CollisionWorks

Also spent time today answering some more congratulations on the nytheatre.com thing and running errands -- post office, library. I'm getting in daily trips to the library, mostly in dropping off and picking up books in Richard Stark's Parker series, which Berit and I are going through like popcorn, though I don't think they'll have any immediate influence on any work I'll be doing.

By chance, I've been reading a number of memoirs, mostly of actors -- apart from Patti Smith's excellent Just Kids. That was the first one I read, and unfortunately it was so much better than the rest that the remainder of the memoirs have not looked so good. I've recently gone through Hal Holbrook's, Jane Lynch's, John Lithgow's, Diane Keaton's, Kristin Hersh's, Roger Ebert's, Tina Fey's, and the journals of Spalding Gray, as well as a combined bio of Carole King/Joni Mitchell/Carly Simon. Now I have a new one from Judi Dench. It wasn't intentional, but this will come in handy for my work on next year's play Removal, which is about a writer (or so it seems) looking back on his life and trying to revise it through obsessive revisions in his art. So these will be good to see how some artists do it, even when they aren't so enlightening or entertaining. Also, we've been watching Ken Russell's films in order, so I've finally gotten to see most of his early composer biographies for the BBC, which will also be a good source of inspiration.

I also have a nice stack of library books on branding, which are needed for research on another upcoming show, Invisible Republic #3, but I really need to get into those, and I probably won't be able to until after Xmas.

Tonight's viewing, while I was working on the scripts, was Sidney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson -- meh; nothing wrong with it exactly, just . . . didn't grab me; Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town -- fun big Hollywood camp, with a great crazed car ride through Rome sequence (Berit, familiar with the automotive fatalities of Contempt and Toby Dammit, now calls out, "No, you're making a movie in Rome in the 60s, don't get into that car!" when the convertible shows up); and Robert Aldrich's The Legend of Lylah Claire, which was almost disappointing, though entertaining, in a bad-good movie way, until it got to the ending, which nearly made the whole thing a masterpiece -- I had heard that the last 2 minutes of this film were NUTS and either ruined it or saved it, depending on your point of view, and the psycho ending isn't even that long actually, but for me it made everything before it worthwhile. But whoa, is it nuts. Then it was the last of the available BBC Russell bios, the amazing Song of Summer. Really some of his finest work, though I still prefer the operatic, perverse Russell of 1970-1977.

Then, while internetting my merry way and enjoying some hot tea and cold aquavit, back to some of the TV shows we cycle around between on Netflix Instant. Tonight, a second season Mission: Impossible episode, a recent 30 Rock and now, as usual, several How It's Made episodes until sleep finally comes.

Tomorrow, fixing scripts, researching, and finally getting back to the Weekly Random Ten lists. And maybe some first words on Westerns. Berit and I have been watching American Western movies chronologically, starting with Stagecoach from 1939 and planning on ending with The Shootist (1976). We're up to 1972, and 134 movies of a 147-movie list, and I'm still not sure what I might do with what I've learned, or even what I've really learned. I just knew that it was important to know these movies better if I really wanted to GET movies and America and the 20th century in some important ways, but it's not something that can be intellectualized or verbalized so well. Or maybe that's the point.

So as I concentrated more on Theatre . . . film kinda vanished for me. There were certain directors I would always follow, and films of interest, but I watched fewer and fewer movies as the decade went on -- in the last three years I saw anywhere from 1 to 3 movies in a theater. During my NYU days, I would see up to 10 movies a WEEK in theaters, plus whatever I'd watch on video.

So I'd had a low opinion of Film in the '00s, but as I look over all of these "Best of the Decade" lists, I'm a bit stunned at how many good films there were, and how many I DID see (nothing compared to previous decades in my life, but better than I thought). So, looking the lists over, I decided to make up my own -- which first involved figuring out which films I actually saw during this time. After some research, I came up with a list of 228, and I ranked them all from most favorite to pond scum. I include the full list here for it's own odd purpose.

