Plan 9 from Outer Space

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd share one of my favorite (non-) scary movies: Plan Nine from Outer Space. It's a delight, and an absolute disaster.

The film is remarkable for several reasons. Aside from being known as one of the "worst" movies ever made, it's the last film to feature actor Bela Lugosi (the guy who played the O.G. Dracula in 1931). Lugosi died before production really took off, so director Ed Wood hired a random actor to replace him. Wood still had footage of Lugosi, however, and he opted to simply splice the two actors' performances together.

Most audiences were unimpressed.

Now the movie has a quasi-legendary status. Almost everything about it is, by conventional standards, terrible. The acting, the writing; the production. Even when I first watched this as a naïve and impressionable six-year-old, I knew it was not a well-made movie. But that's its whole charm: as ridiculous a film this might be, it never takes itself too seriously.

For your enjoyment and chagrin, here's the whole thing.

- Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), directed by Ed Wood

"I Like Beer"

Julia Child and Jacques Pépin tear it up and make some sammies on Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. This whole video is a gem, but the true highlight comes near the end, at 3:36.

Enjoy.

Daisies

Celebrating another first draft; delaying another revision.

-Daisies (1966), directed by Věra Chytilová

Retrospectively

It sounds like an overwrought and clichéd story: tortured artist kills himself after the death of his girlfriend.

This was the case for Jeremy Blake, who allegedly walked into the ocean and drowned himself. A week earlier, he'd found his girlfriend, blogger and video game designer Theresa Duncan, dead in the apartment they shared above St. Mark's Church (which has its own fascinating history). According to friends, the couple had been acting erratically. They told stories of being followed and harassed by Scientologists, and went so far as to make their friends sign loyalty pledges to ensure they weren't agents of Scientology. In short, she and Blake were both scared, and they didn't seem to be in good health. Their loved ones were worried, but no one had expected their deaths, just a week apart in July of 2007.

Blake and Duncan in Venice, CA, photographed by Bret Haller

It would be impossible to sit here and give a concrete reason for their suicides, which, like most, are shrouded in uncertainty. The mystery behind their deaths has overshadowed any creative successes they achieved, as evidenced by not only this blog post, but several trendy magazine profiles published after they died. (Here is one from Vanity Fair, and another from New York Magazine.)

The work they left behind, I'd argue, is a far more compelling and enriching glimpse of what and how they thought. With that in mind, here are pieces of their work: a series of video games produced by Duncan for young female audiences, and a digital video made by Blake and inspired by Sarah Winchester.

- - -

Rhizome and the New Museum present:
Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero
 - - -

- "Winchester Redux," by Jeremy Blake (2004)

Intention

I made more accidents! These photos were doubly exposed last summer by simple ignorance. This roll was processed by the knowledgeable folks over at Express Photo. If ever you're in Brookside, be sure to pop in and say hi to Steve.

Chicago, July '16 / KCMO, August '16

He Needs Me

I can't help but watch this and imagine Shelley Duvall singing instead to Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

- "He Needs Me" as performed by Shelley Duvall in Robert Altman's Popeye (1980)

Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers

The title says it all.

- Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers by Les Blank (1980)

Dancing, Asleep

Having a Coke with You

"Having a Coke with You"

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them 

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse 

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

by Frank O'Hara, originally published in 1960

- Frank O'Hara reading the poem in his apartment in 1966, taken from the film USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara

Chat écoutant la musique

You can laugh at me all you want, but I cried the first time I ever saw this video.

If you're interested in learning more about this film or its director, Chris Marker, check out this unofficial archive of and about his work.

- "Chat écoutant la musique" by Chris Marker (1985)

A Failing Marriage

Who ever knew shopping could be so much fun? Clearly, a trip to the mall is exactly what this couple needs.

-1991 Commercial for the Mall of Memphis

Babies on Parade

This is so wrong, in so many ways.

I wonder where these babies are today.

- Footage of the annual Ladera Park Baby Show, 1950

Improvisation (Girl)

A month or two ago, I was feeling pretty down and decided to watch the movie Antichrist.

