This post should be better, more indepth, with more links. Maybe at some point in the near future.
Sometimes, very rarely, it is possible to watch entire films on youtube without them being cut into a million pieces. This is one of those instances…
This rarely seen, rarely known, underground film staggered out of the mess that was Berlin in 1984 (whether the release date was a deliberate reference to Orwell’s novel or merely synchronicity i do not know). You can look at as a critique of society, of media, of totalitarianism. As a treatise on the power of symbols, the way in which they pervade and control our lives and the ways in which they can be highjacked for alterior ends. I suppose it is all of those things. It’s a messy film made on not much of a budget and featuring such countercultural luminaries as William Burroughs and Genesis P. Orridge in cameo roles.
It is possible to get hold of this film on DVD but it ain’t cheap. There are other ways to get hold of it but I won’t be going into them here 😉
This might be your only opportunity to watch this astounding piece of cult filmmaking so, you know, pull the sofa up to your PC, turn out the lights and click play.
This looks like an absolute riot. I can’t wait to read it all!
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of
society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded,
responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government,
eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy
the male sex.
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males
(or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must
begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious
purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male)
gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set
of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a
walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient,
emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are
emotional cripples.
Time traveler or proto-beatnik? What, you think a whole counter culture just sprang up in the 50s cuz Jack Kerouac released ‘on the road’? Yeeesh.
The above photo was taken in 1940. Some people say the hipster-looking fellow with the sunglasses on the right side of the photo is a time traveler because his hair, shades, clothing, and camera didn’t exist at the time. But Forgetomori does a fine job of busting this rumor, complete with photos. Curses!
The outfit could also be found 70 years ago. Being used as we are to our contemporary fashion, we look at the man and assume he’s wearing a stamped T-shirt, something that would be indeed out of place (or time). But if you look carefully, you can see that he’s actually wearing (or could as well be wearing) a sweatshirt. And sweatshirts with bordered emblems were not uncommon in the 1940s – in fact you can find those in other photos from the same exhibit.
Dangerous Minds!
Dangerous Minds!
Why are all your links so fine?
youtube videos beyond sublime
I wish that all of them were mine!
That was my little ode to Dangerous Minds. Because they’re just so cool. Oh yeah baby. Sometimes I think about just blogging everything they blog so I can be cool too. But then, this would be Dangerous Minds and not Either/or/Bored, wouldn’t it? Not so cool.
I came across Lydia Lunch’s work several years ago whilst I was excavating the tombs of punk. See, I’m a cultural archaeologist. I like to explore things in the past tense. If something is paticularly cool and hip i like to wait until the bandwagon masses have forgotten all about it, and then figure out if it’s worthy. I tried reading harry potter once, the first book, way after the fact. You know, just to see if it was worth the hassle. I only got a few pages in before I got bored. Maybe I didn’t give it enough time but frankly there are so many books out there that give the impression of being infinately more worthy that why waste your time? It’s a limited commodity you know.
Okay, maybe I’m not strictly a cultural archaeologist. The internet is after all fueled by neophillia and this is a blog after all. What I’m saying is there are alot of things to dig and alot of them have already happened. The present is a playground but the past is a treasure trove – so grab a shovel. Also, don’t forget your rubber gloves. There’s alot of shit to wade through.
Anyway, lydia lunch . I dug some of her music. I read paradoxia (excerpt here), her confessional novelish of sadomasachistic peversions. And drugs, I think there were drugs in there too. Lydia was in the seminal NY nowave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks who are totally worthy of a listen, even if this isn’t actually THEIR myspace page.
Fuck, you know, I dug this out of my draft bin and I’ve completely forgotten where i was going with it.
Oh yeah, there was an interview with lydia lunch posted on dangerous minds. I was gonna regurgitate it.
There, now I can lay this post to rest after its month in draft limbo.
No, wait. There’s more. It’s all coming back to me now….
