'A few years ago, Claude Chabrol phoned Isabelle Huppert. The veteran director wanted someone to play a particularly horrible role in his new film, and thought of her. "I need someone to play a really perverted character. Fancy it?" "Yes," she replied immediately. That's not to say that Huppert is a pervert. Rather, perverted roles have become her métier. She's drawn to the honeypot of sour roles. She's been a nymphomaniac nun (Amateur), a mother who kills her children (Médée), a psychopathic postmistress (La Cérémonie), a woman who makes very suspicious bedtime drinks (Merci pour le Chocolat), and a piano teacher who craves masochistic humiliation in Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher.
'There is so much depth suggested by the superficiality of Huppert's face, that she cannot but be threatening to some. As one critic noted: "Her rather plain looks belie an almost shockingly smouldering sensuality." And some male directors clearly adore Isabelle Huppert. They love to leave their camera gazing at her face for long moments. Haneke does precisely this in The Piano Teacher in arguably the film's most compelling moments, the camera lingering on her face as she listens to the student who is trying to seduce her while he performs a piece by Schubert at an audition. And that lingering is worth the effort: Huppert gives a dizzying array of emotions - at once welling up with tears, and repressing her feelings angrily.
'Huppert has excelled in the spiteful, the nasty, the unpleasant and - regularly - the murderous. More than that, she carries herself with imperious intelligence, and thus seems to be self-conscious about her own wickedness. No doubt that is why Chabrol has cast her so often. He's interested in guilt, manipulativeness and shame - all of which she loves portraying. As she has become a more mature performer, Huppert has been able not only to depict evil but, more, to make us empathise with the perpetrators.
'Since the success of The Piano Teacher Huppert has been at the pinnacle of her career. She has subsequently given numerous extraordinary performances in two more films with Haneke as well as with such respected directors as Francois Ozon, Christophe Honore, David O. Russell, Claire Denis, Patrice Cherseau, and many others. And she goes on working hard, obsessed with acting and unprepared to discuss anything else - at least with journalists. Like most French actors, she refuses to talk about her private life but loves to reflect on her work - which she does with great intelligence.
'"It's just a desire to work. A desire and a need, like eating. An actress may see herself as more than a baker, but it's the same thing. I find it really hard to resist that desire. And it's true that that can result in some bad cakes - but that's never happened to me. I've never blushed at any of the films I've made. I've been very lucky."' -- The Guardian
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Stills
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Further
Isabelle Huppert Fan Site
Isabelle Huppert @ IMDb
FUCK YEAH ISABELLE HUPPERT
'I don't have a reputation for being difficult'
'I always feel misunderstood, yet that is also what I seek'
'There's such respect for movies here'
'Je vois le cinéma comme un espace mental'
@Michael_Haneke: 'Izzy huppert always speeks the truth even wen shes high'
Isabelle Huppert @ The Criterion Collection
Video: Isabelle Huppert In Conversation @ BFI
'Material Concerns: Isabelle Huppert'
Book: 'Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces'
Isabelle Huppert anticipated obituary @ Necropedia
Isabelle Huppert stuff @ Film School Rejects
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Isabelle Huppert, Une Vie pour Jouer
in French
'Director Serge Toubiana spent a year in the company of Isabelle Huppert. Where she went, he followed. Huppert is an around-the-clock actress so she doesn't need the cinema to exist – she embodies the cinema. When she's not performing, she doesn't exist. From film to film, on stage as on screen, Huppert invites us to survey those inner landscapes of hers that we don't yet know.' -- film-documentaire.fr
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Interview
from Index Magazine
CORY REYNOLDS: I just saw The Piano Teacher in New York. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a movie with that degree of sustained psychological tension. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to work on it for months and months.
ISABELLE HUPPERT: I guess the film was easier to make than it was to watch. I’ve heard that a couple of people actually fainted in cinemas in Spain and Portugal, and ambulances were called to one of the New York screenings too. [laughs] I mean, I didn’t go to the hospital myself every other day when I was shooting it.
CR: You seemed to be holding so much in. At the end of each work day, didn’t you feel spent and empty?