For years and years starting in 1971, first in Movietone News and then later in Film Comment magazine, which I grew up reading whenever I could get my hands on an issue, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy would do a year-end wrap-up on Film called "Moments Out of Time," which I always looked forward to. They focused on those perfect moments in movies, which can occur in any and every film, even truly awful ones, where everything comes together in one of those especial transcendent moments unique to the medium -- my all-time favorite was when, in the midst of mentioning

The blog Parallax View has been reprinting the older pieces, and their 2009 list is online at MSN Entertainment. I recommend looking at them, they bring back lots of memories of some of the finer moments of those great years of film.

Today I'm going through several of my favorite 20 movies of the past 10 years, watching them either in their entirety, or in just fragments, reminding myself of those very same moments that make me still love movies.

Things to be watched for today:

Fragments of Mulholland Drive . . . the color of Diane Selwyn's kitchen . . . the amazing business Justin Theroux does with his cigarette as he hears the name of the actress he's been ordered to cast . . . the laugh of the suddenly-competent hit man when he is asked what his blue key unlocks . . . "The girl is still missing" leading to the sound of a telephone ring hanging endlessly in the air as poor doomed avatar Betty Elms is brought into Diane Selwyn's dream . . . and then the cruel way Betty is dispatched from the dream, removed from the frame (and existence) by a casual camera move, never to return . . . The Cowboy saying, "There's sometimes a buggy..." . . . the actual script supervisor of Lynch's film, as the keeper of the text, appears in it to close the book on Diane's pitiful life and get the last word . . . "Silencio."

In The New World . . . the opening, pre-credit ritual from Pocahontas that calls the film itself into being . . . the looks of discovery on both sides as they spot each other . . . the amazing final four minutes (almost to the second) as Pocahontas/Rebecca leaves her life by ducking playfully out of the frame as she plays with her child (the positive flip-side of what is done to Betty Elms), only to be reborn in Nature again with the appearance of a Native American spirit in her English home . . . the final moments, where the film joins with the endings of Apocalypse Now, Contempt, and Bad Timing in pulling away from all humanity to show how small and petty we and all our concerns are in the landscape of the natural world. There will always be the ocean, rivers, rain, trees.

INLAND EMPIRE . . . "BRUTAL fucking murder!" . . . Bucky Jay attempts to adjust a stage light . . . a woman (prostitute?) in a Poland hotel cries herself into the static of her TV, falling down the rabbit hole into a fantasy of herself as a beautiful blonde Hollywood actress, but still unable to escape her real life of murder and infidelity, as neither Laura Palmer, Fred Madison, nor Diane Selwyn could in their own dreams before her . . . "AXXoN N." . . . "Look at us and tell us if you've known us before" . . . Nikki Grace shrugging off the attentions of The Woman in White-figure who always represents peace and transcendence in Lynch films, as she still has unfinished business . . . The way the music and sound goes - counterintuitively - strangely and suddenly quiet and mournful during the terrifying finale around the appearance of the horrible face . . . And then Nikki, The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman, finally transcending into The Place Where All Stories Come From, a beautiful mansion filled with characters mentioned in this film, from past Lynch films (and maybe future ones?), and a man sawing logs, where there is always music in the air, and the women sing a pretty Nina Simone song.

Dear god . . . Speed Racer . . . an entire MOVIE that looks like molten hard candies and marbles and is the biggest, glossiest art film about movement, editing, and color I've ever seen, continuing the experiments Lucas started with THX-1138 but got sidetracked from by being convinced he needed more "emotion" in his films (I'm sure he wishes his Star Wars prequels were more like this film) . . . an exploration of how to turn the Stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey into a coherent storytelling system for narrative film, with car racing as metaphor for the artistic process.

Men (and a few women) doing their jobs in Zodiac -- writing, cartooning, codebreaking, investigating, fathering, editing, killing; the fascination of watching talented professionals do their jobs (compounded by the joy of watching highly skilled actors do their own perfectly modulated work) . . .

