Next January in Austin, Texas, USA, the Society for Historical Archaeology will hold a conference with the theme "Boundaries and Crossroads in Action." Cool topic. Boundaries and crossroads are filled with "exchanges, conflicts, challenges" for sure, especially over (or through) time. Archaeology can mine the layers, or you can just go out to a crossroads and observe for yourself. The theme has also been receiving some attention in art, communications theory and psychology.
Boundaries can be big, like an international frontier, or small, like a street or road dividing city and suburb. Some places are porous, and some are more locked down. Mack Avenue in Detroit is porous; the 38th parallel dividing Korea is locked down. Going back to frontier days in North America (or anywhere else), crossroads and boundaries entailed a lot of unpredictability and interaction -- and instability. Since recorded history began, border towns and port cities have tended to be wilder and rougher, less sheltered than interior towns, though even deep in the interior of many places, strange things have happened near crossroads and on the "inside" of boundaries.
I can think of a bunch of ways this all applies, but for one, think of how people in the recent past (and in many places, still) would make a booze run from "dry" areas to "wet" areas, and all that entailed with policing, risk, danger and excitement! Think of gobs of youthful travellers crossing from Michigan into Canada or Amsterdam to skirt laws enforced within their home boundaries . . . and you get the idea. Think race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, profession, organization, etcetera, and the possibilities for exploration and storytelling are as boundless as Médecins Sans Frontières . . .
Night owl or early bird? My "natural state" makes me a night owl, but my Marxian reality is more of a mixed bag: because early birds must have created the typical work schedule quite a little while ago. A farmer's schedule in the electric age. I'm flexible (of course) by necessity (also of course). I find irksome, however, those early birds who chirp, "Rise and shine! Day's a-wasting!" Mercifully, there is coffee -- and more coffee. There are also day dreams as well as nightmares.
If I were put on trial a la Kafka and had to explain my living preferences, what would be my defense? I would lay out my preference for some variety in sleeping/waking schedule, with six to nine hours of sleep when possible, and nothing urgently important scheduled first thing in the daylit morning ever. Why? Because, like Bartleby the Scrivener, I prefer not to deal with such "daymares" until fully awake. How about you?
At top: Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight / Campanadas a medianoche (1965), insanely not yet available in the USA 45 years later! With Jeanne Moreau and Fernando Rey, bring it on over, please . . . Wake me up when it gets here . . . And let's not forget Woody Allen's newest project, Midnight in Paris.
During the Great Depression, an aging Tennessee hermit decides to come to town and hold a living funeral for himself. Things proceed from there. That's the premise of Aaron Schneider's Get Low (2009), set for limited American release at the end of this month.
From the press kit:
For years, townsfolk have been terrified of the backwoods recluse known as Felix Bush (Robert Duvall). People say he‘s done all manner of unspeakable things -- that he‘s killed in cold blood; that he‘s in league with the Devil; that he has strange powers -- and they avoid him like the plague. Then, one day, Felix rides to town with a shotgun and a wad of cash, saying he wants to buy a funeral. It‘s not your usual funeral for the dead Felix wants. On the contrary, he wants a "living funeral," in which anyone who ever had heard a story about him will come to tell it, while he takes it all in. (For more, see http://www.sonyclassics.com/getlow/)
Add Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black and others, actors who've turned in many a strong performance. Will it work? More will be revealed . . .
Reminds me of two things right off. First, "Play Guitar Play," one of Conway Twitty's best songs penned by the man himself, a number one Country and Western hit in 1977; and Iggy Pop's "The Ballad of Cookie McBride," from which today's header derives, orginally from "Zombie Birdhouse" (1982). Iggy's song is so bad it's become a real favorite -- that's how bad it is! Where he got the idea, God knows. But it makes me chuckle every time. Jack London? Sample lyric:
Well gather 'round people and listen to this I am a hermit of burial ridge Once I was shaven and worked every day But the call of the wild just lured me away . . .
And onward, complete with "bears in the area and wolves at the door" . . .
This odd and darkling ditty may have inspired John Waters to cast Iggy as Belvedere Rickettes in Cry-Baby (1990) alongside Johnny Depp. Who knows?
Now that slavery has been abolished in the USA, civil rights acts established, now that women and any other free citizens of age can vote, now that the 18-21 year old crew can, too, Americans can feel pretty good about Independence Day. Some of these liberties have been established in my own life time.
