16.4.15
12.3.15
CFP: Women and Ageing: New Cultural and Critical Perspectives
University of Limerick, Ireland · 20-22 May 2015
 |
University of Limerick, Ireland
20-22 May 2014
A conference engaging with the symbolic aspects of women and ageing in culture and society, and the power these constructions exert over old age.
Conveners: Dr Cathy McGlynn, Dr Maggie O’Neill, Dr Michaela Schrage-Früh (University of Limerick)
Plenary Speakers: Prof Germaine Greer; Prof Margaret Harper
Events: Poetry reading by Medbh McGuckian; Roundtable on Women and Ageing
In a time when even Bridget Jones finds herself in her early fifties, it may at first glance seem unwarranted to speak of the invisibility of ageing women in literary and cultural contexts. In fact, in a review of Mad about the Boy in The Times, Sarah Lyall writes that, “Bridget’s amorous adventures … make the prospect of middle age not so bad at all”. Constructions like this open up questions about representations of women and ageing. What types of images of the “ageing woman” are created in cultural texts? Do women in later life, in order to become visible, need to find ways to “pass” as younger so that “age shall not wither them” as Kira Cochraine puts it in an article in The Guardian? Are these legitimate strategies or should women embrace the menopause as a new phase of life and liberation as advised by Germaine Greer? What impact do dominant representations of ageing women have on the sociocultural realities of women in their later years? And in what ways do they compare to earlier representations?
The rise of the new interdisciplinary field of ageing studies / cultural gerontology testifies to the need to reassess cultural representations of ageing and to view ageing not only as part of the life course but as a social and cultural construct. It is all the more surprising that ageing is a topic still marginalised in feminist theory, despite Simone de Beauvoir’s testimony to her dismay at ‘society’s secret shame’ in The Coming of Age in 1970. There are some notable exceptions, such as Germaine Greer’s work on the postmenopausal woman, Susan Bordo’s work on the body, or Lynne Segal’s recent reflection and analysis of the process of growing older. This conference will engage with the symbolic aspects of women and ageing in culture and society, and the power these constructions exert over public and private conceptions of old age.
The aim of this conference is to provide an opportunity to discuss intersections of the cultural, social and medical dimensions of women and ageing. It will engage with discourses on ageing in their various cultural manifestations through the ages but also across different cultures, genres and media. We invite papers from diverse disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, film and media studies, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and the medical humanities.
Possible topics can include but are not limited to:
- Ageing, autobiography and lived experience
- Technologies, medicine and ageing
- Ageing and popular culture
- Ageing and neoliberalism
- Visual images of ageing
- Age and performance
- The ageing body as text
- Ageing and memory
- Stigma
- Myths about ageing, women in myth
- Age and creativity
- Queer ageing
- Love, loss and mourning
- Health, menopause, the post-maternal body
- Male representations of women and ageing
- Older and younger mothers
- The ageing spinster
- The cult of youth and perceptions of beauty
- Ageing, recession and dependency
- Ageing and women minorities
- Age, race, and colour
Queries may be directed to the conference organisers at ageing.women@gmail.com. Please submit proposals for papers or panels by 15 March 2015. Proposals should be 250 words and should include a 50-word biography.
Website: womenandageing.wordpress.com
On the David Foster Wallace Biopic, The End of the Tour
Emma Bailey asks whether the new film helps or hinders Wallace's legacy
 |
| Jesse Eisenberg (left) and Jason Segel (right) in The End of the Tour (dir. James Ponsoldt, 2015) |
The film is billed as a true story, based on Lipsky's book, Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, which was originally composed from transcripts of the interviews and conversations that took place during the five days that Lipsky and Wallace spent together. The interview material was not ultimately filed nor published in Rolling Stone, who deemed it too depressing, and Lipsky did not compile it into book material until after Wallace's death in 2008. The delayed publishing led many to speculate whether Wallace himself would have approved of the book, and now, the subsequent film that A24 and DirecTV are hoping to cash in on.
