super great things with the best of intentions, may find themselves faced with super great obstacles. Our nemesis is always greater than ourselves - or, as you know, where would the conflict and resulting transformation be? Our nemesis is disguised. The clue is to examine the "wanting" part of our struggle - because our wants are insatiable. They pretend to be "good" for others. They deceive us in this way. Our wants drive us to live and work. But eventually destroy us with disappointment and longing, or at the least keep us distracted from the deeper path leading us to become more joyous, wise and compassionate.

Be a light unto thyself. Your productive outpouring and expressive words may light the path for those who are looking for something, but if not - then it is either because they are not needing your words, you are short of wisdom, or you are somewhere way beyond and the average person. Be happy, and keep pouring forth. Rain simply falls and nourishes. It doesn't expect to feel satisfied or appreciated. Those needs come from our childhood. But we don't need our parents' love and respect anymore. They need ours. When you can give and need nothing in return - then you are at peace.

Well, just some thoughts,

Who knows if they have any significance.

Best again,

XXXX

A confidential note to Billy. (Sorry that there is not space to reprint your magnum opus to me.) -- R.C.

Billy,

The "Alexander Supertramp Award" was in commemoration not of the band, but of Christopher McCandless, who used that moniker. See page 99 of the Mailbag for more info about him and the book Jon Krakauer wrote about him. I was comparing your lonely journey with his.

Re: your statement about God's voice coming from the prophets--yes, but I would put it more strongly. We are God's voice. We are not only the prophets; we are God. We do not need to look to a prophet for wisdom. And in fact a prophet can never give us anything. Or can only give us what we already have. We have to look inside ourselves. All wisdom, all experience, all of history and all of the future is in us. And it has always been in us. The only problem is that we refuse to look and listen deeply enough. We drown out or run away from the voices inside with worldly distractions, we paint over the view with our emotional colorings.

I take everything in your letter to me in a second sense by turning every outer reference to an inner one. Outer collapse is happening, yes, but the inner catastrophe is the important one. Outer discovery is happening, but it is the inner discoveries that matter. The world will not be described in terms of outer relations and outer events. The events of consciousness are the ones that matter.

Fare onward, voyager.

This just came in from former BU student Lucas Sabean:

Subject: Munch Munch

I just finished watching Peter Watkins "Edvard Munch"--Wow!!! It is instantly one of my favorite films ever made. He lulls you into deep connections without you even knowing what is happening. So original, perhaps the greatest artist bio pic ever made?Here is my latest called "Quiet Desperation"

http://blip.tv/file/1526403

Trying to remain strong when everything around me falls apart....

Lucas

RC replies:

Lucas,

Great to hear from you! Peter Watkins is one of the greats. (As well as being a great film theorist and writer, which is a side of his career many people are unaware of.) Sometime ask me about my (futile) efforts to convince the department to hire him to teach in the Boston University film program. (But I sensed it was doomed from the start. He's just too interesting and independent. They don't want people with opinions.) The Watkins attempt was one of many unsuccessful attempts on my part over the years to bring major filmmakers into the regular film production teaching faculty. (Think Robert Kramer, Robb Moss, Fred Wiseman, Rick Schmidt, Jon Jost, and two or three others.....) None of the appointments happened. Such is life. You give it your best shot and keep on going..... You can't let anything stop you--for more than a minute. -- R.C.

Subject: HUSBANDS - variant versions

Dear Ray,

Hope you are well.

Was wondering if I might pick your brains for information concerning the variant versions of HUSBANDS.A cable TV channel called Simply Movies has just started broadcasting in the UK. One of their first screenings was of a 140 minute version of HUSBANDS. This differs from the 131 minute version in the following ways:1- Whereas all prints of the 131 minute version that I have seen begin with the original Columbia logo from the early 70s, this version begins with a more modern Columbia logo from the 1980s.

2- 11 minutes of footage has been added to the drinking scene (as well as to the start of the following scene).3- Almost 2 minutes of footage has been eliminated from the scene in which the husbands arrive in London: shots of them running through the airport in the rain, catching a taxi, arriving at the hotel, and being shown into their room.

An identical transfer was shown on French television in the 90s.Do you think it's possible that Cassavetes might have recut the film (adding the drinking scene while tightening the arrival in London section) in the 1980s, perhaps while he was making GLORIA for Columbia? Are you aware of the longer version of the drinking scene being included in any prints circulating during the 1970s?

Best wishes,

Brad Stevens

RC replies:

Brad,

Right you are! (Or mostly right.) I have all of these different versions myself and have a discussion of these cuts at several points on the site. (See this page for example; once you're there, scroll down to read the entry for April 28, 1994).

But Cassavetes did NOT re-edit Husbands in the 1980s. His edit, his release version, of the film is the 140 minute edit (actually it's almost 141 minutes). It was cut by Columbia (and later issued on videotape by the studio in its cut form) to eliminate 11 minutes of scenes: viz. the end of the Leola Harlow badgering scene; the John "Red" Cullers singing of "Brooklyn;" and the beginning of the men's room scene. The UCLA film restoration program continued --or contributed to -- the confusion by sanctioning the cut 130-minute print as the "directors cut." It is not true. All of the cuts were made after Cassavetes' death. UCLA made their cuts (and gave this name to the cut print) to please Gena Rowlands, in response to her request that those parts of the film be cut: Those scenes. The only true, real, correct, complete, accurate (how many ways do I have to say it??) edit of the film is the 140 or 141 minute version you describe in your note, but with the 1970s Columbia logo, not the 1980s logo. The 1980s logo was added later. Is that clear? If not, I have something coming out on the subject in a book. Look for it in a few months.

Oh, one more bit of trivia: There are also a few alternate edits of the film, with slightly different footage, only a minute or two here and there, or a different shot or two in a scene, but these are trivial variations compared to the omission of the 11 minutes in the film as it now is distributed on video (and was shown at UCLA's Festival of Preservation). I'll spare you those details, but your number 3 observation falls into that category. Cassavetes himself made those two minutes of cuts to bring the film in under Columbia's contractual running time. He would have preferred those two minutes to remain, and they were in the print he gave the studio, but he was forced to cut them from the release print to fulfill his contract with Columbia. (Now are you really confused? I hope not!)

Cheers,

RC

An exchange with a young filmmaker:

Subject: Quick Jarmusch Question

Hey Ray,

Real quick- I'm a big fan of Jim Jarmusch and I know you've appreciated, at least, his early work. Have you ever done any formal writing on him- even if it was a single article for a magazine? I'd love to read your views on his works, no matter how brief.

Thanks again, keep writing, don't die and such

-John P.

RC replies:

Dear John P. aka Minemasta (whatever a minemasta is),

Thanks for the kind words. Not planning on dying so if it happens, blame my Chairman. Or my former Dean. Or an old girlfriend. Just kidding, of course. No homicidal girlfriends. Never published anything about JJ, beyond a few sentences here and there in other pieces; but I have lectured on his films--including Perm. Vacation, Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train (Is that the title? Well, you know what I mean). Love them and show all of them in courses regularly and lead discussions. But that does you no good!!!!Tell me about yourself. Whatssup? Give me a little sketch of your age, background, and goals. I'm always interested

.Cheers,

RC

Hey,

Thanks for the quick response! I always picture you as being super busy and annoyed by the tons of emails you get. It's truly refreshing to have a professor actually ask about my goals/interests in life.I'm actually the guy who emailed you a month or two ago about my "being nowhere, saying nothing" movie (I believe it's on pg 116 of the mailbag). I'm 22, student at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and still struggling to make truthful stuff.This isn't flattery: your stuff has really helped me recently. Because I thought I was the only who didn't understand why everyone swoons over Hitchcock films. I often feel like an outsider among what I call the "film jocks" in my school.

I've realized this is a good thing though, since I've been an outsider in everything else. So your stuff has helped shake off the noise, the stuff that was brainwashing me, and has taught me some new stuff. When I get money again (this may never happen), I will buy your cass on cass finally.I'd like to ask you one quick word of advice about the same film I mentioned I was making (if you have the time, if not, skip it).The film is intended to be short and capture one experience and is about strangers in a park wanting to talk to each other but not doing it (in a very non-romantic way). But it is also about a person walking alone in the woods, connecting with nature, and partly running away from her friends and obligations. My worry, after tons of rewrites, is that the film will be too much from a "main character's" perspective. There are plenty of narcissistic qualities in her, but I do not want my film to be narcissistic. So, while I would love to explore tons of different perspectives and characters, I am working with a limited amount of people and time here, and am really just focusing on this one person's journey. Has this been done before in shorts (just as encouragement)? I do not want to make a "poor me" or a limited view- but like I said, people aren't quite available til summer, so I can only make something that's about 20 minutes over winter. Hopefully you see the advice I'm asking you, it's a bit clumsy in words. Just worried I'll create heroes and villains in my film. Or worse, something simplistic. An idea. A "point". I never want that.Other than that, I can expand on my American Independent Cinema horror story from my last correspondence. I had a freak out in class and was laughed at for having a legitimate opinion. If you think film students worshipping Hitchcock is bad, it's gotten much worse. Tarantino has ruined my generation. Misogyny is celebrated. It's awful.One last note to you: I agree with what you criticized Bujalski and co. for not doing, which is showing desperation (etc.) in characters. While I probably only half grasped what you meant, I've noticed that I usually argue with, disagree with, and purposely hurt the people closest to me, and vice versa. My relationships with people are not mellow, they're chaotic. I believe love is a struggle- one filled with extreme passion, anger, doubt, confusion, petty grudges, and other things people run from. Cassavettes was right. We need to transcend those obstacles, because that's what love and life is all about. To I rant too easily! You know all this stuff, you've said it yourself. Anyway, if I ever finish this film I'll mail it to you. Don't know how good it will be, but I'm more interested in the trying than the succeeding.

-John P.

RC replies:

Subject: originality is individuality

Quick reply: If you make something from your own perspective, that stays true to your own truths, it will never be already done by someone else. On the other hand, if you make your film look "like someone else's x,y, or z" (look like Hitchcock's, Tarkovsky's, Tarantino's, or anybody else's work), then it will always be already done by everyone, all the time, forever. Imitation is death. Do it your way--do all of your work like no one else ever did it.Is that too Yoda-like?

Plunge in. It's the only way to go.

Ray Carney (aka Yoda)

A note from Ray Carney: This came in recently from leading American independent filmmaker Jon Jost. Among his many remarkable qualities, Jon has always been extremely generous with his time and energy in his efforts to assist young and struggling filmmakers. He wrote me about a young Nigerian artist named Isaac Chung. I want to post Jon's words and the artist's "manifesto" on the site not only in hopes that it can help to make his work better known, but because of the importance of what he is doing and the value of many of his observations to filmmakers everywhere.

.... A young now-I-hope-friend, Isaac Chung - I might have written you about him before - who made a film, Munyurangabo, in Rwanda a few years back, got it into Cannes in one slot or another, and has set up a workshop-company in Kigali, sent me the following, which I find wonderful. It is nice to see someone doing things who is not full of themselves. Isaac is just finishing a new film (see his website) which he hopes to have off to Cannes, but so far, like the rest of us, he's scraping by. Maybe he'll grab a brass ring, maybe not. I will forward you a letter he sent me. If you know any teaching things he might have a shot at, let me or him know. I am going to check here in Korea and maybe, if they decide or I decide to move along, see if I can slide him into my position.

Here's what he wrote regarding what he's trying to do. Poetic, and just along what you try to convey to people in your teaching and your website - it's about life. You might want to post on the site. --
Jon Jost

Retrospectives by Isaac Chung

1. My grandmother didn't finish elementary school and lived a daily resignation to poverty and struggle for most of her life. Her illiteracy caused both shame and sympathy for my father, notably because he is a gifted writer. Yet, he remembers the way others revered her in the village because she told stories. They were recollections, simple stories sprung from a memory that gathered passing moments others had disregarded, occurrences with meanings she alone discerned.
My father told me this when I was ten - it is a small footnote in our family history but one that I revisit often. How can storytelling bring a humble woman the respect of an entire village? Then, I remember that even scripture is an epic narrative.

2. In the 1880s, a great argument arose between the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison about their new invention, the motion picture camera. To this day, no one is sure who invented it first.Edison's Kinetoscope featured vaudeville performers and fighting animals while the Lumiere's captured everyday life; both foreshadowed a division between the US and France that remains today - cinema as spectacle and cinema as art.

One could argue that cinema has become the most powerful form of storytelling in the world. Anti-Western sentiment, especially the type directed against Hollywood, does not deny this contention; it disagrees with the stories.

3. In the 1990s, Kenneth Nnebue, a businessman in Nigeria, imported blank videotapes from Asia to sell in the local marketplace. Finding that he had ordered too many, he decided to make a small movie to include on the tapes as an extra incentive to buy. 750,000 sold copies of the film and thousands of imitations later, "Nollywood" is now the third largest film industry in the world behind the US and India. It remains the second largest provider of jobs in Nigeria, after subsistence farming.They are crudely and quickly shot with over two thousand new titles a year to keep up with local demand for African films. Western audiences might cringe at the exaggerated acting and stories of HIV and witchcraft, but each of the noisy videos proclaims, "we wish to speak too."

4. The art of memory collects disparate details from the past and reshapes them into a harmonic whole. It is a dying art in much of the world where society has less of a demand for remembrance and a greater emphasis on daily production and consumption. So great is the divide between everyday existence and active reflection that modern storytelling - the cinema - is no longer interested in life. There is a common saying, "I go to the movies because I wish to escape." Meanwhile, the culture of escape spreads from the West to the rest of the world like industrial haze.
It reaches Rwanda, where, after the tragic Rwandan genocide of 1994, several personal accounts recall that genocidaires liked to mimic Rambo films when slaughtering others, a chilling detail for moviegoers.

In a great irony, Western penitence has invaded Rwanda several times to recreate the genocide for film crews that resemble, at first glance, a military occupation. Its height is reached in HOTEL RWANDA, in which American actors fake African accents in a story that many Rwandans dismiss as overly exaggerated to sell tickets. Its target audience is the West, and as the spectacle - with its prestige, Oscars, and box office data - passes from our minds to obscurity, Rwanda is left with few resources to share its own recollection of the tragedy, to engage in the art of memory.

My work in Rwanda is:

-A quiet endeavor - to train and equip a group of fifteen Rwandan filmmakers who want to share their stories and transform their nation and perhaps the world.-An act of resistance - against a pervasive and spreading fog that allows only the powerful to have a voice.

-A remembrance.

--Isaac Chung

Prof Carney,

....I've been thinking about our Mike Leigh class and this past summer I reread your book and re-watched most of the films, it's a testament to your writing and teaching that I was compelled to revisit all the ideas brought up in class in order to see why, for me, Mike Leigh's films work (and on occasion, Naked comes to mind, fail), after all there is so much that can be done in a semester and the classroom is but a stimulus for more in-depth personal study.Benny and I would always refer to your classes as not just theoretical classes but classes on filmmaking.For me there are two ways to learn filmmaking, the first, and most obvious, is to make films and when that isn't possible to engage in the type of intellectually rigorous criticism we were subjected to in your class.One of my favorite (and most useful as a filmmaker) assignments was when you asked us to analyze the last sequence in "Meantime" but not just analyze it in a superficial way by resorting to facile symbolism or generalities, but analyze the sequence in a concrete way, scene by scene, shot by shot in order to articulate for ourselves why and how the sequence works (or doesn't).This is similar to the close reading of poetry, something poets have been doing for centuries, and most contemporary greats learned their craft by studying masters like Auden, Hardy, Yates and Lawrence.Joseph Brodsky's masterful essay on Auden's"September 1, 1939" is a prime example.It analyzes the poem line by line, word by word, image by image to show how Auden's complex intertwining of language, imagery and form works to create a complex and multifaceted work of art.

Best,

Reshad

Ray Carney replied:

Flattery will get you everywhere! But seriously, you've touched on one of the central practices and informing beliefs in all of my publishing and teaching: I (in the footsteps of James, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and others) am trying to re-define meaning -- so that meaning is not in our brains but in the world. So that meaning can be embodied. So that meaning can be practical. So that meaning will not be thought and felt, but lived and acted and practiced. There is much more to say about this intellectual project of course. There is a lot more behind it. It won't be summarized in a series of maxims. It's the "Figure in the Carpet" that makes all of my books and essays one continuous text. There is a whole philosophy of experience behind these beliefs and practices, a deep philosophy of life and expression, and it marks a parting of the ways between me and most other American and European intellectual practice--in university art departments most of all. Henry James, William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson would have understood what I am doing; but most academics, most critics and so-called intellectuals are running the other way -- into a world of (what you call) "symbolism and generality." This is a very difficult subject for my own film studies grad students to understand, which makes it all the more wonderful that you and Benny have broken through to this awareness. Most of the rest of the students, like their professors, are seduced by the allure of theory. Very few of them seem to understand that the clarifications of terminology are illusory. Abstraction appeals powerfully to the human mind. (Look at what it does to terrorists.) Our whole culture is trapped in this way, and (I fear) doomed by its love of unreality. --R.C.

P.S. Read the excerpts from Emerson and James that I have posted on the site. The search engine has many entries for each. Or go directly to Mailbag page 118 for a good place to start. There is a long essay by William James that is worth pondering toward the bottom of the page.

Before I close out the page, I can't resist appending a bit of information I received only a few minutes ago. Noted American independent filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt wrote to tell me that he is making plans to issue "Volume 1" of his collected films on DVD. Yippee! Hooray! The first volume will be devoted to the "compilation films" and will include the following titles:

RestrictedShort of BreathThe Smell of Burning AntsHuman RemainsKing of the JewsBrain In The Desert

The DVD will not be out for a few months, but check Jay's web site -- Jay Rosenblatt Films / Locomotion Films for updates on its exact status and future availability. Jay and his work are national treasures. Every film program in America should own and screen these films. Jay Rosenblatt is writing the history of the present and showing us who we are. His films are works to live with and to learn from. -- R.C.

Subject: RC mailbag mention in indieWIRE

RC,

Just happened across a mention of you and the mailbag in indieWIRE, in an interview with Director James Westby. Quite a compliment (although I don't know anything about James Westby, I agree with his assessment!)

iW: What general advice would you impart to emerging filmmakers?

James Westby: Do it yourself. Don't wait around. Learn how to edit. Have a good script and get good actors and pick a start date. Watch Godard's movies. Read everything, including Ted Hope's blog, and Lance Weiler's workbookproject.org. Especially go to Ray Carney's site, cassavetes.com. His "mailbag" section is the single best thing on the Internet.

The best things on the internet. I thought you might like to hear that. I wonder if anyone at Boston U. reads IndieWire?

MJ

A concluding personal note: I have received notice that the Boston University College of Communication will no longer provide support to help me maintain the site (and is also withdrawing support for all of my other research and publishing projects) -- so this will be the final posting, for a while at least, or until circumstances change. But rest assured that I will continue to read and answer emails sent to me via the site link (see the clickable blue button in the left margin of most pages), to fulfill book orders and autograph and inscribe copies as presents, and to answer questions as time permits. (For background on this and other issues connected with the university's attitude toward the site, for those unfamiliar with past events, it is recommended that you read the material in the box at the bottom of Mailbag page 101 and all of Mailbag page 102.) And also see the note higher up on this current Mailbag page (122) for another event which may or may not be related. Within days of receiving notice that my research would no longer be supported by the administration, I discovered that Boston University had disabled the site search engine. Search results for the site are no longer displayed either on the site itself (by use of its own search engine) or on the main Boston University pages (via the university search engine).

A note from Ray Carney: The preceding announcement was only up on the site for a matter of minutes when I received the following brief responses. I'll give my readers the final word.

Subject: RE: cliches designed to resemble truth

Having just read your note at the bottom of page 122, I was disheartened. It's a terrible thing that they're doing to you, but please don't let them stop you. Keep fighting and keep writing. Yours is a voice sorely needed and far more valuable than whatever uniform the other academics try to force on everyone. The biggest problem I see is that people are conditioned at an early age. Certainly, they're capable of thinking for themselves by college, but that hype-induced slant is difficult to overcome without the right teacher. Someone like you.

Best wishes and best of luck.

-Alex Landry

Subject: a quick thank you

Dear Prof. Carney,

I stumbled upon your site a few months ago and have since been reading and re-reading (and even re-re-reading) the various essays/interviews/emails on the many wonderful, but marginalized independent films out there, especially the various mailbag replies, which I refresh obsessively every morning looking for the latest update. Anyways, I just wanted to thank you for helping me open my mind to a larger world of film and art -- the tyranny of prettiness really does suffocate so many films, even in "art" cinema (a term I've never liked).* I'm sure I still have a ways to go, but at least I feel I'm on the right path now.

