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.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
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
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"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.
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
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
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