* texts collaged from numerous sources incl. Film Comment, io9, indiewire, Open Culture, flavorwire, a.o.


Waiting for Godot (Roman Polanski)

Polanski proposed a film adaptation of the play to Beckett, who politely refused to allow it. Beckett insisted that the play was not cinematic material and that an adaptation would destroy it. He asked for Polanski’s forgiveness and that the director not dismiss him as a “purist bastard.”






Who Killed Bambi? (Russ Meyer, 1978)

Intended as a punk rock version of A Hard Day’s Night, the film was to star the Sex Pistols. It was to be based on a screenplay by Roger Ebert and Malcolm McClaren. According to Ebert, "McLaren claimed 20th Century-Fox read the screenplay and pulled the plug. This seems unlikely because the studio would not have green-lighted the film without reading the script. Meyer called me to say McLaren had made false promises of financing and was broke. The film's fate was sealed when Princess Grace, a member of the Fox board, said, "We don't want to make another Meyer X film." Some footage was shot by Meyer, but not much, perhaps several days' worth, and it wound up in Julien Temple’s The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.




A Confederacy of Dunces (John Waters, 1980s)

Adaptation of the novel by John Kennedy Toole about a corpulent, flatulent medievalist. The role was considered for John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley, all of whom died before anything could be realized. Waters, who for a time had lived half a block from Toole's mother (Thelma Ducoing), wanted the part for Divine before his death and pitched for the job of director, and lost it when the producer saw a photo of him, in his book Shock Value, visiting Manson Family member Charles 'Tex' Watson - who had killed one of the producer's best friends.





Video: CONFUSION. LECTURE BRUITÉE D'UN SCÉNARIO NON-RÉALISÉ DE JACQUES TATI

Confusion (Jacques Tati)

In a media-obsessed future Paris, society is glued to communication technology and little distinction is made between fiction and reality. Tati was planning to collaborate on the film with the band Sparks, who were to play two American TV execs. Action centers around the mishaps within the studio facilities of fictive media conglomerate COMM. During the live broadcast of a scripted drama filled with stagy theatrics, a mistakenly loaded gun kills an off-screen Monsieur Hulot. The cameras keep rolling, with cast members discreetly stepping over the fresh cadaver during their scenes, while the crew scrambles to remove it from sight.






King Shot (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Co-produced by David Lynch, it was to star Asia Argento, Jeff Bridges, Marilyn Manson, and Udo Kier in a “metaphysical western set in a desert casino, featuring a man the size of King Kong and Marilyn Manson as a 300-year-old pope.” The film's storyboards are available here.




Women (Paul Verhoeven)

To be adapted from Charles Bukowski’s fictionalized account of his experiences (and frequent dissatisfaction) with sex and romance.






The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling (David Miller, 1966)

'This was my first film role, co-starring with Gregory Peck, who was a huge movie star at the time. He was not well-cast as an English army Colonel — he repeatedly addressed me as 'Loo-tenant': and when I repeatedly corrected his pronunciation (in UK we say 'Left-tenant'), the director David Miller told me to shut up. 'Never forget Ian, Great Britain is only 5% of the world market.'" The story was that a squad of British airmen attempt to smuggle plane parts into enemy territory with the aim of reassembling them and attacking German targets. It was a disaster. After five weeks filming, the summer was invaded by early snow which was forecast to persist through the following six months. The shooting was already behind schedule so Mirisch cut their losses by abandoning the film and sending us home — me with 4000 pounds.'-- Ian McKellen




To the White Sea (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2001)

The Coens wrote a nearly dialogue-free adaptation of James Dickey’s 1993 novel about a WWII American fighter pilot who, shot down on a mission over Tokyo in 1945, murders his way through the outskirts of the fire-bombed city. Brad Pitt was set to play the brutal protagonist, with Jeremy Thomas producing. The Coen Brothers' decision to actually shoot the film in Japan proved to be the project’s downfall as it already had been a struggle for the Coens to convince 20th Century Fox to take this violent, experimental movie on.





Luchino Visconti in France in 1971 scouting locations for 'A la recherche du temps perdu'

À la recherche du temps perdu (Luchino Visconti, 1969)

In 1969 Visconti commissioned a script by Suso Cecchi d’Amico. Visconti conducted rigorous research around Paris and the Normandy coast. The usual collaborators were retained: Nicole Stéphane (who owned the rights), photographer Claude Schwartz, costume designer Piero Tosi, and set designer Mario Garbuglia. Silvana Mangano was to play the Duchesse de Guermantes, Alain Delon or Dustin Hoffman the narrator-protagonist Marcel, and Helmut Berger the homosexual protégé of Baron Charlus, Charlie Morel. The proposed four-hour film boasted a huge cast and an accordingly huge budget for which financing could not be secured. Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando were considered for role of Charlus.




In a Dream of Passion (Monte Hellman)

Hellman’s adaptation of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel, La Maison de Rendez-Vous, about an American’s experiences in a Hong Kong brothel, was to be produced by Roger Corman.






Batman-Dracula (Andy Warhol)

Thought to be the first campy portrayal of Batman, Andy Warhol directed the film without the permission of DC Comics and only showed it at his own exhibitions. Warhol's friend, the appropriately named Gregory Battcock, played Batman, while Baby Jane Holtzer played Catwoman. While the film itself is unavailable, some scenes are shown in the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. Smith played Dracula.




A Scanner Darkly (Charlie Kaufman)

Kaufman said he wrote this script soon after Being John Malkovich: "I got it as an assignment. There was a director attached, an Australian woman named Emma(-Kate) Croghan. She had just directed an independent comedy [Strange Planet] and she was attached to the project by Jersey Films and then they brought me on." And then the studio lost interest. Kaufman's script is easy to find online, but Kaufman says you should just read the book instead. "What's the point if you're going to read the book? Certainly my version doesn't offer anything that the book doesn't! At the time, I felt like I was trying to do something that was respectful of the Dick book. I felt like the movies coming out based on his books had nothing to do with his books."






Technically Sweet (Michelangelo Antonioni)

The director worked on this screenplay in the late Sixties and envisioned Jack Nicholson in the lead role as a man lost in the Amazon wilderness after surviving a plane crash. Some production stills from the unrealized film are available here.




Suffer or Die (Michelangelo Antonioni)

Scripted by Tonino Guerra and Anthony Burgess, it was to star Debra Winger alongside Mick Jagger or Richard Gere or Giancarlo Giannini as an architect. Amy Irving was cast at one point as a Catholic novice.






Freud (John Huston/Jean-Paul Sartre)

In 1958, legendary director John Huston decided to make a film about the life of Sigmund Freud. Having met Jean-Paul Sarte in 1952 during the filming of Moulin Rouge, Huston felt the philosopher would be the ideal person to script the Freud film, since Sartre knew Freud’s work so well and since Huston surmised that he would have “an objective and logical approach.” Ironically both Sartre and Huston considered themselves anti-Freud for largely the same reason: Sartre because as a Communist he believed the role of the psychoanalyst was limited and of little social importance. For his part Huston felt that psychoanalysis was an indulgence for bored house wives and the problem children of the rich while the “movers and shakers”’ were too busy for it and those that most needed it couldn’t afford it. First, Sartre delivered a modest 95-page treatment. This, however, became a 300-page draft in 1959 that Huston calculated would produce an unacceptable five-hour-long film. When Huston and Sartre met in person in Galway to find a way to cut the screenplay down to a reasonable length, their working relationship was less than cordial. In Huston’s recollection, Sartre was “as ugly as a human being can be.” Sartre’s remembrance is hardly more flattering of Huston: "…in moments of childish vanity, when he puts on a red dinner jacket or rides a horse (not very well) or counts his paintings or tells workmen what to do. Impossible to hold his attention five minutes: he can no longer work, he runs away from thinking." After their Galway meeting, during which Huston tried and failed to hypnotize Sartre, the philosopher attempted another revision, but this time, he sent Huston an even longer draft, for an eight-hour film. At this point, Huston gave up on Sartre.




The Story (Jean-Luc Godard)

In the late 1970s Jean-Luc Godard became obsessed with the story of Siegel and planned to make a movie about him. He wrote a screenplay called, simply, "The Story", and planned to cast Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton in the Siegel and Hill roles. He dropped this plan when Keaton lost interest and then turned his attention to Every Man for Himself (1980) as his return to commercial filmmaking.






Kaleidoscope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964-67)

After watching Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Hitchcock felt he was a century behind the Italians in technique. He asked the novelist Howard Fast to sketch a treatment about a gay, deformed serial killer. Pleased with the results, Hitchcock composed a shot list with over 450 camera positions and shot an hour’s worth of experimental color tests. MCA/Universal were disgusted by the script and immediately canceled the project, reducing Hitchcock to tears. See the images, parts of the script, and test footage.





Bunuel in Mexico researching A Sumptuous Ceremony

A Sumptuous Ceremony (Luis Buñuel)

At four o'clock one afternoon Luis Buñuel decided that he would make no more films. He was staying in the spa at San Jose Purua in southwest Mexico where, for more than twenty years, Buñuel had gone to write his scripts. It is a semitropical paradise set in a green canyon — a bit too hot, in truth, for Buñuel liked rain, fog, the north. The screenplay was for a film to be called A Sumptuous Ceremony, in homage to Andre Breton, who defined eroticism as "a sumptuous ceremony in an underground passage." From the outset the watchwords were "terror" and "eroticism." Bunuel imagined a young girl in a prison cell receiving a visit from a phantom bishop; a trap door led to an underground passageway and to a boat filled with explosives for blowing up the Louvre museum. The script was never finished. Buñuel had barely arrived in San Jose Purua when he felt unwell, ill at ease (this was 1979 and he was therefore seventy-nine years old). He spoke of some "menace," and at four o'clock in the afternoon he announced that his life as a filmmaker was over.




The Conquest of Mexico (Werner Herzog)

Planning to take the perspective of the conquered Aztecs, Herzog said the film would be so expensive that it could only be made with the backing of a Hollywood studio. "I am currently working on a film about the conquest of Mexico and Francis Ford Coppola is involved," Herzog said at the time. "But I am not making a Hollywood film. Somehow it will still be a Bavarian film. I have nothing against what they do in Hollywood. It doesn’t bother me. Let them do it.”





David Lynch storyboard for Ronnie Rocket

Ronnie Rocket (David Lynch)

A comedy starring a reanimated dead teen, set in a rundown, industrial future. Screenplay available here.




One Saliva Bubble (David Lynch, 1987)

An early project of Lynch and Mark Frost written almost a year before the Twin Peaks pilot. A saliva bubble from a country bumpkin working at a top-secret military base gets into a weapons system, causing the device to fire upon Newtonville, Kansas, and prompting the townsfolk to switch identities with one another. Lynch called it “an out-and-out wacko dumb comedy”; Martin Short and Steve Martin were initially attached to star. Screenplay is available here.






Heartbeat in the Brain (Amanda Feilding)

After shaving her hairline, donning a floral cap and constructing protective eyewear from a pair of sunglasses and medical tape, 27-year-old art student Amanda Feilding injects herself with an anesthetic, peels the skin from her forehead with a scalpel, and begins to drill into her own frontal bone with a foot operated dentist's drill in this documentary/art piece about the "science" of trepanation. A reviewer who saw the film in 1978 reported that when Feilding finally drills through the bone and grins victoriously as blood spurts down her face, several members of the audience fainted, "dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums." The film hasn't been seen in 44 years. It is assumed that Feilding has a copy.




Pincushion (John Carpenter)

Postapocalyptic odyssey was to star Cher, whose character must deliver a life-saving serum to Salt Lake City. John Raffo scripted.






Hu-Man (Jérôme Laperrousaz)

An actor (Terence Stamp, playing himself) is placed in a series of dangerous situations, while his fear is broadcast to the television audience. Their emotional reactions will determine whether he is sent into the future, or the past. Directed by Jérôme Laperrousaz, a highly elusive figure whose other films include the almost equally obscure documentary Amougies (Music Power - European Music Revolution) and the Bob Marley-starring musical Third World, and co-starring Jeanne Moreau, Hu-Man won the Trieste Festival of Science Fiction Films in 1976, but has fallen into obscurity, and apparently no prints exist.




L’Ailleurs immédiat (Jean-Pierre Gorin)

In the director’s first solo film, Gorin played the lead, reciting passages from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals while getting tattooed, and masturbating on a Paris window ledge. The film was reportedly destroyed by the producers before completion, after the drug arrest of the lead actress.






The Tourist (Claire Noto)

Noto’s script, started in 1980, has often been cited as similar to Blade Runner, and its moody, atmospheric, and unexpectedly sexual overtones also suggested the alienation and tragic nature of The Hunger and the exotic mien of the creatures from Ridley Scott’s Alien. It languished in development hell forever, while its ideas proved so popular that it was plundered time and again, most blatantly by Men In Black which mostly lifted the concept wholesale, added heroic human agents as the leads, jettisoned the existential woe of estranged aliens, trapped and in-hiding on Earth, and of course made it a comedy. Legendary visualist H. R. Giger created a series of alien designs in the early 1980s and they, like the script, were much too sexualized and unsettling for the execs who were trying to grapple with an unwieldy story of morality, corruption, xenophobia, humanity and imprisonment, both physical and psychological. Citing influences such as Fellini and Antonioni, Noto once said of the screenplay “I wanted to portray sexual agony and ecstasy in a way I’d never seen before, and science fiction seemed like the arena.” But in development hell she remained, though briefly flirting with Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, before they went broke (legal problems began here, as another producer claimed she co-owned the option). Noto’s difficult nature saw her kicked off her own creation, which then spent years in the studio system (Universal, WB, Paramount, Joel Silver all being involved) as it was overdeveloped into something less nihilistic and more homogenized. And also, bland. In the end, it was a dark independent movie that should have stayed that way. Unfortunately, the Fox Searchlights of the world didn’t exist yet, thus the only option for the project was the studio world where it just didn't fit. HR Giger's conceptual drawings for the film are available here.




The Corrections (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

Scott Rudin was to produce this HBO miniseries adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s novel. Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Dianne Wiest, Maggie Gyllnehaal, Greta Gerwig, and Rhys Ifans were cast and shooting began before HBO cancelled the project. According to Baumbach, "We shot a pilot, but we didn't shoot a whole pilot, even. It was never finished.”






Napoleon (Stanley Kubrick, 1969-70)

A biopic on Napoleon set to be made just after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick was so enthusiastic to make the project that he confessed to identifying with Bonaparte down to the way he ate his food. Jack Nicholson was slated to play the title character, but when corporate changes hit MGM, Kubrick lost the approval.




The Lord of the Rings (Stanley Kubrick)

In the late 1960s, The Beatles worked for a year on a project in which they would star in an adaptation of Tolkien's novel. The plan was that Paul McCartney would play Frodo Baggins with Ringo Starr backing him up in the role of Sam Gamgee. George Harrison would don a hat and grow his beard a little longer to take on the role of Gandalf and John Lennon decided that for him only the role of Gollum would do. They even went as far as to Stanley Kubrick to direct the film. Kubrick did consider it, citing the sheer immensity of the book as a reason for his declining The Beatles' offer. The project finally died due to the increasing animosity between band members.






The Moviegoer (Terrence Malick)

Adaptation of Walker Percy’s novel about a Korean War vet turned stockbroker whose traumatic experiences cause him to search for life’s deeper meaning, heading for New Orleans. Malick abandoned the idea after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, where the film was to take place.






The English Speaker (Terrence Malick)

This highly personal passion project was based on the pioneering study by “talking cure” proponent and Freud forerunner Josef Breuer of 1880s psychoanalysis patient Anna O, a hysteric given to melancholia, personality changes and a form of aphasia in which she could understand only German, but replied in English, French or Italian. The screenplay, according to producer Bobby Geisler, one of the very few people ever allowed to read it, was “as if [Malick] had ripped open his heart and bled his true feelings onto the page,” while author Peter Biskind described it as “The Exorcist as written by Dostoevsky.” But perhaps because he felt so passionately, the project got sucked into the whirl of controversy and recrimination that surrounded the tortuous process of getting The Thin Red Line to screens. Malick in fact held the finishing of his war elegy for ransom, demanding in perpetuity rights over The English Speaker to ensure no one but him could direct it. The producers held out, though, and in the dust cloud thrown up by the eventual breakdown of the relationship between Malick, Geisler, and The Thin Red Line producer Mike Medavoy, it’s hard to see exactly where the rights landed.




Mona Lisa (Larry Clark)

Remake of Neil Jordan’s 1986 underworld thriller to star Eva Green and Mickey Rourke, or Rosario Dawson and Hayden Christensen.






Maldoror (Alberto Cavallone)

This is a holy grail amongst film collectors, matched only by The Day the Clown Cried. There was no one more qualified to adapt Comte de Lautréamont's infamous novel than director Alberto Cavallone, who made a number of grotesque/erotic art films, which were in vogue at the time. Cavallone's adaptation was completed, though never publically screened, making the film as impenetrable as its source material. Finding a copy would be, in the words of the Comte himself, as "beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table." A detailed account of the film's history by Mike Kitchell is available here.




La Belle vie (Robert Bresson)

Bresson received “advance-on-box-office” French funding in 1986 for the project.






Genesis (Robert Bresson, 1963)

A lavish adaptation of the Book of Genesis that Bresson wanted and tried to make off and on for 35 years. The story would have had to span the creation of the universe all the way to the building of the Tower of Babel. And back in the day, Bresson didn’t have Terrence Malick’s VFX team for “The Tree of Life.” Dino De Laurentiis had agreed to finance, but Bresson abandoned the project only to take it up again and then abandon it a second time. He once said that one of the frustrations with the production was that he couldn’t make his animal performers do as they were told. He would try to mount the project one more time in 1985, thanks to "an exceptional pre-production grant” he had received, but this attempt failed too.




Gershwin (Martin Scorsese, 1981)

Paul Schrader and John Guare wrote drafts of the script for this biopic about the American composer George Gershwin. Lavish production numbers of Gershwin’s works were to be related to scenes from his life as discussed by Gershwin on a psychologist’s couch. The movie was owed to Warner Bros., but they were eventually interested in another Scorsese picture (they also were skeptical about the cost/return prospects on "Gershwin"). “Ultimately, when it was time to do Gershwin, they turned to me and said, 'We'd rather have one on Dean Martin,'” Scorsese said circa 2004. The problem was, while Tom Hanks was eyed for the lead of Dino (Martin’s birth name), and Nick Pileggi (the author and screenwriter of Goodfellas and Casino) was going to write the script, that one wasn’t even started, while Gershwin was ready to roll. WB wouldn’t budge. The project was finally canceled for good due to complications with rights and the fear that a young audience would not understand or care about Gershwin.






Frankenstein (David Cronenberg)

Canadian film producer Pierre David approached Cronenberg in the '80s with the idea and the filmmaker offhandedly said yes. "He said, ‘Listen, tell me what you think… David Cronenberg's Frankenstein?" Cronenberg recalled of the producer's pitch. He replied “Sounds good to me. What about poor Mary Shelley?” And the next thing Cronenberg knew, there was a full-page ad in Variety touting, “David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein.” Evidently, Cronenberg did think about it a little bit. “It would be a more rethinking than a remake. For one thing I’d try to retain Shelley’s original concept of the creature being an intelligent, sensitive man. Not just a beast,” he is quoted as saying in the collection of interviews Cronenberg on Cronenberg, but, beyond that nothing seemed to happen.




Master of Lies (Nicolas Roeg)

This modern-day Jekyll-and-Hyde story was to star Donald Sutherland as a celebrated author who suffers from attacks of blindness. A story of parallel protagonists in which one man’s destructive fascination for another masks his desire to become him. Jamie Sives and Shirley Henderson were to co-star, with Eddie Dick producing.






Dumbo 2 (Walt Disney Studios)

Dumbo 2 was to be a direct-to-video sequel. It would of taken place a day or so after Dumbo ended. Now that Dumbo isn’t considered a freak (as he’s bringing in major bank for the circus) he’s made a group of super cool and hip friends. The premise: Dumbo and his circus buddies have to figure their way out of the big city after the circus train accidentally leaves them there. When John Lasseter became the Creative Director for Disney, he put a stop to all Disney sequels. Because instead of introducing children to the classics like intended, the sequels often tarnished the spirit of the original films. And it’s not surprising that Lasseter wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to his favorite film. The sequel was so far along that a “behind the scenes” trailer was actually released.




Maldoror (Kenneth Anger, 1952)

A film based on the work of proto-surrealist poet Comte de Lautréamont. Production never went past test footage and rehearsals with ballet dancers for the film from the companies of Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and the Ballets de Paris of Roland Petit. The footage and information about the film are lost.





Spike Jonze Harold & The Purple Crayon Test Film

Harold and The Purple Crayon (Spike Jonze)

The film was an adaptation of an adaptation of Crockett Johnson's novel Harold & The Purple Crayon. Jonze worked on the movie for a year and half, but said by that time the vision of the movie had veered off course from its original aims, due to studio notes and interference. "I wanted it to be almost like this silent animation, going back and forth between live action and animation," he said, but after 18 months it had transformed into something else. "When we finally got the plug pulled I got this amazing sense of relief." Jonze and his team took a giant 6-foot Purple Crayon replica that was made during development and pitched it off a six story roof in downtown Los Angeles in an anti-form of celebration. "We watched it shatter and I was just so relieved. And I realized over the course of a year and a half, I'd let the studio anxiety—'It's gotta be funny,''It's gotta have snappier dialogue,''This is too sad,''This is too melancholy'— and it happened millimeter by millimeter. A year and a half later I realized this is so far away from what I originally wanted to do."




The Idiot (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)

Throughout the 1970s, Tarkovsky tried and failed to make a film version of Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot. According to Tarkovsky's younger sister, Marina Tarkovskaya, adapting the novel was a lifelong dream and the state-funded and controlled Russian government (who had to approve all such movies) would never let him make it and kept stringing him along. "Andrei dreamed about filming [it], but they casually told him: 'You are too young and inexperienced. Let some time pass!," she told the Voice Of Russia in 2012. “In the end, they kept feeding him with promises for 10 years, and that cherished dream of his life was never realized. Let me stress that Andrei was never a dissident, but the leaders of the USSR still perceived him as a stranger, a person with internal freedom, that was what they could not forgive." An August 1983 letter from a Russian Deputy Chairman, confirms that Tarkovsky had signed a contract to write an Idiot screenplay for Russian film studio Mosfilm, but in an 1984 Italian press conference, Tarkovsky declared he would never return to the home country. He then passed away three years later at the age of 54.






Where the Wild Things Are (John Lasseter)

In 1983, future Pixar honcho and director John Lasseter directed a 30-second film test of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, which Disney then owned the rights to and were planning to make into an animated film. Lasseter was asked to do an experiment to see if it would be feasible to hybridize hand-drawn character animation with 3D backgrounds. Studio heads decided the technique was "too expensive" and "what they do on Futurama," and Lasseter was fired shortly after.




Cocaine (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)

Fassbinder said of his flashback-centered film based on Pitigrilli’s 1921 novel: “Cocaine freezes the brain, freeing one’s thoughts of anything inessential, and thereby liberating the essential, the imagination, concentration, and so on. This freezing of the brain . . . will be expressed in the film as follows: everything visible will appear covered with a sort of hoarfrost, glittering ice, whether in winter or summer; glasses and windows will covered with ice flowers, and with all the interior shots in the studio, even in summertime, the actors’ breath will be visible, as is usually the case only when it’s bitter cold outside.” This film was supposed to be a big budget production. It had an announcement at the festival in Cannes in May 1982, which Fassbinder and the producer attended. The problem was that because Fassbinder’s script was so big (about 600 pages) the producer asked him to think about shortening it. Since Fassbinder wasn’t in the mood to cut it quickly, he proposed to shoot other films first. He died without ever going back to it.






Dracula (Ken Russell)

A “sex-propelled” comic script was written in 1978 as a star vehicle for Mick Fleetwood. The aesthetic was to draw on Aubrey Beardsley (an artist admired by this version of the Count, an arts philanthropist).






Giraffes on Horseback Salad (Salvador Dalí)

The screenplay was written for the Marx Brothers. It was never produced because MGM thought it would be too surreal for them. Harpo also did not find it funny enough for the group. The film's storyline is available here.




Cleo (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

Soderbergh envisioned a 3-D rock musical about Cleopatra with songs by Robert Pollard, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. Ray Winstone was signed to play Julius Caesar, and Hugh Jackman was to play her lover. "It's like an Elvis musical in a way," Soderbergh said of it at the time. "It's not serious. I mean it's historically pretty accurate but it's sort of like Viva Las Vegas meets Tommy." As of late 2013, Soderbergh announced he was reimagining the project as a Broadway musical.




*

p.s. Hey. So, later today I'm heading off to the German city of Halle to spend a couple of days doing early work on and rehearsals of Gisele Vienne's and my new, upcoming theater piece. As usual when I'm out of Paris, you'll get rerun posts, specifically tomorrow through Thursday. But, unusually, I should be able to do the p.s. every day during that time, barring unexpected internet problems where I'm staying and/or currently unplanned early morning rehearsals. So, expect things below the posts to happen normally. If one of the next three posts does surprise us all by lacking a proper p.s., know that it'll probably be for one of the aforementioned reasons. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man. Well, I haven't read 'ASN' yet, but I think it's that a sub-current of a lot of his work was made the current. And, true enough, you're right: 'ASN' was the best selling R-G novel in France in decades. Oh, shit, the underground filmmakers tips. I'll have nothing to do on the plane tonight other than paging through the new issue of The Wire, so I'll make a list then, sorry. I'm so happy that I've never read Andrew Sullivan that I know of and barely know what he's supposed to be. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, but the French secretly love to be shocked and outraged, and its writers know that, and R-G actually managed to trigger that impulse, which isn't so easy. Thanks re: the R-G post, and, yeah, Catherine was/always is a regal thing. I'll check out that Richard Kramer book, thanks! ** Sypha, Ha ha, well, feel free to counter-program the Robbe-Grillet post with a JK Rowling Day, if you like. That would slip an interesting ice cube down the blog's pants. One literary agent reject is pre-par for the course. Ask anybody. Keep on it. Cool about the 10th possible story. No, I haven't played Kyte's game. I really want to do that. Thanks a lot for the reminder. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Me too about the book. It's on its way to me, and I'm chomping. The Chris thing is a performance work inspired by this place, the blog, you guys, my doings, etc., masterminded by the great man himself. That's all I know so far, but I think everyone here is going to be invited to contribute ideas and such to the work, so, yeah, it seems like it's going to be really exciting! The auditions went really great. I think we have a bunch of the cast in place. We're going to look at the footage we shot of them later this week and start cementing the roles and stuff. How was your weekend? Lots of love to you. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. I really look forward to reading the book and getting to say something about it, and it's awesome that Mike's thoughts are already on their way to all of us! The auditions went as well as we had hoped. All is very well. Thanks! I can't remember if I've read that Sollers piece. Hm, I'm going to try to find it and, if I haven't, I definitely will. Thank you for alerting us to it and for talking so wonderfully about it. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. You have the best street, so that book is a lucky dog. True, what you said about the conservatism now. It is the weirdest time. I just read this interesting essay somewhere about 'the new PC' and why it's happening and why the Left is the realm that's propagating it, but, unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw it. **  Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, Mikel. I think you might be right with that little masterpiece attribution. I pulled it out again this weekend, thanks to you, and was more insinuated by it than ever. Beautiful thoughts/writing on it. Really. A super pleasure, and, yeah, totally resonant with me. No, I haven't seen the 'Dune' doc yet. It hits theater here soon. Jodorowsky's stuff is really singular. The early few are especially strong, maybe 'The Holy Mountain' most. It's interesting/weird: when I saw them back at the time they were released, I liked them, but they had this heavy hippie/trippy contemporary infection that was kind of hard to take, for me, but, seen nowadays, that stuff is pretty much drained off, and I think they look much more amazing out of their original context, or maybe I mean in the pure context in which they were made and for which he intended them. ** Magick mike, Hi, Mike. So lucky you re: the early ARC. So majorly excited to read your doozy of a review. If you remember, alert me/us to where it ends up, if you don't mind, and I'l keep my eyes and fingers peeled for it in any case. Just read your piece in Plinth and really liked it a lot. Kudos! Fantastic about your column at Entropy. Bookmarked. And I'll greedily read that two-parter the minute I am able. Everyone, the supreme writer (and d.l.) magic mike aka Mike Kitchell has begin writing a column @ Entropy Magazine, and, well, here he is: 'i've started writing a weekly column at Entropy Mag, and I just finished a two-parter addressing Bataille, Blanchot & Duvert in how they all severely revised (cut in half) significant texts. part one, part two.' It's extremely highly recommended that you click those links and go read Mike's always incredible text, ideas, thoughts. I would have been pretty shocked if 'ASN' was Bataille-an. Take care, man, and thanks a lot. ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, it seemed pretty safe to assume that Aronofsky + $130 mil + Russell Crowe + The Bible was not going to be a game-changer, or at least not in a positive direction. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Got your email. It's perfect! I've set it up, and it's set to go on the 14th. Thank you so, so, so much! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. By 'in the Whitney', do you mean in the Biennial? If so, no, strangely, I don't think I knew that, and, wow, that's a great and deserving thing, if so. Ottinger's stuff is definitely worth testing out at the very least. Ooh, pix of Cambodia by you. I'll be there gawking as soon as I am humanly able. Everyone, do you want to see photos of Cambodia snapped by the superb artist and d.l. Bill (Hsu)? Of course you do, right? Here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Hope you like 'MC', and I suspect you will. That is a really good interview with Jeff. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic alerts all of to a really good, smart interview with the one and only Jeff 'Mira Corpora' Jackson aka the one and only Chilly Jay Chill over @ The Quietus. Excellent reading for all kinds of reasons. So please go here. ** Torn porter, Yo, Torn! Welcome to the extended hood, man! We should get a coffee for sure duh. I'll be back in Paris at the end of the week. Let's sort it out. Have a blast in the meantime if not even forever! ** Zach, Hi, Z. Yeah, yeah, good thinking there, yeah. I haven't read the actual R-G novel yet, but, yeah, I trust and share your entrance ideas. I vaguely remember that part of 'Ulysses'. Or vaguely until you referenced it, and now it's blooming again. Exactly, about connections. Really great thoughts, man, thank you! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Really excellent Quietus interview. You said great things. Rachel K. is a friend of mine, so I don't say much in this context, but I totally agree with you. The auditions went really well, thanks. The Fest sounds nice, fun. I've met Vollman a few times, and we've talked on the phone. I read with him twice. That 'kind and gentle affect, an almost aw shucks quality' is really him, I think, not only when he's performing. Like him a lot. Yeah, I'll tell you about the script, not today, but soon. Zac and I are in the heat of conceptualizing and writing it now, so it'll be easier and more accurate to talk about in the next couple of weeks when we've nailed things down more. ** Misanthrope, Aw, yikes, about the mix-up, but it's cool to imagine LPS watching it while you typed. And, yeah, fingers crossed and mum's the word until the LPS returns news becomes factual. Well, for sure, we'll sort out a day that's great for you and fine for me re: you coming over here for a day. Shouldn't be a problem at all. Great, great! ** Rewritedept, Hi. It's available now, not even nowish. Auditions went great. Auctions, ha ha, good old spellcheck and good old my hurried, apparently non-detailed last p.s. check for mistakes. Really glad the Cobain gig went so well. If there end up being pix, fill us in, yeah? My weekend was good, yeah. Thanks, buddy. ** Okay. Unmade movies, a bunch of them, for your delectation or whatever. Like I said, you'll get a hopefully fun rerun post tomorrow and, barring the unforeseen, I'll be here to talk back to you like almost always. See you then.

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GB Jones helped start the homocore scene in Toronto which later inspired the worldwide queer punk movement of the late 80s and early 90s. She was in the seminal, pioneering queercore band Fifth Column, to which current bands like The Hidden Cameras, Kids On TV, Xiu Xiu, and Lesbians On Ecstasy still pay tribute. She is an internationally shown visual artist. In 1996, the New York gallery Feature Inc. released a book of Jones' drawings, and other artwork, entitled G.B. Jones, edited by Steve Lafreniere. Although widely available in the U.S. and Europe, copies were seized at the Canadian border and it was officially banned in Canada. A twenty year retrospective of her drawings, The Power and the Glory, was held in Toronto in 2005.  With Bruce la Bruce, she founded and co-edited the first and arguably most important queer punk zine, JD's, in 1985. She has directed a number of underground no-budget Super 8 films. Her best known work is The Yo-Yo Gang, a 30 minute 'exploitation' movie about girl gangs that has gained significant cult status even though it, like most of her films, has rarely been screened. She has starred in several underground films including Bruce la Bruce's first feature No Skin Off My Ass.  She lives and works mysteriously in Toronto.
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The Lollipop Generation (1993 - ?): This legendary, unfinished film, almost fifteen years in the making, about the lives of underaged porn stars is roughly to Queer Cinema what Orson Welles''The Other Side of the Wind' is to, well, Cinema. Eternally in progress and always purportedly near completion, its current status is unknown. The artists Scott Treleaven and Paul P, who appear in the film, have confirmed that scenes were being shot by Jones as recently as 2002. A rough, short early draft of the film featuring footage shot in the early 90s has occasionally been screened at film festivals. In addition to Treleaven and P., the cast of 'TLG' includes Jena Von Br_cker, Johnny Noxzema, Vaginal Creme Davis, Caroline Azar, Mark Ewert, Karen Chapelle, Rachel Pepper, Diana Donato, Mitchell Watkins, and G.B. Jones.



Trailer: 'The Lollipop Generation'


The Yo-Yo Gang (30 minutes; 1992): This 'no budget film' follows the exploits of two girl gangs, the "Yo-Yo Gang" and the "Skateboard Bitches", as a gangwar erupts between them. The tag line for the film reads: "Gang girls frequently out-curse, out-fight and out-sex every boys' gang around". The theme song, "Yo-Yo" is performed by Fifth Column and the film also features songs by Human Ashtrays and by Anti-Scrunti Faction. The soundtrack, including these bands and songs, was a cassette tape only release on Bitch Nation Tapes. Cast: Jena von Brucker, Anita Smith, Beverly Breckenridge, Suzy Sinatra, Caroline Azar, Leslie Mah, Tracy, Candy, Mark Frietas, and G.B. Jones.



Trailer: 'The Yo-Yo Gang'



The Troublemakers (45 minutes; 1990): The film is equally fact and fiction, documentary and performance, home movie and narrative - the line is blurred and distinctions meaningless. Shot in the condemned home of director G.B. Jones and lead actors Caroline Azar and Bruce laBruce, the total cost of the film was the price of 7 cartridges, 3 minutes in length, of Super 8 film plus developing and transfer to video with a one-to-one ratio. There are no outtakes. GB Jones: '“We were all really poor so I decided to make a film about what our lives were like, to really honestly portray how we were getting by. So, on one level it’s a document of how people living on the margins of society manage to exist. But on another level, I wanted the film to capture the dichotomy between how society views people like us and how we choose to be portrayed on film.'