Like a lot of young filmmakers these days, I've got a bedside copy of Bresson's "Notes on the Cinematographer," and I find that reading the materials your site have much the same effect on me.I don't always agree with every opinion expressed, but that's beside the point.Both yours and Bresson's texts help me wash myself of convention and consider the underlying assumptions behind my ideas.And I think that's just invaluable.I know you get tons of email, so really there's no need to reply.I just wanted to say a quick thank you, and I look forward to reading more updates if and when BU restores your funding -- I like that they cut back on "non-essential" things like, say, helping a professor teach and learn and connect with students who want to learn. Ha, oh the world we live in...

~Peter Limm

A note from Ray Carney: Though I received hundreds of other responses from site readers to the announcement about the suspension of the Mailbag postings, the following statement by Adam Bertucci (which, for the sake of brevity, combines the texts of two separate emails he sent me) is the final one I shall post. Adam offers reflections about the shutting down of the site, and the censorious attitude of my department Chairman, my colleagues, and the Boston University administration to what is posted on it; but the real value of Adam's email to my mind (and the main reason I am including it) lies in his observations about the effects of real art (as contrasted to popular culture). This is what the site is (and has always been) about -- the crucial importance of works of art in our lives, the "necessary experiences" (as one of my publications calls them) that art offers. The importance of that subject is what ultimately makes me want to give Adam the last word. -- R.C.

Subject: How I discovered mumblecore and lived to tell the tale

Dear Professor Carney,

My name is Adam Bertocci and I am a New York filmmaker. I've been following the site off and on for a couple of years now.

I'd given up on the mailbag around page 100, when you were first having problems with BU. Then one day I was at the site on other business, and saw you'd posted more, and rejoiced.

Then I lost track, figured I'd wait a while for you to post more stuff as you caught up. Came back tonight .... imagine my surprise when I saw your note that the mailbag was shutting down again. Well, serves me right for getting my hopes up.

The sad thing is, I've read so many of your other essays, as well as "C on C", but I admit that I find the mailbag the most inspirational section of them all.

My grandfather, Peter Bertocci, was by all accounts an important and well-respected professor of philosophy at BU back in his time. I have no doubt that he, in his personal and professional capacity as a "searcher for truth" (if you like), would have found BU's decisions toward the mailbag etc. this past year or two shameful and disgraceful.

In any event, I thought you would rather read of more pleasant matters.

This past summer I was in the midst of a long and frustrating post-production on a short of mine, one of those rambling projects that sort of gets away from you where the art of filmmaking is reduced to being the goatherd desperately trying to wave all the stock into the pen before nightfall. Around this same time I vowed that whatever my next big filmmaking project would be, it would be one where I could go back to basics--a couple of actors, a lot of dialogue, nothing complex or unwieldy. Something simple.I'd use the tired old phrase "something more personal", but this would imply that I'm telling the story of a Hollywood-poisoned soulsucker who found Art and regained his integrity. No, I've negotiated the shift between mainstream and non-mainstream. My problem was more complicated. The soul and heart were all clicking along marvelously, but the tongue had already rooted through all its usual languages and didn't know how to say it.About that same time I sat down to, for the first time, watch a Cassavetes film. I don't know why I waited so long, having been familiar with your writing ever since first seeing your "non-rules rules" introduction to Rick Schmidt's book. (I was in high school when I first read that and I confess a few things you said there made me mad.) (I'm 26 now and sometimes some of the things now still make me mad. The difference is these days I like it. It means something's got my fires going, for better or worse.)
I won't say "Faces" taught me to, in your words, see with new eyes, but it sure as hell grabbed my head and pivoted it in a new direction. As I watched "Faces" I could feel corners of my brain opening up and spilling out thoughts and inspirations previously unvolunteered, as if the film was blasting keys into locks at the rate of twenty-four per second.

I was taking notes on my own film even as Cassavetes' spooled out before me. This kicked off a brief tour through the 'Ray Carney classic collection', so to speak, a binge of movies lasting about a month. What did I particularly dig? "Minnie and Moskowitz", owing primarily to Moskowitz; "Mikey and Nicky", more for the performances than anything. Of films made before my time, though, my favorite was "Opening Night".

I don't know why "Opening Night" affected me more than one of the more usual heavyweight choices. Perhaps in some of the other projects, I had signposts to hold onto, something that was telling me, right or wrong, "this is an indie film; you know how to deal with it." Or maybe the other projects had more critical writing on them (including yours) to prepare me. Rightly or (again) wrongly, I felt like I had some basic foothold with the other projects that helped me fit it into my normal film-going experience. With "Opening Night", I was lost in that marvelous way, as if the film was improvising itself before me. I don't mean in the sense that the actors were improvising, I mean as if the whole flick, edits and soundtrack and all, were inventing itself frame by frame before my eyes and if I were to rewind the videotape it would start the scene again from that point anew and different, like what I'd seen before was some fresh spectacle to exist once and only for me.

The flick that really rocked me during the course of my travels, though, was Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha". Perhaps the finest indie feature of the 2000s that I've seen so far. Granted, I have an innate fondness for movies that were clearly made on the cheap, but I think Kate Dollenmayer's performance is so special. She is a perfect example of how exactly one element can lift a movie from one level to another entirely, and I think all the 'mumblecore' pieces, Bujalski's and otherwise, that followed suffered in comparison by having her bar to live up to.

Anyway, all that was summer, and look how much time's gone by. What about that simple short film I wanted to make? I've got a first draft. It's still on the slate as my next big project. ("Big" by my standards, mind you. It's a red-letter day if I spend more than a thousand bucks to produce a short.) I sometimes describe it, half-jokingly, as Adam's "mumblecore" film. I make finger quotes when I use the m-word, heh... say what you like about the term, but it has its uses, provided people know what the hell you're talking about.Maybe people don't know why I'd want to make a film so resolutely not about plot or event. But, then, many people don't know why I make any movies at all, even my more mainstream ones. And there are many... I confess that you would not be a fan of most of my own work, nor would you approve of my DVD collection. (I have this mental image of you coming over for tea, now, and me rushing about the house hiding my comic books and "Star Wars" trinkets before you got here!)But this was the joy of the mailbag. Maybe if someone like me read this, someone tentative about dipping their toe into the murkier waters, they'd read that and think, oh! why, these films can be watched by any open-minded person; enjoying and learning from a Cassavetes film isn't the exclusive province of someone on a different intellectual plane. And, confidence raised, they'd go have the experience for themselves.If the mailbag was up again, that is.

Regardless, that's enough out of me for the moment. I have tried to turn other people on to some of the films you discuss(ed?) on the site, though. Not sure I've had any success yet, but, well, maybe everyone's gotta find these movies in their own time. God knows it took me long enough...
Hopefully in future there will be some opportunity to have the 'offending' elements of the site in a non-BU-centric place, if it comes to that. (This assumes that the school is not planning to Google their faculty and make sure they're behaving themselves off-site as well as on.) I realize you've never claimed to be a technical wizard, but, heck, even one of those free blogs you can sign up for would do much of the trick.

For my part, I attended the film program at Northwestern University. Sometimes when I read about your struggles I wonder if such things happened behind the scenes among my undergraduate professors, but the truth is I have such trouble understanding just what on the site is so troubling that it can't be handled on a point-by-point basis, that it requires these vast outages. Even if it was so controversial and terrible, you would think they'd be proud of that, in a way; how many schools can boast a controversial professor of any sort, let alone film... it's like free advertising for the institution.
Say what you like about a culture obsessed with marketing and advertising, but I think they've missed the angle here. I can see the marketing scheme now: apply to BU, home of that wacky Ray Carney! You just never know what crazy thing he'll cook up next! (For what it's worth, I did apply to BU, way back when, and got in. To be fair, my family connections meant I was more than aware that the school existed, but would I have known they had a film program were it not for your section in Schmidt's book? Who can say?)

Oh well. I'll keep dropping in on the site every so often, see if something pops up. In an age where we're used to our inboxes and RSS feeds and Facebook and heaven-knows-what updating every ten seconds with socially driven mass content, it's sort of fun to see a throwback to the old days (i.e. the mid-90s, hah) of one guy at his site sporadically updating... maybe there's something new, maybe there's not. Always a surprise....

Yours in film,

Adam Bertocci

To read other responses from site readers to the attempts by Boston University to control what is published on the site or, if they are unable to censor it, to force Prof. Carney to remove the site from the university server, see Mailbag page 102.

121

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

This came in from former Boston University student and site regular, independent filmmaker Lucas Sabean. -- R.C.

Subject: Pascal

Hey Ray-Re-reading Pascal's Pensées for a third time. What an amazing revolutionary genius. I remember we talked about him years ago on the phone and you said something like, "Pascal is the foundation of french thought and literature." Well, here is a quote from a much longer section that struck me this morning:

"This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses." Reminds me so much of Emerson. I guess great minds think alike.

I also wanted to throw my hat in the ring for "Rachel getting Married", I was spellbound for the first two-thirds of the film. (A note from Ray Carney: See independent filmmaker Jim McKay's letter near the bottom of Mailbag page 119 for the recommendation of the film by Jonathan Demme to which Lucas is referring.) It reminded me a lot of Vintenberg's "The celebration" in tone, style and narrative mistakes. I was rooting for the film the whole time. I kept thinking "please don't go there--don't ruin a good thing." And for the most part the film tosses you into the mud and you don't know whom to trust--Who is right and who is wrong. It blew me away and I thank Demme for providing such a great experience. There are things that could have been shorter etc., but the acting was wonderful and it clearly shook up many people in the audience. Side note--I was writing to a friend the morning BEFORE I saw the film (Sid Varma actually) and I signed the letter "Shiva the destroyer"--which I have never done before in my life--well, in the film Anne Hatheway gives a speech and when she introduces herself she says "I'm the bride's sister--Shiva the destroyer". I almost fell out of my seat in the theatre. Weird. Strange. Wonderful. Great exhibit just opened at the MET on "Love and art in the renaissance"--Like the previous show "Treasures from the royal court"--we get to see these amazing objects (this time bowls and plates--from "treasures" tables and furniture) that usually play second fiddle to paintings. I was so engrossed and amazed by the beauty of certain objects that I entered into a new way of seeing--like I was seeing them in this totally fresh way before thought could really enter--I was seeing the beauty with my heart-if only for a few minutes. So awesome--three hours just came and went. Of course I always stop by to say hello to Rembrandt and Halls (and a few other favorite pals---"Hey Lucas how are you my friend"). Boy do I feel nuts some times. Sometimes. Always!!

Oh yeah, what do you make Gurdjieff? Is he worth reading? I just ordered "The Beelzebub tales", but don't know anyone who has read him.

Hope all is well.

L

RC Replies:

In haste: Thanks for the great tips, Lucas. I shall share them with site readers.

About your "Shiva the destroyer" anecdote. It's not necessarily just a coincidence. There is a group mind. And group effects. This is not science-fiction or mumbo-jumbo. It's good basic physics. It just hasn't been discovered yet. (And of course most physicists are too stupid and arrogant to realize that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their current theories. As Wallace Stevens said, the imagination is always at the end of an era.) Of course I can't say exactly what was going on in your case, but it is certainly possible that you knew things you didn't know. In a few hundred years, physicists or biochemists will definitely be writing about this. They just haven't gotten there yet. As I say, there's a lot contemporary science hasn't discovered! But it will, a thousand or million years hence. So just be patient!

About Gurdjieff: He's good. Very good. His work on meditation is solid; and mediation is the key to understanding the nature of existence; but there are many different paths of course. His way in is only one of hundreds that all lead to the same place (or non-place), the same depth (or non-depth), the same fullness (or emptiness). Since you got me onto this topic, I can't resist quoting something else about mediation from a book (not by Gurdjieff) that I value very highly since it understands that the realms of the spirit and the body, of science and religion are the same. It understands that the soul is a physical body, not a metaphysical one. I quote, somewhat freely and loosely, from memory:

"Many different practices suffice, but the best is to meditate in such a way that the mind is concentrated on a part of the body or a physical sensation. The ingoing and outgoing of the breath is often the best. This relieves the onslaught of impressions coming in from the physical world on the electromagnetic body and enables it to resonate and expand. Paying attention to physical sensation is paying attention to energetic sensation. Watching oneself and one's surroundings -- what the masters call paying attention or waking up -- increases the intensity of the impressions so that they affect the spin of the electrons present in the nervous system. Being awake means being aware of oneself while at the same time absorbing impressions from the outside. The increase in spin and enrichment of the complexity of the pattern of electron spin that results brings increasing form to the radiant body. In other words, you must be able to watch and not watch at the same time. You must be within life, but not entirely absorbed in life. Inside and outside it. Part of you feels and experiences, but part observes yourself from a distance. If you do not watch, you do not see, and if you do not see, you do not impart a change in the spin of the electrons. The development of the soul is slowed by points of attachment with the world and the body. So detachment is essential to ecstasy. You must live life as both an observer and a participant. Buddha understood this. The outsider notices the shine of the spoon, the sunlight on the plate, the taste of food; the participant only eats. Many situations try to take us out of this vast deep calm, but even when the house is burning, you can maintain an absolute, perfect composure, and smell the smoke, feel the heat, watch the flicker of the flames. Concentrate on your body, follow your breath, and you will become God, loving, enjoying, participating in the ecstasy of the world."

Words worth pondering.... Gurdjieff's discoveries were not far from this. Nor was the work of Krishnamurti. I recommend his writing too. And Dogen's. And Hakuin's. And that of a hundred others. There is lots of good, deep thinking on this subject. You'll learn good things from any of it. -- R.C.

Thom Powers, whose documentary programming for the Toronto Film Festival and the IFC CENTER (323 Sixth Ave @ 3rd Street) in Manhattan has been mentioned elsewhere on the site, sent some information about two upcoming screenings that should be of interest to NY City residents. I highly recommend both events. For more information, go to: www.STFdocs.com.
Kevin Rafferty is one of the wild-men stylistic zanies of American documentary filmmaking and I assume that the work of the great Ricky Leacock needs no introduction. He is one of the spiritual godfathers, one of the founding fathers of the entire American documentary tradition.

And don't say "it's just a documentary." Since the mid-1960s a small group of American documentary filmmakers (including the two named above) have created a body of work that is far more interesting and important than the entire cinematic output of all of the Hollywood studios combined--and you can quote me on that! -- Ray Carney

CLOSING NIGHT OF THE FALL SEASONTUES, NOV 25 at 8pm
THE LAST CIGARETTE (1999)Q&A with filmmakers Kevin Rafferty & Frank Keraudren
followed by a gathering at 99 Below with a
"Last Cigarette Drink Special"

Kevin Rafferty's documentary career has been rich and varied. He collaborated on the breakthrough doc ATOMIC CAFE (1982) that opened filmmakers to new ways of interpreting archival footage and was such a surprise hit, he was invited on The Late Show with David Letterman. His other films include BLOOD IN THE FACE (1991) about neo-Nazis and FEED (1993) which made inventive use out of satellite feeds during the 1992 Presidential election, revealing all the bits about politicians you weren't meant to see. And if that wasn't enough, Rafferty helped launch the career of Michael Moore as the cameraman on ROGER & ME.Rafferty's latest work (opening today at the Film Forum) is HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

To honor this impressive career, STF is bringing back THE LAST CIGARETTE (1999) in which Rafferty and Frank Keraudren apply the treatment of ATOMIC CAFE to America's obsession with cigarettes. The film compiles eclectic footage ranging from Hollywood to Madison Ave to bizarre fetish videos. Whether you smoke, quit or never caught the addiction, this film will deepen your understanding of why tobacco has such a powerful hold over America. Not to mention, it's hugely entertaining and being presented on a wonderful 35 mm print, courtesy of New Yorker Films.
From Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times: A horde of film clips illustrate the movie shorthand of a meaningful gesture and a lighted cigarette. It was an especially valuable prop in the days when films required visual metaphors for what they could not otherwise say, as in a romantic scene that ends with Jennifer Jones and a bare-chested William Holden locking eyes while touching their cigarettes together. And by angrily throwing a cigarette away, John Wayne could make himself look even tougher. There are even glimpses of latter-day smoke-porn videos in which a fully clothed woman, perhaps one with two-inch talons and a tattoo, does nothing but smoke her cigarette and talk about it. And it goes without saying that an actor who pauses before exhaling looks thoughtful, even if he's not.

TUES, DEC 9 at 8 PMAUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD LEACOCK
Q&A with Richard Leacock
The 87-year-old Richard Leacock makes a special return appearance to STF, visiting from his home in Paris, to present and discuss film clips that accompany the autobiography that he's been writing for several years.

Leacock's career spans the whole history of modern documentary, making his first film CANARY BANANAS at the age of 13. He served as a cameraman in World War II and on Robert Flaherty last film LOUISIANA STORY. In the 1960s, Leacock pioneered the 16 mm movement working with Drew Associates on classics such as PRIMARY and CRISIS and with D.A. Pennebaker on MONTEREY POP. Leacock directed several touchstone works including HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY and CHIEFS (about a 1968 police convention). As an instructor at MIT, he inspired a new generation of filmmakers including Ross McElwee and Rob Moss. In the age of video, he directed the first hi-8 film shown on French television LES OEUFS A LA COQUE. And that's only skimming the surface of his credits. For more, see his web site richardleacock.com.

Two years ago, STF presented a tribute to Leacock showing TOBY AND THE TALL CORN, JAZZ DANCE and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY that was unforgettable to everyone who attended.
This AUTOBIOGRAPHY presentation will focus on different works and is not to be missed!
Excerpts from a note from Ken Cormier, a Ph.D. student at U. Conn. I have removed some of the personal material to focus on a specific observation he makes. -- R.C.

Dear Professor Carney,

I am a longtime fan of the films of John Cassavetes and an admirer of your books on Cassavetes. I'm a current PhD student student at the University of Connecticut, a former manager and projectionist at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, and a fledgling independent radio producer. I do a lot of other stuff, but I'll leave it at that. ....

.... Thanks for all the work you've done on Cassavetes. I spent a semester showing several Cassavetes films at the library here at UConn, mainly geared toward the English Department, and I'm always looking for ways to get people to stop and take notice of his incredible accomplishment. I'm teaching Emily Dickinson today, and I am reminded of Cassavetes when I read how critics like Bowles and Higginson told her she didn't know what she was doing as a poet in her time. "Obey the rules!" was all they could seem to muster. I think the majority of people still feel that way about Cassavetes. "He missed the mark." "The films aren't polished." "The scenes go on and on!" It's tough to get a real conversation going even among people who know independent film. Egad!

Anyway, thanks for your time.

Best wishes,

Ken Cormier
Editor, The Lumberyard (www.thelumberyardjournal.com)
PhD Candidate in English LiteratureUniversity of Connecticut

RC Replies:

Ken,

A very interesting (and true!) observation. I was talking with an art film programmer for a major film venue only last spring about this issue. He was talking about his programming and mentioned that it was a very rare viewer, even of the ones who bothered to attend the screenings, who could appreciate what he or his institution was attempting to do. He noted, as an aside, that English professors and other professors in arts fields -- even famous prize-winning, book-writing professors at Ivy League universities -- often had the worst taste in film. The most conventional taste. They loved junky Hollywood movies. Or movies they had seen in their teens and twenties. In effect, their appreciation of film had never grown up since their college days. They went to their graves never really understanding or appreciating the art of film. (Think Stanley Cavell -- or worse.)
I have a few reflections on this subject in the "Polemical Introduction" I wrote for the special issue of PostScript magazine that I edited after Cassavetes' death. I noted how easy Woody Allen was for intellectuals to appreciate: the wit, the jokes, the play, the gorgeous music, the gorgeous photography, the tortured (parody!) intellectuals -- all rang bells. Professors and so-called intellectuals "got" those kinds of things. No strain. No pain. But Cassavetes doesn't give us those kinds of things. His films aren't "beautiful" in the postcard way. The soundtracks don't have Gershwin or a juicy tenor sax wailing in the velvety darkness. The characters are not cool and poised -- but hot and sweaty and embarrassing. The soundtrack is scrappy and the shots are all elbows and knees. That's not what the professors want in their art. They want unworldly beauty and smoothness and perfection. They want prettiness. They want stylistic virtuosity. They want fancy shots and camera angles. They want visionary control and poise and balance. They want intellectualism and abstraction. (Go to the middle of Mailbag page 118 to read a little more discussion of this issue and go to the bottom of that same page to find a few links to click on. And also click on this link to read part of an essay I wrote that touches on the cult of picture postcard beauty and Faustian stylistic effects, and a million other stupidities that are often confused with ART -- but there is really just too much to say about how backward film and most other humanities professors are when it comes to art, so there is lots more that I'll have to resist the temptation to mention. But I'm sure you saw enough of that in your university course work. The profs -- with the fewest of exceptions -- are just too dumb. They're such slow learners. They'd rather clang their beat-up symbols and sling their French and German jargon than risk encountering a new emotion or idea in a work of art. That would be too threatening to their intellectual stances.)