So, i dug her music and read her book. Years stumble by like drunken & stoned little angels. Now i’m in the final year of uni and writing my dissertation. It’s on counterculture & film (and does not include, despite how much my lecturer told me to include it, easy rider) and I’m doing this whole section on the Cinema of Transgression – a New York underground film ‘movement’ (or maybe ‘moment’ is more apt). From wikipedia:
Perhaps the most famous transgressive artist, Richard Kern, began making films in New York with actors Nick Zedd and Lung Leg. Some of them were videos for artists like the Butthole Surfers and Sonic Youth.
Lydia Lunch appears in alot of the works of the cinema of transgression, some of which can be viewed over at ubuweb (lydia lunch filmography here). If i remember rightly, Lydia Lunch and Nick Zed were going out for a while as all this was going on and it didn’t end well. Their relationship was an inspiration for several of his films.
One of the main sources for references in my dissertation were the books of Jack Sargeant whose work is indespensible to anyone who has an interest in underground film or the intersections of counterculture and film. His website is here and here‘s an interview with him.
I’d love to embed this, but i can’t. restriction of wordpress.com i’m afraid. Still, all you have to is click the link and it’s there for your viewing pleasure. Pull my Daisy. By Robert Frank (although, actually, that’s a point of some debate — whether you believe it or not do check the photographs from his book ‘the americans’ which are awesome. Plus kerouac wrote the introduction for it. Neat, huh?). Beat cinema. Enjoy.
Must… entertain… my masses. Okay, maybe masses is the wrong word. I mean the cool people that condescend to visit my blog. I mean you. I must bring you content. If i do no the interweb pixies will eat my girlfriend. They told me so!
so here’s another post from my old blog.
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Pull my Daisy / Shizzle my Nizzle
The following is a synopsis for Pull my Daisy, which Jonas Mekas called “The first truely beat film.” It’s copied out of Naked Lens by Jack Sargeant, which is one of the rare books on beat cinema. if Jack reads this please be aware that I’m gonna reword it before I use it in my dissertation. Honest. It’s up here so I don’t lose it.
God, I hate essays.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Set in an apartment in downtown Manhattan, it opens with an establishing shot; tracking around an empty room. Kerouac’s voice begins the narration which, save for a few short breaks, runs for the length of the film: “Early morning in the universe…”. A woman, whom the narration describes as a painter and the wife of a “railroad brakeman” enters the room. The wife walks to the windows and opens the curtains, letting the light stream in, her young son Pablo enters to eat his breakfast, before rushing off to school. Shortly before they leave for school Alan and Gregory enter, carrying bottles of beer.
Alan and Gregory sit down and begin the discuss poetry, the camera roving back and forth between them, in close up a joint is passed between the two poets. Alan and Gregory begin to argue about Apollinaire, and in a long shot Alan stands up, frustrated with Alan’s argument, and this becomes emphasized by the rhythmic aggression of the narration, juxtaposing the velocity of Alan’s frenetic speech patters (“that’s right/that’s right/that’s right/that’s what I said/ that’s right/that’s right/that’s right” [punctuation Sargeant’s]) with Gregory’s sullen weariness at Alan’s continued dancing movements. At the end of the argument, in established shot-reverse-shot style, Alan states: “The Lower East Side has produced all the strange gum chewing geniuses”, to which Gregory replies, “Ah you make me – I could tell you poems that would make you weep with long hair, goodbye, goodbye…”
The scene is interrupted by the arrival of Milo, as he walks around the apartment the three poets follow him. Flute music plays on the soundtrack, switching from the (supposedly) diagetic sounds produced by Gregory’s flute playing to the extra-diagetic music of Amram’s score, the music serves to emphasize the almost child-like enthusiasm the poets have for the railway worker. Ells them that the Bishop is coming “you guys have gotta act a little better […] no flutes and no nonsense”. A shot from the window looking down into the street depicts the Bishop’s car arriving. The wife goes to welcome the Bishop and his entourage into the apartment while the three poets excitedly anticipate the Bishop’s immediate arrival.
Milo dances around the apartment, a movement which is directly constrained by the apparent stoicism of the Bishop. The Bishop and his family (mother and sister) are introduced and begin to settle down. Gregory begins questioning the Bishop about Buddhism, before rapidly sliding into ‘nonsense’ talk (“goofing […] playing around with words”), apologizing and then asking more serious questions on Buddhism.
