Category: Film

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Walk Like an Egyptian

I went out with this cute furry Egyptian tonight. He fits the profile of a terrorist so perfectly that I kept my hand on the handle of the car door in case I had to make a quick getaway and roll out onto the road on the way back from the restaurant. That is, he fits the profile until he opens his cute little furry mouth, and out rolls this big queen. He wears gold rings studded with diamonds, cologne, and unbuttons his shirt so that his hairy chest spills onto the table. He seems to be the only one of my would-be suitors to share my thoughts on relationships, love, monogamy and french kissing in the USA–and his body is straight from Central Casting–but he’s a bit more materialistic than intellectual. He’s fun, though, and has read Naguib Mahfooz, so a second date is in order.

I’ve been seeing Bob more. His little boyfriend left him for a rabbi. The absence of boyfriend-ness means I finally have a movie partner to watch all those Sokurov and Peter Watkins films with. I’ve missed Bob. He came over for dinner last night, and to watch Sokurov’sFather and Son–a meditation on father/son intimacy. It was overwhelmingly homo-erotic, to western eyes maybe, but still, pretty dang erotic. I can see all the things I loved in Bob, but also suddenly and with amazing clarity the reasons why we couldn’t be together any more.

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Life Munches On

Life munches on.

I spent last weekend at Dean & Doug’s Inverness pad. We picked huckleberries, which turned into a delicious ice cream topping, donned our netting and fed the bees. Dean did the best Queen Bee imitation. I brought up an apple pie that I made from apples that they had brought to my house the previous weekend. Apples, apples, apples–everywhere apples! I made about 3 pies with them and still have more! We spent the bulk of the weekend picking fruit and cooking and eating and drinking, like what people used to do before TV. They recently put up a deer fence, so they toss spent apples over the fence for the deer to nibble on. And nibble they do. It’s like putting out used furniture on 20th street in front of my house–gone in 15 minutes. Where are the deer when there are no apples for them to eat? How do they just suddenly appear? They are so adorable, I don’t see how people can shoot them, their swirling pink tongues and quivering little white tails and (real!) doe eyes.

We took a walk after dinner on Saturday night–an incredible vegetarian dinner involving artichokes, barley, cauliflower, corn, and love–a walk “around the block.” It was so dark from the dense canopy of trees that I could only make out a slightly less-dark trapezoid under my feet that was the road. Everything was blurry, like walking in a cartoon. I could hear the crunch of my feet on pavement, but couldn’t see my feet. I’d stick my hands out in front of me and they’d melt into the less-dark-ness of the road. Then I’d turn to the side and see trees disorientingly silhouetted against the night sky in remarkably sharp focus, and then look straight ahead again into the blurry abstraction of the road. It was thrilling. Sleeping was like that, too, pitch black and hallucinatory. I could hear every sound of the many creatures visiting the improvised feed lot outside my window–munching sounds and cracking twigs. Were I not surrounded by my dear hosts and dear deer, I would have thought I was in a horror film.

Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton had a show at Paule Anglim that was pretty dynamite last month–very large caricatured portraits of her contemporaries on scrolls of linen, big bold blobs of color. She’s my kind of painter–expressive and gestural. If Fat Albert had a painter friend in the ‘hood, it would be Caitlin, master portraitist of the new Cosby kids.

Nick Dong finally returned my Inter-Personal Masculinity Evaluator, so line up to be evaluated.

A crisp new version of Lang’s Scarlet Street came out a while back and I finally watched it, having seen it many times over the years as a fuzzy scratchy worn out print. It’s the story of my life, rich with gender ambiguities and frustrated attempts to love the person that you eventually have to kill. Chris Cross, played by Edward G. Robinson, is a meek clerk who, in his spare time and in the bathroom, paints naive portraits of “what he feels.” The film opens with Chris being feted for decades of service to the firm, with no hopes for advancement. He glances out the window to notice the boss’ beautiful mistress waiting in a limo outside. He says to his colleague, “I wonder what it’s like to be loved by a woman like that.” Not “I wonder what it’s like to LOVE a woman like that,” but “I wonder what it’s like to BE loved by a woman like that,” establishing his passivity. He finds out alright, and ends up homeless, unable to claim his identity as the painter of his own masterworks that were improperly (but with his blessing) attributed to the woman he desires most but kills; Kitty, who led him to his downfall, the love that he can never attain, but whose voice calling out to her lover–who gets blamed for her death and is fried in the electric chair–will haunt him for eternity. It’s a sublime masterpiece.

