Andrei Tarkovsky’s Masterpiece Stalker Gets Adapted into a Video Game

in Film, Video Games | January 8th, 2015

StalkerGun_jpg_600x480_q85

Of all the movies out there, Andrei Tarkovsky’s mad­den­ing­ly oblique mas­ter­piece Stalk­er (1979) doesn’t seem like a like­ly choice to be adapt­ed into a video game. Yet it was.

The movie, Tarkovsky’s last in the USSR, is dense and enig­mat­ic with none of the nar­ra­tive pay-offs that you see in most films. The sto­ry cen­ters on a region called the Zone, which after some unnamed dis­as­ter, has the pow­er to ful­fill your great­est wish. Nat­u­ral­ly, the area has been ringed off by the author­i­ties with razor wire and armed guards. At the film’s open­ing, a guide, called a Stalk­er, takes two clients, a writer and a sci­en­tist, into the Zone. And yet after near­ly three hours of mean­der­ing and philo­soph­i­cal mono­logues, none of the char­ac­ters make a wish nor are any wish­es grant­ed. The end. But the rea­son the movie has such a fer­vent, cultish fol­low­ing is not for its dra­mat­ics. Instead, the film’s pow­er is found in the cumu­la­tive effect of its hyp­not­i­cal­ly slow pac­ing, its spir­i­tu­al long­ing and its gor­geous imagery. You can watch the film online here. Find more Tarkovsky films here.

And there’s the uncan­ny fact that Stalk­er seemed to pre­fig­ure a glob­al dis­as­ter that struck sev­en years after the movie pre­miered. It is just about impos­si­ble to look at those eerie pho­tos of irra­di­at­ed ghost towns with­in Chernobyl’s 30 square kilo­me­ter exclu­sion zone and not think about Stalk­er.

Enter Ukrain­ian game devel­op­er GSC Game World, which explic­it­ly con­nect­ed the dis­as­ter with Tarkovsky’s movie when, in 2007, it released S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shad­ow of Cher­nobyl, the first in a whole series of games. (The title might just fea­ture the most tor­tured acronym this side of the USAPATRIOT Act, stand­ing for Scav­enger, Tres­pass­er, Adven­tur­er, Lon­er, Killer, Explor­er, Rob­ber.) On first blush, the game and the movie seem to have lit­tle in com­mon aside from the name. There are rel­a­tive­ly few machine gun bat­tles or zomb­i­fied mutants in the film. Yet Gabriel Winslow-Yost argues in The New York Review of Books that there are more sim­i­lar­i­ties than might be first appar­ent.

As games, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series are remark­able.… While they all have the ele­ments of a stan­dard action game—guns, mon­sters, mis­sions, traps, loot—much of the player’s activ­i­ty is odd­ly in keep­ing with Stalker’s spir­it, some­times even man­ag­ing to expand upon it. […] Watch­ing Stalk­er, one is occa­sion­al­ly brought up short by remem­ber­ing that it was not filmed in Cher­nobyl, so per­fect an ana­logue does that event seem for the film’s images of tech­nol­o­gy and nature, beau­ty and dan­ger in strange alliance. The games, at their best, can seem like a sort of mir­a­cle: a dead man’s mas­ter­piece, come home at last.

Stalk­er was based on a novel­la called Road­side Pic­nic by Arkady and Boris Stru­gatsky. Winslow-Yost points out the games are actu­al­ly more in keep­ing with the source mate­r­i­al than Tarkovsky’s film. “The stalk­ers are numer­ous and mer­ce­nary. The ele­ments of the Zone are many, and named, if not quite explained—there’s ‘Mos­qui­to Mange’ and ‘Burn­ing Fluff,’ ‘Full Emp­ties’ and ‘Black Sprays.’ In the film most of these are not present—Tarkovsky leaves in only one, the ‘meat­grinder,’ though his Stalk­er is clear­ly ter­ri­fied of many more.”

The games proved to be so suc­cess­ful, espe­cial­ly in Rus­sia, that they were turned into nov­els. No word if any­one has both­ered to buy the film rights to those books. If you want to see what the game looks like, there’s a video of it above.