Trailer: 'The Troublemakers'






'G.B. Jones has an uneasy fascination with authority and uses her gender and sexual preference to exploit fantasies of rock & roll, sex, groupies, booze, drugs, money, leather, torn jeans,motorcycles and stardom as an all out assault against values that would strive for assimilation of queer culture into the mainstream. She's every queer girl and boy's hero, whether you want her to be or not. Believe it or don't, she is looking out for every queer's best interests.

'Her obsession with power, narrative, and the detailed reworking of Tom of Finland's stereotypical gay male erotica is apparent in the series of drawings titled "I am a Fascist Pig." This series recalls scenes from a dyke fantasy movie such as "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Here a beautiful blond female motorcycle cop is seduced by two punkrock babes, who tie her up and steal her bike. We are left to imagine that the cop was raped as the final scene leaves her tied to a tree, bare ass facing the audience, while the babes make a fast getaway.

'The style the drawings take is usually casual, pencil on paper with heavy outlines and carefully rendered tits, asses, quads, biceps, et al.. and whether framed, pinned to the wall or just printed in a zine, they maintain the freshness of pages torn from a teenager's school notebook.'-- Arnold Kemp, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
















“ The ruined and decaying monasteries and remote, secluded spots of Caspar David Freidrich's ink drawings are translated into this age while attempting to continue his traditions. To behold private places, to see the moment altered irrevocably, ravaged by circumstances and violence beyond our control and, afterwards, the beauty of decay. Whether discovered by chance or created by fate, the unimagined becomes visible. What was unknown becomes accessible, fleetingly merging with the aesthetic of the present till, once more, it becomes forgotten and invisible to the future.” -- G.B. Jones, October 2003












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'Fifth Column is an all-women experimental post punk band from Toronto, which came about during the early 1980s. Originally the group had been known as Second Unit, but they took the name Fifth Column after a military manoeuvre by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, in which nationalist insurrectionists within besieged Republican Madrid, called 'the fifth column', would aid the four columns (north, south, east and west) outside the perimeters.

'Independent-minded, they released their recordings, including their second full length recording All-Time Queen Of The World, themselves. In 1992 they released a single, "All Women Are Bitches", on the independent record label K Records. Despite being controversial and receiving little airplay, the recording was voted "Single Of The Week" in the UK music publication Melody Maker. Their last full-length recording, 36-C, was also released by K Records. The band's latest release was in 2002, on the Kill Rock Stars compilation, Fields And Streams.'-- collaged



'Like This'


'All Women Are Bitches'


'Donna'


Trailer: 'She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column'


Xtra catches up with Kevin Hegge, Director of 'She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column'



Albums

To Sir With Hate (1985, Hide Records)
All-Time Queen Of The World (1990, Hide Records)
36-C (1994, K Records)


Singles

"All Women are Bitches/Donna" 7" on K Records (1992)
"Don't" 7" split single with God Is My Co-Pilot on Outpunk Records (1994)
"I Love You, But" 7" split single with Trailer Queen on Dark Beloved Cloud Records (1995)

Cassettes

Work (1989) Hide Records & Tapes; soundtrack for the video by Paulette Philips, cassette only release

Links

Fifth Column interviewed at PunkAcademy.com
Fifth Column's Myspace page
Fifth Column Fan Page (in Portugese)
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'J.D.s is seen by many to be the catalyst that pushed the queercore scene into existence. The editors had initially chosen the appellation "homocore" to describe the movement they began, but later replaced the word 'homo' with 'queer' to create Queercore, to better reflect the diversity of the scene and to disassociate themselves completely from the oppressive confines of the gay and lesbian communities' orthodoxy and agenda. G.B. Jones says, "We were just as eager to provoke the gays and lesbians as we were the punks." According to Bruce LaBruce, J.D.s initially stood for Juvenile Delinquents, but "also encompassed such youth cult icons as James Dean and J.D. Salinger."

'The zine featured the photos and the "Tom Girl" drawings of G.B. Jones, stories by Bruce LaBruce, and the "J.D.s Top Ten Homocore Hits", a list of queer-themed songs such as "Off-Duty Sailor" by The Dicks, "Only Loved At Night" by The Raincoats, "Gimme Gimme Gimme (My Man After Midnight)" by The Leather Nun, "Homophobia" by Victims Family, "I, Bloodbrothers Be" by Shockheaded Peters, "The Anal Staircase" by Coil and many more. Groups like Anti-Scrunti Faction were featured in the fanzine. Contributors included Donny the Punk, comic artist Anonymous Boy, author Dennis Cooper, artist Carrie McNinch, musician Anita Smith, punk drag performer Vaginal Davis and Klaus and Jena von Brücker.'-- collaged

You can download pdfs of two issues of J.D.s for free here from the great Queer Zine Archive Project Site.

Or you can buy a special box set of meticulous recreations of the entire run of the J.D.s zine for the unpunk rock but rather art world price of $80 (Canadian) here.
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*

p.s. Hey. Greetings from Halle, Germany. Nothing to report back on yet. I just woke up. ** Sarah Schulman, Sarah! Wow, hi! How really awesome of you to come in here. How are you? I miss you. Oh, yeah, I've got a list of my-stuff-to-film projects that never happened. Some quite sadly. I've also got one 'successful' my-stuff-to-film project that I wish had never gotten made too, ha ha. Thanks a lot, Sarah! Much respect and love to you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Yes, I found maybe 5 really exciting sounding films that Resnais wanted to make and never did, very sadly. The Garbo thing, wow. That I don't know. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hey! Really good to see you! Ugh about the internet issues. I'm good, really busy, really good. Oh, yes, I like Breillat's films. I did a post here about her work a while back. Let me see if I can find it. Hold on. Yeah, here. Yes, the questions for Elias! I spaced in my current spate of work overload. I'll have a bunch of bored downtime the next couple of days because theater rehearsals are usually something like 70% sitting around waiting, so I'll make a list and get that to you pronto. Sorry. I'm really excited to get to query him. I intend to see 'Under the Skin', yeah. I think it just hit Paris. Music ... give me a day to get my memory together. I just woke up, and I'm typing on barely coffeed-up, rudimentary fumes/brain power. Cool to see you, man. More soon, including Elias questions. Thanks a lot! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Thanks re: the post. Good, no, great question. I didn't remember where I read that piece, sorry, but Steevee suggested another think-piece that I read too, by Michele Goldberg @ The Nation, and which isn't bad at all, so I doubly recommend it. I agree with you on every point wholeheartedly. ** Sypha, Hi. Suzanne Vega would be a nice ice cube for the blog's pants too, so, yeah, if you want to make a SV pst, I would be thrilled and really grateful. I joined Amazon Prime so I could watch some movie, and their player didn't work with my system, and it was big waste of whatever I paid. ** Bill, I know, right? Yeah, I looked around and saw that they are in the Biennial, which is so great. I'm not sure if your link is what I found, so I'll use it later. I forgot my toothbrush, and the flight here was a horror -- never fly Darwin Airlines, trust me -- and I just saw Halle in the daylight for the first time, but, so far, for the most part, things here are A-okay. ** Statictick, Hey! Big N! I missed you! Oh, fuck, about the epilepsy episode and the hospital outcome. Man, you are the toughest fucker ever, I don't even know what to say. Obviously, mega-hopes for the visit with the neurologist. The Mitten Movie Project sounds really interesting. 'I need to get back to doing what it is that I do': truer words hath ne'er been spoke! Love to you, buddy. ** Steevee, Thanks for the suggestion to Tosh. I read that piece too. Not bad, yeah. That's great news about the actor! Congratulations, man! That's fantastic! Having just gone through successful auditions myself, I think I know how strengthening that feels. ** Magick mike, Hi, Mike. Oh, shit, sorry. I rushed to judgement on the authorship. I'll change the attribution in the link. Yeah, sorry about that. ** Torn porter, Hi. Okay, sounds good, and meeting/seeing Ratty would be ace. Let's sort it this weekend. Thanks for the link, but, yeah, said fellow being interviewed is an ex-boyfriend of mine, and I actually didn't like that interview at all for numerous reasons, but, yeah, I can see why it might seem like I would. Long story short, thanks! ** Zach, Hi. I would think it would, yes. I had a friend who did it a few times, thinking it might cure his ills. It didn't, and, wow, no thanks. I actually found that unmade Eisenstein film info when I was looking for stuff for the post, and I somehow lost it along the way and didn't use it, weird. Yeah, really interesting, right? Indeed, Sarah S. came in here. I was and am very chuffed. ** Kier, Hi, K! Thanks a lot, pal. That's weird: I listened to Mahler's 'Kindertotenlieder' about four days ago for no reason at all. Our brains may have ended up in the same loop or something. My day was okay, mostly traveling, but today might be something. First day at actual work on the new theater piece. Momentous or something. Have a great day. ** Rewritedept, Hi. I don't know or maybe remember about the 'Abelcain' thing. He has a lot of never realized films. Is that Gilliam doc the one from quite a while back with Johnny Depp, etc..? If so, it's okay. I did see 'Cocksucker Blues', yeah, quite a while back in a theater. I thought it was quite interesting, and while, yeah, I can see why the RS didn't want it out, their refusal to let it be released does not speak well of them. Hope you're much less bored out of your skull today. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks for directing me to the source re: the Sollers. Interesting about Bataille holding the greatest mystery. I'd need more coffee and wakefulness to figure out which of those guys is the most mysterious to me. I think the problem re: Sollers, at least in France, is that he has become a go-to TV talking head/guest on shows here all the time, and I haven't read hardly any of his writings from the last many years, but people I know who have and who I respect always say something happened and that he has become a much less interesting thinker and writer. But I don't know at all, personally. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Yeah, I like the reading clips being included. It's nice, a curious offshoot, a interesting tangential add. I guess that, like, a 'Left Hand' FB page or something is a good idea? People seem to do that all the time, so I guess it works and is a plus? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Yeah, I'm pals with John W., and I didn't know about the 'Dunces' project either until I found the info online. You know, obviously, the Bressons are the most tragic never-mades for me. I would kind of die if Tati had made that Sparks film or even any additional film. And the Malicks, of course. I think your dissent was very respectful. I haven't seen a consequent shit storm, so I suspect you just said what a number of people have been thinking. You're going to LA? Whoa, to read or ... ? To be on Bookworm? My fave LA restaurant is Real Food Daily, a vegan place, on La Cienega near Beverly. I love the 'fast' Mexican food place/chain Poquito Mas, on Sunset a bit west of La Cienega. A trip to Amoeba Records is always hugely recommended. What area are you staying in? ** Misanthrope, If anybody could have seen all those films, it would have been you. Dude, I read about The Undertaker losing. I was completely shocked. I watched footage of the crowd's reaction. Amazing. One of guys that Zac and I are casting in our film is really really into American pro wrestling, and he's also the bass player in a French Death Metal band. He is awesomeness. Cool, let me know know what's up re: your accommodations when it's up. ** Right. You get this old post about the wondrous GB Jones today, which I hope you'll thoroughly enjoy, of course. I'm off to rehearsals now. I promise to break a leg if you will. See you tomorrow.

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"The Damned (1969) Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973) are known as Luchino Visconti’s ‘German Trilogy’. Here Visconti examines the decadence of the Belle Epoque, the corruption and confusion behind the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany, and the story of Ludwig II of Bavaria who has been viewed as very eccentric and was the patron of Richard Wagner. Whilst some critics have marked this down as Visconti’s ‘decadent’ period, and noted an increasing pessimism in the themes that he dealt with this has frequently been over-personalised. Visconti has argued that what interested him was the analysis of a sick society, and in these films the historical forces of modernity versus counter-modernity are being played out.

"In The Damned the representation of the infamous ‘Night of the Long Knives’ when the SS slaughtered the leadership of the sexually transgressive SA of Eric Rohmer, links the growth of Nazism to a crisis of masculinity, and also explores the homo-erotic bonding of militarism which repress its own sexual excess instead transferring that into compulsory heterosexuality in tandem with patriarchal family values.

"Death in Venice links Thomas Mann and Mahler, artists of the period, with a desire for youth represented as homosexual longing which was an impossible desire at that time. Representing a crisis where the new generation will be fundamentally different whilst the once resplendent Venice the most dynamic city in Europe of the Early and middle Renaissance is decaying, riven by a pestilence of a more Mediaeval type. This isolation of the wealthy and their retreat to decadence is a representation of modernity as conquering the old, marginalising the ancien regime.

"Ludwig’s homosexuality can be seen as indicative of the passing of a monarchical system reliant upon hereditary and therefore compulsory heterosexuality. This dovetails two themes. Patriarchal systems based upon physical reproduction have become outmoded and unstable. A newer form of patriarchy is necessary to achieve stability. For Ludwig to express his desire even as a monarch means to regress from the social reality of the moment only when Bavaria has been subjugated to Prussia leaving a token monarchy can Ludwig act out his desires in a limited way."-- Kinoeye




The Damned (1969)




"It's been suggested that there's incest between Hamlet and his mother in Shakespeare's play, but between them there's lots of things in addition to the incest; Hamlet never actually has intercourse with his mother, and even in my film The Damned I was able to convince [the censors] that the scene was very elliptical. However, when I showed them the film with a tiny cut, they asked for a much longer cut, one which would have eliminated the whole scene, so I refused and stuck to it (...) I said I could have cut more of that scene, but that I would have been forced to insert a counter-camp, and I said it would have made everything more graphic, because you would actually see a naked man and a naked woman on a bed. So I cut this counter-camp in and I showed them the film again, and they immediately agreed to go back to that only one tiny cut."-- Luchino Visconti

"The Damned won Visconti his sole Academy Award nomination, for best screenplay, shared with his two co-writers."-- BBC Four

"When Visconti asked me to be in The Damned, I said to him, "Look. I can't play this role." He said, "I know you can do it," and I said, "How?" and he said, "I can see it behind your eyes. Just listen to me. I'm going to make you up, I'm going to change your style, I'm going to make you look like a woman in her thirties, you're going to have beautiful clothes, a beautiful set, you're going to have beautiful people around you. I'm going to put you into this place and you're going to have to do what you have to do. I can't act for you. I can do everything else for you, but I can't act for you. Will you act for me?" I said, "Senor, si! Grazia!" And I did. With Helmut Berger he was an absolute tyrant. He told Helmut every single thing to do. Everything. Every movement. But with the women, he was - I don't know how he was with Ingrid Thulin because we didn't have so many scenes together - certainly with me and Romy Schneider, he just puts you in this most incredible situation where you feel like a princess and you're absolutely loved, and you're dressed and you're made-up and he says, "Just now act for me." And with his women it was like that. With the men it was very different."-- Charlotte Rampling







"Visconti’s intention in The Damned is not to present a realistic character driven drama but a highly stylized metaphor for Germany's descent into insanity. He intentionally uses extreme grotesque images, with one scene more bizarre than the next. The film is filled with moments of great sadness, perversion and horror that include themes of incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, murder, drug addiction and suicide. One of the highlights of the film is a bloodbath -- the historical "Night of the Long Knives," massacre of Hitler's old private army. This memorably horrific set-piece is superbly staged, beggining with a pastoral scene of soldiers playing in a lake, then progressing into an almost surreal drunken orgy of soldiers, naked women, men in drag, finally leading to the brutal massacre.

"Visconti dramatizes alienation and madness in a very similar way that Stanley Kubrick handled similar themes in A Clockwork Orange. He photographs these acts of violence and perversion with detached but almost pictorial beauty. Everyone's sweats in this movie: drops of perspiration trickle down temples, and rivers of sweat glisten on upper lips while the baroque lavishness of the scenery makes a striking contrast with the ghastly minds of the characters. The cinematography is brilliant, capturing the decaying elegance impecably. Visconti uses a Hammer-horror pop color palette emphasizing the intense contrast between shadow and light (good vs. evil), blues, browns and reds. In the opening scene, he shoots the blasting furnaces of the steelworks factory, flames and smoke coming up from the furnaces as the titles jump on and off the screen and we hear the harrowing music theme by Maurice Jarre; a fitting metaphor of Hell and of the horrors and depravity which will follow.

"With The Damned, Visconti reassures himself again a spot right up there, into the pantheon of great directors. One can see the influence of The Damned on later films such as Bob Fosse’s Cabaret or the psycho sexual drama The Night Porter. The film was originally rated X due to its challenging subject matter, but Visconti’s craft and talent elevates this epic drama to a higher artistic level. With its brilliant set design, spectacular costumes, the intensity of Helmut Berger and Ingrid Thulin performances, Luchino Visconti's The Damned is a feverish masterpiece not to be discarded."-- from 'The Spinning Image'



Trailer



The massacre


Dinner scene




Death in Venice (1971)




"Some shots of Björn Andrésen, the Tadzio of the film, could be extracted from the frame and hung on the walls of the Louvre or the Vatican in Rome. For this is not a pretty youngster who is supposed to represent an object of perverted lust; that was neither novelist Mann's nor director-screen writer Visconti's intention. Rather, this is a symbol of a beauty allied to those which inspired Michelangelo's David and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and which moved Dante to seek ultimate aesthetic catharsis in the distant figure of Beatrice."-- from Lawrence J. Quirk, 'The Great Romantic Films'

"In his memoir, An Orderly Man, Dirk Bogarde relates that, after the finished film of Death in Venice was screened for them by Visconti in Los Angeles, the Warner Bros. executives wanted to write off the project, fearing it would be banned in the United States for obscenity because of its subject matter. They eventually relented when a gala premiere of the film was organized in London, with Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne in attendance, to gather funds for the sinking city."

"Luchino Visconti's 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella Death In Venice visibly had a strong influence on Ron and Russell Mael aka the band Sparks. In their early performances Sparks got a miniature ocean liner made out of papier-mache, and Russell Mael had burst out of it wearing a dark sailor suit to begin the show. The ideas of the miniature ocean liner and the sailor suit were obviously inspired by Lucchino Visconti's movie despite Russell's suit was dark instead of the white one wore by the main young character Tadzio from the movie. When the first Halfnelson album failed, the Bearsville label thought the record should be repackaged under the name "Sparks" with a revamped packaging too. So Ron Mael and manager/ photographer Larry Dupont designed the album cover with the fake brick wall. It just wasn't as interesting as the original first car interior cover but the pic featured Russell Mael in the famous sailor suit inspired by Luchino Visconti's movie. When Sparks' second album, A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing, was released one year later it included the song "Moon Over Kentucky". The intro of this song was written by Ron Mael after seeing Death In Venice."-- from 'Sparks: the Early Years'







"If The Damned displays a violent assault on space, Visconti's adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice shows it slowly dissolving. Twenty years before Wong Kar-wai, Visconti had already penetrated the private space of a lonely, romantically obsessed individual and summoned up his emotional landscape through the expressive use of an urban environment and music. Like the furnace that sets the scene in The Damned, Death in Venice states its mood and pace in its opening image, an incredibly slow shot floating from the middle of a dusk-blue mist into the Venetian lagoon across which the boat bearing composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) to the city of his death passes. Accompanied by the music of Gustav Mahler, upon whom the character of the composer was based, this shot slowly brings the story into focus, just as at the end it again drifts out of focus. This lends a sense of instability to the melancholy, dreamlike interim. Visconti's descriptive camera is allowed to dominate the film because there is simply nothing but description and observation in this film. As in The Damned, Visconti makes expert use of the zoom lens, but this time the zooms are for the most part slow and exploratory. The camera glides endlessly across the hotel and its guests, as well as the beaches with their numerous holidaymakers, often starting a shot as if it were from von Aschenbach's point of view, only to finish with him in shot, creating a subtle sense of disorientation.

"The only action in this film is what goes on within Aschenbach's mind and it is by colouring the potentially neutral, at times almost documentary scenes that Visconti creates with the appropriate mood that he brings this film to life. Compared to the crushing solidity of Ludwig, space here is frequently subjective, a screen on which the dying hero projects his feelings. At the same time, this space remains mysteriously aloof from him, displaying all the inscrutability of a foreign country. This slightly threatening aspect of Venice is hinted at from the outset. As von Aschenbach is brought by gondola from the boat at the opening of the film, a dispute with the gondoleer leaves Aschenbach muttering worriedly to himself: “I don't understand”. In the final stages of Death in Venice, when von Aschenbach discovers evidence of a cholera epidemic locals are trying to cover up for the sake of the tourist industry, the menacing aspect comes to the fore, the now corrupt beauty of the alleys and canals of Venice holding a lurking sense of death and danger far more powerful than even that evoked by Nicolas Roeg in Don't Look Now (1973) with its more obviously grand Guignol trappings. Roeg's rainswept, off-season Venice is immediately inhospitable, whereas Visconti, the master of decadence, seduces us with his painterly vision only to gradually reveal the danger at its heart. This parallels the process of Aschenbach's hopeless love for a boy he has spotted on the beach and his ultimate death in pursuit of his ideal, Visconti once again using space to tell his story, this time with a delicacy that he would never surpass."-- from 'Visconti's Cinema of Twilight', by Maximilian Le Cain



Trailer


The entire film




Ludwig (1973)




“One would spontaneously put Visconti’s Ludwig in the category of films that are bigger than cinema and more audacious than their time. Their mere existence challenges the dullness of daily life, the materialism of the century… And in this film of over-proportionate ambition, the filmmaker could not remain smaller than his subject: Ludwig, no more than Linderhof castle, is meant to be inhabited.”-- Olivier Assayas

“In Helmut Berger’s Ludwig, Visconti’s echt aestheticism finds its last champion, its Tristan, and also its supreme sacrificial victim, its Christ. Ludwig is a passion play: a mass.”-- James McCourt







'Visconti's best films have the rare quality of existing in space as much, if not more, than in time. It is an intensely visual style of filmmaking, which involves immersing the audience in the atmosphere of each scene and gradually overwhelming them with it as opposed to rushing from one scene to the next in pursuit of narrative tension. Of all the directors who, each in their own very unique way, practice a similar approach – Dreyer, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Jansco, Angelopoulos, Tarr, certain films by Kubrick and Wenders – Visconti is the most subtle, consciously or unconsciously cloaking his radicalism in the 'respectability' of the period genre. I would argue that this radicalism was achieved through constant striving to tell his stories more vividly rather than by making use of any preconceived aesthetic programme. In this way, Visconti can be perceived as the transitional figure in European cinema between classicism and modernism.

"Ludwig deals with an aristocrat isolated by changing times, in this case the King of Bavaria. Melancholy gives way to neurosis; the romantic atmosphere has become that of a gothic horror film, with Helmut Berger's tormented King hiding from the world like a vampire as he descends into escapism, illness and insanity. Ludwig is a film about a man avoiding coming to terms with change, put in a position of leadership for which he is hopelessly unfit and which he uses to hide from the world. It is an icy, spare, claustrophobic record of decadence and degeneration. Each scene has the feeling of a solemn ceremony or, at times, an historical tableau. His view of events is detached, reflecting both the hero's helplessness and his increasingly tenuous grip on reality.

"In one powerful scene, we follow Ludwig into a room full of relatives, through a complicated process of bowing and hand kissing. In the middle of it all he becomes aware of a personal betrayal. Almost overwhelmed with fury and grief, he goes through the same formal procedure before leaving the room. The scene is not played as a stiff upper lip exercise in putting a good front on things. Rather it is bitterly farcical, the King's body trembling with humiliation as he goes through the empty procedures. Ludwig is the story of a man trapped by destiny, history, and his own personal failings. And, in what is Visconti's most extreme film, he is a man trapped by the walls that enclose him.

"Ludwig is ultimately a man crushed and destroyed by architecture. Having been deposed by the government as mentally unfit to govern, he is silently escorted by his captors in an interminable real time scene down an endless series of corridors to his bleak, sterile cell. It is at moments like this that Visconti's leisurely pace turns almost sadistic, yet the relentless oppressiveness of corridor after corridor is genuinely chilling and, taken in the right spirit, possesses a hypnotic, mercilessly compacted power. It is the natural conclusion to Ludwig's ever contracting world, a final imprisonment. All that is left is his mysterious death by drowning the first time he is let out for a walk in the grounds." -- from Viscont's Cinema of Twilight, by Maximilian Le Cain



Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt in Italian


Helmut Berger in Ludwig 1881




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p.s. Hey. The combination of a suddenly gone-shit-internet connection where I'm staying plus a weird Blogger glitch that prevents me from seeing the comments from yesterday means I can't do the p.s. today. Hopefully, the internet will perk up and Blogger will chill by tomorrow morning, and I will catch up with yesterday's and today's comments then. My apologies. Enjoy the Luchino Visconti stuff, I hope. See you tomorrow.

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Dear Dennis, as you know I’ve been working for a long time on an exhibition here in San Francisco that will bring back Kiki Gallery for six weeks this summer at Ratio 3, deep in the Mission District and oddly enough right around the corner from the original Kiki. The young artist Colter Jacobsen has been my co-curator for this show, and we have been well advised by Ratio 3’s director Chris Perez, who gave us the green light a year ago and who has been patient, helpful and generous for months. Our show is called “Kiki: The Proof is in the Pudding,” and it opened June 27, to run through August 2, and seeing that you can’t be here, I’m sending you some bits and pieces of it through e-mail for your wonderful blog. Most of your readers will have never heard of Kiki, nor of its founder, the late Rick Jacobsen (1961-1997), so I thought to introduce the show by way of a memoir -- unpublished and unfinished -- which I’ve been writing for some years. The show includes nearly two dozen artists who showed at Kiki and we have scrounged the world for the original artworks that once hung on its walls. Even though the gallery lasted for only 18 months, it turned into something of a legend, perhaps because so many of the artists involved went on to fame elsewhere. And also just because it was so amateur and contingent and makeshift I guess, in that respect very representative of the funk-junk aesthetic often associated with California art. Thanks, Dennis, for giving me and Colter permission to use the essay on Yoko Ono which you wrote for Kiki’s final show, “This Is Not Her,” organized by Rick Jacobsen and Wayne Smith, and of course for opening your blog to me and to Kiki today. If any of your readers will be here in San Francisco this summer I hope they can come down to Ratio 3 and take a look. Love from, Kevin K.









pictures of the opening, and the dinner afterwards.



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p.s. Hey. Please welcome back this great paean to the late, great, visionary art space Kiki by the godlike Kevin Killian. It's a place both key and important to know about, so get in there, yes? Thanks, all, and humongous thanks to the master, Mr. K. Otherwise, I've finished up the theater work here and am heading back to Paris this afternoon. It's gone really well, and, who knows, but maybe this new piece is going to fly, and the cool and kind of scary thing is that it's nothing like anything that Gisele and I have made together before. So, yeah. Tomorrow morning I have a big, fairly early morning meeting with the German producers of Zac's my and film project, so I won't be able to do the p.s. It'll be back on Saturday, and at that point I'll catch up with all the comments that end up here between now and then. ** Tuesday **  Chilly Jay Chill, Have a really great LA trip in every respect. I'm sure you'll do great on Bookworm. Michael can be intimidating in his genius, but he's also very welcoming and focused on making the guest writers shine, so no worries. Oh, you'll be downtown? There's kind of no perfect or best place to stay in LA since it's so centerless and scattered. If you have a car or some kind of arranged transport, you can get around. If you want to see the Mike Kelley show again in its LA configuration, it's at MoCA right now, which is nearish you. Enjoy everything. And fingers way crossed re: the Book Prize! ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, sir. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron! It's really great to see you! Yeah, it was really great to get to hang out with you in Paris, and I hope we'll get another chance asap, in Paris or somewhere. Sure, we can talk wrestling. I'm pretty far behind on what's going on in these later years 'cos I haven't made the extra effort to keep up here in France, but, yeah, I would love to talk wrestling. And your film idea of course intrigues the shit out of me. All is well with me and with my film project with Zac so far. I'm glad things are moving well with you. I hope to get to talk and interact with you more. Take care. ** Slatted light, Wow, David! It's so kind of unspeakably amazing to see you! I've missed you a lot! I'm really happy you liked the non-film post, obviously. Life's great with me, on, wow, kind of every level. Really busy, lots of projects going on. I'm shyly but sincerely happy/hopeful about the 'something in the mix' on your end, fog enshrouded or not. I'd love to know what's up if and when you have something that would be okay and interesting for you to share. Yeah, I'm working on two films, actually. One is collab. film based or kind of spun off the porn film I wrote and hoped to make years ago, directed by my genius friend Zac, and the other is a feature film that Gisele is going to direct, and which Zac and I are co-writing. I can say more about both in time when they get themselves cemented. The film Zac and I are making is ideally going to be shot this summer, and I'll know more about the specifics after we meet with the producers tonight and tomorrow. I'm in the middle of a novel too, and I'm very excited about it. So, yeah, lots going on. Man, please hang out more if you feel like it. It's really so great to see you and get to talk with you! Lots of love. ** Zach, GBJ is awesome, worth your investigating, for sure, I think. Ah, so 'spring break' per say is in swing now, yes? What's the difference so far? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Yeah, I don't really know about the newer dislike of Sollers in detail. I think it's also based on some change in writing and, more than that, thinking or the attitude behind his thinking? I should ask people more about that in detail, and I will. 'Winter is my poetic fake, or something': wow, that's really nice! ** Steevee, Hey. 17! Sweet Jesus, not bad. Great start! Really happy to hear about that! ** Kier, Hi, K! I think you said in your next comment that you scored Melt Banana tickets. I def. think going is good. I haven't seen them in a long time, but, the last time I did, they were so incredibly loud and the pitch of their sound was so high or something that I think I got permanent hearing damage. I mean that in a good way, ha ha. Maybe they've quieted, but I guess I would say bring some cotton balls just in case. Germany was nice to me, I think. Yeah, it was relatively quite kind to me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. No, don't panic. I think those kinds of unpleasant surprises are pretty standard fare, and they'll just be like barely remembered daydreams at the end of things. ** Misanthrope, I really wonder what the story is behind that Lesnar/Undertaker thing. Would love to have been a fly on the wall of McMahon's office when that was being decided. ** Rewritedept, Thanks. Awful and weird about Ultimate Warrior. I just saw that, and I haven't even seen anything but the headlines. Pix! I'll go look in a bit. Everyone, pix of Rewritedept and band/crew in the midst of a recent tribute to Kurt Cobain performance by his truly. Germany, or what I've seen of it, which means my hotel, the street between me and the puppet theater where we're working, and the inside of the puppet theater, have been very good to me. Thanks. ** Postitbreakup, Hey, Josh! Yay! How are you? No, actually, given the heavy clothes I had to wear, I was more in danger of sweating to death than freezing. What's up, buddy? ** Wednesday ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. At least among people I know, I think there's actually a bit of a rising interest in Visconti nowadays, and, strangely or not, focused mostly around 'Ludwig'. ** Empty Frame, Hey! 'Ludwig' is a trip. Germany's been a decent enough bud to me, I would say. How are you? ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Hi, man! Great, really glad that the Breillat post helped. I didn't know about that new Marching Church song/clip. Thanks! I'll hit it very shortly. And the wonderful one too. Yeah, thanks, and the Elias questions are in very latter stages of being cooked. Soon. Take care. ** Kier, 'Ludwig' is wild and wooly and all over the place and amazing and kind of boring at times and epic, and, yeah, check it out. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure Visconti was queer. I think he was lovers with Helmut Berger for ages, as far as I know. Mr. E can certainly give you the scoop, if he likes. ** Bitter69uk, Hey, man. Yeah, I've seen 'The Damned', and, yeah, Ingrid Thulin, totally. You were her? Wow! I haven't seen that film in years too. I guess I like the early and later Visconti for weirdly different reasons, but I saw 'Death in Venice' at a vulnerable age, and it kind of changed me or something, so there's that influence going on. ** Steevee, I look forward to reading it. Everyone, here's Steevee's review of Alain Guiraudie's film THE KING OF ESCAPE. Head over there and read it, yeah? ** Zach, Hi. Nice and appropriate spring break beginning activity there with the herbs. Yay! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. You'll be glad you watched it, I can kind of guarantee, I think. ** Sypha, Hi. Well, I haven't read the 'new' R-G yet, but, yeah, knowing your R-G resistance, etc., I guess your semi-thumbs down isn't a huge surprise. ** Misanthrope, I just saw that about Ultimate Warrior. That's really sad and so weird. Crazy. RIP. ** Rewritedept, Hey. I've had two days of crazy busy, and today is too with a fucking plane flight in the middle of the busyness, so, yeah, hurried hugs. Take care 'til next. ** Right. Kevin Killian (re-)awaits you right above this. The blog will be here tomorrow with newness in tow, and I will be here 'live' to say hey to you and blab with you again on Saturday. Later.