This problem, this blindness, says a lot about what most people think art is about -- even English professors and a lot of film professors too! They still live in some 19th century backwater where art is supposed to be transcendent and purifying and resolving. As if 20th century painting and music and sculpture and dance hadn't happened.... Well, I better stop. It's such a reductive notion of what art is and does. Even back in the 17th century, Rembrandt and Frans Hals created art that was more complex than this. But these people will never understand that. They use the same methods they do in film to take the threat, the danger out of earlier work as well .....

You know I always tell my graduate students that someone should write a "history of taste" in 20th century America. Not about the good taste, but the bad--what became popular, what became fashionable, what became "hot." About how stupid, bad, immoral paintings, television shows, movies, and books became (and still continue to become) wildly popular. And about how and why great, stimulating, profound things are passed over. There are reasons for why this happens, but maybe it is too painful for anyone to write about. That's the noble reason why I figure no one's taken me up on this as their thesis. In my dark moods I imagine no one is interested in this subject because they don't even see what is going on, because they themselves are captive to easy beauty and cheap effects. Or am I being too cynical? Sometimes it's hard to tell cynicism from reality.

RC

From RC: A newsletter from distinguished independent filmmaker Jon Jost arrived, with information about his recent projects and plans. I am glad to share it with site readers:

The autumn leaves are in full color, up on the mountain sides and hills here in Seoul a tawny range of ochre yellow rusted red, and littered on the ground the oxidized residue of one more year of life is swept up and bagged, sent off we presume to some recycling center, round and round like the earth's orbit of the sun, leading inexorably to a missing letter, obit dicta. [So I wrote a handful of days ago, but now a few days of sub freezing weather have stripped the trees, and the barrenness of winter already embraces us with a flurry of short-lasting big snowflakes.]

Marcella has been bitten by the bug - specifically the filmmaking one. Coming down from editing of the to-be-renamed RANT, a major job and done well, she started making a film blooming into a feature-length one, with some friends she has among the US and other expats, here teaching English in various schools, from children up to college. She seems to have maybe 30 minutes already in hand, edited, and the tentacles of the improvised manner are reaching out. It looks to be a mix of a look at the here-today/gone-tomorrow little community of young people and their mores and foibles, along with their interface with another very different culture. So far it is looking very good and interesting and I am glad to see Marcella take the leap, even if it brings the customary anxieties of creative work. I suspect she'll be on this one longer than she thinks.Meantime I had my all-too-fast journey to the US - Lincoln, Chicago, Philadelphia, NYC - with screenings, talks, workshop all crammed into 10 days. Made some $, saw friends, if all far too hastily. On getting back had acquired or aggravated a nasty bronchial cold, for which I finally succumbed a week and some ago to taking antibiotics to kill, and it now seems cleared up. Fully on feet, back to work.Sent off new films - PARABLE and RANT and LOVE IN THE SHADE (ominbus item of 90 mins, 2 shorts by students of mine, one by me, all circling around the topic of love Korean-style) - to Rotterdam and Berlin, and await word from them. I am pretty sure they'll all find a place, and if so Marcella and I will be off to Europe during the academic winter break, in Jan-Feb. If so, likely for 4-6 weeks. We think. Meantime Marcella's two sisters will be here for 2 and a half weeks come December, each with friend in tow. 2 will stay here, 2 at a friend's place. Should be fun, especially for Marcella - taking them to eat live squid, or dog ! Or just a real Korean meal for 3 Euro, excellent and more than sanity should allow.

We are pondering the coming year - whether to stay in Korea, and stay at Yonsei (if they decide to reinvite - my contract is annual). I am looking around a bit for another university in case we want to stay. Would prefer one a bit more creatively minded and have a line on a few things. Yonsei is a bit too much a rich kids' place. We shall see.

Also it will depend rather a bit on the larger world situation - whether we spiral, as I fully anticipate, into some kind of full-tilt deep deep recession/depression, or not. Mr Obama is being handed a ravaged, worse than empty bag by the departing Mr Bush and friends and I don't think there's any magic cure for some decades of American (and elsewhere) decadence. The last minute pillaging by the bankers and other uber capitalists for whom the rules go by the board as soon as their interests are threatened - AIG execs partying to the end while wallowing in public billions, and sneak raids on public funds pulled off by Paulson to benefit those who sucke(re)d us into this mess - all offer an ugly sign-off for a whole era. Good riddance. We'll see just which way Obama plays this. My fingers are x'd, though frankly the hints given by appointments so far are much too "centrist" for me.

So dependent on these matters we will/won't stay another year, and if not, just where we'll go, after a European stop of a while for Marcella, is none too clear. I don't frankly expect much clarity for a while. Our earnings in Won, juxtaposed to the almight Buck, have diminished over 30% in the last 8 months, but that could flip easily, or get a lot worse. My crystal ball declines to inform me just which way things will go. I'm checking around for other sectors of the world where perhaps the Won didn't get so dented exchange-wise. South America? Africa? India?Anyway that's news from here for now. For further ruminations and thoughts, see blogs per below.Hope all is well with you as we enter soon into winter, and if you have time and the spirit moves, please send us a note. We'd love to hear from you.jon and marcella

Professor Jon Jost,
Yonsei University
Graduate School of Communication and Arts
134 Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu
Seoul 120-749, Korea
blog: www.jonjost.wordpress.com

A note from Ray Carney: I'm always amazed at the things that get sent to me. At how lucky I am, I mean. I don't deserve my good fortune. A DVD from a young, unknown filmmaker who had never contacted me before arrived in the mail a few days ago. Just a disk in an envelope with a short personal note on top of it. I sat down and looked at it tonight. It was a film called Creative Nonfiction by a writer-director-actress named Lena Dunham -- and it was terrific! I haven't talked with the filmmaker yet, so I don't know much more than that, with respect to who she is or how or when she made her movie; but I want to go on the record to be the first critic to offer her the verbal equivalent of a handshake or a hug or a "bravo" or a football cheer. Thank you, Lena, for sending me your film. It's amazingly good. Creative Nonfiction is a wonderfully perceptive study of a group of college friends and roommates, mainly young women but a few young men, and (this is the miraculous part) a few minutes into it, magic happens. It gets to the place of truth and stays there. Lena Dunham has created a group of young college roommates and friends and lovers who look, sound, and act like people we know -- people like us or our friends, people with the same problems and concerns we and they have. That may not sound like much, but it sets Creative Nonfiction apart from 99 out of 100 other films I see. Film is still a mystery to me -- a wonderful, alluring, sometimes maddening mystery -- and it can be almost impossible to say what makes one movie work and another not work, but whatever magic it is, Lena Dunham has it. Thank you, Lena.

This came in from two of my favorite indie filmmakers: Randy Walker and Jennifer Shanin, the collaborating writer-directors of Apart from That. (Click on this link to read a description of it that I wrote when I programmed it for an independent film festival at Harvard two years ago). I haven't seen the films they mention, but their recommendation is enough for me. And the book about their own film, available through the third link, is a beautiful souvenir and keepsake. -- R.C.

Randy & Jenny here. Just a brief howdy and a nudge; a few of our friends are releasing their films this holiday season, and if you'd like to throw a bone to some starving artist/filmmaker type folk (whilst giving the gift that keeps on giving, by golly) here's the scoop:

1. "Manhattan, Kansas". Superb doc. DVD release, with beautiful cover art by cartoonist Joe Lambert;http://www.lbthunderponyproductions.com/
2. "The Last Romantic". Great narrative film with a funny-looking tall guy and the Coco Chanel chick in it, just released on IFC On Demand;http://www.ifcfilms.com/viewFilm.htm?filmId=1256...and we're also reducing the price of the special edition "Apart From That" CD/DVD/Photo book;http://www.foreignamericanpictures.com/

Hope you are all well, and please keep in touch. We'd love to catch up.

sincerely,

Randy & Jenny

RC,

A friend of mine told of her experience seeing a documentary film about women artists at a film festival last week, and I thought you might possibly have an interest. My friend who is a successful artist in her own right was so profoundly affected she cried through the whole film. She says it's about what it's like for a woman to be an artist while having to juggle all of her other responsibilities, how she strives to be who she is through her art without compromise and what that means. It's about five women artists in different art forms, eg dance, drumming, sculpting, etc. The film is called "Who Does She Think She Is?" by Pamela Tanner Boll. Have you heard anything about it?M
RC replies: Haven't heard of it, but I am glad to pass along information to site readers. I'd love to hear other responses and observations, or any other information that may be available, about it, the filmmaker, or future screenings of the film. -- R.C.

A note from Ray Carney: I'd be interested in hearing site readers' thoughts about Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. The fundamental question is whether it is really, truly an important and enduring work of art, a film that will be thought about, viewed, and discussed decades from now, a work that can deepen and enrich our lives, or just a flash in the pan. If I receive enough thoughtful responses, I'll devote an entire page (or more) of the site to a discussion of the movie.
This page of the Mailbag was up only for a few nanoseconds, when Australian correspondent Fraser Orr weighed in with a response to my comments to Ken Cormier halfway up on the page (next to the yellow graphic of PostScript magazine). --R.C.

Subject: A History of Taste

Professor Carney,

I loved your comments on the latest letters page about the declining taste of American culture (I'm Australian, and would guess it's just as accurate to say "Western culture"). My own half-baked opinion is that the junk now churned out through all forms of media works in the same way as a narcotic.When a person takes, for example, an amphetamine the drug causes the brain to release endorphins, which make us feel good. These endorphins are usually released after a person has achieved success in life, say through a relationship or a new job. Endorphins are our brains way of rewarding us for the hard work we have done. I'm probably embarrassing myself with how little I know about the brain here, but you get the drift. The drug user has found a way to get the reward, without having to put in the hard work.So much of what we consume in modern society (film, television, sport, even the news!) works to activate perhaps these same endorphins and fool our brains into thinking we're doing something constructive with our lives. But we don't call it a narcotic, we call it entertainment.I know you've studied the way the brain works to some extent, do you know of any scientific studies that monitor the brain as it watches a Hollywood film? I wonder how that brain would compare to the brain of someone gambling, playing a computer game, eating junk food, at a sporting event or on drugs.Thanks for all the work you've done. I've just finished university, and reading "The Films of John Cassavetes" had more impact on me than anything else I've done in the four year degree.

Sincerely,

Fraser Orr

RC replies:

Sorry to hear Australia is no different, but it doesn't suprise me. I could feel the effects of the "thought police" during my visit there a few years ago. The "cultural studies" nuts and the "language censors," at least. They were all over film study.

Don't faint, but I once said more or less the same thing you do in your note in a class. It was a year or two ago. I told the students that we lived in a druggie culture (in the largest sense of the adjective), and it was not surprising that our films were made by druggies to provide drug experiences for drugged viewers. Well, you should have seen the looks on the students' faces. You would have thought I said a swear word. I had just "pulled a Carney," I guess. I was told a day later by one of the female students, in confidence, that the girls went into the ladies room during a subsequent class break and whispered the whole time to one another about what I had said! Shocking. Shocking. The truth always is. The fish can never see the water it swims in. It's always shocked to learn that it's not flying through the air. Where something is everywhere, it's always invisible.

With respect to the psychologists' studies of the effects of film. Psychologists are the last people on earth I would ever turn to for accurate information. American psychologists in particular have all sold their souls to various fashionable ideas (the social "construction" of identity, the infinite plasticity and malleability of human nature, the born-in-the-bone equality of childrens' intellectual and moral capacities, the infinite reformability of character, and a million other trendy TV cliches about race, class, and gender). Show me one psychologist who ever took a daring stand on anything -- who ever said something that upset anyone. (They're like ministers that way. They want to tell everyone what they want to hear and already believe. They don't dare risk alienating anyone by ever expressing an original thought. Jeremiah Wright was the last minister who did that, and look at the brouhaha he caused! Not one defender in the entire American media empire. What a jerk. He actually said something we needed to hear.)

Anyway, why do we feel we need (pseudo-) "scientific" validation for what is right in front of our eyes? What is this cult of (pseudo-) science that has us all brainwashed? Do we really believe that scientists are smarter or more courageous intellectually than the rest of us? Scientists -- even "hard" scientists like physicists, I should say especially physicists! -- are the most conventional, follow-the-leader intellectual lemming group in our society. When was the last time any of them risked tenure and promotion and government grants by daring to express a controversial or even a completely new idea? Scientists are slaves to trendy theories, not independent intellects.

Fare onward, voyager,

RC

A note from writer-director Mary Bronstein, about one of my favorite films of the past year: Yeast. Highly recommended, and I guarantee that it won't be coming to a theater near you. It's too good. --R.C.

I KNOW A LOT OF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS ALREADY... IF SO, WATCH IT AGAIN! AFTER THAT, FORWARD TO FRIENDS WHO WOULD LIKE THIS MOVIE AND ENEMIES WHO WOULD HATE IT. SPREAD THE YEAST.

YEAST
www.yeastyeast.com
A film by Mary Bronstein
Starring Mary Bronstein, Greta Gerwig, Amy Judd, Sean Williams,
Ignacio Carballo, Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
Crewed by: Sean Williams, Ronald Bronstein, Michael Tully, Sam Lisenco, Benny & Josh Safdie & Ignacio Carballo
Is now available for rent or purchase through amazon.com's video-on-demand feature: http://www.amazon.com/Yeast/dp/B001LRTQRO
Fresh off a win at the St. Louis International Film Festival!
"...a riveting spectacle." --The Austin Chronicle"...a tribute to excellent acting and directing.'Yeast' is an intense little film."--Film Threat"The world she creates is voiced not with conversational realism, but rather with a reactive, tweaked-out, primal scream." --Filmmaker Magazine Blog

A note from Ray Carney: I recently posted an essay "The Art of Fiction" by Henry James on another page of the site that I wanted to refer readers to. Though this essay is nominally about the novel, the observations in it apply equally to all other contemporary arts. I highly recommend that all artists (and critics) read and think about it. It is worth pondering.

This came in from Irish independent filmmaker Donal Foreman. -- R.C.

Hi Ray,

Don't know if you know or have heard of David Graeber, but I've been reading his stuff lately and came across this interview about being pushed out of his teaching job at Yale... Thought you might be interested in his analysis of it.

----Dwww.donalforeman.com/blog

A note from Ray Carney: The article is brief but there is much in it to ponder: about how (bogus) claims of "confidentiality" are used by universities to squelch debate and discussion; about how taking a principled political or institutional stand can be used against a faculty member; about the "corporate" nature of decision-making in the modern university; about how the expression of differences of opinion becomes evidence of a faculty member's being "divisive;" about how administrative and faculty "bullies" systematically retaliate against faculty members who don't follow their lead or mouth the party line; and about many other related issues. I recommend it highly for an insight into how colleges and universities really function. The modern university, all too often, does not care about new ideas and new approaches; it cares about positive PR and contributions to the alumni fund.

See the material in the box near the bottom of Mailbag page 101 (accessible via the blue menus at the top and bottom of this page) for more reflections on the importance of absolute, unfettered free inquiry and free expression in American universities, and on how, in our culture of salesmanship, those things are all too easily confused with generating good PR and high application and enrollment figures. The university becomes indistinguishable from a corporation selling a product, and students are treated not as thinkers in the making, but as purchasers of a product, to be courted and sold on the basis of its future supposed financial value. The university is turned into a supermarket and students are turned into customers. "Quick Quiz: How many things are wrong with this picture? How many different ways does it distort the educational process and foster false (non-intellectual) values? You have one minute to list five. Five more will count as extra credit toward your final grade in the course."

But let me end on a more serious, and a more positive, note: What a joy to be a student in a university that doesn't function this way. A university that doesn't try to sell us something, or keep us happy, or please us, or flatter us. A university that challenges us and never stops challenging us. May we all be students for life in this other way. Not moving through college like a "consumer," asking a teacher or a school to give us what we want and think we need, but opening ourselves, humbling ourselves, throwing ourselves down to observe and study and learn. Infinitely curious, open, and receptive. I'm a student this way myself, right now, and have been a student of this sort for every minute of my life. May I always remain a student in this other way. To be a student forever. A student of life and art and all experience. There are no limits to that -- no boundaries to what we can learn, and no end of the learning. To be a student in this way is to live in a world of mountains beyond mountains and rivers beyond rivers, with no end. May it be forever so. Thank God it can be so! -- R.C.

120

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

Subject: Greetings to Ray

Dear Ray,

This is a greeting from Hungary.And thanks for your works.It helps keeping the Spirit of true filmmaking in us.Though my movie is Hungary's Official Entry for the Academy this year, it is Hungary's choice, and I don't think that's going to be the Academy's as well. I owe too much to Cass' and my movie is as far from mainstream as it is close-to-life (both very much). Some quotes attached here show how much it is a character-driven movie, if you have a minute.This year I began teaching at a University in Hungary (No Bordwell, neither Thompson:) but I'd like to use your works and website as very useful sources. So you'll spread your wings in Hungary :)When we'll have the DVD edition of ISKA'S JOURNEY, I'd like to present you a copy.What else?Have I told you 'Thanks'?

Csaba Bollókfilmmaker
Budapest

ISKA’S JOURNEY

‘A moving, human and relevant film, reminiscent of Ken Loach, it impresses through the magnetism of its central character and the depth of commitment to its subject.’ Peter Hames, London Film Festival

‘Iska’s Journey contains a central performance by young girl Maria Varga that is worthy of study by any actor.’ Jeremy Irons

‘Iska’s Journey – a courageous and very, very important film. The emotions this film causes are unspeakable.’ Philina Schmidt, Berlinale

‘Iska´s Journey certainly left a huge mark on the viewers of the International Film Festival Festroia. This is a film based on a true story and the true heroes of this story play the roles of themselves. They play and they show us all the little things that their life consists of; their real everyday life. Maybe this is the reason why you get a feeling that this is a documentary-feature film; the reason why you get a feeling that you are actually peering at somebody's life from a secret hidden corner. This is a story that could happen anywhere. This is a story that astonishes you with its honesty and realism. This is a story that will impress you with its dramatics like no other film ever’ . Salome Kikaleishvili, FIPRESCI JURY

‘A masterpiece.’ Hungarian Quarterly

’With her button nose, generous freckles and wise eyes, Iska (Maria Varga) looks for all the world like a cross between "Paper Moon"-era Tatum O'Neal and Kevin Corcoran as Disney's Toby Tyler…Her performance is at once innately dignified and terrifyingly vulnerable.’ Eddie Cockrell, Variety

Csaba,

I'd be honored to be presented with a copy of your film. Please send it to the following private address since it will be more secure than if you mail it to the university. Too many things are stolen or misplaced there..... (deleted material)......

I like your joke about not being David Bordwell or Kristin Thompson -- or not using their writing, if that is what you mean. That's an unfair advantage! That one thing will make your classes better than most of the ones in America. What fashion-slaves American film professors are..... Jargon and obscure teminology substituting for insight....

You have my permission to use my web site all you want in your classes. And you and your students have my permission to print out whatever you want to discuss.

Keep working for truth and deep morality (beyond mere good and evil). And, though I hope you do win a stupid Academy Award, it doesn't really matter--except financially. Don't ever take prizes seriously. Mohammed and Buddha never won any. And we know what happened to Jesus. The world hasn't changed much since then. The prizes for truth-telling are awarded in eternity.

Sincere best wishes,

Ray

P.S. Looking over the quotes you sent me, I have to say that the Variety quote says so much about American film reviewing in comparison with the rest of the world. What's wrong with my country? Why is everything -- from politics to film reviewing -- so trivialized? Turned into cuteness and "personality?" How did America become so stupid? Or is it only American journalism? No answer expected!

A note from Ray Carney: The following letter was written in response to the email exchange printed, in heavily redacted form, on the bottom of Mailbag page 117 (use the blue menus at the top bottom of this page to go there). It is by American independent filmmaker Tom Russell, and takes the side of the filmmaker I was debating with (who is identified only as XXXX) in the exchange on page 117, taking issue with my argument that American independent film is emotionally immature.