But the real ques­tion is what oth­er art house land­marks are going to get remade into video games? A ver­sion of Sec­ond Life inspired by Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry? A mash up of Grand Theft Auto and Jean-Luc Godard’s Week­end? Last Year at Marien­bad as a first-per­son shoot­er?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Steven Soderbergh Creates a Big List of What He Watched, Read & Listened to in 2014

in Film, Life, Literature, Television | January 8th, 2015

640px-Steven_Soderbergh_at_the_66th_Mostra

Image by Nico­las Genin

Our vast media land­scape feels gross­ly over­sat­u­rat­ed with adver­tis­ing, pro­pa­gan­da, and all man­ner of redun­dant noise. But the dis­cern­ing eye, and ear, per­ceives just as much qual­i­ty out there as crap. “Retired” auteur Steven Soder­bergh, as fans of his will know, is just such a dis­cern­ing cus­tomer — and an exact­ing, high­ly orga­nized one at that. Soder­bergh has sworn off direct­ing film, turn­ing his atten­tion to tele­vi­sion by direct­ing the Cin­e­max series The Knick as well as—reports Indiewire—“pro­duc­ing, edit­ing, and lens­ing Mag­ic Mike XXL,” the sec­ond install­ment of the Chan­ning Tatum-star­ring male strip­per saga.

One might think all this work would keep Soder­bergh busy from dawn to dusk, but he’s a man who “gets more done in a day than most do in a week.” A con­sum­mate con­sumer of cul­ture high and low, Soder­bergh assid­u­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed his watch­ing, read­ing, and lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences for the entire year pre­vi­ous. His list includes TV shows like Veep and Louie, and heav­ier fare like True Detec­tive and House of Cards. He read Don­na Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Karl Ove Gnausgaard’s labo­ri­ous Prous­t­ian nov­el My Strug­gle (books one through three—in two months). In addi­tion to recent films like Gone Girl, Soder­bergh watched Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey three times and Jaws twice. He even found the time for Die Hard With a Vengeance.

The above rep­re­sents but the tini­est sam­pling of Soderbergh’s vora­cious diet. You can see the full list, includ­ing his album pur­chas­es here. As Indiewire right­ly observes, the list is “a lot to wade through.” Even more so the incred­i­ble range and diver­si­ty of cre­ative works con­tained with­in. Soder­bergh main­tained a sim­i­lar log for 2013, which you can see here. Scan­ning these may inspire you to step up your input, or maybe just to pull a man­age­able num­ber of selec­tions for future reading/viewing/listening of your own.

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Soder­bergh Posts a List of Every­thing He Watched and Read in 2009

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Stag­ing”

Steven Soder­bergh Writes Twit­ter Novel­la After His Retire­ment From Film­mak­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Origins of Spinal Tap: Watch the 20 Minute Short Film Created to Pitch the Classic Mockumentary

in Film, Music | January 7th, 2015

When This is Spinal Tap came out over 30 years ago, it went over a lot of people’s heads. “Every­body thought it was a real band,” recalled direc­tor Rob Rein­er. “Every­one said, ‘Why would you make a movie about a band that no one has heard of?’”

It’s hard to believe that lines like “You can’t dust for vom­it” failed to come off as any­thing but a joke. But, to be fair, Hol­ly­wood come­dies were gen­er­al­ly straight-for­ward affairs in the ‘80s. Think Blues Broth­ers or Fletch. Fake doc­u­men­taries weren’t a thing. And This is Spinal Tap looks and feels exact­ly like a rock doc­u­men­tary– the hagio­graph­ic voiceover, the shaky cam­era, the awk­ward inter­views.

The movie was just as unscript­ed as rock docs like Don’t Look Back, The Song Remains the Same and The Kids Are All Right. The film is not only a par­o­dy of the gen­er­al­ly overblown silli­ness of rock and roll, it is also, as Newsweek’s David Ansen notes, “a satire of the doc­u­men­tary form itself, com­plete with per­fect­ly fad­ed clips from old TV shows of the band in its mod and flower-child incar­na­tions.”

