CollisionWorks

Jim Emerson, over at his wonderful Scanners blog, felt the need to defend Stanley Kubrick from the charge that he "hated humans," leveled by a writer for the Seattle weekly The Stranger in response to an SK film series playing there. Though no one seems to have taken the original piece, or its writer, very seriously, Jim seems tired of yet one more portrayal of Kubrick as filmic misanthrope, viewing his characters with disdain and/or disgust, godlike, detached.

I am personally tired of this easy cliche myself, which seems to attach itself at one time or another to most of my favorite filmmakers (Godard, the Coen Brothers, Cronenberg, even Lynch sometimes, and - oh, god - Greenaway, quite a bit), but mainly Kubrick. If you present the horrors of the world and of humanity in a distanced way, believing that they speak for themselves and that the best way to look at the worst things is to really LOOK at them, without flinching, and do this without editorializing ("THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD!"), you are cold and unfeeling, apparently.

JE, in looking to refute the original charge, has found a document of great interest to Kubrick fans, that (as one of those fans VERY well-read about the man and his work) I've NEVER seen quoted or mentioned anywhere, and which is as good a statement of intent from SK about his work as he ever made.

It's a letter he wrote to the New York Times in 1972 in response to an editorial referring to A Clockwork Orange as being "the essence of fascism." Kubrick, an EXTREME anti-fascist, felt the need to respond. The full letter is behind the Times Select wall, but Emerson quotes it liberally.

Interested in Kubrick at all? The full post is HERE, and is REALLY worth it.

One quote from SK's letter that bounces around my head in particular:


The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's "Emile": "Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault." It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society.


NOTE -- possible title for one of next year's shows: Extremity (the age of the alibi).

Berit and I are in Portland, ME for a spell, relaxing, recouping, regrouping. I am starting to think about next year's shows for Gemini CollisionWorks. I would like to create one new original one for the June Summer festival at The Brick, and if I have August for my own shows again (or whatever month), have another three or four shows ready for that.

I am planning on making one of the shows a restaging of my 1999 production of Richard Foreman's 1966 farce Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville. I would also like to restage That's What We're Here For as one of the others, if I can get the majority of the cast back. I'll see if the play I'm working on, Spell, will be ready to go by the end of the year. Then, I'm planning on starting work on two other projects in January and seeing where they go. I want to have two groups of actors to work on two different shows, and just start rehearsals with no plans, no script. Maybe some visual ideas, thematic links, a handful of sound cues, and perhaps a title (see above). Meet two or three times a month at first, then more and more as the year goes on. Try to have the full shows completely ready to go, with all props, lights, costumes, etc. by mid-May. One show for June, one for August.

But for a couple of days, I'm going to enjoy watching things on my brother's GIGANTIC HDTV and home theatre system. Yesterday, he had me calibrate it for him to get the audio and video just right (he trusts and prefers me to do this for him), and I tested it with DVDs of INLAND EMPIRE, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, and then an HD broadcast of Full Metal Jacket. Nice. I'm going to veg for a bit, I think . . .

Attorney General and Constitutional danger Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Effective September 17. Which can't fucking come soon enough for me.

The account from the New York Times is HERE.

A more cheery summary is HERE at Wonkette, in their aptly named "A Farewell to Assholes Dept."

So who was the Al Neri?



"You broke my heart, Fredo."


(OK, fun is fun, but can anyone explain to me how he became "Fredo?" His name's "Alberto," not "Alfredo." Apparently, it was given to him by Our Fearless Leader. Are all "Als" of all ethnicities the same to the man? Or was he aware some time ago that one day Fredo would be sent on a little fishing trip?)


And yes, some things can lighten the heart for a while, but even LOLCats know that the bastards never really go away. No, not really . . .





(Oh, and a Google search doesn't answer the why of the "Fredo" nickname, only that it started with OFL calling him "Alfredo" for some time. Nickname or numbskull? Youth wants to know!)

Good performance of Necropolis 0 and 3 last night. Only one more left of that, Sunday at 8.00 pm. Rebecca Collins understudied for Amy Liszka as Little Nemo and did a great job. Beautiful show.