Lipsky’s memoir may actually hold some clues as to how Wallace would have reacted to the film project ‒ no matter what Wallace’s opinion may have been, the book has been touted as one of the most insightful pieces ever written about the author. Lipsky describes Wallace as an intensely private individual who values his solitude as well as his art. And with an irony worthy of Wallace's notice, the film faithfully portrays the author as someone who would likely be appalled to learn that his life was being offered up as the sum of a handful of mundane and offhand comments made to a reporter nearly two decades prior.
The film itself has been well-received by casual audiences who are not overly familiar with Wallace's body of work and, even among those in the know about Wallace, there is reserved interest. An early area of concern was the casting of Jason Segel as the author, though in the end, Segel showed a dedication to the role that would likely have impressed Wallace, even if the creation of the film itself would not. Many also agree that the role of Lipsky seemed ready-made for Jesse Eisenberg, whose performance is one of the major strengths of the film.
The Wallace family, his estate, and his long-time publishing company of Little, Brown, and Company have all made public statements against the making and release of the film, stating that they were not involved with the decision-making process, nor do they feel that the original transcripts which eventually became Lipsky's novel and source material for the film were intended to be used in this way. As far as they are concerned, David Foster Wallace would never have agreed to the repurposing of the transcripts, especially since they were never published by Rolling Stone, as was the original intention.
All in all, most fans of David Foster Wallace, however casual or dedicated, can agree that the man was a cultural icon and deserved recognition for his substantive literary contributions. However, perhaps a better tribute would focus on spreading word of his works rather than focusing on his personal life. While Infinite Jest has thus far eluded the process of movie adaptation, perhaps the time has come to reexamine the possibility and challenge of allowing the author to be viewed through the lens of his greatest work rather than through a handful of old transcripts.
About the Contributor: Emma Bailey is a writer in the greater Chicago area who covers technology, entertainment, and business. She enjoys reading novels by humorists, cooking at home during the week and eating out on the weekend, and watching indie movies (especially anything mumble-core). You can find her on Twitter at @emma_bailey90.
11.3.15
CFP: Scale: Malta, 2015
European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts · Malta · 15-18 June 2015
 |
| A still from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (2011) |
This year’s conference is dedicated to the theme of Scale. In one way or another, scale is an issue deeply embedded in every discipline and every aspect of scholarly and scientific research. As the Call for Papers puts it, in the grand scheme of things Scale is the scheme of things itself. We do very much hope, therefore, that you will be as excited by the prospect of an interdisciplinary conference on Scale as we are. We are very pleased that the location of the conference will be Malta, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean with a rich history and culture, where effects of scale have exerted intriguing and complex energies for centuries, and which provides a particularly fitting and appealing venue for this year’s event.
The Call for Papers sets out a number of scale-related topics that cut across disciplines, with six threads identified that should themselves help to provide further prompts for thought. You will see that there is a distinguished group of keynote speakers – Bruce Clarke (Texas Tech), Marcus du Sautoy (Oxford) Gaetana Marrone-Puglia (Princeton), Tom McCarthy, Franco Moretti (Stanford) and Cary Wolfe (Rice) – which can only help to enrich intellectual and academic exchange when we meet in Malta in June. ‘Scale’ therefore promises to be an event that provides rich and rewarding interdisciplinary debate.
We very much look forward to receiving abstracts exploring scale and its various aspects and effects within and across disciplines. The conference will be particularly attractive to academics and researchers working in SLSA’s main areas of focus – literary studies, the sciences, the arts and the spaces (and scales …) in between, but we also hope to hear from delegates from other fields, who are most welcome to attend and participate.
This SLSAeu conference is organised in collaboration with the Humanities, Medicine and Sciences Programme at the University of Malta, and with the further support of the University’s Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science and the Department of English, whose help is here warmly acknowledged.
