Some Came Running

Weekend in Tucson

Over the weekend I had a mostly wonderful time doing something I would rather not have been doing: commemorating the life and work of David Foster Wallace, who took his own life last September. Dave was the fiction editor of the University of Arizona-affiliated literary review Sonora Journal while he achieved his MFA at that school, and the current editor of the SR, Michael Sheehan, invited a group of writers and friends to mark the publication of the new double issue of the Journal, which features a 100-page tribute to Wallace that includes a remembrance by myself, some really wonderful essays and interviews, and a previously unpublished short story by the man himself. You can order a copy here; I think it's an essential volume for anyone who cares about Wallace's work.

A few observations.

—I miss Robert Garlock too, as it happens.

—Very nice, also, the acknowledgement of Manny Farber. A Condon consideration, I'd reckon. He knows about that stuff.

—The Franco/Rogen thingie was the funniest of the thingies.

—I'm real glad I didn't live-blog it, and that I only followed the thoughts of others who were doing so via occasional peeks at Facebook updates. Lame is lame, I agree, but if, as Cyril Connolly once noted, nothing dates like hate, well, hate via Twitter just curdles into useless snot instantly. One actually funny comment amid all of it was a bit about the various "Justice Leagues" of acting award presenters.

—I see that Joel Stein was credited for "additional material." I say we start a rumor that he wrote the opening number, the most excruciating in Oscar history since that Rob Lowe/Snow White horror. I think Jackman recovered very nicely, though. 

—The wife and I had a great time with a swell group of friends. Hope you did too. 

Rescuing "Mavericks," or, "Positif" Vibrations

Barbara Loden in her Wanda, 1970

The word "maverick" has come in for a lot of ridicule in recent months, for reasons we a loathe to reiterate here, so in a sense, the series currently unspooling at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, "Mavericks and Outsiders: Positif Celebrates American Cinema" can be seen as an attempt to "take back" the term. I half-jokingly suggested this idea to the venerable Michel Ciment, editor of the legendary French film magazine Positif, when I interviewed him for The Auteurs late last week. He chuckled wryly but didn't elaborate much. 

The series, which runs through February 5, is, true to Positif's ethos, very much about strong individual voices, from Toback with Fingers to Lodge Kerrigan with Keane. Barbara Loden's galvanizing, still-influential Wanda is honored, as is the freewheeling Jim McBride/L.M. Kit Carson sendup of the notion of cinema-as-salvation, David Holtzman's Diary.

My full interview with Ciment is now up; here's a taste of what he had to say:

"A lot of the films [in the series] are also first pictures, because I believe that—well, first off let me talk about what I don't believe, I don't believe in this cliche that you sometimes encounter when you speak to a colleague you say, 'I like that first film.' And your colleague says, 'Yes, it's not bad for a first feature.'  I happen to think that first features are very often the best films of their directors, because when you start to make a film, a first feature, you don't know how many difficulties you will meet on your way. But because you are fresh, you have thought about this first film for years, there is a kind of intensity and density in the first feature.  And the filmmaker doesn't have the full experience of  the problems of the press, of the producers, of the audience, all the things that little by little demolish the directors.  And so many directors have such difficulty in making a fifth or a sixth feature, because they have given up in a sense. In the cases of [Wanda director] Barbara Loden and  [The Honeymoon Killers director] Leonard Kastle, they didn't even get to direct a second feature."

L.M. Kit Carson in David Holzman's Diary, Jim McBride, 1967

More Panels About Critics and Food

Okay, not food. And okay, it's just one panel. I'm reading an Eno biography at the moment, whaddya want from me.

This Saturday the Film Society of Lincoln Center's having a panel on everybody's favorite subject, the future of film criticism, entitled "Film Criticism In Crisis?" on this Saturday the 27th, 1 p.m., at the Walter Reade theater. This panel, moderated by Film Comment's Gavin Smith, has a refreshing international perspective—in addition to its American contingent, the great Kent Jones, the great Jonathan Rosenbaum, the near-great Jessica Winter, and the mysterious Acquarello, the panel also features Emmanuel Burdeau, editor of the beleagured Cahiers du Cinema, Suung-hoon Jeong, one-time critic for the Korean film weekly Cine 21, and in a rare appearance in these parts, American-in-Berlin David Hudson of the estimable GreenCine Daily.

Should be fun. If you hear a guy heckling "Fuck you and Manny Farber" from the back of the hall, I'd expect that'd be Steven Boone. Okay. I really have to stop.

More info on the program is here.

UPDATE: A mutual friend of Mr. Boone and myself mildly chided my snark in an e-mail. He's right to. Truth to tell, Boone belongs on this panel; like it or not, he's bringing something new to the table, passionately. He'd get some sparks flying up there.

Driving "Trafic," heading uptown

My musings on Jacques Tati's Trafic, to my mind a wonderful and misunderstood film, have just gone up over at The Auteur's Notebook. The splendid Criterion DVD of the picture streets on July 15.

