Top 5:
5. Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - Michael Cera and some chick from The 40 Year Old Virgin run around New York for a night trying to see a band or something. I dunno. It sounded good though.
4. The Soloist - Directed by Joe Wright, the guy who directed Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, and Jamie Foxx. A journalist meets a Julliard-trained homeless guy when trying to write an article and you can probably figure out what happens.
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Directed by the wonderful, wonderful David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac) and based on a short story by the even more wonderful F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's about a man who ages backward - grows younger, not older. Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and other big names.
2. Synecdoche, New York - Written/directed by Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Eternal Sunshine (of the Spotless Mind), Adaptation., and Being John Malkovich, among others. Starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener (again!), Michelle Williams, and a bunch of others big names. PSH plays a director who builds a life-size replica of New York City in a warehouse as part of his new play.
1. Revolutionary Road - Sam Mendes, the guy who directed American Beauty. His wife and the youngest woman ever to be nominated for 4 Oscars, Kate Winslet. And her Titanic costar Leonardo DiCaprio. 1950s. They play 2 free spirits who get trapped in mundane lives. It doesn't get any better than this. Absolutely cannot wait.
Also:
~ Frost/Nixon - Ron Howard directs the film version of the play about the talks between Frost and Nixon after Watergate.
~ Australia - Baz Luhrmann's latest. I'm not a huge fan of Nicole Kidman, but Hugh Jackman is immensely talented and always surprises me.
~ Milk - So much buzz about the Sean Penn / Emile Hirsch flick directed by Good Will Hunting's Gus van Sant, I guess I have to add it to the list.
~ Doubt - Meryl Streep and Amy Adams with PSH. A nun suspects and accuses a priest of abusing a young black man in the 1960s. Written and directed by the man who wrote the award-winning play on which it's based, and Adams and PSH were in the original Broadway production. I bet it's awesome.
Plus:
~ Bolt - [Pixar-less?] Disney movie about a dog who thinks he's a hero. Voice talents aside (Miley Cyrus? John Travolta? Ugh.) it looks good.
~ Quantum of Solace - The new James Bond flick. Daniel Craig's back. Looks good.
~ Zack and Miri Make a Porno - Kevin Smith's latest with Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks. Probably highly inappropriate but probably also hilarious.
~ The Road - Based on Cormac McCarthy's highly acclaimed book. Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall. The last McCarthy adaptation? No Country for Old Men. Yeah. Just don't expect the feel-good movie of the year.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The Many Facets of Cary Grant
I never used to understand how people could devote themselves to studying one topic or one person. I used to think biographers must get so tired of reading constantly about one person all the time. But I can understand that continuous fascination now - at least, in regards to Cary Grant.
I've only seen six or seven of his movies, and they're all from the 1930s, the decade of Screwball Comedy, which is wonderfully underrated these days. Every once in a while, I'll get on a Cary Grant kick, and become absorbed in watching movies starring him or reading more about him. When I first started reading Marc Eliot's biography of him, before I knew anything about Cary Grant, I wasn't expecting very good writing - it's over 380 pages. Granted, he went into pretty rich detail about many of Grant's 70+ films and about what Hollywood was like back then, but even without all the extra depth, it'd still be a long book: Cary Grant was fascinating.
As an actor, he was amazing. I haven't seen him in any of his more serious roles, but I will soon. Even without that, Cary Grant was wonderful at comedies. On screen, he was charismatic, charming, witty, and quick-tongued; since he was originally trained as an acrobat for Vaudeville performances, he was great at physical comedy as well, from trips to double takes and pratfalls in general. Yet you would never mistake him for a slapstick actor: he always did it gracefully and made it look so easy. The funny part is, everything he did was calculated. He didn't like performing spontaneously, he didn't like improvisation - he liked rehearsing over and over until everything was perfect. As much as he could, he chose his roles and directors carefully, never wanting to be the pursuer - always the pursued. In the comedies, he was the quintessential leading man; in the more serious films, his darker side came out beautifully. Hitchcock perfected that, it's said. I also read once that Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were Hitchcock's favorite leading men for his films - he directed them four times each over the course of their careers - because Cary Grant represented Hitchcock as he wanted to see himself, and Jimmy Stewart represented Hitchcock as he existed.
As a part of classic Hollywood, Cary Grant is legendary. Even disregarding his status as a performer. He was the first major actor to break the studio system. It used to be that an actor signed an exclusive contract with a studio and could only make movies for that studio, unless the studio heads agreed to lend him out to another studio for another picture. The actor didn't have much say in his career decisions. Cary Grant, though, got his agent Frank Vincent to negotiate nonexclusive contracts with both Columbia and RKO simultaneously. The Academy punished him for that. He never won an Oscar; the only Academy Award he received was an honorary one in the 1970s. 1973 I believe. There are several films where this is conspicuous - you can look at the list of who was nominated for the film, and the absence of his name is extremely noticeable, like The Philadelphia Story - Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Ruth Hussey (the other 3 leads) were all nominated, and it was also nominated for Best Screenplay, Director, and Picture. Jimmy Stewart won (though he said it was his reward for not winning the year before for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and it won Best Screenplay. Grant didn't even to go the ceremony.
His early family life wasn't boring either. He came to the U.S. as a teenager in a Vaudeville troupe. His mother Elsie was committed to a mental institution before then; she'd been considered mad since her first son, Cary's older brother, died as a little boy. This was back when Cary Grant was still just Archie Leach from Bristol. He lived in New York with the troupe for a while, eventually finding his way to Broadway. His last stage role was a character named Cary Lockwood, then he signed with...Paramount I think. Publicists recommended he change the "Lockwood" because, I think, another star already had a similar name. Since the C and G initials were apparently doing Clark Gable and Gary Cooper well, he chose Grant.
He was married five times. His first wife was jealous of his relationship with friend/housemate and possible lover Randolph Scott. His second wife was an heiress who was giving money to her Nazi-supporting ex-husband. He had to start spying on her for J. Edgar Hoover so as not to be sent back to Britain and be drafted for the war. His third wife got him into the psychotherapy program she was in - which got him into LSD when the drug was still in experimental stages. His fourth wife gave him his only child, his daughter Jennifer, when he was about 62. And his fifth wife was still Mrs. Cary Grant when he died at 83.
The idea of the "real" Cary Grant still mystifies people. On screen, he had that charming, comedic, leading-man persona. So that's who he became in real life. He worked hard to maintain his physique, and to make sure he was always dressed impeccably. The man isn't still a style icon for nothing. In life, his look was carefully planned, yet on screen, he carried himself with a careless grace in such a way that you didn't think of him as a distant, unobtainable star, but as a human. The comedies focused on his light, ideal romantic side, while it's said that Hitchcock brought out the real Cary Grant by focusing on the dark, which I love. I like to think that the lines between the actor and the person blurred in his own confusion, and I hope there was a side to him that no one ever truly discovered. Everything about him was calculated - he shaped an image and persona and career that he wanted people to identify him with - and I heard a critic say that he stands out among actors from that period in that he never let himself become identified with an era. Clark Gable and Gary Cooper aren't seen today the way Cary Grant is, and their body of work doesn't hold up the same way his does.
