Body Double Addendumb

Thom Anderson's L.A. Plays Itself mentions the use of architecture in Body Double, as well as how other films use Modernist architecture. I love Mr. Anderson's film. Please someone give this to me for my birthday (ahem).

The Please See This Movie Because it is NOT a piece of Shit Series

BODY DOUBLE (1984): Go See it!










Every artist responds to his/her critics, or the past, with the work. These reactions are so deeply embedded that its usually ignored entirely. But when the artist is especially harried by particular criticisms he/she will kickback something so focused and angry it's as if the piece is saying: "You asked for it, motherfucker!"—a la Kippenberger. Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984) is a perfect case in point.
Tired of being accused as a Hitchcock rapist, De Palma goes balls out and beats the Hitchcock horse until it cries for mammy. The film, heavily borrowing from Vertigo, Dial M for Murder, and Rear Window, takes a pot-pourri of Hitchcockian tropes and put them in a blender with the plot and technical ploys of a B-Slasher flick.
I had caught snippets of this film when I was very little on the now defunkt Z Channel (the world's first cable station) and when I decided to rent this I just thought it was going to be a nostalgic dalliance, a little retreat to 1980s Los Angeles. But I was pleasantly surprised with a lot more. DePalm deconstructs DePalma to such a degree you can almost feel him tatoo "GET IT!!!?" on your brain. This is not to say that it was annoying because he lets the medicine go down with beautiful photography, classic L.A. backdrops, and silly plot devices and twists worthy of a $4 budget horror film. De Palma seems to say that it's all in good fun and if you don't feel it, then you're at the wrong party.
At the film's beginning, failed character actor Jake Scully, the claustrophobic protagonist (to Hitchcock's acrophobic Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo) gets fired from a B-movie vampire film because of his phobia. It's only until he 're-creates' a new situation of being below ground, 'outside' the film world, that he gets the part on the vampire film again. It is here DePalma creates the perfect metaphor for his working process in relation to his idols.
Watch this. It's a hoot. Also, please Watch DePalms's late 60s film "Hi, Mom!", starring a very young Robert DeNiro. It takes a piss out of cinema verite via black panthers and porn.

Clasp your Hands and say Yes

Tough times ahead for Knotty. Remind me to keep busy and swerve on as straight as possible.

Mexico. Burrito. Taco

Pants and I had gone to Mexico City recently.
Mexico City was fantastic. I was amazed by the sheer density of the place. Sometimes I felt as if I was in an endless sea of merchants who were selling everything from quesadillas to plastic sombreros for the tip of your pencil. It made me claustrophobic some of the time, but I would down a blue tortilla quesadilla and everything would be peachy again.

Mexico City wasn't short on rotting architecture. The decay came uniformly in lime greens, pinks, and aqua-blues. Many buildings were even sinking into the ground. The Spanish built the city over a drained swamp, which is the equivalent of building a house on a giant marshmellow. They also literally built on top of Aztec structures to make sure they were sufficiently evil. In the Zocalo (the city center where the president hangs out for special events) you can see these structures through plate glass on the ground, which is surreal and sad at the same time.

The food, of course, was amazing. I was especially taken by said blue corn tortilla fare (the tortilla is literally blue as opposed to the green, white, and red colors of the flag as I had expected). In FACT, there was not one merchant that sold a bad morsel of food anywhere. They had that shit down—except in Cancun. That's because they make the food as American as possible so the tourists don't get overwhelmed and confused.

I was also struck by the abject poverty of many families trying to get by. It was not uncommon to see an Indian lady begging with two children sleeping next to her on the pavement. It's pretty clear the government has NO social programs for indigenous people, which is why it was common to see mass protests in the streets by hundreds of dancing, naked Indians as traffic whizzed by.

My main highlights included the Leon Trotsky house, replete with bullet holes which were made during the first attempt on his life. His personal items were also on display as if a day hadn't passed. I also enjoyed Xochimilco, the last vestige of the lake that became the building site of Mexico City, and, how could I forget, the pyramids made by a culture that PREDATED the Aztecs by at least a few hundred years! They built the structures according to the sun's seasonal positions which made it quite mind-blowing as if the things themselves weren't impressive enough. We climbed to the top and of course the first thing I did was carve "Nancy + Max 4 ever" on a stone. I really wanted to carve "Legalize it" but I knew that wasn't particularly romantic. OK, just kidding. We took obligatory "we conquered this thing" pictures instead and left some trash behind for good measure.
Finally, Mex. City's Anthropology museum had an amazing collection of pre-Hispanic art.
Beautiful artifacts aside, the Mayans and Aztecs did not seem to be the nicest of people. There were TONS of sculptures of evil snakes, people being eaten by snakes, or sleeping in snakes. And there was no shortage of skulls with googley eyes either. I wouldn't want to run into a Mayan in a dark alley for sure.

Overall, It was a great experience and I can't encourage you enough to go someday. And I didn't even get kidnapped!