Been reading your Capra book some more the last few days. Finally got to your fifteenth chapter-- your analysis of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. I'm been excited and inspired by the fourteen previous chapters, but your writing about this particular film were particularly resonant (perhaps because it's the film of Capra's of which I am the most familiar). My appreciation and admiration for it has deepened a hundred if not a thousand-fold. You managed to express a lot of the things I love about the film but was unable to do so-- for example, the constant breaking/fissuring of the narrative structure. (A note from Ray Carney: Click here to open a window and access a series of links that contain excerpts from the book Tom Russell is discussing, Ray Carney's American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra, or to find out more about it, including reading critical reviews of it.)
It got me thinking about your recent discussion re: the "shallowness" of many recent young filmmakers. How all their films are about romance and ennui and playing games. How they don't engage socially, how they don't represent social systems and relationships with the same depth as, say, Mike Leigh.

The thing is, for most people in their twenties, life is about romance, ennui, and playing games, about hanging out. They're expressing the life they know.Looking at two of Capra's films, at AMERICAN MADNESS and WONDERFUL LIFE, in both films you have someone in the banking & loans business, a married man, someone with responsibility. But the difference between the two characters is night and day; it's not just that Huston's banker can navigate dangerous social systems while George Bailey is trapped by them. The very image of what it means to be a married man with responsibilities is completely different in the two films. In AMERICAN MADNESS, it's fun-- a kid's idea of being an adult. While in WONDERFUL LIFE, Capra's vision is mature and sobering.

I'm not calling Capra a kid and neither am I extending that to the young filmmakers, some of whom I consider to be my friends, to whose work we're alluding. I'm just saying that it takes a little life experience for artists to be ready to grasp with the deeper issues. I was recently talking to (an American independent filmmaker) .... about his films and the lack of, for lack of a better word, cruelty in them. And while I won't share exactly or all of what he said out of respect for the privacy of our correspondence, I do feel comfortable in relating that he said there are a lot of filmmakers who traverse that material, and not so many that pay attention to what's right under their nose.

And, you know what? Sometimes that is enough. I don't see it as a defect of their filmmaking; rather, it's what makes their filmmaking interesting and unique. (The filmmaker I was talking to) and a couple of others have a certain touch, something that's identifiably "them"-- a "voice" if you want to use the old cliche. And while I'm not saying they should do the same thing over and over again (and I don't think they would do that, either; I've seen leaps-and-bounds between one film and the next for these filmmakers) I am saying that they have to keep true to that voice.

One can't ask Capra to make LORD OF THE RINGS and one can't ask Carl Theo Dreyer to make BRINGING UP BABY. Yes, yes, granted, those are genres, but they're also styles, they're also sensibilities. And in this day of homogenized sensibilities, in which a lot of twenty-something filmmakers are all making crappy horror movies, it's so wonderful to have artists that young who actually have something to say, that have a vision.

Maybe that vision will one day be more socially-engaged, and maybe it won't. Whichever direction it moves in, though, I think they're going to make interesting and lasting works of art.

==Tom

Ray Carney replied:

Thanks for the response. Very very smart and good, but I still have my reservations about many of these films. Not just about the work of XXXX, but about almost all American independent filmmaking from the past ten or fifteen years. In response to your argument I have to say..... yes and no. Yes--OK, these guys are young and their characters are young and puppy love is what they know and care about and what their characters care about.But no--they are not sooo young that they can use that excuse for not seeing further. It might work in a high school film festival, but many of these filmmakers are in their thirties, even mid or late thirties. We die or retire at 60, so they have lived half their lives. And at 35 they should care about more than adolescent love and romance and hanging out.

But I want to be clear, all the more since even the filmmaker I was communicating with didn't seem to understand my point. I am NOT saying that filmmakers should have to include politics and mortgages and children, NOR am I saying that they have to have scenes about social problems. ("Bank runs" in your example from Capra.) That's not what I'm saying. I am saying that their view even of love and romance is IMMATURE, ADOLESCENT, TOO SIMPLE. Their characters are naive. Their groups are too "friendly." (Maybe this is what you were saying to your filmmaker friend.) There is no understanding of how much more complicated people are than their "good intentions" indicate. THAT'S what I want to be included. Not politics. Not sociology. Not world affairs. Not marriages and families and children and mortgages. I just want more than a "high school" view of people.

For an example of a film that does this and doesn't go near politics and sociology, look at Mike Leigh's Bleak Moments or --even better-- his Abigail's Party or Meantime. All three are brilliant visions of how messed up, how complex, how amazingly weird human personality is. That's what I don't see in more than a handful of American indie movies. And if you don't have that view by the time you are 30, I don't think you'll ever have it. You'll remain an immature artist with immature understandings of life's complexity. You'll go to your grave thinking it's about adolescent love and romance. You'll be a Cheever character, or a Spielberg character, no matter how many children or wives you have, or include in your movies.

Too harsh? I think not. Tarkovsky at 35 had made Andrei Rublev, Cassavetes at 35 had made Faces, Picasso at 35 was doing totally "mature" paintings, Mozart at 35 was writing amazingly emotionally complex concertos.... all of them at that age included towers of Babel of complexities, evil, tortured motives, messed up intentions in their work. That's a large part of what the world is. And what human interactions are. Not puppy love and group hugs and hurt feelings.

Tell me where I'm wrong. I want to hear it. Your letter is terrific, but I think it lets these guys off too easily. An artist's goal is to go into the hard, messy, complex places of life. Not to hide out at home or with your friends where tenderness and kindness rule......

RC

Tom Russell replied:

Subject: A Certain Tendency of the Recent Low-Budget American Independent Cinema

Ray,

Since I received your e-mail late last night/early this morning, I've been living with your words in my head. I went to bed but was unable to sleep; I went to work but was unable to be particularly productive. I've spent all this time, whether I wanted to or not, mulling your argument over and trying to formulate some sort of coherent response.

I have, quite frankly, failed miserably at this but if you'll excuse something slightly more scattershot, I'd like to offer some random thoughts about this.*****I'd like to start by clarifying something in my last letter. More than once I referred to the possibility that my contemporaries might become more socially-engaged. But I did not mean it in the sense that their films would become political or sociological or that they would tackle social issues or problems. I meant "socially-engaged" more in the sense that operates as the opposite number of the kind of solipsism that is sometimes palpable among younger filmmakers. That they might get "outside" themselves a bit without losing their own personal ideas, feelings, and "touch". There is a certain homogenized quality to the characters and dialogue in many recent low-budget independent films. While vocal mannerisms hardly equates a characterization (look at how many different meanings Cassavetes gets out of "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers"!), it's harder to refute charges of solipsism of the kind Amy Taubin leveled at the "mumblecore" crowd when many of the characters in a given film speak with the same helter-skelter sense of rhythm, the same abundance of verbal placeholders (um, like, y'know). And this might be less because of any deficit in craft in the creators of these films and more a matter of background and life experience. My general impression is that a number of these filmmakers either employ improvisation to a large degree or that they draw heavily from the lives around them and the life they themselves have lived. They are representing life as they know it. Now, how do I say this without getting myself in trouble?...I think, to a large degree, their lives have been comfortable. Most of these filmmakers are highly-educated and have been to good colleges, if not to film school. They have a large support network of friends and family. They started making films out of college and, with a few exceptions, haven't had to work a real nine-to-five. And I don't think they've experienced much by way of real honest-to-God completely humiliating failure.
You said to XXXX that everyone in these indie films are "too normal, too well-meaning, too nice", that it doesn't reflect your experience of life. It doesn't reflect mine, either. In all the sweeping generalizations I made in the preceding paragraph, my life has taken a completely different path. I didn't get to go to college. I'm stuck in a low-paying and in many ways demeaning municipal job. And I've failed. Oh, Lord, have I failed.

But that's my life, my experience, and I think my films reflect that. Their films, on the other hand, reflect their experiences, reflect their lives. Just as Cassavetes's films reflect his. And, really, what more can we ask of an artist?That's why I don't think I'm "letting these guys off too easy". There are, to paraphrase you quoting James, many windows in the house of fiction-in the house of art. I say let Andrew Bujalski be Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg be Joe Swanberg and Tom Russell be Tom Russell and Nick Cassavetes be Nick Cassavetes and John Cassavetes be John Cassavetes and Ray Carney be Ray Carney. Now, that being said, let me address another facet of your argument-that the understandings of life in these films are too simple, naïve, adolescent, or immature. While I might see your point generally-and that got me thinking about some solipsistic and sheltered tendencies in some of these recent independent films-when I look at things specifically, I have to respectfully disagree.

Look at the beach scene in Swanberg's film LOL. Joe's character is on his phone with a friend while his girlfriend flirts with a random beach guy. "So, check it out," Joe says to his friend. "The coolest thing is happening right now. I'm sitting on a beach and Ada is thirty feet away talking to this dude. It's this fucking dude with a sleeveless shirt and cargo pants. She's just doing it to piss me off. She's failing to make me mad which is then making her even more mad. I guess if I keep pushing it maybe she'll go home with him tonight." Ada waves to him, and he waves back, still on the phone.Maybe I'm too easily astonished, but that, to me, is a complex character and a complex moment. He's not naïve or dominated by good intentions. In many ways, I think the characters in LOL especially are crippled by a sense of irony-the characters never seem to be inside themselves or genuinely comfortable but always intensely aware of how ridiculous they're being, how passive-aggressive, always self-overhearing. Later in that same film Joe's character (Tim) is practically dragged from his computer by Ada into bed, and we get this exchange:

TIM: Hey, were you wanting to have sex tonight?
ADA: Yeah.
TIM: Could you give me like twenty minutes? (he smiles)
ADA: Are you serious?
TIM: Well... no.When he smiles, it's because he knows how ridiculous he's being, and how, in a very real way, his desire jeopardizes perhaps not only tonight's chances for nookie but his relationship in general. He knows this, he's completely aware of it, and yet he still does it. To me, that is a complex understanding of PEOPLE and their multivalence of conflicting motives and pressures. And I see such complexity and subtlety in the films of many other of my contemporaries. Look at, for example, the two party scenes at the center of Mutual Appreciation. Look at the tension and anger that flares up early on in that same film when Lawrence doesn't quite understand the Cool People's Inclusive Club. In fact, the last time I saw it, I was especially struck by how Lawrence often doesn't quite understand or get Alan or Ellie; the gulf there is palpable but admirably understated. There's also the scenes in which Ellie addresses the shallow surface nature of conversations with Alan-how they can never talk about anything real except his music-and she points up how creepy it is that Lawrence is so calm when she tells him about the moment Alan and Ellie shared. Both those examples, in a way, function as criticism of the tendencies of recent independent films to not go deeper and to avoid confrontation and extremes.

So, for me, I think there's a very deep and, just as importantly, highly unique understanding of human beings on display in the work of all of these filmmakers. I think the way in which they treat their subject matter does exhibit some depth and maturity. (When I think immaturity, I think of something like Juno.)Now, the subject matter itself-ennui and romance-does, I think, leave a little something to be desired. But I think with those subjects, as limiting as they are, these filmmakers have shown a great deal of understanding of not only the subjects themselves, but of the dance of personality and identity. As for when and if they'll move on to subjects that are a bit more ambitious and less limiting-

Well, I think that is, again, a matter of life experience. Not of time spent on the earth, but of how that time is spent. Of the people we meet, the love we give, the things we lose and struggle with. As they live a little more life, they'll be able to bring more of it into their films.

My argument, I guess, in summary, is that I think a deeper understanding of life IS there. It's not a drop of insight but gallons of it. They just need a good-sized tub to put it in, and right now they've got a bucket.

And while Mozart might have been grappling with tortured motives and extremes by the time he was thirty-five, by the time he was thirty-five he was also dying. I think the latter generally helps with the former. :- )*****

And something else I can't quite find a place for in the above argument but that I feel needs saying, once again addressing the idea of the people being too nice. You once said (and I'm paraphrasing here, so please forgive me if I'm misremembering) that great art teaches us about how to be better people, better lovers, better friends. If that's true, most great art teaches us by negative example-by showing us how not to behave and the folly of not listening, not understanding, not sympathizing, not forgiving.

Some of these recent American independents teach us, I think, by positive example. If other films show us why we should listen to people and respond to them lovingly, these films show us how to do so.And all I'm saying is, isn't there room for both?*****Hope some of the preceding made some kind of sense,

==Tom

A note from Ray Carney: I think both of Tom's letters are wonderfully insightful and eloquently argued. What do site readers think? I continue to invite responses, reactions, and thoughts about this topic or this exchange. (Site visitors who want to review the entire thread of previous thoughts and comments on this subject are encouraged to click on the "Most Popular Topics" button in the left margin of this page and to follow the links in the first entry on the Mailbag Highlights page they will be taken to: "Enough with the praise for the young and the noble. Click here to read what's WRONG with American independent film.")

A major new indie label. I know some of the individuals involved, and highly recommend it. -- R.C.

Underground Film Veteran Launches Provocateur Pictures
(Los Angeles, CA) 2008 saw the launch of Provocateur Pictures, an independent DVD label for alternative cinema. Founded by curator and co-founder of Other Cinema Digital, Noel Lawrence, Provocateur aims to create a space for challenging and offbeat works to thrive within an increasingly competitive media marketplace.

"When Hollywood rejects your work, I'll screen it," says Lawrence. "When your film is called weird or subversive, I'll embrace it. I am interested in taking chances on the films that other distributors appreciate but decide against releasing because they are too deemed too risky. It is my belief that there is an audience for quality alternative cinema." Providing major backbone and backup, Provocateur has enlisted Microcinema International, to distribute its film catalog both in the retail and institutional sectors. Founded in 1996, Microcinema is a leading international rights manager, exhibitor, and specialty markets distributor of the "moving image arts."

"We are proud to be distributing Provocateur's releases," says Joel S. Bachar, Founder of Microcinema International. "Noel's vision and curatorial aesthetic is in perfect sync with our distribution efforts and his acquisitions will add significant value to our repertoire of unique and diverse titles."

Provocateur Pictures released its first title, Rob Nilsson's "Words For The Dying," in September, a revealing cinema verité portrait of the former Velvet Underground musician, John Cale, in creative collaboration with Brian Eno. Director Nilsson ("Northern Lights" - Camera d'Or, Cannes, "Heat and Sunlight" - Grand Jury Prize, Sundance) follows them to Moscow, London and Wales for the recording of a new album, "Words for the Dying", built around four Dylan Thomas poems.
Web: http://www.provocateurDVD.com

Csaba Bollók, the Hungarian filmmaker / film teacher who wrote the letter that appears on the top of this page replied to the response I wrote him. I wanted to share his thoughts with site readers. (Note that the abbreviation "B'n'T" in the following note is his shorthand for the work of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, two of the most influential film theorists alive, the pernicious influence of whose work on film study -- and vision and understanding of filmmaking -- he and I exchanged jokes about in our first exchange.) It is particularly valuable for American filmmakers and writers to hear a view of film and film study that has not been polluted by the hegemony of Hollywood and warped by its pop culture value system (as even the work of Bordwell and Thompson has). Can anything escape that force field, that publicity juggernaut? That's exactly what I thought it was the job of intellectuals, critics, and reviewers to do -- to take the long view, to see things freshly and truly, to lever themselves outside the fads and fashions of their time and culture -- not merely to echo them in their work; but I guess I was misinformed. Foolish me. -- R.C.

Subject: Some Thoughts from Csaba

Dear Ray,

I was much impressed by your reply, you're very generous. So, we'll visit your sites, and read your writings with my students, for the benefit of future generations: to see clearly!

Yes, I mean I didn't want to use B'n'T in my lessons, though in Hungary, most of the media training is based on it, too.

When kids tell me those artificial terms taken from that book, I simply ask them to quit and forget about them. Being a filmmaker, I believe 'Movie as an Art' is much more organic, and subject to change all the time, like a plant, it cannot be descripted strictly by terminus technicus. (RC: "technical terms.")

In making movies, we might arrive at a level, when what we produce - probably by God's grace, but only with a huge respect to the world of facts - is not art anymore, but simply, 'life'. Nor abstraction, neither reference to it. It is rare in cinema, but when it happens, we can experience 'life' in its manner of operation. Characters not only in their acting but in their 'presence'. At this point, certain scholarly terms are no longer able to interpret. It is insight, intuition, the secret knowledge of being silent about certain things. And how many scholars or critics cannot even see when this phenomenon (easily the aim and function of art) is 'there'! Many of them get disarmed at this point, and I guess, that is why B'n'T did not ever (dare to) write about John Cassavetes. Have they remembered the ancient Greeks, or at least Thoreau : philosophy is not knowing how to live but practicing it at the same time! Your approach is like that, and this is very rare. Tell me please if I'm stretching it too far! I'm no writer - philosopher just a filmmaker.

I guess you are much addressed by students filmmakers etc. so no problem about reply. Any accident happens with me (Oscar), I'll let you know.Thanks for the address, DVD will go there once we have it.

All the best,

Csaba

P.S. I just checked my B'n'T: ONE mention of Tarkovsky (1993 edition!) at the film footage stock! Haha! :) Csaba

A note from Ray Carney: I have a question for site readers (really, a problem for them to solve). Here is the background: I was recently asked by a friend and colleague to recommend names of a few speakers who might agree to come to the College where I teach to speak to faculty members and "inspire them" to entertain "new visions" of their disciplines. The idea would be to bring in a number of high-profile "visionary" writers, thinkers, or teachers who can shake-up faculty members, get them out of their ruts, and suggest new ways of thinking about their fields and teaching them to students.

My College has three departments. One is devoted to Mass Communications, Public Relations, and Advertising. Another department is devoted to Journalism. And the third is the department in which I teach: the Department of Film and Television. The idea would be to bring in one or more speakers to inspire, excite, and give a new vision for faculty in each of these fields of study.
Now here is the question (or the problem). When I thought about who might be invited to come and speak to the Journalism department, I came up with a fairly long list of names of innovative thinkers who could offer serious and potentially radical critiques of problems with how American journalism is conducted and how the education of journalism students might be improved. (Robert McChesney, Mark Danner, Frank Rich, Eric Alterman, and many other names came to mind.) When I thought about who might be invited to come and speak to the Mass Communication, Public Relations, and Advertising department, I came up with another list of exciting, innovative thinkers and theorists whom I thought might come to campus to offer faculty members a critique of these disciplines and a new and different vision of how to train students to prepare for them. (E.g. Stewart Ewen, Mark Crispin Miller, Todd Gitlin, Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber, and other names came to mind.) But -- and this is the problem or question for site readers to respond to -- when it came to my own department, the Department of Film and Television, which includes both production and criticism courses, I was hard pressed to think of a single genuinely "radical," innovative, revolutionary thinker or writer who might come in to offer a new vision of these fields, particularly of film criticism and film production, and a new understanding of how to teach their methods and values to the next generation of students.

It was upsetting to me that, even off the top of my head, I could think of ten important books that critique the culture of advertising and publicity and mass communications, and twenty or thirty important books that critique what journalists are doing and how they are doing it and what values are being communicated to them in school, and fifty that critique the way American television is done, but ..... couldn't think of a single title that deeply and systematically critiques what film professors, critics, and reviewers are doing. So that's the problem. That's what I am asking for help and advice about from site readers.

Two questions, the first practical, and the second theoretical:

1. Practically: Who are the "revolutionaries" and "visionaries" of film criticism and film education? Who is suggesting new ways of making films and new ways of doing film criticism? Who out there is offering a serious intellectual critique of the moral and cultural shallowness of almost all film criticism or of the triviality of most American filmmaking and most academic film production courses and curricula, and is offering a vision of film study and film education that goes beyond prevalent, customary understandings of the field? As I say, I can't think of a single professor, critic, or reviewer who could be invited to speak to my department on this subject, who could really offer a radical, thoughtful critique of the present, and articulate alternatives to the way things are currently done. I couldn't think of anyone who might come and speak to my department to shake things up and offer a fresh vision of filmmaking and film study for the future. Who am I overlooking? Who is doing this?

2. Theoretically: Even if we can agree on a name or two or three in answer to question number one, why is film education and film production the "odd man out" in this triumvirate? In other words, why are there so many books and lectures and articles in intellectual journals about problems with advertising and public relations and about the unfortunate influence those activities have on our culture; and so many books and lectures and articles about the deficiencies, shortcomings, and institutional failures of American journalism (print, broadcast, and web), and about their unfortunate effects on our culture and their threat to our democratic processes, and so many books about the inadequacies of television programming, and their dire cultural effects --- but so few about the equal or even greater problems with and cultural effects of American filmmaking and film education? Films reach at least as many people as advertising and journalism, but it seems that somehow no one is paying attention to their unfortunate influence on our imaginations, to their deplorable cultural effects -- or the deplorable effect of almost all film and television education, which more or less amounts to preparing another generation of students to imitate (or admire) past television and film works.