Looking forward to scale-related conversations in June, in Malta. [Read More]
25.2.15
What David Foster Wallace Taught Paul Thomas Anderson
The Paris Review transcribes a recent interview
 |
| Paul Thomas Anderson |
When I was at Emerson for that year, David Foster Wallace, who was a great writer who was not known then, was my teacher—he was my English teacher … It was the first teacher I fell in love with. I’d never found anybody else like that at any of the other schools I’d been to. Which makes me really reticent to talk shit about schools or anything else, because it’s just like anyplace—if you could find a good teacher, man, I’m sure school would be great.
[...]
I called him once. He was very generous with his phone number. He said “Call me if you got any questions,” and I called him a couple times ... I ran a few ideas by him about this paper that I was writing. I was writing a paper on Don DeLillo’s White Noise … I’d come up with a couple crazy ideas, and I don’t remember the conversation well, but I just remember him being real generous at like, you know, midnight the night before it was due … I’d love to go back and read [White Noise] again. [Read More]
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
16.12.14
Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks
Brad Dukes' volume offers an in-depth look into the making of the series
 |
| Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks |
Released just in time to coincide with the much anticipated Blu-Ray release of Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery and Missing Pieces, Brad Dukes’ new book, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks sheds new light on the beloved cult TV series.
The book, which is done entirely in interview format, features cast and crew members speaking candidly about the filming of the show. With great nostalgia, writer Mark Frost rehashes the story of the show’s conception. Frost and auteur David Lynch originally met through their mutual agents and were in talks to do a biopic called Goddess about Marilyn Monroe. While that project never came to pass, Lynch and Frost nevertheless became friends. Legend has it, one unsuspecting day while sipping coffee at a diner, Frost and Lynch conceived Twin Peaks.
Originally titled Northwest Passage, Lynch and Frost were inspired by an old ghost story Frost had heard growing up. The character of Laura Palmer evolved from that story and allowed Lynch and Frost a way to, “peel back the onion” and go deeper within the layers of the seemingly innocent Pacific Northwest town. It should also be noted that Lynch and Frost, both huge fans of film noir, named the character of Laura Palmer after the 1944 Otto Preminger film, Laura. [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
17.9.14
I See Myself: David Lynch on Eraserhead
From interviews conducted by Chris Rodley
 |
| Working the night shift: Cast and crew members of David Lynch's Eraserhead |
Eraserhead took five years to complete. You must have been completely dedicated to the film to sustain both the project and your own enthusiasm over such an extended production period. What was it about the idea that you loved?
It was the world. In my mind, it was a world between a factory and a factory neighborhood. A little, unknown, twisted, almost silent lost spot where little details and little torments existed. And people were struggling in darkness. They’re living in those fringelands, and they’re the people I really love. Henry’s definitely one of those people. They kind of get lost in time. They’re either working in a factory or fiddling with something or other. It’s a world that’s neither here nor there. It came out of the air in Philadelphia. I always say it’s my Philadelphia Story. It just doesn’t have Jimmy Stewart in it!
I could be on the set at night, and I would imagine the whole world around it. I imagined walking out, and there were very few cars—there might be one far away, but in the shadows—and very few people. And the lights in the windows would be really dim, and there would be no movement in the window, and the coffee shop would be empty except for one person who didn’t speak properly. It was just like a mood. The life in that world . . . there was nothing like it. Things go so fast when you’re making a movie now that you’re not able to give the world enough—what it deserves. It wants to be lived in a little bit; it’s got so much to offer, and you’re going just a little too fast. It’s just sad.
When he reviewed Blue Velvet, novelist J. G. Ballard said that the film was “like The Wizard of Oz reshot with a script by Franz Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon.” Kafka certainly comes to mind in Eraserhead. Do you like his work?
Yeah. The one artist that I feel could be my brother—and I almost don’t like saying it, because the reaction is always, “Yeah, you and everybody else”—is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read. If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I’d be there. I’d like to direct that for sure.