"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant; unsure of either, suspecting each. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until I finally became that person. Or he became me."
- Cary Grant
I've only seen six or seven of his movies, and they're all from the 1930s, the decade of Screwball Comedy, which is wonderfully underrated these days. Every once in a while, I'll get on a Cary Grant kick, and become absorbed in watching movies starring him or reading more about him. When I first started reading Marc Eliot's biography of him, before I knew anything about Cary Grant, I wasn't expecting very good writing - it's over 380 pages. Granted, he went into pretty rich detail about many of Grant's 70+ films and about what Hollywood was like back then, but even without all the extra depth, it'd still be a long book: Cary Grant was fascinating.
As an actor, he was amazing. I haven't seen him in any of his more serious roles, but I will soon. Even without that, Cary Grant was wonderful at comedies. On screen, he was charismatic, charming, witty, and quick-tongued; since he was originally trained as an acrobat for Vaudeville performances, he was great at physical comedy as well, from trips to double takes and pratfalls in general. Yet you would never mistake him for a slapstick actor: he always did it gracefully and made it look so easy. The funny part is, everything he did was calculated. He didn't like performing spontaneously, he didn't like improvisation - he liked rehearsing over and over until everything was perfect. As much as he could, he chose his roles and directors carefully, never wanting to be the pursuer - always the pursued. In the comedies, he was the quintessential leading man; in the more serious films, his darker side came out beautifully. Hitchcock perfected that, it's said. I also read once that Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were Hitchcock's favorite leading men for his films - he directed them four times each over the course of their careers - because Cary Grant represented Hitchcock as he wanted to see himself, and Jimmy Stewart represented Hitchcock as he existed.
As a part of classic Hollywood, Cary Grant is legendary. Even disregarding his status as a performer. He was the first major actor to break the studio system. It used to be that an actor signed an exclusive contract with a studio and could only make movies for that studio, unless the studio heads agreed to lend him out to another studio for another picture. The actor didn't have much say in his career decisions. Cary Grant, though, got his agent Frank Vincent to negotiate nonexclusive contracts with both Columbia and RKO simultaneously. The Academy punished him for that. He never won an Oscar; the only Academy Award he received was an honorary one in the 1970s. 1973 I believe. There are several films where this is conspicuous - you can look at the list of who was nominated for the film, and the absence of his name is extremely noticeable, like The Philadelphia Story - Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Ruth Hussey (the other 3 leads) were all nominated, and it was also nominated for Best Screenplay, Director, and Picture. Jimmy Stewart won (though he said it was his reward for not winning the year before for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and it won Best Screenplay. Grant didn't even to go the ceremony.
His early family life wasn't boring either. He came to the U.S. as a teenager in a Vaudeville troupe. His mother Elsie was committed to a mental institution before then; she'd been considered mad since her first son, Cary's older brother, died as a little boy. This was back when Cary Grant was still just Archie Leach from Bristol. He lived in New York with the troupe for a while, eventually finding his way to Broadway. His last stage role was a character named Cary Lockwood, then he signed with...Paramount I think. Publicists recommended he change the "Lockwood" because, I think, another star already had a similar name. Since the C and G initials were apparently doing Clark Gable and Gary Cooper well, he chose Grant.
He was married five times. His first wife was jealous of his relationship with friend/housemate and possible lover Randolph Scott. His second wife was an heiress who was giving money to her Nazi-supporting ex-husband. He had to start spying on her for J. Edgar Hoover so as not to be sent back to Britain and be drafted for the war. His third wife got him into the psychotherapy program she was in - which got him into LSD when the drug was still in experimental stages. His fourth wife gave him his only child, his daughter Jennifer, when he was about 62. And his fifth wife was still Mrs. Cary Grant when he died at 83.
The idea of the "real" Cary Grant still mystifies people. On screen, he had that charming, comedic, leading-man persona. So that's who he became in real life. He worked hard to maintain his physique, and to make sure he was always dressed impeccably. The man isn't still a style icon for nothing. In life, his look was carefully planned, yet on screen, he carried himself with a careless grace in such a way that you didn't think of him as a distant, unobtainable star, but as a human. The comedies focused on his light, ideal romantic side, while it's said that Hitchcock brought out the real Cary Grant by focusing on the dark, which I love. I like to think that the lines between the actor and the person blurred in his own confusion, and I hope there was a side to him that no one ever truly discovered. Everything about him was calculated - he shaped an image and persona and career that he wanted people to identify him with - and I heard a critic say that he stands out among actors from that period in that he never let himself become identified with an era. Clark Gable and Gary Cooper aren't seen today the way Cary Grant is, and their body of work doesn't hold up the same way his does.
"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant; unsure of either, suspecting each. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until I finally became that person. Or he became me."
- Cary Grant
Remembering Andy Warhol
I just realized I never posted this. Oops.
So here it is. A bunch of people who knew Andy Warhol recalling different things about him for Interview. Andy Warhol fascinates me. He's something completely different from anything, really, that I've ever seen or known. That's why hearing what other people had to say about him and his work really interested me.
Glenn O'Brien: What did you learn from Andy?
Pat Hackett: Throw everything away! It only gives people material to build their misconceptions of you on.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF ANDY?
Betsey Johnson: A silent, mysterious spirit.
John Giorno: I took hold of his limp hand, squeezed and held it, and we looked into each other's eyes. Andy hummed, "Ohhh!"
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ANDY?
Irving Blum: The importance of going forward and keeping your focus.
Chris Stein: To relax. that might sound odd, but I always thought that he somehow managed to let things roll off him. And he could be invisible and a celebrity simultaneously.
That's something that I find particularly interesting: everyone seems to remember Andy as being a huge public figure, yet a willow-the-wisp who did more observing and listening than anything else.
Jill Selsman: Always listen, even if it seems like you're not listening, because there are some pretty good ideas out there from the most unlikely sources.
Paloma Picasso: Not to worry if people like you for the wrong reason. Just use that energy to build on it.
Nick Rhodes: To surround yourself with inspirational people.
Sigh. We do what we can. I guess you should be able to find inspiration in everything, but it's not always as easy as I think it should be, and sometimes finding the people that will inspire you the most is the hard part.
Robert Hawkins: Graciousness and humility equal beauty. How to pain the "kinetic cliche" brushstroke. (Swooshy S-shapes)
John Waters: To always have a sense of humor and to never brag and to make sure to praise what everyone else hates.
Debbie Harry: To be a good listener.
Francesco Clemente: That painting is alive. The notion of masterpiece is dead.
Stephen Shore: I watched him make aesthetic decisions. It was my first real exposure to aesthetic thinking. I also appreciated his sense of detached enjoyment of American culture.
Bebe Buell: That presentation is key. He was magical in his delivery.
Walter Steding: To have faith.
Patty D'Arbanville: To sit back and watch.