I’m getting into Top Chef. I developed a big crush on Joey, the chunky italian, who was asked to pack up his knives and hit the road last week. He breaks down and cries, it’s so heartbreaking. I’ve watched the last 10 minutes about 5 times already in reruns, and I cry each time, hoping that this time he’ll be spared, that it won’t be the last time I’ll see him. He even says, “This isn’t the last you’ll see of me,” but come on. The other hot chunky guy, Howie, is a thug, and while cute, he’s a thug, really, with no inter-personal relating skills. The other chef-testants cower in fear when they have to break up into groups, fearful that they’ll end up in his group and have to deal with his misanthropic dictatorial take on group dynamics. Still, I’d boink him. And eat his food, of course.

What else? Reese turned 14–Bob made a volcano cake that spewed lava. Many contestants on The Dating Game, but none worth mentioning. I drove D to Reno to visit his mom and discovered that everybody there is overweight and limps. No dates, though. I’m having dinner with Thomas Hardy tonight. I didn’t get ANY of the grants that I applied for. But you haven’t seen the last of me…

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Br’er Coco

I finally saw The Song of the South tonight, a film that I’ve wanted to see since I was a kid, but was told that it was racist. I’m not sure if I’m a racist by thinking this, but I totally want to be black! First of all, all the black people are like magical people–they make pies with no effort, and tell stories that bring little kids back to life! And I totally want to make out with Uncle Remus. In all seriousness, I don’t understand why anyone would feel oppressed by this film, except for white people, who are depicted as stupid and uninteresting. Meanwhile, the African Americans are smart, amazingly talented, great storytellers and cooks, sensitive, wise, nurturing… I wish there were stereotypes of white people like that. Little Johnny, in his delirium, after being gored by the bull, calls out to Uncle Remus for solace, not his absent father, no, it’s Uncle Remus, the fabulous storyteller and healer. Remus even calls Johnny “honey!” I am so crushed out on Uncle Remus. Heal me!

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Dolls, the Dating Game: #13, MM#1

It’s my yard so I will try hard To welcome friends I’ve yet to know! Oh, I’ll plant my own tree!
My!
Own!
Tree!
And I!
(pause)
Will!
(pause)
Make!
(pause)
It!
(pause)
Grow!

Dean and Doug and Big Chrissy came over for dinner and The Valley of the Dolls Saturday night. Earlier Dean received a favorable but unsurprisingly not-cogent review in Our City’s Paper by Our Big Art Critic. Mr. Critic wrote that, for Dean, “Thinking seems entirely subsidiary to process.” In reality, Dean’s mastery of technique allows him to articulate his ideas through a labor-intensive process that mirrors the complexity of his thinking. Our Critic is smart enough–I should say, learned enough–but he lacks an ability to connect with, or even see, what artists are doing or saying. He consistently compares art to work that’s already been written about–ideas that have already been developed by other writers. If he can’t think of a comparison, he writes stupid shit like that. I love Peter Schjeldahl, who writes for the New Yorker. Not only is he incredibly smart, but he consistently brings his personal experience and biases to everything he writes about.

Anyway, I want my dolls!!!! What a fun movie. I’ve been humming the theme song for days and twirling around my house in a technicolor-infused holiday spirit.

Bachelor #13 has made a few more guest appearances at Casa Coco. I showed him Uncut, not the John Greyson movie, but the stupid Italian penis exploitation-fest. For the entire film, our headless hero tries to get laid, while the camera stays trained on his pee-pee. It’s a nice enough peep to watch, especially his balls going up and down with his changes in vocal intonation. He’s stuck in bed following an accident in which he mangles his leg–his girlfriend is presumed dead, and the police are suspicious–yet his thoughts are solely on getting laid, and every attempt is waylaid in often hilarious situations–and that’s the joy of the film. Unfortunately, it takes a few silly turns that make it one of the dumbest movies I’ve seen. Plus he’s a muff trimmer, and you all know how I feel about that.

Speaking of muff-trimming, #13 spoke favorably of the film’s star’s “haircut,” much to my dismay. Clip your hair below the neck and suffer the consequences, bachelors.