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Spacemen 3 Big City (1990)
'Spacemen 3 were an English alternative rock band, formed in 1982 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Peter Kember and Jason Pierce. Their music was "colourfully mind-altering, but not in the sense of the acid rock of the 1960s; instead, the band developed its own minimalistic psychedelia" Spacemen 3 came to prominence on the independent music scene around 1989, gaining a cult following. However, they disbanded shortly afterwards, releasing their final studio album post-split in 1991 after an acrimonious parting of ways. They gained a reputation as a ‘drug band’ due to the members’ drug taking habits and the candid interviews and outspoken views of Kember about recreational drug use. Kember and Pierce were the only members common to all line-ups of the band. Both founding members have enjoyed considerable success with their subsequent projects, Sonic Boom/Spectrum and Spiritualized.'-- collaged






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Sun DialExploding in Your Mind (1990)
'Sun Dial's first album came out in 1990, but it was as determinedly retro an effort as anything released that year; Gary Ramon and his bandmates clearly worshiped at the altar of all that was psychedelic, and there wasn't the smallest bit of irony in their approach on Other Way Out. Many latter-day psych bands sound as if they're trying as hard as they can to capture the lysergic sound of the late '60s, but Sun Dial never betray any such effort: they simply seem to have dropped through a wormhole in time from the UFO Club into Balham Market, and their natural and unaffected embrace of drifting melodic structures, guitars floating on clouds of fuzz, phase shift and wah-wah, splashy drumming that colors the music as much as keeping time and firm, thick basslines that anchored the music in some sort of reality are genuine enough to convince most folks who haven't looked at the liner notes that this was put to tape in 1969, not 1989.'-- allmusic






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Butthole SurfersNo, I'm Iron Man (1991)
'Coming off a backlog of LP's and EP's that had yet to disappoint and after a frustratingly long wait since Hairway to Steven, Pioughed showed that The Buttholes could make a bad album. Taken in isolation, Pioughed isn't a total write off. The problem lies in the fact that it sounds like a band trying to sound like The Butthole Surfers. In bits it's convincing. 'PSY' and 'Blindman' are passable 2nd rate Butthole's songs and the 1st 20 seconds of 'No, I'm Iron Man' is hilarious, but mostly its just awful. 'Lonesome Bulldog', 'Hurdy Gurdy Man', 'Something', 'Golden Showers' all stink both lyrically and musically (why the awful country music parody... why the horrible J+tMC pastiche?). The whole thing is aimless and pointless.'-- Smelsch






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Mercury RevChasing a Bee (1991)
'With their early records, Mercury Rev offered experimental, psychedelic rock, which gradually shifted to a melodic, ornate sound. Mercury Rev is often compared to The Flaming Lips, and in fact share close ties: soon after the band's formation, Donahue also joined the Flaming Lips as second guitarist and appeared on two of their albums; and since the 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance, Dave Fridmann has co-produced every Flaming Lips studio album to date except 1993's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. A music video for the song "Chasing A Bee" was shot at an abandoned infectious disease hospital that once housed "Typhoid Mary" on North Brother Island in New York City, and was directed by Jim Spring and Jens Jurgensen.'-- collaged






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Cul de SacDeath Kit Train (1992)
'Shunning the burgeoning alternative rock movement, Cul de Sac intertwined elements of surf rock, Krautrock, Middle Eastern trance and folk music, post-rock psychedelia, and avant-garde to create a unique blend that garnered immediate critical attention. Formed in the early '90s by guitarist Glenn Jones, multi-instrumentalist Robin Amos, formerly of the Girls, and Bullet La Volta drummer Chris Guttmacher, Cul de Sac released their first LP, Ecim, on the independent Northeastern label. Early live shows were enhanced by the experimental films of Fujiwara and A.S. Hamrah, adding to the band's eclectic mystique. Their original compositions and recordings have been enhanced by instruments of their own creation, including the Contraption and the Incantor.'-- collaged






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Brian Jonestown MassacreCrushed (1993)
'The Brian Jonestown Massacre began as a shoegazing group in San Francisco in 1988. After their debut and sophomore albums, the group quickly turned to a broader style of psychedelic rock incorporating folk, blues, raga, and later, electronica influences. The name "Brian Jonestown Massacre" is a portmanteau of The Rolling Stones' founder and guitarist Brian Jones and the infamous mass cult suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. They have gained media notoriety for their tumultuous working relationships and the drug addiction of their leader, Anton Newcombe.'-- collaged






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The Flaming LipsPilot Can at the Queer of God (1993)
'The addition of guitarist Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd recharges the Flaming Lips' batteries for the superb Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, another prismatic delicacy that continues the group's drift toward pop nirvana. In typical fashion, the record's left-field hit, the freak-show singalong "She Don't Use Jelly," bears little resemblance to the album as a whole; the remainder of Transmissions is much more sonically and structurally ambitious -- the towering "Moth in the Incubator" keeps generating new layers of noise before erupting into an amphetamine waltz, "Pilot Can at the Queer of God" dive-bombs with kamikaze recklessness, and the slow-burning "Oh My Pregnant Head" is as mind-expanding as its title.'-- collaged






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Polvo Tragic Carpet Ride (1994)
'Polvo is widely considered to be standard bearer of a genre which came to be known as math rock, although in interviews the band disavowed that categorization. Their sound was defined by complex and dissonant guitar harmonies and driving rhythm, complementing cryptic, often surrealist lyrics. Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band's guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars. Polvo's songs and artwork frequently featured Asian/"exotic" themes and references. The band's name means "octopus" in Portuguese and "powder" or "dust" in Spanish; in Spain it also is a slang word for sex.'-- collaged






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Elf PowerGrand Intrusion Call (1995)
'island on the wall / grand intrusion call / unicorns and antelope / erase their nowhere glow // deeply drifting spies / rolling through the sky / unicorns and antelope / erase their nowhere glow // enter at the light / forceful fits of fright'-- Elf Power






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The Olivia Tremor ControlThe Opera House (1996)
'The Olivia Tremor Control is a psychedelic rock band that was prominent in the mid-to-late 1990s. The band's distinct sound is a mixture of Doss and Hart's pop and experimental tendencies. This chemistry is evident in their albums given that some tracks are 2–3 minute songs, while others are electro-acoustic collages ranging in length from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and differing in content from vibrant horns to near silence. The band is influenced by the odd quality inherent in dreams and asked their listeners to send in tapes describing their own, examples of which can be heard in the final track of Black Foliage and the OTC-BSN collaborative LP. While their debut album Dusk at Cubist Castle focuses more on complex vocal harmonization and upbeat melodies, Black Foliage is more noise-oriented, with more feedback samples and tape loops.'-- collaged






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Super Furry AnimalsSomething 4 The Weekend (1996)
'Super Furry Animals are probably influenced by recreational chemicals. They draw from a deep well of 1960s and 1970s influences, merging the madcap iconoclasm of early Frank Zappa and Syd Barrett with the skewed melodic majesty of Brian Wilson and the British art-pop group the Soft Machine. On Fuzzy Logic, SFA openly play their hand in "Something 4 the Weekend": "First time I did it for the hell of it/Stuck it on the back of my tongue/And swallowed it." But while Fuzzy Logic is rich in hallucinogenic spirit and shimmering guitars, SFA also evoke the decadent '70s pop of Mott the Hoople and David Bowie, while the album's celestial-flute passages and overdrive-guitar storms resemble those of America's own Mercury Rev.'-- Rolling Stone, 1996






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Acid Mothers TempleSpeed Guru (1996)
'Kawabata Makoto initially formed Acid Mothers Temple (originally "Acid Mother's Temple") with the intention of creating "extreme trip music" by editing and dubbing previous recordings, being influenced by progressive rock, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and krautrock. Kawabata, along with Koizumi Hajime, Suhara Keizo, and Cotton Casino formed the original Acid Mother's Temple lineup as a group; however, the first recordings released were Kawabata's own mixes and overdubs. The band released two self-titled tapes on their eponymous label in 1996 before dropping the apostrophe from their name. They soon released their first self-titled album. The group began to tour overseas in 1998.'-- collaged






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OneidaSalad Days (1997)
'Oneida is a rock band from Brooklyn, New York. Their influences include psychedelic rock, krautrock, electronic, noise rock, and minimalism, but the overall structure and intent of their music cannot be easily traced to any of these styles. Common elements found in their music include improvisation, repetition, driving rhythms, antique and analog equipment, and an overall eclecticism. A prominent aspect of Oneida's music is their use of repetition. Oneida's music can also be distinguished by the band's use of antique keyboards and analog electric pianos.'-- collaged






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The Legendary Pink DotsHellsville (1997)
'Founded in 1980, the Dutch band Legendary Pink Dots takes place in the field of experimental and psychedelic music. The band is fronted by Edward Ka-Spel who doubles as singer and chief lyric writer, but other members including Phil Knight (The Silverman), Erik Drost and Raymond Steeg make up the current lineup of the band. The sound is often made up of a conglomerate of electronics, saxophones, guitars, drums and Ka-Spel's distinctive voice and lyrical invention. Although distinctly underground, the band have been musically influential over the years. Their name was derived from pink dots of nail varnish on the piano in their squat, where founding members Edward and April lived. Their music is nothing if not original and it is difficult to categorise, but comparisons may be drawn with bands like Pink Floyd and Can.'-- collaged






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The Chemical BrothersThe Private Psychedelic Reel (1997)
'“The Private Psychedelic Reel” is what Britpop should have been: brimful of confidence, but also a feast of sound and quite unlike anything the charts had played host to before. You grope for reference points – My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” after eight pints of lager? – but nothing fits. The Chemical Brothers’ guest-stars policy has never paid off so handsomely as here: approaching Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue to fuzz up and enlighten “…Reel” was an act of curatorial genius. It’s not of course possible to exactly define where Donahue ends and the Brothers begin, but that’s hardly the point. “The Private Psychedelic Reel” is that great and rare kind of collaboration where both parties seem to raise their game out of respect for one another – the Chemicals offer a beat of total propulsive acumen and a nagging sitar line to ground the surrounding madness, and with the security of that structure behind him Donahue goes all out for texture. He smears effect after effect over the track, dissolving the edges of every sound until “…Reel” becomes a disorienting head-riot of whistling, chiming, howling and swooping.'-- freaky trigger.co.uk






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GrandaddyA.M. 180 (1997)
'The solar-powered neo-psychedelic space pop combo Grandaddy were formed in 1992 in Modesto, CA, by singer/guitarist/keyboardist Jason Lytle, bassist Kevin Garcia, and drummer Aaron Burtch. Although a noisy, lo-fi approach characterized early recordings like 1994's Complex Party Come Along Theories, the addition of guitarist Jim Fairchild and keyboardist Tim Dryden in 1995 expanded the band's sound exponentially, fueling such subsequent efforts as the unreleased Don't Sock the Tryer and the 1996 EP A Pretty Mess by This One Band. Originally issued on indie label Will Records, 1997's acclaimed full-length Under the Western Freeway proved to be Grandaddy's creative breakthrough, and the following year the album was reissued on major label V2, with "Summer Here Kids" earning Single of the Week honors in the pages of the NME.'-- collaged






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Bardo PondWalking Stick Man (1999)
'Bardo Pond was formed in Philadelphia in 1989 by guitar-playing brothers Michael and John Gibbons, who'd long had an interest in making free-form noise, though they didn't pick up non-percussion instruments until attending art school in their twenties. Their first collaborator was guitarist Clint Takeda, a friend of Michael's who shared their enthusiasm for free music. Over the next two years, the band held twice-weekly jam sessions in their living room. At first, their aesthetic was one of naive, unfettered freedom, but they slowly grew convinced of the need for some semblance of structure and proper instrumental technique. Takeda christened the band Bardo Pond in 1991, after a location described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.'-- Fire Records






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Boredoms7 (1999)
'There may be no other band in the world that has traced a history quite like Japan’s Boredoms. Across over 20 years, founder and leader Eye, along with frequent collaborator Yoshimi, has taken the band on a cosmic road trip, from the early swamps of chaos through times of tribal frenzy, oceanic tranquility, and massive sonic constructions. Perhaps most remarkable is the unceasing commitment to vision above all else, and the effects of that Commitment. The influence of Boredoms in underground, experimental, noise, and performance-based music cannot be overstated. The early Boredoms seemingly harnessed that chaotic energy and began melding it into a No Wave-influenced rock format. The first release under the name Boredoms appeared in 1986. The frenetic, maniacal live show cemented their reputation. The incredible rhythmic power, clever melodic punches, and sheer chaotic intensity of the band to play off each other in ways that had perhaps never been heard or seen before. From their associations with bands like Sonic Youth to their explosive tours through the U.S. and Europe, the Boredoms were partially responsible for opening the eyes of listeners in this country to the possibilities of the Japanese music scene.'-- The Windish Agency







*

p.s. Hey. As promised, here's a post and a minimal p.s., and even it is being written without the artificially induced brain power of anything close to sufficient coffee. Like I said, I'll get back to you about everything tomorrow. In the meantime, even though externally placed tags that lump together artists or, in this case bands, in order to create a convenient thinking- and judging-related filter is inherently a short schrift, the groups up there have been tagged with the moniker I borrowed by certain pundits at some point, so I thought I would gang them up accordingly and see what happened. That's where you come in, if you like. In any case, see you more talkatively tomorrow.

'A new study in Nature Neuroscience by MIT postdoctoral fellow Jason Fischer and his University of California-Berkeley colleague David Whitney suggests that humans are equipped with “serially dependent” visual perception, a process that uses prior stimuli and current information to construct the scene in front of us.

'The researchers tested the idea with experiments that asked subjects to look at flashes of “randomly oriented gratings presented several seconds apart in time” and then report “the perceived orientation of each grating” by marking it on a computer screen. “We found that perceived orientation was strongly and systematically attracted toward orientations seen over the last several seconds,” the scientists write. “This perceptual serial dependence was modulated by attention and was spatially tuned, occurring more strongly for successive stimuli that appeared nearby in space.”

'The researchers term the space in which the phenomenon occurs a “continuity field,” and conducted other experiments to ensure that it wasn’t simply the result of consistency in “motor responses or decision processes.”

'But isn’t spotting subtle change important? Why are our eyes deceiving us with this stale field of croissants?

'Without a visual mechanism to adjust the current scene for recent prior stimuli, daily life would be more akin to a jarring acid trip, according to the authors. “The continuity field smoothes what would otherwise be a jittery perception of object features over time,” David Whitney, senior author and associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, told the university’s news center. Accounting for an aggregate of small recent changes in the environment—due to “head and eye movements,” shadows, and lighting—allows us to walk around without feeling like we’ve stepped into a field of melting clocks.'-- Ryan Jacobs, Pacific Standard






Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn from'Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out'








Derek White: Your latest book, Divorcer, is described simply as "a collection of seven harrowing and hyperprecise short stories about ruinous relationships and their aftershocks." Would you care to expand more on this? What I am interested in delving into is the way relationships, failed or not, play out in your work—not just at the story or even character level, but at a more granular sentence level, which is where your stories seem to work their magic.

Gary Lutz: My fiction has always been full of ruptures, fractures, severances. From my first book onward, much of my work has been about collapsing marriages, and every story has had, for me, the feel and form of a fragmentating relationship. But Divorcer is my only book in which every story concerns a partnership gone kaput. Ending every sentence feels like a breakup to me, because the words have become so involved with each other and have tried out so many different positions on each other and have then eventually settled down into something so permanent and independent that I can feel the sentence physically breaking away from me, breaking off from me—dumping me altogether. My reaction is equal parts sadness, grief, and, I guess, a lust for revenge on behalf of the narrator. And it's in this rocky state that I try to get another sentence started, maybe just a "fuck off" lunge of a sentence, which I guess accounts for the lack of pillowy transitions in my fiction. There's no cradling anywhere. I'm often put in mind of that admonition "Get over yourself" as an encouragement to attempt a kind of gymnastic leap over the entire life that the narrator has pathetically piled up for himself in the previous sentence, so that he might land somewhere unexpected, a place where he just might have a chance at establishing a freshly sufficing verbal circumstance—until I, as the writer, get the heave-ho anew. It's always this way with me and my writing. The end of a paragraph is an even more traumatic separation, and the end of a segment is, to me, like the formality of divorce, an irreversible parting of ways.

I make occasional eye contact with sentences in magazines and books and often wonder what on earth the words see in each other, what on earth they’re doing together, because they don’t look as if they’ve found excitement in each other’s company. Shouldn’t writing be far more sexual than sex? Sex is messier and doesn't leave you with anything, unless you come out with a kid, and then the kid will likely as not grow up to be some brute vagrant anthology of your every ugliness—yours and the other party’s. Why is it that kids usually look like sick, sniggery parodies of their parents? Get your caricature done by some tank-topped street-fair charcoalist and be done with it already.

What keeps happening to me, though, is that in my stumbles through vocabulation (more often, these days, as a listener or an eavesdropper than as a reader), I cross paths with a word, even just some drudge of a noun, and start swooning over it and dancing attendance on the thing, trying to find a way to enter into its life and psyche, until it dawns on me anew that as a human being (and as a human being of the lesser, male variety [and what has my own writing been if not an ongoing demonstration of the misbegottenness of those of us chromosomally disadvantaged with the Y?]), I am no match for this now juicy-seeming pip of language and realize that it would be in the best interest of everything involved if I found some other word to introduce to this word, a word with which it might start a better life, with me entirely out of the picture. So I hand the word off to another, and a sentence gets going.

(much more)





A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go on a Paris adventure whereby I would ride the metro to a bunch of stops where I had never been before in order to see what was outside and above them. I chose my destinations based on how much I liked the name of the stop itself and whether it was on a metro line that I had rarely if ever used before. When I disembarked at Dupleix on the 6 line and was deciding which of its two exits I was going to use, a boy walked up to me. He asked if I was Dennis Cooper. I said I was. He pulled a notebook out of his handbag, opened it to a blank page, and asked if I would give him my autograph. I did. Then he reached into the same handbag and removed a stack of identical black & white head shots of himself. He peeled off the top one, turned it over, wrote his name (Pierre) on the back, and handed it to me. Then he said, 'Thank you,' and walked away.



Pierre





'Inspired by Beyoncé’s sensational, visual album which emerged ‘out of nowhere’ in December, we decided we wanted to surprise you too, by secretly creating a Shabby Doll House video edition featuring some of the greatest international artists working & playing on the internet in 2014. We are proud to present seven brand new videos, each focused on the commonplace, contemporary questions of loneliness, distance & longing, which together form this year’s Shabby Doll House Spring Edition.'-- SDH



john mortara 'there are a lot of yous in this poem and one of them is you'


sarah jean alexander & lucy k shaw 'OBLIVIOUS'


Michael Inscoe 'Untitled'








Hydrofloors is a company focusing primarily on the concept, design and custom manufacture of complex systems for covering and dividing swimming pools. The design and manufacture of our moveable floors, submersible booms and motorised hatches is executed in our own facilities in Belgium. This gives us full flexibility, control and reliability in serving our clients. We are uncompromising in providing products at the cutting edge of technology that are also the highest quality possible and this commitment together with our attention to detail and highly skilled team of employees is well recognised by our clients in the International markets in which we work. We manage each project from conception through to completion working together with the architect, the client and the swimming pool construction company. Hydrofloors is driven to meet the project needs of the individual clients by the application of intense technological expertise and innovation.













BLACK METAL BOY GOES TO THE GROCERY STORE WITH FRIEND


BLACK METAL BOY'S NEW YEARS EVE









'The story of Cuba's National Art Schools is at the same time the story of the Cuban revolution, of its saddest failures and its most ebullient hopes. Born and educated in Venice, Roberto Gottardi was working in Caracas when Fidel Castro’s victory march arrived in Havana in January 1959. Like many European leftists, he was enthralled by Cuba’s revolution. In Caracas he had met a Cuban architect named Ricardo Porro, a young radical who had fled Fulgencio Batista’s government. Porro returned to Havana and invited Gottardi and another Italian architect, Vittorio Garatti, to join him. Their talents were sorely needed, as half of the island’s architects had left. A new nation was to be built, and not only that. Cuba intended to construct, in Che Guevara’s words, a ‘new man’.

'In 1961, as legend has it, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara played a round of golf on what had until recently been the manicured greens of the Havana Country Club, a few miles west of the capital. The society they envisioned had no place for country clubs, so the two revolutionaries agreed to build an art school. Culture would be no longer a commodity hoarded by the wealthy but the birthright of the people. It would begin here, where the rich had played, created by the children of the poor. Castro assigned the project to Porro, who brought on Gottardi and Garatti. None of the architects had any experience with such scale, but then, Gottardi pointed out with eyebrows raised, ‘the revolution meant that anything was possible’.

'The schools would be located on five campuses, and Gottardi would design the School of Dramatic Arts. Aside from a few basic directives, the architects were given complete creative licence. ‘The euphoria of that time’, he told me, ‘is difficult to describe’. The project was not merely inspired by revolutionary ideals – it embodied them. The buildings themselves were extraordinary, departing equally from the chilly Modernism that had dominated the architecture of the time and from the colonial Neo-Classicism that had preceded it. Porro designed the School of Modern Dance as an explosive complex of interconnected, fragmentary vaults. His School of Plastic Arts turned to Cuba’s African roots – a surreally erotic sub-Saharan village recast in brick among the palms. The cupolas of Garatti’s School of Ballet curved through a ravine and his School of Music wound like a lizard’s tail tracing the banks of the river that limned the old club.

'Gottardi’s School of Drama, a complex of airy classrooms surrounding a central amphitheatre, strived to recreate the intimacy and spontaneity of urban space. Brick-walled corridors curved like alleys in a North African medina. Sight lines were intentionally obscured, ‘so that you wouldn’t know what’s coming’, Gottardi said. ‘Like life.’ On 26 July 1965, though they were far from complete, the National Art Schools were officially declared open. But their inauguration was also a death sentence; construction would never resume.

'A lot had changed in four years. "Architecture must add a poetic dimension to everyday life", no longer fitted the prevailing ideology. Castro began to lean towards a Soviet model. The art schools’ ecstatic organicism suddenly reeked of heresy. Their design, possessed as it was by revolution, was accused of being ‘insufficiently revolutionary’. In the end only Porro’s buildings were substantially completed; Garatti’s music school was not even half done. Although most of the classrooms were finished, the theatre at the centre of Gottardi’s drama school would never be built. Its winding corridors converged on empty space. The metaphors are impossible to resist: as the years passed, Castro’s revolution grew more stultified, and the art schools languished. Roots and vines ate at the mortar and cracked the terracotta tiles. Looters took what they could. The revolution’s bright dream was pilfered and abandoned.' -- Ben Ehrenreich, Frieze



ruins


reconstruction








'The National Building Museum is America’s leading cultural institution devoted to the history and impact of the built environment. They do this by telling the stories of architecture, engineering, and design. The Museum occupies a building with a soaring Great Hall, colossal 75-foot-tall Corinthian columns, and a 1,200-foot terra cotta frieze. NBM has announced that BIG has designed a 61×61 foot maze to be housed in the building’s grand atrium from July 4th to September 1st of this year. According to the NBM’s website, the labyrinth’s Baltic birch plywood walls, which stand 18 feet high at the maze’s periphery, descend as you make your way towards the center. The concept is simple: as you travel deeper into a maze, your path typically becomes more convoluted. What if we invert this scenario and create a maze that brings clarity and visual understanding upon reaching the heart of the labyrinth?'-- collaged











Vomir live at Optimus Prime II, Tilburg, Holland





'A French artist is living inside a bear carcass for two weeks, as part of an art performance piece that he started on Tuesday. Abraham Poincheval is performing his Dans La Peau de l'Ours (Inside the Skin of the Bear) at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Hunting and Wildlife Museum) in Paris. During the performance piece, which he first exhibited at CAIRN Centre for Contemporary Art in Digne last year, Poincheval will not leave the sterilised carcass for a fortnight - forcing him to eat, sleep, and relieve himself while being filmed by two cameras. He won’t emerge from the creature until 13 April.'-- The Independent

Live feed
















'Alt Lit Gossip gathered some of the best alt lit stories from the past year or so and threw them into one convenient PDF. You might recognize a few names like Frank Hinton or Richard Chiem–both have books out very soon. Ben Brooks and Sam Pink and Megan Boyle are alt lit mainstays. You probably won’t recognize someone like LK Shaw or Justin Carter or Spencer Madsen–they only have a few indie e-chaps to their names, but all signs point up. It’s not experimental, it’s not odd, it’s just … original. Check out the full site here and download the pdf.'-- Vol. 1 Brookyn


I’d be a Barbie Without Him
by Frank Hinton

6

We were in the playroom. I had Legos and Barbies everywhere. Ryan and I started to wrestle. He pinned me to the ground and I felt something hard in his pants.
    “What is that?”
    “My thing.”
    I saw it then, like a little thumb beneath his jogging pants. Without asking he pulled it
out and I looked at it and realized I’d just lost something but I couldn’t think of what. I was amazed.


12

Frank and I were playing Chrono Trigger on SNES. He said he had figured out how to time- attack it and beat the game in under 16:00’’. I was impressed, I think. I had just learned the controls of Chrono Trigger.
    Frank killed the last boss in 15:00’’ and we watched the ending and we watched as credits rolled. All kinds of Japanese names slid up the screen in 16 bit font. Frank tilted to me and turned his head and tried to kiss me. I saw his face coming and thought for a moment that it would be fine to kiss him and then in another, more powerful moment, I saw him as a repulsive, oily skinned creature that was beyond untouchable. I recoiled. Frank dropped the controller and smiled some crooked thing and crawled onto me as I pulled away.
    "This is probably a bad idea.”
    Frank's breath smelled like vanilla frozen yogurt which was kind of all right. He came in again and this time I closed my eyes and risked being eaten by a monster. His lips clamped onto my bottom lip and I stiffened. Then his tongue came forth and wet my bottom lip. I relaxed at the warmth and when the lip part of me relaxed the mouth part of me relaxed and then my entire face relaxed. I opened my mouth for his tongue and brought it in to perform a kind of Sea World whale-act. Frank slid his body up and fully onto mine. I didn't hear the wooden floor creaking and I didn't hear the Chrono Trigger ending music. Everything worked.


27

I cut you a paper flower out of a large piece of red paper. I made my cuts in a long, single spiral and rolled the spiral up until it formed the shape of a rose and I taped it and affixed the spiral rose to a sliver of green paper and I gave you all of that. You smiled at me when you took the paper and you didn’t react the way I wanted you to react. I wanted you to think about it real hard. I wanted you to see the process I put into the rose, not the result. You thought it was a shoddy, childish craft. I found it in your sock door, to the left, with the loosies.


9

We all had pet rocks at our school. We didn’t have marbles or Pogs we just had pet rocks. Every girl would pick which boy she wanted to have a pet rock with. All of the pretty little cunts politiced their way into a pet rock family with the most desirable boys. I was stuck with Glenn. Glenn was popular and funny but he had the kind of overbite that makes one resemble a horse. Our pet rock was named Metroid. It was green. We pretended to be good parents but Glenn and I fought constantly. He wanted to hold hands and I couldn’t do it. One weekend when it was my turn to take Metroid home I dropped the little green rock in the river on the way to piano practice. I hated that rock more than Glenn.


24

I was drunk and the guy shaped me on the bed. I felt like a puzzle being taken apart. He asked me to suck on his tongue instead of kiss. He asked me to lock my joints. I’m like furniture, I thought. It wasn’t so bad. The way he broke me wasn’t so bad.


18

I was promised a dream. Frank told me we would lie under soft silk quilts and undulate in a mixed glow of lantern and moonlight. It was supposed to be warm and safe and slow. Instead I got the sound of rain on a tin roof falling like stones above me. There was no pace to him. Frank entered full of fear and I felt a ripping and the room got so cold I shivered the entire time. I was so happy for it to be over. I was happy to be left. We were in a shitty south shore cottage. Everything smelled of sea.


17

I went to the river and pulled out Metroid. Some specs of green remained. His little sad eyes had been weathered away. I got stoned and took the rock to Glenn’s house and he answered the door and I laughed when I saw him but Glenn didn’t laugh.
    “Who are you?”
    I told him I had the wrong house and I put Metroid back in the water.


7

I saw my friends parents fucking. I knew I was going to be alright.


28

You have hurt me more than anything. I will take you back no matter what. You could hit me in the face and I would take it. You could sleep with my best friend and I would forget it. You can’t break me. You can have me over and over until forever.






Marc Vallée Anti-Skateboarding Devices
24 pages, A5, printed and stapled
Published by Marc Vallée
Second Edition 2014
Edition of 50
Numbered and signed by Marc Vallée
Printed on FSC certified paper stock which is chlorine free
Buy online fromBig Cartel





15 profile photos of escorts whose profile texts were too uninteresting to allow them to be included in the monthly escort posts.
























'Noise may not be to everyone’s taste (in fact by definition noise is classed as “unwanted” sounds) but to the hardcore few it’s a way of life. People Who Do Noise follows some of those artists and shows them performing live, often on homemade or radically modified kit, and talking about the philosophy and influences behind their work.

'The film takes a very personal approach, capturing the musicians working alone with no interference from a live audience. What often took place in crowded basements or dark smoky venues was stripped bare for the cameras, providing an unprecedented glimpse of the many different instruments and methods used.

'Covering a wide range of artists and styles, the film features everything from the absurdist free-improvisations of genre-pioneers Smegma, to the harsh-noise assaults of Oscillating Innards and everything in between. Many of the artists in the film, such as Yellow Swans and Daniel Menche, have performed and sold records all over the world. In spite of such successes, noise music remains one of the least understood and most inaccessible of genres.'-- Dangerous Minds











'New Jersey’s Action Park boasted perhaps the worst reputation of any amusement park in history. The place was a perfect storm of unsafe rides, drunken patrons, and disinterested teenage employees. Countless injuries were suffered on the park’s water slides. At least six people were killed during the park’s history, including three drownings, an electrocution, and a heart attack allegedly caused by the shock of frigid water beneath a rope swing. One man died when the car he was riding on leapt off the Alpine Slide, causing him to smash his head on a rock. By 1998, the crushing weight of lawsuits forced the owners to close down Action Park.'-- listverse


























'Turn your loudest, most urgent frustrations into mere whispers with the Shouting Vase. The plastic jug is designed to fit over the contours of your mouth and absorb your screams and shouts, “storing” them in the vase and emitting a softer version of your angry cries through the tiny hole at the base. The shouting vase was first featured on NHK’s Good Morning Japan and has since appeared on several other television shows, making this terracotta pottery-inspired item a hit product. Ideal for when you feel like shouting, but know that speaking softly is more likely to do the trick. Or the perfect gift for the loud one in your life.'-- Japan Trend Shop







*

p.s. Hey. ** Thursday ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. I like Sollers's early writings too. I guess I especially like his very early novels, especially 'Event'. Ah, 'Camera Lucida', nice. Thanks about the German theater piece. Fingers crossed, but all signs are positive so far. Yeah, Zac's and my film is not a porn film. It'll have explicit sex in it, but, so far at least, it's not going to be shot like porn, i.e. with the standard close-ups and lengthy concentration on the actual sex acts and that sort of thing. ** Torn porter, Hey! Oh, no, no problem at all. It's fine. If I seemed irked or something, it was just an unintended tone arising due to rushing or half-concentrating on what I was writing. Yeah, maybe we can meet up later today or this evening sometime? Or tomorrow? That should work for me. I guess instant message me or call when you see this and feel like it, and we'll sort it out. ** Bill, I know, time's disorienting and sometimes beastly pace, so weird. I have this feeling that 'Ludwig's' length and pace with be a toughy for you, but what do I know really? Nada. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Before I forget yet again, your lovely guest-post will appear here next Wednesday. Thank you so much! Oh, yeah, I was on a plane. Word of advice to you and everyone: Don't fly the super-budget Darwin Airlines if you ever have that option and have any choice in the matter. Weirder than early GbV? ** Steevee, Hi. Kiddiepunk saw and loved the new Errol Morris, but I don't think it has opened here. I think he saw it online somewhere. Maybe iTunes? ** Slatted light, Yay! You're back! Hi, D! Would be extremely awesome if you hung around, that's for incredibly sure. Well, as per the movie Zac and I are making: I don't know if you'll remember, but I used to express interest here in making a porn film, and someone who was a d.l. at the that time worked in the porn industry and thought he could get something like that produced and financed. So I wrote a script, but it turned out to be too outrageous and controversial and blah blah to get any support within the porn industry. So, it got shelved. Then, maybe 6 months ago Zac expressed interest in collaborating on it with me, so we went back and revised the script together. It's mostly the same, but we cut one scene and added a new one, and, luckily, people were interested in making it, so it's green-lit with producers (Jurgen Bruning, who produced Bruce la Bruce's films, along others, and Christophe Honore) and the financing pretty much in place. It involves explicit sex in most of the scenes, and we're hoping to have the sex be real, at least in some cases, but it's not going to be shot like porn, and it remains to be seen how real the sex will be because we're casting people who aren't porn stars or actors, and some of them are okay in theory with doing the sex for real, and some aren't. So, it's going to be an experimental film about sex, and showing sex unreservedly, but we're not thinking of it as a porn film. A film very influenced by porn would be more accurate, I guess. Shyly hopeful sounds really good. I'll take that! 'The Rememberer': that's beautiful, D. I can't say too much about Zac because he's a very private person who wants as little online presence as possible. He's an extraordinary visual artist working mostly in video, photography, and event-based work. We met about a year and half ago. We just felt this kind of almost paranormal connection immediately, and we've had this kind of transformative effect on each others' lives. We're working on lots of projects together, and we've been traveling all over the world together, and etc. I guess it's like a separated a birth, soulmate kind of thing. Hard to describe. He's the most important person to me whom I've ever known. It's huge, but it's very hard to characterize. The meetings went really well, thanks. We're pretty much set to start shooting the film in May unless something unexpected happens. It's so great to get to interact with you again! It really, really is. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Understood about wrestling. I was totally obsessed with it for a while years ago. Kevin Sheen, I don't know him. I'll google him today. Of course I really hope you get to make that film about him. It sounds exciting, and, wow, 'Hamlet' set in the wrestling world, whoa. That's so great! One of the things that most interested me about wrestling, and still does, is the way it uses narrative in and around the actual wrestling bouts. It's really kind of innovative, I think. I used to study the way the WWE did that, trying to get stuff I could use in my novels. You sound really good, man. That's so good to hear. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Well, I don't know, there seemed to be a fair amount of negative in your mini-review of 'ASN', so semi-thumbs down was just my guess. I stand corrected. Oh, you know, I like linear narrative and cohesive characters, sometimes a lot, especially when they're coming from a writer for whom that approach isn't natural and/or heavily taught. I mean, that's the way I enter hose tthings when I use them. So, who knows, but I doubt that, if R-G is going that way, it'll be a problem for me. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Kevin rules! That's weird: Gisele and I were just talking about 'Les chansons d'amour' three days ago, and we were both saying, 'Jeez, I really need to watch that again'. Are you able to make much art these days what with your farm duties? ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, yes, Nayland used to be a skinny rail of a guy. It's funny. I think he was always only smooth from the jawline up though. ** Friday ** Marc Vallée, Hi, Marc! Wow, that's wild: you're up there in the post this weekend. What were the odds? I so wish I could get over there for the launch of the Dom zine, but, barring a miracle, I'm crazed busy stuck here for a while making 4 projects at once. Let me alert everyone else. Everyone, especially everyone in and around London: the great photographer and other things and d.l. Marc Vallée, whose work is represented up there in the post, is about to publish new zine, this one focused on the wonderful writer and d.l. Dom Lyne, and there's a launch party/event for it in London happening soon that I highly recommend you attend if you can. Here's Marc: 'I’ve been working on a new zine with Dom Lyne. It’s called Queer and we have a launch party on the 29th here in London - if you can make it over that would be great. (That invitation is extended to all the London folks who hang around here.) [Here] are some notes on the new zine.' Thanks again, Marc. I would really love to have a copy, of course. Take care! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Aw, thanks, man. Really glad you dug the gig. I like SFA a lot too. Especially everything up through 'Rings Around the World'. I think they're often overlooked and underrated. You have a fine day, or, rather another one, or, rather, two of them, considering it's the weekend! ** Steevee, Thanks, pal. Glad you liked it. Cool re: the Fandor review and the interview. Everyone, mighty film writer brainiac with fingers attached Steevee aka Steve Erickson has a couple of new things up for you to read, which you should! First, here he is on the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s "Art of the Real" Festival, running from now until the 26th, and here's his interview with actor/producer Waleed Zuaiter. If I was ever going to listen to Oasis consensually, it would be in the context of 'Setting Sun', yeah, I agree. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, man. I would say that the best rock show I ever saw was probably The Flaming Lips circa 'The Soft Bulletin'. Oh, thanks for the video link to that show you saw. I'll watch it pronto. Wow, you saw that Spiritualized show too. I saw the original, or, rather, the related show when the album first came out, which was phenomenal. I think my favorite gig by them was a tiny show at the Whisky-a-Go-Go circa 'Pure Phase'. It was super druggy. I've never seen Primal Scream live, and I definitely have the feeling that it's probably too late to even try now, I don't know. Thanks a lot, Mikel, that was great! ** Kier, Oh, shit, that's so sad about the lambs. God, that must be so, I don't know, such a deep thing to have to go through. Hugs, my dear friend. My day was definitely better than yours, I'm guessing. Uh, big, long meeting with the film producers and then working more on the film with Zac, and then eating and chilling. Have the best weekend possible, K! ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks! Yeah, that Boredoms track is crazy good. They're amazing, still, to this very day. Busy weekend ahead? Me too. How was it? Oh, and that floater is so charismatic and beautiful! I'm very happy to have it in image form, yes. Very happy! Thank you so very much! ** Zach, Hi, Z. Cool, hope the gig did its gig-like duties for your ears and affected brain and bodily functions. Only 100 pages left! I can't remember what happens at the end. Did it hold up? ** _Black_Acrylic, Howdy, Ben. 'Definite Motion' is a nice title. I'll go check out the pix. Thanks a lot, pal. Good weekend in the offing? ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Nice to see you, man! No go re: Entropy and HTMLG, huh? There's a time and a place in one's head for those kinds of ventures, for sure. Your alternate plan sounds really good to me. You gutted your mss.? I mean, as rough as 'gutted' sounds, that kind of heavy pass can be miraculous. I'll go check in on The Body this weekend, cool. Thanks! I'm really excited for Blake's novel, obviously, yeah, wow. Jarret Kobek is very interesting. I recommend reading him. Maybe 'Atta' first? I'm really good, just, like, so busy. I sort of can't believe that I'm balancing out all the stuff I'm doing, but, so far, I seem to be. Life's good here, yeah, definitely. Thanks again, pal. Take good care, and I hope to get to see you again soon. ** Misanthrope, Sad, yeah, weird and sad. Ugh. New story! Very, very cool! Do share if it pans out to your satisfaction, yes. My novel goes very well, I think, I hope. Really different for me, but very 'me' too, albeit with a lot of challenging, uncharted turf to work with. Yeah, I feel excited and hopeful about it. ** Right. I haven't done a Varioso post in a while, and, well, now I have again, duh. I hope you find stuff of interest in there. Have lovely weekends. See you on Monday.