Cornelia Guest: To be interested in everyone and everything.
Ronnie Cutrone: 1) That art is a job like everything else; 2) That romantic love is all illusion; 3) That it's really hard to be famous and that everybody famous must deserve it even if I can't see it; 4) Don't waste time defining art (you can't), just do it; 5) That there are no bosses--we all serve art if we're good enough to get the job of making it.
At first I didn't understand what Shore meant, but I think I know now. The conscious framing of a photograph is an aesthetic decision. The choice of color, style, arrangement of anything - the clothes you choose to wear in the morning - I think I'd consider those aesthetic decisions.
I'll get back to Cutrone's comments another time. Too much to say to those. I think they're all interesting if not universally applicable lessons though.
Haha, also. It's so easy to demand someone to have faith. To actually have it is a whole different matter completely.
WHAT DID ANDY LEARN FROM YOU?
Benjamin Liu: Not all Asians are like Yoko Ono.
HAHAHA, love it.
Ivy Nicholson: He learned that a woman could love him. He once told me that he loved me more than his male friends because I was more masculine than them.
John Wilcock: ...Over the years I have noticed echoes of other things I said [in Andy's work]. Andy was like all true poets--bad poets imitate, good poets steal. He incorporated ideas from everywhere and everyone.
Creation is nice, but I think pure, completely original creation is extremely rare these days. But I do also think that reinterpretation is an offshoot of creation.
WHAT'S YOUR MOST VIVID MENTAL IMAGE OF ANDY?
Farrah Fawcett: What I remember most about Andy is that he was the only person I had ever met who seemed even more shy than I am around strangers.
Diane von Furstenberg: He was never alone. He was always surrounded by a group. At the time it was Fred Hughes, Candy Darling, Jane Worth (who became my first model). Andy was a voyeur. He did not communicate much, but made people pose and act in front of him. He always had a tape recorder or a camera on hand.
Ultra Violet: The first time I saw him lose his wig, I was unable to pull my eyes away when I saw a metallic metal snap embedded in the front part of his skull.
Yeah, that just freaks me out. :: Shudder ::
But I think it's so interesting that he was never alone, because I think he was perpetually lonely.
DID ANDY SAY ANYTHING THAT STUCK WITH YOU?
Walter Steding: "You're not the one who decides what's good."
Bob Colacello: "If I let myself have feelings, I'd commit suicide."
Nick Rhodes: "If you don't go, you won't know." He could easily become more enthusiastic about going to a dull event than a grand affair and it usually paid off.
Patti D'Arbanville: "Pretty will get you pretty far." He was right.
Vincent Fremont: "If you are not having fun with the work you are doing, then don't do it."
That's going to go on my wall.
TELL US SOMETHING MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANDY.
Ivy Nicholson: We were threatened by one of his boyfriends, Rod la Rod. Andy took my hand and led me to the backseat of his car. He was on L.S.D. We soul kissed for one hour and a half. 100 percent love.
Chuck Close: Andy seemed to be part of that cliche, "What you see is what you get." But he was actually more than what people expected. I think he was earnest and serious.
Some people are more than what you expect. Some people are less. Some are just what you see. I think I'd always like to be more than what people expect. I mean, I don't think I would ever consciously try for that. I wouldn't try to not be myself. But it'd be nice if it just worked out that I was more than people expected. I would like that.
Ultra Violet: One time, alone on the fire escape at the Factory, I grabbed him and said, "Let's make love." He got stiff and cold as he resisted me. He let out a loud moan as he wriggled out of my embrace. I thought he was afraid of heights, but I realized he was afraid of me.
Francesco Clemente: He was lonely.
Stephen Shore: One day, when he came into the Factory, he asked me if I had happened to watch a certain movie that was on channel 2 late the previous night. It was a terrible 1930s tearjerker starring Priscilla Lane. I said that, in fact, I had. He asked me to tell him the story, because he said he had started to watch it but had begun to cry and cried himself to sleep. He added that when he woke up, the TV was off. His mother had looked in, saw Andy sleeping with the TV on, and turned it off.
I love that story. I don't know why, but there's something wonderful about it. I may figure it out day, but I don't think I want to. I think I'd just like to leave it as a little sketch like that.
Nick Rhodes: He sometimes liked to carry a fistful of loose diamonds in his inside jacket pocket. He was excited by the fact that nobody knew they were there.
I would have liked to meet Andy Warhol. No, not even. I would have liked to observe him. My dad says he saw him with Ultra Violet in the Village one day when he was young. I can't even fathom what it would be like to bump into that man on the street.
Robert Hawkins: Andy loved them more than they knew.
Susan Blond: He returned phone calls. Andy might buy a painting with a woman with her eyes crossed. He liked the mistakes in things.
I feel like that Robert Hawkins bit is true of a lot of people, though. I think most people love others more than they know. I love everyone more than they know. But in the big picture, isn't it kind of silly that they shouldn't know? Everyone should know how much they're loved. Yeah.
I also like the mistakes in things. I like the mistakes in people, too.
DID ANDY CHANGE THE WORLD? IF SO, HOW?
Elizabeth Taylor: Andy saw the world through different-colored glasses, ones that we will never imagine. He was fortunate but tortured. Torture of his kind seems to plague all great artists because of their vision. They see deeper, they think deeper, and they translate their ideas from the mundane to the realistic. Not that there will ever be anything realistic about Andy's vision. It will never be conceived as mundane or realistic--only poetic, and visionary, and mind-blowing.
I don't think you could ever really ask for more than that. I don't think I could, at least. Though, at the same time, I feel like he probably sacrificed so many basic human experiences - not consciously, I mean - to be that way. Rather, I feel like he probably lost out on so many basic human experiences in being that way. I like that contradiction in how I view him, though - I'm not sure if I should admire and respect what he did as an artist, or if I should pity him for missing out on so much.
Palomma Picasso: I'm not sure he changed the world. But he certainly figured out where it was going before anybody else.
Francesco Clemente: Real artists leave the world alone.
Walter Steding: No, he let it happen.
I like that. Those. All 3. It's a different perspective, a way I never thought about art and the world before.
Bob Colacello: Not as much as Ronald Reagan, but quite a bit. He identified the 20th-century cult of fame and promoted it. He legitimized photography, pornography, and television as art. I'm not sure if this was good or bad.
I don't know either, but I sure appreciate the first and last parts, and I definitely know others appreciate the middle, haha.
Bryan Ferry: He was the prime mover in opening the doors of the art-world to a much greater public.
Chris Stein: He changed the relationship between art and commerce, uptown and downtown.
That idea still blows my mind. I guess I got caught in that trap of thinking of art as something non-profitable, of thinking of artists as independent spirits who either are true to themselves or sell out for money, and that it's anathema for it to be otherwise. But Warhol really believed that art and business could - should, really - go hand in hand, that the best art was business art, commercial art. I still don't know if I can personally think that way, though.
Betsey Johnson: He brought art to the masses that the masses enjoyed.