And so on . . . here's my top 20 for the decade, followed by a full ranked list of the remaining 208 films I saw these ten years:

I LOVED AND LOVE THESE MOVIES AND DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT, IF ANYTHING, MIGHT BE WRONG WITH THEM:

1. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch, U.S. 2001
2. Dogville - Lars von Trier, Denmark 2003
3. The New World - Terrence Malick, U.S. 2005
4. INLAND EMPIRE - David Lynch, U.S./France/Poland 2006
5. No Country for Old Men - Joel & Ethan Coen, U.S. 2007
6. Irreversible - Gaspar Noé, France 2002
7. Zodiac - David Fincher, U.S. 2007
8. I'm Not There - Todd Haynes, U.S./Germany 2007
9. Battle Royale - Kinji Fukasaku, Japan 2001
10. The Saddest Music in the World - Guy Maddin, Canada 2003
11. My Winnipeg - Guy Maddin, Canada 2007
12. The Royal Tenenbaums - Wes Anderson, U.S. 2001
13. There Will Be Blood - P. T. Anderson, U.S. 2007
14. Sin City - Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez, U.S. 2005
15. Full Frontal - Steven Soderbergh, U.S. 2002
16. The Fog of War - Errol Morris, U.S. 2003
17. Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman, U.S. 2008
18. The Gleaners and I - Agnès Varda, France 2000
19. In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong 2000
20. Speed Racer - The Wachowski Brothers, U.S. 2008

( The Remaining 207 Movies I saw, 2000-2009 )

We are staying in tonight, and avoiding the craziness and unpleasant travel of New Year's Eve. We've watched Dogville, INLAND EMPIRE and Speed Racer in their entirety, and Zodiac is almost over. What next? I'm Not There? The Saddest Music in the World? Synecdoche, New York is also on the pile but, uh, I'm not so sure that's appropriate for what supposed to be a more happy evening.

And a happy new year to you and yours, friends.

Nathaniel R. at Film Experience Blog innocently started a meme nine days ago that, as he notes, evolved out of control - name and post pictures of your 20 All-Time Favorite Actresses (an original part of his meme seems to have also been to just put them in no particular order, and without comment, which has fallen by the wayside for most others doing this). Why? Well, as he says, "Sometimes you need to be reminded."

He tagged a few people, and they tagged a few, and then everyone just started doing it, tagged or not (ah, film geekery! the province of the OCD and/or slight Asperger's sufferers!). Now dozens of lists are up. Maybe over a hundred (Nathaniel had to stop linking to them; there wasn't time or space). I made up a list, but wasn't going to post it until I got a little bored last night and started searching for pictures of the women I'd had down. Once I got the pictures and cleaned them up, well, there was no reason not to post.

Rules in making the list for myself were: The listed actresses were to be "favorites" based on movie performances only, which not only took out all the stage actresses I work with, of course (several of whom, no joke, would be at the top of my list) but also actresses whose work I primarily love from television - so that took out Helen Mirren, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Melissa Leo. Also, to narrow it down and make it workable, they had to have more than one "key performance" which made them a Favorite - which took out most of my favorite individual performances from all of film, from Agnes Moorehead, Naomi Watts, Julia Ormond, Melanie Lynskey, Miriam Hopkins, Janet Gaynor, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, and Greta Garbo.

And I wound up eliminating a number of actresses who I would have thought would be here, whose work is wider and more varied than the ones below, but who haven't had - for me - those two or three moments that jump to another level and really grab me the same way: Jodie Foster, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Cate Blanchett, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Tilda Swinton, and Elizabeth Russell. There, with all the ones I've now named PRIOR to my list, you have a good alternate 21 runners-up. Throw in Anna Faris for 22, just because (yeah, I'm among those who're waiting for her to get a really good part).

So here - for this week at least (and it's changed several times in the week I've had the list sitting around) - are my 20 Favorite Movie Actresses, in alphabetical order:

Jenny Agutter - Walkabout, Logan's Run, Equus, An American Werewolf in London


Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca, Notorious, Under Capricorn, Murder on the Orient Express, Autumn Sonata


Ellen Burstyn - Pit Stop, The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream


Kathleen Byron - A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room


Angie Dickinson - Rio Bravo, The Killers, Point Blank, Dressed to Kill


Miss Pamela Grier - The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba, Baby, Friday Foster, Fort Apache The Bronx, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jackie Brown, Ghosts of Mars


Jessica Harper - Inserts, Phantom of the Paradise, Love and Death, Suspiria, Stardust Memories, Shock Treatment, Pennies from Heaven, My Favorite Year, Minority Report


Holly Hunter - Raising Arizona, Broadcast News, The Piano, The Firm, Crash, A Life Less Ordinary, Timecode, O Brother Where Art Thou?