"Left Hand is every reason why Paul Curran is one of the smartest, most daring, meticulous, violent, delicate, awe-inspiring new fiction chiselers in the known world, if you ask me. His work has been a huge favorite of lucky insiders like me for years, and now the secret is finally and definitely out."-- Dennis Cooper.

"With Left Hand, Paul Curran has written something so different that reading it will make your eyes burn."-- Matthew Stokoe.

"Stop the psychotic qualitative self-deception of childhood as Henry Miller, Paul Curran's Left Hand ordered a mandragora sex. It is a cyber ploy plausible to deal with Georges Bataille's supreme life anyway, this literary alcohol than ecstasy drugs cruel image of Antonin Artaud's formalin fixed heart that heresy novel is formed on the eroticism cause of supremacy he was attached to the soul of Jean Genet's sexual literature manual of the internet through perversion strong language. -- Kenji Siratori.

"I experienced half of it not even thinking of it as a novel, but as a series of instructions whispered to me from my darkest and most reclusive self, a man I don’t like being very often. As a manual for how to go mad, Left Hand will find its own audience, but I urge discriminating readers to seek it out and read it with the utmost care and patience: slowly it unveils and embodies what happens when a sensitive mind, scarred by the sins of the fathers and the 'acid rain' of today’s neoliberal globalism, revolts by letting his genitals control what’s left of him after the cutting. We've all gone there to one degree or another, but only rarely, perhaps not since the death of Brigid Brophy, has so fine a mind allowed us access to all ten circles of hell. Or meta-hell: 'I go to this novel’s funeral, sit on a hard chair, and observe the casket entering flames.'"-- Kevin Killian.

"Like most fogged and drug-coated apathetic worlds, Paul Curran's Left Hand begins by playing into our assumptions of the consequences of narrative violence and unpoliced desire. But as we proceed, unraveling takes hold and all perceptions of ordered identity, even the state of the novel, explode into a slowly undulating chaos. The reader is erupted, returned, through amputation and orgasm into a new site of beginning. I felt afraid in welcome, unprecedented ways."-- Cassandra Troyan.

"From extreme to extreme the balance is fleeting. A select few recognize the balance that lives between the extremes of good and bad. Such moments ought to be cherished. Moments of clarity offer a glimpse into the future. Depending on the strength of the eyes those fleeting glimpses can determine an entire life. Sometimes a future can flash before a person's eyes. Unfortunately most people tend to blink."--  Beach Sloth.

"The narrator appears to be at war with the thing he's been designated to create, taking part in real-life scenes as close to those we've been commanded to perform. It is almost as if the narrator has been enslaved to his creation, forced to recreate things that should have never had a life. By the end, everything is so fucked it doesn't even feel fucked anymore, and the private life of the narrator doesn't seem strange either. It creates a truly terrifying feeling—recognizing that you've forgotten not to relate to what the book would have you do, which is maybe the rarest sort of power." --  Blake Butler, Vice.




Twenty years ago I went back to university to study writing, won a short-story competition and then a scholarship to do my masters. The manuscript I wrote was short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, got interest from several agents, but was rejected by all mainstream Australian publishers. While living in Japan in the early 2000s, I wrote another novel that my agent rejected and then I rewrote the first one. I was based in London by then, and after my agent rejected the rewrites, I sent it to every agent there and they also rejected it. So, around 2006, inspired and encouraged by new internet writing, and particularly the community gathered around this blog, I decided to start something completely new.

Left Hand consists of four interlinked sections. There's two parallel sets of second-person imperatives based on command hallucinations, advertisements, or song lyrics (Left Hand/A Tower of Limbs). These are like columns that the other sections move around and bleed into. The first instruction section runs linear, and the second runs as a broken reflection of the first. Both sets are divided into 21 parts made up of five blocks (1-5) of five instructions (a-e) that are ten words. In several notebooks, I outlined both sections with 10 instructions (a-j) as a paragraph each and then cut five lines from the final list using a random number generator. While following this procedure, I also wrote notes in the margins or across the pages, anything I was thinking about at the time, memories, comments, observations, processes, distractions, and then wrote these up and mixed them with research papers and violent porn descriptions into a 100,000 word document. I scrambled the document by cutting and pasting at random into a new document. Then I used two different translation programs to translate the fragments into Japanese and then back into English. Finally, I edited and rewrote the whole thing as a 10,000 word first-person meta-monologue (Obscure Distortion Organ). I wrote the last section (Scatter), which is third person, straight onto the computer with minimum notes after completing the other three sections.

I finished the manuscript of Left Hand in 2012 and sent it to Civil Coping Mechanism. They got back to me within 24 hours and offered to publish it. Marc Hulson, who I met through this blog, agreed to paint something for the cover and also asked me to collaborate on a project for Five Years Gallery. Part of that collaboration featured covers of previous editions of Left Hand mentioned in the novel.












EXCERPTS


from LEFT HAND


1.1.

a) Perch with your feet on either side of the bathtub.

b) Stare at your cock getting hard through the rising steam.

c) Hear your lungs sucking in the most air they can.

d) Exhale and then thrust your mouth down at your cock.

e) Slip under the water hitting your head and pass out.



1.2.

a) Catch your reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.

b) Taste the bathroom steam mix with the hallway's thick dampness.

c) Look at Alex slumped on your bed shooting up heroin.

d) Hear yourself asking Alex about the money he owes you.

e) Listen to Alex describe the English language course he joined.



1.3.

a) Smell Alex's hair as his mouth slurps on your cock.

b) Let go of the curtain hanging broken from your window.

c) Taste some blood that you noticed on your left hand.

d) Watch your hand pushing Alex's head away from your cock.

e) Shut the door behind Alex and collapse onto your bed.



1.4.

a) This line has been left blank for no particular reason.

b) Wake up to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere.

c) See the words left hand printed deep inside your brain.

d) Lean back in your chair when you smell your manager.

e) Watch your manager saying there is blood on your collar.



1.5.

a) Spy on a woman in the window behind your office.

b) Feel the head of your cock glide between your teeth.

c) Smell the carpet below your desk after you fall down.

d) Remember Alex calling heroin the only cure for jet lag.

e) Unravel a note that you found in Alex's coat pocket.



2.1

a) Click on a Japanese schoolgirl masturbating in a navy uniform.

b) Taste honey in your throat when her limbs are amputated.

c) Look up when you notice a student approaching the counter.

d) Watch the student's eyes and say the manager is out.

e) Ask your colleague if she can answer the student’s questions.



2.2.

a) Stand in front of your mirror sniffing a schoolgirl uniform.

b) Lay the mirror on your bed and become a schoolgirl.

c) Watch the schoolgirl in the mirror fucking a Coke bottle.

d) Feel the Coke bottle rip the inside of your asshole.

e) Taste soap on your lips and collapse onto the mirror.



2.3.

a) Tap your keyboard until two words appear on the screen.

b) Say the words left hand to yourself in your head.

c) Change the font from Times New Roman to Courier New.

d) Increase the font size until each word takes one line.

e) Put the words in bold and italics before deleting them.



2.4.

a) Feel a layer of sweat and deodorant covering your body.

b) Take your left hand off your mouse and bite it.

c) Realize that your computer screen has swirled into tunnel vision.

d) Try to touch the words coming from your colleague's mouth.

e) Listen to your chair swiveling around as you stand up.



2.5.

a) Hear the sound of your shoulder barging the toilet door.

b) Breathe in the mix of bleached come and air freshener.

c) Smell your invisible left hand in front of your face.

d) Turn on the hot water tap and taste the water.

e) Look at the water running through your invisible left hand.



3.1.

a) Order a Double Whopper meal at Burger King in Westfield.

b) Go into the Disney store and touch the stuffed toys.

c) Listen to women trying on lingerie in different changing rooms.

d) See a customer pointing you out to a security guard.

e) Look at the security guard asking you to follow him.



3.2.

a) Walk into Central Bar and order a glass of vodka.

b) Take a mobile phone off the counter and call Alex.

c) Look at the phone and say you quit your job.

d) Listen to the traffic going through the Holland Park roundabout.

e) See a schoolgirl in uniform getting off a 94 bus.



3.3.

a) Suck on the last piece of ice in your glass.

b) Breathe in deeply and rub your cock through your pocket.

c) Hear a horn blasting the schoolgirl across Shepherd's Bush Green.

d) Catch the scent of her white panties as she walks.

e) Hide behind a tree when she looks over her shoulder.



3.4.

a) Listen to the schoolgirl calling to you on Goldhawk Road.

b) Inhale her vanilla perfume as she turns down an alley.

c) Grab her hair and kiss her mouth until she resists.

d) Push her to her knees and pull out your cock.

e) Squeeze her throat and fuck her hard in the mouth.



3.5.

a) Lick your lips then hear footsteps coming down the alley.

b) Glance around realizing your cock has left the schoolgirl's mouth.

c) Smell garbage as the schoolgirl's head hits a brick wall.

d) Catch a taste of her panties as she slumps down.

e) Watch the come spurt from your cock onto her legs.





fromOBSCURE DISTORTION ORGAN 


To stop this novel occurring from this motel room is impossible. I go with a girl. We meet a boy. There is sexual intercourse with glass on the floor in a broken pharmacy. A police officer discovers my dead body in the back of a stolen van. The police officer shoots at my dead body. The girl is driving the van. I want to murder the boy. But I think it would be easier to murder the girl. So I try to murder the girl, even though I am already dead, and the boy throws me onto the road. That is the end of this novel.




I leave my father's remains in a glass case at a strip club and catch a flight to London, shouting drunken methods in an Indonesian bar during a layover on the way, or when I get to Europe in a hostel somewhere east of Prague, where the owner says medicine rather than method has been inserted into your writing. It is no remedy, I reply, and orgasmic childhood psychosis is not self-deception, but if stopped and ordered to ask, alcohol is a plausible ruse for coping with life, and anyway this novel is stronger than medicine because of the heart images formed through fictional masturbation. When the owner asks me to pay, I tell him my money to get high will come from the directors of several multinational companies who intentionally republish this novel in its current unrecognizable form.




London summer is a bone-hot tombstone deceased under where I walk. I arrive as a prostitute accompanied by internet instructions about illegal student immigration. Anyone speaking natural English will confuse the authorities. Language draws up substances lacking actuality, and desire is more easily pursued with confidence when you can blend into the crowd. I work in an ex-curtain factory on Uxbridge Road. I stand in a corner of Shepherd’s Bush Green. A mysterious telephone call on an abrupt slow night possesses enough doubt to deceive what guides me. Her shoes. Her husband. The absence of a pulse. At a sewerage plant, near where they used to make cars, I walk across rusted pipes churning out shit and mulched up paper and enter an abandoned factory converted into apartments now derelict and possibly being used as some kind of theatrical space. I join what appears to be the audience participating in an unrealistic performance of a courtroom situation until my attention implodes and I slink under the floorboards. Other things happen after that. I become another person completely.





from A TOWER OF LIMBS


1.1.

a) Hear the beat moving and vibrating down through your intestines.

b) Squint at a glitter ball reflecting racks of colored light.

c) Taste sulphur and sweat that has dried and come back.

d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.

e) Feel the music circling through your ass and your cunt.



1.2.

a) Notice a man and a woman dancing on a stage.

b) Look at the woman sucking on the man's soft cock.

c) See yourself in a mirror tied up to a pole.

d) Watch the man trying to fuck the woman from behind.

e) Bite at and chew on the material covering your mouth.



1.3.

a) Watch the man spraying his cock to get it hard.

b) Try to squeeze your hands out of some wrist straps.

c) Look at the woman grabbing and pulling the man’s hair.

d) Clutch onto the pole and try to yank it out.

e) See the man throwing the woman down on her back.



1.4.

a) Twist the wrist straps around until your hands are numb.

b) Look at the man pissing on the woman's shaved head.

c) See the woman scratching and then punching the man’s face.

d) Watch the man strangle the woman until she goes limp.

e) Look at the man wanking and coming on the woman.



1.5.

a) Choke yourself jerking forward on the strap around your neck.

b) Gag on the vomit back-washed through your mouth and nose.

c) Feel and hear the screams coming out of your throat.

d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.

e) Close your eyes and fade into the music guiding you.



2.1.

a) Hear the music stop and see the lights go down.

b) Track a spotlight and listen to a voice saying welcome.

c) Feel yourself being lowered into a chair with leg stirrups.

d) Listen to the voice explaining there are only two contestants.

e) Hear the voice saying the first to come inside wins.



2.2.

a) Reach past the spotlight to a crack in the wall.

b) Feel the crack move as the voice introduces the champion.

c) Listen to the champion strutting around the stage and clapping.

d) Look at people trying to order drinks at a bar.

e) See an assistant grabbing and dragging me onto the stage.



2.3.

a) Hear the assistant pinning me down and removing my clothes.

b) See the champion inspecting me through the mirror on stage.

c) Watch the champion wanking his cock and punching my face.

d) Look at the champion picking me up in the air.

e) Feel the champion slapping his cock up against your cunt.



2.4.
a) Listen to me crying as I wank over your reflection.

b) Tell me you want only my cock inside your cunt.

c) Feel the champion’s spit hitting your face and your breasts.

d) Look at your body wasted from drugs in the mirror.

e) Wince each time the champion punches me in the head.



2.5.

a) See the champion laughing and throwing me through the mirror.

b) Listen to me wanking my soft cock on the floor.

c) Feel the champion kicking your stomach and then choking you.

d) Watch me trying to get up but then falling down.

e) Notice your heart throbbing when you see me standing up.



3.1.

a) Hear the champion jump on me and fuck my ass.

b) Feel a gust and realize your left arm has gone.

c) Listen to me wanking my cock covered in your blood.

d) Watch the champion rubbing your cunt secretions on my face.

e) Feel another gust and realize your right arm has gone.



3.2.

a) Taste some morphine and see an assistant slapping your cheeks.

b) Look at the blood spurting out from your left hip.

c) Hear the champion sticking his cock into my droopy mouth.

d) Watch me bite the champion’s cock and swipe his feet.

e) Notice some people below the stage glancing up at us.



3.3.

a) Look at me picking up a piece of broken mirror.

b) Watch me stabbing the champion in the face and neck.

c) Feel the champion’s full weight collapse on top of you.

d) Listen to an assistant dragging the champion behind the stage.

e) See a different assistant inspecting your cunt with his tongue.



3.4.

a) Hear music blasting from speakers and then see lights spinning.

b) Watch me escape from the assistant who was holding me.

c) Feel my cock throbbing hard as I pump your cunt.

d) Taste the come spurting from my cock into your uterus.

e) Sense the come travelling up inside and around your body.



3.5.

a) Gaze at your headless and amputated torso on the stage.

b) Drift to the rooftop and breathe in the midnight air.

c) Feel the neon warmth of Bangkok Hong Kong Shanghai Tokyo.

d) Hear an airplane taking off and rumbling through the sky.

e) Catch your silhouette looking out from one of the windows.





from SCATTER 


Paul thought he had suffered a fatal brain injury but felt like he had entered a new reality and was experiencing everything for the first time. He predicted what he was going to see before he opened his eyes. There would be palm trees and seagulls and the ocean swelling along the same beach he had seen a million times before. But everything would be totally different. He felt calmer and more in control than he had ever felt in his life. The oscillating binaries of pain and desire had gone. His head had been wiped clear. The tide seemed to be connected to his breathing in an unselfconscious way. He doubted he could move even if he wanted to. He expected to be paralyzed at least.

- - - - -  When Paul looked at the road, time became unstuck and hurtled back into the present. He watched the van swerving away from him before it straightened up and settled into a comfortable pace. He could just make out Robert and Lucy huddled together through the dusty curtain across the back window and he held onto that image for a long as he could. He told himself it didn't bother him that they were together. It seemed to represent the correct order of things.
A road train coming from the mines in the desert ploughed head-on into the van. The impact ripped a hole through this new reality. The van crumpled and flipped into the air before landing on its side. A door came spinning off the van and skidded into a ditch covered with long dry grass. Everything went silent for a second after the crash then returned louder than before. Dragging sound out of every object present, the road train kept going. Paul stepped back as it lumbered past. The driver was focused straight ahead on something far beyond this plane of existence. The van was motionless. No one climbed out from the hole where the door used to be. The heat shimmered everything into a mirage.




 Paul smashed a bottle on a sewerage pipe. He gripped the neck of the broken bottle in one hand and his cock in the other. He staggered along the beach, stabbing the bottle at his chest and wanking his cock until it got hard. When he was about to come he shuddered to his knees and hacked into his cock with the broken bottle. The glass got halfway through and the come spurted out along with the blood. Ecstatic under the influence of the chemicals shooting through his body, and determined to enact their conclusion, Paul hacked the glass through the rest of the flesh until the whole thing came away.

- - - - -  After standing up and walking a few more steps, Paul looked back at the discarded lump of flesh lying there but couldn't comprehend that it had ever been connected to his body. It resembled a dead sea-creature washed up on the tide rather than the rare delicacy he once believed it to be, but of course those two analogies amounted to the same thing in the end. Paul felt voices somewhere in his head and realized the voices were telling him to keep going. The blood now pumping from where his cock used to be turned into flames between his fingers. He stared into the flames until he couldn't see or feel anything. His body became pieces of cinema film, burnt up and melted as he collapsed into the sand.





























































READING
















'Please note that all orders placed via Amazon and other sales channels will be fulfilled as per usual with little to no delay; however, due to a few errors, mainly to do with the unusually graphic content of the book, there were some hiccups and stalling between CCM and its printer. Because of these hiccups, the book is listed as unavailable or temporarily out of stock. Although, those issues have been cleared the after-effects of the delay can and will be seen in the next few days. Again, the effects are cosmetic and all orders will suffer little to no delay.'-- Civil Coping Mechanisms




*

p.s. Hey. Today is a great day for and on the blog if there ever was one. The amazing Paul Curran's fantastic novel Left Hand is, as of this morning, officially a published done deal. And, at my behest, Paul has very kindly put together this post to mark the occasion so that we can celebrate this ever so eminent arrival. Please give it a thorough read and going over today, and, obviously, place your finger(s) on the appropriate spot(s) and get yourselves a copy. You will be incredibly not sorry that you did. Thank you all, and huge thanks to Paul for letting the blog participate in his novel's awesome birth. ** Empty Frame, Hi. Thanks, pal. I don't know if Marc saw your comment, but I'm sure that I'm safe in saying that he would love it if you can make it to the launch. ** Aaron Mirkin, Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, it is a crazy gif, and how cool: the coincidence. Really excited to see your Xiu Xiu video. Does it have a launch date? Yeah, I totally agree about the simpatico thing between wrestling's narrative use and general context/build re: 'Hamlet'. Really, really inspired idea. I'm not sure if or specifically how the narrative style of pro-wrestling, and, I guess especially, its approach to 'the broadcast', effected my fiction, but I'm pretty sure it did. If I had my old notes here, I'd go back and check and probably find all kinds of ideas about that translation. I did take a little first look at Kevin Sheen, and I was suitably intrigued, and I've got a more detailed look into him and his thing set for later on. Ah, thanks for that direct link. I didn't see that before, and that's very cool! Ha ha, great story, and, yeah, I did really enjoy that. You rule. ** Rewritedept, Hi. The 4th boy down ... you mean the one who looks like the young Bret Easton Ellis? Interesting choice. Cool that you liked the neo-psych gig. That Lips track is a big favorite Lips track of mine as well. That album is so great in general. My weekend was good, mostly a lot of work and not a lot of outside stuff, but it was productive. Uh, I guess the boy who gave me his photo was a fan. It wasn't a slavish encounter. It was just casual and nice. I think I can completely assure you that he didn't want anonymous sex, and that would have been beyond the last thing on my mind. I'm not like that at all. Never seen 'Zoolander', no. Always been slightly curious to see what it is. Shit, I hope the DUI thing goes as smoothly as you hope it will. Yikes. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! Thanks, buddy. Oh, shit, yeah, I'd be thrilled to bits if you want to do a Varioso post. I would be proud and really excited to see what you did with that form. I like that form, obviously. So, yeah, that would be amazing. It was your birthday! Belated, passionate HBD, man! What did you end up doing, if you don't mind my asking? ** Kier, Hi, K! Great, you are making art! I'm so happy to hear that! That's interesting about you having the inclination but maybe not the instinct. I think I know what you mean. I think that happens to me too, not infrequently. I think/believe that the instinct always comes back, and without warning often, and suddenly, and it's so weird when it does, and it's so weird how you can't control that or coerce it back into your talent. Strange stuff. But I bet one day, any minute now, that rush you feel when you know it's happening will take you over again. Glad your weekend was good. Mine was fine. May your Monday be even gooder. ** Paul Curran, The dude! What a great, momentous, historic day today, my friend! I'm really excited, and thank you really so much for letting this place take part. I did get your update emails, and I hope I added the things in appropriately. So, yeah, whoo-hoo! ** Dan Shea, Hi, Dan! Oh, wow, well then I hope I run into you somewhere. Cool. Yeah, the SFA had their kind of 'big moment', I guess, with 'Rings Around the World' winning the ... was it the Mercury Prize? I can't remember. And everybody I knew in LA was suddenly all into them for a while, and then that quieted, and now they just do their great thing less spot-lit. I suppose they're entering the 'legendary, respected elder influential band' era. Weird. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, that running time was why my comment had a Bill-related warning sticker on it or whatever, ha ha. Thanks re: the post. Oh, that's an interesting idea. Huh, maybe I should assign escort photos to d.l.s who are interested and do a post of fictional ads/profiles. Hm, I might just do that. Thanks! ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Ugandan coffee, ooh, I don't think I've ever had that. What is it specifically like? I've been a vegetarian unwaveringly since I was 16, so, yes, I still am. Are you? I forget. You're ... not, if I'm remembering correctly? Cool you liked the Frank Hinton story. Yeah, she's great, I think. ** Misanthrope, Cool, thanks. Mm, I think Pierre probably gives photos of himself as a regular thing when meeting people? Either that, or he was on his way from wherever he'd gotten them made coincidentally. No idea. I did in fact think of asking him if he wanted to audition for Zac's and my film, but I felt too shy, and now I regret it, but he's who-knows-where out in the world, so it's too late. I think I always try to go for something really different, and I think it always ends up being 'me' no matter how hard I push away because my thing/voice etc. are so specific. I don't know. Thanks, George. ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, that photo is cool, right? That's too bad about your disappointment. I'm very curious to see it. I think that Sicinski comment about Morris is really off the mark. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. When I see it, and if I remember, I'll do the same. ** _Black_Acrylic, Interesting about the Cellino. I know virtually squat about football, but I'm interested in entrepreneurs and their styles and modes of presentation, so I'll go have a look at him/it. I hope the jab today goes as well as something like that can go, and I hope the big window is cooperatively scenic. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Paul Curran's day is here! Nice that you're back in WSP, and that your initial two days had plus signs attached. Thanks for the nice words. Ah, the 3rd novel is in the offing! People say the 3rd novel is the key novel. Like that's where writers either become lifelong public writers with respect attached or fall by the wayside due to their tiredness re: the grind of writing and publishing versus the rewards. Or people say something like that. Off the top of my head, that makes a weird sense. You weren't rambling. Was that rambling? No, definitely not. ** Slatted light, Hi, David! Yeah, the original porn version was always a thing about sex utilizing a hardcore porn presentation to illustrate and make its point. I guess that's why the transition to something less lengthily explicit hasn't been so hard, at least in theory until we shoot it. I suspect that, had I made the film as a porn back then, the same thing might have happened. You know, unless I'm spacing out, which I do, I don't remember my work have much of any experience with anti-porn feminism. That early period of my books coincided with Bret Ellis's, and I think he and the greater prominence of his books pulled that kind of attention away from my stuff. The only experience like that which I can remember was from the anti-porn -- or, well, less anti-porn than anti-'non-positive'-porn PC queer contingent. I would love to read and answer your question if you ever find it or want to reconstruct it. Thank you for saying that about the connection. Yeah, it's huge and very meaningful, and I'm very grateful for it. I saw that you're off FB. Completely understandable. Whenever I do more than dip in there for a longish peek, I get the same ugh. Oh, god, yes, please do tell me/us what you think of the new Morris doc. I agree with you about his work and how it works, and I've always found his films fascinating to one degree or another. Cool, thank you so much, David! Have a great day, and take some love from me, please. ** Schlix, Uli! It's so great to see you, man! I was hoping someone would note the Vomir video. What a weird, charismatic clip that is, I think, and, yeah, I like his stuff in general, of course. The Halle trip was very productive. I hardly saw the city. I go back at the end of the month for two more days of rehearsals, and maybe I'll get some minutes to not be in the puppet theater from morning until night. Enjoy your vacation! That sounds really nice! Cool about the Bresson retrospective. Which films are you going to try to see? Take care, my friend! ** All right, that's that. Time to party down with Paul Curran and his mighty 'Left Hand'. Enjoy everything. Say anything. I will see you tomorrow.

__________________




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Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia

HIRE ME BUT DONT FUCK ME. IF YOU INTERESTED GODBLESS.

switzerland.nescafe.riding bike.die antwoord.vinjak. cartography.berlin.cats.nirvana. skins.shameless.free minded people.atheism.video games. rollercoaster.amy winehouse. green eyes.ww2.black nails. tumblr.haled hoseini.spiders.my little hometown.sarcasm.zürich. russian.cara delevingne.rabbits.

you can fuck yourself all day all night.

NEXT STOP FRANKFURT.

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Top only
Kissing Consent
Fucking No
Oral No
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Rubber, Underwear, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 2000 Dollars
Rate night 4000 Dollars



____________________





Crasssssh, 22
Barcelona

I need to come tomorrow in Barcelona....I bought ticket on tomorrow plane,I'm from romania,city galati...But I don't have enough money to go to Bucharest to take the plane to Barcelona ...I need 50 € more..I come in Barcelona because i will have a new job there...I am looking for someone that can really help me...you can help me? Tell me what you like and let's do that. Or I can give you more than what you want.

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position No entry
Kissing No entry
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



___________________



mysteriously1, 22
Milan

Not to spoil the mystery

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing No entry
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



____________________





kleinGeldJunge, 20
Erfurt

U need a hot session and friendly date with ESCORT?Hm forget it.Cuz I'm not ESCORT!I'm kleinGeldJunge aka the hot Guy 4 u,in bed. No problem to cum.If u'r a Gentleman we have it. Then i give my full personality. I temperament and advice we will enjoy.Hey this is first class business.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Underwear, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age Users younger than 42
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 350 Euros



____________________




like_a_twink90, 24
Berlin

Hi I am come from Macedoina and I won't lie. I need money the fastest way. I tell the truth so contact me.

I like to have sex as in movies.....start with soft smooches n kiss.....follow with deep tongue kiss for long......then slowly removing the cloths of partner...feeling the heat of each part.....then to sleep nude touching every part of partner....cock fondling....sucking and fucking and someone rim my ass.

I am looking for friendship as well so keep in touch with me forever.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position More bottom
Kissing No
Fucking More bottom
Oral Bottom
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 150 Euros
Rate night 500 Euros



_____________________



MisterEyeCandy, 21
Tokyo

i like all types of sex hardcore,dirty smootching, kissing, licking, get deep anal fucking..etc. fuck me hard n make my hole loose... then u can try fisting me with u r hand too.. u can use me like a bitchwat ever u want u can use like that. is there any1. don't take long time to think.

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position More bottom
Kissing Yes
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age Users between 18 and 56
Rate hour 600 Dollars
Rate night 2500 Dollars



_____________________




FuckYouHard, 21
Marseille

'm a great guy and I will fuck the shit out of you with all the force that I have

Dicksize XXL, Cut
Position Top only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Top only
Oral Top
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active
S&M No entry
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age Users younger than 49
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_____________________




TopMeNow, 18
Regensburg

AMERICAN BOY (English bitte) Please do not write without reading first. And I 100% will not answer any questions to a faceless fat, belly, stocky old Bear. 18 to 40 but it also depends if you fit what I like to see next to me in my BED! Okay! I had to change my writing here! If you are looking older then my dad who every one we meet thinks he is my big brother then you should not waste your time if you look like you can be my father and not big brother! I am only trying to make extra money for School. But I am not so desperate , to just hop into bed with anyone! I try being nice and answer back but I will ignore you until you read and did what you must do first!

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Consent
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Skater, Underwear, Jeans
Client age Users between 18 and 40
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_____________________




lowcost, 20
Brussels

This is the first time that I do it. I need fast money so my friend told to me about this profile. I had a problem and I could get it faster.

You know how much I want for one hour. This is real and serious.

I am going to choose just normal people. I don't live as escort life, just two or three men and later I delete this profile.

I don't know how to define me but I am not a latin or brazilian guy. I am an european guy with you can talk about one normal conversation.

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position No entry
Kissing No entry
Fucking Top only
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age Users between 28 and 70
Rate hour 190 Euros
Rate night 450 Euros



_____________________




roman18, 18
Prague

Dont know what to say.im 18.just came to prague.im here.

Dicksize No entry, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active
S&M Yes
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



____________________




Mess, 23
Rotterdam

well where do i begin i am 23 i am post suicidal i hate my body with a passion i cut (i am not ashamed of my scars) i have ad.hd (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) depression epilepsy odd (oppositional defiance disorder) that's right i am so mentally fucked up you could abuse me and i wouldn't care but yet i like to help people out

Dicksize M, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing No
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Rubber, Uniform, Formal dress
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 130 Euros
Rate night 600 Euros



____________________





sUcKaNdFuCkPrOjEkT, 19
Pasadena

if u need big tool then m worried that u make ur hloe big too... so i will fuck u so passionately n make u feel good with giving u ur hole increasement

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Top only
Kissing Yes
Fucking Top only
Oral Top
Dirty Yes
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Fetish Leather, Formal dress, Jeans
Client age Users between 25 and 54
Rate hour 6000 Dollars
Rate night 22000 Dollars



______________________



kindersurprise, 18
Budapest

i'm just Ok.

hope you know the meaning for escort.

i come. you pay. i go on my knees. you fuck SAFE. and it's done. i go.

one night stand is much better than blah blah...

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position No entry
Kissing No entry
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Fetish No entry
Client age Users younger than 60
Rate hour 300 Euros
Rate night 1000 Euros



______________________



CrazyHairDresser, 23
Köln

My ass waiting 4 your lips touchlips, tongue, come and lick it, touch it, fingers deep, 1,2,3.,do not hesitate, more fingers, then lick, lick fingers, suck myhole,whole tongue inside,funn , kissing it ,embrace it,(hug) it,licking my ass...fucked.party,crushed pills inside,beerwine, enema,drink it,swallowme shit, more more,pi,shit ,eat myshit,eat my ass mess clean,fuck again,lick,fingers deepin it,five, come on!!!,get it in, youcan, youcan(!),fist fist, wreck it,fuck my wrecked hole,eat itout more, fuck fuck me, tongue suckit,fuck fist eatfuck eat fill it,fillfill it,eat yrcum, eat it out ofme, eat it,eatme, feed!!!! feed!!!!!!!!. much funn and nice time together

Dicksize No entry, Cut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Bottom
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Skater
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



____________________





So-fucking_hot, 25
London

Hate this fucking world...

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position More top
Kissing Consent
Fucking Top only
Oral Top
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_____________________



ForYourEntertainment, 20
Boston

Is this cock big enough for ya?” I looked at it. It was certainly medium-sized, and not skinny. I wasn’t sure if it had been a rhetorical question, like when people say “hot enough for ya?” or if he expected a thought-out response. I was momentarily confused, looking at his wielded appendage. “Yes,” I replied, with certainty. It was big enough for me.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Bottom
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active / passive
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Underwear, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Drag
Client age Users between 27 and 99
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



________________




SadomasoFilmAndMore, 18
Rastatt

movie Plot
- you horny bastard spit on your cock and cum before
- push your horny dirty cock slid into the maul of the slave me-
The needle - disaster
Urinary bladder emptying in Facesitting
- Kotze on breakfast bread
Bubbles Bubbles Bubbles
- Dick massage and eggs clapping
Eggs kicks
- kv scart puke spit licking spit cum popel
Educate me poor and humble- we have fun on it
Fist in my ass
length 50 to 60minutes and cost 25euro
After payment is made online link
Meeting will take place in Rastatt extensively.
accurate directions on request.
Criminal activity in all profiles listing mobile numbers 6930903060 and 6930865204.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active / passive
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



__________________




xPop44, 19
Nantes

My attitude is like a mirror. It's up to you really.