Kenny Scharf: He redefined what it meant to be an artist and opened up all the boundaries that were so in place at the time. He made it okay to exist in the world outside the art world--the world at large.
I'm sure there are people who still can't handle that idea, that art is for everyone and everyone can appreciate art, and that "art" has a much broader definition than the one critics assign it. I'm not even sure if I fully can. But shouldn't it be that way? Shouldn't as many people as possible experience beauty and art and culture in whichever ways they can?
Even if you don't like Andy Warhol or his work or what he did or anything about him, you can't deny that if he'd never existed, today's world would be a vastly different place.
So here it is. A bunch of people who knew Andy Warhol recalling different things about him for Interview. Andy Warhol fascinates me. He's something completely different from anything, really, that I've ever seen or known. That's why hearing what other people had to say about him and his work really interested me.
Glenn O'Brien: What did you learn from Andy?
Pat Hackett: Throw everything away! It only gives people material to build their misconceptions of you on.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF ANDY?
Betsey Johnson: A silent, mysterious spirit.
John Giorno: I took hold of his limp hand, squeezed and held it, and we looked into each other's eyes. Andy hummed, "Ohhh!"
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ANDY?
Irving Blum: The importance of going forward and keeping your focus.
Chris Stein: To relax. that might sound odd, but I always thought that he somehow managed to let things roll off him. And he could be invisible and a celebrity simultaneously.
That's something that I find particularly interesting: everyone seems to remember Andy as being a huge public figure, yet a willow-the-wisp who did more observing and listening than anything else.
Jill Selsman: Always listen, even if it seems like you're not listening, because there are some pretty good ideas out there from the most unlikely sources.
Paloma Picasso: Not to worry if people like you for the wrong reason. Just use that energy to build on it.
Nick Rhodes: To surround yourself with inspirational people.
Sigh. We do what we can. I guess you should be able to find inspiration in everything, but it's not always as easy as I think it should be, and sometimes finding the people that will inspire you the most is the hard part.
Robert Hawkins: Graciousness and humility equal beauty. How to pain the "kinetic cliche" brushstroke. (Swooshy S-shapes)
John Waters: To always have a sense of humor and to never brag and to make sure to praise what everyone else hates.
Debbie Harry: To be a good listener.
Francesco Clemente: That painting is alive. The notion of masterpiece is dead.
Stephen Shore: I watched him make aesthetic decisions. It was my first real exposure to aesthetic thinking. I also appreciated his sense of detached enjoyment of American culture.
Bebe Buell: That presentation is key. He was magical in his delivery.
Walter Steding: To have faith.
Patty D'Arbanville: To sit back and watch.
Cornelia Guest: To be interested in everyone and everything.
Ronnie Cutrone: 1) That art is a job like everything else; 2) That romantic love is all illusion; 3) That it's really hard to be famous and that everybody famous must deserve it even if I can't see it; 4) Don't waste time defining art (you can't), just do it; 5) That there are no bosses--we all serve art if we're good enough to get the job of making it.
At first I didn't understand what Shore meant, but I think I know now. The conscious framing of a photograph is an aesthetic decision. The choice of color, style, arrangement of anything - the clothes you choose to wear in the morning - I think I'd consider those aesthetic decisions.
I'll get back to Cutrone's comments another time. Too much to say to those. I think they're all interesting if not universally applicable lessons though.
Haha, also. It's so easy to demand someone to have faith. To actually have it is a whole different matter completely.
WHAT DID ANDY LEARN FROM YOU?
Benjamin Liu: Not all Asians are like Yoko Ono.
HAHAHA, love it.
Ivy Nicholson: He learned that a woman could love him. He once told me that he loved me more than his male friends because I was more masculine than them.
John Wilcock: ...Over the years I have noticed echoes of other things I said [in Andy's work]. Andy was like all true poets--bad poets imitate, good poets steal. He incorporated ideas from everywhere and everyone.
Creation is nice, but I think pure, completely original creation is extremely rare these days. But I do also think that reinterpretation is an offshoot of creation.
WHAT'S YOUR MOST VIVID MENTAL IMAGE OF ANDY?
Farrah Fawcett: What I remember most about Andy is that he was the only person I had ever met who seemed even more shy than I am around strangers.
Diane von Furstenberg: He was never alone. He was always surrounded by a group. At the time it was Fred Hughes, Candy Darling, Jane Worth (who became my first model). Andy was a voyeur. He did not communicate much, but made people pose and act in front of him. He always had a tape recorder or a camera on hand.
Ultra Violet: The first time I saw him lose his wig, I was unable to pull my eyes away when I saw a metallic metal snap embedded in the front part of his skull.
Yeah, that just freaks me out. :: Shudder ::
But I think it's so interesting that he was never alone, because I think he was perpetually lonely.
DID ANDY SAY ANYTHING THAT STUCK WITH YOU?
Walter Steding: "You're not the one who decides what's good."
Bob Colacello: "If I let myself have feelings, I'd commit suicide."
Nick Rhodes: "If you don't go, you won't know." He could easily become more enthusiastic about going to a dull event than a grand affair and it usually paid off.
Patti D'Arbanville: "Pretty will get you pretty far." He was right.
Vincent Fremont: "If you are not having fun with the work you are doing, then don't do it."
That's going to go on my wall.
TELL US SOMETHING MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANDY.
Ivy Nicholson: We were threatened by one of his boyfriends, Rod la Rod. Andy took my hand and led me to the backseat of his car. He was on L.S.D. We soul kissed for one hour and a half. 100 percent love.
Chuck Close: Andy seemed to be part of that cliche, "What you see is what you get." But he was actually more than what people expected. I think he was earnest and serious.
Some people are more than what you expect. Some people are less. Some are just what you see. I think I'd always like to be more than what people expect. I mean, I don't think I would ever consciously try for that. I wouldn't try to not be myself. But it'd be nice if it just worked out that I was more than people expected. I would like that.
Ultra Violet: One time, alone on the fire escape at the Factory, I grabbed him and said, "Let's make love." He got stiff and cold as he resisted me. He let out a loud moan as he wriggled out of my embrace. I thought he was afraid of heights, but I realized he was afraid of me.
Francesco Clemente: He was lonely.
Stephen Shore: One day, when he came into the Factory, he asked me if I had happened to watch a certain movie that was on channel 2 late the previous night. It was a terrible 1930s tearjerker starring Priscilla Lane. I said that, in fact, I had. He asked me to tell him the story, because he said he had started to watch it but had begun to cry and cried himself to sleep. He added that when he woke up, the TV was off. His mother had looked in, saw Andy sleeping with the TV on, and turned it off.
I love that story. I don't know why, but there's something wonderful about it. I may figure it out day, but I don't think I want to. I think I'd just like to leave it as a little sketch like that.
Nick Rhodes: He sometimes liked to carry a fistful of loose diamonds in his inside jacket pocket. He was excited by the fact that nobody knew they were there.