Oddly, I seem to have most in common with Married Man #1. I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow night. He quotes Pinter, reads, knows stuff…

When did I get, where did I
Why am I lost as a lamb
When will I know, where will I
How will I learn who I am
Is this a dream, am I here, where are you
Tell me, when will I know, how will I know
When will I know why?
When will I know why…

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Sofia and Her Shoe Thing, Japanese New Wave, Out of Control dvd Madness

Sister Sue is still here, the last of the lingering Thanksgiving visitors. We saw Marie Antoinette the other night, and completely loved it. The film creates a vision of adolescence confined by excess and formality. If you could imagine. What else to do but buy shoes, eat fabulous pastry, and stage little performances in your Petite Trianon? It’s Sofia Coppola’s Picnic at Hanging Rock–the same kind of tension and sensual immersion, but with butter!

Face of Another, Teshigahara’s masterpiece (with screenplay by Kôbô Abe, from his novel!) played last night at the Castro. I didn’t see it, but was so excited by the possibility of seeing it again, I had to tell you. It’s one of my favortie movies about identity. Another favorite Japanese film dealing with identity from that era is Death By Hanging, by Oshima, about a man sentenced to death by hanging. He survives, and his executioners, as well as a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, and the dead woman herself, decide what to do next…

I’ve maxed out my dvd shelves. It had to happen. Actually, it has happened several times, but now the floor below and space above the shelves are full. It’s all ready to topple on top of me in the event of the slightest tremor. I’m in the process of replacing the thicker covers with the thin 5mm deals–except for my beloved Criterions, OOP’s, and box sets–filing away the printed covers, and making my own printed covers with titles in Standard Coco Futura Condensed. Do other people do this kind of thing? Am I scaring you away?

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Excuses and Recommendations

Although my life seems very full of activity and experience, I haven’t felt much of an urge to document it lately. Frankly, this single crap is the bunk. No matter what I tell myself, or you, I loathe the serenity that has settled on my home–everything orderly and predictable, low calorie, high fiber. Productive. I’d shuck it all for a furry femme-bear slobbering on my pillow right now.

In two days I turn 41. Prostate enlargement and cholesterol loom ominously over my psychic life.

Go see Dean Smith and Gay Outlaw’s show at Paule Anglim. Dean’s obsessively beautiful lines and liquid circles on paper play wonderfully against Gay’s pocked and probed 3-dimensional surfaces. Get thee to the gallery.

Of the billion movies that I’ve seen since my last entry, I highly recommend I Am a Sex Addict, by local filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, an exhilaratingly funny, inventive, and often squeamish comedy about the filmmaker’s obsession with prostitutes; and À Nos Amours, Sandrine Bonnaire’s extraordinary film debut as a 15 year old girl exploring sex and avoiding love in a story that seems drawn from real life, defying all cinematic narrative convention or cliche.

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Serious as a Heart Attack!

Greetings from Alabama. Alabama the Beautiful, the license plates say. Dad’s had a triple coronary bypass, and I’m the last of the siblings to make the pilgrimage to Birmingham to help nurse him back to health. He’s been cranky the last few days, contrary to the mood of his post-operation survival euphoria. Yesterday during his checkup, the doctors found that half of one of his lungs was filled with fluid, hence his getting winded so easily, and genetic predisposition for crankiness aside, the root of his recent crankiness. So I’m sitting in the Same-Day Services Waiting Room while he gets checked in for the procedure. They say he’s going to be here for a day or two. Two days just to stick a needle in his lungs? Can’t they just turn him upside down? I’m experiencing the paranoia of an early 30’s heroine told that everything’s going to be fine, and then the next scene the doctor’s turning to his assistant and shaking his head.

S_ picked me up at the airport. Her daughter’s having a rough time, going through the rebel teen years. She’s fallen head over heals for an unexceptional little dude from, as S_ puts it, “an unexceptional family,” unexceptional except for their criminal records–a murderer, an alcoholic, a registered sex-offender. “But the mom’s a Christian,” S_ was quick to add. Little 16 year old C_’s passion seems entirely hormone driven, and given blind forward momentum by her dad’s steadfast refusal to bless her little love. I respond to everything with, “Family counseling, family counseling,” but according to S_, C_ adamantly refuses, failing to understand that a counselor is going to actually listen to her and guide her through living harmoniously with mom and dad and her feelings for the unexceptional little dude. I’m afraid that she’s not going to be able to set aside her willful rebellion and see this guy with any clarity until they’re living in someone’s tool shed with a bun in the oven and a minimum wage job at Wal-Mart. In a way it’s very romantic, or could be, but I’ve seen the movie, and since 1938 the ending has always been tragic.

