The Movie Experience at the Film Forum, Febrary 7th, 2006

So often, my backlog of interests guides my actions, such as wanting to see all the films of James Whale and Val Lewton, and I’ve at least heard of the director, Edgar Ulmer. A film of each comprised the triple feature at Film Forum last Tuesday during the Karloff festival. One present day development comes to mind, my preference for stories told in an hour and fifteen minutes. I suppose the more gruesome the subject matter, the shorter the better. It’s amazing how eventful the time can be. Ultimately, though, I did spend four and a half hours at the movies, basking in the reflected glory of 35mm prints, one, The Old Dark House, from the archives of our own Library of Congress!

I intended to miss “The Black Cat” and when I arrived there, that was the one starting.

When I bought a ticket at 2:40 they warned me that the theatre was almost full. When I left at 7 a crowd of people waited to get in and the line for standby tickets extended half the block.

The art deco home of an architect portrayed by Karloff, built atop the remains of a fort that 10,000 people defended to the death, made use of overhead fluorescent light, giving the actors from the 1930’s a shadowless pallor, as if they were in a bland office of today.

Boris’s reward for his nasty behavior toward his guests and colleagues was to be stripped to the waist and flayed by Bela Lugosi.

In a parlor with a bay window overlooking the Alps, this film, “The Black Cat,” staged a chess match for the lives of the young couple, so “The Seventh Seal” of Ingmar Bergman comes to mind.

I want everything to be pleasant and harmonious, yet it remains my intention to make a horror film, so I found these films to be worthwhile. I justify fantasizing by adding conflict to the fantasy. I deny myself what I want for purpose of exploration and growth, yet I’m too frightened to actually live conflict. I’m simply considering an invented reality, such as a novel or a movie, or an audio recording.

In the Maxfield Parish Elysium I put a snake in the grass just to keep it real. Dave Chapelle shared, in a 2004 rerun last night, what happens when keeping it real goes really wrong.

The fly in the ointment.

In Storm Cloud I pretended I was famous through an alter ego, Kevin Vargas, but chose to explore giving him everything I wanted by adding a fear of exposure to the fame, yes, in the ugliest way possible. Sure the casualty is supposed to be a misunderstanding, but someone in his film Dies and the unpleasantess, the reality of the fantasy goes well beyond my capabilities.

The Robert Wise adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatchers was gruesome. Take me back to Disneyland! The Satanism of the Black Cat is consistent. Guess what, facilitating destruction upon others brings it ten-fold upon oneself. That’s easy. I’m not entirely convinced Karloff didn’t want to be flayed by Lugosi.

I actually want peace and harmony, which I see existing in nature. The mere finding of a cause worth dying for is enough to call the confrontation upon oneself.

There is a crossover into beauty one finds in a horror film that may be worth exploring, but what are the emotions that support it? Has the director crossed over into an embrace of nastiness? I haven’t seen “Carrie” for many years but I recall how utterly hilarious I found the hand reaching from the rubble matching the hand from (Amy Irving’s) mother, and the music pounding away. In retrospect I’ll call the Carrie finale a reasonable victim backlash. It’s a warning of victim victorious, with the caveat that the expedient way to put destruction to rest is to put all its participants to rest.

Galapagos Introduces Sara Silverman... Not Catholic so she needn't feel guilt for her thoughts

On Wednesday, November 9th, they actually took two little 35mm projectors and showed her movie. It was a free screening so I can't complain that they only played the secondary soundtrack, which means you couldn't hear the words to the songs.

(Gene Stavis explained: "Undoubtedly they were playing the optical track and were unable to synch the digital tracks which are common today. Or, perhaps, the equipment they used was of an older type which does not properly reproduce a more modern red track.")

It has a great escalating opening from a drab apartment room to the big stage.

"American Airlines: First through the towers."
Ron Jeremy keeps his pinky out "'cause he's classy."

She takes cluelessness to the level of high art. As a narcissist, she has also mastered the art of expressing heartless compassion.

Despite her obvious capacity for empathy, she has one weakness, the desire for a pretty jewel that is only found on the tailbone of ethiopian babies.

We make fun of people we're not afraid of.

"I'm not racist, I speak facts. You can't smell yourself..."