In a way, Henry is akin to Josef K in Kafka’s The Trial—a man by turns bemused and alarmed by what is happening to him.
Henry is very sure that something is happening, but he doesn’t understand it at all. He watches things very, very carefully because he’s trying to figure them out. He might study the corner of that pie container just because it’s in his line of sight, and he might wonder why he sat where he did to have that be there like that. Everything is new. It might not be frightening to him, but it could be a key to something. Everything should be looked at. There could be clues in it.
There seems to be little differentiation between the outside and the inside in Eraserhead—something that becomes much more pronounced later in Twin Peaks. Views through windows are of brick walls, and although the sounds might be different, it’s mostly just as noisy inside Henry’s apartment block as it is in the world outside. The feeling is of no letting up. There’s a constant . . .
Pressure. Well, again, it’s industry and different things going on—a lot of it unseen but heard. But to me, even though there was plenty of ambiguous torment in Henry, his apartment—actually, his room—was, you know, fairly cozy. It was just this one little place he had to mull things over. The anxiety doesn’t let up, but it doesn’t really let up for anybody. Pressure is, you know, always building. In a way, I’d like to live in Henry’s apartment, and be around there. I love Hitchcock’s Rear Window because it has such a mood, and even though I know what’s going to happen, I love being in that room and feeling that time. It’s like I can smell it.
How did Eraserhead come about?
Well, fate stepped in again and was really smiling on me. The Center [the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies] was completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great. And you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing. If you could get it going, they would support it. They didn’t have any kind of real program. They ran films all day long, and you could look at them. And if there was something you wanted to see, or something somebody said you’d gotta see, you’d go up, and there it would be. It was an unbelievable screening room. Anything that was on film, they could show there. And people would get ahold of really rare prints. The chandelier would drift up into the ceiling and dim as it went. And they had the greatest projectionists!
My first year at the Center was spent rewriting a forty-five-page script I wrote called Gardenback. The whole thing unfolded from this painting I’d done. The script had a story, in my mind, and it had what some people could call a “monster” in it. When you look at a girl, something crosses from her to you. And in this story, that something is an insect.
Well, a couple of things happened. Caleb Deschanel read this script, and he called me up and said he loved it. He was a fellow at the Center and a director of photography. He said he wanted to shoot it. And that was really great with me. I’d worked with Caleb on a film he was shooting for a guy named Gil Dennis. They wanted a snake to crawl between the wall and the wallpaper in this thing, so I built this snake and this rig and did this thing for Gil. It didn’t work out real well, but it was okay. So Caleb was telling me about this producer over at Fox who was ready to do a series of low-budget horror films. This guy was a sort of friend of his, and he wanted my permission to show him Gardenback.
Frank Daniel—who was the dean of the Czechoslovakian film school—was by far the best teacher I ever had. Just a great, great teacher. Unbelievable! I never really liked teachers, but I liked Frank because he wasn’t a teacher, in a way. He just talked. And he loved cinema, and he knew everything about it. Frank was always trying to talk to me about Gardenback, but I wasn’t, you know, talking. So one day, Caleb and Frank and I went to see this guy at Fox. And this guy said, “Look, I want to give you fifty thousand dollars to make this movie. Caleb will shoot it, and it’ll be a labor of love—you’ll get everybody in there to do stuff for nothing.” But he said, “It’s only forty-five pages. You gotta make it 115 or 110 pages—it’s gotta be a feature script.” And this, like, hurt my head! “What does he mean?”
So Frank tried to explain to me. He said things like, “You have to have these scenes between the people. And they have to talk. You should think about some dialogue.” And I still didn’t know what he was really on about. “What are they gonna say?” I said. And so [laughs] we started having these weekly meetings that were like an experiment, because I really didn’t know what they were getting at. And I was curious to see what they were going to say to me. Eventually, a script got written. Gil Dennis was a writer and would come into the meetings. And Toni Vellani [codirector of the Center] would sit in on these meetings too. So they would all talk to me, and I’d go home and try to write these things.