IH: No, no. Whether the performance is internalized or externalized, you get the same sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.
CR: How do you approach your roles? Do you have a consistent method?
IH: I wouldn’t say I have a method, but I’m quite attached to the idea of trying to get as close as possible to the truth. Very often, actors want to idealize their characters, or they want to be as fascinating as possible to the audience. That has never been my concern. I’d rather focus on what I think reality is, with all its ambiguities and complexities and shadows. A little bit of good and bad — that’s a human being, you know?
CR: Even so, you’re known for choosing particularly edgy roles.
IH: I never play entirely sympathetic characters. But the great thing about film today is that the line between good and bad is more blurred than it was thirty or forty years ago. So in some ways, I’m just reflecting the spirit of our time, when it’s so difficult to determine who is normal and who is insane.
CR: You’ve worked with all of the great European actors. And you’ve worked with directors like Claude Chabrol, Benoît Jacquot, and Goddard ... I’m wondering if anyone has been particularly influential to you?
IH: There are certain actors and directors whose work I admire, but I can’t say I’m influenced by anyone. Being an actress is more about making a statement out of your difference. You don’t want to look like anyone else. You just want to look like yourself.
CR: You must get so many scripts. How do you actually choose your roles?
IH: Ordinarily, I don’t choose a role because I like a script or because I want to play a particular character — I the choice because of the director. It might be a very European concept, but there are lots of American directors I’d like to work with. I guess that’s why just getting involved with mainstream Hollywood films is not so appealing to me.
CR: Who are some of your favorites?
IH: I like David Lynch and David Gray very much. Woody Allen. Todd Solondz, of course. Lodge Kerrigan. And Todd Haynes, too.
CR: You’ve made more than sixty films, all of them artistically challenging. It seems you were rigorous and selective from the very beginning.
IH: The secret to being able to do so many films is to always pick roles where you can be a little awestruck. I need the sense of anticipation, the feeling of being in a new landscape. It doesn’t always pay off right away, because of course some films are not successes — there are always setbacks. But it’s important to be adventurous. In the long run, artistically, it pays off.
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17 of Isabelle Huppert's 62 films
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Alain Robbe-Grillet Glissements progressifs du plaisir(1974)
'Like several other French filmmakers of this era, Robbe-Grillet got away with making such an experimental, non-narrative feature by adding softcore sexploitation elements, but he doesn't "sell out" as much to the sexploitation angle as some of his country-men like Jean Rollin or Walerian Borowzyx (which might be one of the reason his films are a lot harder to find today). 'Gpdp' features an early appearance by Isabelle Huppert, who is now probably THE most respected actress in France. (This is kind of like finding out that Meryl Streep was once in a softcore porno "art" film early in her career, but then Huppert has always been a much more daring actress than Streep). I'm not sure which character Huppert plays exactly--I think she's one the protagonist's school-mates since she was would have been very young back then.'-- collaged
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Claude Chabrol Violette Nozière(1978)
'Violette Nozière (Isabelle Huppert) is a French teen in the 1930s who secretly works as a prostitute while living with her unsuspecting parents, father Baptiste Nozière (Jean Carmet) and mother Germaine Nozière (Stéphane Audran). Rebelling against her "mean and petty" petit-bourgeois parents, she falls in love with a spendthrift young man, whom she virtually supports with thefts from her parents as well as her prostitution earnings. The film was entered into the main competition at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, where Isabelle Huppert won the award for Best Actress.'-- collaged
Excerpt
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Jean-Luc Godard Every Man for Himself(1980)