I would have liked to meet Andy Warhol. No, not even. I would have liked to observe him. My dad says he saw him with Ultra Violet in the Village one day when he was young. I can't even fathom what it would be like to bump into that man on the street.
Robert Hawkins: Andy loved them more than they knew.
Susan Blond: He returned phone calls. Andy might buy a painting with a woman with her eyes crossed. He liked the mistakes in things.
I feel like that Robert Hawkins bit is true of a lot of people, though. I think most people love others more than they know. I love everyone more than they know. But in the big picture, isn't it kind of silly that they shouldn't know? Everyone should know how much they're loved. Yeah.
I also like the mistakes in things. I like the mistakes in people, too.
DID ANDY CHANGE THE WORLD? IF SO, HOW?
Elizabeth Taylor: Andy saw the world through different-colored glasses, ones that we will never imagine. He was fortunate but tortured. Torture of his kind seems to plague all great artists because of their vision. They see deeper, they think deeper, and they translate their ideas from the mundane to the realistic. Not that there will ever be anything realistic about Andy's vision. It will never be conceived as mundane or realistic--only poetic, and visionary, and mind-blowing.
I don't think you could ever really ask for more than that. I don't think I could, at least. Though, at the same time, I feel like he probably sacrificed so many basic human experiences - not consciously, I mean - to be that way. Rather, I feel like he probably lost out on so many basic human experiences in being that way. I like that contradiction in how I view him, though - I'm not sure if I should admire and respect what he did as an artist, or if I should pity him for missing out on so much.
Palomma Picasso: I'm not sure he changed the world. But he certainly figured out where it was going before anybody else.
Francesco Clemente: Real artists leave the world alone.
Walter Steding: No, he let it happen.
I like that. Those. All 3. It's a different perspective, a way I never thought about art and the world before.
Bob Colacello: Not as much as Ronald Reagan, but quite a bit. He identified the 20th-century cult of fame and promoted it. He legitimized photography, pornography, and television as art. I'm not sure if this was good or bad.
I don't know either, but I sure appreciate the first and last parts, and I definitely know others appreciate the middle, haha.
Bryan Ferry: He was the prime mover in opening the doors of the art-world to a much greater public.
Chris Stein: He changed the relationship between art and commerce, uptown and downtown.
That idea still blows my mind. I guess I got caught in that trap of thinking of art as something non-profitable, of thinking of artists as independent spirits who either are true to themselves or sell out for money, and that it's anathema for it to be otherwise. But Warhol really believed that art and business could - should, really - go hand in hand, that the best art was business art, commercial art. I still don't know if I can personally think that way, though.
Betsey Johnson: He brought art to the masses that the masses enjoyed.
Kenny Scharf: He redefined what it meant to be an artist and opened up all the boundaries that were so in place at the time. He made it okay to exist in the world outside the art world--the world at large.
I'm sure there are people who still can't handle that idea, that art is for everyone and everyone can appreciate art, and that "art" has a much broader definition than the one critics assign it. I'm not even sure if I fully can. But shouldn't it be that way? Shouldn't as many people as possible experience beauty and art and culture in whichever ways they can?
Even if you don't like Andy Warhol or his work or what he did or anything about him, you can't deny that if he'd never existed, today's world would be a vastly different place.
Friday, September 26, 2008
"I've never been in love...it all feels more like fiction to me."
Will: Emily, will you, uh, marry me?
April: No.
Will: Goddd.
April: What do you mean, “Will you, uh, marry me?”?! I haven’t seen you in weeks. You don’t look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage. You’re asking me to give up my . . . my freedom, my joie de vivre, for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you want to marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda.
Will: Oh! Ohhh my god.
April: You should have got on your knee.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it seems so easy to fall into the trappings of social norms, because they set the status quo on so many things that we don't even think about. Like, as April points out, marriage.
[Long excerpt coming up]
Celine: I was thinking, for me it’s better I don’t romanticize things as much any more. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they’re not in regard to my love life. It doesn’t make me sad; it’s just the way it is.
Jesse: Is that why you’re in a relationship with someone who’s never around?
Celine: [laughing] Yes, obviously I can’t deal with the day-to-day life of a relationship. [seriously] Yeah, we, you know, have this exciting time together, and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I’m not dying inside. When somebody is always around me, I’m like, suffocating.
Jesse: No wait, you just said that you need to love, and to be loved.
Celine: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes me nauseous! It’s a disaster. I mean, I’m really happy only when I’m on my own. Even being alone—it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It’s not so easy for me to be all romantic. …I’ve just had too many . . . blah relationships. They were mean, they cared for me, but there was no real connection or excitement. At least, not from my side.
Jesse: I’m—I’m sorry, is it really that bad? It’s not, right?
Celine: You know, it’s not even that. I was fine. Until I read your fucking book. It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me of how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now, now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people any more. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again...
Jesse: I—I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that.
Celine: You know what, reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they are now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them to care and respect women—
Jesse: I think I’m one of those guys.
Celine: —You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them! I would have said no, but then at least they could have asked! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man, never. But what does it mean, “the right man”? The “love of your life”? The concept is absurd, that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?!
Also, the more I watch Before Sunset - well, first of all, the more I realize it's absolutely brilliant, especially when paired with Before Sunrise, then you realize Jesse and Celine as characters and performances are that much more beautifully, beautifully subtle and nuanced and real and detailed and perfect than when the movie stands alone - but really, the more I watch it, the more I identify with Celine. Take out the ultra-liberal activism and I'm basically her. But it always makes me think that marriage is just an institution that makes you take something irrational and impermanent and constantly changing, and force it into a mold of practicality and pragmatism and sensibility. It just doesn't work like that in my mind. Yet I think there's this constant pressure on most people I know to want to marry. Beyond that, even - in high school, we're practically forced to take the SAT's and apply to college, and it's implied to us that it's impossible to succeed otherwise. From there, we have to choose a degree. One line of study. Then we graduate and we have to get jobs. But not just a job - we have to choose a career, a practical line of work to which we can devote ourselves and from which we can make a comfortable living. And obviously after that we have to get married and start a family. Because that's the thing to do. It's like the whole '80s yuppie thing only evolved, so it doesn't necessarily mean a life of luxury but one of financial success, if only on a middle class level.
And my problem with that is that not everyone wants the same thing. In fact, most people don't want the same thing. Or else, they really don't want the same thing but they think they do because they've been tricked and trapped into it. But really, this whole life doesn't apply to everyone. It's one of the things I like about St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin starts off as this crazy cynic about love and marriage, even though he changes by the end, and Lesley accuses Alec of not wanting to get married, but of wanting to be able to send out a Christmas card with a picture of them on it, and Billy ends up realizing that the "after college life" isn't for him and he has to stop trying to be Alec. They all start off with these ideas of how life is supposed to be and they eventually realize that they just have to do their own thing. Well, to some extent.