Kim Hunter - The Seventh Victim, A Matter of Life and Death, A Streetcar Named Desire, Escape from the Planet of the Apes


Anna Karina - Une femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux, Bande à part, Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, Pierrot le fou, Made in U.S.A.


Nicole Kidman - Dead Calm, Billy Bathgate, Malice, To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, The Others, Dogville


Sheryl Lee - Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Backbeat, Mother Night


Brigitte Lin - Police Story, Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman II, The Bride with White Hair, Chungking Express


Julianne Moore - The Fugitive, Safe, Assassins, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Psycho, Magnolia, Not I, The Hours, I'm Not There


Michelle Pfeiffer - Scarface, Into the Night, Sweet Liberty, Dangerous Liaisons, The Russia House, Batman Returns, The Age of Innocence


Vanessa Redgrave - Blowup, The Devils, Murder on the Orient Express, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Prick Up Your Ears, Mission: Impossible


Theresa Russell - Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance, Kafka, Wild Things


Sissy Spacek - Badlands, Carrie, 3 Women, Missing, The Straight Story


Liv Ullmann - Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Scenes from a Marriage


Kate Winslet - Heavenly Creatures, Jude, Holy Smoke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Romance & Cigarettes

Now of course, I want to pick the men . . . let's see . . . Bogie . . . Clooney . . . Dourif . . . Brando . . . Marvin . . . Hoskins . . .

UPDATE

Daniel McKleinfeld correctly notes that I left off someone I should not have. I'll leave the above 20, but really, I should be replacing Jenny Agutter with:

Jennifer Jason Leigh - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Flesh + Blood, The Hitcher, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Rush, Single White Female, Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, Kansas City, eXistenZ

And then, once you've gotten used to whatever craziness that was, something else comes along and tops it. Like the following.

This is real. It's from the front page of The Hollywood Reporter (thanks for the pointer, Jeff):

'Monopoly' has electric company
Ridley Scott will direct; Pamela Pettler to write screenplay
By Steven Zeitchik
Nov 12, 2008, 01:00 AM ET

The Hasbro-Universal collaboration "Monopoly" is jumping a large number of spaces up the board.

The feature project has brought on Pamela Pettler to write the screenplay; She penned Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride," Gil Kenan's "Monster House" and the upcoming animated adventure "9," produced by Burton and Timur Bekmambetov.

And Ridley Scott, who has been attached as a producer on "Monopoly" and has been mentioned as a possible director, is now officially attached to helm the project, with an eye toward giving it a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic "Blade Runner."

In addition to Scott, Giannina Facio and Hasbro's Brian Goldner are also producing the movie, which will shape a narrative out of the iconic real-estate game. Lawrence Grey will oversee for Universal and Bennett Schneir will oversee for Hasbro.

"Monopoly" marks the latest Hasbro property to look to pass go and head to the big screen. Board games and branded properties have become more attractive as studios look to mitigate risk by finding built-in audiences.

Universal is working with Hasbro on several projects as part of a long-term development deal. Platinum Dunes is producing its feature adaptation of "Ouija Board," while the maritime classic "Battleship" is also in development. Elsewhere at Hasbro, Paramount this summer is set to release Stephen Sommers' feature based on its "G.I. Joe" character. And "Trivial Pursuit: America Plays" is now airing as a syndicated television program.

Hasbro, Scott and Pettler are all repped by WMA.

{sigh} I'm looking into the rights for "Yahtzee!"

Even such a relatively short, small-cast piece as this Penny Dreadful is giving me agita when it comes to rehearsal schedules and the like. Of course I can't get actors together who are in scenes together until performance/tech day! Of course. It'll work fine. Just wish I could see it work sooner and more often.

Back over at the meme from a few days ago, there are still six quotes left unidentified out of the 15 quotes from my 16 Top Favorite Movies (as one of the Top 15 had no "memorable quotes" on IMDb). Some of them are hard ones I didn't expect anyone to get, but some of them should have been pegged by now.