'Around the middle of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sauve Qui Peut—La Vie (Every Man for Himself), a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) leaves a hotel and is cornered by an angry pimp and his thugs. She has been caught working for herself, and the pimp wants to teach her an important lesson, not so much about her line of work but about life as a whole. Sauve Qui Peut—La Vie is a film for filmmakers. Those who want direct access to the souls of characters or meanings of sequences will miss much of its seemingly aleatory visual language. Outside is the life of the city—people are walking, shopping, talking. Inside, the man coldly rubs her ass as he talks on the phone. The transition or cuts between inside and outside, private and public, weave a particular (and peculiar) line of sexual desire right into the heart of the social fabric. Godard is to cinema what Ornette Coleman is to jazz.'-- The Stranger
Trailer
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Michael Cimino Heaven's Gate(1980)
'Most box office flops rarely attain the status of film history footnote. But “Heaven’s Gate,” the 1980 epic directed by Michael Cimino, became a legend. Its difficult production and disastrous premiere, which left a trail of vicious reviews and rubbernecking media coverage, turned it into a punch line, a symbol of all that was wrong with Hollywood and its excesses. In the popular telling this nearly-four-hour western, which recounts the violent conflict between wealthy cattle barons and poor European settlers in 1890s Wyoming, derailed the career of its ambitious young director (who had just won Oscars for “The Deer Hunter”), cost several top executives their jobs and left its studio, United Artists, vulnerable to a takeover.'-- NYT
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Bertrand Tavernier Coup de Torchon(1981)
'An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief turned heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa. Featuring pitch-perfect performances by Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, this striking neonoir straddles the line between violence and lyricism with dark humor and visual elegance. By movie's end, Tavernier leaves little room for redemption, leaving the joyless Lucien mired in a moral quagmire of his own making.'-- collaged
Trailer
Excerpt
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Claude Chabrol Story of Women (1988)
'Claude Chabrol is known as one of the fathers of the French New Wave movement. Perhaps lesser known than some of his counterparts such as Truffaut and Godard, Chabrol has had highs and lows in his 46-year career. One of the high points came in 1988 with Story of Women, a well told tale of the life of one woman and how her choices and the social environment in which she makes them serve to change her life. Huppert effortlessly portrays a woman driven by many forces. She is at times driven by lust for money, lust for power, and lust for men; but she is also driven by a desire to provide for her children, a desire to help her neighbor, and a desire to be free of the roles placed on her by society and circumstance. For her performance in the role, Huppert won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.'-- collaged
The entire film
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Werner Schroeter Malina(1991)
'Literally incendiary, Malina is one of the rare truly visual films about writers. Based on the celebrated novel by Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina stars Isabelle Huppert in a ferocious, stops-out performance as a philosophy professor driven mad by her love for two men, her "husband" Malina and her young lover Ivan, and by her tormented relationship with her father. Schroeter's plunge into desire, dissolution, and death must be experienced, then recovered from. Working with a sharply lyrical adaptation by the 2004 Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, who also wrote the novel on which Haneke's The Piano Teacher is based, of Ingeborg Bachmann's cult novel, Schroeter follows the exquisite associative logic of poetry and madness. The story ends with a mirror game as intricate as the one in The Lady from Shanghai, but to more quietly devastating effect.'-- The New Yorker
Trailer
Excerpt
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Hal Hartley Amateur(1994)
'Some people are never going to warm to the deadpan comic aesthetic of writer-director Hal Hartley (The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men). Screw'em. For the rest of us, "Amateur" is Hartley heaven, a sharp-witted thriller that takes off into dark and uncharted territory. French actress Isabelle Huppert (Madame Bovary) is new to the Hartley world, but she's up for every curveball he throws. Huppert is delicious as Isabelle, a nun who has left her convent to write pornography. At a Manhattan greasy spoon she meets an amnesiac named Thomas, played by Hartley regular Martin Donovan in peak form. The extraordinary cast brings snap and surprising heart to Hartley's riffs on sex, lies and exploitation. Amateur marks another creative leap in the career of a fervently inventive original.'-- Rolling Stone
Trailer