Three more shows of The Hobo Got Too High, tonight and tomorrow at 8.00 pm, and also tomorrow at 4.00 pm. I'd like this to have a longer run, as I may have said, and there's no AEA restrictions on it, so maybe we'll have it back. Depends on what the other folks at The Brick want.

And out of 20,937 songs on the ipod now, this morning's selections . . .


1. "The Big Bamboozle" - Barry Adamson - Tico To Tico 2: Crimetastic
2. "Come On" - Julie London - Ultra Lounge: Tiki Sampler
3. "Jag Vill Ingenting: - Massmedia - Das Jazz 7"
4. "Woodland Rock" - T.Rex - History of T.Rex—The Singles Collection
5. "Not Alone" - Bernard Butler - People Move On
6. "The Letter" - The Box Tops - Those Classic Golden Years 10
7. "You Beat Me To the Punch" - Mary Wells - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971
8. "Who Are the Mystery Girls?" - New York Dolls - in Too Much Too Soon
9. "The Summer Skies" - The Higher Elevation - Fading Yellow volume 2
10. "Monks" - King Missile - Failure

I am darkly amused by this article in the Times about the "company" hired to demolish the Deutsche Bank building near Ground Zero, which continues to injure people and claim lives. Nice little scam. I like the name. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Also, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show had another amusing-but-not-really-so-much piece - this one on the USA's history of bringing peace to the Middle East. {sigh}

Okay, gotta cheer myself up now on this dark little day here to do a funny show tonight.

Five days and six performances left in this crazy Summer. Here's the promo sent out to my list and posted on my MySpace page:


TWO SHOWS FROM
GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS

FINAL THREE SHOWS FOR EACH!

**********

all shows at The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
right by the L Train (Lorimer) and G Train (Metropolitan/Grand) stops

all tickets $10.00

**********

Gemini CollisionWorks and The Brick Theater, Inc. present

NECROPOLIS 0:


and

NECROPOLIS 3:


written, directed, and designed by Ian W. Hill

Wednesday, August 22
Thursday, August 23
Sunday, August 26
at 8.00 pm

"Gemini CollisionWorks's hypnotic new revival of Ian W. Hill's NECROPOLIS 0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus and At the Mountains of Slumberland shows one of indie theater's most singular and unique talents working at full power. These two one-acts show Hill in top boundary-breaking form as he pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft, classic comic strips, and 1960s exploitation movies in the typically fearless fashion theatergoers have come to expect from him . . . terrific cast . . . one of the most visually stunning productions I've seen in a while . . . For theatre-goers who have never experienced the inventive and uncompromising work of this veteran indie auteur, I can't think of a better time to do so than right now."
-- Michael Criscuolo, nytheatre.com - full review at
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/necr5527.htm

more information here: http://www.bricktheater.com/gemini/necropolis03.html or http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/94113.html

tickets: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/135639

NECROPOLIS 0 and 3 is an Equity-approved showcase

** and also **



directed by Ian W. Hill

Friday, August 24
Saturday, August 25
at 8.00 pm, and
Saturday, August 25
at 4.00 pm

Bug Blowmonkey loves music. Bug Blowmonkey loves a woman. Bug Blowmonkey loves cocaine. Two of these things are good for him, but the other one is messing him up. Bad. Wanna take a guess which one? Bug knows the blow is taking him down a dark path, but can't quit it on his own. Luckily, he has a spirit guide to help him out of his hole, and towards the "light" he seeks: Marvin Gaye.

Marc Spitz's The Hobo Got Too High is an hour of sex, drugs, rock and roll, romance, nonsequiturs, vast numbers of curse words, retractable penises, and an appraisal of Diane Lane's breasts. All for a sawbuck. You may not see better value for your theatrical dollar anytime soon.

more information here: http://www.bricktheater.com/gemini/hobo.html or http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/94290.html

tickets: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/135640

Ian W. Hill/Gemini CollisionWorks online:

blog: http://collisionwork.livejournal.com
images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geminicollisionworks/
info: http://www.myspace.com/geminicollisionworks
store: http://www.cafepress.com/collisionworks

Rest Day #1 of 3. Kind of. I have one thing to do for the next few days - let in a rehearsal to The Brick tonight, have a screening of Daniel McKleinfeld's video "The Water Cooler" tomorrow, and rehearse an understudy on Tuesday for Thursday night's Slumberland (my Little Nemo got a sweet commercial gig that day - I can't be an ass about it). No shows, though. Yesterday was all three shows. Kinda killer. Good houses though, either size-wise or reaction wise or both (different for all three).

