Category: Art

Kill Bill was terrific. And the soundtrack was fabulous. Tarantino is the perfect post-modern director, appropriating and translating material as diverse as sounds from Ultraman to the actual stars of Hong Kong action films. He reminds me of a geeky Martin Scorsese, although drawing from overlooked instead of acknowledged masters.

Speaking of drawing from the masters, I had a vision of my next film tonight. I’m going to remake the cropduster scene from North by Northwest, shot by shot, edited exactly the same way, but with completely different imagery–close ups of Dean’s fur. Of course. It makes sense, really, only I’m too exited to tell you why. I want to shoot it now. Dean and I are going to see Love, Actually tomorrow, so perhaps we can get started right away.

I worked on the sound for my Tremor video today, and am perhaps 1/4 of the way through with the editing. It’s very challenging, sequencing these images in time, instead of on a wall. With my grids, the images relate to each other as a complete abstract visual experience that disintegrates into detail. I’m doing the opposite with the video, the narrative coming together slowly from the sequencing, and the sound manipulating how you read the images. It’s really thrilling.

Tonight it’s martinis and laptop movies in bed. Just me and Jean-Luc Godard. (In Praise of Love–a second viewing after falling asleep last time). Last night I watched an early Douglas Sirk film, Scandal in Paris, which was more Lubitsch-y that Sirk-y, Sirk not quite finding himself in the material, although the 15 seconds of over-the-top-ness were clearly his.

Okay, back to my olive.

Finally made it to the Philip Guston retrospective this weekend–remarkably moving work for such a limited iconography. Get thee to the museum, and don’t forget to see James Turrell’s equally remarkable Nada, a light installation on display on the second floor. Upon entering the darkened room, and after a few disorienting minutes, soft light falling on the left and right walls becomes visible. A few more moments, and a rectangle slowly appears, straight ahead. At first it seems like the wall is painted maybe a slightly different shade of white, or a painting, but presented very cinematically. The top and bottom lines of the rectangle appear very solid, while the sides seem to blend in with the walls. As you get closer, the flat rectangle gives way to an illusion of depth, but without lines or shadows. Curious about this, I drew closer and put my hand through the rectangle, which turned out to be an opening into another space, lit slightly brighter than the other room, but with absolutely no depth or seams, just empty space. Nothingness.

Also on display is a very large exhibition of very large luscious color photos by my former teacher, Reagan Louie, of Asian prostitutes, beautifully, lovingly, and inertly photographed. I left learning nothing really about them, other than that they have very colorful rooms and seem to lounge around all day nude on beds or in baths and never seem to have sex.

I also finally got to see Masamura’s Afraid to Die starring Yukio Mishima! Mishima, sadly, was not the greatest actor, but what a hot little number. His greatest acting role was as one of a pair of lovers turned to wax in Black Lizard. You’d think that Mishima would have said something about the script, but it was fun for its lurid color and fabulous death scene. One yakuza keeps scratching his pubic area, too, very prolonged rubbings, perhaps to warn us of the crabs that come with a life of crime? I went through an intense Mishima phase in my early twenties, very affected by his Sea of Fertility tetralogy–life’s struggle revealed as an illusion. “Life’s a big joke, and there’s no punch line…” Marie Windsor cries after being shot by her husband Elisha Cook, Jr. in Kubrick’s The Killing, before keeling over. After several weeks I moved on to Mishima masturbating to Saint Sebastian, where I’ve been ever since.

Glen Helfand, our cute local critic is curating a 20th anniversary show for the LAB, and has invited me, and some 19 others who have had solo exhibitions there over the past 20 years to participate. I first showed there in 1992 (‘ish), a very large installation/gender spectacle/showdown called High Noon. Glen asked if I’d like to revisit the piece for the show, and I’m thinking of proposing something containing similar conflicts that I explored in High Noon, but starring the inhabitants of the new West, my furry West. The show opens in October. Mark your calendars, and stay tuned for details…

Tonight I dogsat for my neighbor Arnie. His dog’s name is Shimon, and I am in love. We ate burritos, drank a bottle of wine, and watched No Man’s Land and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning together. Arnie came home to us in a tangle of arms and paws on the living room floor. I had passed up a last-minute opportunity to have dinner with Toirac, a famous Cuban painter whom I met in Havana a few years ago and who’s in town, only because Bob has so unsettled me over the past few days that I didn’t think I could be around him without the evening quickly dissolving into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe–well, it already had for starters. I needed a non-human companion for the evening, and Shimon didn’t mind having a soused Liz Taylor for company.

Muscrat Love, the song by Captain and Tennile, is buzzing in my head tonight. I haven’t heard it in years, and only chanced upon a brief snippet of it several months ago, so it’s a faded sort of memory of it that is serenading me, but Toni’s sincerity and lush voice, and that bizarre electronic muscrat sound toward the end have seized me in this iron vice of sugary pop innocence and nostalgia.