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Benoît Jacquot L'ecole de la Chair(1998)
'Perhaps only the French could create a movie with the sexual heat of The School of Flesh. International star Isabelle Huppert, a strawberry-blonde beauty with brimming blue eyes, is Dominique, a successful businesswoman of "a certain age." Quentin (model-pretty Vincent Martinez) is a bisexual male hustler half her age. They begin an affair after meeting at a disco, and their relationship turns toxic in short order--a compulsion that neither can shake, with negative consequences for both. Each is drawn inexorably into a hurtful game of cat and mouse, switching roles back and forth with every round. More than anything else, the film does a truly convincing job of depicting the exquisite pain of addictive relationships. It is impossible not to become drawn into the enticing energy of the affair--to hope it won't end, while knowing it must. The School of Flesh takes us on an irresistible walk on the wild side.'-- Laura Mirsky
Trailer
Excerpt
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Olivier Assayas Les Destinées sentimentales(2000)
'Jean and Pauline first meet at a ball at Barbazac in the Charente region of France when she is twenty. He is a Protestant minister, married with a young daughter, and has just resigned himself to the failure of his marriage with Nathalie. The pressures of the upstanding Protestant society surrounding them do not count since their "sentimental destinies" are closely bound. In the tragic upheavals of a changing world marked by the incurable wound of the Great War and in which certainties and industrial dynasties crumble, the love of Jean and Pauline, in all its luminous permanence, is stronger than anything, stronger perhaps than death itself. "Love... there's nothing else in life... nothing."'-- festival-cannes
Trailer
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Raúl Ruiz Comedy of Innocence (2000)
'At the center of ''The Comedy of Innocence'' is a round-faced, apple-cheeked moppet named Camille (Nils Hugon) who lives in serene haut-bourgeois elegance in an old house in Paris. Shortly after his ninth birthday, Camille, whose closest companions are a possibly imaginary friend named Alexandre and a video camera, starts behaving strangely. He insists that his name is Paul and starts addressing his mother (Isabelle Huppert), with cold formality, by her first name, which is Ariane. What is going on here? Some kind of strange supernatural event? Is this the latest movie to explore the possibility of parallel realities, to imagine a kind of lived hypertext? For its first hour, Raul Ruiz's film, adapted from a novel by the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli called ''The Boy With Two Mothers,'' weaves an elegant spell of epistemological confusion. The quiet, elegant Parisian interiors take on a spooky, claustrophobic feel, which is intensified by the odd behavior of the people who inhabit them.'-- NYT
Trailer
Excerpt
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Michael Haneke The Piano Teacher (2001)
'Subversive, meditative and poetic, The Piano Teacher, thanks largely to Huppert, is a daring work of sexually strange, unmitigated genius. Like truly feeling music, which comes from precise craftmanship and then spins you into mysterious, emotional and exalted places, so can the workings of love and all the other, stuff. Sex, desire, neurosis and romance are often quite specific and yet deeply enigmatic sensations. For that, the movie, though disturbing remains unsettling erotic and yet unusually romantic. To the trees and the stars and the beds and to the...sex shops.' -- Sunset Gun
Trailer
Excerpt
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Christophe Honore Ma Mere(2004)
'In his pioneering study “Suicide,” the French anthropologist Emile Durkheim invented a concept to describe the social situation at the center of “Ma Mere,” Christophe Honore's film adaptation of Georges Bataille's novel. He called it anomie, a state of normlessness in which there is chaos and or no rules to guide human behavior, including sexuality. The performances are exceptional, particularly by Garrel , better known for his role as the twin brother in Bertolucci's “The Dreamers,” and Huppert. With this film, Huppert again proves that her range is limitless and that she is one of most daring and fearless actresses working in today's cinema.'-- Emmanuel Levy
The entire film
The incest scene
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Patrice Chéreau Gabrielle(2005)