Someone in the waiting room has a telephone with a series of warbly histrionic country love song ring tones. Turned up full blast. The phone’s owner has temporarily disappeared, but left his bag behind with his clueless but you can tell tender-hearted beer-bellied baseball-hatted totally-my-type friends, so every like two minutes there’s a new tear-jerking tune jolting me and the blue-haired ladies out of our seats as the buddies shift nervously.

Tyra’s on the TV here in the waiting room. It’s a show about straight girls who like to make out with women, with some lesbian wanna-be’s and a panel of expert lesbians. The guys in the waiting room are all totally turned on, and the women look occasionally at the TV and let out exasperated huffs. I watched Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends the other night. It’s like Fassbinder never happened in this country. A thing that I love about his films is that most of them are really structured like standard Hollywood melodramas, but with an unapologetic gay disposition transposed on the directorship and narrative. He’s my total hero of the moment. When I get back, I’ll screen his BRD Trilogy, so let me know if you want to join me at the Coco-Plex.

The Lesbians are riding horses on Tyra now.

Look who just walked in. Omigod. He’s like 7 feet tall, teetering on cowboy boots, with a 10-gallon hat, horseshoe mustache, and a tiny little girlfriend who fits at his side like a polyp. He mumbles an incomprehensible southern scramble of words to her occasionally as his eyes shift from under his hat towards me. I blush and squirm under his intense but sweet honey gaze and focus on my laptop. His little belly wobbles as he fills out his admission form.

There don’t seem to be any single men around, just a lot of married men looking for “friends.” And what is it with those half-naked married guys who are just “looking for friends?” I’m ready to start perusing the Convicted Sex Offender list.

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Dean and Konrad Present

Dean and Konrad put together a knockout lineup of films tonight, presented to an intimate gathering of art world glitterati in Dean’s studio in Oakland. They ranged from a Melies film of 1906 to an Eric Saks film of just a few years ago, to Dean’s own film–from, what, yesterday?–all bound together by a use of animation or collage. Bill Morrison re-edited a deteriorating silent film from 1926, starring Boris Karlov and Lionel Barrymore, narrative intact, but with a level of physical disintegration that bordered on abstraction, parts of the film like looking in a funhouse mirror, or watching a movie while your house is on fire. There were a few films from the 50’s, cacophonous unions of image and be-bop, precursors to those iTunes effects, but hand-drawn, meticulous, gestural, like cool daddy-o. One of them, called Bop Scotch, fused images of sidewalks, terrazzo, concrete, stone, turning the ground we walk on into a crazy visual poem, man! Crazy!

Dean’s film was the most challenging for me. He made it with Bob, that is, former Mrs. Me, Bob, with whom I’m on very good terms I’m happy to report, but somehow his voice bugged me. Dean’s imagery was fabulous, culled and cropped from classic porn films, and kneaded into a narrative already so complex that Bob’s voice just bugged me, overcomplicating an experience that I was happy having without him. When his words were seen as text, against black, no other imagery, then it worked for me. His writing is so complicated, and so much about a clanging clashing commingling of words, that the clanging and clashing going on with Dean’s imagery was just too much stimulation. In the spirit of the evening’s entertainment, I’m going to mentally re-make Dean’s film and gag Bob and insert inter-titles of Bob’s text, white on black.

Prior to the screening, I chatted with a rather distinguished collector of my work who mentioned that recently, while entertaining a male visitor, the kind of visitor who receives compensation for visiting, on the way to the washroom noticed a piece of mine hanging in the hallway and asked, “Is that a ‘Chris Komater?'” I told him to tell him I work for trade…

—Image from Bill Morrison’s The Mesmerist (2003)

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Showtime, Tut, Helen Keller Mole, Kiss Me Kate

I’ve started sending out packets to galleries, feeling good about my new work and ready to work with a new dealer. I got a nibble from one of the 49 Geary dealers, who wants to meet with me and discuss a proposal for an installation. It’s in THE coolest space in the building, so I’m pretty psyched. Cross your fingers, pray to Allah, light a candle… I’m already thinking of doing some super gigantic piece that covers an entire wall, my obsession writ large, but of course accompanied by gorgeous and affordable little things. I tend to work better once I’ve established a structure or context for my art, and this space is a humdinger, so the creaky wheels of my creativity are turning once again.