I've been meaning to head up to Harlem to check out the Maysles Cinema ever since it opened in March, and I now have even more of a pretext to do so and/or less of an excuse not to, as the case may be: Sunday, the uptown arthouse with a documentary emphasis begins its series "Strangers in a Strange Land" which runs through August 5. Curated by the Museum of the Moving Image's astute and, incidentally, personally delightful Livia Bloom, it starts with a bang: a marathon screening of Louis Malle's beautiful, penetrating seven-hour Phantom India. Other delights include an inventive double bill of Vigo's A propos de Nice and Chantal Akerman's beguiling News From Home. The schedule is here; a good news piece about the Maysles Cinema is here.

Souvenir

Monday evening I had the fantastic privilege of attending a special family-and-friends show by the reunited Feelies at Maxwell's, their old Hoboken stomping and strumming and jumping grounds. Aside from being musically spectacular, it was genuinely moving to see these old friends and neighbors working together again; Bar/None records founder Glenn Morrow and I wound up comparing notes as to which of the songs choked us up the most. I'm going to be high on both the music and the fellow-feeling of the night for quite some time.

My favorite account of the evening is this one, which is pretty much the sweetest thing I've ever read.

"Some Came Running," at leisure

Display case, "No Wave 1976-1980," KS Art

As I deal with the varied vicissitudes of being out (for the time being) of a day job, I've been trying to do a bunch of stuff that I might not have done were I still, you know, in a day job. Hence, last Thursday night, I met up with my similarly day-job-less pal Louise W. (who I met in geometry class at Jefferson Township High School in 1977; she was a freshman, while I was a mathematically-challenged senior), with blankets in tow, to get a sweet spot on the lawn by the Prospect Park Bandshell for the opening night of the Celebrate Brooklyn! series of concerts at said bandshell, featuring Mr. Isaac Hayes. We were soon joined by a host of day-job-possessing pals, including Kenny-Evans-wedding maid of honor Rubina H., wedding usher Patrick K., my buddy Mario of DVD Palace fame, and more. (My Lovely Wife, alas, was tied up in rehearsals for a play.)

It was a beyond-perfect night for such an event, which was hilariously prefaced by a bunch of goofy speeches from varied representatives of the municipality. Hayes was pretty awesome. He can't rock the gold-chain "Black Moses" vest like he used to—he instead wore a long black-and-gold robe—and he had three electronic keyboardists emulating the sounds of a 21-piece orchestra, but close your eyes and it was Hot Buttered Soul and Live at the Sahara Tahoe all the way, except without the stage patter. It was as if South Park had never even existed. "Lord, ain't nobody making music like this no more," one delighted old-schooler exclaimed a couple minutes into "I Stand Accused." Damn right, as Hayes says on one of his most famous hits. Speaking of which, the extended version of the theme from Shaft with which he closed the show had enough wacka-wacka for ten porno movie soundtracks...

Late afternoon Friday I hied down to Manhattan's Leonard Street, with a two-fold purpose. First, to attend a book party/gallery reception celebrating No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980 by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and longtime critical gadfly Byron Coley. An essential photo collection and text for anybody who looked in terrified wonder at the back cover of No New York, and subsequently listened in terrified wonder to its grooves.

"Exile," cunning, no silence

The above shot is from the bustling scene at Manhattan's KGB complex (it's an arts/reading space with an ironic Soviet nostalgia theme—no, Martin Amis would not approve, but it's still a happening joint) in the aftermath of a celebration of/reading from Exile Cinema: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood, a collection of film writings edited by Michael Atkinson, that, Atkinson says, has been awaiting publication for three years. Among the luminaries in the audience were such thoroughly engaged and engaging films writers as Aaron Hillis, Karina Longworth, Craig Keller, Kevin Lee, Allison Willmore, and David Fear; among the luminaries reading their contributions to the book were Ed Halter, the particularly delightful Stuart Klawans (whose essay is a Talmudically-informed consideration of Chantal Akerman) , and Atkinson himself, who read from both his introduction and from filmmaker Guy Maddin's appreciation of Jose Mojica Marins.

Yes, this is the same Michael Atkinson with whom I picked a fight just a couple of days ago. How could it not be? As I've said before, I think he's a provocative and often astute critic, and I think the book's a worthy project (and most of the readings I heard suggest I'm going to enjoy the whole thing almost unreservedly). But I'll admit that another reason I turned up was in the hope of unruffling some feathers. While I take passionate exception with some of the specifics of the arguments Atkinson's put out there, the fact of the matter is that we absolutely agree on certain essentials, the biggest one being on the need for an informed, literate, non-market-oriented film criticism with an engaged international perspective. Whether it comes from mainstream media outlets (which seems less and less likely) or a loose affiliation of internet-based writers, or some where/thing else. As much as the essays I heard last night, the conversations I had with the above-mentioned folk suggest to me that there's more than a little hope for that. Although I get the feeling that Atkinson is more pessimistic on this front than I am. But in any case, let me give him the last word here—this is from the introduction to Exile Cinema:

It is the critic's job, performed well or not or not at all, to embrace the visual text in question as a totality—as an expression, a creation, a consummable product, a market agent, a social symptom—but as a totality with intent. That intent is to be viewed, by people, for enjoyment, stimulation, and/or satisfaction, and so the critic is the cultural pointman, the reconnoiterer for his fellow citizens for whom a movie is an experience to be had, enjoyed, contemplated, and argued over, nothing less and often little more. Their responsibilities begin and end in the seat, in the dark, watching, with their readers.