'Based on Joseph Conrad’s short story “The Return,” this Belle Epoque chamber drama depicts an upper-class French couple whose marriage of convenience implodes in a single afternoon. The film becomes memorably intense once director Patrice Chéreau puts aside the flashy, distracting stylistic tics — once he gets out of the way of actors Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory as their characters start laying into each other, in other words. The movie at times suggests a more searing version of Martin Scorsese’s Edith Wharton adaptation, The Age of Innocence (1993), with Huppert’s Gabrielle the Newland Archer figure here. As their marriage shatters within the space of hours, Gabrielle calmly, icily delivers the death blow to Jean: “The thought of your sperm inside me is unbearable.” There’s no rejoinder to a line like that, especially not when it comes from Isabelle Huppert.'-- Mark Tompkins
The entire film
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Claire Denis White Material (2009)
'Claire Denis' strongest movie in the decade since Beau Travail, her tense, convulsive White Material, is a portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty. The time is unspecified. The subject is the collapse of an unnamed West African state, and the protagonist, Maria, a French settler unflinchingly played by Isabelle Huppert, is the proprietress of a family-run coffee plantation. White Material is impressionistic yet tactile — Denis presents an unclear situation with gorgeous immediacy. White Material, which was shot in Cameroon, has an urgent lyricism predicated on fluid jump cuts, jittery camera moves, and extreme close-ups. This composition in continuous crisis and continual dread, written with Prix Goncourt–winning novelist Marie N'Diaye, is at once pre- and postapocalyptic.'-- SF Weekly
Trailer
Isabelle Huppert speaks about 'White Material'
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Brillante Mendoza Captive (2012)
'It’s hard to turn a dramatic story like the 2001 hostage crisis in the Philippines at the hands of Islamic separatists into a routine adventure story, but in Captive, Brillante Ma. Mendoza (Serbis, Kinotay, Lola) succeeds. In this compendium of horror, the film has only the angry, frightened Therese as a central point of view, and she’s not all that easy to identify with. Her short fuse often pits against her captors her in furious outbursts, putting her life in danger. More than others, she fights off the Stockholm syndrome. Her courage only breaks down when a local TV journalist is allowed into the rebels’ camp to interview her and Huppert pulls out the stops on her considerable acting gifts.' -- Hollywood Reporter
Trailer
Isabelle Huppert speaks about 'Captive'
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Hong Sang-soo In Another Country (2012)
'Like many other films by the sly and prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, “In Another Country” is at once a comedy of manners and an oblique commentary on the power of cinema to expose and alter reality. Its three chapters, each a little under a half-hour long, are scenarios dreamed up by an aspiring young screenwriter (Jung Yumi) in the midst of some vague family trouble. In each vignette Isabelle Huppert plays a Frenchwoman named Anne, who finds herself the only foreigner in an overcast beach town. What the point here might be is a bit elusive. It may be simply to allow Ms. Huppert, one of the most adventurous actresses in movies, the opportunity to try something new. And that might be enough.'-- NYT
Trailer
Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. RIP: Evan S. Connell. ** Alter Clef Records, Hi, Nick. Thanks a ton for the Knowlesian birthday song. Tricks are pretty good. I sort of decoded some FB updates of yours and concluded that you were moving flats, but I don't think I knew what an upgrade the new surroundings were until now. Congrats! The Myers Twins ... nope, or not by name until now. They sound intriguing, obviously. I'll do an online hunt. Maybe a post if there's enough out there. Sweet, obviously, on the possible Wilson communing in Hamburg. Brighton seems to be quite a fount. New novel is possibly getting back on track maybe. Want that album/package of yours, man, yes. Usual Recollets address, exactly. Kiddiepunk's new score? Three intriguing words right there. Great to see you, Nickster. Hey to Joe. ** Kiddiepunk, Aw, thanks, man. Good to know that you guys will be back here pretty damn soon. Thanks about my Dad video. Yeah, that was hidden on youtube, and I had completely it was there. I love you too, little big man! Get back here! Orders! ** Wolf, You're back! Hallelujah! (The Leonard Cohen version). Yeah, sorry about the post's destructive force. But it probably weeded out the faux friends from my true ones or something. No, wait, just my higher tech friends from my older fashioned ones, I guess. That's terrible. What was I thinking? Or not thinking? Well, the flat in that video is the original flat before we settled in here for the duration and filled it to the brim with our crap. It'll never looked like that again unless