But this morning, sitting back, enjoying listening to music and watching videos with my new headphones (INLAND EMPIRE on a good computer screen, with good headphones, loud? Excellent.).

And by following a weird YouTube train of thought (thanks for the Orson Welles video, dad!), I got into looking up some of those early music videos of the kind I miss - cheap, scratchy, probably shot on 16mm reversal stock. Watched more than a handful, thought I'd share just a handful.

So, here's Lene Lovich doing "Lucky Number;"

Camper Van Beethoven doing "Take the Skinheads Bowling:"

and (since I couldn't find "Oliver's Army") Elvis Costello's "(What's So Funny ' Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding:"

The Residents with "Hello Skinny:"

Devo's early (and better, I think) version of "Secret Agent Man:"

and Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band's "Ice Cream for Crow:"

And a special bonus, found while searching for Elvis Costello videos, Costello and Lou Reed together on French TV performing Reed's "Set the Twilight Reeling," from the album of the same name. Kicks the album version's ass:

Enjoy.

Oh, hey, look, it's Friday morning already. Cool.

So, first, a couple of links. I had thought of posting a link to this hysterical post of Qui Nguyen's early on, but didn't feel like posting anything. Then, everyone linked to it, so no need.

However, his latest post is also well worth reading, if you don't read Qui's new blog regularly already (and why not?). Not exactly as funny, but a good story, well-told (and a familiar one to me, actually).


"The pure products of America go crazy . . ." - William Carlos Williams, 1923

We just passed the 30th Anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I remember that day - lying on the floor - nine years old - on my stomach in the sunporch at 20 Field Road in Cos Cob - for some reason watching something on WOR channel 9 (there was nothing on that channel for me in the afternoons, so I don't know why I'd be tuned to it) - my great-grandma talking with her friend Alma in the next room - when a chyron crawl went across the bottom of the screen announcing E's death. I remember the exact quality of that 1970's video super and typeface, but I don't remember how it was phrased, except that it mentioned his age. I did feel at the moment that it was important, even though I had no real concept of ELVIS. I owned the Aloha from Hawaii 2-record set for some reason, but it was 1977 and I was 9 and what would I know of The King, right? But I knew that it was important and that I should be sad. I wasn't, but I knew I should be. I didn't know enough to be.

Elvis has become a bigger and bigger force in my life over the last 15 years, and, despite all the crap he put out (and if I believed in a Hell, I'd want Col. Tom Parker there for his senseless mismanagement and near-destruction of a great talent), his greatest moments are untouchable and irreducible (and I'm sure you know many, if not most, of them, but if you've never heard his 1966 version of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" --haunting, quiet, beautiful, and shoved onto side 2 of the soundtrack for Spinout! for chrissakes, surrounded by garbage -- GET IT and LISTEN TO IT).

And this is all actually just getting off the track of my original intention - just pointing a link to screenwriter Todd Alcott's excellent overview of The Elvis Movies.

Elvis was (and is) America. He was grand. He was a pioneer. He was overindulgent. He was nuts. He had no idea of his true greatness and did not value what he was best at. He was the melting pot. His music is not just a simplistic synthesis of "white hillbilly" and "black blues" musics -- he was a sponge, he listened to EVERYTHING, he loved all kinds of music -- it all went into him, and it all came out together, new. His favorite singer was Dean Martin. Favorite Elvis story not in Peter Guralnick's great 2-volume biography of the man (I read this a few years back in, I believe, New York magazine): Elvis was a shabbos goy. A rabbi and his wife lived above Elvis in Memphis when he was growing up, and Elvis earned some money helping them out on the sabbath. He also borrowed their record player often, as he didn't have one of his own, to listen to his records - blues, country, middle-of-the-road pop singers, whatever. He would also, when he was out of new music, listen to the records the rabbi would loan him with the player as well, which were all recordings of cantors. Elvis absorbed EVERYTHING. And it all came together in him. So somewhere in That Voice, with all the blues and country and pop, and the Italian-American crooners he so wanted to be like ("It's Now or Never"), are also some Jewish cantors. Neat, huh?