It's funny because I just got back from my Theater & Society class, in which we're watching a bunch of documentaries on the 1950s. Today's was called "Let's Play House" and it was about how after World War II, there was this huge marriage and consequently baby boom, and the consequences. Men felt their masculinity was being threatened when they had to go back to civilian life and enter the corporate world - thus Sloan Wilson's book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Women, on the other hand, were feeling pressured to find a husband - after the war, the numbers said that 1 in 7 women would have to be single because of the death toll. So, they were pushed into this lifestyle of hyper-femininity in which they couldn't work, had to be housewives and mothers, and had to literally fit this physical mold of the American woman. She had to be the June Cleaver figure. And then all these men were unhappy because their lives were dull and corporate life was dissatisfying, and all these women were unhappy because they weren't allowed to do anything but cook and clean and basically not have a personality. Everything in the media was supporting this - movies, books, magazines - until a few people broke out and rebelled, like Wilson, and Betty Friedan (who wrote The Feminine Mystique).
In comparison, we have so much freedom today, so much choice, yet I feel like the current is still carrying us towards these unfulfilling lifestyles that society mandates are what we should want. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting that whole packaged lifestyle, either, though, even though it very much sounds like I am, haha. The more I think about it, it's just not for me. While it's liberating to realize what you want is not what everyone else wants, it's also daunting, because in a way, you're preconditioned to fail. Or preconditioned to succeed, I'm not sure which. I mean, you're setting out to do what no one else wants you to be able to do. That's what I meant. What is that quote?
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
And also, I'm really not totally condemning marriage here or anything. Because in the society we live in, it does make sense. I just don't think it makes sense for humans in general, haha. And I'm not bashing love here, either. It's just...a mystery to me. Which sounds painfully obvious and stupid, but I mean it in a beyond-the-cliched-ways way. Because to me, love is different to everyone. And in some people, I think it's buried deeper than in others.
Jesse: We’re just living in a pretense of a marriage, responsibility, and all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.…and, and I know that there’s something wrong, and I know that I can’t keep living like this, and I think, there’s gotta be more to love than commitment, but then I think that I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love...
Oh yeah. Romance. That's another thing. One of those Interview segments quoted Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone as saying that Andy Warhol taught him that, "All romantic love is an illusion." I never thought of it like that. All romance in general, though, I think is an illusion. It's all in how you choose (whether consciously or unconsciously) how to perceive things. Romance and cynicism are both just filters. They're films through which you see the world. So it makes sense that romantic love would be an illusion. It's just how you're choosing to see love. Not that I have a problem with that. Romance makes life palatable and easier to digest. That can become problematic, but in general, that rosiness is nice. Romance, in a way, is hope. And while part of me hates hope - because hope, like expectation, often leads to severe disappointment - a character one movie or another that I was watching in a class the other day pointed out, "We all hope. It's what keeps us alive." I think that was during one of the John Cassavetes movies that I didn't really like. Faces maybe. But I digress. Except not really because I think I was done.
No I wasn't. I was about to say that I might have misinterpreted the way Cutrone meant "romantic love", but it still made me think of it the way I did. If he meant "romantic love" not as, being "in love" with romance, but just as, being "in love" in general (did that make ANY sense? Yikes, I need to sleep), then I'm not sure I agree. But like I was saying before, I think it's different for everyone. For some people it's harder to fall in love than for others. "Here's what I know. There are some people who fall in love over and over. And there are others who can only seem to do it once." Haha, that was from the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. But I like it. And I like that it says "seems," because I don't think that it's humanly possible for anyone to fall in love only once. I think it's possible to go your whole life being in love with only one person - but that's just because there's no way you'll ever meet all the people you could fall in love with. And then there are those people who are perfectly capable of falling in love with each other but they don't let themselves. But that's something else entirely.
It's like that Jane Austen Book Club bit:
"A person's no more sane falling out of love than falling into it, I guess..."
"What do we know about it, you and I?" Allegra asked. "We're not the sort who fall out of love, are we?"
Oh, and it reminds me of Persuasion. Anne and Capt. Wentworth both try to love other people. They try to resign themselves to the idea of loving another. What is it, eight years, that pass? Anne firmly believes that it's easier for men to fall out of love than women, that they are better at forgetting, and that women suffer more, but then Capt. Wentworth writes her that wonderful, wonderful letter completely contradicting her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." Oh, that's also like in Before Sunset. Nine years pass and Celine pretends to have forgotten because Jesse waltzes in all romantic and married and she thinks he's moved on, so she has that breakdown in the car, but then he reveals that he hasn't, and that he's still suffering just as much, if not more, than she is. Most amazing scene in the whole movie.
Ack, think I wrote enough? Too much overlap right now. None of this even makes sense any more. Sorry about that.
----------------
Now playing: Feist - So Sorry
April: No.
Will: Goddd.
April: What do you mean, “Will you, uh, marry me?”?! I haven’t seen you in weeks. You don’t look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage. You’re asking me to give up my . . . my freedom, my joie de vivre, for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you want to marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda.
Will: Oh! Ohhh my god.
April: You should have got on your knee.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it seems so easy to fall into the trappings of social norms, because they set the status quo on so many things that we don't even think about. Like, as April points out, marriage.
[Long excerpt coming up]
Celine: I was thinking, for me it’s better I don’t romanticize things as much any more. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they’re not in regard to my love life. It doesn’t make me sad; it’s just the way it is.
Jesse: Is that why you’re in a relationship with someone who’s never around?
Celine: [laughing] Yes, obviously I can’t deal with the day-to-day life of a relationship. [seriously] Yeah, we, you know, have this exciting time together, and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I’m not dying inside. When somebody is always around me, I’m like, suffocating.
Jesse: No wait, you just said that you need to love, and to be loved.
Celine: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes me nauseous! It’s a disaster. I mean, I’m really happy only when I’m on my own. Even being alone—it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It’s not so easy for me to be all romantic. …I’ve just had too many . . . blah relationships. They were mean, they cared for me, but there was no real connection or excitement. At least, not from my side.
Jesse: I’m—I’m sorry, is it really that bad? It’s not, right?
Celine: You know, it’s not even that. I was fine. Until I read your fucking book. It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me of how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now, now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people any more. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again...
Jesse: I—I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that.
Celine: You know what, reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they are now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them to care and respect women—
Jesse: I think I’m one of those guys.
Celine: —You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them! I would have said no, but then at least they could have asked! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man, never. But what does it mean, “the right man”? The “love of your life”? The concept is absurd, that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?!
Also, the more I watch Before Sunset - well, first of all, the more I realize it's absolutely brilliant, especially when paired with Before Sunrise, then you realize Jesse and Celine as characters and performances are that much more beautifully, beautifully subtle and nuanced and real and detailed and perfect than when the movie stands alone - but really, the more I watch it, the more I identify with Celine. Take out the ultra-liberal activism and I'm basically her. But it always makes me think that marriage is just an institution that makes you take something irrational and impermanent and constantly changing, and force it into a mold of practicality and pragmatism and sensibility. It just doesn't work like that in my mind. Yet I think there's this constant pressure on most people I know to want to marry. Beyond that, even - in high school, we're practically forced to take the SAT's and apply to college, and it's implied to us that it's impossible to succeed otherwise. From there, we have to choose a degree. One line of study. Then we graduate and we have to get jobs. But not just a job - we have to choose a career, a practical line of work to which we can devote ourselves and from which we can make a comfortable living. And obviously after that we have to get married and start a family. Because that's the thing to do. It's like the whole '80s yuppie thing only evolved, so it doesn't necessarily mean a life of luxury but one of financial success, if only on a middle class level.