I buy the idea that casting off worldly goods is the path to enlightenment, and I can't see that happening. Maybe my accent changed. It's probably just cigarette smoking damage, though. I got seriously treated yesterday. My pal Zac made me cold sesame noodle, the food of the gods, and he managed to make it exactly how I most like it, so my tastebuds were tiny pigs in clover. Anyway, you're back! I don't think anything got too major here while you were gone. Well, I want to hear endlessly about China, so let's make a date by phone or over a double espresso or over a pot of tea or something. Welcome the holy fuck back, my buddy! ** Billy Lloyd, Hey! Awesome to see you again so soon! I did have a really good birthday, and I didn't have to get reckless even. Urgh on that bland instrumental track. Can you seriously tweak and twist and turn it into something that turns the blandness into inaudible ambience or something? Or do they want you to just decorate the blandness? Knowing you, I'm sure you found away to turn it into a gold mine. Right? Continued ultra-luck and inspirational vibes to you, man. ** Scunnard, Thanks a bunch, Scunny! I think I know about your stuff re: the Winchester House, don't I? Tell me again. That place can never be taxed. I enjoyed my day, and you enjoy yours. ** xTx, Thank you, my great pal! How awesome that 'Bille' got completely swallowed by the hordes so quickly, but now you have new slavering hordes to deal with. Ha ha, it was your dad's birthday too! Oh, right, I actually just saw that evidence of your 'Django' dialogue with him on FB. I hope he had as nice as a one as I did. Love and more love! ** Foggy Sapphires, Hey! Nice to see you! Oh, cool, your Nick interview. I, of course, will get the pleasure post-p.s. Everyone, in a case of connect the comment section dots, d.l. Foggy Sapphires aka writer supreme Caroline Simpson has interviewed d.l. Alter Clef Records aka recording artist supreme Nick Hudson, and, sure enough, you're all invited. Just click this and read the great minds melding. Take care, and thank you, pal. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, thank you, David! My birthday is now missing nothing whatsoever. ** Daniel Portland, Hey there, Daniel Super sweet to see you! Are you Capricorn too? Secret handshake or hoofshake? You good? What's new? ** Alana Noel Voth, Hi, Alana! Thank you, thank you! No, I don't think I knew that I somehow made the intros between you and Suede. How cool of me. Have the loveliest possible day! ** Rewritedept, Cool, what's five minutes of waiting between friends, right? We are talking mega-time change. Try flying that distance sometime, and prepare for a week of sleep-deprived mental wreckage. Band practice is plenty, cool. Bon day! ** Oriol Rovira Grañen, Thank you, kind sir. That first image/present wouldn't load for some reason. Temporary outage or something. I'll keep clicking. Oh, wait it worked. Mr. P! Thank you very much. And that promo video for the piece by the Need Company does look quite amazing. Thank you for that too. You rule. ** MANCY, Hi! Suburban Lawns! Su Tissue! What an excellent choice! Thank you! I'm one of those who were lucky enough to be an Angeleno at the right age and time to get to see them play quite a lot. Sweet! Thanks a lot, man! ** Cobaltfram, Thank you, John! Uh, yeah, it's the, uh, big 6-0, and, uh, let's just leave it at that, ha ha. Thanks for the funky birthday song. I only heard a few seconds so far, but it feels funky in my right places. No, seriously, not a breakout hit. Relentless, bleak books with extremely unhappy endings don't make it big ever, as far as I know, but fuck crossover success. Good to hear that the proposal is a mere month away from making the nerve-wracking rounds. And about the split in two thing. Good, good. Well, have a great time with your friend if I don't talk to you before he rings your doorbell. ** David Saä V. Estornell, Thank you so very much, David! Lots of love to you! ** Heliotrope, Oh, gee, thank you, Mark. Yeah, you know, that goes double bordering on infinitely for me, Marquee. ** Thomas Moronic, Thank you, T! The bold type was a fulsome and much appreciated touch! Whoa, I do now remember that you were there at the Galerie Oef opening where the portrait of Y. and I was unveiled. Holy shit! Tons of love in a hurricane-like return! ** Tender prey, Mark! Welcome back! Oh, my God, jet lag, dude, you can't imagine how much sympathy I feel. Get through that, and then I want to hear all about China, please? ** Jeff, Aw, thank you, Jeff. I loved my slice. Both of the slices. Really sweet of you, my friend. Thank you, and love to you. ** KYTE, Hey, Kyte! How awesome and super special it is to see you! I'm glad that Mars/Saturn occasioned your reentry. Not to mention it facilitating you getting back into writing. That's always excellent news here in Paris. Okay, no problem on the promo thing. Hold on. Everyone, the wondrous and spectacularly talented d.l. KYTE requests that you click this link -- as do I -- and both look into and consider participating in a 'cellphone novel' project. I won't paraphrase, 'cos the info is just that mere click away, so please press those blue words, thank you. Yeah, sounds exciting. Awesome. 