My price includes - internet, bathroom, washing machine, kitchen, dishwasher, oven, etc

Dicksize M, Cut
Position No entry
Kissing Yes
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M No
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 300 Euros




*

p.s. Hey. ** Kiddiepunk, Hi, Kp! Top of the French morning! Let's talk and do an in-person soon! ** Kevin Killian, Greetings, sire! Hi, Kevin! Oh, you speaking about Tony Greene! How my mind wanders and regrets its physical location inside my Paris-bound body upon hearing about that incredible meeting of mind and matter! Will your talk/text end up anywhere? I miss Tony. It's been so incredibly heartening to see his work being (re)discovered and appreciated of late. Yes, for sure, I'll pass along ... Everyone, and more particularly those of you in reach of Chicago, the great Kevin Killian will be there at Iceberg Projects on April 19th, i.e. 4 days from today, to speak about the work of the late artist Tony Greene, a superb artist who died young of AIDS -- and who was a dear friend of mine as well as a favorite artist -- in the context of an exhibition of Tony's and others' work  Not only that, but he'll also be reading from his brand new book of poems, 'Tweaky Village', which is an event in and of itself not to mention a book that you need to possess and read. Anyway, if you're in that vicinity and don't go see Kevin/Tony, you're nuts. Here is the info on the event, and here is where you can read about and order Kevin's book. I would so love and revere a copy of 'TV'. Thank you, Kevin, and I hope SF is treating you as splendidly as P is treating me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David! ** Kyler, Hi, bud. 'Dostoyevsky first!' Ha ha, why not? ** Zach, Hi! Farm? Nice, or seemingly so. Did you do farm things there, and, if so, was it willingly and wantonly or were chores the price you had to pay to imbibe some pastoral input? Oh, right, I remember that now, the hot chocolate, even the shaving, and of course the waking up. Hard to believe, no? ** Slatted Light, Hi, David! Interesting, very interesting, about the Morris. What you say makes utter sense. Yeah, I'll hope to see it one way or another soon, and I'll share what it does to me with you once I have. Yeah, that's fascinating. Ha ha, yes, they did seem to win the day, or certainly in the US and the western part of Europe at least. At least in the area of tone, and at least they enlarged the fringes, or force-created a porn fringe where there hadn't been one before. Interesting that the porn fringe is so much larger than the fringe of art or film or book/fiction. Hm, I'm not sure that my thinking about sexual exploration and gender representation in my work was heavily affected by the contemporaneous thinking, discussion, and flow on those issues. I mean, I was certainly aware of and interested in feminist critique and, I guess, post-feminist and early/pre-queer critique re: those areas, but I don't recall what impact my readings and discussions, etc., had on my work's development of those things. Whether that means the effect was slight, or whether it's a matter of how scattered/focused/absorbent my brain is when I'm studying and learning and seeking influence from things out there, I don't know. It's often really hard to for me to pinpoint sources because my mind does this kind of multi-tasking, stew-making thing when I'm thinking about my work in a conceptually external way. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say I'm pro-porn in a general sense. Or, I don't know, 'pro', hm, I guess so. I don't know that it's a value judgement or side-taking thing. You know me, I have a hard time thinking about things in categorical groups except when I'm called upon to do so, or when I call upon myself to take a stand re: stuff that has been officially categorized, whereupon that category is therefore a necessary evil/term that I feel I need to adopt to participate in a public discourse and/or take a stand one way or another in a political sense, at which point, sure, pro-porn works. There was a sex-radical feminism being talked and performed and used as a tool of reinvention in LA at that time as well, but, as things go in LA, it was evidenced more in the art and performance and music and zines and texts circulating locally than something that crystalized and got out in a way that would have made it useful or cogent beyond the scene. As far as what anti-porn critiques stuck with me, I don't recall specifics. I was very involved at that time in working out my own notions of how to represent sex and sexual power relations in the specific context in which I wanted to work within my work, and my memory has it that most of not all of the critiques I was paying attention to addressed male-female representation, and that the most fruitful thing to come from my reading and study of that was to help me clarify the difference I was going for in my attempt to represent a, hm, fair (?) male-male sexual act and dynamic. So, I think it was likely a matter of urging me closer and more accurately towards my idea of representing bodies as flawed mirror reflections or clones that could erase as much as possible everything to do with sexual representation that wasn't personal, subjective, emotional, and fantasy-based, if that makes any sense. Does it? Thank you so much raising all that and involving me, it's such a great pleasure and push. Excellent day to you, D. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Wow, that is a long week. I was thinking mine is going to be a long one 'cos I have so much work and research and meetings and stuff to do, but I think mine will be a piece of cake, relatively speaking. Good luck with all of that, and let me/us know how it all goes. ** Tosh Berman, Golden words, my friend! Thank you! ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Wow, cool, about that Paris cafe having said coffee. I think I'll go order some as soon as this evening. Thank you! Sorry about not remembering your vegan-ness. Doing the p.s. has this weird blurring effect on my memory sometimes. Apologies. My week's a busy one too. High five from busy me to busy you in advance. ** Dan, Hi, Dan! The meeting with Amanda was a lot of fun. She's really great, as you already know. I'll go look for your email. Thanks, pal, and I hope is great with you. ** Brendan, Hi, big B! ** Torn porter, Hi! Yeah, I didn't see your message until I had already planned up my Sunday to death, or, well, to life but a jam-packed life. How long is Ratty here again? I'm sure we can find a day. Maybe Thursday? ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Terrific review and interview the other day! Of course, very best of luck with the blood test. That Romanian film does sound really, really interesting. ** Paul Curran, Paul! Thank you, sir! I sure hope that mess/delay thing is a tiny one. Such a happy occasion! There are no words! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Ah, mostly the earlier stuff. I mean, you can't go wrong with Bresson. I would say 'A Man Escaped' might be my favorite of his earlier films. Excepter! Never seen them live. Very cool. Plus Black to Comm! Nice gig. Envy. If you remember, let me know how it was. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hey! Whoa, it's really sweet to see you back underneath your dear old moniker. I'm good, really good, thanks! And you, if I may be so bold? ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! Did I already tell you what an incredibly awesome cover that is? If not, or even if so, dude, it kills, in the best and most humane way. ** Misanthrope, That was a ... nice, hm, okay, maybe not nice ... story. A ... potent, insinuating story. I liked the blue a lot. The squirrel thing had a nice Sherlock Holmes thing going on, poor thing. Yeah, I'm happy to have that story under my belt. Belt? Under my ... headband? ** Rewritedept, Hi. Okay, I'll try 'Zoolander' sometime. I'm okay with Will Ferrell. I don't rush out to see his movies very often if ever, but, yeah, he's pretty funny, sure. Colbert? I've only watched clips here and there. Don't know. He seems funny. I'm not a huge comedy guy, as you might gather, so I don't keep up with those guys very much, or not over here where I can't just turn on the TV and zone with Colbert or whoever doing his or her thing in the space in front of my face. My day was good. Worked on the new theater piece with Gisele and Jonathan Capedeville for most of the day then had a lovely visit and movie project-related tete-a-tete with Zac. The writing is going well, yes, thank you for asking. And yours? I know what jk is, for whatever reason. Interesting choice: well, because, I don't know, I guess I always think it's interesting when people go for an escort who isn't blatantly cute or hot in the 'normal' ways. ** Okay. Mid-month, escort post. Like clockwork. Do with them as you see fit, and I'll wipe the slate clean with something new tomorrow.

a clip from the first episode of 'mr. show with bob and david,' in which david cross presents a selection from his one-man musical, 'hitler sings.'


Mr. Show with Bob and David is an American sketch comedy series starring and hosted by Saturday Night Live writer/actor Bob Odenkirk and stand up comedian/actor David Cross. It aired on HBO from November 3, 1995, to December 28, 1998.

Cross and Odenkirk introduced most episodes as versions of themselves, before transitioning to a mixture of live sketches and pre-taped segments. The show featured a number of alternative comedians as both cast members and writers, including Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Jack Black, Tom Kenny, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brian Posehn, Jerry Minor, Scott Aukerman, and Dino Stamatopoulos.

It was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as a Golden Satellite Award.
-from wikipedia.



lie detector.


the word 'irreverent' gets tossed around a lot w/r/t sketch comedy shows, but mr. show was definitely one of the most deserving of the term. in their four season run, they made sketches about the KKK, nazis, reality tv shows, satanists, catholics, NAMBLA and tons of other topics. instead of doing the 'SNL' approach, and making sketches based on current events, celebrities and headlines, they went for a more broad approach, avoiding current event-topicality, and instead focusing on subjects that were more universal, which is probably one of the reasons the show is still so funny 16 years after it finished airing.



the new KKK/NAMBLA - 'we're not killers.'


the 'hail satan' network.


the mr. show cracker barrel, in which they attempt to solicit hate mail from viewers.


operation 'hell on earth.'


they didn't always focus on pushing audiences' buttons, though. some of the best mr. show moments were just genuinely funny.



the 'todd linder-floman show.'


drunk cops.


'eww, girl. ewww.' the hit single by three times one minus one.


the highest number.


titannica.


wyckyd sceptre.


mr. show made a lot of sketches with music. this one's great, and involves one of their few recurring charcters, ronnie dobbs:



fuzz the musical.


unlike many sketch comedy shows, mr. show didn't rely on recurrent characters to ensure viewers. the above seen ronnie dobbs was one of the few (he also shows up in the mr. show movie, 'run, ronnie, run). three times one minus one also made several appearances on the show. otherwise, every episode featured different characters and sketches.




'peanut butter, eggs and dice: the bob lamonta story.'


due both to its being broadcast on HBO and HBO's constant changing of the timeslot in which the show aired, mr. show failed to find a mainstream audience while it was on air, though it was critically acclaimed and remains a fan favorite to this day.



thrilling miracles!


globo-chem/pit-pat, the pansexual!


america is going to blow up the moon.


as mentioned at the beginning of the post, many current luminaries of the current comedy scene had their televised debuts on mr. show, including sarah silverman, brian posehn, and jay johnston, all of whom wrote and starred on the sarah silverman program. tom kenny and jill talley are both more well known for their voiceover work: kenny did the voice of spongebob squarepants for the entirety of the series run, while talley has done voices for, among other series, the boondocks (in fact, series creator aaron mcgruder said of talley that she was great because she could voice any side characters and make them great). co-writer dino stamatopolous created the [adult swim] stop-motion series moral orel.

series star david cross played the part of brother-in-law/analrapist (that means he's both and analyst and a therapist) tobias f¸nke on short-lived fox sitcom arrested development, which also saw guest appearances by bob odenkirk (as a marriage counselor) and johnston and 4th season costar jerry minor (as gay cops for whom juklia louis-dreyfuss is serving as surrogate mother).

odenkirk, cross and longtime costar john ennis also appeared in the video for yo la tengo's 1997 single 'sugar cube:'



yo la tengo - sugarcube.


indomitable spirit, featuring john ennis, jay johnston, sarah silverman and jill talley.


this is only a brief introduction to the series, but i hope it inspires everyone to go seek out the whole series. it's available in a six-disc box set (here is a link to buy it on amazon), and i believe HBOgo is streaming it, for readers in the US who pay for a subscription. there is also a newish book out, called 'hollywood said no!' which collects scripts and sketches that were written but never filmed for the show, and a now out-of-print book, 'mr. show: what happened?!' which collects cast and writer anecdotes and a complete episode guide, both of which can also be found on amazon.




*

p.s. Hey. The honorable d.l., writer, and musician (not in that order, of course) Rewritedept is back in the frame to, in this case, focus us in on that nugget of a TV show 'Mr. Show'. Are you already fans? Is this a discovery? Is it ... something else? All bases should be covered, and I hope you will respond to the show and/or to its evidence and to its host accordingly, thank you. And thanks galore to the guy in charge. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Cool of you to spread some of that sweet stuff back at your congratulators and admirers. ** David Ehrenstein, Sir! Paper plate on his cock ... hold on. Oh, ha ha, he wishes. Yeah, your friend's thing that he likes does seem up my alley. I'll go look at the trailer and so on and so forth in a bit. Thanks! Everyone, David Ehrenstein's friend David Cairnes alerted the readers of his wordpress to a forthcoming horror-type film called 'Let Us Prey', and Mr. E thought I and you guys would be interested to check it out. I am, and I have this feeling that at least some of you would be into said film in theory too. Why not find out?'Quite enjoyed it' sounds kind of qualified? Am I right? ** Kier, Hi, K! Yeah, keep at the drawing. That's how it unlocks. It's really about chiseling away the fog and the external weight and stuff. Great, great, so glad that's working! Bottle feeding the lambs. aw. Any chance for a Kier/lamb selfie? The drawings you made for Jheorgge's/George's memorial are beautiful, my pal! Hugs. Everyone, you remember that the blog recently paid tribute to Jheorgge aka George Michael Taylor, an amazing and very much loved d.l. who passed away from cancer. For Jheorgge's memorial service, the great Kier made two beautiful drawings, and you can see them here. ** Bill, Hi. German slant? I never notice, but I always assume there's some kind of German slant because it does seem that, for reasons I don't understand, German escorts often have the best texts, proportional speaking. No clue as to why. Where are you going to be in Germany again? Shall I point you in some fellas' direction? Ha ha, that was a tight flash fiction thing. I think I might also nominate the Guyotat-ish stylings of CrazyHairDresser. ** Aaron Mirkin, I will, yeah, if I find those notes. I wrote an essay thing on pro-wrestling back in the, hm, mid-80s, and it's in my 'Smothered in Hugs' book, but it's not so interesting or great, I don't think. One of the guys who I'm pretty sure is going to be in Zac's and my film is a Death Metal bass player/singer who is really into pro-wrestling, and we've shot the shit about it. Ooh, stills. Nice! Everyone, d.l. Aaron Mirkin is also a super-excellent filmmaker, if you don't know. And he recently shot the upcoming new Xiu Xiu video clip, and, if you want a preview, here are two stills to gander at: one, two. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, D! Yeah, I think chilling is right, speaking for me, but it's a chill intersected by and in battle with other tones, some creating deflections. It's impossible to speak about the escorts in general, or it is for me, because there's no way to know how much theater, truth, lying, confession, manipulation, artful or playful usage of the form and categories is going on, especially given that the ones I seem to particularly like and use in the posts a lot involve guys trying to write clearly in a non-native language or even tossing what they actually wrote into some translation service and serving up whatever it scrambles into English. And with the escorts, it's a job, and the texts are their come-ons and resumes, so, I don't know, I always see it as a different thing than on a hook-up or dating site, but that distinction might be a convenience that I'm constructing to support my interest in the idea that the escort ads are studies and experiments in depersonalization, in part. Or something. I'm too uncoffeed right now to try to be a bright guy. Anyway, that's so interesting. I mean, well, everything you said, but also that resemblance to the house searching thing. And books are getting that treatment too? Wow, that's ... I don't know what I think about that. I'll go read what's at the end of that link. Neoliberalism, ha ha, yes, innit, indeed. Cool. Love to you too, my man. ** Kyler, That play does sound fun. Grand Guignol-ish. It so often does suck that critics come on opening night. We've had that mess with Gisele's work too. ** Steevee, Hi. That racist tattoo guy seems to have been the eye-mind-crotch-catcher of the bunch. He kind of lit up my FB feed and threatened to become a meme but didn't quite get there. ** Misanthrope, Oh, right, you've haven't seen me since I started wearing a headband everywhere I go. I have never seen a pack of Camel Blue Wides on sale over here anywhere, but if I do, oh boy, I'll be so happy. Even happier than I am having a Chipotle in Paris.
Great that LPS is coming! Who's doing what at that Raw? I have a feeling that I won't know most of the names, though, I'm so out of it. Oh, yeah, about that Roth. Never read it. Trying him again seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. Hm. ** Zach, Yeah, right? Re: the end. Congrats on getting that behind you. Well, physically behind you. You are now officially a man or something, apparently. Yeah, what was xPop44's thing? It sounded to me like he was looking for a sex-starved, control freak roommate or something. Huh, that blog you've been looking at does seem very curious. Sweet and, I don't know, something that tweaks my investigative impulse. Thank you. I'll go scroll down/through/back. Maybe others would be curious. Everyone, here's d.l. Zach tipping me and you, if you like, to a blog. I'll let him tell you: 'I have also been looking at this blog a lot lately. It's a 20 and 53 year old in a couple who get asked a lot of questions and do a weird balance of endearing and kind of sad or lonely feeling and ultimately heartwarming: http://mikeandbob.tumblr.com/. They said they were going to delete it and focus on their relationship but then they kept it up!' Thanks, man. ** Sypha, Ha ha, that makes sense about MisterEyeCandy. He's two of your favorite rolled into one. Okay, that's some progress on your health issues. That's good, tentative as it is. How's the new therapist? Yeah, I loved 'GBH' too. He's really, really good. ** les mots dans le nom, That's interesting about the impression BEE makes. I don't know him very well at all, but melancholic makes sense. I'm not sure about greedy. I didn't get that, but I had his whole body and voice and stuff to work with. Fatigue, I know that one. I won't forget you, don't worry, and I've got work galore for the next while too, so my goal is not to forget myself, ha ha. ** Rerwritedept, Hi, man! Thank you again for gracing this hood with your great post! Nice musical scores there. There aren't any good used record stores in Paris that I've found. In fact, there's only one really good record store here that I've found, period, and it's tiny and only really stocks fringe, experimental things, which, of course, works for me. I think my Wednesday will be pretty good. All signs point in the good direction. Fingers crossed, for yours too. ** Right. Have a 'Mr. Show' kind of day today, you guys. See you tomorrow.

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p.s. Hey. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! Awesome about your birthday. Naturally, I heartily approve in retrospect of your b'day cuisine choice. Yeah, nice. It would so great if you want to make the Varioso! That's really exciting to think about. Take care, bud. ** Slatted light, Hi, David. Oh, man, I'm so sorry and smothered in hugging impulses to hear about the internal roughness. That answer or riposte: that one doesn't want help enough, specifically when coming from professional help givers, always seems like it's caught up in some strange blend of self-consciousness on their parts and a predetermined strategy re: instructions and a complicated lack and denial of close attention to the person being addressed, and an impulse on their parts to self-protect, and I don't know what else. It's like a moment when the ideally collaborative structure of therapy, or at least the believability of that illusion, is deliberately made imbalanced, and the ambitiousness necessary to hold up their end of the therapy bargain reveals its limits, reveals the overall game too much or something. I guess in that probably unclear way, I'm trying to say I agree with you that the problem becomes its problem. I mean that, in that deflection, the helper's inability and/or unwillingness to search you, and his/her requirement that you qualify for help by showing some conventional, easily visible form of desperation or a usable manifestation of weakness becomes the problem, maybe not with therapy as a practice itself, but with the problem within the practice that the help seeker's chaos must immediately be recognizable or interpretable. Man, I'm probably not even speaking to what you're saying centrally enough. And I don't wish to encourage you to 'give up', however that works. I'm so sorry, D. If related discussion would help, I'm interested, and my brain has the ambition to engage even if my language problems gum up its signals. Right, Dorothy did found Lesbian Sex Mafia, I think. I miss her. She was a very cool pal back in the day.  I hope your day today surprises you with pleasure, man. Love, me. ** Torn porter, Hey! That's weird, or not weird: I just texted you not five minutes ago. Hopefully we can sort out a meeting today finally. Hopefully see you ultra-soon. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, David. Shit, I just realized I missed 'Nebraska' when it played here. I saw the posters and made a mental note, and then the note drowned inside my head or something. ** Schlix, Huh, wow, I never imagined Excepter having such a strong performative aspect to their shows. Curious. Cool. I hope you've gotten some decent sleep by now. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. You're in Leeds, cool. The Tetley looks interesting, or its website seems promising. How was it? ** Lynne Tillman, Lynne! My dear friend, my hero! This is so incredibly cool to have you in here. I'm so sorry that I'm such a shit correspondent. Really, emailing has become such a stand-offish foreigner of an activity to me, it's really strange. If you see this, I want your book so badly, yes! I keep reading about it and biting my nails, literally. My snail mail address is: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St, Martin, 75010 Paris, France. Lynne, I miss you! I wish NYC and Paris were down the street from each other. I wish Paris was Veselka and NYC was The Poetry Project, or something. You're the best, and I send you massive love! ** Sypha, Hi, James. Nice guy therapist, great! Interesting: the relaxation, visualization, etc. techniques. Anyway, obviously I'm really happy that you're off to a positive, hopeful start with him! ** Zach, Hi, Z! I always tend to think that 'Blood and Guts' is a great way to start reading Kathy Acker. I started with ... what did I start with? .. oh, with 'Great Expectations', which I love. But, yeah, 'BaGiHS' is definitely one of her super-peaks, I think. I'm sure I've done an Acker post. Hold on. I know there've been a few, but the only one I could find quickly is Spotlight on ... Kathy Acker 'Dead Doll Humility' (1990). I liked Travis''The Suiciders' a lot, yeah. An excellent read. You're definitely off to a great post-'Ulyssses' start. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Oh, holy shit, you bet that a kier/lamb selfie drawing would do nicely, and even more nicely than a photographed one, and even much more nicely. Awesome! Can't wait! xo, me. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, D! Yeah, but the chill is important. Or an importance or something. Well, yeah, I mean I put them here to do something with blog readers. That's key, or as key to them as it is to everything on the blog and in my own writing or whatever. I think they're very rich, textually and emotionally and in the way they straddle and quick-jump tones, depths, guesses at audience and self, etc. Obviously, they fascinate me since I keep doing them, and they've been influential on my writing. My new novel is definitely beholden to their particular, exciting (to me) form in places. Yes, Lynne! ** Steeve, Hi. No, I mean record/music store in general and period. You really would think that Paris would have an Amoeba- or Other Music-like store, but it doesn't. I've looked, and I've asked countless people, and they all say no. There are some very small, good stores, but with quite limited selection and stock. It's the strangest thing. Lynne's new book is a collection of non-fiction, I think. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Yeah, Barthes on wresting. Did you ever see the Barthes/wresting post I did here a while back? If not, hold on. Here it is: WWE Special: The Undertaker vs. Roland Barthes. Hm, I do remember being really surprised at times by people/artists who revealed themselves to be pro-wrestling followers, but I'm blanking on who. Stephen Malkmus is, but I feel like somehow that's not as surprising as it sounds. Death Metal band ... oh, you mean the band that the performer in Zac's and my film is in? They're not known outside of gigging in Paris a bit, but, weirdly, they're actually starting to record their first EP today. They're called Dragons of Hell. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Ah, drat that you didn't win the LA Times Book Prize. I was in that boat once. My second poetry book 'Tenderness of the Wolves' was nominated and lost. I think ceremony was sort of fun/weird or something. Sweet about the time you spent with Michael and that show went well. If he said it did, I'm sure it did. He doesn't really bullshit about that stuff. I'm so excited to hear your and his minds interact. Oh, and thank you for having my name in there. That's really nice. TMoJT: sublime, right? Amoeba! Tosh! It sounds really, really nice. That's funny, yeah, I can totally see the 'Performance' vibe now that you mention it. Huh. I wonder how deliberate that was. Welcome back, pal! ** Les mots dans le nom, Hi. Very interesting about your experience and about the relevance of the thing I wrote about why the escort posts interest me. 'Depersonalization and impersonality (associated with the neutral, the third language, gentleness in utopian encounters) are not so distant to each other': oh, yes, for sure, I agree, very complex, thank you for that thought. That post idea is amazing, of course. Yeah, if you have the time band interest to make it, that would be amazing, thanks so much! Oh, I deliberately don't invite people to comment here. Sometimes someone will write to me and express their liking of blog, and I'll let them know they would be most welcome to comment if they want to. But I kind of have an overriding principle about trying not to oversee or tamper with the idea of who comments here. I'm interested in that happening of its own accord with as little of my influence on people's decision to do that or not as possible. Yeah, of course it would be really great if there were more women here commenting more regularly. There have been at times in the past, but not so much right now. ** Rewritedept, Hi, man. A slow day sounds really nice. I haven't had one of those in a while. I haven't heard Future Islands yet. I was thinking of checking them out. If you went, how were they? ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh! It's always so really good to see you. Oh, shit, I'm sorry, my friend. What an interesting story. What a curious sounding guy. Maybe his Christianity started to fuck with him inside or something. Yeah, I'm sorry, Josh. Hugs from Paris if you want and need them. ** Okay. Today's post is today's post. See you tomorrow.

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Cinecitta World (Rome)
'Imagine your own world. A world that resembles your dreams: where cinema fiction becomes reality, where the star of the show is you, where all of your dreams come true, where you can enjoy a fantastic world, where you will experience the greatest emotions of cinema. Cinecittà World is the world where cinema fiction becomes reality, where tradition and innovation join together, where doing cinema becomes amusement. The $700 million park is being built just south of Rome on an expansive site originally used by famed producer Dino De Laurentiis for studios built to rival Rome's storied Cinecitta Studios starting in the 1960s. The two remain linked, with the theme park expected to feature roller coasters and other rides based on some of the more than 3,000 films and television programs produced over Cinecitta's 75-year history. Cinecitta is best known for giving birth to dozens of iconic films, ranging from William Wyler's 1959 epic Ben-Hur, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita from 1960 and 1963's mega-budget Cleopatra, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, to more modern productions including Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and the HBO series Rome. And the studio's connection to the theme park will be unmistakable: Aside from the shared name, the park will include movie sets ("visitors will not move between movies but between sets," Gout said), themed rides and a sort of synergy between the two institutions.'-- collaged













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Mammoth (Holiday World)
'“Air Time” on a water ride? Yes! When it’s a water coaster! Mammoth towers seven stories from highest to lowest point and covers more than three acres. The massive Mammoth begins with a conveyor ride up the water coaster’s lift hill. Following each breath-taking drop, LIMs will fly your boats back up hill after air-time-filled hill. What powers these six-passenger boats up the hills? Something called Linear Induction Motor (LIM) technology. In total, six LIMs will magically propel the boats on their way through this 1/3 mile water coaster. Mammoth’s rafts are six-passenger boats. Round boats: Nine feet in diameter, flying up and down hills in the 12-foot-wide channels and tunnels. That means your thrilling trek on the World’s Longest Water Coaster may be facing forward, facing sideways, or facing backwards. Facing backwards? Yes, and in the dark. There are five enclosed slide sections. And many twists and turns. Plus air-time, that incredible feeling of being lifted off your seat. Your whole family will be able to challenge Mammoth together – and watch each other’s delighted faces as you conquer this epic ride.'-- Holiday World








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Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom (Six Flags Great Adventure)
'With a sheer drop of 415ft - higher than the Statue of Liberty - and travelling at speeds of 90mph, a new record-breaking ride will not be for the faint-hearted. A New Jersey company is planning to build the 41-story drop ride, making it the world’s tallest. Six Flags Great Adventure says Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom will hoist riders 415 feet in the air and drop them back to the ground at 90 mph. The stomach-churning attraction will be attached to what is itself the world’s tallest roller coaster, Kingda Ka in Jackson, New Jersey. Zumanjaro’s three towers, each 41 stories tall, will be nestled inside the green loop of the current ride. Three gondolas will carry brave riders up the face of Kingda Ka. They will drop from just below the coaster’s 456-foot peak as Kingda Ka’s trains rocket toward them at 128 mph. At the top - far higher than the 305ft Statue of Liberty - riders will be able to see the skyline of Philadelphia, which lies 52 miles away.'-- Daily Mail








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Hotelli Kyöpelinvuori (Linnanmäki)
'Linnanmäki, Finland’s largest theme park, has just opened a new haunted ride ‘Hotelli Kyöpelinvuori'. Based on the story of an hotel operated and inhabited by witches, the ride replaces an old ghost train which has been a favourite at Linnanmäki over many years, but had become uneconomic to maintain. Technical Director Anssi Tamminen said “I am very pleased with our new ride and our guests have received it well. We had to satisfy guests who wanted something new and exciting, and traditionalists who wanted us to keep the old ride they remembered from when they were children”. Nick Farmer at Farmer Attraction Development designed and built the complete show, with Gosetto providing new cars and track. Farmer commented “the ride’s name is inspired by Kyöpelinvuori, a place of legend in Finland where annoying elderly relatives are taken and pushed off a cliff. As a grandparent myself, I am hoping this doesn’t give young guests any ideas!”'-- in park Magazine









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unknown (Alton Towers)
'I know theme parks are naturals at overhyping, but the words 'GET READY FOR AN UNBELIEVABLE EXPERIENCE' would still be very weird if this is just a splash battle. I'm leaning towards some form of dark ride, even if it is water based. Might there might be a chance of a whole new area being created? They've got the amount of land needed to create a whole new area.'-- Sazzle




'I meant to post this photo last week. It's a massive ride area so I'm starting to believe that it's not simply a Splash Battle. There's a lot of land that has been moved to the left side of that image. It looks like they've been concentrating on landscaping the new area at the moment.'-- Rob




'Update: It seems they are actually stepping up a gear with new frame structures appearing around the site. and it looks like most of the landscaping is completed in the new mysterious ride area. The enthusiasts over in Spain seem to be trying the same a few of us lot do in the UK asking workers what it is they're building.. and of course they know nothing! According to rumours too the 2014 project will open in April 2014!'-- James






'This is an idea someone has of what the attraction may be like (I'm not sure if they're guessing or have evidence though).'-- Andrew




'Update: A new picture of the construction site at PortAventura has revealed lots of new details and clearly shows off not only a ride station, but support buildings and where crews have clearly dug a trough through the terrain. Could this be for a new boat ride of some kind? The park already has a log ride, a big splash boat ride and a river rapids ride, so I’m wondering if this might be a Splash Battle style ride. Of course, it may not be a water ride at all and could be something entirely different and unique. Anyone know more? Doesn't really look like an "unbelievable experience" at the moment.'-- Sam





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Yumble (Roermond, Netherlands)
'An inventive indoor theme park with 8000m2 of interaction, innovation and entertainment. This is Yumble! An array of unconventional attractions, a first-class food & beverage concept and a digital setting based on projection technology, together present a unique and all-embracing happening. The varied use of projection technology and interactive software enables Yumble to create new marketing value time after time. Where traditional parks cannot escape building new (expensive) attractions, Yumble effects repeat visits by tailoring its content to the latest hypes or relevant themes (Christmas, Easter, Halloween). The digital stage setting enables Yumble to communicate with the audience, which makes the unique experience even more intense. The first Yumble is opening at the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet in the Dutch city of Roermond in late 2014, the European Fashion Outlet par excellence with over 200 leading designer brands under one roof. For good reason this outlet is already drawing 4.4 mn customers annually. And this number continues to grow as a consequence of further territorial developments. In addition, this triple-A location has a service area of 16.8 mn inhabitants within an hour's driving distance. The Roermond area is looking forward to the opening of Yumble and the expected economic and tourist impulse for the whole region. A visit to the Roermond Yumble is an excellent family trip, especially when combined with the nextdoor Fashion Outlet. We anticipate people will spend a half-day at Yumble. The Roermond Yumble expects approximately 300,000 - 350,000 visitors annually.'-- brandnewleisure.com










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Goliath (Six Flags Great America)
'Goliath is a wooden roller coaster currently under construction at the Six Flags Great America amusement park in Gurnee, Illinois. It will be designed by Rocky Mountain Construction and will debut in May 24, 2014, Memorial Day. The ride will begin with a left turn out of the station before ascending the 165-foot-tall (50 m) chain lift hill. The track will then drop 180 feet (55 m), 15 feet (4.6 m) below ground level, at an angle of 85°. The track will then ascend to a height of 125 feet (38 m) for an overbanked turnaround. A small air-time hill will be followed by a dive loop. The ride will then enter a zero gravity stall, where the train is suspended upside-down as it crests over a hill. This element is followed by a second overbanked turnaround, leading to the brake run and a short path back to the station. One cycle of the ride will take approximately 90 seconds to complete. Goliath will claim three Guinness World Records when it opens in 2014. The ride's 180-foot-tall (55 m) drop at 85° will be both the steepest and longest in the world for wooden roller coasters. Goliath will also become the fastest wooden roller coaster in the world, with a top speed of 72 miles per hour (116 km/h).'-- collaged












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WonderWorks (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee)
'WonderWorks is a ground-breaking attraction combining science education and entertainment and located at the site of the former Music Mansion on Pigeon Forge Parkway. Thanks to cutting-edge graphic and audio presentation techniques, the new attraction features some of the most imaginative displays and exhibits anywhere in the United States. WonderWorks is a place where reality and fantasy come together, said Sande Weiss, general manager of WonderWorks Pigeon Forge. There is just nothing else like it. We think of it as an amusement park for the mind. Guests arriving at the nearly 55,000-square-foot facility will know they’re in store for something different. The interactive science museums 82-foot-tall façade, part of a $9 million renovation project, makes it appear as if one building the mysterious WonderWorks Institute has crash-landed upside down atop a 1930’s-era brick warehouse. According to the folklore, WonderWorks began as a technically advanced research facility on an island in the Bermuda Triangle for scientists to study unexplained phenomena. When an experiment went awry and a man-made tornado was unleashed, the laboratory was hurled into the sky before crashing hundreds of miles away.'-- travelmole.com











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Sochi Park (Russia)
'All eyes are on Sochi, Russia with the 2014 Winter Olympics officially underway. But for theme park enthusiasts, the main event may not be the sports. Touted as Russia’s first modern theme park, Sochi Park stands unfinished among the glimmering Olympic facilities, despite Russian officials’ promises after rushing construction. Locals refer to it as “Putin World” due to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s involvement with the project. Mystery has shrouded much of the park’s development. TODAY’s Matt Lauer recounted a story circulating in the area that the oversized steel bolts crucial to attaching the roller coaster to the concrete slabs in the ground somehow got “misplaced.” Russian officials later apparently “found” the bolts after tracking them down. The park’s hotel, which lights up at night, is reportedly occupied but there's no official word about who the tenants are. Word on the street, however, has it that members of the Dutch and Sri Lankan royal families are staying there. According to RCDB, the $371 million Sochi Park will feature three roller coasters: Dragon– a Mack launched coaster, Quantum Leap– a Vekoma “Giant Inverted Boomerang” (think Six Flags’ former Deja Vu coasters), and Sharolet– a Mack wild mouse. Also included in the ride lineup are a drop tower, ferris wheel and other standard theme park attractions. At the moment, officials promise that the park will premiere in July, but the prominent theme park enthusiasts website Screamscape is advising people to avoid the park, even when or if it does open. "We shudder to imagine," it writes, "what kind of corners may have been cut inside the amusement park."'-- coaster101.com











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The Lost Temple (Movie Park Germany)
'The new attraction coming to Movie Park Germany will be a new 4D Dinosaur themed attraction where guests are taken “on a thrilling adventure deep beneath the park in a mysterious prehistoric world”. To do this, they will travel through a 23 meter long “immersive tunnel” on expedition buses loaded with 4D effects through a 360º screen. Sounds like the park is making their own version of a King Kong 360º 3D style attraction. I’m told that this will be one of the Simworx Immersive Tunnels. The new addition is set to cost €5 Million, and Screamscape speculated that the attraction would utilize one of two ride systems. The first being a Dynamic Attractions Immersive Tram system, which the company describes as: ‘Imagine boarding a tram to begin a simple tour, when all of a sudden, the tram is rocked up and down and side to side by a pack of wild animals! That is the thrill your guests experience with the technology of a multi-axis motion base coupled with high definition 3D A/V. After entering the Immersive Tunnel, visitors take their seats on a ‘tram’ styled simulator and are taken on a fun-filled journey that assaults the senses – physical platform drops, dynamic motion, blasts of air, water spray, vibrations, dramatic light, surround sound and 3D film projected to the front and both sides of the tram combine to give the most realistic experience possible.'-- collaged













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Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (Disney World)
'For more than two years, construction walls in the center of Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom have shrouded the final element of the New Fantasyland expansion. A skeletal white steel structure has grown into a lush mountain, hiding a mine inside. “It’s a unique experience unlike anything else in our parks,” writes Mine Train Creative Director Dave Minichiello. “This attraction is more innovative in its ride system and vehicle. It gives the guests a new sensation they’ve never had before.” During the ride, Minichiello said the passenger vehicles will slow so riders can take in the thematic scenery. The slow periods of the ride were created by design. Visitors will be able to get their hands on some of the jewels. The queue line leading to the boarding station will feature an interactive element where future riders will wash the gems, much like a Dwarf at work. Another question still on the minds of theme park visitors will wait to be answered: When will the attraction open to guests? Minichiello did not reveal an exact date, rather simply responded with “Spring.”'-- collaged
