With a burst of the jazz soundtrack, Mezz Mcgillicuddy enters the apartment, shaking hands with everybody. Peter begins to talk to the Bishop, asking him “Have you ever played baseball and seen girls with tight dresses?” and then “Is baseball holy?” while swinging an imaginary bat.
The scene fades to an exterior shot, the soundtrack becomes more melancholic, while in long shot the Bishop preaches to a congregation of, predominantly, women and children. As he delivers his sermon an American flag, held by Milo’s wife who is standing at the Bishop’s side, blows over his face (“The American flag is a recurring motif in Robert Frank’s book The Americans, where it was used to simultaneously symbolize both identity and lack of identity; belonging to a national culture and being excluded from it. For many Americans the flag also functions as a visual signifier of their own freedom. The American flag is also a ‘thematic’ of Alfred Leslie’s paintings from the early fifties; ‘abstract’ works such as Spots and Stripes Painting (1952) and Hoboken Oval (1953) are characterized via the repeated use of stripes (both vertical and horizontal) which are visually contrasted with painted areas of circular shapes.” – Sargeant, pg51, 16.). The camera tracks to a medium close-up over the faces of the street congregation, all of whom are speaking, although, crucially, there is no narration at this point in the film.
Cutting back to the apartment the film continues to track across the faces of those around the Bishop (Alan, Gregory, et al). Kerouac’s narration: “The angel of silence hath flown over all their heads”, the narration continues but begins to turn into ‘music’, no longer emphasizing ‘real’ sentences, but ‘pure’ word plays which seek to evoke the spirit of the evening. Not only is the silence of the apartment articulated by Kerouac’s narration, it is also emphasized by the shots of the tightly shut lips of all in the parment, and contrasts the extra-diagetic silence of the animated congregation of the previous exterior scene with its images of speech.
Gregory slumps drunkenly while Milo’s wife berates him for the Beats’ behavior. From the wife’s seated position the camera flows around the room, to the mirrored door of the bathroom; “The Queen of Sheba takes a bath in this bathtub every day”, then across the cooking surfaces, where Kerouac’s narration describes the cockroaches that inhabit the apartment: “cockroaches, cockroaches, coffee cockroaches, stove cockroaches, city cockroaches, spot cockroaches, melted cheese cockroaches, Chaplin cockroaches, peanut butter cockroaches – cockroach cockroach – cockroach of the eyes – cockroach, mirror, boom, bang”. The narrative rap is accomained by the jazz soundtrack, along with a quick-fire montage of images of Alan dancing with gun-fingers pointed like a child playing cowboys. Then, as the rap ends, the film resumes its track around the room. As the bookcase comes into shot the narration states “Jung, Frued, Jung, Reich” as if reading the titles from the bookcase. Returning to long-shot the Bishop states “Strange thoughts you young, uh, people have.” Gregory walks over to the Bishop and sits at his feet, simultaneously Peter walks to the table asking “Is everything holy, is alligators holy, Bishop? Is the world holy? Is the organ of man holy? [the narration continues] The Bishop says, what, holy, holy? He says, Oh my mother wants to play the organ.”
Mezz Mcgillicuddy positions a chair in-front of the pump organ so the old lady can play something “holy”. Noticeably the music the mother plays is the same as which was heard during the exterior scene depicting the street congregation. In a separate room of the apartment Gregory asks Milo, “When are we going to blow man, what are we going to do?” The soundtrack changes to jazz and the tempo increases, emphasized by the increased speed of the editing. In the bedroom McGillicuddy begins to play the French horn. A woman laying on the bed tosses and rolls away from him. While in the living room Alan has joined in the ‘confrontation’ with the Bishop asking him, in quick fire questions, punctuating the jazz rhythms, “are holy flowers holy? Is the world holy? Is glasses holy? Is time holy? Is all the white moonlight holy? Empty rooms are holy? You holy? Come on Bishop tell us. Toy holy? Byzantine holy? Is mock holy? Izzamerican flag holy? Is girl holy? Is your sister holy? What is holy? Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy? And car holy and light holy? Is holy holy?” Each question is punctuated by the cutting of the film to illustrate it, which serves as an emphasis to the quick-fire Kerouac as Alan narration. The music becomes increasingly frenetic as Milo picks up a saxophone and begins to blow. The Bishop states that he should be leaving, and Milo’s wife sees the Bishop and his family out.