What I wrote was pretty much worthless, but something happened inside me about structure, about scenes. And I don’t even know what it was, but it sort of percolated down and became part of me. But the script was pretty much worthless. I knew I’d just watered it down. It was way more normal to me. The bits I liked were there, but they were interspersed with all this other stuff. And now it was the end of the first year, and there I was with this thing.
On the first day of the second year, the old fellows came in and met the new fellows. And at the end of this meeting, they assigned different groups to different places to kick off the new year. And I was assigned to a first-year group. In my mind, this was a humiliating thing, and I didn’t understand it. So I got really, really upset. All this frustration came out, and I stormed up to Frank Daniel, and I screamed at him. I just barged in and told him, “I’m outta here. I quit.” I went and told Alan [Splet]. I said, “I’m outta here!” He says, “I’m going with you,” because he was fed up too, and we both stormed out of the place. We went down to Hamburger Hamlet and just sat there drinking coffee. It was over.
I finally went home, and Peggy [Lynch’s wife] said, “What the hell’s going on? They’ve been calling every ten minutes!” And I said, “I quit.” And she said, “Well, they want to see you.” So I calmed down, and the next day I went up, just basically to hear what they had to say. And Frank said, “We must be doing something wrong, because you’re one of our favorite people and you’re upset. What do you want to do?” And I said, “Well, I sure don’t wanna do this piece a shit Gardenback now—it’s wrecked!” And he said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I want to do Eraserhead.” And he said, “Okay, do Eraserhead then.”
So you already had the idea ready to go?
I had this twenty-one-page script. And they said, “It’s twenty-one pages,” and Toni or somebody said, “It’s a twenty-one-minute film.” And I said, “Well . . . er . . . I think it’s going to be longer than that.” So they elected it to be a forty-two-minute film. But the beautiful thing—because they were now feeling a little bit guilty—was that I was able to go to the equipment shed. My friend David Khasky was in charge of all the cameras and cables, lights, everything. And I had this Volkswagen with a four-by-eight wooden rack that held tons of stuff. Well, it was packed four or five feet tall with cables and lights. And the car was packed with camera equipment. And I’d drive down to these stables owned by the school, unload, and drive back up and get more.
The stables were down at the bottom of the mansion down Doheny Road. It was a little mansion in and of itself. It had a greenhouse and a garden shed, all made of brick, with these shingle roofs. But it was all getting old and funny. It had garages and a hayloft, a big L-shaped room above the garages. It had a maid’s quarters and places above for different people who worked for Doheny, kitchens, bathrooms, like a little hotel, with a lot of other stuff around. And I got four or five rooms and the hayloft and a couple of garages.
You just laid claim to them?
Yeah. No one wanted them anyway. They were empty. So we had a camera room, a greenroom, an editing room, rooms for sets, a food room, and a bathroom. We just sort of had the run of the place. I had those stables for many years.
They knew you were there, but they just left you alone?
Yes. They didn’t know I was living there—I got divorced in my second year, and I started living there. I also stayed at Jack Nance and Catherine Coulson’s house sometimes. And Al stayed at the stables a lot. That’s another thing I had: since Al was head of the sound department, I had access to the entire mixing room, the Nagras, microphones and cables, and all the rest. And the soundman. I had everything going for me. I was doing the thing I wanted to do most of all, making films. And I practically had my own little studio.
Did you get a grant to go to the Center, or did your parents have to pay?
You have to get there, and you have to take care of yourself. My father lent me money—me and Peggy and Jennifer [Lynch’s daughter]—and Peggy’s parents helped out too.
So how were you taking care of yourself during that time?
I can’t remember what year it was in Eraserhead, but I got this paper route, and I delivered the Wall Street Journal. That’s how I supported myself. We only shot at night, and my route was at night. So at a certain point, I’d have to stop the shoot and go do the route. But I had the route down so fast that I was only gone about an hour and eight minutes. Sometimes it would be fifty-nine minutes, but I was going flat out to make the hour.