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Wonder Mountain's Guardian (Canada's Wonderland)
'For more than 30 years, a familiar darkness has surrounded Wonder Mountain at Canada’s Wonderland. Guests and employees alike have suspected a dark mythical presence hidden within this iconic landmark. In May 2014 the park will throw speculation about these myths aside and blast into Wonder Mountain to unveil a thrilling new interactive 4-D dark ride, Wonder Mountain’s Guardian. Wonder Mountain’s Guardian begins with a perilous climb up the side of Wonder Mountain then plummets into its core traveling through five different layers of this dimensional world. Riders will encounter mythical creatures as they navigate 1,000 feet of coaster track through a desolate forest, underground lake and Draconian City. The quest culminates as riders enter the dragon’s lair for the ultimate battle with a heart stopping finale that will shock thrill seekers of all ages. Montreal based TRIOTECH, a leading manufacturer of multisensory attractions for the amusement industry, has developed the ground breaking technology for Wonder Mountain’s Guardian. This next generation ride will allow guests to experience stunning 3D effects overlaid with 4-D elements: simulating wind, movement and more. Real time graphics and the fastest most accurate targeting system will be installed to create an ultra-immersive interactive experience.'-- canadaswonderland.com









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Ratatouille – L'Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy (Disneyland Paris)
'Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy is an upcoming motion-based trackless dark ride based on the Disney/Pixar animated film Ratatouille in Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, France that is currently under construction and is scheduled to open in summer 2014. This attraction will be one of the biggest projects ever in the Disneyland Paris complex, with speculation that the show building could be as tall as The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the neighbouring Disneyland Park, and will cost an estimated $120 million-$150 million to complete. The attraction's exterior, according to conceptual paintings and blueprints, will be that of Gusteau's restaurant, and the surrounding buildings of the Parisian plaza. The attraction is rumoured to use LPS trackless ride technology, similar to Pooh's Hunny Hunt (in Tokyo Disneyland) and Mystic Manor (in Hong Kong Disneyland), which offers using vehicles shaped as rats to automatically slide across the ground with no track. It also could contain a 3D dome segment of the ride that the vehicles will ride into. The ride begins with a pre-show by Remy to show the rules of this ride, and then a ride through the kitchen on mouse cars, the ride should take about five minutes and twenty seconds approximately, then exit to the boutique where you can buy Ratatouille related items, then meet and greet with Remy and then a simulator ride will take you to the locations from the film, after that, exit the ride.'-- collaged













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Banshee (Kings Island)
'The first female-inspired thrill ride at a Cedar Fair Entertainment Company amusement park, Banshee will send riders screaming through 4,124.1 feet of track and seven mind-bending inversions at speeds up to 68 miles per hour during the 2-minute, 40-second ride. It will be the longest inverted steel roller coaster in the world. Built over hilly terrain, the ride layout for Banshee is specifically designed for Kings Island and features several unique elements that distinguish it from other roller coasters. The ride experience on Banshee begins with a lift taking riders up to the maximum height of 167 feet. After plunging down 150 feet, riders will go through a curved drop, dive loop, looping interacting with the lift, zero-G-roll, batwing, outside loop, spiral, in-line roll and carousel. Two of the most unique features about Banshee are the massive size of every loop, and unlike other roller coasters, the top speed isn’t reached until halfway through the ride’s course. Since Banshee’s lift hill is on a higher elevation of terrain than the other side of the ride that goes down into a valley, the total elevation change is 208 feet from the highest point at the top of the lift hill to the lowest point, which is the bottom of the batwing between loops four and five.'-- theme parks-us.com







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Red Sea Astrarium (Aqaba, Jordan)
'The Red Sea Astrarium (TRSA) is an integrated resort destination on the shores of the Red Sea. It is considered the first themed entertainment attraction at the coastal city of Aqaba-Jordan, and the first to use green energy to minimize adverse environmental impacts, and it is scheduled to open in late 2014. The Red Sea Astrarium occupies 184-acre (70 hectares) of land and, when fully open, will employ more than 4,000 people directly. The resort’s design features three major zones of entertainment: The Summit, The Old Waterfront, and The New Waterfront. The resort is set to feature four luxury hotels, botanical gardens, a collection of entertainment, dining areas, 4D cinema, 16 attractions and retail stores. The Red Sea Astrarium will house an array of international theme-park level attractions suitable for all ages. Some attractions use highly-advanced Jordanian 3D technology. In 2013, a signing ceremony was held at the Jordanian-American Business Forum under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan. King Abdullah had suggested Star Trek be included in The Red Sea Astrarium, being a big Star Trek fan who had an uncredited cameo (as background Starfleet crewman) on an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in 1996.'-- collaged














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Thunderbolt Reborn (Coney Island)
'Like its equally famous sibling, the Cylone, the original Thunderbolt was a classic Coney Island coaster. Built in 1925, it thrilled generations of riders until it was closed in 1982. It was immortalized in Woody Allen's 1977 film, Annie Hall, in which the filmmaker's character, Alvy Singer, lived in a home under the coaster. Incredibly, there was a real house with occupants beneath the actual coaster. lt may share a name and location with the original, but it’s built to deliver modern day thrills. The new Thunderbolt will stand 125 feet tall, have 2,000+ feet of track, and hit a maximum speed of 65 miles per hour. The ride's layout starts with a 125 foot plunge downward, and up into a large vertical loop. After that is what looks like a modified corkscrew, stretched out so that it slightly resembles a heartline roll. A heavily banked wave turn is after that, and then trains quickly enter a reverse dive loop, for lack of better words. Two long camel hills lead the trains back to the final brakes. The ride will be built on a very narrow piece of land, close to the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium and partially next to where go-karts and a Skycoaster were opened last Summer. The rest of the open space near where the Thunderbolt will go is not owned by the city, forcing the ride to have a very narrow but long layout.'-- Zamperia






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Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts (The Wizarding World of Harry Potter)
'Visitors to Diagon Alley will see the Gringotts facade rising at the end of alleyway, with a fire-breathing dragon atop. You're visiting Gringotts to open an account and get your own vault but, of course, because this is a theme park, you can expect something to go terribly wrong. Walking inside the bank building, you'll step into a small Entry Hall with three chandeliers before entering the Bankers Hall, the elaborate main hall filmed inside London's Australia House for the Harry Potter movies. The Bankers Hall will be lined by animatronic goblins behind the tellers' desks. From this room, the queue will split, with the regular queue heading outside to a large supplementary queue located behind the Gringotts show building leading into a hallway of Gringotts offices. The offices will include a Security Office where you'll have your picture taken (yes, more souvenir sales!), before ending up in Bill Weasley's office. After his presentation, the doors on the far side of his office will open, leading your half of the queue to one of the two waiting elevators. These elevators will take you down 30,000 feet to the subterranean Gringotts vaults — juuust like those "hydrolators" at Epcot's The Living Seas used to bring you up from the bottom of the ocean. ;^) Once "down" at vault level, you'll pick up your 3D glasses in a tunnel-like room, before climbing a spiral staircase to the load platform. After the load platform, the two track channels merge to the south, then bearing to the left and entering Scene 1. In this scene, you'll face a brick wall, with two tunnel entrances, to the left and right. You're really facing a 3D screen, though, and here's where it all starts to "go terribly wrong." Within a moment, the car then drops 70-80 feet into the tunnel, for a kinetic ride section through a stalactite-filled cavern, which is only the beginning.'-- Theme Park Insider












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Falcon's Fury (Busch Gardens)
'In spring 2014 Busch Gardens Tampa is taking guests’ experiences to new heights with Falcon’s Fury, the first drop tower of its kind in the world. Additionally, with no connecting structures, it will be the tallest freestanding drop tower in North America. No bird can match the speed of a falcon in its hunting dive. The falcon is the fastest animal on Earth, reaching speeds of 200 mph. Designers were inspired by this bird of prey during the development of the new attraction. Falcon’s Fury will stand at 335 feet and take riders soaring 60 mph straight down. Located in the Timbuktu™ area, Falcon’s Fury will be visible from any location in the park and even across the Tampa Bay area. At the ride’s highest point Busch Gardens has added an element of surprise. Like its bird of prey namesake, riders will pivot 90 degrees in midair to a face-down dive position. An instant later they'll plunge 60 mph at 3.5 Gs straight down with speed and power like they’ve likely never experienced before. Construction in the Timbuktu area of the park has already begun, and Falcon’s Furyis scheduled for completion in spring 2014.'-- collaged












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Sanrio's Hello Kitty Park (Anji, China)
'A $215-million Hello Kitty theme park celebrating the cute cartoon cat with a cult-like following will open in China in 2014. Construction is expected to begin in July 2013 on the 150-acre theme park in China's Zhejiang province, about three hours west of Shanghai, according to China's Xinhua news agency. With a million visitors expected annually, the new Hello Kitty park will be targeted at families with preteen children and young women who collect merchandise bearing the likeness of the white bobtail cat with the red bow. The main entrance to the new Hello Kitty park will be topped by a skyscraping Ferris Wheel and flanked by nearly a dozen towers of varying heights, according to concept art released by the Hettema Group, a theme park design company. Pastel-colored rolling hills, giant leaves and oversized purple flowers will emphasize a nature theme found throughout the park. An aerial view of the park shows seven themed lands with four bodies of water and a distinct lava-spewing volcano surrounded by a roller coaster. The new theme park will include 35 to 40 costumed Hello Kitty characters, according to the Hettema Group.'-- The LA Times














*

p.s. Hey. As I mentioned belatedly at the top of the comments yesterday, I can't do the p.s. today. If you're interested in why, well, I'll be doing a daylong V.I.P. behind-the-scenes visit to the ballet school at the Paris Opera with Zac and Gisele Vienne because the movie that Zac and I are writing for Gisele to direct is centered around a Halloween haunted house attraction-cum-giant interactive sculpture whose setting is a bizarre ballet school, so our trip is for research. There you go. I'll catch up with the comments from yesterday and today when I see you tomorrow morning. In the meantime, here are some things that amusement park aficionados like myself have to look forward to this year.

'Marginalized by film historians and largely overlooked during his lifetime, the late Curtis Harrington (1928-2007) was a key figure in the West Coast experimental film scene and among the most wholly original directors to work in the Hollywood studio system. An ardent cinephile since his earliest years, Harrington began his film career as an errand boy at Paramount and eventually became a successful A-list director at Universal in the 1960s. An early protégé of Maya Deren and a close friend of Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos, Harrington’s first works were poetic trance films that revealed his careful eye and distinctive style. During his youth Harrington also befriended two of his greatest idols, iconoclastic studio directors James Whale and Joseph Von Sternberg, uncompromising aesthetes whose refined—and at times, perverse— tastes and wicked sense of humor would remain major influences on all of Harrington’s major films.

'Harrington ended up being an example of what is likely a typical tale in Hollywood: a director who gladly (and sometimes begrudgingly) took the work that was handed to him as he labored to get pet projects off the ground. His filmography looks like a scattershot run through everything from fractured art house shorts to campy horror to nighttime soap operas of the eighties. But if you start digging into the life of the late artist (he passed away in 2007), you’ll find a fairly incredible story built on a deep love of film, good fortune and a singular vision that shone through even his most commercial work.

'As you would expect from the tenor of many of Harrington’s work, a lot of it is available for mass consumption: a DVD that pairs up two of his campier efforts, What’s The Matter With Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (both starring Shelley Winters), and many other films streaming online including one of his most fully realized horror experiments, Ruby. Another thread that runs through so many of these films is Harrington’s love of Hollywood’s Golden Age, which he tries to inject into even the most unusual projects.

'He convinced Basil Rathbone to play the majordomo of a group of space explorers in Queen of Blood, while also going against producer Corman’s wishes to put former noir moll Florence Marly in the title role. He cast legendary British actor Ralph Richardson opposite Winters in Auntie Roo. And for a TV movie about a woman in control of a hive of killer bees, he gave the plum lead role to the great Gloria Swanson. “He talks a lot about how he really had a way with egotistical women actresses,” says Lisa Janssen, an archivist and film theorist who is working with Chicago-based imprint Drag City to bring a DVD collection of Harrington’s early experimental works into the world. “Someone called him the next George Cukor because he was so good with those personalities.”

'“It was a huge heartbreak for him to end up there,” says Janssen. “What he finds is that you don’t just do one show and then go back to directing features. You’re marked for life. He just got stuck there.” During that time, Harrington pleaded with movie executives to help him get films funded and produced. For the better part of thirty years, he tried to get an adaptation of Iris Murdoch’s book The Unicorn brought to the big screen. He also attempted to work on TV adaptations of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and a biopic about Swanson, as well as dozens of other big and small films. Frustrated as he was, Harrington kept soldiering on, able to keep working thanks in no small part to his gregariousness with everyone he encountered along his life’s journey.'-- collaged



___
Stills


















































_____
Further

'The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection' @ Drag City
Curtis Harrington @ imdB
Ch obituary @ Fortean Times
'Curtis Harrington, Restored'
CH interviewed @ The Terror Trap
'Exploded View'
'Negotiating the Dangerous Compromise'
'Curtis Harrington: Living in Dangerous Houses'
CH's memoir reviewed @ Bookforum
'Remembering Horror Maestro Curtis Harrington'
The Curtis Harrington Papers @ Margaret Herrick Library
CH obituary @ The Los Angeles Times
The Estate of Curtis Harrington: Grandfather of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in LA
'CURTIS HARRINGTON: CINEMA ON THE EDGE'
CURTIS HARRINGTON: 2001 INTERVIEW
'Curtis Harrington on James Whale'
'Michael Gothard and the Curse of Curtis Harrington'
'From the Eye of the Storm: Remembering Curtis Harrington and His Films'



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House of Harrington
'House of Harrington is a short documentary about Curtis Harrington, a filmmaker who amassed a short list of very interesting, arty, plodding horror movies throughout the '60s and '70s. Unfortunately, outside factors (bad ad campaigns, dubious distributors, meddling producers, etc.) prevented Harrington from ever having the illustrious film career that he could/should have had. The documentary features one of Harrington's final interviews in which he reminisces about his early life and fascination with films through his career in Hollywood to his final independently produced short film Usher. Punctuated with clips from most of his movies (including glimpses of his oft-spoken-of but incredibly rare early shorts Fall of the House of Usher, Fragment of Seeking, and The Wormwood Star) as well as some of the television shows he directed, few of his works are discussed in-depth, it's just sort of an overview of his career.'-- Vinnie Rattolle









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Inauguration









Kenneth Anger 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome', featuring the author Anaïs Nin as 'Astarte', Marjorie Cameron as 'The Scarlet Woman', and the filmmaker Curtis Harrington as 'Cesare the Sleepwalker'.




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Extras


Cult People Episode 6 - Curtis Harrington


Curtis Harrington Audio Interview


Curtis Harrington Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood Book Trailer



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Interview
from Halloween All Year




When did you know you were a filmmaker?

Curtis Harrington: I wanted to be a filmmaker from about the age of twelve. I got my parents to buy me an 8mm camera out of a catalogue. I then got a job working as an usher at the local theater. I would see films over and over again.

The first film you made was in your early teens, an adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher.

CH: I did a version of The Fall of the House of Usher—a little 8mm film—when I was fourteen. To say that it’s crude is putting it mildly. I don’t like to show it. The only time I’ve shown it in recent years is when I took my new version of The Fall of the House of Usher to the Munich Film Festival about two years ago. They begged me to show the earlier version of it.

And you gave in.

CH: I gave in. People like the idea of seeing a film that I made when I was fourteen, then seeing a different version of it at 104 years of age.

Did you go to film school?

CH: Yeah. I went to USC. For someone like me, it was largely just going through the motions. I made my first films—one of my key films— Fragment of Seeking when I was at USC. My friend at that time, Kenneth Anger, made a film called Fireworks. Both of these films were very personal so USC had nothing to do with them. I remember when I showed Fragment of Seeking to a couple of USC professors, I might as well have shown them a blank screen for all the reaction I got. The film was just meaningless to them. It’s a film that’s created a lot of interest over the years.

Generally speaking, my work has been much better understood and appreciated in Europe than in America. In Europe, I get instant responses to everything I do, even the new version of Usher. No film festival has any interest in it here in America. But in Europe I’ve already been invited to several marvelous film festivals and everybody loves it and they write about it. The separation from the European mentality and the American one is weird. They have no interest in artists in the States. When I went to USC film school, you talked about Citizen Kane; you didn’t talk about Doris Day in The Glass Bottom Boat. Everybody wanted to do something different back then. Now people go to film school to learn how to make very commercial movies, real Hollywood stuff. That’s what most of them are in there for; they want a hot job. And today they have plenty of opportunities to make these utterly inane teenage movies. Do you know what I’m talking about?

The target audience is bored fourteen year olds with too much of their parents’ money.

CH: Yes. Steven Spielberg makes his films for the same audience.

Was it looked down upon by the avant-garde crowd that you wanted to move into films with narratives?

CH: The only question the avant-garde crowd had at the time, specifically Jonas Mekas, was “Is Curtis Harrington selling out to Hollywood?”

My favorite film of yours is What’s the Matter with Helen? How did that picture come about?

CH: I made Games at Universal. I was put under contract there. And then after Games my producer George Edwards and I met with Henry Farrell, who wrote Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and we asked him if he had some other story of that genre. He gave us the outline of a story called “The Box Step,” which was the basis for What’s the Matter with Helen? We had the studio backing, hired him, and he wrote the first draft of the script. But then I could never get a cast to the studio’s satisfaction. We needed an aging actress who had done dancing.

Before I offered it to Debbie Reynolds, I offered it to Shirley MacLaine, but she wouldn’t do it. I had the idea of Joanne Woodward, who was a friend of mine. She also wouldn’t do it. She always got advice from her husband Paul Newman who advised her against doing it. I have no idea why. At one point we had a friend who knew Rita Hayworth and we had a meeting with her, which was one of the most heart-wrenching moments I’ve ever had with anyone. Of course we all know that she finally developed Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know at what point she was at when we had this meeting, but we met at her house and we had a wonderful time. We were thrilled to meet her. She still looked very good and we sat out by her pool and chatted with her and then finally George and I left. We were both very pleased with the meeting, but suddenly at the doorway she just collapsed. She crumpled and said, “You’re laughing at me aren’t you? I know you’re laughing at me.” It was a horrendous moment...so that obviously didn’t work out. Debbie Reynolds liked the script, one thing led to another, and she agreed to do it. And that’s how it came about. We made it independently.

Are there any recent filmmakers that interest you?

CH: Yes, but very few. The only American is David Lynch. I’ll tell you my personal favorite film of the last—I don’t know, it may have been made more than twenty years ago now—time goes so quickly. My favorite big commercial movie of the last twenty or twenty-five years is Blade Runner. I really love it and I’m so disappointed in the director. I don’t think he has any high ambitions, it’s not that, but he certainly hasn’t made anything close to Blade Runner since it was made... One whose work I hate, a lot of young people think he’s really cool. I can’t remember his name. I can never remember the names of people I don’t like.

What did he do?

CH: Magnolia.

Oh, Paul Thomas Anderson. I don’t like him either.

CH: I think his work is pretentious.

What do you think about the state of the horror film today? Is there even a future for horror?

CH: [laughs] Well, it all depends on the evolution of special effects. [laughs] I don’t think we’re going to get over that anytime soon. I just wish they were put to better use. I like character-driven horror and that’s very old fashioned. I think the only slightly interesting thing in the horror genre, and I’ve just read about them, are these Japanese horror films that are being remade in America. I thought The Ring was interesting, but I have a feeling I’d like the Japanese version a lot better. I always like Japanese horror films. I remember them from years ago. I used to go to the Japanese theater downtown. There were no subtitles or anything but they were always wonderful. The Japanese have a real wonderful sense of horror.

I think it’s very hard for an individual filmmaker to get anything done. They’re all committee-made films. And most films are just animated demographics. The casting is all demographic and it’s nothing to do with the integrity of the film. I’m not interested in seeing films that are for built-in demographics. For example, films that have to have fourteen-year-olds who solve the world’s problems, you know? Spielberg was always doing that in his films; it’s always a kid who comes in with a computer. If I see that scene one more time I will puke. The worst director currently is Joel Schumacher. He’s the total pits.



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10 of Curtis Harrington's 25 films

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On the Edge (1949)
'In this fragile, yet frightening poetic fantasy, set against a dark industrial landscape, Harrington casts his own mother and father in the lead roles. On the Edge comes perilously close to feeling like a throwaway gag: Set amid the burbling mud pits of some post-apocalyptic wasteland (in actuality the Salton Sea), this short is almost entirely inscape: An elderly man sneaks up on an old woman (who may or may not be one of the three Fates) hard at work knitting in her rocking chair. In a trice, he snatches the sewing out of her hands and scampers off. You can probably guess the rest: When the thread runs out, his time is up.'-- collaged



the entire film



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The Wormwood Star (1956)
'It’s certainly no slight to the late director Curtis Harrington to describe The Wormwood Star, his visually arresting 1956 portrait of occult artist/beatnik weirdo Marjorie Cameron as being “Anger-esque” considering that he’d served as the cinematographer for Kenneth Anger’s Puce Moment and that it stars Cameron, one of Anger’s most well-known cinematic avatars (Cameron famously played “The Scarlet Woman” in Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome and Harrington himself portrayed “Cesare the Somnambulist” in that film. Additionally, Paul Mathison, who played “Pan” in Anger’s druggy occult vision was the art director of The Wormwood Star). What you should know as you watch this is that the vast majority of Marjorie Cameron’s paintings were destroyed by her—burned—in an act of ritualized suicide. There are very few pieces by Cameron that have survived—a few paintings and some sketches—and The Wormwood Star is the only record of most of them (outside of the astral plane, natch. What does survive of her estate is represented by longtime New York gallerist Nicole Klagsbrun). Cameron has long been a figure of fascination for many people and I think I can say with confidence that this film meets or even far exceeds any expectations you might have for it.'-- Dangerous Minds



the entire film



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Night Tide (1961)
'Seaman Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper), on shore leave, finds a "Mermaid" sideshow attraction at the marina, operated by Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir). The "Mermaid" Mora (Linda Lawson), who lives in a hotel above the marina merry-go-round (the movie was filmed at the Santa Monica pier) and Johnny fall for each other. Everyone around them is wary of the romance, as her previous lovers have died mysteriously. The film is an oddball cheapie that's a lot of atmospheric fun for about an hour or so, then kind of just peters out with a weak ending. Still, there is a nice tone to the off hand, low key acting, and it is wonderful for an L.A. Lover to see Santa Monica and Venice as they looked in this period. This film, along with Welles Touch Of Evil and John Parker's Dementia aka Daughter of Horror, form a sort of dark trilogy of Venice Beach Noir. The unmistakable Bruno Ve Sota (the poor man's Orson Welles?) is in two of them. Anyway, it's a must for any fan of the "Pyschotronic" film underground, you'll be glad you checked it out.'-- collaged



the entire film



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Queen of Blood (1966)
'Queen of Blood is a 1966 horror/science fiction film released by American International Pictures. The director, Curtis Harrington, crafted this B-movie with footage from the Soviet films Mechte Navstrechu and Nebo Zovyot. It was released as part of a double bill with the AIP movie Blood Bath. The film features John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith and Dennis Hopper. Basil Rathbone was paid $1,500 to act for a day and a half on this film, and $1,500 for half a day on Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), which was another film based on Russian footage. Rathbone ended up working overtime and missed a meal. The Screen Actors Guild demanded overtime pay plus a fine for the meal violation but producer George Edwards produced footage showing that the delay was because Rathbone did not know his lines and insisted on skipping lunch.'-- collaged



Trailer 1


Trailer 2



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What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)
'The layers of pastiche that fuel What's the Matter with Helen? multiply like Shelly Winters's titular character's fat white rabbits. In fashioning a flapper-era psycho-shocker with muted sepia tones and two histrionic performances from slumming movie starlets, director Curtis Harrington (then also involved in the filming of Orson Welles's lost project The Other Side of the Wind) was some years too early for the big '70s nostalgia fad for the American Depression years, and it was far too late to stand shoulder with the trend-setters Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte as a representative example of "diva-bitch Hollywood gothic" cinema. Shelly Winters and Debbie Reynolds star as Helen and Adelle, the mothers of two murderers — two Leopold & Loeb-esque types, probably, considering their high maintenance mothers -- who run away to Hollywood to escape the high profile life of flashbulbs and psychotic reporters begging for interviews. (Yeah, Hollywood would've been my first choice, too.) Adelle opens a dance studio for little Shirley Temples-in-training and Helen accompanies on the piano, otherwise spending most of the film clutching a ratty Bible and gradually losing her marbles while Adelle makes like the next Jean Harlow. Whereas Debbie loses major points for trying to play her role straight, Shelly would appear to be using the film as a feature-length audition for her role as a whiney fatshit in the following year's disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure.'-- Slant Magazine



the entire film



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Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
'In its combination of childlike wonder, black psychosis, nail-biting terror and florid fantasy, the film is exemplary. In terms of photography, atmosphere and pacing, it is equal to, if not superior to, any of Hammer or Amicus’ greatest moments. Then again, we’re talking about British AIP here, the same studio that gave us The Masque of the Red Death -- so why shouldn’t we expect a masterpiece? Whoever Slew Auntie Roo has admittedly never received the acclaim it deserves, possibly because of its chronological placing at the end of a series of similarly titled, similarly-themed “batty old actress” horrors that include Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, What’s The Matter With Helen and Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice, and also possibly because, straddling as it does two decades, it has its foot placed firmly in the camp of neither- but even one casual viewing should be enough to convince viewers of its power.'-- britmovie.co.uk



Trailer


Whoever Slew Auntie Roo (1972) Review - Cinema Slashes



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Killer Bees (1974)
'The invasion of a community by a swarm of deadly bees was, for a time, a popular commodity in genre cinema: this was preceded by Freddie Francis' THE DEADLY BEES (1966) and followed by THE SAVAGE BEES (1976; TV), its sequel TERROR OUT OF THE SKY (1978; TV) and Irwin Allen's inflated all-star fiasco THE SWARM (1978). Frankly, I never understood this situation's appeal, as the sight of people fleeing for their lives from badly-processed insects (as in the film under review) was always prone to elicit laughter as opposed to the intended terror! Anyway, here we get the added – but equally dubious – treat of having the leading family of the locale (after whom it is named!) as the bees' keepers…or, rather as one of them opines, it is the other way round! In fact, matriarch Gloria Swanson (in her much-publicized TV debut) is constantly surrounded by them – until it is time to pass the baton to another, younger woman and, since her direct relations all happen to be male, her successor ends up being one of their number's girlfriend (played by Kate Jackson, later one of TV's CHARLIE'S ANGELS)! Still, the fact that the reason behind the African killer bees' mass migration to the U.S. – apart from the declaration that their particular honey gives the "Van Bohlen" wine an extra sweet taste! – is never properly delineated hurts the overall effort (to say nothing of its credibility quotient).'-- Mario Gauci



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Ruby (1977)
'Ruby was one of the last horror films by Curtis Harrington, who directed several notable “horror of personality” films in the 1960s (e.g., Games, What's the Matter with Helen) and the atmospheric piece Night Tide. Although Ruby is not up to that level of achievement (thanks to interference from a producer who wanted an exploitation horror film), the film does feature a fine lead performance by Piper Laurie as the titular character, Ruby Claire, a one-time gangster’s moll who has old mob members toiling at her drive-in in the ‘50s. Ruby’s paramour, Nick (Sal Vecchio), was murdered by his fellow mobsters, and now his spirit comes back to wreak its revenge. Harrington worked with his long-time collaborator George Edwards, who ensured that the film has a rich visual look, reminiscent of Harrington’s inspiration, Joseph von Sternberg, despite having only a roughly $600,000 budget.'-- Cinema Fantastique



Trailer


Title song from "Ruby" by Don Dunn



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Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)
'Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell is a 1978 television movie directed by Curtis Harrington. The story centers on a suburban family and the harrowing experiences they endure from a possessed dog they innocently adopt. The film stars Richard Crenna as Mike Barry, the father, Yvette Mimieux as Betty, the mother, and Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann as Bonnie and Charlie, their children. The latter two starred in Disney's Witch Mountain series, but were not intentionally cast based on that fact, just on that they looked believable as siblings.'-- collaged



the entire film



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Mata Hari (1985)
'Sylvia Kristel adds her sexual allure to the story of Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle), executed by the French in 1917 at the age of 41 for being a double agent. In reality, "Mata Hari" had been married, had children, and performed as a dancer around Europe -- not the normal background for a spy. And according to the man who requested her execution, Captain Ladoux, she was a lousy spy indeed. But Kristel and director Curtis Harrington capture one aspect of Mata Hari that made her most infamous -- her willingness to bed down with just about any military man she found attractive, and none were not. As Kristel jumps into bed with both Germans and French, and others in-between, something of the spirit of Mata Hari may live on in this ostensible biography. Viewers may definitely want to compare versions with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, or Jeanne Moreau in the lead.'-- Rovi



Trailer


Excerpt




*

p.s. Hey. ** Thursday ** Dennis Cooper, What?! ** Scunnard, Does 'France' mean something different in France is a profound question for which my puny mind has no answer. Oh, man, that's okay about the post. Whenever will be glorious. I'm really good, just a little too busy with projects to walk in a straight line, but there are far worse maladies. And you? ** Bitter69uk, From my perspective and from everything that I can tell, it does, yes. ** David Ehrenstein, Juliette Greco! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! I love how people associate France with insane filthiness. It's very ... well, very much akin to my way of thinking about France back in the golden mists of time. ** Bill, France is the new sauna? Ha ha, I don't even know what that means, but it sounds right instinctively. Mid-June suggestions? Hm. Well, there's Paris, but that's old news. I loved Scandinavia in general, so there's that, and there are all those amusement parks, of course. Hm. Let me think. Maybe there's some art thing or music festival or something somewhere at that time near you that could influence a choice. I'll check. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Yeah, obviously, the plugged-in locale changes when you move. But there was something particularly funny about 'France' being in plugged in there for me. It could be as simple as some kind of linguistic cheap thrill or something: the bluntness of the rhythm and syllables, the way it's like the words 'in France' seem to hit the sentence on the head with a rock or something. I don't know. What you said about it is pretty brilliant/cogent, I think. For some reason, it made me laugh a lot. ** Kier, I found it! And it's so fucking beautiful! I want to put it on a t-shirt! Everyone, Kier made a drawing/selfie of him feeding a lamb, and it is terrific-ness incarnate. See it. It's here. Or better, much better, use this link which will transport you to a stack of Kier's amazing drawings in which the lamb selfie one is imbedded down near the bottom. Wonderful, wonderful. I think it's happening in France, yeah, if you like that kind of thing, yeah. ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark! Oh, thanks, man. About what I wrote to SL. And the info/memories/thoughts it inspired in you was/is so deeply welcome. That's such, such great news about your unfamiliarity with pain. Holy shit! Yeah, alternative medicine, I've been a recipient of its foreign and simultaneously anti-foreign notions/help enough times to buy-in to some degree. For me, at least, it's pretty unpredictable when it works magic and when it doesn't seem to lay a finger on my health. Weirdness. Man, that is so awesome! I wish I could see your happy face right now! If only astral projection was an alternative medicine that worked. Big, fat, glowing, extruding love to you! ** Steevee, Yikes, about that death threat. I just ... wow, am not surprised, which is so ... wow, ugh. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, man! Yeah, superb reinforcement of my post choice there re: the 'in France' thing. Thank you! Seeing those pop up when I was on certain, ahem, sites also just made me kind of almost sort of fall off my chair laughing, and so there was the 'am I crazy?' motivation in decontextualizing them too. The 'am I' question remains unanswered, however. Oh, well. How are you? Tell me exactly what you did this weekend in detail. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Yeah, geo-specific advertising. The idea that if you just toss any old location into that slot, it'll work equally well. Kind of ridiculous and interesting. I think I knew which one was the lie. ** White tiger, Buddy! Thank you! How is LA treating you and vice versa? You happy? ** Slatted light, Hi, David. Oh, man, I'm so pleased that what I wrote made some kind of sense. And what you wrote in return makes massive sense. Yeah, I guess if I were you, searching for the right oddball therapist would seem to be a right or, I don't know, logical move. Therapy is so weird. You know that I was in therapy for, I don't know, four years in the '90s, and it did really help, and I still don't have a clue as to how it did. It didn't seem like it could possibly be doing anything useful when I was doing it, but I guess it added a particular kind of input, or it added some kind of strange mirror to my daily life that reflected me back at myself in a kind of new, refreshed way, or it sculpted a piece/outskirt of my life into something that then reshaped or at least effected the shape of the whole to some degree, or ... I'm at a loss. It wasn't the answer, but it was kind of like becoming friends with someone whose friendship woke something up in me that had been dormant and problematically so. Weird stuff. Ha ha, nice joke, and I totally get why it occasioned a joke. I definitely got a 'punchline' effect from the placements of 'in France.' ** Misanthrope, Roth is souring on you? No way, ha ha. Yeah, that standard fiction over-telling thing is for the birds, especially in 'literary fiction'. Every time I see that happen, my mind calls bullshit. Tonight's the wrestling thing! No, wait, on Monday, duh, sorry. Are you having fun with LPS? Surely. ** Zach, Hi! 'Empire of the Senseless' is good. I think maybe it starts a lot better than it follows through and ends, but I can't remember. When I was co-editing the Selected Kathy Acker book for Grove Press, I had to reread all of her books in quick succession, and they've tended to blend together in my head ever since. I wonder how they get those photos for those pop-up 'come on' things. I wonder if they get permission. I wonder if they pay? I wonder if all of those guys are dead. ** Friday ** Thomas Moronic, Yep, yep, about theme parks' appeal. Obviously, I'm a calf in clover on the subject. Spon reprinted my Courtney thing. Huh. I feel like I was so wide-eyed and gullible with her, but maybe there's something interesting and nice about that, I don't know. Everyone, if you want to read this old cover story I wrote about Courtney Love for Spin Magazine 20 years ago, wow, Spin has republished it on their website here. Thanks, Thomas! Have a great weekend! ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. It does, doesn't it? Not enough to make that huge special trip, although being in China must be amazing, and Zac and I have talked about putting it on our ambitious future trips list. You have a fantastic weekend too. Is your book out of purgatory yet? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, the Paris Opera visit was fantastic. We got to see all kinds of areas in that building that punters don't get to see, including a peek at the 'secret' lake underneath the building. Oh, okay, the Tetley website might have oversold the place, and that definitely happens. Really great about the progress on ART101! You sound revved up, and that sounds so good. ** MANCY, Hi, buddy! It goes very good with me, thanks. And with you? That LA minimalism show sounds really good. I love De Wain Valentine's stuff. So you're good with the move up to Bellingham? Do you feel like you've gotten enough of the 'big city's' ups and downs to take a break? ** Steevee, Look forward to the review! Everyone, here's Steevee's review of Joe Swanberg's film 'All the Light in the Sky' on Fandor. There's no 'Suspiria' in Zac's and my script and conceptualizing, no. That doesn't mean Gisele won't bring something of that to the film in her directing. But, no, our script is very much about structure with the haunted house and ballet as vivifiers and illustrations. ** Kier, Hi, K! Thanks about the film project. Yeah, we're pretty excited about it, and it's going really well. We're going to be working on the script today in the fresh light of our field trip. Great weekend to you! ** Sypha, I envy your 'Rollercoaster Tycoon' play. Do alert us when there are images, and, yes, please post some. That would be manna. I'll go read your list-in-progress. Very cool! Everyone, if you click this, you'll get to read a tentative 1st draft of Sypha's top 100 albums list. ** Rewritedept, Theme park trips should always be near the top of one's to-do list, if you ask me. You made another blog day? Wow, thank you. That's incredibly welcome! The VIP tour was really great. Saw a lot of building interior. Visited ballet classes, saw rehearsals, etc., etc. Big help. Have a good one. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. What up? ** David Ehrenstein, Morning! ** Kyler, Hi. Writing cover copy is so weird. I don't like doing it at all. I always make my editors write mine, and then I fix them. Fingers crossed on the pub date and that you don't get caught up in delays, which happen a lot. Hopefully not for you. Oh, gosh, I hate front cover blurbs. There's something about them that bug me. I don't know why. I've had them on my books, but I don't like them, so actually I kind of hope mine isn't on your cover, ha ha, but, if it is there, I'll bow gracefully to how those kinds of things work. Have a lovely weekend. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Thanks for the offer of help. That's really kind. We're pretty far away from the actual production of the film, for sure. But, yeah, thank you! Ha, those are nice coincidences! Weirdly almost meaningful ones or something. Really, about the wrestling song in the BlaB film? I'll go listen. I need to see that film, I think, I guess. Hm, I'm going to need a day or two to think up possible reading recommendations on that topic. I'm blanked at the moment, but the p.s. does that to me. It's most unfortunate. But I'll put my mind and memory to it this weekend. Thanks, pal. ** Okay. You guys know Curtis Harrington? If not, here's an opportunity, if you like. Have the Saturdays and Sundays of your dreams, and I'll see you on Monday.