Pablo ambles into the room, where he is asked by Milo if he wants to play too. Returning from his bedroom clutching a horn he joins in the impromptu session. The soundtrack becomes punctuated with random blasts of out-of-key horn, emphasizing Pablo’s playing.
Cutting to a long-shot of the table, with more relaxed music on the soundtrack, Milo picks up Pablo, the camera focuses on the action moves to capture the smoke rising from the cigarettes in the ashtray on the table. Kerouac sings: “Up you go, little smoke. Up you go little smoke. Up you go, little smoke.” Each line is higher in pitch. The smoke about which he is singing being both the actual smoke from the ashtray, but also – and more importantly – the child being lovingly carried on his father’s shoulder from the room. Mezz plays alone while, outside, the wife waves goodbye to the Bishop.
Alan announces “Wow, let’s do something we’ve never done” and suggests that they “play cowboys”. Milo – who has returned from his son’s room – begins to tell a story about a cowboy. Milo’s speech is delivered in Kerouac’s driest quasi-William Burroughs-styled tones (indeed the story could almost be a homage to William Burroughs’ blackly humoured routines). The story describes a cowboy who shoots a wino who is sitting at a Preacher’s feet (the story is a reference to Gregory’s behavior). Milo enacts the story while recounting it, finally – as the cowboy shoots the wino – Milo points his finger-gun at Gregory’s head. A close up of the finger-gun death shot to gregory’s head illustrates Gregory’s anger at being the butt of the story; “What’d you do that for? – Pow!”
Milo’s wife returns and once again berates him for his behaviour. The three poets – all sitting in line, wdged onto the sofa – appear like naughty school boys. Led by McGillicuddy the poets run from the apartment, calling for Milo to follow them “Come on down those steps. Let’s go. We’ll go somewhere, we’ll find something. Maybe we’ll play by fires in the Bowery.” Milo argues with his wife, then angrily kicks the rocking chair which rocks back and forth as he leaves the room. In a visual counterpoint to the movements of the rocking chair in the apartment, a ceiling rose in the dark entrance hall swings back and forth: “And the rose swings. She’ll get over it. [Milo appears on the stairs to be greeted by the poets] Come on, Milo. Here comes sweet Milo, beautiful Milo. [In Milo’s voice] Hello gang. Dad a dad a And they’re going dada dad a dada dad a da” the narration becomes accelertated, in an affirmation of joy. The group run out, laughing, into the night.
I have actually seen fragments of the film that is spoken of here. I found them in a torrent of kenneth anger’s films.
*snip*
In 1955, Kenneth Anger made a voyage to Cefalu in Sicily to shoot a documentary about Aleister Crowley’s erotic frescos, Thelema Abbey.
“The film was made for Houlton Television which was a branch of Picture Post an extinct British Magazine. They lost it. I tried to find it and it’s untraceable. I lived in Crowley’s house, alone, but that kind of thing doesn’t bother me. I had to. It was the only way to get it done. I spent three months there scraping the whitewash, which had turned to stone, off the walls. It was a big job, but one of the most exciting things I have ever done. They were still there – all those hyper-psychedelic murals: goblins and demons in fabulous color, scarlet and pumpkin-red. Actually they were good paintings, similar in feel to Ensor.”
Well, this film seems to be lost, but here you can find another film from Anger about Crowley’s paintings. And here is a montage of photos (not from Anger) showing Thelema Abbey and its frescos.