Well, here's some help. Since I had to figure out what my top 15 films were right now (an occasional chore - someday I should post the many lists of "favorite films" I have, all carefully dated as I knew the lists would change, going back over 20 years), I had to start with a bigger list and winnow it down. So I went to my IMDB page where I've rated several thousand movies (I was trying to give a rating to EVERY movie I've ever seen, but I haven't kept up with it) - you can see these ratings HERE - and grabbed the films from my highest-rated ones that just leaped out at me and made me just feel "favorite film." I wound up with a list of 45, so I've gone back and added another five.

Here's my 50 Favorite Films as of today:

The Age of Innocence (1993) by Martin Scorcese
Apocalypse Now (1979) by Francis Coppola
Bad Timing (1980) by Nicolas Roeg
Barry Lyndon (1975) by Stanley Kubrick
Barton Fink (1991) by Joel and Ethan Coen
Black Narcissus (1947) by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles
Contempt (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard
Detour (1945) by Edgar G. Ulmer
The Devils (1971) by Ken Russell
Double Indemnity (1944) by Billy Wilder
Duck Amuck (1953) by Chuck Jones
Eraserhead (1977) by David Lynch
The Falls (1980) by Peter Greenaway
Glen or Glenda? (1953) by Edward D. Wood Jr.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) by Sergio Leone
Head (1968) by Bob Rafelson et al.
Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Peter Jackson
Hellzapoppin' (1941) by Erle C. Kenton et al.
High and Low (1963) by Akira Kurosawa
Hour of the Wolf (1968) by Ingmar Bergman
How I Won the War (1967) by Richard Lester
Jackie Brown (1997) by Quentin Tarantino
The Killers (1964) by Don Siegel
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by Robert Aldrich
The Last Picture Show (1971) by Peter Bogdanovich
Lost Highway (1997) by David Lynch
Mean Streets (1973) by Martin Scorcese
Mulholland Dr. (2001) by David Lynch
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Sergio Leone
Peeping Tom (1960) by Michael Powell
Performance (1970) by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman
Point Blank (1967) by John Boorman
The Red Shoes (1948) by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Schizopolis (1996) by Steven Soderbergh
The Seventh Victim (1943) by Mark Robson and Val Lewton
Singing on the Treadmill (1974) by Gyula Gazdag
Sorcerer (1977) by William Friedkin
Stardust Memories (1980) by Woody Allen
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by F.W. Murnau
Targets (1968) by Peter Bogdanovich
THX-1138 (1971) by George Lucas and Walter Murch
Tout Va Bien (1972) by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin
2 or 3 Things That I Know About Her (1967) by Jean-Luc Godard
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick
Videodrome (1983) by David Cronenberg
W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (1971) by Dusan Makavejev
Wavelength (1967) by Michael Snow
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) by Peter Greenaway

Ask me again in a few days and there could be 5-10 changes on there. But the remaining unidentified six quotes are from among these films . . .

When caught in the various binds of "what am I to do next?", "what should I be doing?", and the occasional "why am I even doing this?", Fripp's writings have been a gentle guide towards finding a direction when one is needed (like getting a slight push in a rowboat on a calm lake or blowing softly on a piece of floating tissue paper). More general than Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, which come in handy when blocked in specific working situations, Fripp helps answer the "whys" rather than the "what nows" - and once you have a few of the former answered the latter begin to take care of themselves.

Fripp, dealing with music rather than theatre, often deals with the "why" of performance in public as desirable or not, necessary or not, his concerns with Music being primarily (entirely?) between the musician/interpreter and Music itself. Theatre, being all about public performance, does not have many of these same concerns . . . should it? . . . but much of the thinking still travels from medium to medium . . .


from Robert Fripp's Diary, October 30, 2007:

Performance / presentation in public is a superb way of getting to know ourselves & our mechanics, with a primary aim: to become aware of our illusions. This line of education is strong stuff, and holds dangers:

if we are unpopular with members of the public, the advice they offer (not always attenuated by compassion & forms of refined expression) may do us damage;

if we become popular, our illusions & self-deception become reinforced & strengthened, that fans (who have the right to do so) may live vicariously the thrills & wonder of idealised celebrity;

if we are very popular, representatives of commerce & those who profit from our work, act to encourage our illusions that they may strengthen their hold upon us, and we become more susceptible to business control & direction.