Sometime I'll get back to working on my play about Elvis Aron Presley and Philip K. Dick (and their dead twins, Jesse Garon and Jane C.), Kindred. It involves a collision of ghosts, aliens, rock 'n' roll, and living in Fortean Times. It had some difficult structural things to solve before moving on. Maybe now I can crack it.

I've posted the above and below videos before, but here they are again - Elvis in 1957 and 1977, a 20 year change that boggles and saddens. I wish someone would post better copies of each to YouTube, but whatever -- there's a longer version of the clip below, from only weeks before his death, HERE, but while it has an uncut intro, it's spoiled by someone deciding to do a "touching" montage during the performance, instead of staying with The King. You don't need a touching montage when you have this face . . .

"The pure products of America go crazy . . ." - William Carlos Williams, 1923


Also, combining links and the Random Ten, today's Random Ten will be enhanced - for me, anyway - by being listened to through a pair of Sennheiser HD 202 headphones, which I ordered after hearing a review by Tom X. Chao at his Peculiar Utterance of the Day. I needed some good headphones, but didn't think there was anything in my price range that would be worth it - Tom's right, these are a steal for the price (they list at $25 - I found them for $18 online). Hooray! No more ear buds or cheap 99-cent store headphones . . .


So, onward -- today's Random Ten from the CollisionWorks iPod of 21,026 songs:


1. "Octopus' Garden (remix)" - The Beatles - Love
2. "Lonelyville" - Combustible Edison - mix disk from my dad
3. "Mr. Jones" - Talking Heads - Sand in the Vaseline
4. "Wild Jam" - Pop Drive Ltd. - Instro-Hipsters a Go-Go! Vol.1
5. "Hold It Part 1" - Bud Grippah - Las Vegas Grind Part Two
6. "I'll Be Gone" - The Coastliners - The Childish Urge That Won't Make You Go Blind
7. "Bury My Body" - The Animals - The Best of The Animals
8. "That's Why I Treat My Baby So Fine" - The Siegel-Schwall Band - ...Where We Walked
9. "Mansions in the Sky" - The Red Rose Girls - The Red Rose Girls
10. "Samba Para Ti" - El Vez - How Great Thou Art


Hmmn. A nice mix of pop leading to rock 'n' roll leading to blues-rock to blues to country and winding up with a clever Elvis impersonator mixing E with Santana and Lou Reed. A good lead-in to actually listening to some E now. And why not?


(good lord! and the next song that came up after the 10 above, before I went and specifically told the iPod to just play Elvis, was the great "Crawfish" from King Creole - one of his few good original movie songs . . . sometimes I think the iPod is sentient, and fucking with me . . .)

Woke up this morning, went into my normal panic about "What do I have to do on the shows to get them ready RIGHT NOW," and realized that all the shows are now up and running and there's nothing else I have to do for any of them (except replenish programs and the disposable props).

I am now quite happy and am sitting back and just enjoying some music by myself for the first time in weeks.

Last night, we gave damned good performances of WGW/WGW (for a quiet, good-sized house) and Hobo Got Too High (for a small, wonderfully-reactive house). Today, I have all three programs of four plays to get through -- Succubus/Slumberland at 4.00 pm, WGW/WGW at 8.00 pm, and Hobo at 10.30 pm. Ah, just like the old NADA days. At least I'm not actually in the second half of each of the first two programs.


And they're all in good shape. Wow.


Come see them, if you were thinking of it, please.

Okay, so first, we opened NECROPOLIS 0 and 3: Kiss Me Succubus and At the Mountains of Slumberland last night, and they went quite well. Few little missteps here and there, but not bad. Not bad at all. So we've now "opened" all four of the Gemini CollisionWorks shows at The Brick in August (including the opening night run-thru of Hobo), and we have seven performances left of each of them.


So I just got a good night's sleep for the first time in . . . well, a while.


And then I got an email from John Issendorf telling me that the Times review was up for NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed, and congratulating me on it. Yeah, Jonathan Kalb came to see the show on opening night . . . our VERY rocky (technically), but okay, opening night. Originally, I had been told he might only be able to stay for the first half, as he had to catch a plane to India, and he would be noting in his review he had only watched World Gone Wrong, but he wound up staying for the whole show, which I took as a good sign (he also asked Ivanna, who was working the box office, how long The Hobo Got Too High was and when it would start, and if it had been shorter and started earlier he would have stuck around), so I wasn't terribly worried about the review.