Big Chrissy flew out to Chicago with me last week, for my cousin Dawn’s wedding, and to visit his family. We saw the King Tut show at the Field Museum. At one point I got choked up, remembering how I had ached to see the Tut show when it came to the US in the 70’s but had to settle for the National Geographic issue and the Steve Martin ’45. Aside from the elegance and intricate beauty of the objects, there was also a simplicity, in either expression or execution that touched me, particularly a portrait bust of Nefertiti that captured nobility, humanity and godliness, all at once, voluptuously. Seeing the various little sarcophogi for this pharoah’s viscera and that pharoah’s organs, I thought how sad it was that the egyptians spent so much time and energy preparing for an afterlife in Chicago.

We had a few good meals out, no Alinea this time, but one memorable meal at a Mexican restaurant in Boy’s Town, or whatever they call the gay ghetto over there. Oh, and the boys are pretty hot. Like milk-fed steak-eating hot. Anyway, I had the chicken mole, and the sauce, in the dim light of the restaurant, was so black that no light was reflected. A dark plate was set in front of me on the table and I couldn’t see anything in it, only empty nothingness, which I prodded with a fork until I found chicken. It was like Hellen Keller’s trip to Mexico.

Katherine Hepburn was interviewed by Dick Cavett tonight on TCM. It was her first televised interview, from 1973. I’ve been watching the Cavett interviews and they’re fascinating. He chats with these stars for a full hour each. You feel like you really get to know them, relaxing into normalness with them. Hepburn was an amazing contrast to Bette Davis, interviewed a few weeks ago. While Davis seemed fully aware and in control of being and being seen as an icon, speaking cleverly and wittily, and clearly to future biographers, Hepburn seemed like somebody totally enmeshed in family life, just a lucky dame who made movies for a living, oblivious to being one of the greatest actresses of the 20th Century, her legs spread apart, one propped up on a table, hair a mess. At the end of the hour, Cavett started to say that the interview was coming to an end and Kate just hopped up and said “Okay, bye,” and ran off the set. Cavett didn’t even have time to finish his sentence. As he pleaded, stunned, asking “Aren’t you going to wait while I…?” she paused for a moment and said, “No, you take it from here,” and disappeared behind a curtain with a quick wave. He just looked at the camera and mumbled something about the interview continuing with Part 2 next week… Can’t wait!

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SFMoMA, Tomatsu, Davide

Dean Smith and I met last night for a very thorough tour of Matthew Barney’s installation at SFMoMA. We really put a lot into it. His work demands it. It takes and takes, asking so much of its viewer, and at times seemed worth the investment. Otherwise, if you’re not willing to read about what he’s up to, or call the special cellphone hotline at various points in the museum, the work itself doesn’t seem to contain or convey much about experience or form. Sometimes the sheer theatricality or spectacle, or ambition, is thrilling, but I don’t know, sometimes it seems like he just needs a good editor. Like ditch the photo stills from the films. The films are great, but the stills don’t extend the narrative or experience, they just locate the work as a capitalist venture, okay, consistent with his underlying themes, but if I were the King of the World, I’d strip it all down. I bumped in Jonathan Katz and suggested that Barney should really make a gay porn film to end his career–all this struggle building up to some revelatory Man-on-Man action. Björk and the kids can sing at the commitment ceremony. I see blubber, lots of slippery blubber.

I’d really never think of re-imagining someone else’s work, or sexual idenity, but my obsessive compulsive side just can’t take it when I get near a Matthew Barney.

Downstairs, one is treated to remarkable photos from Japanese post-war photographer, Shomei Tomatsu. This is what inspired my Barney rant–his work is so moving, and like, there, in the image, contained within the frame. The content and formal qualities support and extend each other. The images are of the effects of the atomic bomb, the influence of American military and pop culture, and the impact of the Japanese economic boom–quietly powerful works that stand in stark contrast to the grand empty gestures upstairs.

Tonight Davide came over for L’Avventura. Rather than focus on the isolation, desolation, and impotence of the characters, I got lost in Monica Vitti’s hair–the way it reflects light, defies gravity–kinetic and wild, yet always with form and visual dazzle. It deserves its own Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival.