What Are You Looking At? OR:

Finally got this uploaded . . .

At The Brick's 5th Anniversary party, back in December, Berit and I did a little live performance piece accompanied by a video playing behind us.

The stage was covered with sixteen chairs, evenly spaced in three rows facing the audience (5/6/5). As each of our pre-recorded voices alternated on the video, we would take turns slowly walking around the stage -- each of us ending our little segment by knocking over a chair, one-by-one, until at last the stage was covered with overturned chairs (some had been carefully tipped, some knocked, a couple thrown, and one smashed over and over into the ground and destroyed) and the two of us wound up facing each other over the last chair, which was not overturned, as the lights faded (we had created the light cues in the computer board so that Berit could start the DVD of the video and hit the go button on the light board 5 seconds later - then run down the ladder from the booth and to the stage to perform the piece - and the lights and video would sync up).

It was designed and intended completely as a live video/performance combo, so the video doesn't exactly work on its own (it's basically a slideshow of text with voiceovers), but I'm happy enough with it to share it with you. It was much liked by a number of people there (who might not want me to say so in public), and got a little heckling afterward as well ("More facile statements!").

I created the soundtrack and designed the overall piece. Berit created the text slides (from my design suggestion of copying Godard/Gorin's titles in Tout Va Bien) and put the whole thing together as a movie.

Here it is behind the cut. It's close to 11 minutes long.

( Where Do You Stand? )

Enjoy.

Zany Afternoon

From around the series of tubes, some links and images for the dining and dancing pleasure of you and yours . . .

First, an album cover that went up today on LP Cover Lover that I couldn't resist ganking and sharing (dig the song titles) . . .

Next, great comic artist Wally Wood's instructions to himself on how to spiff up a boring, talky, and badly-written story (which I got from Joel Johnson Has a Blog): "22 Panels That Always Work!!"

(note: You might want to see this larger, which you can, HERE)

Finally, as a big fan of the retro humor-art of Bruce McCall, I am very fond of the site Modern Mechanix, and have posted images and links from and to there before . . . but this may be my all-time favorite.

From the March, 1956 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, an article and splash page that asks an important question facing America . . .

(again, can be seen larger HERE - full article is HERE)

Enjoy. Back to breaking down scripts into french scenes and scheduling for me . . .

You Wavin' the Flag, Too?

Three posts today? What's going on?

(A: I get frazzled easily by my giant multicolored Excel charts of rehearsal schedules and conflicts and need frequent breaks to keep sane)

I just read the New York Times obit for actor Richard Widmark.

He made a lot of movies in his career, and most of them, especially near the end, aren't exactly memorable (though he's great as the evil victim in Sidney Lumet's incredibly fun film of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express).

At the start of his career, however, he was almost an exclusively film noir actor, and gave two of the best and deepest performances of the genre.

And no, neither of them is his famous debut performance as Tommy Udo in the noir Kiss of Death. Fine work, sure, but he really shone his brightest elsewhere (if not as distinctively in Kiss, for which - to his chagrin - he would always be best remembered "for a giggle").

He is in Samuel Fuller's 1953 Pickup on South Street as Skip McCoy, pickpocket - an amoral criminal who finds a spark of morality in himself by the end of the picture, enough to make him (to his own surprise) a hero - made believable only by Widmark's performance (which ensures that the spark remains only a spark, and not a wholesale redemption).

And he is so good as to be almost impossible to watch as low-level hustler (trying to become a big-level hustler) Harry Fabian in Jules Dassin's 1950 Night and the City. I've only watched this film once since acquiring it in my research for World Gone Wrong in 2005, despite thinking it's probably one of the very best noirs ever made. The reason I can't bear to go back to it is the pain I felt in watching the slow destruction of Widmark's character - a stupid, unskilled man who is somehow (well, through Widmark's performance) someone you can feel great empathy for. Maybe it's also because Harry Fabian may be one of the unluckiest characters in film history - despite his own lack of knowledge and talent, he nearly gets everything he wants, and it is only taken away from him by random, blind chance.

(in watching as much noir around this home as we do, the most regular statements uttered sometimes by me, and more often by Berit, when film-watching are "you poor bastard" or "you stupid bastard" or "you poor, stupid bastard" - for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows the genre well - I think this was said more during Night than any other film we've ever watched)

The film actually features a pretty amazing cast top-to-bottom - especially Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, and the beautiful, haunted, and heartbreaking Gene Tierney.

I think I'll try and steel myself and watch Night and the City this evening, maybe Pickup too, if I have it (not sure about that).

If you haven't seen either, they're both worth it, and available on DVD in lovely editions from The Criterion Collection. Watch them for Widmark, who deserves to be remembered for things other than being well-impersonated by Frank Gorshin.