And then there’s the fact that, for a fake band, Spinal Tap knew how to rock — albeit to com­plete­ly idi­ot­ic lyrics. Christo­pher Guest, Michael McK­ean and Har­ry Shear­er, the actors who make up the core of the band, actu­al­ly played all the music in the movie. And after the cult suc­cess of the film, they went on to play con­certs. Can you real­ly call Spinal Tap a fake band if they wowed audi­ences in Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um?

But the genius stroke of the movie was to mix in pain and dread with the humor. As we’re laugh­ing at David St. Hub­bins and com­pa­ny fret­ting over an 18-inch Stone­henge prop, we also wince in sym­pa­thy. Sting report­ed­ly told Rob Rein­er that he watch­es the movie every time he is about to go on tour. “Every time I watch it, I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry.”

Spinal Tap made its first appear­ance in 1979, five years before the movie pre­miered. It was on a short-lived ABC SCTV-like com­e­dy series called The T.V. Show that starred Rein­er. You can see Guest, McK­ean and Shear­er and com­pa­ny rock­ing out to the tune “Rock n Roll Night­mare” right above. Though the per­for­mance is not near­ly as tight or fun­ny as their sub­se­quent appear­ances, all of the ideas are there. The bloat­ed pre­ten­tious­ness. The sil­ly lyrics. The sil­li­er out­fits. By the way, that bot­tle-wield­ing key­boardist in the clip is Loudon Wain­wright III.

A cou­ple years lat­er, Rein­er and com­pa­ny decid­ed to revis­it Spinal Tap with the idea of mak­ing a mock­u­men­tary. As Rein­er recount­ed in an inter­view with Sound Opin­ions:

They gave us the mon­ey and we real­ized that there was no way in screen­play form that we could cap­ture what this would be. Because it was going to be a doc­u­men­tary. So I said to the guy, give us the mon­ey you were going to give us to write the screen­play and I’ll make you a lit­tle bit of the film. And we made like 20 min­utes of this film. We had back­stage footage. We had con­cert footage. Inter­view stuff.

You can watch the whole demo film (Spinal Tap: The Final Tour) up top in two parts. The hair might be dif­fer­ent and some of the gags might not land with the same punch, but the chem­istry, the con­cept and the com­e­dy are all there. In fact, some clips from the demo, par­tic­u­lar­ly the inter­views, made their way into the final cut of the movie.

Sad­ly, the demo failed to impress the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. “The guy [at the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny] said, ‘I don’t like this.’ So we went around for years to get it made. And final­ly, we were able to put it togeth­er for a cou­ple of mil­lion bucks.”

You can watch Rein­er recount the mak­ing and lega­cy of This is Spinal Tap below. Spinal Tap: The Final Tour will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary

Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel Pro­motes World’s Largest Online Gui­tar Les­son

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

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Rare Footage of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Other Beats Hanging Out in the East Village (1959)

in Film, Literature, Photography, Poetry | January 2nd, 2015

We don’t often think of the Beats as fam­i­ly men, and that’s because the most promi­nent of them weren’t, except William Bur­roughs for a time (a trag­ic sto­ry or two for anoth­er day). But friends of Gins­berg and Ker­ouac like Lucien and Francesca Carr and Robert and Mary Frank brought chil­dren into the poets’ lives, and you can see them all above, relax­ing at the Har­mo­ny Bar & Restau­rant in New York’s East Vil­lage in 1959.

This rare silent footage unites the three Carr and two Frank chil­dren in a rare appear­ance of the Beats togeth­er on film. The mus­ta­chioed Lucien Carr —a char­ac­ter with his own dark sto­ry—can be seen seat­ed next to Ker­ouac.  The Franks, père and mère, were both artists in their own right—London-born Mary a trained dancer, sculp­tor, and painter, and Robert an impor­tant Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er.

Dan­ger­ous Minds spec­u­lates that it’s Robert Frank behind the cam­era, both because we don’t see him in front of it and because Frank would that same year direct the short film Pull My Daisy (above), fea­tur­ing both Gins­berg and Ker­ouac and adapt­ed from Kerouac’s play Beat Gen­er­a­tion. (Frank appar­ent­ly denies he shot the footage at the top). Pull My Daisy also includes famous Beats like Gre­go­ry Cor­so, musi­cian David Amram, and Ginsberg’s part­ner, poet Peter Orlovsky. In a pre­vi­ous post on that film, Open Culture’s Col­in Mar­shall described it as craft­ed with “great delib­er­ate­ness, albeit the kind of delib­er­ate­ness meant to cre­ate the impres­sion of thrown-togeth­er, ram­shackle spon­tane­ity.”