And now, I keep returning to the following issue.... What is pornography?
Hem haw, I KNOW it when I see it.
She doesn't, thank heavens! A&E were cast from paradise not because they were naked but because they KNEW they were naked.
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In other comedian news: Apologies to Robert Shapiro for my mistaking him for his brother, Rick on Monday by the 6th Ave Bus stop... SORRY! Jeez.


Then there's the wit & wisdom of the Drew Blood...

From the point of view of Cupid, David Souter (GHW Bush USSC nominee, 1990) and Harriet Miers (GW Bush USSC nominee, 2005) were a match made in heaven.

On to other matters.

Oh, vote!

In very local news, the New York County District 60 voting machine at the Sirovich Center accepted four choices for Mayor.

I discovered this today at 10:00 AM while considering a vote for the "Rent Too High" party candidate for the position of Public Advocate. He was actually one of the candidates bunched in for Mayor.

The levers should lock after the maximum number have been pulled. They did for all the other choices.

I only voted for one Mayor, but I could have voted for four! I was actually inarticulately upset by this but did manage to convey the discovery to the pollers.

My getting upset tends to help no one, unless it is my intention to achieve the opposite result.

In more general local news, say good-bye to mechanical voting machines.

Do you suppose this evening will bring any election result surprises? I do not.

And thank you, New York 1, for last week's full week profile on "Top" Independent Party Member Fred Newman. What was the connection again?

Oedipus was a detective in search of himself.

How could Harriet Miers know her path was his as she led her search committee toward the next Supreme Court Nominee?

How could I know how similar to Jackie Mason I would feel in expressing that parallel?

Is a "how could you" question answerable or rhetorical, asked by someone making a point?

Yet I ask it.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.

Sunday, October 2nd from 5PM to 6PM at the Bryat Park Book Fair, continued.

As for my Book Fair report, following Art Spiegelman in the New York Times Book Review tent was Pamela Paul to personally introduce us to her new book, "Pornified."

If you sense a kinetic energy in your hotel room, then perhaps it's because, sniff-sniff, it's been pornified!

In case I was not already alarmed by my potential comments about a hundred million dollar industry, following Pamela Paul and a summer camp break with Christopher Lehman-Haupt, was author Ariel Levy, introducing her new, red book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, describing her undercover work during the spring break shoot of a show called "Girls Gone Wild." (This show, immortalized by Larry David in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, is mostly comprised of minimally solicited public-breast-bearing "reality" clips. In syndication, perhaps it should rerun as "Girls Went Wild.")

If I add anything to the self-perceptions of the "wild" ones whose body displays were freely offered to cameras in those episodes -- especially to those who masturbated –- it is this suggestion; rather than being victimized in retrospect, consider the respect you offered to a 100 million dollar industry and its customers by mooning them.

Perhaps there are times when the act of observing something does NOT change it. Let voyeurs watch. The power to change in their observation is negligible compared with a scientist looking for an electron through a microscope.

Yes, bodies are fascinating, ever-surprising in their breath-taking beauty, and worthy of time spent looking at them.

No, I haven't seen March of the Penguins, but I'll bet we benefit by observing them, too.

If pornography is images of people who prepare and present themselves and others in various displays of sexual arousal then, yes, the world is pornified.

But what is pornography? The knowledge of it, like the knowledge Adam and Eve acquired about being naked in the Garden of Eden, was contained in the definition; "I KNOW it when I see it."

The standard has become what a community/planet will tolerate.

Perhaps for sexual arousal to be pornographic a measure of self-hatred is required.

Pamela Paul's featured video description was of “sheiks” clenching Abu Ghraib prison photos as they surrounded the military-garbed woman they held responsible.

In this video after a suggested decapitation they drench the woman with their self generated kinetic fluids.

“Masturbatable,” perhaps with self-hatred. Consider, in response to the blinding rage "generatable" from the previous near-dada description, how powerful emotions (i.e., hate, love...) readily couple with physical feelings of sexual (reproductive) arousal.

-- Don't just stand there, do something.

-- I can't. It's on film; it already happened.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.

To write one of these MD posts I like to have some kind of general interest update to share.

I just returned from a day of jury duty in 2d Dept. Federal Court, and no I wasn't picked but I was among the first called to join a panel seated within a beautiful courtroom jury box after watching a hypnotizing video projection. I didn't catch the video title but it was directed by Jody E. George of the Federal Judicial Center and screened in double projection with capital-letter-captioning, white on black.

"We're going to show you a film. What the film does is give you a brief idea of what it's like to do jury service here in Federal Court."

Yes, it cast a spell upon all, turning random individuals into prospective jurors.

Only by the judge saying these magic words, "You are excused," may the juror spell be broken, and he did to me, so I missed out on determing the controversy raised by Ralph Lauren suing Jordache and the United States Polo Association for trademark infringement of the double horse logo, which I confess I cannot picture.

The judge conducted the voir dire of the jurors as the eight attorneys and two rows of interested observers sat with senses on alert.

"Do you rent or own where you live?"

In addition to clearly establishing the trial schedule, Judge George B. Daniels asked other probative questions, and unearthed amazing coincidences. (i.e. My husband is a partner in the plaintiff's firm, I'm friends with one of the defense attorneys (waves exchanged) and I just submitted an opposition brief to your honor on another matter., or -- I provided fringes for Lauren clothes, I met him often and yes, he was very good to me., -- Or, most generally, my attorney suffered a psychotic episode and was disbarred during my med mal trial.)

A jury of eight was quickly, impressively, and admirably had.

I went for lunch to the corner dim sum place and ran into the owner of a sea food restaurant, "Up the River," in Westley near Mystic. He and I struck up a conversation because I couldn't help noticing that his shirt had a bright polo insignia of a man on a horse swinging a mallet. Now there's an original trademark for a polo shirt.

Look, if you invest, time, money and effort in some(any)thing, then you should have at least the modicum of self-interest (and intelligence) to create a defendable ownership stake in it...

The jury service waiting time after lunch was an opportunity to read the daily free paper, "AM New York." A brief article within it speculated about the identity of Bush's next supreme court nominee. Will it be his former personal attorney?

Again, if you, the term-limit-public-servant, have a choice discretion, you may also wish to factor self-interest into the equation.

Suddenly here appears a general header for everything I write:

Dear gentle reader, I don't readily access past sensory observations as readily as I access the internet so an additional purpose served by this writing is to refresh my memory.

Furthermore, my undercover expose' tone (like I'm a spy on the "Girls Gone Wild" shoot) is a reverberation from what I enjoyed yesterday afternoon when I attended -- and forgive me because any literature distributed at the event had run out by the time I arrived at 5PM -- some kind of book fair at the park (Bryant) behind The New York Public Library.

Multiple tents were up, plus a carousel! One tent had a waiting line extending throughout half the park, because a panel discussion by New York Times Op Ed writers was soon to ensue within.

Another little tent was wide open for seating. I heard the buzz word, Heidegger, and asked a distinctively tee-shirted attendant. She said that speaking in there was Harry Frankfurt (I am only now realizing that the City of Frankfurt is his surname) reading from his philosophical treatise "On Bullshit." (on dancer on donner on prancer...).

The word "Bullshit" still has its punch as a period, a conversation stopper, or at least, as an argument starter.

Mr. Frankfurt's primary observation is that the bullshiter simply doesn't care if what he says is the truth in contrast with Iago, that liar, who does.

He concluded by reading from his treatise what I will paraphrase as follows: Our general acceptance of bullshit means that we, yearning for its substitute, discern and respect sincerity. A person whose expression holds the ring of truth, from being true to him or herself, is the final exemplar of bullshit, because in truth, no matter how true to ourselves we sincerely are, reality exists apart from our perception and expression of it.

I agree, even as I, with all my sensory caveats, seek clarifying expressions of reality.

That little reading tent was like The New York Times Book Review, Live, and I kept getting up, and then sat back down after they announced the next author.

I knew of Harry Frankfurt's book, as well as Pamela Paul's Pornified and Ariel Levy's Female Chauvenist Pigs from the past year's New York Times Book Review. And the novel The Mad Cook of Pymatuning was read by its author, Christopher Lehman-Haupt, a reviewer of books for the New York Times.

As for the Target Logo appearing within the New York Times banner behind these authors in the little tent, although it remains unclear what the "Target" trademark represents, I am familiar with it because its trademark holders, whoever they are, had bought out an entire New Yorker issue’s ad space for red and black graphics, making that issue so obviously a collector’s item that I promptly threw it away.