Enough of my yammering, here's more pics....








































Happy cloud ending!

Blog 2 today, even though I've TOO much shit to do

I found this track on an mp3 blog (Beat Electric) that indeed is, as the blog puts it, "perfect for the dog days of summer". This will make up for my sicking Tiesto on you.
Sorry.

Alice Neel

I went to see the documentary about Alice Neel—made by her grandson Andrew Neel—last night. Pants backed out last minute due to some last minute moving procedures, but I did have the fine company of Dave Janik and Alicia Bergman. And in addition, we ran into K-Wolf and Wang at the theater. In times like these L.A. feels quite small because we comprised most of the audience.
These are the main things I might have learned from the film:

1. It is hard to be a female portrait painter in an era mostly dominated by males, Abstract Expressionism, and Greenbergian Modernism

2. You might have to make great sacrifices when you have children, often against their best interests, when you are trying to be a great artist.

3. The Great Depression sucked a big fat penis.

4. Anything can be accomplished, theoretically, if you are sufficiently tenacious.

5. Neelian doctrine: a lot of art is anti-psychological while in fact psychology creates the world.

6. If Alex Katz's ego was any bigger the movie screen might have caught on fire.

7. Michel Auder is awesome and deserves more screen time.

Questions:

1. Would it have been 'worth it' for Alice Neel to have gone through everything she went through to pursue her art if she never got famous in the end?

The Elephant Man Goes to Ibiza

David Lynch's use of Adagio for Strings in Elephant Man (1980) has always reduced me to Niagra Falls every time. The song has been used in many films and no matter what context its in, it still pulls my heartstrings—even in the sweaty, lubed fists of Tiesto, the massively 'popular' DJ responsible for much of the music you'd hear at Club Disney. His music is perfect to have your salad tossed to in lockdown I'd say: download here. Its DRM encoded so only the first 3 'winners' have the first cry. But seriously, even trance can't FULLY take this song down, which attests to its power.

The Crow likes Shiney Things

Mrs. Doubtfire and I were discussing the idea of precocious youth this past summer. Crow might be the queen of the female squad. I didn't know my ass from a hole in the wall when I was her age...

Palin has no Heart

If you watched the RNC last night you would have noticed that Heart's 70s classic "Barracuda" was used during the celebrations. This struck me as kind of odd. This feeling was confirmed when Heart released this statement today:

Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there.

Yeah! you don't see Obama use any Damn Yankees songs. McCain also called Democrats "me first" types. Talk about twisted logic.

OH YOU BETCHA

So how about that RNC speech by Palin last night eh? Pretty killer right? Totally the jam. The hero of the party. Oh Ja, she's ready. I love that North Dakotan accent she's got going, the hair, the LOOK. And what a mouth on that one. So feisty!

Talking about politics has never been a fave, as I always feel that there are too many facts to grab, so many numbers and pie graphs to memorize—not counting the secrets that go on behind the media and the politicians—to convince anyone to change their position, esp. when it comes to party affiliations. If the world was more socratic, I would bother to try more, but I'd rather get the Led out, so to speak, in art making or blogging to an audience of, like, four people. What ever happened to the idea of having the humility to change your position? E. Tolle said to be wrong is like death to the ego. I agree, because for what other reason would people AVOID socratic conversation as much as they do? Everything has to be dualized and polarized. More on this idea later...

I don't really know how to be a great debater or speaker but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this: the Republicans, for the most part, are a bunch of self-hating MachiavelliansHell-bent on getting whatever they can now and not giving a rat's petuti about anyone else in the process, except for maybe the other fools who believe in the same principles. And I'm not even mentioning the religious right part. Hoo boy. It's gets ever more fucky from there.

DEATH

I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Not as a verb but a concept. Maybe it's because my life is in a major transitional stage (i.e. girlfriend moving abroad, moving apartments and studios, starting new jobs, growing a larger beard, et al), or maybe it's because I saw a dying bird yesterday which was later devoured half-alive by ants? Hmmm.. ..what do you think? "Life is strange" as philosopher/singer/poet James Douglas Morrison once wisely said. Everything is fleeting and change sometimes comes in bundles. Or in an onslaught of ants. You decide.


before


after

We originally perched the bird in a prefab nest so it could be 'comfortable' as it was dying. Chris, my mother's husband, pulled out his trusty pellet rifle and we all pleaded him to spare the coup de grace. He told us we were all retarded and that the bird would die a slow and painful death just so we could enjoy this communion with nature.
But still the idea of him aiming his huge rifle at the throat of this tiny bird seemed unbearable. Later that night, when I found the bird, being eaten alive by ants I felt retarded indeed. The lesson? Sometimes you have blow a little bird's head off so it can die quickly in peace instead of selfishly giving yourself a Kodak moment with a wild animal—which usually stays as far away as possible from humans—and for good reason. Either we want to eat them, cage them, or get a snapshot with them while they're writing in pain. Oh man.