I solicit reader responses and will publish the best and most thoughtful one on the site. Where are the film visionaries? Where are the critics when we need them to do more than pan another stupid Hollywood movie -- when we need them to critique the problems with, and offer an alternative vision of, how film criticism is done, and how film is taught in our universities? -- R.C.

Subject: a quick question

Mr. Carney,

I consider you the foremost expert on the life and work of John Cassavetes. I champion your Cassavetes on Cassavetes book, and describe it to people as "my first introduction to the REAL Cassavetes." And I cherish it as a myth breaker.

I am writing to you today because I just finished Michael Ventura's book "Cassavetes Directs", thoroughly enjoyed it and decided to contact Mr. Ventura to set up an interview because it inspired me to begin to write a piece on Love Streams. But, I knew that the first thing I needed to do was to see what you thought of the book, and I found on your site that you called it "hero worship". At first, because I trust your words, I felt like the reason why I had enjoyed the book so much may have been because I too was falling for a form of hero worship. But as I thought of it more, I decided I needed to contact you and ask you to elaborate on it, if you can, before I interviewed Mr. Ventura.
So, Mr. Carney, if there is anyway you can write to me briefly about your opinion of the book, completely off the record, I would appreciate it. Or you can call a leave an informal message on my voicemail XXX-XXX-XXXXX

I know you may not have time to do either, but I thought I would give it a shot.

Most respectfully yours,

Peter Rinaldi

RC replies:

Peter, Michael is a friend. I read this manuscript 20 or more years ago when it was first written and tried to get him a publisher for it. (More to say about that, but I'll save it for a personal conversation.)
In answer to your question, here is a brief notice I wrote about the book in a kind of diary of Cassavetes-related events that I keep:
2007
June 21: Journalist Michael Ventura publishes Cassavetes Directs (Kamera Books), an on-the-set diary of the making of Love Streams. The manuscript was completed more than 20 years earlier, and shows its age. The text is back in what might be called the "hero-worship" phase of Cassavetes appreciation - unashamedly in awe of him and his work and almost completely blind to the personal failures, confusions, and vulgarities that energized it and allowed him to create it. The text appears not to have been revised in the intervening two decades, to take account of recent discoveries and information and contains a number of factual and interpretive errors.

In short, there are LOTS OF MISTAKES in it, and a lot of weirdly dated commentary (much of it "hero - worship"), but most people won't notice since they don't know the facts anyway. It's OK to like it.

Ray

-->

"The difference between a real work of art and a work of popular culture / mass culture" -- I received the following e-mail from a woman who was in three of my classes at Boston University in the past two years (most recently my Mike Leigh course, which she alludes to in her note). She wrote me about going to New York to see the current production of Anton Chekhov's Seagull. Her observations about Chekhov and the Seagull are extremely deep and insightful, but the greater importance of her note, to my mind, is as a reminder of how low our expectations for film have sunk. We don't even expect to have this kind of experience when we go to a movie, certainly not an American movie. When was the last time an American film -- Hollywood, independent, or other -- did this to you? When was the last time an American film even attempted to do this to a viewer? When was the last time it moved its audience to tears, cries of joy, and a standing ovation at the end? Why are we satisfied with so little from our films? I thank her from the bottom of my heart for her observations about Chekhov, and for reminding us what real art can do and why art matters--and also for reminding me and everyone else one more time how trivial, how silly, how reductive, how-beside-the-point all of the ever-so-fashionable forms of race, class, gender, and ideological critical analysis are in the presence of a work of genius. -- R.C.

119

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

Dear Prof. Carney,

I've read your statements about thinking (RC: There are many discussions of the limitations of ideas and the dangers of abstraction on the site, but for a starting point, to know what Lindsey is referring to, read the blue headnote titled "A note from Ray Carney" that precedes the excerpt from chapter 6 of William James's A Pluralistic Universe around the middle of the preceding page of the Mailbag -- page 118.) You are a very brilliant man but I still am not sure I understand what you are saying. Can you explain how to think without thoughts? Thanks.

Lindsey Hall (not a film student but a film lover)

Dear Lindsey--

Thanks for the kind words. Flattery will get you everywhere! ("Brilliant" is one thing I am seldom accused of being!!! haha.)

I appreciate your questions but the problem is, first, that the site only has excerpts from my writing, not the complete books and interviews (go to the Bookstore section via the top menu of the Mailbag to find the complete versions), and, second, that this is an inherently difficult idea to explain. Some things are hard to put into words, and more easily explained by "working on them" in a classroom where there is a give-and-take, call-and-response, question-and-answer format. As Maria Montessori and John Dewey understood, a lot of learning is easier done as "doing" than as "talking." Explaining some things is a little like trying to learn farming or carpentry (or love) from a book. I guess it might be done, but it would be the slowest and most cumbersome way to learn it. The best way to learn this would be in my classes. But even then it is hard. Many students have a lot of trouble learning it even that way. They dig in their heels, they kick and scream bloody murder, they don't want to "be pushed off the cliff" into the dark. We love ideas. We cling to them with a death grip. We don't want to let go of them. As my coach said: "No pain, no gain." It's true intellectually, too. I have lots of discussions of that on the site.

So I don't know exactly how to answer your question. I assume you have already read the note I wrote that precedes the William James passage and read James's words that I posted in the middle of Mailbag page 118. I also assume you have seen the links to other pages on the site that have related discussions that I posted following the James passage. If you haven't already done it, go to the middle of page 118 and start reading there with my headnote, followed by the James text (though I'll admit that the James stuff may be stiff going if you aren't up on your Bergson -- or more recently: Maurice Merleau-Ponty or John Dewey or Richard Rorty or Richard Shusterman, if that's the right spelling of his name, I can't remember!). Once you have done that, or at least have tried (give it the good old "college try!") to understand what James is saying, then read the material elsewhere on the site that the links on the bottom of Mailbag page 118 take you to. (My words may be easier to understand than either James's or Bergson's. I'm not as smart as they are, so my ideas are simpler and easier to explain.) Don't rush. Don't skim. Devote a few days to this. Or at least a few hours. It's worth it. All learning is hard. All real learning. Students forget that. America is a culture of instant gratification. People expect quick and easy results, but it's a mistake. It leads to wrong answers. Ideas can be as hard to wrestle with and take as long to work through as a war or a financial bailout. Why wouldn't they? So be patient. Be kind to yourself. OK? Once you have already clicked on those links and read the material on the other site pages, then try this one and this one and this one and this one. And then, maybe read one of my books or packets (on this topic I'd especially recommend the "What's Wrong with...." packet).

But bear in mind that ultimately it's about you working through art in any way you can, on your own, and coming to your own understandings. I really can't GIVE anyone anything. I can only point in a promising direction. (If you know music, think of how you learned to hear the difference between C major and D minor, between G and F major. Once you know the difference, it seems obvious and absurdly simple; but the first time you listen, it is so hard to put into words.) And all I'm doing in this case is reminding students (or you) that everything must be thought through--even the importance of thought! The important lesson is that you need to think through EVERYTHING from the "ground-up." There is so much received knowledge, so many cliches substituting for original response.
EVERYTHING must be thought through. Why do we search for symbols, metaphors, images in films or novels? Why do we search for philosophy? Why do we search for meanings? Why do we think that THOUGHTS are the goal? Get the idea? Do you understand what I am driving at? Where I am going? Put EVERYTHING in question. EVERYTHING. Even THOUGHTS and IDEAS.
Well, that's the best I can do in an email. Hope it's of some use.

Fare onward voyager.

Sincere best wishes,

RC

Subject: Link András Schiff Beethoven-Lectures

Hello Mr. Carney,

this is Klaus Findl from Cologne (who is also very happy about the continuation of the mailbag posting!...).

I wanted to share with you and other visitors of your site (especially for those interested in music) a very interesting link - just in case no one else told something about ist:

During the last two or three years the pianist András Schiff performed (and recorded) the complete 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. In Wigmore Hall, London he gave introductions to the sonatas, about 30-40 minutes playing parts and talking about every single one of them. It's a pleasure to listen to - humorous and full of insights.

His lectures have been recorded, and you can listen to them here.

All the best

Klaus Findl

P.S.: Cassavetes' "Husbands" is released today on DVD in Germany! (I still don't have it, so I can't say anything about cuts etc...We'll see...) By the way: the (unfortunately dubbed) Version I taped years ago from German TV contains - as far as I can see - all the harassing in the bar and the complete toilet shit, fart and puke stuff.

RC replies:

Klaus,

Great to hear from you! It's been about a year, hasn't it? Thanks for the information about the German release of Husbands. A few other site readers from Germany alerted me to it a few months ago, but I forgot to post the info. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it's the complete version. Still hasn't happened yet in America -- but what else is new? The U.S. of A. always has to learn about what matters in American art from Europe. It was true with Chaplin and Jerry Lewis, and true with much American painting and music, so why wouldn't it be true of Cassavetes as well? We'll have to learn from Germany and do our own DVD release some day. And what about Love Streams? That's still not available! (Though I did help with a French release of it five or six years ago.)

Re: the Schiff Beethoven lectures, thanks for that information as well. I had no knowledge of them being available (and for myself can't access them on my old computer), but I am delighted to pass the link on to my readers. Beethoven's piano sonatas are among his greatest works (and just a tad easier and more pleasing for newbies to listen to than his quartets, which are a bit more demanding and better saved for "advanced students."). Here is a quote I use in one of my books about them. Maybe it will help to generate some interest. It's from one of my favorite contemporary music critics, Antony Hopkins. I've mentioned his name before on the site.

"The thirty-two piano sonatas Beethoven wrote are his most significant biography, worth more than all the thousands of pages that have been written about him. In them we see not the events of life outside, as we do in most biographies, but the infinitely more important life within. In the sonatas, written clearly for us to hear, lie the stages of a great composer's development from youth to maturity, a journey which paradoxically began with the complete confidence of a young man, knowing he had the stuff of genius within, and ended in loneliness, cut off from the world by a barrier of silence, pushing bravely but sometimes gropingly into a new era." -- Antony Hopkins, Talking about Music

Best wishes and thanks,

Ray Carney

P.S. (To site readers): If anyone out there is able to download and copy Shiff's lectures to a plain old "red book" CD , and send it to me, I'd be in their debt. I'm such a techo-klutz luddite that I don't even know if this can be done, or if it is too time-consuming to bother with; but if it isn't too hard or inconvenient, I'd love to listen to Shiff's lectures myself. (Note that the CD must be indexed to be read by, and playable in, a regular "low tech" CD player; if it is a CD Rom to be played on a computer, then I'm back to square one. And please do not send me an electronic file, MP3 or anything else, via email. Same problem. My own primitivism. My poor stuffed-to-the-gills hard drive groans and mutters every time my machine receives an email attachment.) -- Ray "Living in the Stone Age" Carney

Subject: Keep it Up!

Ray,

I just wanted to let you know I still visit and read and love being challenged by your site. You're
doing great and thanks for staying in the trenches and fighting the good fight.

Much Love and Respect,

Paul Biagiotti

RC replies:

Thanks, Paul. I recognize your name from previous emails a year or two ago, but have to confess that I forget who you are. Don't take it personally! Haha. Just too many emails to keep track of.
I really appreciate the encouragement. Keeping up the site is like digging a well that, when I drop a pebble in to see how deep it is, I can never quite hear an echo back from. In other words, I don't know how deep I've gone or if there is anything worth hearing. (Thanks to Robert Frost for the image---see his poem "For once, then something.") So it's good to hear an echo. (I just thought of another Frost poem on the subject of echoes and replies. It's about Adam and Eve and the incredible value of receiving "creative response" from someone else, the importance of getting stimulating feedback -- that's what you and other site readers give me!! Hey, thanks, guys!! -- It's called "The Most of It." Check that out also. Frost must have felt pretty lonely at times.)

Since you allude to the motion to censure me by my department and the period in which site postings were suspended, if you want to know how things stand at present, the current status of things BU-wise is summarized near the bottom of page 101 of the Mailbag, or you can click on to the Mailbag "Most Popular Topics" button in the left margin of this page and scroll down to the "Sources of Fascism" category and click on six or seven different pages that are linked there to get a bigger picture.

You too keep up your good work, whatever it is. I was just telling a woman I met in a bookstore the other day that most of the greatest achievements in the history of civilization have gone unrecorded and uncommemorated because they have been done not by politicians, generals, and presidents, but by ordinary people--mothers, teachers, nurses, ministers, and caretakers of all kinds. We need the Baracks, but we also need the mothers, teachers, and ministers too.

Translation: Keep doing whatever you can for truth and love and compassion, however you can do it. Nothing is too small to make a difference.

Best,

Ray Carney

Subject: Best version of Shadows?

Mr. Carney,

I read the information on your pages but was wondering, I may have missed this but, what is the best (your recommended) version of Shadows I can purchase right now that shows the closest version of the original Cassavetes' intentions for the film?

I would love to order a copy of the closet thing to the original very soon.

Thank you,

Sean McHenry

RC replies:

Easy answer in this case. There is only one version of Shadows you can buy right now: the second version. Gena Rowlands has prevented me from making the other one available as a video release, from screening it publicly, from giving it to Criterion to include in their box set, from everything! Her lawyers are "on my case" to keep me from showing the first version.....

But your question is worth responding to anyway. My response is that you should try to break away from thinking in terms of "best" or "second best" versions of anything. It's a "Top 40," "Academy Awards," "News at Nine" vision of reality. What is the best film? Who is the best director? Who is the best novelist, poet, or playwright? What is his or her best novel, poem, or play? Who is the best parent, brother, sister, child, boy or girlfriend in your acquaintance? What is the best job? Who is the best person alive? Who was the best philosopher, historian, mathematician? What is the best country to live in?

There are no answers to those questions because they are premised on false understandings of art and reality. There is no "best" or "second best" -- except in stupid awards ceremonies and magazine polls. Things are unique. People are different. Films are different. Artists are different. Most of Henry James's novels and stories are published in two different texts. Neither is better or worse.They are different. Art Tatum performed "Tea for Two" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "Night and Day" and "The Man I Love" dozens of times, each time in a different way. None of those performances is the best -- or the worst. They are all different and all interesting for different reasons. That's the way art and life are. There is seldom a best or worst. Both versions of Shadows are fascinating, wonderful, and interesting -- for different reasons. There is no best version of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie either. And no best version of anything really complex. There are only different versions.

The earlier Shadows has much more of the three boys' sensibility, and much more of Tony's sensibility. The narrative is more masculine in its point of view. That is because Cassavetes was much closer to the boys and to Tony, imaginatively and emotionally, when he made the first version. The second version has more of Lelia's sensibility and less of Ben's and Tony's. That is partly because of screenwriter Robert Alan Aurthur's insertion of new material, and also because (partly due to Aurthur's input) Cassavetes had changed his view of his own movie by the time he shot the new scenes to cut into it. Both versions are equally fascinating but really very different.
But, as I say, all of this is moot, since Gena won't let the world see the first version. Too bad.

Happy viewing!

RC

Subject: great film programs

Hi Ray:

A random Google Alert brought you to my attention and I can see your wonderful array of films. Congrats on being such a fine archivist of excellent and unrecognized works. I particularly love the film Junebug - it ranks as perhaps my favorite film of the past few years.

Please keep up the good work and inspire even more people.

Rick RayProducer/Director10 Questions For The Dalai Lama

Dear Rick:

Thanks. And praise counts triple when it comes from certain people. I LOVE YOUR MOVIE! And the Dalai Lama is one of my great personal heroes of all time. I'm posting your note and this reply on the site Mailbag (I hope you don't mind) to bring your work to the attention of those who might not be aware of it.

Best wishes,

Ray Carney

Klaus Findl, who lives in Cologne, Germany, sent in a postscript to his notice above, about the relevance of the Beethoven Sonata Lectures by Andras Schiff to students in other arts. He makes an excellent point about how all great art is fundamentally revolutionary. It aspires to move beyond what has been said or thought before. It aspires to move beyond the ways the "instrument" (piano in the case of music, camera and Nagra in film, brush for a painter) has ever been used before. Look at Picasso and see how his paintings not only "destroy" other paintings that preceded them, but even his own previous works. ("My paintings are the sum of destructions," he once wrote.) Listen to Ives or Stravinsky and hear how they mess with meter and wound harmony. ("Do not correct all the mistakes. The mistakes in my score should not be changed. They are the way I want things," Ives wrote to a copyist.) Meanwhile, film scholars and film students revel in "intertextuality" and "allusions" and "cross-references" to Spielberg, Welles, Renoir, Tarkovsky. And production teachers (at least the ones I know) continue to give their students rules for how to shoot and edit their work: e.g. "cut on motion," "coverage," "alternate close-ups in a conversation," "don't cross the 180 degree line," and a hundred similar stupidities. No real artist works this way. No real artist makes his or her art from a recipe. No real artist tries to make his or her art look like someone else's. Artists learn from other artists, not by imitating, but by stealing; not by following rules, but by breaking them; not by doing what someone else did, but by doing everything differently.

Deny influences. Reject models. Throw out the past. Break the mold. Break with the old. Find a new path to pursue your new truths. Follow no one -- not even Schiff or Beethoven! Make it new. Do it differently. Tell your truth your way. -- R.C.

Subject: Postscript to: András Schiff Beethoven Lectures

Hello, Mr. Carney,

in my preceding mail I sent you a link to the public lectures the pianist András Schiff gave about the Beethoven Sonatas.

Maybe I should make a remark, why I think these lectures, in my opinion, are so inspiring -- and not only for musicians (your website is mainly for people interested in film).

I myself am no film director, I started as a theatre director and now I am a painter for several years, and one of the things that is great about the lectures (for me, too) is how Schiff emphasizes and shows in detail that for Beethoven "the piano is never just the piano".

Beethoven thinks in his piano sonatas in a constant mixture of pianistic and orchestral and chamber music terms. In every sonata he develops different concepts of relationships between (potentially) orchestral, pianistic, string quartet-, woodwind ensemble-, percussion- etc. sounds and layers. Every sonata is a kind of utopian load test for the potentials that can be embodied by a work written for solo piano. And more than once he goes beyond the limitations of the instrument, in favor of the "idea". And these load-tests, these strains for the piano and for a solo piece are essential to the "content" of Beethoven's music. (In the late 19th century somebody in fact orchestrated the "Hammerklavier-Sonata" for big symphony orchestra. I once listened to a recording and the piece sounded rather silly and inflated - because the utopian potential of the sonata was - well,"realized")
I think this experience could be a very important insight for students and people who want to make films. I know some film students (we have two Film academys here in Cologne) and many of them are only interested - in films. They don't know why they should be seriously interested in any of the other arts and their potentials. So the films they make in most of the cases are just "films", nourished only by other films... Well, you get the point - your website is dedicated to it.

Best wishes

Klaus Findl

P.S.: My English is probably not always state of the art. If you want to post my mail or parts of it on your site, feel free to correct awkward passages.

Klaus,

Your English is fine. And your thinking is terrific. -- R.C.

This came in from a programmer who runs a very interesting and important documentary series. I recommend his IFC series to readers who live in Manhattan. And his programming in Toronto. -- R.C.

Subject: Question

Dear Ray,

I recently wanted to recommend your 1986 New Republic essay on Vincent Canby, which I vividly
recall reading at the time. Is it collected in any book or available on-line anywhere?Thanks,Thom PowersDocumentary ProgrammerToronto International Film FestivalStranger Than Fiction @ IFC Center (Tuesdays: Sept 23 - Nov 25, 2008)

NEW web site:
http://STFdocs.com/

RC replies:

Thom,

I can understand it being hard to find. The site is so sprawling and massive I tell people to leave a trail of cookie crumbs or unfurl a thread behind them as they go to avoid being lost forever in the maze of endless text passages and the mind-boggling confusion of dead-end ideas. (I hear the howls of lost souls through my modem all night long.) Many enter never to be heard from again. Lost to the world of capitalism, profit, power, and fame, forever.

The essay I wrote about Vincent Canby is at this url.

To get to the New Republic cover story, you'll have to scroll down until you reach the heading:
The Hazards of HumanismThe corrupting influence of Vincent Canby and The New York Times on American Criticism and Culture

You might also want to check out the piece above that point as well as some of the other pieces listed in the top (roll-over) menu on that page. They are companion pieces to my Canby caper.
I know and appreciate your work. Thanks for the good words.

Ray

A note from Ray Carney: Jim McKay is one of my favorite people and independent filmmakers. I
pass along for the benefit of site readers a recent unexpected recommendation of his. I myself have not seen the Demme film, so I can't corroborate Jim's recommendation, but I will admit that I just love the fact that Demme's film has gotten only so-so (or worse than so-so) reviews, as far as I've seen. It would be just the same-old, same-old deju vu all over again (thanks, Yogi!) if the critics have missed the boat with this movie for the ten-thousandth time. That never changes.