Also appearing within the tent was the amazing Art Spiegelman. He followed Mr. Frankfurt and I sat down in disbelief immediately upon hearing his name as I greatly admired Maus and enjoyed his attention-grabbing New Yorker Covers. He crucified the Easter Bunny over some tax forms and illustrated the slurp kiss between two people who would more likely share an employer/employee relationship, among other covers suggestive of George Grosz paintings. Mr. Spiegelman did the black on black World Trade Center cover in the wake of their demolition. What better person to do the cover? Not only does his family live two blocks from the calamitous site but his is wife the cover editor for the New Yorker. After his presentation he went to sign copies of his "graphic novel," In the Shadow of No Towers.

I am sorry to only now think of asking him, does he have any update on the activities of his fellow Raw comic book artist, Mark Beyer?

I must go now. MORE LATER...

tail-end notes...

Supposedly you could get your book appraised from professional booksellers at this fair; someone showed me multiple hardcover first edition copies of On The Road. No, I could not imagine what they were worth and thanked him for letting me look at them.

Somehow, the idea that buying a 15 dollar N.Y.T. tote bag would entitle one to enter an area of, and fill the bag with, gently used books was vaguely annoying.

Oh, thank you for telling me about the book fair.

Movie making consists of capturing and communicating an experience not otherwise safely available to our senses, at least not in this lifetime. One such experience is a visit to Vegas.

Vegas is infinitely trashable.

I've never been to Vegas, and movies that use it as a backdrop lessen my desire to visit... Bugsy, The Godfather Part II, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, the Tristan Isolde segment of Aria, Oceans 11, and The Cooler. Any others?

Yet Vegas inspires a degree of greatness in those films.

As he does most every day Jackie Mason on August 18th, 2005 presented himself on the Broadway stage, making observations and asking people, challenging them with the question, "Do you understand this?" Thanks to an attorney friend at 13th Street Rep, I finally saw Jackie Mason. I wanted his take on current events, and will probably get that by tuning into his comcast radio show. My favorite observation was a pure joke about job discrimination and fat people... fat people can't get a job. Fat people are starving to death. Do you understand this? He criticises to improve. Would he if he didn't care? No. He loves this country. He uses dirty words because he recognized the audience was comprised of a lower class of people. Change the station if the abusive words offend. For those of you no longer satisfied with verbal abuse, consider a friend who attended a warrior workshop at the Catskills Nevely and came back with a limp and a bandaged knee. It was a workshop where martial arts experts (physical, versus verbal, comedians) suprise-attacked and hospitalized many. Now THAT's abuse. As for those of you prefering the beauty of the ethereal, listen to Jackie Mason's singing voice... ------------------------ I'm adding the details of our cover of Harry Nilsson's Without Her here: My transcendent moment with Nilsson (and Tarantino) occurred when Harry Nilsson’s recording of his song, “Coconut,” played at the end of “Reservoir Dogs.” ----------------- My latest home recording project for Wood Records is a cover recording of Harry Nilsson’s “Without Her,” a song to be distinguished from Nilsson’s “Without You.” July 7, 2005. I just sent my cover of Without Her to Wood Records for its tribute CD. I combined Mr. Nilsson's great recording with the version by Blood Sweat and Tears (in which the melody is lowered a fifth...). I spent a Friday evening in May at George Parow’s home recording studio in Danbury Connecticut. He uses Q-Base software. George and Dale had already been listening to the Blood Sweat and Tears recording of the song. I only knew the Nilsson recording which Mark at Wood Records sent me. We combined the two. I sang Nilsson’s melody (BS&T sang the melody a fifth lower.) and we alternated with the giddy bossa nova rhythm at the chorus. I played a piano keyboard and dubbed a flute solo on a midi keyboard. The following visitors to the studio participated in the recording: Liam Glynn: Harmony vocal Dale Jones: Guitar Dennis Simonson: Bass Although Mark from Wood Records discouraged mastering, George thought it should be mastered and I compromised by doing what I’ve done with all my recordings, I let Alex Abrash run it through his elaborate home system. When I asked Alex what his credit should read, he requested the following: Prism SNS Mastering by Alex Abrash of Tremendos Music. PETER DIZOZZA dizozza600@cs.com http://www.cinemavii.com Albums: Pro-Choice on Mental Health, Songs of “The Golf Wars,” and a new one produced by George Parow!