R.U. Sirius posts the follow up to his “Albums that defined the Dot Com Era”, the first part which was previously blogged here, starting with a rather excellent preamble:
*snip*
I spent New Year’s Eve 1999 at my ecstasy dealer’s condo in E-ville (natch), staring at a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay. And even the twinkly bright city sported a patchy waterfront fog like the chin pubes on a 1990s hipster…
I’d spent the entire decade with the same girl, and as we approached the door to an obscene feast of cheese, booze, and drugs — we were stopped short by a pair of very pretty and very fucked up people.
“Oh my god,” the gorgeous brunette half giggled, half implored, “do NOT eat the sushi!”
With that they stumbled down the stairs to god knows where. It was only 11 p.m…
We’d arrived late, and thank Christ. The party people were not happy, as Mr. E had generously spiked the catered sushi with liquid LSD. And while I certainly admired the opulence, I couldn’t understand why he did it, since he — and most of the kids there — were more about pills and coke. (Plus, I’m not a fan of the Pearl Harbor approach to getting your friends ripped to the tits on acid. Or your enemies.)
It was a great night — despite the grumblings of some who weren’t as fortunate as we were in our early warning about the hazards of the hamachi. We watched as the clock struck midnight, ignoring the media hype about a coming Y2K apocalypse, yet feeling on the brink of something.
For me it was huge personal change, good and bad. But because I’m not really a coke guy (well, sure, there’s Vegas and… well, you smell what the Rock is cookin’) — and because I had to drive us home — I stood out on the balcony of a brand new condo, built and rented with dot-com dollars, the only person there who wasn’t on drugs.
I first stumbled upon the name Anais Nin in my teenage years. I was reading alot of early to mid 20th century american-european literature. You know, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, Kerouac. It was very much the era of the confessional, although frankly that term carries a little too much of a catholic guilt undertone for my liking. A more apt expression would be to say that these writers were documenting a lifestyle (often bohemian, definately on the fringes of society) and time period through the lens of their experience and under the influence of writers who had come before them. Nin herself is perhaps best known for her diaries and was very much part of bohemian circles wherever she went, being invovled socially and romantically with writers and artists. She appears in films by both meya derren and kenneth anger; two prominant underground film makers of the time, the former being especially important culturally for creating avant garde works in the predominantly male-dominated counterculture although to reduce both Anais and Maya’ contributions to their paticular gender is to pay them a great disservice. I mean, Kenneth Anger is also pretty damn vital too, especially considering his representations of homosexuality, but to say that this is all there is to his work is as bad as just giving props to Deren and Nin for being female.
Anyways, barely structured and formless ramblings aside, Nin is also known for her Erotic Writings. I’ve only read one book by Nin, much to my shame, and it was a collection of such writings called Little Birds and was a well worth while read. I urge anyone who has the opportunity to read any of her works to seize the chance.
fuck, where was i going with all this? My head keeps telling me that i need to write posts on Deren and Anger but that’s not where this started.
Oh yeah, Nin. She write good. She lived interesting life surrounded by interesting people. She documented a vital time in 20th century society, art and counterculture in a frank manner. She’s a damn fine writer of erotic fiction. She held her own in social circles dominated by men.
This is her talking about drugs, specifically LSD, taken from one of her diaries:
[Huxley] reminded me that drugs are beneficial if they provide the only access to our nightlife. I realized that the expression “blow my mind” was born of the fact that America had cemented access to imagination and fantasy and that it would take dynamite to remove this block! I believed Leary’s emphasis on the fact we use only one percent of our mind or potential, that everything in our education conspires to restrict and constrict us. I only wished people had had time to study drugs as they studied religion or philosophy and to adapt to this chemical alteration of our bodies.
[LSD’s] value is in being a shortcut to the unconscious, so that one enters the realm of intuition unhampered, pure as it is in children, of direct emotional reaction to nature, to other human beings. In a sense it is the return to the spontaneity and freshness of childhood vision which makes every child able to paint or sing.
Raindance
Film making tips, courses, festival and all-round UK indie film behomoth
Senses of Cinema
‘online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema’ based out of australia
Sight & Sound magazine
official magazine of the British Film Institute. Excellent film scholarship, features and reviews; Selected articles from the print magazine archive and online exclusives.
EITHER/OR/BORED 