Why were you only shooting at night?
Well, you know, because it was dark! And the park department was up there during the day, so it was noisy and there were people around. At night, no one was there. And it was a nighttime film. The mood was perfect, and that is critical.
Did you now regard yourself primarily as a filmmaker?
I didn’t really think about it; I was making this film. But I always felt there were these filmmakers out there, and I wasn’t part of that. I was separate from that. I never really considered myself in the system at all. [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
8.9.14
David Lynch's Industrial Symphony No. 1
Open Culture tracks down a copy of the 1989 musical play
From Open Culture:
It is time, I thought to myself just a couple weeks ago; time, I thought, to watch Twin Peaks again. How I had missed Leland Palmer’s crazed dancing/crying jags, Agent Cooper’s straight-shooting cornball savvy, Audrey Horne’s tongue-in-cheek slinkiness, and the absolute nightmare of Bob. How I had especially missed the haunting score of Angelo Badalamenti and the ethereal interludes of Julee Cruise. Immersed now in the second season, I already mourn the premature end. But you can imagine my delight when I discovered the film above, a Lynch musical play scored by Badalamenti and showcasing the otherworldly voice of Cruise, who appears as “The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman.” Cast as the actual heartbroken woman is Lynch stalwart Laura Dern, whose heart is broken over the phone by then-young-heartbreaker Nicolas Cage. Rounding out the cast is another familiar face, Michael J. Anderson—Twin Peaks’ “Little Man From Another Place”—appearing here as “Woodsman/Twin A.” Logs are sawn, neon signs flicker, dancers writhe, and Badalamenti’s twisted cool jazz lulls us into bizarre Lynchian neo-noir terrain. [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
7.9.14
The Photography of Vivian Maier
An unknown artist who chronicled post-1945 America
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
 |
| Photograph: Vivian Maier |
"Honestly, my reaction when this process started was, oh, they're doing a movie on my crazy nanny who I never really liked," says Joe Matthews. The nanny's name was Vivian Maier, and she looked after Joe, his sister Sarah and brother Clark in the Chicago suburbs for three years in the 1980s.
The family knew that Maier was unusual and that she took a lot of photographs. Her attic bedroom was kept locked and packed full of boxes and newspapers. Joe's mother, Linda, says that she hired Maier, who was in her 50s, because she wanted someone she could respect as an equal: "I liked Viv because she spoke her mind so I knew what I was dealing with. We could disagree. I could say, 'No, I don't like doing things that way.' I thought she made a good partner."
But neither Linda Matthews nor any of the other families Maier worked for dreamed that soon after her death in 2009, their former nanny would be hailed as a key figure in 20th-century American photography. "The first time I saw her picture on television, I was stunned," says Linda. "I knew she was talented but it's astonishing what she made of it. Who could have imagined she could have left so much behind?" [Read More]
Find Vivian Maier on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
6.9.14
Werner Herzog: On Location
A selection of images from the British Film Institute
 |
| On the set of Fitzcarraldo (1982) Credit: © Werner Herzog Film GmbH. Courtesy Collection Deutsche Kinemathek |
 |
| On the set of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Credit: © Werner Herzog Film GmbH. Courtesy Collection Deutsche Kinemathek |
 |
| On the set of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Credit: © Werner Herzog Film GmbH. Courtesy Collection Deutsche Kinemathek |
 |
| On the set of Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) Credit: © Werner Herzog Film GmbH. Courtesy Collection Deutsche Kinemathek |
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
5.9.14
Lost Highway Screening: V&A, London
Introduced by author Richard Martin
 |
| Lost Highway (dir. David Lynch, 1997) |
 |
| Lost Highway (dir. David Lynch, 1997) |
 |
| Lost Highway (dir. David Lynch, 1997) |
Find David Lynch on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Mulholland Drive Screening: Barbican, London
Introduction by author Richard Martin
 |
| Mullholland Drive (dir. David Lynch, 2001) |
David Lynch’s surrealist neo-noir marries a mood of urban anxiety to a narrative that is not simply set in Los Angeles, but actually scrutinizes the collective dream that is LA. How many aspiring starlets have come to the city, only to have their dreams smashed?