And my problem with that is that not everyone wants the same thing. In fact, most people don't want the same thing. Or else, they really don't want the same thing but they think they do because they've been tricked and trapped into it. But really, this whole life doesn't apply to everyone. It's one of the things I like about St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin starts off as this crazy cynic about love and marriage, even though he changes by the end, and Lesley accuses Alec of not wanting to get married, but of wanting to be able to send out a Christmas card with a picture of them on it, and Billy ends up realizing that the "after college life" isn't for him and he has to stop trying to be Alec. They all start off with these ideas of how life is supposed to be and they eventually realize that they just have to do their own thing. Well, to some extent.
It's funny because I just got back from my Theater & Society class, in which we're watching a bunch of documentaries on the 1950s. Today's was called "Let's Play House" and it was about how after World War II, there was this huge marriage and consequently baby boom, and the consequences. Men felt their masculinity was being threatened when they had to go back to civilian life and enter the corporate world - thus Sloan Wilson's book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Women, on the other hand, were feeling pressured to find a husband - after the war, the numbers said that 1 in 7 women would have to be single because of the death toll. So, they were pushed into this lifestyle of hyper-femininity in which they couldn't work, had to be housewives and mothers, and had to literally fit this physical mold of the American woman. She had to be the June Cleaver figure. And then all these men were unhappy because their lives were dull and corporate life was dissatisfying, and all these women were unhappy because they weren't allowed to do anything but cook and clean and basically not have a personality. Everything in the media was supporting this - movies, books, magazines - until a few people broke out and rebelled, like Wilson, and Betty Friedan (who wrote The Feminine Mystique).
In comparison, we have so much freedom today, so much choice, yet I feel like the current is still carrying us towards these unfulfilling lifestyles that society mandates are what we should want. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting that whole packaged lifestyle, either, though, even though it very much sounds like I am, haha. The more I think about it, it's just not for me. While it's liberating to realize what you want is not what everyone else wants, it's also daunting, because in a way, you're preconditioned to fail. Or preconditioned to succeed, I'm not sure which. I mean, you're setting out to do what no one else wants you to be able to do. That's what I meant. What is that quote?
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
And also, I'm really not totally condemning marriage here or anything. Because in the society we live in, it does make sense. I just don't think it makes sense for humans in general, haha. And I'm not bashing love here, either. It's just...a mystery to me. Which sounds painfully obvious and stupid, but I mean it in a beyond-the-cliched-ways way. Because to me, love is different to everyone. And in some people, I think it's buried deeper than in others.
Jesse: We’re just living in a pretense of a marriage, responsibility, and all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.…and, and I know that there’s something wrong, and I know that I can’t keep living like this, and I think, there’s gotta be more to love than commitment, but then I think that I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love...
Oh yeah. Romance. That's another thing. One of those Interview segments quoted Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone as saying that Andy Warhol taught him that, "All romantic love is an illusion." I never thought of it like that. All romance in general, though, I think is an illusion. It's all in how you choose (whether consciously or unconsciously) how to perceive things. Romance and cynicism are both just filters. They're films through which you see the world. So it makes sense that romantic love would be an illusion. It's just how you're choosing to see love. Not that I have a problem with that. Romance makes life palatable and easier to digest. That can become problematic, but in general, that rosiness is nice. Romance, in a way, is hope. And while part of me hates hope - because hope, like expectation, often leads to severe disappointment - a character one movie or another that I was watching in a class the other day pointed out, "We all hope. It's what keeps us alive." I think that was during one of the John Cassavetes movies that I didn't really like. Faces maybe. But I digress. Except not really because I think I was done.
No I wasn't. I was about to say that I might have misinterpreted the way Cutrone meant "romantic love", but it still made me think of it the way I did. If he meant "romantic love" not as, being "in love" with romance, but just as, being "in love" in general (did that make ANY sense? Yikes, I need to sleep), then I'm not sure I agree. But like I was saying before, I think it's different for everyone. For some people it's harder to fall in love than for others. "Here's what I know. There are some people who fall in love over and over. And there are others who can only seem to do it once." Haha, that was from the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. But I like it. And I like that it says "seems," because I don't think that it's humanly possible for anyone to fall in love only once. I think it's possible to go your whole life being in love with only one person - but that's just because there's no way you'll ever meet all the people you could fall in love with. And then there are those people who are perfectly capable of falling in love with each other but they don't let themselves. But that's something else entirely.
It's like that Jane Austen Book Club bit:
"A person's no more sane falling out of love than falling into it, I guess..."
"What do we know about it, you and I?" Allegra asked. "We're not the sort who fall out of love, are we?"
Oh, and it reminds me of Persuasion. Anne and Capt. Wentworth both try to love other people. They try to resign themselves to the idea of loving another. What is it, eight years, that pass? Anne firmly believes that it's easier for men to fall out of love than women, that they are better at forgetting, and that women suffer more, but then Capt. Wentworth writes her that wonderful, wonderful letter completely contradicting her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." Oh, that's also like in Before Sunset. Nine years pass and Celine pretends to have forgotten because Jesse waltzes in all romantic and married and she thinks he's moved on, so she has that breakdown in the car, but then he reveals that he hasn't, and that he's still suffering just as much, if not more, than she is. Most amazing scene in the whole movie.
Ack, think I wrote enough? Too much overlap right now. None of this even makes sense any more. Sorry about that.
----------------
Now playing: Feist - So Sorry
Monday, September 15, 2008
'The Bridge of San Luis Rey,' Thornton Wilder
Like all beautiful women who have been brought up amid continual tributes to her beauty she assumed without cynicism that it must necessarily be the basis of anyone's attachment to herself... This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that she had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gave birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday...
(102)
Madre Maria stood with her back against a post; the sick lay in rows gazing at the ceiling and trying to hold their breaths. She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was thinking of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more than difficult, without meaning. And those who lay in their beds there felt that they were within a wall that the Abbess had built for them; within all the light and warmth, and without was the darkness they would not exchange even for a relief from pain and from dying. But even while she was talking, other thoughts were passing in the back of her mind. "Even now," she thought, "almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
(123)
I'll get around to writing about this and about the Interview stuff one of these days. Swear.