To learn more about the Beats’ appear­ances on film—as them­selves, in char­ac­ter, and through their adapt­ed work, see this excel­lent fil­mog­ra­phy. And just above, watch a mash-up of most of those var­i­ous cin­e­mat­ic appear­ances in a trail­er pro­duced by Cine­fam­i­ly for the IFC and Sun­dance series “Beats on Film.”

via The Wall Break­ers/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg, Shot by Robert Frank

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Steven Spielberg & Alfred Hitchcock Face Off in an Epic Rap Battle (NSFW)

in Comedy, Film, Music | January 2nd, 2015

In a throw down between direc­tors Steven Spiel­berg and Alfred Hitch­cock, who do you think would win?

The pio­neer­ing crowd pleas­er?

Or the mas­ter of sus­pense?

If Peter Shukoff and Lloyd Ahlquist, the mak­ers of Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry refuse to say, I will: nei­ther of them.

Instead, it is action direc­tor Michael Bay (as embod­ied by a bewigged Shukoff), who emerges vic­to­ri­ous, drop­ping into the pro­ceed­ings via heli­copter, to spit that moviemak­ing is all about the “motherfuc&in’ mon­ey”! Artis­ti­cal­ly, he may not have much cur­ren­cy, but there’s no argu­ing that the Trans­form­ers fran­chise has indeed endowed him with the “socks made of silk mon­ey.”

Oth­er unan­nounced com­peti­tors include Stan­ley Kubrick, ped­al­ing down a long hall­way on an ersatz Big Wheel, and Quentin Taran­ti­no, sum­moned, no doubt, by a Hitch­cock taunt that no one will ever pick Samuel L. Jackson’s turn in Juras­sic Park as their favorite Samuel L. Jack­son role.

It’s vul­gar, and NSFW sans head­phones, but as legions of ado­les­cent boys will pas­sion­ate­ly attest, it has its moments. Watch­ing the behind the scenes, below, remind­ed me of all the plan­ning that went into this episode, from spe­cial effects make up to research and green screen. If the end result is not quite to your taste, at least you can rest assured that it’s by design.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Ter­ry Gilliam Explains The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Marilyn Monroe’s Go-Getter List of New Year’s Resolutions (1955)

in Film, Life | January 1st, 2015

Marilyn's Resolutions

The com­mon con­cep­tion of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions frames them as dis­pos­able ideals, not to be tak­en too seri­ous­ly or fol­lowed through past the first few months of win­ter; by spring, we all assume, we’ll be right back to our sloth­ful, glut­to­nous ways. Per­haps the prob­lem lies in the way we approach this year­ly rit­u­al. Lists of the most com­mon res­o­lu­tions tend towards the almost shock­ing­ly banal, such that most people’s desires for change are inter­change­able with their friends and neigh­bors and might as well be script­ed by greet­ing card com­pa­nies. I’d haz­ard it’s impos­si­ble to be pas­sion­ate about half-thoughts and boil­er­plate ambi­tion.

But there are those few peo­ple who real­ly pour their hearts into it, cre­at­ing lists so indi­vid­u­al­ized and authen­tic that the doc­u­ments expose their inner lives, their hopes, fears, loves, strug­gles, and deep, per­son­al yearn­ings and aspi­ra­tions. One such list that cir­cu­lates often, and which we fea­tured last year, is this gem from Woody Guthrie cir­ca 1943. It’s so com­plete­ly him, so much in his voice, that no one else could have writ­ten it, even in par­o­dy. This year, we direct your atten­tion to the list above, from Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, writ­ten at the end of 1955 when the star was 29.