This hallucinatory tale of a perky blond ingénue (Naomi Watts) caught up in a mystery involving an amnesiac brunette (Laura Elena Harring) begins with a bone-crunching car accident on the famous road above the city. [Read More]
Find David Lynch on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
4.9.14
David Lynch Artwork Retrospective
Pennsylvania Academy from 13 September 2014
 |
| David Lynch working at his home/studio in the Hollywood Hills |
 |
| Jack Fisk (left) and David Lynch (right) in Philadelphia, 1967. Photograph: C. K. Williams |
 |
| The screen for “Six Men Getting Sick,” (1967). Photograph: Rodger LaPelle and Christine McGinnis |
 |
| David Lynch, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” (2012). Credit: David Lynch/Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery |
 |
| David Lynch, “Boy Lights Fire” (2010). Credit David Lynch |
David Lynch’s rooftop painting studio, perched high in the Hollywood Hills, is littered with the byproduct of work. Paintings with crude, childlike figures doing menacing things lean up against the walls, unfinished drawings are strewn over his huge desk, and the floor is carpeted with cigarette butts. While the dark visual sensibility of his film work — “Eraserhead” (1977), “The Elephant Man” (1980), “Blue Velvet” (1986), “Wild at Heart” (1990), “Mulholland Drive” (2001), and his TV series “Twin Peaks” (1990-91) — has permeated the public consciousness and widely influenced other filmmakers, writers and artists (including Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson), Mr. Lynch’s own visual art is almost unknown. Yet painting is where he started, enrolled as an advanced student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1966 and ’67, and it is the medium he continues to work in most actively. His first United States museum retrospective, “David Lynch: The Unified Field,” opens at the Pennsylvania Academy on Sept. 13.
“I loved my time at the academy,” Mr. Lynch said, drinking coffee and smoking at his desk, his genial small-town manner a vivid counterpoint to the eerie tenor of his films. “The building was almost black. All of Philadelphia had a kind of coal-dust patina and a mood that was just spectacular. There was violence and fear and corruption, insanity, despair, sadness, just in the atmosphere in that city. I loved the people there. All these things, whatever way it was, was my biggest influence.”
Despite the cultlike devotion to Mr. Lynch’s films, “nobody’s paid attention to him in terms of my colleagues at American museums,” observed Robert Cozzolino, the senior curator of the Pennsylvania Academy, who organized the show. It brings together paintings and drawings from five decades and includes a trove of barely exhibited early work from Mr. Lynch’s time in Philadelphia that set the tone for everything that followed.
“I think the art world has been suspicious of David, although he was trained as an artist,” said Brett Littman, executive director of the Drawing Center in New York, referring to the fashion of creative people prominent in one arena trying their hand in another. “He’s not James Franco.” Mr. Littman organized a smaller show of Mr. Lynch’s works on paper and photographs last year in Los Angeles at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, which represents the artist.
“David changed the way that we think about visual culture in the United States through his movies,” Mr. Littman said. “You may or may not like his visual artwork, but it’s definitely worth looking at.” [Read More]
Find David Lynch on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini
A bilingual edition
 |
| The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition, ed. Stephen Sartarelli |
Most people outside Italy know Pier Paolo Pasolini for his films, many of which began as literary works—Arabian Nights, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Decameron, and The Canterbury Tales among them. What most people are not aware of is that he was primarily a poet, publishing nineteen books of poems during his lifetime, as well as a visual artist, novelist, playwright, and journalist. Half a dozen of these books have been excerpted and published in English over the years, but even if one were to read all of those, the wide range of poetic styles and subjects that occupied Pasolini during his lifetime would still elude the English-language reader.