I'd encourage site readers to write back with their own reactions. Is Jim right? Is he (or Demme) on to something? -- Or not? Let me know what you think, and I'll publish the best responses. -- R.C.

From: Jim McKay

Subject: MOVIE ALERT

Hey, folks -

If you're thinking about taking a pass on the new Jonathan Demme film, Rachel Getting Married, because it has a weird title and because his last two fiction films, The Truth about Charlie and The Manchurian Candidate, were remakes and didn't have the oomph that his movies typically have, please think again.

I saw Rachel Getting Married last night and want to tell you that it is a total gem. The script, by Jenny Lumet, is amazing - extremely mature and subtle and featuring complex, finely drawn characters across the board.

But it's the absolute audaciousness of the movie itself that is overwhelming.

The rehearsal dinner toasts go on and on. We start to think, "okay, this is too much." But then we sink back in, we feel like we're there, we want to eat and drink with these people and share in their celebration. The music almost never stops and we start to think, "enough of the music, already." And then the main character says "enough of the music, already" and it stops - for a moment. And we embrace the boldness of the choice, Demme's decision to bombard us with music - from every corner of the country and the world - because....well, because he loves music and he wants to share it with us. Yes, Demme loves music but more importantly - and here's why the film is really a success - he loves his characters. Their joy, their flaws, their bickering, their insecurities....
It's beautiful to see a director so deep into his career making a film that is so personal and so adventurous. Not adventurous on some meta level. But a film that challenges mainstream narrative conventions, that has an actual personality, that you, as a viewer, experience in a completely different way. It's the kind of movie you'd expect to have come from an emerging French director, but with all the smarts and sophistication and life experience that a director like Demme can bring to it. And a humanism and an optimism that is very, very rare.

None of this addresses the amazing cast - incredible performances across the board by all the leads and inspired casting choices like Fab Five Freddy, dj Anita Sarko, poet Beau Sia. sax player Donald Harrison Jr, Demme regular Paul Lazar, and Demme's "Cousin Bobby" and his son, Brooklyn.

I don't know - I have a feeling the film might not be for everyone. Maybe some of what I just wrote is over-the-top. Maybe I'm caught up in some kind of post-election emotional mess.

All I know is that I laughed a lot, I bawled my eyes out numerous times, I broke out in weird tears of joy while waiting in the lobby afterwards (I think I was literally so happy just to have seen something so wonderful), and the film inspired me to think about my own life and experiences and to see the world in a little bit of a different way as I walked out of the theater and into the Brooklyn night.
I hope you get a chance to see it while it's playing in your town.

peace,

Jim

A note from Ray Carney: As a companion piece to Jim McKay's appreciation of Jonathan Demme's movie, I excerpt the following brief mention of Kelly Reichert's latest film from a message by Mike Gibisser (writer-director of the magnificient Finally, Lillian and Dan). Some site readers already know that I regard Kelly Reichert as one of the great hopes of American independent filmmaking. Her work is amazing, and I gather that Mike thinks so too. Catch her work any way you can. -- R.C.

.... I caught Kelly Reichert's WENDY AND LUCY as well; I think she is going to blow the lid off of the whole thing some day. I look forward to it.... -- Best, Mike

Oh, and while I'm at it, I might as well add a sentence from an email Caveh Zahedi wrote me today, recommending Mike Leigh's latest:

.... I just watched "Happy-Go-Lucky" tonight and thought of you. I LOVED it. And what a fantastic ending.....

And here's one more recommendation from Caveh that came in after the preceding:

P.S. Another film I liked a lot ... was "The Nines" (by John August) .... I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

So who says there are no good movies out there? Who says there is nothing to see? Who says the art of film is dead? Go check out Demme's, Reichert's, Leigh's, or August's flick. Or, better yet, check out all four. These are four strong recommendations from three of my favorite American independent filmmakers .... -- R.C.

Oh, and here's one more final thing from Caveh and Mandy. They sent me this birth notice a good while ago, but "better late than never" will have to be my motto. -- R.C.

Beckett Field Zahedi was born on Friday, October 3rd at 8:50 a.m.After a sixty hour labor, we are both thrilled to finally meet him in person.So far, he's good at sucking, sleeping, and making funny faces.

We hope you get to meet him soon,

Mandy & Caveh

118

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

From: sumonja petar

Subject: a tribute video to John Cassavetes

Dear Ray Carney,

i have written to you some time ago now...i was doing that master on John Cassavetes at the time.I would just like to send you a link of something i have made that i have posted on youtube.
its a sort of a tribute video to John Cassavetes

hopefully you will find it interesting.

sincerely,

Petar
http://www.youtube.com/perashsh
100 Faces Of John Cassavetes - A Tribute

RC replies:

subject: cave man thoughts

Thanks very much!

Unfortunately, my computer is too ancient (steam powered and four hundred and ten years old) to access videos. But I shall post on my web site and ask my readers to report back to their fearless leader. (I guess that's me.)

Keep the faith and keep working for truth and moral values in art.

A confession: I remember your earlier email and project, from a year or two ago, but I forget what country you live in. Remind me please.

Cheers,

Ray

Petar replied:

i live in Serbia... a small and insignificant country in the Balkans... don't know what else to say about it.

Thank you! Hope that someone will like it. It's a "post modernistic" mish-mash cut-up of his films. It's something I wanted to do for a long time. To make some sort of tribute to John Cassavetes.

Petar

An important survey from one of the major online film publications, IndieWire. But it did not begin auspiciously for me at least. IndieWIRE is so "industry-centric" that there is no category for "film educator," "film professor," or "film critic" (nor one for "film student") on the first page. I had to describe myself as a "film fan," and many site readers will have to also. Who says America (or American film) respects intellectuals and thinkers? Sarah Palin and IndieWire would probably agree on that subject! -- RC (who thinks of himself as more -- or less -- than a "fan")

From: Eugene Hernandez
subject: indieWIRE
Survey: We need your input & guidance

LETTER TO READERS:Back in mid-July, as indieWIRE hit its twelfth anniversary, we announced our sale of iW to Ted Leonsis' new company, SnagFilms. Since the partnership with the folks at Snag, we've spent quite a bit of time pondering indieWIRE and its future. Rest assured, indieWIRE's focus will not shift, but the way we deliver our content will. As moviegoing and filmmaking continue to change, we are exploring many opportunities to bolster the community of filmmakers, industry and aficionados who are members of indieWIRE.For twelve years, iW has been the gateway for our members to discover intelligent films: independent, international, documentary cinema. Being that gateway for intelligent film remains our passion and is driving our development of the new indieWIRE.We've had great conversations with numerous friends and colleagues about our plans to dramatically re-develop indieWIRE.com. As we continue working towards the launch of the new indieWIRE in early '09, we need the input, guidance and advice of our members.Please take a moment to participate in our survey. We invite you to share ideas, thoughts, and feedback and appreciate your continued support of indieWIRE.

thanks,

eug

Prof. Carney,

I found you on the internet.

I am looking for a copy of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater, "Free of Charge" with John Cassavetes.

One of my favorites of all time. I had a VHS copy back in the 1970's when it was broadcast on the ABC series Startime. But it is now gone.

I did get to meet Mr Cassavetes once in Los Angeles in the 1980's.There was a panel truck driving down Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills that was plastered with posters from the movie Opening Night. I pulled up next to it at a stoplight and yelled in " Do you have an extra copy of the poster?" To my surprise leaning out the truck to hand me a poster was John.

What a guy!

Thank you,

LS Love
Santa Fe, NM

RC replies:

Dear LS (short for "love streams?") Thanks for the great story! And typical "John." Just the guy I knew. Yes, he WOULD HAVE leaned out of the truck -- that's just like him!!! -- and, if you had asked for it, he would have given you HIS SHIRT too!!! He was a total nut case. That was what was so great about him. He was absolutely fearless. And didn't give a damn what anybody thought. He would do ANYTHING!!!! (I am a little like that myself, demented in the same way, but boy does it get me into trouble with "formal people!") So thanks, but sorry I can't help with "Free of Charge." I have my own copy, but the Bob Hope Presents folks would sue the pants off me if I started distributing it: Law suits, demands for moola, stupidity, the works!!!! just can't afford the court costs or lawyers' fees, but I promise you, if you are ever in Beanburg, give me a call, and I'll try to screen it for you. It's really (I mean really!) a wonderful piece. Strictly between ourselves (shhh--don't tell anyone): You want to know an even more wonderful (and rare) Cassavetes work? It's called "XXXXX." Try to see that one if you can. It's friggin' a-maz-ing. And I may be the only person in the world who knows about THAT ONE! One of the most important works John ever did in his whole life. Keep the faith, my dear friend. And do let me know if you are ever up in this area, and I'll set up a screening. Honest injun. -- Ray Carney

A note from Ray Carney: William James is one of the most important philosophers of the past 400 years. His writing about the difference between conception and perception, ideas and experiences, is very relevant to the work of the artist. Below I reprint an extended excerpt from Chapter 6 of A Pluralistic Universe, one of James's most important books. I recommend this excerpt to every creative artist. Think about how ideas mislead us, how abstractions can take us away from reality, how the "conceptual transformation" can represent a profound loss for life--and art. Every artist must grapple with the issues James deals with in this piece. In fact, it would not be too much to say that this is the most important issue that artists must deal with. Artists need to have ideas, and need to use various forms of conceptual and temporal shorthand in their work (metaphors, symbols, typologies, summaries and abbreviations of all sorts) -- but they must also understand how ideas and abstractions and summaries can and do betray or falsify the deepest and most important aspects of lived experience. Life is non-conceptual. Life is not ideas. Life is experiences. How can an artist make a work of art responsive to the non-conceptual, non-abstracted, temporally flowing side of reality? How can an artist avoid giving his or her viewer or listener "ideas" in place of "experiences?" Read and think about these issues. -- R.C.

Bergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. He alone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible or possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons which at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the whole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where its sovereignty is indisputable. Bergson's own text, felicitous as it is, is too intricate for quotation, so I must use my own inferior words in explaining what I mean by saying this.

In the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the conceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We live forward, we understand backward, said a Danish writer; and to understand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up into bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical herbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain which of them statically includes or excludes which other. This treatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the concepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective and post mortem. Nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and project them into the future. We cannot learn from them how life made itself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that its ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what positions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given conditions. We can compute, for instance, at what point Achilles will be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth minute. Achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail of how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never gives us--we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results contradict the facts of nature. The computations which the other sciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. The concepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or extrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are found as consequences. The latest refinements of logic dispense with the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their correspondences each to each in various series. The authors of these recent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the last vestiges of intuition, videlicet of concrete reality, from the field of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots or bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may be strung in naked series.

This is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most likely misunderstanding. So I speak here only by way of brief reminder to those who know. For the rest of us it is enough to recognize this fact, that although by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux of the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making another cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there; and that although in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be said to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular thing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest); yet in the deeper sense of giving insight they have no theoretic value, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the flux, or with the causes that govern its direction. Instead of being interpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality altogether. They make the whole notion of a causal influence between finite things incomprehensible. No real activities and indeed no real connections of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic; for to be distinguishable, according to what I call intellectualism, is to be incapable of connection. The work begun by Zeno, and continued by Hume, Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and Bradley, does not stop till sensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of 'reason.'

Of the 'absolute' reality which reason proposes to substitute for sensible reality I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile you see what Professor Bergson means by insisting that the function of the intellect is practical rather than theoretical. Sensible reality is too concrete to be entirely manageable--look at the narrow range of it which is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is able to compass. To get from one point in it to another we have to plough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. No detail is spared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at Port Arthur, and we grow old and die in the process. But with our faculty of abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as if we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as by a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require without entanglement with any context. What we do in fact is to harness up reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it the better. This process is practical because all the termini to which we drive are particular termini, even when they are facts of the mental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly celebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the transformations of external things are dealt with. To deal with moral facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests as mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams,' and the like. Paradoxical effect! as Bergson well remarks, if our intellectual life were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures. One would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the domain of its own intellectual realities. But it is precisely there that it finds itself at the end of its tether. We know the inner movements of our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us, but can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely predict their future; while things that lie along the world of space, things of the sort that we literally handle, are what our intellects cope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life is to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and activities?

One can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own experience with pragmatism makes me shrink from the dangers that lie in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for that word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson, and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' or scientific knowledge from the deeper 'speculative' knowledge aspired to by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge, which is knowledge about things, as distinguished from living or sympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of reality. The surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter of space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not penetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. That inner dimension of reality is occupied by the activities that keep it going, but the intellect, speaking through Hume, Kant & Co., finds itself obliged to deny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible existence. What exists for thought, we are told, is at most the results that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along the surfaces of space and time by regeln der verknüpfung, laws of nature which state only coexistences and successions.[1]

Thought deals thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is essential and permanent, not temporary.

The only way in which to apprehend reality's thickness is either to experience it directly by being a part of reality one's self, or to evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining someone else's inner life. But what we thus immediately experience or concretely divine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to conceive eternities. Could we feel a million years concretely as we now feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for our conceptual faculty. We should know the whole period fully at every moment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by means of concepts which we project. Direct acquaintance and conceptual knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the other's defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered like, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians, we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points of which they occasionally rest and perch.

Professor Bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine absolutely. Instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder, he calls it the more superficial. Instead of being the only adequate knowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the practical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience and thereby to save time. The one thing it cannot do is to reveal the nature of things--which last remark, if not clear already, will become clearer as I proceed. Dive back into the flux itself, then, Bergson tells us, if you wish to know reality, that flux which Platonism, in its strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always spurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which rationalism has always loaded with abuse.--This, you see, is exactly the opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute, which our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental habits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary to that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is our usual intellectual pose.

What, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the conceptual translation so fatally leaves out?

The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our concepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of arrest herein. With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. But these concepts are not parts of reality, not real positions taken by it, but suppositions rather, notes taken by ourselves, and you can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can dip up water with a net, however finely meshed.

When we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. A concept means a that-and-no-other. Conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; this connection excludes that connection--and so on indefinitely; whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined as being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however brief, co-present with each other throughout experience. The literally present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the only present ever realized concretely being the 'passing moment' in which the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix their lights. Say 'now' and it was even while you say it.
It is just intellectualism's attempt to substitute static cuts for units of experienced duration that makes real motion so unintelligible. The conception of the first half of the interval between Achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and the mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last half is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever being traversed. Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. The velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the expansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as [s/t], but the s and t are only artificial cuts made after the fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners as the same tracts of 'objective' space and time, for the experienced spaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably as different as his velocity from the same things in Achilles. The impetus of Achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and conquest over the inferior creature's motion indivisibly in it. He perceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician's homogeneous time and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both, or of their order. End and beginning come for him in the one onrush, and all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a certain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact outstripped.

We are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life that I know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion in place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state of mind. Yet I ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher thought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in tasks which sense-experience so easily performs.
What makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. But are not differents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn't every bit of experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? They exist only durcheinander. Reality always is, in M. Bergson's phrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they compenetrate and telescope. For conceptual logic, the same is nothing but the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each other. Not so in concrete experience. Two spots on our skin, each of which feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are felt as different from each other. Two tones, neither distinguishable from a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. The whole process of life is due to life's violation of our logical axioms. Take its continuity as an example. Terms like A and C appear to be connected by intermediaries, by B for example. Intellectualism calls this absurd, for 'B-connected-with-A' is, 'as such,' a different term from 'B-connected-with-C.' But real life laughs at logic's veto. Imagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. First A and B take it. Then C takes hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and B drops off, so that C and D now bear it; and so on. The log meanwhile never drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. Even so it is with all our experiences. Their changes are not complete annihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely novel. There is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a nucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and which takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length something wholly different has taken its place. In such a process we are as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its 'as suches,' that it is the same nucleus which is able now to make connection with what goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same point can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. Without being one throughout, such a universe is continuous. Its members interdigitate with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no clean cuts between them anywhere.
The great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is where the experience is that of influence exerted. Intellectualism denies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one another, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up to themselves. To act on anything means to get into it somehow; but that would mean to get out of one's self and be one's other, which is self-contradictory, etc. Meanwhile each of us actually is his own other to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which logic tells us can't be done. My thoughts animate and actuate this very body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts. The dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous the intermediary conductors may have to be. Distinctions may be insulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things can and do commune together every moment.

The conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the intellectualist doctrine that 'the same cannot exist in many relations.' This follows of course from the concepts of the two relations being so distinct that 'what-is-in-the-one' means 'as such' something distinct from what 'what-is-in-the-other' means. It is like Mill's ironical saying, that we should not think of Newton as both an Englishman and a mathematician, because an Englishman as such is not a mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an Englishman. But the real Newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the whole finite universe each real thing proves to be many different without undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected editions of itself.

These few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the Bergsonian point of view. The immediate experience of life solves the problems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: How can what is manifold be one? How can things get out of themselves? How be their own others? How be both distinct and connected? How can they act on one another? How be for others and yet for themselves? How be absent and present at once? The intellect asks these questions much as we might ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly Bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'Lo, even thus; even so are these other problems solved livingly.'

When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness can you manufacture the concrete. But place yourself at a bound, or d'emblée, as M. Bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active thickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions are given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist substitutions to your heart's content. Install yourself in phenomenal movement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and innumerable other things are given you in the bargain. But with only an abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up movement itself. It slips through their intervals and is lost.

So it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. Our intellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a post-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most expedient. We can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever we wish to. But place yourself at the point of view of the thing's interior doing, and all these back-looking and conflicting conceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. Get at the expanding centre of a human character, the élan vital of a man, as Bergson calls it, by living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see it from without interpret it in such diverse ways. It is something that breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, stupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you feel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify it stably with any of these single abstractions. Only your intellectualist does that,--and you now also feel why he must do it to the end.

Place yourself similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision and you understand at once all the different things it makes him write or say. But keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism applied to their own works!

What really exists is not things made but things in the making. Once made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself in the making by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of them is the more absolutely true. Reality falls in passing into conceptual analysis; it mounts in living its own undivided life—it buds and bourgeons, changes and creates. Once adopt the movement of this life in any given instance and you know what Bergson calls the devenir réel by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead results.
Thus much of M. Bergson's philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in these lectures, so here I will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other constituent features, original and interesting though they be. You may say, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his remanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to that ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since Green have buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a return to empiricism, but I think that the return in such accomplished shape only proves the latter's immortal truth. What won't stay buried must have some genuine life. Am anfang war die tat; fact is a first; to which all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, never its full equivalent. When I read recent transcendentalist literature--I must partly except my colleague Royce!--I get nothing but a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, and resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall with an empty manger. It is but turning over the same few threadbare categories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers and solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into sight. But open Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand.

That he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in intellectualist eyes. He only evokes and invites; but he first annuls the intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a French disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient attitude of mind. They are now Bergsonians ... and possess the principal thoughts of the master all at once. They have understood in the fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and can thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity, and the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes, and varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and dialectic, the original theme.'[2]

This, scant as it is, is all I have to say about Bergson on this occasion--I hope it may send some of you to his original text. I must now turn back to the point where I found it advisable to appeal to his ideas. You remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last lecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same time be one collective thing. How, I asked, can one and the same identical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the esse is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only feeler? The usual way of escape by 'quatenus' or 'as such' won't help us here if we are radical intellectualists, I said, for appearance-together is as such not appearance-apart, the world quâ many is not the world quâ one, as absolutism claims. If we hold to Hume's maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever things are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of connection between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save by stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different spiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required. But this rescue by 'scholastic entities' I was unwilling to accept any more than pantheistic idealists accept it.

Yet, to quote Fechner's phrase again, 'nichts wirkliches kann unmöglich sein,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what is actual at every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which I now proceed to remind you of. You can hear the vibration of an electric contact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill, co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. But you can also isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. If you close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get the sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation that it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the sound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations again. Now the natural way of talking of all this[3] is to say that certain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together with other sensations, in a common conscious field. Fluctuations of attention give analogous results. We let a sensation in or keep it out by changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in or drop it out. [Please don't raise the question here of how these changes come to pass. The immediate condition is probably cerebral in every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for now we are thinking only of results, and I repeat that the natural way of thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so absurd.]

The absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so differently, now with and now without something else. But this it sensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand strikes in turn your eyes. It functions at once as a physical object in the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds. The very body of mine that my thought actuates is the body whose gestures are your visual object and to which you give my name. The very log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by James. The very girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. The very place behind me is in front of you. Look where you will, you gather only examples of the same amid the different, and of different relations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. Quâ this an experience is not the same as it is quâ that, truly enough; but the quâs are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem remains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once whatever different things it is at once at all. It is before C and after A, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with that one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of parts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without interference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to what I call the 'immediate' point of view, the point of view in which we follow our sensational life's continuity, and to which all living language conforms. It is only when you try--to continue using the Hegelian vocabulary--to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute concepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates its triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this smooth-running finite experience gets proved.

Of the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the sensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with them. This is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. No element there cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts cut themselves from concepts. No part there is so small as not to be a place of conflux. No part there is not really next its neighbors; which means that there is literally nothing between; which means again that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part absolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are cohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with them; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other reals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its Hegelian 'own other,' in the fullest sense of the term.

Of course this sounds self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts don't sound at all, but simply are, until we conceptualize and name them vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual or discursive form being substituted for the real form. But if, as Bergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it; and if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life's inner nature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its accusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or 'catastrophe' of which M. Bergson's disciple whom I lately quoted spoke. We are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats logos or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth, that to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and to think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson calls them, comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of reason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, I believe, to the possession of reality, and I permit myself to hope that some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next lecture.
––Excerpted from William James, “BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM” (LECTURE VI in James’s A Pluralistic Universe).

To read excerpts from an interview where Ray Carney talks about the hazards of intellectualism in film study and how to "think without ideas," click here. And to read a lengthy essay about the ways common cinematic styles of presentation "de-realize" experience, click here. And to read a brief exchange wtih a site reader about this issue, click here.

To read Ray Carney's response on Mailbag page 119 to another question about this issue from a site reader, a response which links to several more discussions of the dangers of abstraction and intellectualism in criticism at other pages of the site, click here.

Subject: You are making a real difference

Prof. Carney,

Thought you might enjoy reading this piece I found... I'm not sure if you realize it, it may be invisible to you and to many others, but your work is seeping out into the consciousness of a new generation of students and making a real difference, changing minds, one at a time, all across the country. Here's one more Ph.D. student in film you have deeply affected with your deeply moral approach to art, criticism, and instruction.

Robert

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Notes on the Career I Have Chosen

A couple days ago I turned in my dissertation. My advisor happened to be in his office when I dropped it by, so we planned a date for my defense, and we talked about Tarkovsky, the subject of my work, Tarkovsky scholarship and the state of things in academia. I'm still a bit shaken by the way our conversation ended, because it was one of those moments you may have had with a teacher/mentor figure of your own, where everything is moving along pleasantly, and then he starts to give you advice that makes you want to scream, because you find it offensive, and you feel sick that someone you respect so much, someone that has been your teacher and helped you open our eyes to so many important things, is now advising you to do something you find morally reprehensible.

Basically he was advising me to engage in dialogue with mainstream film criticism in respectful terms, and this is something I find myself completely unable to do. Because I think it is irresponsible. I am supposed to be writing a review for an on-line journal for a book entitled: Frames of Evil: the Holocaust as Horror in American Film. 100% academic bullshit. I sent a letter to Ray Carney about it, and he posted it in his mailbag. Go read it. When you're done with that, read some more stuff at his site. Particularly in the mailbag, Dr. Carney has been writing about something that he has only touched on from time to time in his books and essays, namely, the notion that art is a form of resistance. Real art is a form of resistance, not just the agit-prop that quasi-activist academics like to praise. Go read, The Difference between Fake and Real Emotions in Life and Art. It's short but maybe the best primer for thinking about art I can think of.

If you read these two sections you have a good sense of the problem. Part of it is that academics are playing games with each other. They write crazy things about bad art and leave good art alone, because writing about good art is no way to build a career. The other ingredient is that the so-called liberals in academia have turned the revolutionary aspect of art into a single note populist maxim. They have dumbed it down and reduced it to its shallowest manifestation without no regard for how this action plays into the hands of power brokers. The hegemony wants academia to be about esoteric minutia that no one would understand but an academic. That way they get to call us elitist. All the cultural studies brand deconstruction in the world will not so much as make a dent in the façade of hegemony. If you are a film scholar and you write wacky things about how Spielberg uses horror frames more familiar in Hitchcock as a code for evil so that the audience can make some unconscious connection between real horror and their experience of horror in film, and you think that this is an act of resistance, you are fooling yourself in a most profound way.

This brings me back to my advisor's suggestion that I give these people the benefit of the doubt. There is only so much doubt I can allow before I become morally irresponsible. My critique of their ideology already grants their purity of heart. I have been in college since 1992, and I know for a fact that it is widely considered professionally acceptable (and what's worse, economically viable, when a scholar should never in a million years have to think about how much money he can make from his writing) to be the first to make a case for something. That is just insane. You don't say something because no one else ever said it before; you say something because you believe in it. That this attitude is fostered and perpetuated tells us a lot about what is wrong with academia. We are more concerned about building careers than coming up with good ideas.

In short that's why I have to disregard his advice. The people who want to talk about representations of gender or representations of blackness or representations of "the other" in movies and me - we aren't writing about the same thing. Even if we both write about Tarkovsky, we aren't writing about the same thing. I'm writing aesthetics, they are writing sociology. Why would I read them? Why would I engage in dialog with them? Besides there are plenty of folks writing about film as art that I can argue with. I'll save my debate for the formalists, the amateur sociologists aren't worth the time.

Subject: Film Question for COM201

Professor Carney,

My name is Christine Warner and I am a freshman in COM. I am writing an article for my COM201 course about the formatting of film and video content to accommodate small screens. Some music video and film directors are beginning to adjust the filmmaking process to this development through center framing and changes in color, scenery and sound. I am interested in your perspective and opinion about this shift as a film professor involved in the industry. Do you think that catering the filmmaking process to smaller screens detracts from the artistic quality of film, or is it simply a natural progression for the industry?

Sincerely,

Christine Warner

RC replies:

Christine,

Three metaphors:

1. Art books do the same thing when they take Picasso's Guernica (twelve feet wide and six feet high) and put it on a nine by eleven inch page. Looking at it in a postage stamp reproduction is better than not being able to see it at all, but it will never replace the experience of pacing back and forth in front of it, looking up and down at it, stopping and starting and peering at details within it, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

2. Videos of football and basketball games, weddings, church services can be watched on TV or YouTube. And if you're half-crazy, I guess you could sing along with the church service or cheer for your team sitting all alone in your living room or with your laptop on your lap. But it bears almost no relation to going to church or standing up and yelling for your favorite player at the game. That is how watching a movie on your computer compares to watching it in a movie theater.

3. There are books published with titles like "the greatest lines in Shakespeare" or "the chief thoughts of the philosophers." When I was a kid there was a company called Reader's Digest that published "condensed classics" of the great novels, and there were "Classic Comic Books" too. You could read War and Peace in a half hour. They are all children's versions of works of art. Is anything lost? Is anything missing? Does our tolerance for such things, heck, our positive preference for them, tell us something important about us? You can answer that one yourself.
But all of these metaphors are subtly inappropriate, because in these cases someone else is doing it to the originator, someone else is making the changes and simplifications to the original work. So then ask yourself if Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or Picasso would have actually done this to their own works, and what it says about anyone who is willing to do it to him or herself. I mean--willing to write the Classics Comics version of War and Peace instead of the thousand page version; willing to publish the postage stamp version of Guernica instead of the wall-filling one; willing to give us the "greatest lines" from Hamlet to spare us from having to read the whole darn play. That's what the people you are interested in are doing. Ask yourself about the power of money to corrupt and pervert and cripple and distort expression in our culture, including the expressions of the self-professed (but not genuinely real) artists in it.

Cheers,

RC

117

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

This just came in from a very thoughtful artist who finds himself struggling to teach the mysteries, the wonders, the excitements. It is always a struggle. Everything valuable is. There is nothing more difficult and more exciting than grappling with art. Real art. -- R.C.

Dear Ray,

Apologies to add to the onslaught of unanswered email in your inbox but two things that might interest you:

1. Have you had a chance to see an American independent film by the name of JE NE SAIS QUOI yet? It's directed by John Koch, who runs what sounds like a very decent dvd place, Cinema Revolution, in Minneapolis, and stars Dave Andrae, an actor and also a talented filmmaker himself. It's got a darkness and a formal precision that sets apart from most of the Mumblecore set, while still housing some very strong performances. I highly recommend taking a look if it comes your way.
2. I've started teaching on a film degree course; it has a large academic emphasis so it doesn't suffer from the overwhelming focus on the technical that you decry in US film schools----but it does suffer from an incredibly passive student body. Mostly straight out of school with no particular passions and at the same time no particular objections to anything, they tend to sit in class the way they probably sit in front of the TV, seemingly oblivious to the fact that learning isn't something that they're just going to be GIVEN. I know from your past comments that you've encountered the same phenomenon; how do you deal with them? How do you get them to care about anything? How do you get them to re-examine their own assumptions and prejudices about film? Do you ever tell them straight out that they're wrong, that this is the case rather than that, or are you always gentle about it, letting them figure it out by themselves (if they ever do)?

Hope you're well,

name withheld

PS: If you post this letter and include my comments on the students, please leave my name out!
RC replies: The path of gentleness is generally preferable, as it is in most of life. But sometimes dynamite can come in handy too. As a Zen teacher of mine once said, "sometimes the bramble bush, sometimes the ladder." He meant what to throw in when a student was in a hole. Sometimes thorns, sometimes a helping hand. Teaching is drama. Life is drama. And drama can use anything. But it has to be the right thing. Re: "if they ever do"--some students never will. I mean they just aren't hungry enough, or they are too afraid to risk letting go of old positions, or too busy really doing something else and just trying to hide out for a while and pass time. That's true of all of us in some situations, at some moments in our lives. It's just the nature of life. I have a lot of stuff on the site about teaching. Look up "Appolinaire" with the search engine for a starter and see where that takes you. Ah, I saved you the work. One brief discussion of teaching is towards the bottom of this page. But scratch around and there's lots more where that came from. The important -- really important -- thing is not to turn cynical and start teaching only what they like and understand. You know: screening Psycho and Citizen Kane and 2001. Or other Hollywood movies. If you show the warhorses, the standard works, the top 40 hits, your course evaluations will go through the roof, your students will be so happy and delighted, and your discussions will be a breeze; your students can sit back and relax, and your classes will be put on auto-pilot and will run themselves. Everything will be so much easier; but you will have sold your soul and turned your course into a series of screenings equivalent to what's on Turner Classic Movies TV or what is playing at the local Metroplex. So whatever you do, and however you do it, keep "blasting through the concrete"-- either with dynamite or by wearing the stone down with a sweet, gentle flow of water. Whatever works, as long as you don't compromise on the fundamental challenge and excitement of grappling with real genius. "Some bows, some spits." (Ask me sometime to tell you about that saying. It's a story a Zen master named Walter Nowick, the second greatest teacher I've ever had, told me years and years ago.) --Ray

And this came in from Lucas Sabean, a former student of mine at BU, recommending the new Mike Leigh movie. Lucas's comments about how hard it can be to appreciate interesting works are very perceptive. He's a deep reader. -- R.C.

Subject: Happy-Go-Lucky

I finally got to see the new Leigh film last night and had one of the greatest film screenings in a long long time. Don't know if you have seen it yet, but I think it is his best film since "Life is sweet." Half way through the film, the main character Poppy started to remind me of Chaplin's Tramp, how he/she allow themselves to be vulnerable to all of life and courageously maintain a dignity and playfulness, while we get to enjoy the world through their particular form of consciousness and above all, LOVE. I was able to then not just identify deeply with Poppy's upbeat attitude to life or state of mind, but also, more scarily saw all my shortcomings in the far from perfect characters that walk in and out of her life. It made me laugh and deeply cry to myself. The two 16-year old girls sitting behind me in the movie theatre left after 10 minutes. They could have gotten so much out of the film, but because the film was doing something different (there was no plot with an agenda) it was probably too confusing for them and they had to get out. I walked out of "In the mood for love", which I now consider great, so I can understand, but it made me really sad that they didn't stay. From the first note/dialogue line in the film, Leigh clearly shows us how our imagination can triumph (or must triumph) as Poppy pulls a book off a bookstore shelf which is titled something like "The great Universe, how to get in touch with reality." She says something like, "Ooh, don't want to go there now do we" and the rest of the film follows this attitude of not living in the great cosmic question (even though these types of questions come up again and again or characters that are trapped by a theoretical approach to life--the driving instructor's conspiracy theories or the flamenco teachers notions of "spanish" identity), but rather points to the true path to JOY (rather than happiness, which is the true gold Poppy possesses) by pragmatically dealing with what life presents--no matter what it is--and moreover not running away from the situation. As the Buddhists like to say, a Lotus flower cannot grow in a clean environment, instead it thrives in muddy water and I would argue that Poppy is like a Lotus flower in that she stays with the "mud of life" and doesn't try to change what is coming at her. What makes Poppy who she is, and why she is so loved by the audience and the characters in the films is that she takes chances. She has no fear, no separation from life. The scene with the homeless man is the best example, but it actually runs throughout the whole narrative. In fact, to become like Poppy, we have to live dangerously ourselves, that to me was the ultimate message of the film. What does Helen Keller say, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." The film showed me so much of myself (I even got jealous of her boyfriend in the film--how crazy is that!!) and above all it showed me what is missing in my own life and for that I get down on my knees in front of Leigh and bow deeply!!! If you can watch this film with you heart open it is a magical experience and I can't wait to drag more friends to see the film. It is what the world need more of. Aliveness!!! Can't wait to hear what you make it. Writing about the film reminds me of how Poppy personifies what Emerson is getting at in this wonderful paragraph from "The conduct of Life"

"The heart has its arguments, with which the understanding is not acquainted." For the heart is at once aware of the state of health or disease, which is the controlling state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, to all question of the ingenuity of arguments, the amount of facts, or the elegance of rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses, as soon as their will does not control their passion or talent. Hence the extraordinary blunders, and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence the remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love. "As much love, so much mind," said the Latin proverb. The superiority that has no superior; the redeemer and instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, is love.

Best wishes,

L
****CHECK OUT THE LUCAS SABEAN FILM FESTIVAL
Let me know what you think of the films!!

A note from a friend, whose name I have removed, about a meeting with Mike Leigh in person in Boston. I have withheld her name and deleted a few personal references to protect her identity and that of a few other people she mentions who were having supper with Leigh. I print her note mainly for the "chagrin" she expresses. I'm sure she is being entirely too hard on herself. We all feel this way when we meet someone we've longed to talk to. It's only human nature to feel that we've "blown it," and have not said the "right things." Keep it in mind the next time you feel this way yourself. Don't beat yourself up! -- R.C.

Subject: Regards from Mike Leigh

Ray, saw Happy go Lucky last night. I know you like to go to a film without benefit of reviews by the press or the peanut gallery so will hold off on giving you mine (which is what I should have done yesterday instead of interrupting Mike Leigh at dinner and telling him some of my thoughts about his protagonist without having digested the work). Mike respectfully disagreed with my take on things.... Having not made enough of a fool of myself, I proceeded to tell him about (omitted material). He asked for you by the way; said he had thought he would see you at the screening and seemed disappointed that you weren't there. I told him that you were travelling sans email and hadn't known he was in town. Mike nodded and wistfully said he could well understand the impulse........

Dear Friend,

Join us as we present Two Films by Jon Jost at the Walter Reade Theater, on Friday, October 24 at 7:00 and 9:00pm. Unexpected, perceptive, the films of Jon Jost belong to that rare group of independent works that continually challenge filmmaking styles and conventions. Discover or rediscover two of his most innovative films, Over Here, a delicate work of tonalities rather than a "plot" film, and Oui Non, a simple boy-meets-girl story which is really a tragedy. "Oui Non makes homage to many things Parisian, from Eugene Atget, to Degas and Lautrec, to Monet and Manet, to French films, to the mythos of Parisian romance, and along the way is trapped in its own real reality in which the narrative story imposed collapsed in the face of the lives of its actors and maker" - Jon Jost.

Kind regards,

Film Society of Lincoln Center

A note from Ray Carney: Since I had to cut some material from Mailbag page 115, I wanted to call attention to the fact that I recently added new material to the page (expanding several of my replies to letters, and posting a few completely new items at several places) to make up for the material that was cut. I didn't want them to be overlooked, if someone had already read and "finished" that page.

A note from Ray Carney: I wrote out some recommendations to a friend at Princeton, of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates she might want to read, and realized that site visitors might be interested in the same subject. So I am including the end of my email to her here--for what it's worth. Ah, why aren't short films this interesting, this complex, this perceptive? What is it about words? Or is it just the difference between being a genius (Oates) and being an ordinary person (like all the rest of us!). Anyway, here's the end of my email, recommending some Oates short stories, FYI:

For Oates, for starters, may I recommend either/both of two story collections:Will You Always Love Me? (can't forget a title like that)andFaithless (or that either!)

Here are some stories I highly recommend. There are a few "clinkers" to avoid in each book, but that's the magical, frustrating, "unevenness" of all of life. We must live and dive for the pearls, and read for the "glimmers" (credit Emerson for that last). Here are some killer stories to try on and see if they fit:

In Will You Always Love Me?---You Petted Me and I Followed You HomeGood to Know YouThe Missing PersonThe Goose GirlThe HandclaspThe Girl Who Was to DieAmerican AbroadThe Undesirable Table (corrosive, bitter, and brilliant: the greatest of the great--and very much about Princeton!--they should fire or censure her for having written it!)Is Laughter Contagious? (ditto the above--the Princeton ladies club should ban her from their teas and book club readings)June Birthing (as soft and sweet and tender as the two preceding stories are livid and fierce)
In Faithless---UglyPhysicalSecret SilentThe ScarfWe Were Worried About YouThe Stalker
A good Christmas present to yourself, perhaps.

Best wishes. In haste,

Ray

P.S. (Afterthought): There are other great volumes and great stories, beyond these, of course. E.g. There is one called Heat. In that one, I recommend:House HuntingThe HairSundays in SummerLeila LeeThe Swimmers (a small masterpiece)Capital PunishmentHostageCraps
We have officially launched our new website! For all news and information regarding Tropfest around the world - Australia, New York, Toronto and elsewhere - please see our brand new online home!www.tropfest.comUpcoming Tropfest dates of interest:Tropfest Australia - February 22, 2009 (filmmaker deadline: January 8)Trop Jr Australia (under 15 year olds) - February 22, 2009 (filmmaker deadline: January 8)Tropfest New York - June 28, 2009 (filmmaker deadline: June 5)To see some of the best Tropfest short films, including finalists and winners from the recent Tropfest NY 2008, please visit our YouTube Channel at: www.youtube.com/tropfest

As food for thought, three quotes: The first, a justly celebrated passage from George Eliot's Middlemarch, appeared in an email I recently received from a former classmate. It is about the waste, the pain, the uselessness of consciousness; and the value of stupidity and oblivion. The second, from Howard Aiken, appeared in the current issue of Utne Magazine, as a heading to their feature piece: "Fifty Visionaries Who are Changing the World." The third is a quote from one of my favorite books of mystical vision and insight. -- R.C.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar that lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity." Our "stupidity" is essential for our survival; none of us could bear to comprehend the suffering of everyone else. -- George Eliot, Middlemarch

"Don't worry about other people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken, computing pioneer

"If you would let the barriers down you would fall madly in love with everybody. God's love is not tame. Your love is tame. God's love is huge and passionate and wild. Fall wildly in love with everybody. Cherish all as the precious creations that they are." -- Anonymous

A note from Ray Carney: For what it is worth, I wanted to print excerpts from an email exchange I have been having with one of America's most important independent filmmakers. I have removed his/her name and edited several passages in his/her messages to me to remove personal references and respect his/her privacy.

I have corresponded with this particular fllmmaker for many years, and we have exchanged dozens of emails. One of the recurring subjects of our discussions has been my expression of dissatisfaction at the "merely personal" nature of most of the drama in the work of young American independent filmmakers. The major American independent films --think of The Puffy Chair, Quiet City, Hannah Takes the Stairs, and Team Picture -- are love stories, or failed love stories, and they are good at being love stories. They present their boy-girl interactions well. However, in my opinion, that is not good enough. A film has to be more than just a love story. A film has to do much more than merely tell a boy-girl story. An important film must explore larger social issues and problems. It must deal with dysfunctions in the society. It must propose new ways of thinking about the meaning of life. This is what great films always do. This is what Renoir's The Rules of the Game does, what Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice does, what Bresson's Femme Douce does. This is what the great novelists' work does too: What Tolstoy's Anna Karenina does, what Proust's Swan's Way does, what James's The Ambassadors does, what Mailer's Armies of the Night and Why Are We in Vietnam do. American independent film has to do what these other films and novels do. It has to do more. It has to be more ambitious. It has to be more intelligent. It has to do more than tell a touching, moving love story. That is not enough.

