At the beginning of our movie night at SideWalk show last Wednesday I had much to say about Kat Yew's choice of movie, Rules of the Game. First it was an adventure to find a DVD copy because it turned out Kat couldn't find hers. After buying one from Borders on 32nd and 1st I heard from Sam Moree about how he was enjoying watching the movie at home, how it devolved/evolved into marx brother's slapstick and he was wondering how it all ended... He was preparing for the our show. He had rented it, the two disc criterion version, from Two Boots... He had a copy of the movie for us to run during our set. I didn't have to look for it at all... Meanwhile I had already walked down St. Marks where I used to buy packaged media such as Long Playing Vinyl Records, to find that all the Sounds stores had become tatoo shops.... I knew J&R would come through as they always do and they did not come through. The copy I bought cost 40 dollars at Borders, two discs... I began watching it and did notice a beautiful looking black and white image. The film looks timeless and yet exotic, as if the costumes were anachronisticly modern while the setting was old Versaille. We're in the post war modern world of pre-world war II. The lawyer star -- he has quite a comedown in Casablanca where he works the roulette table -- remains ever cheerful and sincere. As far as I remember, he only lost his temper once. The lightness of the drama throughout the movie gradually becomes shocking and I suppose offensive. Jean Renoir may wish to deconstruct the discreet charm of the bougeousie but he is part of the charm. He's the bear. The mechanical musical doll gets a striking close-up. The Germans in France are well represented by the Game Keeper, the Rules of the Game Keeper. The hunting scene is a slap in the face today and probably would elicit offense. There's a surrealist offensiveness to the entire proceeding if one has investment in the real world, if one considers the historic context, but in its own world, the Rules of the Game is pretty smooth sailing slapstick. If Renoir has any animosity toward high society, he contains it in an engaging pop film. A synopsis of the film can be highly detailed. It opens with the successful completion of a solo transcontinental flight across the Atlantic! But where's the welcome from the Austrian orchestra conductor's daughter? Oh, that's right, she's home with her husband, the lawyer who collects mechanical musical toys. The aviator's radio broadcast makes clear to anyone who knows them that the aviator and the lawyer's wife are friends.... You learn a lot from these movies. Renoir is the filmmaker who let Stroheim teach us to clip geraniums at the end of Grand Illusion...

Reading about Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the New Yorker inspires writing. He wrote as a politician intent on shaping the world about issues that concern everyone. His efforts will help restore Penn Station's glory, and the new Penn Station, invading like an alien utility into the interior of the massive 10001 post office, will bear his name.
I remember that post office as the place where Robert O'Connor's father worked. We would go to the local Blarney Stone nearby... A comparable building may be the Union Square Consolidated Edisons Building, tucked away.
In other news, preparing a production of A Question of Solitude, with a great ensemble, by the way, I'm lately getting in touch with my solitary self. That means evaluating, too, the possibility that my creative work is entirely personal and has little to offer others, let alone even improving my own life. But that is the challenge assumed by all artists. I'll continue to move forward.

I should reiterate here that Michael Douglas was the subject of this blog's first post. I knew Eric Douglas and that helped draw my attention to the rest of his family.

A limited update follows, because a public posting means that I can even access it... After contributing a suite of music to Maria Micheles's Around the Night Park directed by Richard Vetere at Theatre for the New City, I'm participating in the premier of Myron D. Cohen's The Last Lafayette with two songs written for the script. That will have three performances in three different venues, The New York City Bar Association, The Lambs, and the Cold Spring Public Library... next will be a first staging of the musical playscript, A Question of Solitude. And I have a bit of running around tomorrow with the help of Public Transportation... Hope everything's going well with you... Peter

I woke up at 4:15 last night to catch the rest of samson and the vampire woman... I'm sure I've got the title wrong but I was surprised at how readily accessible are the details of this legendary film. The CUNY station ran it... I only watched a few moments. It uses Samson, or rather, Santos's, actual wrestling matches... Then I saw Diane Arbus be Nicole Kidman in Fur... I didn't get to Robert Downey's Elephantisis... Again, there's something about Ms. Kidman I just plain like... she really became quite intimate for Mr. Kubrick and then was really giving her all in that Moulin Rouge musical... damn that botox.. oh, and she did a good job in that spanish ghost story... the visitors? My big issue as a couch potatoe was that Fox Movie Channel is now a pay channel... I'm already paying almost 100 a month for media content they should be paying us to digest... then I went to bed with the air conditioner on and the dreams that followed, other than seeing my grandmother pass away before my eyes with a vision of her in the basement of fox funeral home... anyway, the place I keep going to while asleep is accessible through floor boards... I get in through a cellar hole... we live in a communal building that has secret entrances I access through the ceilings and floors, there are holes near the walls... It was dangerous to arise from them. I had to be careful... How I manage to live with these people I'll never know... there is clearly no supervision... nobody's presence can be traced there... we're off the grid so to speak... Meanwhile, the tall woman next door (in this imaginary village) opened her doors to the cast of Night Park, they all got to see her home and receive a grog bag while I was stuck waiting outside... Wow, a grog bag, whatever that is...

Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/2/2010, 2:08 pm, in reply to "Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster"
There is a pristinely clear recording of our set last night -- of the invasion of the sound spectrum by four Steppes! was that 8 distinct sounds sources? at least... Thank you, Ben! The major moments for me as an audience member... Nan's song, How High Does Your Ceiling Go...beautiful! Nan's rapid performance nuances in her rap songs confirmed for the friends I was sitting with that they were in the presence of a unique and magical artist. And then Tanya O'Debra ran the spectrum of acting and singing, including the birth of Cher, The Bohemian Girl, with "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," a major song and a personal favorite... THANK YOU! (I refer to it with reverence in our opening number, Almond Eyes...) Tanya, I will accompany you with live piano if you want. When is the next chapter? Sarah M-Kelly opened at the piano... with a sound of sarah mclaughlan in the air... That was Mike Hill's observation. My frame of reference is the song, " I can't make you love me..." yes? "Let's give them something to talk about!" no... Later that evening the science jerks gave an audio visual lecture on the thermodynamics of rock guitar/vocal... So a pretty wild program night with many suprise audience members. We had a reunion with Jean Free whom I hadn't seen in like 25 years...30? On facebook Jean alerted me with a quote from night of the living dead that he was coming in from Minnesotta...so I naturally thought another person at the bar earlier that night was Jean Free! and that person convincingly played along. I even acknowledged his father for helping establish the solo Michael Jackson venture for Epic records -- off the wall?... yes, i'm off the wall... He said, are you sure you remember me? I kept giving him more memories... like remember when we met Warhol backstage with The Clash... see I'm quite the name dropper... Oh boy... Anyway, I dedicate our show to the establishment of a long overdue federally funded banking program, Truth in Sarcasm... because there is... Peter Dizozza
Link: WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/1/2010, 2:14 pm
Last Night in The Darkroom... Happy Birthday, Timothy! Now it's July 1st, your Steppes for the night are = Mike Hill Peter Dizozza Kat Yew Annie Levey At 9PM we're playing at SideWalk on a great bill and here it is: 8pm - Sarah Marzalek-Kelly 9-Peter Dizozza Mike Hill Annie Levey and Kat Yew (THE STEPPES) 10-Nan Turner (nan solo like hans) 10:45-Tanya O'Debra (reading the next installment of her CHER MUSICAL.) 11:30-The Science Jerks (chris anderson &co.- what will he do next?) STEPPES SET LIST We are the Drivers Someday Love Cinco de Mayo The Good Life Gone Away See Me Through Forgotten Cat Let Me Be (With You) Out of My Mind Straight for Your Heart PLUS SideWalk of New York Speak Low Bok Choi Plus special guest audience members, you!!! 94 Avenue A at East 6th Street 212-473-7373 don't you know... Peter 917-915-7635

Perhaps before turning to internet movie database or some other links that come up through a click on the google page I can consider what I actually thought of the unique film from 1962 called Jules and Jim, a flamboyant work and one that anticipates some of the charming interaction I know from ken Russell's films. These unique individuals following their own call somehow disappoint me in the end when all that is left is an expression of underlying tension and hostility, or something else I can't understand, in that they drive off a cliff, basically, and that the rules of what can be done with their ashes must be followed... who are these people, and what is the meaning of the German heritage of one of them, well, I suppose he is austrian, and a second world war is brewing as the lifestyles come to an abrupt halt. There is such happiness, joy and beauty experienced in the end result of the film. It is flashing about at images, ever unexpected and certainly there is great sadness in what seems to bring us back to reality, that there is an underlying tension fomenting...Maybe there's something else there. I wish there was because the vision was beautiful, or, what may be my own limitations, hauntingly familiar, and as I am a product of that familiar behaviour, I'd like to see a thriving outcome... well, bringing me back to my own perceptions versus reality. My favorite scene is the slap followed by the laugh. There is a moment of antagonism, one of several where Jules says something that offends Catherine and in my present state I am unable to recall what the comment was. She slaps him. he laughs and the all three laugh... the threesome is a French genre when I think of films of Bertrand Blier, which I haven't thought of for some time. There is another moment when she throws herself in the water... Ms. Moreau, after hearing quotes from Beaudelaire following their attendance of what might have been a strindberg play. the flamboyant Ken Russel style now seems to have its origin in Truffaut. All in all, a yearning arose from the film, and for that I'm grateful.