And, well, it's an okay review. It reads better than it is -- that is, you get the sense of a good review from it, but when you look at the details, it's really, really mixed . . . maybe even a bit more negative. The almost exact opposite of the 2005 Time Out New York review of the show which was pretty close to a rave, but read like a pan -- I've received two congratulatory emails on the Times review already and when the TONY review came out two years ago I got nothing but sympathy emails, though the review was primarily full of phrases like "breathtaking effect," "stunning style," and "tour-de-force text."


So reading the Times review was like:

"Hmmmn. Okay, okay. Good. Great! Neat. This will be good for the show. Well, that was . . . wait a minute, he didn't like it very much, did he?"

And the TONY one was:

"Oh. Oooh. Oh, dear. Shit. Oh, this isn't good. Dammit. She didn't get it did she? Oh, well, maybe next ti-- wait a minute, did she just spend half the column space saying the show was brilliant?"


Tone may be more important than actual content in reviews . . .


At least in getting butts in the seats, which I think this review will actually do.


Have to go out shortly and get the actual print paper to see it there, and see what the photo of Stacia and I looks like in print (assuming it's used there).

Hmmmn. Well, I'm a little unhappy with some of Kalb's criticisms, but not much. I've heard it before about WGW/WGW and other pieces of mine, especially the two-part ones, which, to me, are usually about theme (part one) and variations (part two), with the variants sometimes being a bit minor and subtle.

I think of the original pieces that way, musically -- WGW/WGW is a big sprawling symphony for a Wagnerian-sized orchestra; Succubus is a string quartet; Slumberland is a piece for small chamber orchestra.

And just as often, scupturally -- you look at the work in space from one side, you think you "get" it, then it is turned 45 degrees and you suddenly get a whole new understanding of the materials, the structure, the way it moves and displaces air, how light falls on it differently, what it means . . . but only if you look closely enough to see the subtle change the different perspective has made.


During the final stages of these shows, as I've been wandering around The Brick, crazed, doing whatever I could to be "ready," I've been muttering a paraphrase of Kurt Schwitters to myself: "I am a theatre artist, and I nail my plays together."


So, now I have to go do some more nailing -- the sound for WGW/WGW needs to be fixed a bit, then Berit and I will go over to the space early to fix all the light and projection issues. I'm looking forward to tonight's show. It's going to be beautiful.


UPDATE: Nope, no photo in the print edition, dammit (I think it would be a lot more eye-catching). Looks pretty good on the Times website, though . . .

Last night was opening night of NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed and The Hobo Got Too High.

It was preceded by my staying up for 44 straight hours finishing some of the important tech elements for the show, and then dealing with some huge problems that cropped up with them. Fun. That's the longest I've ever stayed awake by far. I've got 6 hours sleep since, so I'm better now.

Yesterday was a day of much stress and tension that wound up okay. It was a huge question all day as to whether both or either show would actually be able to open. As it was, we were able to get WGW/WGW going, albeit with reduced tech, and as only three people showed up for Hobo, we begged off doing the show to them (and they were cool about it) and did a runthru for ourselves to get it down better before next time.

So we did good, and it will be more beautiful next time.


Next . . . Kiss Me, Succubus and At the Mountains of Slumberland.


And in the iPod this morning, 21,054 songs, 73.33 GBs, and I get this fine fine superfine Sunday morning mix:


1. "Meet James Ensor" - They Might Be Giants - John Henry
2. "Triumphal Theme" - Cop Shoot Cop - Consumer Revolt
3. "Funny Little Frog" - Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
4. "Soon There'll Be Thunder" - The Common People - Of the People, By the People, For the People
5. "Die in Terror" - The Residents - The Commercial Album
6. "If There Is Something" - Roxy Music - Roxy Music
7. "Hostess: Twinkies" - Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research, Inc.
8. "Just in Case You Wonder" - The Ugly Ducklings - Too Much Too Soon
9. "How Many More Years?" - Howlin' Wolf - Best Of Sun Records Volume One
10. "How Soon Is Now?" - Love Spit Love - The Craft soundtrack


More soon . . .