So, for the novice: better to go carefully, preferably with those of greater experience; better to be well-practised; better to be sure of one’s larger aim.

For the more experienced: best to go carefully; best to be well-practised; best to be sure of one’s life-aim; best to know the poverty of our nature (so there is less in the way to prevent music moving out, and inappropriate reactions / repercussions getting in); best to remember Music creates the musician, and who serves the Muse; best to trust the inexpressible benevolence of the Creative Impulse; and best of all - have a really good agent.

Recently, I have been of a distracted and restless nature. I had wanted to rest myself for some time before starting up on "next year's shows" but have wound up making myself fidgety and scattered. Luckily, I have a tech gig and short-term directing-on-commission gig before 2008 to keep me occupied.

But I want to be working on my own things soon, even though I don't really know what those things are as yet (except for the return of Harry in Love). I have bits and pieces of Spell, which appears to be about an American Terrorist in America (a lot like my interpretation of Foreman's Miss Universal Happiness from 1999), and images in mind for another show of grey men in grey suits in grey rooms doing bad things to innocent people they never see (which might or might not be the primarily dance/movement piece I want to do) - lots of clocks and papers. Desks. Metal and glass. Fluorescent tubes.

Spell was being written with a specific actress's voice in mind for the main character (Ann), but the actress is quitting theatre for the time being, so I'd have to recast (at least mentally, it's not like I had or could have had any definite way of knowing this actress would play the part). Any writing I'll do for a while will continue to be in her voice to keep the tone consistent, but I'll probably rewrite it all if I use the fragments I have with another actress (being most interested right now in creating new work for specific actors, their voices, their persons, their emotional tones and timbres). The character has been splitting, anyway, into a male character as well, Andy, who might be Ann's brother (possibly dead, possibly not, possibly imaginary, possibly the "real," dominant figure), or lover, or they just might be the male and female sides of one person externalized. I don't know yet, but I suspect the last. I'll know when it's happening on stage. Ann talks more, though. Still.

While fidgeting around, I've been returning to a lot of old favorite, "comfort food" movies. It started with the horror films around Halloween, but kept going into pulling out and throwing on a lot more movies than have been running here for some time. We've gone through Candyman (Bernard Rose, music by Philip Glass), The Brood (David Cronenberg, photographed by Mark Irwin), Scream (Wes Craven, photographed by Mark Irwin), The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, written by Robert Towne), The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, photographed by Nicolas Roeg), Black Christmas (Bob Clark), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, photographed by John Alcott), The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorcese), The Devils (Ken Russell, designed by Derek Jarman, photographed by David Watkin), How I Won the War (Richard Lester, photographed by David Watkin), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Richard Lester, photographed by Nicolas Roeg), THX-1138 (George Lucas), Videodrome (David Cronenberg, photographed by Mark Irwin), Crash (David Cronenberg), Halloween (John Carpenter, photographed by Dean Cundey, camera operated by Ray Stella), The Haunting (Robert Wise, photographed by Davis Boulton), and the 7-episode series On The Air, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Mostly horror, but slowly moving outward as connections were made or found.

I've got a page of my "favorite movies" on YMDb ("Your Movie Database") HERE. It changes. Fairly frequently. Lots of things drop off and on (especially Sherlock Jr., Sunrise, and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her).

I seem to be going through a lot of these old favorites trying to figure out what holds them all together in some way. Why these? What do I like? What am I interested in looking at right now? Is it the same damn things I've been looking at for 10 years now? How do I make this new for myself?

And I think I was wrong in what I said at the start here. Completely and utterly wrong. Fripp's words are an inspiration, but in the end nothing inspires as much as the tactile quality of the work . . . the Work is always what matters -- the guitar solo on "Baby's on Fire," or the lead line on "'Heroes'" have said and meant more to me for decades now than any words could, as has the quality of red captured by Nic Roeg in photographing the costumes of the Red Death and Zero Mostel, the firetrucks in Fahrenheit 451, and the splattered and sprayed paint in Performance. These are the inspirations I need more for myself right now . . .

Words are a trick. Words are a trap.