As you might guess from the title, this was not a wise decision. I went from being sad to disgusted and scared. The movie is saturated with hellish images of nature, like a fox disemboweling itself. There's also a lot of gruesome bodily harm, like Charlotte Gainsbourg cutting off her own body parts. And that's the least explicit description I could muster. There's also a fine scene in which Willem Dafoe, whose leg is attached to a grindstone, crawls into a foxhole to seek refuge from his grief-stricken, bloodthirsty wife.

In summary, this movie is messed up. Worth watching, if you like being unsettled and perplexed and physically uncomfortable. It's also got some deep commentary on femininity, loss, religion, and the like. Just prepare, if you do see it, to be a little fraught and grossed-out.

The final shot

So anyway, the imagery in the below poem reminded me (much less disturbingly) of Antichrist. I don't mean to impose my own associations, or to dictate your interpretation of this poem. I'm just blathering, as usual.

Regardless, may you read and appreciate this.

"Improvisation (Girl)"

I think she wanted to explain

                                      the silence

             hidden

within her voice—

blue egg in the nettles.

            She wrote something

on a rock, used the rock

                        to bash in the skull

             of an injured deer.

Bloodied swan-neck arms.

                                        She

slinks into her own viscera,

a baby fox

             backing into its trunkhole.

The wordbone's connected to the

                         gutbone.

Meanwhile, her desire

           for nobody now

bucks like a rabbit

                           under her ground.

by Rebecca Lindenberg, from The Logan Notebooks (2014) 

The Michael Jackson Generation

Today I nailed down another final exam. I'm done with John Milton, now and forever. Did you know that he forced his daughter Deborah to learn to read ancient Greek, just so she could read aloud to him once he went blind? The worst part is that he taught her how to read it, but he failed to teach her how to interpret it, so she just had to read him long epics in a foreign language she couldn't understand.

And though academia is currently the sun in the solar system of my life, I'm truly and absolutely excited about my work.

It's also worth noting that I've had way too much coffee today, but that after I finished my final I went and ran hill repeats because I was so jazzed about being done and caffeinated. While I was running those hills, "Billie Jean" unexpectedly began playing, which made this video feel even more appropriate. Can you imagine someone making a commercial like this today?

We're Cooking Quinoa

One day, I'll be so funny that someone will film me cooking dinner for one.

In this low-resolution video, several of my favorite things collide: David Lynch; low, ambient lighting; sitting outside telling stories; and quinoa. It's twenty minutes, ergo I don't encourage you to watch the whole thing. Unless you too love the above-listed things, which perhaps you do. I don't know your life.

That's all for today.

Hot Knife

With a music video directed by the inimitable P.T. Anderson.

(Special regards to my friend Sweet Deeks, who shows me 98% of the things I post on this blog.)

- "Hot Knife" by Fiona Apple, from The Idler Wheel... (2012)

Somewhere in California

In this vignette from Coffee and Cigarettes, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits play hilariously cruel and exaggerated versions of themselves. Other highlights from the movie include a scene wherein Bill Murray serves coffee to the RZA and GZA and a scene in which Cate Blanchett plays both her fictional self and her bitter cousin. I recommend watching it if you have a short attention span, like to chortle, or pretend to be cultured.

"You callin' me a Taco Bell kind of guy?"

- "Somewhere in California" from Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch (2003)

Monster

If you like scary movies, I encourage you to watch this. It's a short film called Monster, created by the filmmaker Jennifer Kent. Eventually, she took a lot of the themes and ideas from this piece and wove them into the 2014 film The Babadook, which she wrote and directed. In case you haven't seen it, I'll refrain from writing any spoilers, but suffice it to say that The Babadook is a terrifyingly honest meditation on motherhood and mourning. It may be the most intelligent and truly scary horror film I've seen in the last several years. Monster is like the CliffNotes version: slightly less intense and experiential, but interesting enough to fill you in and make you sound smart.

- Monster (2005) by Jennifer Kent

Sugar Jets

This is an amusing window into the climate of 1950's American pop culture, at least from what I've been told by people who were alive then.

"They make you feel jet-propelled!"

- "Sugar Jets" cereal commercial, 1955

A Woman's Place

My favorite part of this video is when Ward Cleaver asks Wally to pass him the asbestos gloves.

-from Season One of Leave It To Beaver (1958)