The relevant starting point in my exchange with the major filmmaker involves a somewhat backhanded compliment I paid him/her by saying that he/she never depicted extreme emotions. -- R.C.

Dear XXXX,

.... It's hard to explain so let me throw out some metaphors. As I watch these movies I feel like I am a terrorist attending a high society dinner party. The situations and characters are all so fascinatingly complex and interesting, the dramas are so gripping, but they are ultimately all so irrelevant and trivial. The films and characters don't matter and nothing they say or do seems really important. I live in a world of opera, but I never see my world in these films. I feel extreme emotions. I live in extreme situations. I grapple with good and evil, demons and angels, giants and pigmies.... But ... you and the others make movies where everything is calm and reasonable, where everyone is thoughtful and kind, and where "everyone ... has their reasons." That's not my life. I refuse to recognize it.

Ray

This was my polite (?!) way of saying much recent American independent filmmaking was lacking in emotional depth and seriousness. The films are just too bland, too tolerant, too understanding. The filmmaker, who is a very smart person, was smart enough to pick up on my point., without me spelling it out. The filmmaker's reply to the preceding point follows:

Dear Ray,

Yes indeed, I am afflicted w/ the belief that everyone has their reasons. Which removes most of the enemies from the world, bringing equal parts sense of peace and panic that there's nothing solid out there to push off against.

When I was young.... I moved to a distant part of the country, and it was a massive culture shock for me, and if I'd stayed there for longer than a year, I might have matured into a proper punk rock type of guy--or perhaps I would have followed the same mellowing path and learned to love even the locals.

There are thousands of movies that attack the grey area where pacifism becomes cowardice and implore us to "take a stand" etc etc and our culture seems to have taken the surface of those lessons very much to heart--"civility" perhaps need not be considered paramount among virtues but I don't suspect it makes the top 10 anymore in this country and my bafflement at that I think greatly informs my work. The idea that *trying* to be kind to others can contain struggle and drama all its own is a tough one to sell but it seems to be my preoccupation.

The older I get the more I fear becoming a politician--certainly it seems common in adults. So of course I have admiration for an aging terrorist. Neither fate, I suppose, is quite what we might have dreamed, but time only moves in one direction...?

The demons and the angels are out there, for sure, but I wouldn't begin to know how to separate them out from each other.

Was fun to catch up as always and I look forward to the next time.

XXXXX

I replied to the preceding with the following comments--attempting to push the question into other areas. -- R.C.

Subject: Coriolanian thoughts "there is a world elsewhere"

Dear XXXX,

Thanks for the good thoughts... Very Renoirian, if you can take that as a compliment. The Renoir of Grand Illusion, and the Renoir of one of the greatest movies ever made: The Rules of the Game.
But is that sufficient? Can we really understand the world in terms of everyone having their reasons, their good intentions? As I look around at the financial meltdown we are now undergoing, and at the despicable, immoral eight years of the Bush administration rule of greed, I see too many people who "have their reasons".... too many"good friends afraid to criticize other good friends," too many "go along and get along" individuals, who slap each other on the back and laugh loudly and toast each other, while Rome burns, and indeed while others outside their circle of friends get ripped off.
And, to move closer to my own personal experiences, I have seen (I have worked in) film departments like the Bush administration. Film departments full of "good buddies" who hire other "good buddies"----all of whom are mediocre teachers, mediocre or worse than mediocre filmmakers and intellects, and worse than mediocre examples for students to emulate, and yet (trust me on this, I know whereof I speak) those same departments, like the Bush administration, are total "love fests." Everyone in them is full to overflowing with good intentions, and good feelings. But none of it matters. Being nice doesn't butter any parsnips.

I trust (to allude to your second para) you would have had the courage to be a punk, in more than "in fashion," if you had stayed in XXXX ...... And I believe that maybe being a punk is the best response to some situations (just as being a terrorist may be the best response to others--whoops, hope the NSA isn't monitoring this email). These are metaphors, but there is meaning behind them, I trust. At least a terrorist or a punk is responding to the world out there. A larger world than the world of love and romance and group hugs and fine feelings. But there are no terrorists or punks in these indie films. That's just the problem. Everyone in them is too normal, too well-meaning, too nice. Where are the people in the Bush White House? Where are the fools who I see miseducating the youth of America? Where is evil and malice in the world of these films? They are telling us lies about the world. They are ignoring the real world.

These films are about love and romance, but love and romance are not enough. Private love is fine, St. Paul was right of course to tell us to love our neighbors... Yes, yes, yes, but, but, but! Loving your neighbor may be necessary but it is not sufficient. (To use the logician's terms.)

There IS a world out there that each individual affects and is in relation to no matter how much he denies or ignores it. That's the world I wrestle with every day of my life. And so does even Renoir. And American indie film must deal with it too. But it doesn't. Renoir understood love and sensitivity, but he also made his movie show that in the end Octave walks away from the manor house. He can't stay in it and continue to love those people --as an end in itself; it's not enough--or he would be giving up on something larger about life. Love would be an evasion, an escape. Renoir is showing us something about that larger world.

Ray

Ray,

A very slow reply... Life has been mostly quite pleasant, it's the least I've worked on this film in a long long time and it's been a pleasure to begin such backburned projects as "clean the house / figure out what's in those piles of paper" and "see friends." Which isn't to say that it feels like there's enough time, certainly in the era of e-mail there is never anywhere near enough.....
Re: philosophy:You've pretty handily and eloquently isolated the most disastrous consequences of "going along to get along" and identified a lot of my personal fears.Interested in the distinction you draw re: "private love." Maybe I operate on a fallacy that private love is all I've got to give that's of much value. David Lynch has been promoting recently the notion that, y'know, if 1% of all humans meditate at the same time, the good vibes will get the world back on track. (I paraphrase, I'm sure to the detriment of the concept's credibility.) Anyway I'd love to believe that he's right and I don't guess that we'll find out in my lifetime or yours.

So, yes: private love plus public apathy is not going to do much for the world. So yes there is such a thing as "the good fight." The trick perhaps is keeping the emphasis on "good" rather than "fight"...
It amazes me that a generation of Germans who, by and large, allowed the Nazis to rise to power and fought in their army would give birth to a generation of Germans, by and large, terribly ashamed of that legacy and anxious to rectify for it. It is hard to imagine an equivalent situation in today's reality: what warriors today will, a generation from now, be apologizing for their side of a conflict? Or will we just keep retrenching and rearming?....

XXXX

My reply:

Subject: moving beyond the merely personal and private excruciations

Dear XXXX,

.... Glad you are getting some "down time." It's important. Not just so you can clean the house, but because the deepest work always takes place in the pauses, subconsciously. The way you remember something by not trying. Or the way a thought in bed will clarify something you couldn't decide in the day. So your down time will undoubtedly be productive in ways that you'll feel later.
Re: you queries/observations about "good Germans:" I understand this whole thing very differently. The point you make about collaboration then and grief and regret now, I understand otherwise. They collaborated then, because it was fashionable, when then was now. (Hope that's not dictionally confusing.) And they grieve now because that's fashionable, now. It's collaboration both times. No change whatsoever. The multiculturalists (Germans in this metaphor) are just as intolerant as the racists; but it's just the opposite set of prejudices. If you use a word they don't like, they hang you (occupationally: Howard Stern and the odd sportscaster who talks about the genetic superiority of African American athletes) just as back then they hung you for looking at their blonde daughters. These are metaphors of course, but I stand by the point. I see no more courage or principle now than ever, now than then, present Germany, present multiculturalism, than past nazism, past racism. No more. (And I base this on experience, not my own prejudices; I base this on hundreds of staff meetings and admissions deliberations and votes at faculty gatherings among the most, supposedly, enlightened of our populace.) What are contemporary Germans DOING to change the fascism, the intolerance in the world? Nothing. What are they doing to help the Palestinians, the people of Liberia, the people of Somalia, the people who are being treated like the Jews of the Holocaust TODAY? Nothing, nothing, nothing. In other words, their grief and guilt about the past is just a fashionable pose.

But don't misunderstand: I don't want you or Aaron Katz or whomever to make movies about that! I don't want you to become "political." Most political art is bad art. Oliver Stone is an escapist. Politics can be the ultimate escape. Political art is almost always an evasion of emotional complexity. It's schematic and formulaic. No, I hate that art. But my point (obliquely presented to avoid seeming too hostile to you or the other work of the others) is that when we watch Renoir's Rules of the Game or Grand Illusion we are getting a vision of something MUCH MORE than merely group interactions and personal emotional relationships (what I inelegantly called Pauline private love in the email to you). We are getting a vision of dysfunctions in the culture, of problems in society, of systems of reinforcement of mistakes and deceits that the individual actor is only an agent of, an expression of. Or look at Faces. Lots of personal expression problems analyzed there. But so much more also dealt with: the culture of business, the ego of salesmanship, the way men treat women (at least at that point in American culture), etc. etc. It's a whole world we get, not just a few people with problems. That's the limitation of young American indie film, in my view. It remains too narrow and small and "personal" in its focus. It doesn't go to this larger place. Or look at Todd Haynes's Safe (I hope we agree that it's one of the great works of the decade). Haynes takes this next step toward a larger, more comprehensive vision in it. That's where American indie film so seldom goes, in my view.

And you see my point I hope that this is not a recipe for any one kind of filmmaking. I'm not in favor of formulas. If Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game, Faces, and Safe are all doing it, it means there are a million ways and a million other ways to do it. (And Oliver Stone is NOT in fact doing it, he is just recycling clichés and pop culture images.) That's what I am calling moving beyond private, and merely personal concerns in art..... Hope that clarifies, but indeed I always believe that words are pretty useless; we must each of us come to understandings in our own way and time.

Constructively (I hope),

Ray

To read more on this subject, read the related discussions on Mailbag pages 55, 67 and 92 -- or click here and here and here to open windows to the relevant sections of those pages. I invite reader responses to this exchange. I will publish the most interesting. -- R.C.

116

To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to www.cassavetes.com

Subject: I barely exist- can that even be a film?

Hi Ray. I discovered your site about a month ago, and your writing has seriously taken up 90% of my free time. Your writing has replaced a lot of school work and movie watching at the moment (for better or worse). Let me be brief, since you get plenty of flattery anyway. I've isolated myself from people for various reasons over the past year- literally abandoning my friends and not talking to them anymore. I don't know why. I often spend my free time walking around parks or woods aimlessly, and occasionally I see other lone people and I want to say things to them, but I don't. Cassavetes has shown that isolation is best shown through people interacting. But that's not my only experience, and I want to make a short film about a person abandoning their friends on their birthday and walking around a big empty park, passing by strangers and saying nothing, showing no emotions. And that's it. But I feel like this has been made before by someone else, and probably better, and probably not as literal. But I did these things! I just did them for no reason. Now, I'm afraid if I transcribe my boring, empty life to the screen, people will think it's me asking them to cry for me. I don't want them to. I just want to figure out why the hell I do what I do, but I don't want someone walking in a big empty park to be thought of as a heavy handed metaphor for loneliness. It's more than that. I'm not sure what I'm asking. Perhaps I just need some words of encouragement or discouragement. There's no way you can see in my head and tell me if the idea sucks or not. I'm not afraid of failing, but I am afraid of not seeing something more. Am I just settling on the most blatant, easy part of my life surface wise? Should I be digging deeper? Should I film what happens after I reunite with my friends? Or is filming this going to be the actual excavation?

I'd be flattered and humbled if you even read this far. You are a busy man. But like all of us young people with silly dreams, I am in a constant state of confusion and chaos! I haven't slept in nearly a day, for example. I am gritty! And "edgy"!

Thanks for reading my drivel,

John

PP.S. My "American Independent Film" teacher showed us an awful film called Lars and the Real Girl instead of works by Jon Jost, writing him off as "too avant-garde" and something we wouldn't like. Half my class seemed to like Lars over an earlier screening of A Woman Under the Influence. Top that off with the fact that my professor had a conversation on her cell phone- in the classroom- during the screening for Lars. I'd thought you'd love to hear this horror story.

RC replies:

Subject: Encouraging words, expedient practices (as one of my teachers used to say)

John,

Thanks for the kind words (and the sad story in your P.S.). And never lose sight of the fact that your teacher (the one in the P.S.) is sadder and more pathetic and more hopeless and more lost than anything you say about yourself or your life or your birthday. She is a real loser, and she has already lost her soul -- or let the culture buy it without her even realizing it. (And you can quote me on that.)
As you realize, I can't tell you what to film or whether your film will be worth making, obviously. Life is not the big things. Life is not the events. Life is not ideas about life. Life is second by second, detail by detail. Mood by mood. Flicker by flicker. And that's what will make your film worth watching or worth walking out on. Not some general idea about life. If you understand this, and capture it in your film, it will not be boring or empty.

Another thing your letter shows me is that you understand that life has layers. Even when we think it is flat, it is not. Even when we think we are empty, we are having experiences by the bushel load. You can be walking in an empty park doing nothing, but also be seeing yourself walking, and can be wondering why you are doing it, or what it means, or whether it is just "boring and empty." That's a lot going on. You can also be feeling sorry for yourself and hating yourself for feeling sorry for yourself at the same time. You can also (I am sure) laugh at yourself some of the time in this kind of situation. Or you can be totally wrapped up in yourself, but also suddenly see a flock of pigeons you've startled take off, and suddenly be taken out of yourself. You can see their magic and beauty, even as you feel your loneliness. Or you can be feeling sorry for yourself but also look at a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk and feel how much luckier you are than he is. It's a complex life. Even when "nothing is happening" life can still be very full, very layered, very complex, very interesting. You follow my logic, I'm sure. I'm just saying that even "doing nothing" is full of emotional wiggles and zig-zags. It is not just doing nothing. And it can be both sad and funny at the same time, both narcissistic and concerned with others, both empty and full of inner events....

Your film has been made thousands of times before. Only never by Hollywood, of course. Many indie films have very little "action." Their events are internal. Look at Ronnie Bronstein's Frownland. Look at Mary Bronstein's Yeast. Look at Jim Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation and Stranger than Paradise. Look at Chantel Akerman's Jeanne Diehlmann. Look at Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer. Look at Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. Look at Kelly Reichardt's amazing Old Joy (one of the greatest films of the decade). But that is no reason not to make it again, differently, personally, uniquely, from your perspective. But it must capture the full complexity of the "doing nothing-being nothing" experience. Don't let ideas simplify it. As an idea the experience is boring, but as a life lived it is thrilling. But that is because as an idea it has no context, no past, no history; but as you live your life, you have all of those things. Since films can't a photograph a character's thoughts and feelings directly, the way they represent emotional complexity is to parcel the different moods, attitudes, and feelings into different characters and have them interact with each other or have them have some passing relation with each other. That's why Ronnie Bronstein inserts the roommate into his film. It's why Kelly Reichardt begins and ends Old Joy in totally different places than the rest of the film is set in. It's why many films use more than one character to show us about one character. Not for "realism" in the stupid Hollywood way, but because the contrast of two people's ways of being and talking and acting creates complexities. Structure, comparison, contrast, organization (not just randomness and sequentiality and one thing after another) are the artist's way of getting the real complexity of lived, felt experience into a work.

Or you could write this out as a story. Why insist on making a film? Don't limit yourself by thinking only in terms of photographing it. See my comments on earlier pages on the site about not being limited to filmmaking to present drama (e.g. see the essay titled "A Modest Proposal: Reflections on the cultural hype about the glamour and importance of being a filmmaker and how film schools take advantage of it for financial gain" on Mailbag page 97 -- click here to open a window to read it -- and the responses from readers on subsequent pages 98, 99, 100) where I talk about how writing can be a crucial tool for discovery and how filmmakers cripple themselves by limiting themselves to cinematic expressions--for more about that. Making a film is actually too easy, too slack, too relaxed, too cheap a way of rendering experience. Turning your experience into words, sentences, paragraphs will force you to wrestle with what you want to express more than walking around with a camera does. It's the old late-nineteenth century "painting versus photography" issue. When you have to create the experience stroke by stroke (word by word) like a painter you force yourself to see and realize things that you don't when you just push a button like a photographer. And you aren't limited to what you can stage or photograph. Words can go anywhere. They can describe anything. They can capture consciousness that a camera can never photograph. Read Beckett's Murphy. Or his Molloy. Read James's "The Beast in the Jungle" (a story, if there ever was one, about nothing -- about doing and being nothing). Read Joyce Carol Oates's "Is Laughter Contagious" and "The Undesirable Table" and "We were so Worried about You." Read Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest." They will show you the places words can take you, if they are twisted and tortured into new meanings. Writing out your experience can test your ideas in ways that shooting them with a camera never will. Don't be taken in by the cultural hype about the importance of filmmaking. Don't let film schools brainwash you. The greatest art now being created is NOT being made by filmmakers, but by writers and artists working in non-cinematic forms of expression.

Fare onward voyager. The most important thing is that you don't give up your specialness, your independent view, your differences. The world tries to make each of us fit in and conform. Don't do it. It's a deal with the devil. Only you can give your gift to the world. Keep giving it in life and in art.
RC

tank.tv is inviting submissions from artists who wish to be considered for two week solo exhibitions on www.tank.tv.

In 2009 tank.tv will be hosting an ambitious series of solo shows from established and emerging artists working with the moving image. We would like to allocate 3 of these shows to artists who respond to a series of three open calls for entries. You must have a body of work consisting of at least 10 moving image pieces that are ready for exhibition and which run no longer than ten minutes (although we are happy to consider excerpts from longer pieces). We will consider all forms of moving image work and welcome submissions from artists working at any stage of their careers, of all nationalities.

The first selected artist will have a two week online show early in 2009 and be part of our external events programme which will be toured to galleries and institutions internationally.

Deadline: 10th December 2008.

Please submit examples of work (accompanied by a submission form, downloadable from www.tank.tv) as Quicktime files or on mini DV to:

tank.tv 2nd Floor Princess House50 - 60 Eastcastle StreetLondonW1W 8EAUK

Another book recommendation: At the suggestion of a site regular, I recently came across the following book, which I want to recommend. It is available in an inexpensive paperback edition, and should also be in the collection of any middle-sized library. It was published two or three years ago: John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins is not a professional writer and his book is not particularly well-written or well-documented and researched, but what makes it important is that it tells a first-person, personal story of his experiences participating in a program of corruption and malfeasance funded at the highest levels of the United States government. Perkins was employed by a subcontractor (funded by the CIA, NSA, a division of the Department of Defense, or another "black budget" government agency) to bribe, threaten, and subvert democratic decision-making in foreign countries to further American economic and business interests. The book is not well-written. Perkins's writing is flat; his prose is weak and repetitious; his story is not suspenseful and gripping in the Carl Bernstein way (Bernstein, the friend of the rich and powerful, who never dares to publish anything that would ever jeopardize his relationship with or access to the high-level movers and shakers); but it has the ring of truth -- frightening, discouraging, shocking truth. This book is not part of the paranoid rant that the Bush administration was personally responsible for the events of 9/11; but in some respects it is more shocking than that claim. It suggests that there has been a systematic set of policies in place for most of the post-World War II era in which the United States government (via a web of independent agents and subcontractors like the one Perkins worked for) has participated in a program of assassinations, governmental coups, and the systematic corruption of foreign governments and businesses. If Perkins were the only one saying this, we could possibly dismiss it as the ravings of a self-promoter or fool. But there is, at this point in American history, just too much evidence that, however limited his own personal view of and involvement in these activities, Perkins was part of a vast, well-funded system that is still in place and still as busy as ever at its work of subversion and corruption. Americans are so naive, so trusting of their government's fundamental goodness and truthfulness. It's time for a reality-check, a wake-up call. (But, of course, very few professional journalists, and certainly none at the Carl Bernstein level of self-importance, would risk their careers and reputations by pursuing this or similar stories. So much for the independence and courage of the "fourth estate." That is another American myth that needs to be debunked.) This country has a lot of blood on its hands, but woe to him who dares say so. Don't worry about it. Go back to reading Film Comment and MovieMaker and to enjoying the contentless thrills, the safe danger, the "being nowhere, saying nothing" of the Coen brothers' cinematic rollercoasters. -- R.C.

This just came in from indie filmmaker Raymund Cruz who lives in the Philippines. Thanks, Raymund! -- R.C.

Subject: Bresson..

Bresson sits down in an interview for L'Argent.
Here, he talks about his cinema.

Enjoy.

Raymund