Already well-known for her act­ing in such fine films as All About Eve, Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes, and The Sev­en Year Itch, Mon­roe had recent­ly been accept­ed to Lee Strasberg’s Actors Stu­dio. As Lists of Note puts it, “judg­ing by this list, she was deter­mined to make the most of her oppor­tu­ni­ties.” I’m not sure what to make of the odd use of ran­dom let­ters at the begin­ning of each res­o­lu­tion, but what the list does offer us is a glimpse into Monroe’s deep commitment—despite her feel­ing that her life was “miserable”—to grow­ing and devel­op­ing as an actor and a per­son.

See a full tran­script of her list of res­o­lu­tions below.

Must make effort to do

Must have the dici­pline to do the fol­low­ing –

z – go to class – my own always – with­out fail

x – go as often as pos­si­ble to observe Strass­berg’s oth­er pri­vate class­es

g – nev­er miss actor’s stu­dio ses­sions

v – work when­ev­er pos­si­ble – on class assign­ments – and always keep work­ing on the act­ing exer­cis­es

u – start attend­ing Clur­man lec­tures – also Lee Strass­berg’s direc­tors lec­tures at the­ater wing – enquire about both

l – keep look­ing around me – only much more so – observ­ing – but not only myself but oth­ers and every­thing – take things (it) for what they (it’s) are worth

y – must make strong effort to work on cur­rent prob­lems and pho­bias that out of my past has arisen – mak­ing much much much more more more more more effort in my anal­i­sis. And be there always on time – no excus­es for being ever late.

w – if pos­si­ble – take at least one class at uni­ver­si­ty – in lit­er­a­ture –

o – fol­low RCA thing through.

p – try to find some­one to take danc­ing from – body work (cre­ative)

t – take care of my instru­ment – per­son­al­ly & bod­i­ly (exer­cise)

try to enjoy myself when I can – I’ll be mis­er­able enough as it is.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Woody Guthrie’s Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions From 1943

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The City in Cinema Mini-Documentaries Reveal the Los Angeles of Blade Runner, Her, Drive, Repo Man, and More

in Film | December 29th, 2014

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What do movies like Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, and Repo Man, sep­a­rat­ed by the years and even more so by their sen­si­bil­i­ties, have in com­mon? All come from auteur direc­tors, all have accu­mu­lat­ed con­sid­er­able fan fol­low­ings, and all have styles all their own. But to my mind, one impor­tant qual­i­ty unites them more than any oth­er: all take place in Los Ange­les. What’s more, all take place in a dis­tinc­tive vision of Los Ange­les, that most pho­tographed but least under­stood city in the world. Every fea­ture film that uses Los Ange­les as some­thing more than a back­drop, whether it tries to rep­re­sent or reimag­ine it, also acts as an acci­den­tal doc­u­men­tary of the city: of its built envi­ron­ment, of its peo­ple, of the ever-shift­ing ideas we have of it.

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On that premise, I cre­at­ed Los Ange­les, the City in Cin­e­ma, a series of video essays meant to exam­ine the vari­ety of Los Ange­le­ses revealed in the films set there, both those new and old, main­stream and obscure, respectable and schlocky, appeal­ing and unap­peal­ing — just like the con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ter­is­tics of the city itself. At the top of the post, you can watch my episode on Blade Run­ner, Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1982 pro­to-cyber­punk future noir that remains, to this day, the pop­u­lar idea of the Los Ange­les of the future (as evi­denced by the pejo­ra­tive cur­ren­cy of the term “Blade Run­ner-iza­tion” among NIM­BYs): denser, dark­er, thor­ough­ly Asian­ized, and tak­en back to a third-world indus­tri­al phase it nev­er real­ly passed through in the first place.

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But more recent­ly, a com­pet­ing vision of Los Ange­les’ future emerged in the form of Her, Spike Jonze’s tale of a mus­ta­chioed, ukulele-play­ing mil­que­toast who falls in love with a sen­tient com­put­er oper­at­ing sys­tem. He does so in the high-ris­es and high-speed trains of, by com­par­i­son to Blade Run­ner, a glossier, gen­tler, future Los Ange­les not only free of killer android repli­cants but — even more sur­pris­ing­ly to many an Ange­leno — free of cars. My video essay on Her com­pares and con­trasts Scott and Jonze’s ideas of what lies ahead for the city: would you rather live in the for­mer’s Los Ange­les, hybridized with a grit­ti­er, less order­ly Tokyo, or the lat­ter’s, hybridized with a san­i­tized Shang­hai?

Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s Dri­ve gave us a new take on the old tra­di­tion of Euro­pean film­mak­ers exam­in­ing Los Ange­les with a kind of per­plexed fas­ci­na­tion, as pre­vi­ous­ly exem­pli­fied by John Boor­man’s Point Blank, Jacques Der­ay’s  The Out­side Man, and Jacques Demy’s Mod­el Shop. Eng­lish cult direc­tor Alex Cox added his own rough-edged vol­ume to that shelf with 1984’s sci-fi punk favorite Repo Man. In 2000, Cox’s coun­try­man Mike Fig­gis pulled off his real-time, four-screen exper­i­ment Time­code on the Sun­set Strip, not far from the strip club where John Cas­savetes set much of The Killing of a Chi­nese Book­ie more than twen­ty years ear­li­er. You can find video essays on these movies and oth­ers on the list of those I’ve pro­duced so far:

New videos, includ­ing episodes on this year’s sol­id Los Ange­les pic­tures, Night­crawler and the Thomas Pyn­chon adap­ta­tion Inher­ent Vice, will appear reg­u­lar­ly. If you live any­where near Port­land, Ore­gon, note that I’ll give a talk and screen­ing there enti­tled “Los Ange­les and Port­land: The Cities in Cin­e­ma” at the Hol­ly­wood The­atre, fea­tur­ing nev­er-before-seen video essays on both Los Ange­les and Port­land films, on Jan­u­ary 25, 2015. Keep an eye on their site for details.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Chaos Cin­e­ma: A Break­down of How 21st-Cen­tu­ry Action Films Became Inco­her­ent

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Lynch and Moby Talk Blues Guitar, Meditation, Quinoa & the Joy of Los Angeles

in Film, Music | December 26th, 2014

Elec­tron­ic musi­cian Moby and mak­er of dis­turb­ing films David Lynch might, at first, seem an odd con­ver­sa­tion­al pair. What could the shaven-head­ed Gen­er­a­tion Xer from New York who made the album Play have in com­mon with the mess­i­ly yet elab­o­rate­ly coiffed Baby Boomer from Mon­tana who made the movie Blue Vel­vet? But as the record­ed event from this year’s Inter­na­tion­al Music Sum­mit demon­strates, they’ve got a lot to talk about. Enthu­si­asts of both cre­ators may know that they actu­al­ly do have pro­fes­sion­al con­nec­tions: Lynch direct­ed the music video for Moby’s “Shot in the Back of the Head,” Moby has made his music free to film­mak­ers, and Lynch has even record­ed an album of his own, com­plete with trou­bling video.

They’ve even become friends, ones close enough that Lynch just calls Moby “Mo,” and Moby once gave Lynch a slide gui­tar as a present. They’ve got such a rap­port, in fact, that Moby can ask Lynch, lead­ing­ly and admit­ted­ly so, if Lynch con­sid­ers that slide gui­tar the best present he ever received. He asks it, in fact, right up there onstage at the IMS, along with such oth­er ques­tions, pre-writ­ten on a sheet, as “Have you ever grown mag­gots?,” “Is Inland Empire my favorite movie of the last ten years?,” “What would your favorite birth­day meal be, keep­ing in mind this is a con­fer­ence about elec­tron­ic music?,” “Do we fear death?,” and “Would you like to grow quinoa in your back­yard?”

Though both Moby and Lynch love their quinoa, they make even more of a con­nec­tion over their city of res­i­dence, Los Ange­les. The for­mer points out that three of the lat­ter’s pic­tures — Lost High­way, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, and Inland Empire — star not any par­tic­u­lar human actor, but Los Ange­les itself. “Any­thing goes,” Lynch explains about the city that inspires him (some­times, no doubt, dur­ing the med­i­ta­tion ses­sions he also dis­cuss­es here) with its light and its jas­mine-scent­ed air. “You’re free to think and do things” — two pur­suits that both of these guys have engaged in, unceas­ing­ly and fruit­ful­ly, over their entire careers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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