With British Petroleum off our shores, however, and some of our not-so-united states (Arizona, for example) in a repressive mood, gay rights still fledgling and the land of the free, home of the brave (still) blithely having committed troops and mercenaries to invade and garrison "over there" for insufficient reason (specifically Iraq) and having re-established prison camps (Gitmo, etc.) after 9/11/2001, we can't now afford to rest on our laurels, not by a long shot. If the USA has been at war for more than half of my lifetime, this is certainly even more true for anyone younger than I am . . .
I, too, though, despite the long haul still to go, personally am grateful to be free, to not have to attend a state-sponsored Puritanical ceremony, to be able to write without censorship, to communicate mostly with whom I wish, to eat drink and be merry on my own time, to travel far and wide without censure, to have a job, to have friends and family and aquaintances alive and kicking, to be alive to enjoy, to get another day of life, even -- yes, cynical-sounding as I may sometimes come across, I do be grateful. Have freedom, will travel . . . Happy Independence Day from the US of A, y'all!
Dennis Hopper, RIP. On a related note, another favorite from the 1970s: Wim Wenders' Der Amerikanische Freund / The American Friend / L'ami américain / El amigo americano (1977).
The "American friend" of the title is a character derived from Fort Worth-born writer Patricia Highsmith's Ripliad novels. In Wenders' version, we're not quite sure what motivates the "talented" Mr. Ripley or his German anti-buddy, Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz): money, mortality, kinship? Or is it chance and opportunity? Is Zimmermann dying fast, or is he being hoodwinked into becoming a de facto hitman? What is self-reflection, projection on others, what is real and what is forgery? As art forger Derwatt (Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause) quips, "A little older, a little more confused. . ." At one point, Tom Ripley admits to a tape player: "I know less and less about who I am, or who anybody else is."
What makes the plot work is the added tension created by Jonathan's wife Marianne Zimmermann (Lisa Kreuzer), their son Daniel (Andreas Dedecke), and mystery man Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain). Sam Fuller (the director) adds more as Der Amerikaner, a gangster -- Fuller who said, "Van Gogh was a great inspiration for me, a guy for whom life was work and work was life. I wanted to be like him, except I didn't want to go nuts and cut off my ear."
A beautifully crafted film. Like Sorcerer alluded to in the past two posts (also from 1977), not for the Disney and Hallmark crowd nor the easily distracted, my friends . . . but oh, what a movie!
The Kinks play a subtle reinforcing role for the pensive Mr. Zimmerman: He mumble-hums and listens to The Kinks' Face to Face, specifically "Too Much on My Mind;" when Marianne suspects he's involved in shady business, another Kinks song -- "Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" from Kinda Kinks -- plays in the background.
Mr. Ripley has appeared in more recent movies, as well, but this one's his best showing.
Way cool flick! I doubt any film could be made quite this way today . . . Friedkin shows a mad genius in this one, in the direction of Werner Herzog . . .
From William Friedkin, the director who has given us such gems as The French Connection (1971), The Exorcist (1973) and Bug (2007), another insanely torqued masterwork: Sorceror (1977)! I can't say enough good stuff about this one: visceral and creepy, it draws the viewer into a world few would want to live or die in . . . It's an alternate version of one of my favorite 50s films, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Salaire de la peur / The Wages of Fear (1953) based on Georges-Jean Arnaud's 1950 novel. Off the charts good filmmaking . . .
Early on in Sorcerer, there are scenes in Vera Cruz, Jerusalem, Paris and New Jersey that lay out why four bad dudes end up as desperados driving two trucks carrying volatile explosives toward a burning oil well 216 clicks away from the squalid village of Porvenir ("future" in Spanish) somewhere in South America.*
A shady hitman, a smalltime gangster on the run from robbing a church, the survivor of a cell that set off a bomb in Jerusalem, a banker fleeing from corruption charges, and "the German" -- that's the main crew. Throw in death, destruction and wreckage from an oil disaster, a peasant uprising, guerillas in the mountains, the brutal and ever-changing nature of the terrain, savage tropical weather and corporate mandates -- plus Tangerine Dream's first soundtrack -- and there you have it . . . Not for the Disney and Hallmark crowd nor the easily distracted, my friends . . . but oh, what a movie!
*Possibly an allusion to Provenir in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, though actually the village of Alta Gracia -- "high grace" -- in the Dominican Republic.