(102)
Madre Maria stood with her back against a post; the sick lay in rows gazing at the ceiling and trying to hold their breaths. She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was thinking of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more than difficult, without meaning. And those who lay in their beds there felt that they were within a wall that the Abbess had built for them; within all the light and warmth, and without was the darkness they would not exchange even for a relief from pain and from dying. But even while she was talking, other thoughts were passing in the back of her mind. "Even now," she thought, "almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
(123)
I'll get around to writing about this and about the Interview stuff one of these days. Swear.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Marc Jacobs by Glenn O'Brien
So I'm aware that it's been a while, and I don't have much to say, I just want to share this and something else since I never got around to writing about it. Maybe I will in the future.
"The only time anything ever changes is really when you're respectful and disrespectful at the same time."
- Marc Jacobs
"I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I wanted and like whatever I wanted."
- Marc Jacobs
"But it took a really long time for Pop to happen fully. Because the art world thinks one way and the artists think another way."
- Glenn O'Brien
"Pop said, 'Art is for everybody.' And then the dealers said, 'No, art is to sell for $100,000.' And so the mechanism of the market fought against what Pop was saying. Or pretending to, anyway. But I think now we're finally finding a way that art can be both that incredibly precious object and also something that everybody can have."
- Glenn O'Brien
MJ: Art critics are like every other critic. I mean, I'm not judging. Well, I guess I am judging.
GO: It's okay to judge the judges.
MJ: I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change--people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas--I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about. Whether you like Damien Hirst's work, whether you like Takashi's work or Jeff Koons's work or Richard Prince's work or whatever great artist you're talking about, they are doing something that has changed the perception of today's culture. Whether you like it or not, there's a validity to it. For all the critics who made fun of this installation of a Vuitton shop within Takashi's MOCA exhibition . . . I saw it as like Martin Kippenberger's subway grate, you know? It challenged this sort of categorizing. Like, what is the art here? is it what's on the bag? Is it the action of buying the bag--that's the art? Is it watching the people buying the art? Because it's installed in an exhibition in a museum, is it some kind of conceptual performance piece? It operates on so many levels that it's hard to categorize.
I thought, Well, isn't that what the state of art is right now? It's not so easy to define. "Oh yeah, they're a painter, they're a sculptor. . . ." It's just labels. When you go into a record store and it says "alternative" to describe a sort of music, isn't every music an alternative to another type of music? These labels are ridiculous. I think the need to label things and have things fit so nicely into their boxes is just old.
... [Discussion of Pop art.]
MJ: ...I had a conversation with Elizabeth Peyton and I told her that I tend to think of artists as being divinely inspired somehow. In terms of creativity, part of my intimidation was, "I'm a designer. I make clothes and bags and shoes. I have a job that involves making creative choices, but I'm not a divinely inspired human being like an artist!" And she said, "You can still like what you like, and, you know, we like clothes, too!" Stuff like that has made me lose my intimidation about art and putting something up on a pedestal. I realized, I don't have to look at it that way. I can like it, but it doesn't have to be this precious thing full of pretense. I saw this documentary on Jeff Koons, and his attitude about art being generous and people not having to have this highly cultured or educated background in order to appreciate it, what a relief! You know? And I think, going back to what you said about Pop, that was so much of a relief to me. It was good to look at it. It felt like mine.
...
GO: One of the things that people really didn't get was when Andy talked about business art. He was saying, "I think if I were starting all over, I would do business." When I went to L.A. for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and then saw the Murakami show at MOCA, I thought, Wow, Andy would be so jealous. he'd be so jealous that Koons and Murakami have, like, 200 people working for them--Andy never had more than 50.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: They are the fulfillment of everything he was talking about. He saw that we live in a corporate world and that there's nothing wrong with an artist using corporate techniques to work. You don't have to starve at your easel alone in the garret.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: You've managed to come into a multinational corporation and bring a real artistic approach to it. That's a breakthrough.
MJ: Well, yeah. Again, I didn't mean to do it.
GO: That's all right. We forgive you.
"The only time anything ever changes is really when you're respectful and disrespectful at the same time."
- Marc Jacobs
"I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I wanted and like whatever I wanted."
- Marc Jacobs
"But it took a really long time for Pop to happen fully. Because the art world thinks one way and the artists think another way."
- Glenn O'Brien
"Pop said, 'Art is for everybody.' And then the dealers said, 'No, art is to sell for $100,000.' And so the mechanism of the market fought against what Pop was saying. Or pretending to, anyway. But I think now we're finally finding a way that art can be both that incredibly precious object and also something that everybody can have."
- Glenn O'Brien
MJ: Art critics are like every other critic. I mean, I'm not judging. Well, I guess I am judging.
GO: It's okay to judge the judges.
MJ: I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change--people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas--I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about. Whether you like Damien Hirst's work, whether you like Takashi's work or Jeff Koons's work or Richard Prince's work or whatever great artist you're talking about, they are doing something that has changed the perception of today's culture. Whether you like it or not, there's a validity to it. For all the critics who made fun of this installation of a Vuitton shop within Takashi's MOCA exhibition . . . I saw it as like Martin Kippenberger's subway grate, you know? It challenged this sort of categorizing. Like, what is the art here? is it what's on the bag? Is it the action of buying the bag--that's the art? Is it watching the people buying the art? Because it's installed in an exhibition in a museum, is it some kind of conceptual performance piece? It operates on so many levels that it's hard to categorize.
I thought, Well, isn't that what the state of art is right now? It's not so easy to define. "Oh yeah, they're a painter, they're a sculptor. . . ." It's just labels. When you go into a record store and it says "alternative" to describe a sort of music, isn't every music an alternative to another type of music? These labels are ridiculous. I think the need to label things and have things fit so nicely into their boxes is just old.
... [Discussion of Pop art.]
MJ: ...I had a conversation with Elizabeth Peyton and I told her that I tend to think of artists as being divinely inspired somehow. In terms of creativity, part of my intimidation was, "I'm a designer. I make clothes and bags and shoes. I have a job that involves making creative choices, but I'm not a divinely inspired human being like an artist!" And she said, "You can still like what you like, and, you know, we like clothes, too!" Stuff like that has made me lose my intimidation about art and putting something up on a pedestal. I realized, I don't have to look at it that way. I can like it, but it doesn't have to be this precious thing full of pretense. I saw this documentary on Jeff Koons, and his attitude about art being generous and people not having to have this highly cultured or educated background in order to appreciate it, what a relief! You know? And I think, going back to what you said about Pop, that was so much of a relief to me. It was good to look at it. It felt like mine.
...
GO: One of the things that people really didn't get was when Andy talked about business art. He was saying, "I think if I were starting all over, I would do business." When I went to L.A. for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and then saw the Murakami show at MOCA, I thought, Wow, Andy would be so jealous. he'd be so jealous that Koons and Murakami have, like, 200 people working for them--Andy never had more than 50.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: They are the fulfillment of everything he was talking about. He saw that we live in a corporate world and that there's nothing wrong with an artist using corporate techniques to work. You don't have to starve at your easel alone in the garret.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: You've managed to come into a multinational corporation and bring a real artistic approach to it. That's a breakthrough.
MJ: Well, yeah. Again, I didn't mean to do it.
GO: That's all right. We forgive you.
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