______________________




Columbia Poetry Review: Who was the first poet (or poets) important to you?

Jerome Sala: When I was starting out, I was interested in poetry as performance. I was drawn to writers with a declamatory tone, particularly Futurists of all nationalities. I loved Apollinaire, Marinetti and Mayacovsky. I think I discovered this mode through reading Frank O’Hara, who, of course loved Mayacovsky. A little later, I added Nicanor Parra to my list, as I admired his direct, break-the-fourth-wall style.

CPR: Could you talk a little bit about your process?

JS: I’ve done a lot of commercial writing; mostly forms of advertising that often need to be written quickly, even instantaneously. Lately, I write poetry in the opposite way. I come up with three or four lines that I want to work with after playing around a while, and store them in my poetry ideas file. (I usually write at my computer.) I return to this file, either at home or in the middle of the workday, over a period of weeks or even months, and add to or edit what I have, as the poem gradually suggests itself to me. I usually have about three or four of these little projects going at one time. I can tell when one is finished, as it develops to the degree where it makes a fairly definite point.

CPR: Would you make an observation about today’s poetry landscape?

JS: Once, not long ago, that landscape could have been summed up in a few major modes – like a country with a flag that carried three bold stripes. What seems to be happening now is that a number of styles are springing up, each of which draws its own micro-audience of writers, readers, bloggers, critics, etc. What’s sort of cool about this is that often these enclaves seem nearly unaware of each other; they’re almost monads unto themselves. It’s like the world might have been before the homogenization of globalism – enabling you to hope that someday something exotic will appear out of nowhere.










Jerome Sala The Cheapskates
Lunar Chandelier Press

"Jerome Sala’s cheeky, splashy poetry seems never to be in a bad mood: he sails through profound political and historical issues with a tone of insouciance that—like an erudite carnival-barker’s—successfully lures us into the tent. Indeed, The Cheapskates has a Cecil B. DeMille fullness, each of its sideshows masterfully spacious within close quarters. I hear in Sala’s voice the lovable sound of a storyteller-trickster who wants to beguile listeners into a reverie with no strings attached."-- Wayne Koestenbaum

"From The Flintstones to the Khalisi in Game of Thrones, nothing on TV has escaped Jerome Sala’s attention, though as you can tell from these examples he has a affinity for the Other, for the cult of primitive, animal power transferred from animals, be they dragons or dinos. And where does he run with this knowledge? I have long admired Sala’s wit, his vulnerability, the astute social analysis like a knife that cuts through pretension and cruelty. But we love him for his cheapskate beauty, its rare unearthly gleam. The best poems here come “lit by a supernatural brightness/ that broadcasts delicious ideas, as only light can,/ at the very edge of palpability.” -- Kevin Killian


Excerpts


LATER, CLIFF

when I was a mouse
in a cartoon
chased by a cat

I said, "later, cliff"
as I ran into midair

but the cat followed me out
into the mighty void

of
(I thought)

escape

and we stayed there
above the infinite drop

feet and paws pedaling
long and short noses gasping
tails whipping into the great cool
nothingness

perpetual popular machines

until
we
looked
down



WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MANNEQUIN?

in the commercial
men and women audition
to become mannequins
for a chain of stores
that sells casual party clothes

it's easier to work in the "Service Industry"
with a perpetual smile, hands frozen
in a greeting that broadcasts happiness
with professional grace

once people begged to be awakened from their roles
now they must prove
that they can sell in their sleep

there's an elegance to their somnambulism
a courage and a confidence:
that it's possible to achieve warmth with a blank stare

one that never bumps into the wall
of a customer's personality

one that reflects all interpersonal affection
back onto the clothes at hand



REALITY EVERYTHING

The great thing about everything becoming public
is that this means nothing is.
You are traceable like a cigarette at night,
but no one is there to enforce the no smoking sign.
The lights are on, but no one's on the phone.
Those peaceful scenes after the plague
has annihilated the small town,
and no one's left in the restaurant or department store,
have all come true -- and yet no one's dead,
the market is more crowded than ever,
the street packed with stalled traffic,
the sky dark from flocks of planes,
punks in the overpopulated corners, the gangways,
under the street lamps, still sniffing glue --
but no one's there to get high --
all gone somewhere far away
leaving their lives behind
to go on living without them.



Poet Jerome Sala reads his poem "Urban Warrior"


Jerome Sala at the BPC 3/7/09


Poets Jerome Sala & Stacey Harwood @ Big Apple BAP




____________________




'Lucas de Lima’s poetry is a hot mess. Spittle comes out of its mouth. Blood is contaminated, the flesh inflamed. It is a thing of feathers, teeth, scales and primordial black gunk. The manuscript from which these poems are excerpted recently earned the distinction of being rejected by the Minnesota State Arts Board, who found de Lima’s treatment of the propelling event—the killing of a close friend in 2006 by an alligator—melodramatic” and “inappropriate.”

'They didn’t get it. As de Lima has contended elsewhere, poetry is “obscene adornment” in which “we lose control of our narratives, and inevitably end up thwarting not just our intentions for a poem, but also the way we conceive of ourselves and our bodies.”

'De Lima’s spiritual and political cousin can be found in the fever dreams of artist Manuel Ocampo. His paintings, with their baroque phantasms of Catholic iconography, Nazi symbolism, monster roaches and Klansmen are the bastard products of history. Similarly, De Lima’s poems tear a hole through accepted feeling and reason to inhabit the “SPACE WHERE WRITER & READER BLEED THROUGH PAPER.”

'In his transfiguration of his friend’s death, the tabloid-ready luridness of it all, de Lima locates the ‘HOLY UNCAGING” of the American immigrant and the immigrant artist, who are “NEVER DONE CRYING, LAUGHING, SPURTING, DYING” in the face of the fear of foreign bodies thrashing in our midst: “LIKE THE GATORS UNDERNEATH NEW YORK/WE CLOG THE SEWERS OF LITERATURE.” Or to bastardize the headline from Time magazine’s June cover story, “We are poetry. Just not legal.”' -- Lisa Chen










Lucas De Lima Wet Land
Action Books

'Lucas de Lima's stunning book affected me so profoundly at all the stages of reading it, encountering it—before it was a book and afterwards, when it was. In the work of this extraordinary writer, the fragment is not an activity of form. It's an activity of evisceration.'-- Bhanu Kapil

'These poems lurch from the murky waters of our collective unconscious and side-swipe us with a lyric invocation of the dark forces of... what? Nature? History? The alien life-force that drives planetary evolution? A primal being raises itself from the swamp of human consciousness, animated by the archaic and archetypal Sobek, the Egyptian god in crocodile form. The two voices that alternate in this narrative of trauma—the quotidian voice of the poet and a ritual voice of invocation—queer the story in the most profound way. Together with de Lima we call forth the god who will transform the narrative. As queers, we are the incarnation of countless shamans, medicine men, magicians and priests. The poet places himself in this tradition through his invocation.'-- AA Bronson


Excerpts


MARIAS

I DREAMT OF MY MOTHER DYING & WANTED TO BUILD A FIRE

MY MOTHER IS ONE OF MANY MARIAS FLICKERING

IN CIUDAD JUAREZ, ONE MARIA DIES EVERY WEEK ON THE WAY TO A

FACTORY

AS A WOMAN I CALL MYSELF MARIA & WEAR THE DARKEST RED ON MY

LIPS

WHEN I KISS PALE BOYS I TRY TO SET THEIR FACES AFLAME

SO THE WHITE BOYS’ CHEEKS MELT

THEN I RECALL MY PAST LIFE AS A WHITE BOY WRITHING IN A WHITE

BLANKET

WHENEVER I WANT TO THROW THE PAGE INTO THE FIRE

ANA MARIA STOPS ME BY CRASHING INTO MY BACK

LIKE A WAVE OF THE VIRGIN MARY’S TEARS IN A LATIN AMERICAN

CHURCH

ANA MARIA WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO GIVE ME A CLOVE

CIGARETTE

IT SET MY LIPS OFF

WITHOUT BURNING THEM UP

ONE TIME MY MOTHER ACCIDENTALLY KISSED ME ON THE LIPS

I STARTED WRITING POEMS WITH A MATCH



KILL SPOT

MY BULLET CRACKS THE GATOR’S SKULL LIKE AN EGG.

MY BULLET SHATTERS THE GATOR THE WAY A WORD BREAKS OPEN THE

LORD.

MY BULLET IS BEAUTIFUL.

IT SHIMMERS IN THE QUARTER-SIZED KILL SPOT ON THE GATOR’S NECK.

MY BULLET MAKES MY FATHER PROUD.

HE HOISTS THE HUGE GATOR INTO THE FISHING BOAT BY USING THE HEAD AS

A COUNTERWEIGHT TO THE ARMOR-PLATED BODY.

IS THE GATOR A MANLY PINK UNDERNEATH?

I FANTASIZE ABOUT STRIPPING HIS SCALES.

HIS LEG STILL TWITCHES, FADING SLOWLY WITH THE LIGHT

WHEN I SHOOT HIM NEAR THE HEAD AGAIN.

THE BLACK CRY OF A HAWK COINCIDES WITH MY BANG.

I KNOW THE HAWK IS ANA MARIA BECAUSE HER CRY PIERCES

MY EGGHEAD.

I CRY YOLKY TEARS IN THE BOAT WHILE MY FATHER FROWNS AT ME.

THE SKY IS BUBBLING

YELLOW ABOVE.

O FATHER,

I MOAN IN THE CYPRESS GROVE,

O.

ONCE A GATOR INGESTS THE HOOK

WITH THE BAIT OF CHICKEN,

WINGS TEAR THE SKIN ON MY BACK AS THEY GROW.



GHOSTLINES

THE GATOR’S BRIMMING RED EYE DEPRIVES US OF THE GHOST.

MY MUTE WINGS TALK AFTER SOMEONE CUTS THEM OFF.

THEY REVERBERATE OUT OF MY BODY. THEY FALL BACK TOWARD THE

RED SUN.

IF I FALL INTO THE GATOR’S EYES, HE WILL GLITTER WITH ALL POSSIBLE

COLORS.

HE WILL LOSE HIS COLD-BLOODED BLANKNESS & BECOME A HOT BODY.

WHAT ANA MARIA WAS TO HIM.

ANA MARIA. I JUST WANT TO CHECK IN WITH YOU. I’M NOT GOING TO YELL.

ARE YOU THIS BOOK YET?

ARE YOU, ME & THE GATOR ALL

HANGING OFF THE SAME SPINE?

WITH FORMALDEHYDE, OUR BOOK COULD BE PRESERVED AS IT TURNS

BLACK:

OUR MAGNIFIED MEAT BURNING IN SUNLIGHT.

LET US MINGLE IN THE SWAMP A FEW MORE DAYS. THE BEST SHADE FOR

A TEAM TO PERCOLATE & PRAY IN.

WE TEEM AGAINST ALL ODDS IN THE QUICKSAND OF ALL EYES.

ANA MARIA.

YOUR ADUMBRATION.

I SEE YOUR SPLASH OF WATER FROM THE SKY WETTING THIS BOOK.

MANY READERS ARE GHOSTS

OBSESSED WITH OUR BODIES.



Lucas de Lima reads from 'Wet Land'




_____________________




Megan Lent: You slightly resemble the lead singer to the mid-2000s emo-pop-turned-fake-folk-rock band Panic (! is optional) at the Disco. The band’s prettiest song is called “Northern Downpour.” The band’s biggest hit is called “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” Please write a piece of very short fiction or poetry with the title of one of those songs. Or a different song would work too, I guess.

Andrew Duncan Worthington: The Northern Downpour came upon the hills of our kingdom. The white wolf sang from the depths of the forest and we heard him, we heard his call, and we prepared for the winter tumult.

ML: I just skimmed through a bunch of your stories (some I’d read before, some I hadn’t, they were what Google gave me), and you mentioned New York a few times, and Nancy Drew twice. Also, you wrote in one story that you “hate ice cream sundaes.” Why are New York and Nancy Drew important? And what did ice cream sundaes ever do to you?

ADW: My sister read Nancy Drew when I was a kid. I read the Hardy Boys. I think I mention Nancy Drew because it is something that has always been close to me but which I have never read/understood.

The significance of New York is that I live in New York. I went to 3 years of college upstate at Bard, then I lived in Bed-Stuy for a year, and for the past year I have lived in Harlem. I like to juxtapose Ohio (where I’m from) and New York in my writing a lot. Some might call it played out but I like to call it a rich tradition.

Ice cream sundaes are okay. I think when I wrote the line “hate ice cream,” I was having a weird thought about the ice cream shop near my house growing up. It used to get held up all the time. I think I was thinking that what if those people who robbed it weren’t robbing it because they wanted the money but because they hated ice cream. I thought that was poignant and funny.

ML: Physicists have proved that a “god particle” exists. This happened recently. Is this sad or is this beautiful? Do you like science? What was Galileo like in bed, do you think?

ADW: I didn’t bother to google “god particle” because I don’t care. Even if there was a god, I know it wouldn’t give a shit about me.

Galileo was probably a monster in bed, because he was under house arrest forever, so he probably had a bunch of stored up desire or was sexually desperate or something. Other sexually desperate people would walk past his house and the guards outside would point inside and say, “Fuck that guy.”










Andrew Duncan Worthington Hot Dogs!
NAP

'Homes are full of heart. Cities hold millions of homes. People pay rent for the homes dependent on location, desirability, and need. Andrew Duncan Worthington lives in one of those apartments that people tend to look at and wonder “Why do people live in New York?” Rats of varying sizes hang out outside of his apartment. Unlike Andrew Duncan Worthington who has to pay rent and worry about overdrafts, the rats live rent-free. Benefits of being a rat in New York City include strength in numbers, free food, and the power to terrify others. With enough time spent in the city the rats get less terrifying and more annoying.'-- Beach Sloth


Excerpts


harry potter as a sex guide

harry was often brooding throughout the books
he had issues such as mortality and the fate of the universe that were worrying him
but i wonder if his lack of sexual excursion may have also been a large reason
for his brooding

an asshole killed his mother and left a mark on his forehead immediately
thereafter

i read the more romantic sections in “goblet of fire” over and over again
he even had a kind of hot date to the yule ball
but he just broods the whole time about cho chang
and then he kind of kills her boyfriend
or at least he feels responsible for his death

he is always too busy to bother

and the end of the series he kills voldemort
after coming back from the dead

and then it jumps forward 19 years
and he must have had sex because he has kids
and he probably has a nice house
and a yard
and he takes care of it
maybe even with muggle landscaping equipment
and ginny has a garden
and maybe even takes care of it with muggle landscaping equipment
but they might just use magic for all of the yard work



fast asleep and smiling in front of a 7-11 international terrorist massacre

there is bad shit going on, bad shit
and I want you to know
that I know
that there is a possum growing out of my legs
it has little blood shot eyes that are falling out the socket
and they keep swinging up and down and back
and forth because they are what
one could consider slinkies
bought from the dollar store
made of cheap plastic that
your mom would say isn’t allowed on the carpet
so you play outside
and kill plastic kill

open your wide open eyes
outside
there are helicopters the size of fruit flies
and you cant tell the difference
I can but you cant
I can but you cant
lets eat healthy for now but not care
lets do all the socially acceptable things but not care
if we fail in that ambition because we have none



My Body is a Temple

Well it’s just great that I am taking care of myself.
I spent a lot of money and ordered in for a while
and that made me feel shitty or I felt shitty because
I got broke.

I quit smoking because it was bad for my health,
economically.

I also haven’t been snorting or popping.
All that is bad
for my health, economically.

I realized I was using my partner
so I said we were done.

I started wacking again
after having never done that really
too regularly or religiously,
and I feel a bit more at ease,
except that I always want to
wack it.

I dont
drink as much, anymore.
Some days
I dont drink.

I bought an air conditioner because
it gets unbearably hot over the summer.
I am getting on
a more normal sleep schedule,
except for right now at 609 am
as I write this poem
and the sun comes up.

Things really are going great.



Book Release Party in Brooklyn


mike bushnell at 'keep this bag away from children' reading




_______________________




'The biggest hindrance to American art is the inability to see anything outside our own walls. We’re proud of being a “melting pot,” but when it comes to culture not inherently American (Wendy’s, baseball, crime drama, pop music, fences), it’s hard to convince us that we should care. In literature, as opposed to other media, introducing work to a US audience requires translation, an undertaking that brings with it a bag of problems most profit-oriented American publishers won’t approach unless it’s a ready-made bonanza, like the books of Roberto Bolaño. Imagine, then, the continuum of masterworks we’re missing out on from every language we don’t speak.

'In the introduction to Kim Hyesoon’s All The Garbage of the World, Unite!, translator Don Mee Choi recounts a great example of the type of problem translated works often run into. An American literary journal, after showing interest in one of Choi’s Korean-to-English translations of a Kim poem, requested that the word “hole” be replaced with something else, on the grounds that “hole has negative connotations in our culture.” Choi had used the word in reminding her reader that, during the Korean War, 250,000 pounds of napalm were dropped by the American military each day, turning her country into a mass of holes where once there had been houses, mountains, rice fields. She told the magazine she “didn’t have time to think about it.”

'Kim is no stranger to stodgy literary types. At the time she began writing, classical forms in the hands of aristocratic men had long dominated Korean poetry. “I often felt as if my tongue were paralyzed,” Kim has said. “For me the vast open field of the unknown and the prison existed simultaneously.” Over time, poetry in her country has slowly opened up with the rise of free verse, feminism, and activism.

'Reading Kim’s most recent translated work, Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream, one finds a swarming body of imagination and ideas, which, given the book's social context, could hardly be more rebellious. Any traditional mythos of “the woman” has been completely shattered into a body teeming with imagery that mutates from line to line, melding everyday roles such as mother and teacher into phantasmagoric collages of rats wearing black bras, a house with hands buried in chocolate cake, aspirin hatching into more aspirin. The limits of creativity here are so wide that very quickly we find we’ve fallen through the holes old wars blew open, into something like the endless dreams of millions dead.'-- Blake Butler, VICE










Kim Hyesoon Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream
Action Books

Kim Hyesoon is a prominent South Korean poet who has received numerous prestigious literary awards. She teaches creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. Her work translated into English includes three titles from Action Books, SORROWTOOTHPASTE MIRRORCREAM (2014), ALL THE GARBAGE OF THE WORLD, UNITE! (2011) and MOMMY MUST BE A FOUNTAIN OF FEATHERS (2008). "Her poems are not ironic. They are direct, deliberately grotesque, theatrical, unsettling, excessive, visceral and somatic. This is feminist surrealism loaded with shifting, playful linguistics that both defile and defy traditional roles for women."-- Pam Brown


Excerpts


Cloud's Nostalgia

Rabbit's ear entered as the white wall laughed
I pulled that smelly thing
Rabbit-cloud mushroomed-mushroomed

Buttocks-cloud came down from the ceiling
Those buttocks belong to the wrestler at our neighborhood gym

A rope for strangling came down, but it dispersed as soon as it hanged a neck
The walls floated in air and barked
The door to the room opened, where the angels were tortured and had cried
My screams poured out like shit, so I opened an umbrella to receive them

A thousand nipples protruded from my body
Every nipple needed to be milked white milk
My body overflowing with milk was swollen like a jar
The jar smelled of white rabbit

Those plastic things, paper, cloths
I sang about the memories of my attachment to those things in my room

When I sang, all the sweat pores on my body salivated
my black fur got wet

I pulled the mask tightly like a shoestring
and waddled-waddled out like a wrestler

Now it's time to confess, my lover is that cloud
Water falls from its face every time its expression changes hundreds of times a day

Shall I call it The morning nap of someone who has left?
(I almost said A dirty sight, for I'm unable to forget it)
Shall I say It's a flustered rabbit because its hutch has vanished?
Shall I say My melancholy's nostalgia?
or Your facial expressions fall off every second and get buried in the ground?

Green-strawberry-summit-cloud
White-hair-cloud encircles god's neck
Hook-cloud hooks my neck's artery onto a cloud
Lens-cloud opens the lid of my house and peers into it

Over there, the boys from martial arts gym run into the sunset with red-red briefs
over their heads and

I pull threads from the crimson cloud and weave my undergarments and
twist my fat fattened body



The Way Mommy Bear Eats a Swarm of Fire Ants

that my body grows uncontrollably large
that every time a wound appears I cut up a small piece of cloth to cover it
cut up and cover, cover again then
find myself covered with a quilt blanket over my head
my mommy told me never get under a quilt blanket
never learn to quilt
she told me as I patch and patch I'll never get out of poverty
that I'm now walking like a bundled up garbage quilt
that at one point you used to eat me bite me control me
use me but now I've become a quiet
thing like a bundle of garbage
that I smell like a homeless person who has become one with a pull cart
that when kicked lightly by front paws, I'm like a deer, roe deer
that I'm so huge to the point of dying
that there is only me on the freeway scorched by sun
that there are only things that run away when they see me
like the enormous gray bear that sleeps while it walks
like the enormous black lace cloud fluttering above eyelids
like the dump truck leaking dribbles of oil in the middle of a desert
like the house with rotten stairs and six feet of dust collected in the ceiling
that there is no one except me standing all alone
that I'm getting larger and larger
as I'm chased, chased off the road
that I'm filled with all the screams of the world
that there is nothing else but that



Trailer: SORROWTOOTHPASTE MIRRORCREAM by Paul Cunningham


Kim Hyesoon 'ALL THE GARBAGE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!'


Kim Hyesoon 'SHE, JONAH'




*

p.s. Hey. So, to fill you in on the blog's plans for this week, I will be returning to Halle, Germany this evening where I'll be working on the new Gisele Vienne theater piece for a few days. If you remember how things worked during my last trip there a couple of weeks ago, it's basically the same story. You'll get rerun posts combined with the usual, full-fledged p.s.es from tomorrow until Friday, and then new posts will start appearing here again on Saturday. The only possible glitch will be if the internet is fucked up where I'm staying on one of those days, as happened once during my last trip, in which case the p.s. might experience a temporary interruption, but hopefully that won't happen and things will run smoothly and usually this week, I mean apart from you being asked to look at posts that you might or might not have seen before. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G.I guess your LPS-enhanced period is in full swing. I hope the drive there and back wasn't too grueling, and that you guys are having a blast. I can see that about working out being an artistic enterprise, sure. Definitely an interesting/good viewpoint. Yeah, the times I tried to read post-60s Roth, I guess I had the same problem, although I think it only took me a few pages to close and lock the hatch. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, yeah, Falcon's Fury did look scary in a most alluring way. I'm very glad that you're doing super well! Awesome! Do dissertations have blurbs? That's wild, but, well, why not, I guess. Thanks about the wrestling/Barthes and 'in France' posts. Days are short: boy, I hear that. Mine have been shorter than short for quite a while now. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you for the kudos on the Harrington post. That means a lot coming from you. Thanks too for the VK interview link. What a curious fella. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. That's cool: I wondered if you had met or knew Harrington in any fashion. Yes, Drag City putting out his films is very interesting, isn't it? Feather in Drag City's notion of itself. ** Bitter69uk, Hey. Thanks a lot. I remember seeing a few of his horror films back in the day not knowing who made them or even imagining that I should think about who made them but nonetheless thinking how particular and odd they were. For me, discovering where they came from came much later. Anyway, that was a lovely, exciting comment. Thank you kindly. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Whoa, July 8th! That's, like, practically tomorrow in the publishing world's time zone. Congrats! That's great! You'll have to let me do a celebratory post around the pub date about the book, that is if you want. Quite the charismatic promo sentence there. Surreal as hell. Great, Kyler! ** Steevee, I, of course, share your hopes for St. Marks Bookshop's continuance. Last I checked, their moving-related fundraiser still had quite a ways to go to reach their goal. Obviously, high hopes for the best result for your CT scan today. Let me know. ** Zach, Hi. Exactly, those missing studs in the coaster. That really did a little haunting number on me too. Ouch, wow, about that Batman coaster beheading thing. I think I remember reading about it. It's one of those true life incidents that you can't not end up imagining obsessively. Cool that Kathy's books are keeping their word to you so far. ** White tiger, Hey! Oh, my bad, I thought for some unknown reason that you were already down there. I guess you were there for the audition, or maybe you weren't even there for that. Weird head on my shoulders. No, this might sound strange, but I didn't end up being able to finish the Antarctica slideshow post because I just couldn't find a way to do it and do Antarctica justice. Just couldn't represent it accurately or fairly enough. It's that kind of place. Even trying to tell people what it was like leaves me spouting vague superlatives. Thanks, I am good, just so crazed. So much to do, too many things to do at once, but it's all good. Love, me. ** Paul Curran, Thanks a bunch, Paul. Your book creeping out of purgatory is great news and a stylish way to think about it. May it be a speedy creep, the creepiest kind of creeping. Glad your weekend was a goodie. Right, the chewy blossoms, sigh. It's cold here too, strangely. What's the regular job? Something you're okay or more with? ** Kier, Hi, Kier! 'Who Slew ...' almost lives up to its title, if I'm remembering correctly. I loved it: the drawing! It's on my desktop, and I keep blowing it up full-frame randomly and obsessively. That's so weird, or not, because the moment I saw it, I wanted it on a t-shirt. I even started thinking about how I could have it put on a t-shirt. A white t-shirt, exactly! You should do it, or I should do it, or everyone should do it! ** MANCY, Hi, S. Okay, cool: you're good with it. Makes sense: all your thinking about it, yeah. And you reclusing and working on stuff is music to my ears. Yeah, great, man! ** Schoolboyerrors, Thank you, D! I don't think I ever met Mr. Harrington, or, if I did, it would have been peripherally, and I didn't really know who he was at the time maybe. What a great article pitch! Seems like that single sentence you wrote would be enough to snag an editor. I really like those three writers you mentioned too, quite a lot, and there are a bunch of others in that 'alt poetry' realm whom I'm really into too. People gripe about the 'quick shit' aspect of that writing, but I find it exhilarating mostly, and it reminds me in a way of the earlier work by the second generation NY School poets, who were huge for me when I was figuring out how to write. Yeah, I did an interview recently that's going to be in the first issue of Lazy Fascist's new zine where I talked a bit about how strange it is that there are some really good, UK-based 'alt lit and/or poetry' writers but no seeming support for them in the UK, although Dazed & Confused has begun supporting 'alt lit', and letting UK-based guys like Crispin Best write for them. Anyway, I'm way into your idea of you giving those writers literary clout over there. I don't know E.R.O.S., no, but, based on my quick jump through your link, it looks fascinating, and I'll pore over them/it. I don't know Limb either, but that lacking will be solved today. Thanks, man. I have a feeling that they might not be your thing, or might be too elaborate or something for your current interest, but I've been really into the new Pyrrhon album of late. I love when Stephen gigs on his own too. He is so fucking good. Ah, the incorrigible Mr. Hudson! I haven't seen him too many ages. My weekend was good, very busy, with some projects-related good news and setbacks and blah blah. But, yeah, it was a more than decent and progressive couple of days, thank you, buddy! ** Bill, Hi, B. Yeah, 'Night Tide' has a strange goodness about it, yeah. So, you're a 'fresh face' kind of guy, are you? Can't argue with that priority. ** Rigby, Hi, Rigs, and thank you kindly! Kittens are annoying, ha ha. You generalizing bastard. I can almost see that. ** Sypha, Your list was very interesting, of course. I think I might do an update on my favorite albums list, inspired by yours. Probably not alphabetical, though. Having ABBA at the top of it might be too off-putting. Wow, I so don't think 'DSotM' is Pink Floyd's most important work. Best selling, most familiar, period. At best I think it's the jewel in the crown of their least important and worst work. I think I was way too old when 'The Wall' came out to get whatever its allure may be. I hope all goes very well with your GI doctor. ** Rewritedept, Being the weird bi punker kid at family gatherings sounds like nothing but a good time, but that's easy for me to say, obviously. I always liked being the weirdo in my family. As I told SBS, my weekend was productive, busy, up and down, and ultimately very good.  Your blog goodness is highly anticipated and most welcome. Oh, I tried out Future Islands. I didn't like them much at all. Self-consciously clever retro blah. Bon Monday! ** Slatted light, Hi, Davideroony. Your name is very hard to play with affectionately. Which is to its credit. 'Certain things': huh?! I don't know, man. The cut of that guy's therapeutic job is most suspect maybe. No, I haven't talked to Jesse or written to/from him for a few months. He seemed to be pretty determinedly post-Facebook when we last spoke, but you never know. But, no, I haven't heard from or of him since then, and I sure hope he's okay too. I'll try writing to him today. Ha ha, your reaction to the amusement park post is the ideal reaction that I was hoping against hope for from everyone. I can 'die' now. Or I mean it can 'die' now. Thanks so much about the ballet/haunted house connection thing, yeah. That's in our heads. Also ... too long to explain, but one of the main characters was a very promising ballet dancer until he hit puberty and his body was physically changed by that in a way that destroyed his dancing, causing him to be expelled from his high end, ultra-respected French ballet school, and there's something key and important in the film about physical growth, the attainment of new sensations at the expense of the physical form's external organization/pleasure, and related things too complicated to get into here. I'll read that Elizabeth Robinson essay, thank you! The excerpt is really gorgeous! Wow, I mean really gorgeous! Thank you so kindly, D. Have the finest day you possibly can. I will too. Love, me. ** Right. Those are some books I read and loved of late, all poetry for some strange or not strange reason. I recommend them all, duh. I will see you with a rerun post in tow tomorrow.

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*

p.s. Hey. Greetings from Halle, Germany where nothing of note will happen until a couple of hours from now, but where everything is fine. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Great, I highly recommend Jerome Sala's book. He's a great favorite of mine. To the point where there's a sequence of poems written as a kind of homage to his poetry in 'The Weaklings (XL)', as maybe you've seen. Thesis blurb, sure. That would be a first for me, cool. The traveling right now is super work-oriented, but it's nice, I mean maybe not as an Antarctica, but ... Mm, you know, there might a weird kind of Heiner Muller thing in the theater piece I'm working on, now that you mention it. Thank you so much for talking so clearly and deeply and enlighteningly about Kim Hyesoon. That's fascinating. I knew nothing about her until I read that new book that I spotlit yesterday. Thank you so much! ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, D. Oh, huh, wow, that's interesting and kind of you to say re: the possible connection to 3rd generation NY School. I guess what I see as the 2nd generation vibe in the 'alt lit' poetry is the 'tossed off' quality, a quickness, a lean towards brevity, a faux-scribbled thing in many cases combined with some rapid fire tone and playfulness trickery that makes me think of the young Padgett, Berrigan, Brainard, etc. I feel like once the NY School got to the next and last generation, there was a heavy Ashbery influence in most of my peers, and in me too, that created a kind of, I don't know, solidity to the forms we employed or something, although Eileen makes sense, as she works outside that and very uniquely, and of course Tim Dlugos, although, again, there's a kind of connection in his work to the largesse of the 1st generation or like a historical knowingness or something. Man, I have had way too inadequate amount of coffee to try to think like this. I guess you're in the wilds right now. What are Irish wilds like? If they were in a police line-up of wilds, how would I pick them out? Have fun! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Cool, I'll go check out that Kramer book. Thank you! ** Bill, Hi. The Lucas de Lima is really terrific. Oh, wow, yes, Berlin is pretty close to Halle, I think. To the point where people commute back and forth to work. I'm here from now until Saturday morning. Today through Thursday is pretty work-heavy: rehearsing from noon to 8 pm. Friday is a fairly free day with a big opening of an art show in which Gisele has work in the early evening. I guess that day would be the best one. If you want to come, that would be awesome! Let me know, if so, and we can make a plan. ** Kier, Hi, K! Cool, cool, cool! Malthus. Nice name. I got a weird vibe just from the word. Good weird. I'll go see if I can find anything online to fill me in about this hoarse earl. Rock your day, my pal. ** Hyrule Dungeon, Whoa, hi, Jose! It's so great to see you! I've missed you! Fantastic that you finished the book! And your attitude towards it, writing, publishing, etc. is so fucking good and strong and sane. I think the 'alt lit' world is as open a hand as there is in publishing. Its boundaries relative to pre-existing notions of genre are completely vague in such an exciting way, so, yeah. Very exciting about the journal happening! I mean, you can imagine how up one of my alleys that sounds. Man, you're on fire, it's so awesome. Of course, a call for submissions here when the time is right would be beyond welcome. You can even put together a 'call for submissions' guest-post, if you want. No, I don't know that album. Cool, I'll use your link and get a listen tonight when I get back from the theater. And your website too! Killer, man! So great to see you! ** Zach, Hi, Z. Yeah, that exuberance is weird. It's, like, off-putting in some way that's kind of an exciting challenge to stomach or something. Or the exuberance/content combo is. I don't know. I was surprised that I liked negotiating it. I'm going to find out how wonderful this little corner of Germany is today. We'll see. Biking! So nice! ** Torn porter, Hey! Man, it was so great to hang out with you guys! It was really fun, and, for sure, let's do that again asap. That would be great. I like Normandie. It's kind of lonely or something. I'll be back in Paris at the weekend. Let's figure something out. ** Kyler, Hi. Cool, say the word and send me the stuff re: the book post when the time comes, or, rather, a little before the time comes. So heartwarming, etc. to hear you sound so exuberant! ** Steevee, Ugh about your, yeah, not so good at all sounding day. I hope the night's sleep broke the spell. ** Cap'm, Hi, cap'm! You knew Jerome's stuff back in the Chicago days! He was so wild back then, so wild in fact that he almost died from the physical effects. But he has been sober as a bone for years, and he's doing and writing better than ever, yeah. He and Elaine are in NYC, and kicking ass everywhere. It's true that there's a clearness to your comments now, a difference for sure. That's interesting. I've been a big fan of Cap'm in all of your manifestations. Now we're in the same boat, i.e. I almost never drink, and I haven't done drugs for forever, relatively speaking, so that's cool. Congrats, man. Are you into clarity? I'm kind of really into clarity, by which I mean a substance-free state where 'real' things become the highs or something. I'm so glad things are ok. Ok kind of rules or is the truth or something. Ha ha, coffee is my big vice now, and I'm not nearly caffeined-up enough this morning. Man, it's always great when you're here, truly. Thank you for giving this place the chance. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Yeah, HTMLG is in a different place now, yeah. I still hang out there silently almost every day, but it's a different kind of visiting and studying. Your focusing on fiction gets a big thumbs from yours truly, needless to say. Only a few hours left to go? Whoa! That's cool! I envy you. Interesting about third person. I mean, it's interesting what becomes substantial when you understand what you do and want to do as a writer. I used to be into 3rd person when I wrote the George Miles Cycle and had that as the overall grid, but, ever since then, I'm much more drawn to expanding and tightening and tripping off and on the 1st person. Don't know why. I'm really good, very busy. Traveling to work on theater stuff at the moment. Great to hear from you, pal. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, wow, ugh indeed, in theory, I mean even from way over here. But if it does the trick, it'll just be a flash nightmare, I guess. Yeah, long books, I can't even imagine. ** Rigby, Weird, I feel like you're the one spoiling me, but I guess that, 'no, you, no, you' thing is the magic ingredient or something. What the hell did that mean? Wow, wait, you talked to Adam Ant on the phone? Shit. That's really fucking cool. He was the shit for a while there. And that shirt sounds ace. ** Rewritedept, Being stoned around one's parents, scary. One time when I was a teen I accidentally ran into my mom when I was flying on acid, and I ended up thinking it was trippy to talk to her because I always avoided doing that, so we did, and, until the day she died, she always said, 'Oh, remember that time we had that great talk', meaning when I was on acid, and I never had the heart to tell her that the reason the talk seemed so great was because I was tripping balls. My day probably won't kick ass, but I hope yours does. ** Okay. Here's a rerun for you. Hope you like it or still like it or something like that. See you tomorrow.