For the first time, Anglophones will now be able to discover the many facets of this singular poet. Avoiding the tactics of the slim, idiosyncratic, and aesthetically or politically motivated volumes currently available in English, Stephen Sartarelli has chosen poems from every period of Pasolini’s poetic oeuvre. In doing so, he gives English-language readers a more complete picture of the poet, whose verse ranged from short lyrics to longer poems and extended sequences, and whose themes ran not only to the moral, spiritual, and social spheres but also to the aesthetic and sexual, for which he is most known in the United States today. This volume shows how central poetry was to Pasolini, no matter what else he was doing in his creative life, and how poetry informed all of his work from the visual arts to his political essays to his films. Pier Paolo Pasolini was “a poet of the cinema,” as James Ivory says in the book’s foreword, who “left a trove of words on paper that can live on as the fast-deteriorating images he created on celluloid cannot.”
This generous selection of poems will be welcomed by poetry lovers and film buffs alike and will be an event in American letters. [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
28.7.14
Illustrating David Cronenberg's Scanners
Galleys from the forthcoming Criterion Collection release
 |
| Illustration for David Cronenberg's Scanners, by Connor Willumsen |
 |
| Illustration for David Cronenberg's Scanners, by Connor Willumsen |
 |
| Illustration for David Cronenberg's Scanners, by Connor Willumsen |
 |
| Illustration for David Cronenberg's Scanners, by Connor Willumsen |
Find David Cronenberg on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
27.7.14
David Lynch on Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery
American filmmaker, musician and artist revisits a TV phenomenon
 |
| Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery boxset |
 |
| Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery boxset |
Lynch always intended to revisit Laura Palmer’s world in movie form. After the US network ABC pulled the plug on Twin Peaks at the end of the second season in June 1991, he told himself he would do just that once he had completed work on Wild at Heart. “I always loved Laura Palmer,” he says, “and in the series she’s dead, so I loved the idea of seeing the last week of her life.”
Fire Walk With Me received a critical and commercial drubbing when it opened in 1992, following the world premiere at Cannes. “There were very bad reviews. I was under a bad cloud during that time and it just didn’t go well.” He pauses briefly. This may be a reference to his 1991 breakup with then-girlfriend Isabella Rossellini.“But I loved the film and when you do something you believe in and it doesn’t go well it’s OK. If you sell out like I did on Dune and it doesn’t go well then you really die.” [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
2.7.14
There Will Be Blood (with Live Orchestra)
6-7 August 2014 · Roundhouse, London
 |
| A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) |
 |
| A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) |
 |
| A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) |
 |
| A still from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) |
By arrangement with Miramax and Park Circus Films, Roundhouse is pleased to be the home of a series of world-premiere screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Academy Award-winning There Will Be Blood with Jonny Greenwood’s score performed live by the London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt.
These live screenings will draw together an orchestra of over 50 musicians, including Jonny Greenwood himself, who will play the Ondes Martenot part.
Although widely regarded as one of the most influential soundtracks in recent years, There Will Be Blood was famously ruled ineligible in the Best Original Score category at the 2008 Academy Awards due to its use of pre-existing material. The score features passages from Greenwood’s compositions Popcorn Superhet Receiver and Bodysong (the latter used in the track Convergence), as well as works by Arvo Pärt and Brahms. All these cues have been collated into one ‘performance edition’, offering a complete representation of the original film, shown in a striking new light.
The London Contemporary Orchestra have been performing Greenwood’s compositions since 2008, and in 2012 recorded his score for The Master (Greenwood’s second collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson). This project will build on the LCO’s five-year-history with the Roundhouse, which has included live screenings of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in 2010, and a performance of Greenwood’s Doghouse at Reverb 2012. [Read More]
Find There Will Be Blood on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
