collisionwork | Bring It On Home, Bring It To Jerome (Reply)

Maine has been good to us, but it's time to come on home to NYC. Work to do now, and we miss the cats.

Ideas started coming for the August month of shows from Gemini CollisionWorks, and have been notated and discussed. At the current moment, the August show plans consist of one full 2-act play, ObJects, another dance-theater/text piece in the Invisible Republic series (the previous ones were about propaganda and advertising, this one will be about marketing/branding), two short pieces on a double bill -- Gone and Antrobus -- and a solo performance (by me, the only thing I'll be acting in this year) of Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip (if I can get the rights). Apart from the Wellman, I'm writing the rest -- Gone is complete, Antrobus is outlined with a tiny bit written (and, unfortunately, currently trapped on the hard drive of a broken computer), and the other two, like Spell and Everything Must Go from 2008, need to be written primarily around the cast in rehearsal. So I have dream casts written out, and will start contacting people to start work when I get back to NYC.

It's a lot, but ideas are now flowing -- Berit and I had a nice Valentine's Day dinner where I laid out what I had to her, and we batted some things back and forth and they became more clear and possible-sounding. I am sure that one point of dispute will continue, about whether or not to use real paint onstage in one show where I'd like to have someone actually painting a wall over the course of the show -- I want it done for real; Berit is bringing up, correctly, every single possible problem, and there are many, in doing it for real, none of which are, as yet dissuading me -- but we have the start of a plan of attack for the year.

A favorite of the many bloggers I read is The Self-Styled Siren, who primarily writes on classic film. She is currently co-sponsoring a blog-a-thon, For the Love of Film (Noir), and you can find the first collection of links to blogs participating HERE. A first interview between The Siren and the great noir scholar Eddie Muller preceded the blog-a-thon HERE.

Now, if you know me or my work, you know about the huge part noir has played in both for a few years now, so I'll be joining in the blogging fun in the next few days by pulling out and revamping some of the writing on noir I've done here (and elsewhere) in the past few years, with a few rewrites and new material.

I should also note that For the Love of Film Noir is being done to raise funds for The Film Noir Foundation towards the preservation of the classic noir The Sound of Fury. Previously, the FNF has preserved Cry Danger and Too Late for Tears, among other works. When I started studying noir, I was able to rent Cry Danger and The Sound of Fury (under the title Try and Get Me!) on VHS tape from Videoport here in Maine. Later, when researching World Gone Wrong up here, I found the store had gotten rid of both great films in a VHS purge, and neither was available anywhere. Too Late for Tears, an average noir with WAY above-average performances from Dan Duryea and Lizabeth Scott, I found in a terrible print on DVD in a Brooklyn library (under the title Killer Bait). The Film Noir Foundation is dedicated to tracking down, restoring, and distributing these and other films in new, beautiful 35mm prints, as well as creating new DVDs. You can see Cry Danger (restored) and Sound of Fury (not) on Netflix Instant now, but there's no preservation like a new fine-grain negative and film prints for these works. The Film Noir Foundation deserves all the support it can get, especially from those of us who regard noir as a major part of film (and Art) of the last century. You can follow the links on The Siren's page (or here in the days coming up) to donate to them.

And, before leaving, here's a Random Ten from the North from the 2,407 tracks in the "prime unheard" list in the iPod:

1. "I'm Not Living Here" - Sagittarius - Present Tense
2. "Caribou (2005 acoustic live)" - Pixies - 2005.08.06 - Newport, RI
3. "Crazy Little Thing" - Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Clear Spot
4. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" - Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
5. "New Electric Ride" - Captain Beefheart - Unconditionally Guaranteed
6. "Another Country's Young" - The Gun Club - In Exile
7. "Groove A Little" - T.Rex - Dandy In The Underworld
8. "(You're Gonna) Wreck My Life" - Q'65 - Nederbeat The B-Sides 3
9. "Final Solution" - Rocket From The Tombs - Rocket Redux
10. "Dust My Broom" - Ike & Tina Turner - Bold Soul Sister

And here's an embedded playlist of most of the above, or something similar (unless you're seeing this on Facebook), with an extra one to grow on . . .

And while we can't upload the pictures we took here in Maine before we go, we were sent regular photos of our cats from the Fantastic Mr. Enk, who looked after our little beloved monsters while we were up here. Though sometimes the photos made us miss them more, as when Hooker just looks so very sad . . .