* Thanks to the great kindness and generosity of Hedi El Kholti and the writer/translator Bruce Benderson, the blog presents new excerpts from the forthcoming American editions of the Tony Duvert novels Diary of an Innocent (Semiotexte, 2009) and L'Isle Atlantique. Find them below * (Note: Since this post was originally published, DoaI has been released.)

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Obituary: Tony Duvert, Le Monde, August 23, 2008
Jean-Noël Pancrazi, Translated by David Thorstad
from the Semiotexte website

The writer Tony Duvert, 63, was discovered dead on Wednesday, August 20, at home, in the small village of Thoré-la-Rochelle (Loir-et-Cher). He had been dead for about a month. An investigation has been opened, but it is probably a question of death from natural causes. Tony Duvert had not published any books since 1989. He had been almost forgotten, and yet, he left a mark on his epoch—the 1970s—by the extreme freedom that he demonstrated in both his writings and his life, by his unique tone of coarseness and grace, by the rhythm of his sentence, often lacking in punctuation, carried along by only the movement of desire, capable, as it was then imagined, of changing the world.

Born in 1945, Tony Duvert was an outlaw, he felt himself an ex-convict banned from certain areas—the title of one of his first books, published in 1969 by Minuit, which would always remain his publisher. But the music, at once rough and refined, of his prose lent all the nocturnal strolls and excursions of a man who loved men the look of a funereal odyssey, of an almost mythical promenade by the sheer strangeness and solitude of the darkest city neighborhoods.

In Le Voyageur [The Traveler] (1970), with a feeling of free fall and absence of himself, Tony Duvert lets old images encircle him. In the countryside drowned by winter and rain, the ghosts of Karim (killed by his mother), Daniel (the adolescent the narrator teaches to write), André, Pierre, and Patrick, unprovided for, lost, search in the fog for a gentleness and a justice that the world denies them.

It is perhaps in order to welcome them that Tony Duvert composes this Paysage de fantaisie, awarded the Prix Médicis in 1973 (published by Grove Press in 1975 as Strange Landscape). In a passing orphanage-house, the boarders can abandon themselves to all the whims of the moment, without ever any taboo, look, or reproach. In this book there is a kind of amoral jubilation and ferocious joy. And, in the jostling of grammar, gestures, and scenes, in the transport of the unique sentence, a defiance of all literary and ethical conventions. In his almost childlike joy, this is how Duvert forgot that he was an adult, perhaps even that he was a writer.

But it is in Journal d’un innocent [Journal of an Innocent, translation by Bruce Benderson Forthcoming by Semiotext(e) in 2009] (1976) that this pagan innocence is expressed most clearly. In a universe without either fault or suffering, somewhere in the South, couplings follow one another with a total, absolute naturalness. There is only skin and sun, the simple worship of desire: and one could say that Tony Duvert breaks free from the very need for eroticism, from the obligations of pornography—this pornography that he has been so readily accused of in order to mask it with a cloud of sulphur and make one forget that he was a great writer about the happiness of the flesh. Two works—Le Bon Sexe illustré [Good Sex Illustrated] (1974) and L’Enfant au masculin [The Child in the Masculine] (1980)—will attempt to give a more thought-out form to his vision of the world and of love.

Tony Duvert had a genuine fervor: for nature, at the heart especially of Quand mourut Jonathan [When Jonathan Died] (1978), which recalls the love of a man and a child. This relationship takes on the appearance and the rhythm of a biological association, as if, by dint of understanding and harmony, they both became plants mutually emitting harmful poisons to each other to the point where they are destroyed and separated by society. This society that Tony Duvert seems to rejoin in order better to denigrate it, in L’Île Atlantique [The Atlantic Island] (1979), his most classical, almost naturalist, novel. It is a kind of comedy à la Marcel Aymé that Gérard Mordillat will adapt for television in 2005. Afterwards, Tony Duvert will not write any more novels. Un anneau d’argent à l’oreille [A Silver Ring in the Ear] (1982) is only a distant reflection, the echo of a farewell to this literary form.

In 1989, he will still publish an Abécédaire malveillant [A Spiteful Primer], a series of aphorisms that express all the things he detests—priests, philosophers, parents. But one felt that he had lost the joy of provocation. As if he had understood that the times would be increasingly hostile to him, that he could no longer open up landscapes of fantasy with his sentence alone, with his almost barbarous music. He isolated himself in this small Loir-et-Clair village, very alone, unprovided for, not even searching for the aid of words and sometimes hearing in the distance only the laughing of his pagan angels.



Florent Georgesco on Tony Duvert
translated by Hedi

The articles on him I read earlier were tainted with a retrospective illusion: the importance that was given to Duvert's books is a witness to a transitory state of the sexual liberation, that allowed for such an aberration (complacency is implied); we are astonished to see that these stories of little boys generated a Medicis prize and rave reviews in Le Monde (blindness is implied). Today we would be more mature, capable of distinguishing the good from the bad (salvation, progress is implied). But this is forgetting that Duvert has upset people since his first book, he has always been the target of the sexual virtuous, he has been cursed and rejected. He could publish then "Good Sex Illustrated," hilarious parody of sexual manuals, or Gabriel Matzness "Under 16," or even Guy Hocquenghem, René Scherer and other free spirits, which amount to say deviant, but neither of them would have been called as such and persecuted.

What happened since, I think, is something else. The sexual conventions remained essentially the same: rigid border and constant surveillance. But things tightened somehow, to the effect that an escape, even imaginary, is no longer possible. No other voices can be heard, and literature must align itself, like everything else to the norm of everyday life. Tony Duvert wasn't the prophet of a some revolution that would make tolerable what is deemed monstrous, he wasn't announcing a time of universal love, he was writing books, a territory where, if they radiates, everything is made possible, in a different plane, outside of surveillance, where all is beauty.





Two World Premiere Excerpts

fromDIARY OF AN INNOCENT
by Tony Duvert
translated by Bruce Benderson

----I wanted to talk about birds, but the time for that has passed. In spring there were storks; they were gray and scrawny, like the dead branches of the nests they built on the embankments, far away to the south. Later, they stretched pitiful wings, fanned them disjointedly and soared off.
----In this city it was the time for fasting, and I began writing. Call it winter in this world without seasons; my friends desert me; living is more of a burden. Sunny days go by without celebration. Then, at twilight, life can begin again. People are already seated for eating at the cheap open-air cafŽs and getting their bowls of chickpea soup. It's a spicy liquid purŽe, mixed with lentils and rather acidic tomatoes, in which swim beans and vermicelli; it's good, with an odor of roasted grain, starchy and hearty, and it burns. I'm in a house that intimidates me. A widow and her daughter are seated to my left, almost on the ground, on a straw-and-dried-flower mattress. I'm on the edge of an iron box springs, which another straw mattress has converted into a couch; the two women are leaning back against the edge of a similar bed; the older brothers complete the circle on stools. In the middle is a low table. The mother has placed the soup pot next to her, in a corner of the wall. She's sitting cross-legged with her dress and apron hiked up to her knees, and she has large tits, a flat, square face, creamy white skin, and a narrow mouth and eyes; she's slurping soup from a small wooden ladle as, briefly, she keeps glancing at me with touches of suspicion, scorn and friendliness. I feel like one of those stiff old dogs that the women pet because it belongs to a crony. I'm having sex with one of her older sons, and maybe she's aware of it; the forced smiles that form creases and dimples in her chubby face make her hard little eyes seem colder.
----For my admiration, she presents the two little boys in the family, sitting on some rag cushions below a bare wall. They're wearing worn athletic suits, still spotless and not torn, which also serve as pajamas; they aren't eating, just staring at us silently. I hardly know them. The seven-year-old has a doll's smile, you'd say he was pretty, he's the youngest; he has curly hair, a long face with a heavy jaw, eyes like a girl, a glimmer of wickedness in his cheeks and on his lips; often he grabs me by the shoulders and kisses me, in search of flattery; I push him away.
----I like the other one, who has a round face and short hair, a flat or wrinkled nose. His gaze is steady, serious, sometimes a little absent; he acts cursory, out of politeness; he doesn't speak, and he touched me only one time, to bite my hand while we were taking his picture. He's nine or ten. Between two gulps of soup, the woman of the house asks me which I prefer. I choose the little surly one. They're surprised, make a joke of it, insist he's not good-looking, ask me again and I answer the same. There's a moment of shock, and under the laughter, a rancor I don't understand. We start again, I've got to redeem myself; visitors have always adored the youngest and been turned off by the other, of this the mother insists.
----Afterward, it's made clear to me why my answer provoked such a bad reaction. When the father was alive, he preferred the boy whom I like, and in disregard of the five others, considered him the best son. This brought no benefit to the kid, nor did it appeal to his vanity. Then the father died, his spouse became boss, and the serious little fellow, once preferred, was cast aside, while the youngest son got planted in position number one, and the eldest, a hardworking brute, took the place of the old man. The tale is as unsubtle as a children's story. The night they question me, I'm supposed to incarnate the father himself, back from a long war or trip to put right the injustices of a cruel mother. It was in the time of kings and fairies, the time of simple ordeals; the little boy's tragedy is as clear as the big typeface in vacation books for children.
----I don't give in. The mother consoles her little cipher, and I wonder which of the two are looking the more angrily at me. It's the little one who scares me, he's going to choke: his brows are knit, his skin yellow with bile, his cheeks swollen, his mouth trembling, his nostrils pinched, pulling his nose into an eagle's beak, and he's picking fiercely at little black boogers and forgetting to respond to the flustered fondling of the old woman, who's beginning to look whiny.
----The boy I've chosen is studying me, and his face is lit up with surprise, as if I'd just kept him from being struck. He remains sitting on the ground with thighs spread, knee to chin; he's bare-foot; scratching between his toes with one finger, shifting gently from one buttock to the other and sending me playful little winks, mixed with laughter that opens up his face. They let him have his day. Then he falls back into his usual reserve, and his eyes get their faraway look. The men have begun to talk about other things; but now and then, on his own he still breaks into the surprised smiles of someone having a good dream.
----It would be better to think of a name for certain boys. I'll take them from a novel by Quevedo, I have hardly any books here and that will do. I just need to follow the order of the first chapter: I come to Francesco, the given name of the author, then Pablos, Pedro, Diego, Andr s, and a few others. Let's call Francesco the teenager who brought me to his family and Pablos the little brother I preferred.
----I don't know if these first names are a good match; some people think they are, others don't. But choosing ones that are accurate or attractive isn't important; it's enough for chance to decide, the way it decides in the case of real births, according to people, languages, matings, one here, the other there, for no real reason. Besides, Francesco, who's probably about seventeen, has created a legend about how he came into the world. Around that time, his father was serving a three-year prison sentence for concealing weapons, although he wasn't aware that he was. His family put up with sneers, suspicion and hunger. Therefore, when the father got out of prison, there was a renaissance; they ate every night, sang, cried from pleasure at being reunited with friends, women, neighbors, rich parents, it was a celebration; and Francesco was born two days later.
----At first I reacted the way I was expected to, the story had been well told, he'd used his most astute speaking voice, complete with innocent looks and some very nice miming. Really a lovely story, with dad as God and Francesco's nativity.
----"But since your father was in prison, how did he make you?"
----"What do you mean, make me?"
----Then he understood and blushed a bit, his face changed, his voice fell. I felt ashamed. He said, "Uh, I dunno. That's how they told it to me. I was too little!"
----We're at the table at my place. He's picking at some raw vegetables that he's prepared, tomatoes with salt, green peppers, olives, radishes split crosswise and salted as well, a bit bland, tasting like cold water. He holds back, looks shamefaced and vaguely hostile: I've deprived him of his family legend, all he's got left is an orphan's face.
----The book by Quevedo that I walk around with is The Life of the Adventurer Don Pablos de Segovia, Model Tramp and Image of the Swindler. I like this novel a lot, despite the fact that I haven't read it. The child that I dubbed Pablos isn't a swindler, not even a rascal. But he seemed to have a great appetite for living when we talked. A quiet, determined student, he didn't brag about school; laughing delightedly, he finds me an assignment for which he got an A in a notebook filled with praise and good grades. He gets up at five in the morning to look at his notebooks and books; faint sunlight silently streams onto the patio of the house; he studies in a low voice; nothing distracts him. He doesn't say anything about this work, but in the evening, before nine, he gets dazed, lies down wherever he happens to be, withdraws and falls asleep. He doesn't get a lot of it.
----He's unaware of the first time I saw him because he was already asleep, in the most deeply recessed of the beds, which form a tower of flowered bleachers in the room I come back to. They put me next to him. His head is on the other side, which I can't see because it's facing down; and right next to me are the bottoms of his smooth, dainty feet, on which his curled toes form two pinkish rosary beads. Then they lift him up to put him to bed somewhere else. He doesn't wake up. Now I can see the somewhat coarse sweetness of his handsome, impenetrable face; four pale, sturdy, naked limbs that dangle limply; and in the gape of his briefs, his little boy's cock, impish in a glint of light that tongues it furtively as he's carried off. This plump sex, exposed in its shell of creased fabric, seems like a fleshy face, happily laughing for no reason, the kind you'd discover by parting the edges of bedclothes inside a crib. Pablos's other face: less innocent than his sleeping immodesty would make you think; but more na•ve than I'm hoping when, gripping his dick and balls through his underpants to demonstrate what he's saying, he calls them my loaf of bread and grapes.
----This imagery has an origin. On a photo that was just taken, Pablos was wearing an old pair of wrinkled cotton trousers that were too short for him, to go play in the dirt alley where his family lives; the fly and the entire front, tight along his stomach and struck by the slanting sun, were full of weird bulges, knots, worn, raised areas, one of which looked kind of obscene, long and stiff like the member of a faun. We had a good time with it; and when the kid saw the photo, he as well laughed, but explained that it was only because there was some bread in his pocket that day. And the word slipped from this conspicuous crust to the invisible thing it had suggested.
----As for the grapes, on my table I have some chocolate with raisins, Pablos eats some of it, and as he was retelling the bread joke, he found a better way to describe himself: with the word grape on his lips, his eyes and his finger on the gilded bunch decorating the wrapper, his other hand tugged between his legs at his two balls to be sure of the resemblance.
----Long months passed between the evening of the chickpea soup and that pleasant afternoon of the loaf of bread; then a lot of gloomy days that I don't see any end to. A little twelve-year-old boy, Pedro, who would come by a year ago, used a piece of fruit another way. During his first visit, he stays by himself for a while, sitting stiffly on his chair, or rather, slumped on it, his shoulders slack, the back of his head sunk into his neck and his chin high, his eyes sluggish, white and vacant the way they are during a medical exam. I'm talking to his brother in the next room, because I haven't understood if they're going to have sex together or one by one. This older brother, Diego, who's sixteen, is small and looks somewhat childlike, but he has a big cock and doesn't take kindly to little brats. When we come back, I've decided to wait until later to go to bed with Pedro: even so, before he leaves today I'd like to kiss him, touch him. Standing behind his chair, I slip a hand into his clothing, without opening it, until I've reached between his legs. I immediately regret having preferred his brother, whom I knew.
----But under Pedro's clammy, lightweight "scrotumette" is a large, hard and somewhat cold ball. Taken aback, as if I'd discovered some disgusting infirmity, I palpate it. And I understand what it is: an apple. The boy had grabbed it and hidden it while he was alone. His older brother, who sometimes flaunts his principles to me, wouldn't mess around with such stealing. So I keep quiet, and in the mirror opposite us, I search for the child's eyes: his look meets mine, he suppresses a smile, then gives into it as he avoids my glance. Now he's blushing; a wave of pride, even a certain preening, floods his face. I kept my hand where it was. Standing next to us, Diego probably thinks his little brother is getting hard and that I like his dick.
----Apples are expensive in spring, and so are bananas. I keep these fruits for guests, who eat a lot of them and often arrange them into red-and-green cocks and balls, ready to crunch into. Not many boys like boys; but they like to be a boy, to show it, to be it together.



L'Isle Atlantique
An excerpt from Chapter 1
by Tony Duvert
Translated by Bruce Benderson


Raymonde Seignelet carried in the pasta and, with the monotonous yap that she used for a voice, harangued, "This is real spaghetti! Italian style! Real sauce! Not from a can!"
----"Just take a look at that meat inside!" she added. She put down the plate and glared defiantly at the spaghetti, as if telling it to shut up.
----A slow lolling of cautious necks and a slight stirring of circumspect shoulders came from the four boys in front of the dish, which was forecasting storm. Subservience, anxiety loomed, as well as a faint hunger for rancid fat.
----Madame Seignelet sat down brusquely, belying her oozing shape.
----Robert Seignelet, the ponderous assistant manager at the electricity company, sized up the pasta drowning in lumpy brown sauce. He tipped a quivering nose, like an overwhelmed gourmet, and let out an imperious grumble of approval.
----The children took a breath too soon: Madame Seignelet wasn't in a mood to be satisfied by such a brief tribute.
----"It's not like that grunge you buy in a store," she added bitterly.
----She went on to explain its merits. Jean-Baptiste Seignelet, eleven, shot a mocking look toward his brother Dominique, thirteen, and mimed a biologist startled by examining the blackened meatballs in a bog of sauce. He was good-looking and had a cheerful personality. He got hold of himself before his mother noticed his routine.
----Monsieur Seignelet, who had no opinion about factory-made sauces, took a helping while emphasizing his masquerade as eminent gourmet and head of the family. Actually, he was an alcoholic who ate little, didn't get hungry and didn't want any. His swollen belly, bulging chest, heavy neck gave him the presence that concealed his wasted limbs. What is more, he slapped his children like a homicidal butcher. He did it with theatricality and in cold blood.
----The boys' plates were filled to overflowing: they had to grow. Raymonde Seignelet crammed rancid fat into them and forbid them to react, in other words, forbid them not to eat all of it.
----"Mmm, mmm," emoted Monsieur Seignelet, swallowing a fat roll of spaghetti that, with a circular motion of his elbow and with verbal precepts and touristic maxims, he'd grandiloquently formed around his fork. He made his progeny do the same.
----Once his palate was disencumbered again, he performed, his conjugal duty.
----"Mmm, mmm," he affirmed. "They're so much better than they are in Italy. But that makes perfect sense: perfect sense. Since the cook happens to be a French cordon-bleu. She's French! Meaning: the best in the world!.. Mmm."
----Those at the table mulled over the notion. Robert Seignelet ate another meatball, which emptied his plate. He uncorked his second liter of wine and said, "Darling, it's... mmm... It's, I'd say, it's... staggering!.. It's staggering! Darling, your sauce is staggering!"
----The children looked at each other anxiously. Staggering reminded them of a medical problem they'd seen in cartoons: and despite the moistness and hugeness of the lower lip their father had used to illustrate the term, they sensed danger in it, a blunder. Without daring to look at Madame Seignelet, they were waiting for her reaction.
----Moreover she was eating. And custom dictated that you divert your eyes, simulate indifference: because Raymonde Seignelet was a disgusting glutton. She wasn't even aware of it. She liked to think of herself as having manners of a certain kind, a petit-bourgeois education: you would have thought she'd be neat and quiet at the table. But food made short work of all that.
----Madame Seignelet took her spaghetti without the folderol of a fork. She would inhale seven or eight strands of it, like a brat with a cold swallowing down parallel strands of snot. The pasta followed a single curve from her plate to her stomach, but was sucked, lapped, sundered on the way.
----When she heard the word staggering over oral percussion, Raymonde Seignelet merely rolled her eyes to the ceiling and then briefly threw a black look at the bottles and her husband. She checked to see if her sons were eating neatly. With her eyes she gunned down the youngest, Philippe, a seven-year-old who was a bit frail and was dawdling, and then went back to her praying-mantis gobbling.
----Finally, satisfied enough, she put on a nitpicking, fussy, falsely disgusted expression and, pulling that imitation of a rat's snout that was part of her motherly routine, she squealed, "No! No! Don't tell me! It's not like Buitoni! Pff! Humph! No! No! Don't think it's really mine!"
----She sniggered pityingly. Immediately, the table sniggered pityingly, but unconvincingly.
----Hurt, Raymonde Seignelet insisted.
----"No! No! Not real!" she squealed.
----She lapped up some more, tilting her right ear toward her plate as if listening to the noodles agreeing and groveling. When she'd brought them to her mouth, she opened wide, showed her teeth, stuck out her tongue. She had the eyes of a blind person, and she snatched at it brutally, with the grin of a puking dog and the noise of a sluice gate. Then she reformed her snout:
----"And worse yet that there isn't even any meat, mine! In my sauce!... No Buitoni! Roast meat yet! With their stewed junk! As if I'd roasted it myself !.. No! No meat!" She squealed again, as she sucked. "Nothing at all. Humph! Pfff! Pff! Mine!"
She pointed to the meatballs with her chin and sniggered pityingly. The table sniggered pityingly. Bertrand, the eldest, fifteen, a fat-assed oaf with a fat neck, fat chin and square jaw, square cheeks covered with yellow-tipped pimples, protested, with a malicious smile and hoarse voice, "It's good, Mom! Your sauce is great! Oh, no!"
----With a convinced slap of his palm, he pushed up his round, gold-framed glasses on his boxer's nose, covered with oozing black dots. He wore a mask of reflection, in imitation of his father. He struck his plate, which stirred the overcooked noodles in their vaguely tomato-flavored pond of flour-scorched in oil. He sopped it up using four fingers and a big shovel of bread. He smiled, chewed. He liked keeping relations with his superiors easygoing.
----There was a satisfied silence, a swallow, they were in tune.
----Then a high-pitched voice murmured, "I've got a stomach ache."
----It was Philippe. He'd been a late birth, was small in size, and his presence there was continually surprising.
----Everyone gave a start. Philippe, who really was ill, didn't notice the sensation he'd caused. He wanted permission to go and be sick and didn't dare ask. He was afraid: you don't throw up what you get from Mom. He really would have kept it in, but his stomach was refusing to obey. He was what housewives call a delicate kid, a difficult child, a pain, a cross to bear.
----Madame Seignelet considered having an outburst, hesitated, her eyes screwed up, stopped short between two attitudes.
With a voice that was dangerously low and slow, she said, "But no, Philippe, you're not sick. I know you. Did you make ca-ca at school?"
----"Yes," the child murmured.
----He was turning white.
----"And since then, here, I haven't seen you make ca-ca, right?"
----"Right," admitted Philippe.
----He frowned pleadingly, he was going to throw up at the table. Underneath it was a showy Oriental rug in peacock blue, covered with flowers.
----Madame Seignelet realized her son wasn't going to hold it in. She seemed to be thinking about it. She became unctuous, trying to find a contralto register: "Alright, go now. Hurry up. Enough already. You want me to take you?"
"No," whispered the little boy, rising. He fled.
----He could be heard letting fly an enormous volley of thick muck into the toilet water. They envied Philippe a little. They held back their saliva. They were sickened: obviously little guys were just hollow tubes.
----They kept silent. Madame Seignelet shrugged her shoulders and went back to her inane, yapping tone.
----"He never goes to the toilet! He's always playing! He doesn't even take the time to do it! And not at school, either. He's lying! His teacher told me! Why doesn't he stop fibbing! How could two or three noodles make him sick! He didn't even finish his plate!.. Take a look at that, what a bother!.. And you," she went on, "you're not gong to leave me with that, are you?"
She grabbed the platter on which her rancid gobs were turning cold. The children held out their plates once again.
----"Really staggering, my dear," repeated Monsieur Seignelet in a tired voice, as if he'd upchucked another little compliment with difficulty. He served himself some wine. His movements were becoming muddled. There were a few drops on the tablecloth. He was getting comatose.
----Philippe flushed the toilet and returned to the dining room. Madame Seignelet received him sternly and decided to put him to bed right away since he was sick.
----Infuriated, she waited for him to have a little water. Philippe was his mother's nightmare. His sensitive digestive system rejected and discredited both shrews' and cafeterias' cooking. His scrawniness was enough to bring shame to people who carried themselves well, who knew how to look, who were respected moms. When consulted, Doctor Jurieu had prescribed fresh, light, choice foods: what the child would take, and no more than he would take of it. Madame Seignelet felt accused of not knowing how to nourish. She rebelled. She slapped Philippe at the slightest pretext, to teach him to have a normal stomach. She kept feeding him as she had before, while threatening him with laxatives, enemas, paraffin, and worse reprisals. The little boy would obey, swallow, turn pale, throw it all up, get punished.
----"Your brothers never pulled such stunts! Never!"
----Raymonde Seignelet gnashed her teeth as she put the sick boy to bed. She'd had it. It was torture having this child at the table every evening. A real farce. Now it would have to change. If he dared do it again, he'd be thinking about his smarting ass. And he'd make ca-ca in front of her, like a tiny child, since that was the only way. Or had he eaten something on the sly, bought some candy? Junk food, of course. And with what money? Was he becoming a thief, too? He swore he hadn't stolen anything? She'd find out for sure by checking his wallet.
----She tucked in Philippe the way you fasten a straightjacket, and left. The child lay alone in the dark. He was freezing from having thrown up, his teeth were chattering. He loosened the covers a little bit by jerks of his shoulder and huddled beneath the sheets up to his ears.
----On evenings that Jean-Baptiste Seignelet secretly left the house, there was nothing holding him back. He wasn't anxious by nature and liked fun, tricks, cheating. He shared a room with the eldest boy, Bertrand, who was a hard-working high school student. Bertrand would go to bed at ten-thirty, read or chat for a few minutes and lights out. The only light that remained was a small one beside Jean-Baptiste's bed, which he would turn off himself shortly after. Bertrand would masturbate with the sheets pulled up to his neck, wriggling as if he were changing his briefs under a bath towel at the beach. He'd be out for the count a moment later, having wiped his penis with a special handkerchief that was stiff, crackled, stuck together, yellow and greenish, and which he would hide. Sometimes he'd wash it.
----Monsieur and Madame Seignelet, even if they stayed up a long time to watch television because of a film or to create some kind of scene, would forget about the existence of their children as soon as they'd gone to their rooms. They closed their doors. Everyone would be in place: Raymonde and Robert, Jean-Baptiste and Bertrand, Philippe and Dominique. The parents would never have done a night inspection, or even lent an ear, or been on the lookout for and deciphered anything that was less than silence. They seemed to believe that well-trained children had no will of their own. At night, after use, they are put away in a puppet's case, where they remain silent, unmoving, frightened until the next day-when they're brought out again and you recommence manipulating them and talking for them.
----The Seignelets lived in a house with a small garden that they owned. They had seventeen more years of mortgage payments to make. The house was located to the north of Saint-RŽmi, at the edge of buildings that had been unknown on the island until a quarter of a century ago. They were the homes of low-ranking employees, level, cube-shaped, prefabricated, already run-down single homes, which were showy but tacky, chucked any which way on landfill plots, each with its own lawn, lawn-mower, withered and expensive-looking Thuja trees.
----Without even waiting for his brother to fall asleep, Jean-Baptiste got up in the darkness, took his clothes, left. He locked himself in the bathroom and got dressed again. He hid his pajamas behind the toilet tank.
He slipped into the garden by way of the kitchen. He had no bike: he'd have to get to the older Cormaillon, who was waiting to take him on his moped.
----It was a nice night. The rain felt pleasant. Jean-Baptiste, well protected by clothing, hummed to himself. He was forgetting that he could be heard from his home. It wasn't his home, that house, that neighborhood, that barracks with parents, those broken-down lots.







Bon Sexe illustre (Good Sex Illustrated), 1973

Written in the wake of May ’68 and Deleuze/Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Duvert’s Good Sex Illustrated (Bon sexe illustre) partakes in this miraculous moment when sexuality could turn the world upside down, revealing social hypocrisy for what it is. Bitterly funny and unabashedly anarchistic, Duvert openly declares war on mothers, family, psychoanalysis, morality, the entire social construct through a close reading of sex manuals for children. Published in 1973, one year after Duvert won the prestigious Prix Medicis, it proved that accolades had not tempered his scathing wit or his approach to such taboo topics as pedophilia. This translation, by award-winning Bruce Benderson, will belatedly introduce English-speaking audiences to the most infamous gay writer from France since Jean Gênet first hit the scene in the 1940s.

Read Bruce Benderson's introduction to Tony Duvert's Good Sex Illustrated

Two excerpts:

“And what exactly is touching? What do you touch? The “penis”?… Don’t girls “touch” themselves, too? How do they do it, since they “only” have a vagina? Is it an “orgasm,” like when Dad and Mom make a baby? Do you do it sitting down? Standing? On all fours? Hopping? With your legs in the air? Is it o.k. to watch? Can you sniff? Can you put a finger up your butt? How about two? Do you have to hide?… When you make love, do you keep your hands behind your back? Where’s it o.k. to put them?… And Dad, do you jerk off?”

Why is pleasure “doubled” when it’s “shared”?… Do you really have to cut pleasure in two so that it’ll exist? I mean, if it’s doubled when there are two of you, then it must be tripled when there are three, quadrupled when there are four, centupled when there are a hundred, right? Is it o.k. for a hundred to share? And if I get used to trying it all alone, why is it that I’ll never love anyone again? Is it that good alone and that awful with others?


Paysafe de Fantasie (Strange Landscape), 1973

'Journalist Madeleine Chapsal of the French journal, Express, states that Duvert's Paysage de Fantasie is "scandalous", yet has proven to be a big hit. Winner of the 1973 Prix Medicis, Strange Landscape has been celebrated for its artistic content, but still remains out of reach from the ordinary book browser in France. Though it is not censored in its native country, Strange Landscape, as well as Duvert's other books, is not readily or freely displayed in French bookstores and must be asked for upon demand. The reason for this is the recurring theme in Duvert's writing where childhood is brought to desire. And that is exactly what is described in his novels. Scenes of children in sexual circumstances, with both adults and other children, shock the author's reading public, but has somehow avoided any type of controversy.

Paysage de Fantasie is set in a French chateau, presided over by a woman doctor, her husband, and their young henchman. Several boys, aged 8 to 14 years old, formerly slum kids, are bought from their families to satisfy the sexual urges of a number of successful, wealthy men. The novel is an account of their experiences at the chateau, where some boys fall in love with each other, while other boys react in very opposite ways. -- Kimberly Davies

A short analysis of 'Strange Landscape' by scholar Keith Harvey

Three excerpts:

. . . he stretches out on his back leaning on one elbow kneecaps shining as he bends both legs he took out a long filter cigarette he smokes in his manner no longer so frank one hand shoved down there between his Have you already sucked cock? watch me I can suck myself off both hands now under both legs knees that bend back toward his belly body curving into a ball he stuck out his long tongue licked the tip of it with it he stops once to crush the cigarette Move further away I need more elbow room for this trick a half-somersault backward to raise his ass high in the air legs swinging wide and free his nose smack up against his balls now he moves his mouth experimentally along . . . and finally succeeds after a couple tries . . . I feel around in my own briefs touching my own it's exciting excited we get all undressed . ..




Quand Mourut Jonathan (When Jonathan Died), 1978

When Jonathan Died is a novel by Tony Duvert. It was first published in France as Quand Mourut Jonathan in 1978. The story is not narrated by Jonathan, but it is told in some parts from his point of view. The novel is an unusually frank depiction of love between a man and a boy, and presents what Duvert considers such relationships' potential faults and beauty. The story forms a part of Duvert's radical critique of present-day Western culture's views and valuation of the nuclear family, child sexuality, sexual abuse, paedophile desires, and the nature of love. -- Wikipedia








Other People's Eroticism, an essay
by Tony Duvert
from the Semiotexte website




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Wow, nice, Mallarme in the morning is working like a charm. Thank you, kind and tasteful sir. ** Slatted Light, Thanks a lot, David! Yeah, that Lucas de Lima book was a really great discovery. I hadn't read anything by him before that book magically opened in my face. The Sala just came out, like, three days ago. It's stellar, of course. I will pass along any news I hear from or about Jesse, for sure. Things are moving productively here on the theater front, and given that the piece involves creating something out of, for, and with the eight more respected ventriloquists in Europe, that's saying something. Have a very fine day! Love back big time from me. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, so sorry to hear that your heath was disappointing you yesterday. I hope you're upswinging dramatically by now. It's hard to have much informed knowledge and experience of the SF and LA writers and scenes because they haven't been officialized much at all, LA basically never, and SF only re: the Language Poetry scene. Strange, that, but it's true LA would particularly hard to organize and sum up as a literary scene, which is its strength, I guess. ** Steevee, Obviously, I'm glad the air has quieted around you. Oh, sure, the Bryan Singer thing scandal is well known here, although mostly through the American media, which infiltrates everything. I think if there's a way to characterize the reaction over here, it would be a whole lot less hysterical and gun-jumping. ** Torn porter, Hi, man. Ah, well, I'll miss seeing Ratty on this trip anyway, since I won't get back to Paris until, I think, Saturday night. Next time. Oh, wow, Zac and I are scrambling to find actors to audition right now as well. If I was in Paris and not glued inside a theater for all day every day I might be able to try to find someone for you, but I know I won't have the resources or time this week at all, I'm sorry. I hope you find somebody. We're in the same boat, if any consolation. The rehearsals go very well, just intensive and long and exhausting, but that's things happen, at least in theater piece construction, at least in my experience. All is well, iow. Have a good day, man. ** Right. Here's the return of an old Tony Duvert-centric post, unfortunately, or well, fortunately, I guess, without the 'exclusive' allure it had back when it was new. Anyway, I hope you find interest and whatever else in it. See you tomorrow.