'Twine', no, I don't know it. I just followed your link, and, yeah, very curious. I'll have to investigate it later, as I'm in the nose-to-the-grindstone p.s. mode, but I will. Hm, I'll pass that along as well, what the hell. Everyone, before we leave the area designated as KYTE for today, let me pass along this interesting tip, in KYTE's own words: 'Have you heard of that "game" engine, Twine? It's really popular all-of-a-sudden. Especially in the little, queer indie game dev community. It's this program that allows you to really REALLY quickly and efficiently produce interactive fiction. You can do so much with it. It can be just text, you can time things, use images or animation or whatever if you want. You can make it branching like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books or, you can make it linear but pace your reader a certain way. It seems really cool to me right now. Intro to it and some games are here. A guide on how to use it is here. So, wow, that is big news from Kyteland! That's awesome, congrats! I'm really happy for you! I mean, I'd be really interested to know more, if you want to say more. Is that a fairly recent self-identification? Are you thinking of surgery or not? How has the reception and support been for you? Don't feel pressed to say more, I'm just naturally interested, if you want to share more about that. You're liking living in LA, I'm guessing? We should hang out next time I'm there, yeah? It would be great to see you! And it's really great even to see you here, and thank you a lot for the birthday wishes. Please hang out here whenever the mood strikes, and I send you lots of love, K! ** Steevee, Hi. Mm, The French are into it as entertainment, that's for sure. It's not taken seriously. Not that it's taken that seriously in the US, but, you know, I guess it is taken seriously by Americans who don't really care about film as a serious art form and who don't read criticism outside their local newspaper, but here in France, I don't think it's taken seriously by anyone, even people who just go see blockbusters. They're proud when French stuff wins Oscars, but I think, even then, the Oscars are just seen as some kind of middlebrow stamp of international approval of French goods. Or that's my take. Kind of wild that 'Amour' got nominated for Best Picture. That really is quite a surprise. ** Bollo, I did like it. And I watched it more than once, so, yeah. Thanks again. And thanks about the post. My day was excellent. ** Statictick, Hi, N. Thanks for the b'day thing. Oh, I think 'Criticize' is kind of a genius song. A perfect song. I've always loved it. I even made Ishmael dance to it in one of the performance works we did together. Mr. Toad is as big a deal as a deal can be. Yep. Thanks about the video for my Dad. Happy day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Ha ha, great! The Denial cover. I will get past first few moments of it momentarily. Thank you. It sounds like a beaut! ** Kyler, Hi! I'm trying to remember what happened on Monday now, and I can't, hm, but it must have been okay in skies yesterday because my birthday was surprisingly terrific. Of course I liked your Disney cake! You know me better than that, ha ha. I just didn't see and 'like' it until this morning due to the wonderful avalanche of b'day wishes and stuff on FB. No, much better than a phallic cake. I'm more of an ass cake kind of guy. Have a spectacular day! ** Randomwater, Hi! Really nice to see you, and thank for crowning my birthday with your happy intentions. Oh, no, it was super tense? Screw them. Yesterday? Let's see ... I spent it with my great friend Zac. He made me my favorite food, and then we started our investigation into the secret, hidden tunnel underneath the Recollets where I live, and we got some really good leads on ways to find it, which we will follow up on, and we discovered that it was used as a site for Black Masses by a Satanic cult for years, which is pretty interesting. Then we went to the Hunting Museum, which, despite the uninteresting name, is probably the coolest place in Paris, and that was a lot of fun, and we hung out, all very awesome, and then I came home, and Yury bought me a new pair of sort of suave Paul Smith shoes for my b'day, so it was a very good day. And, yes, all is pretty fucking awesome. I hope fucking awesomeness will descend upon you today if it hasn't already. ** 5STRINGS, Yikes, you sounded like Marine Le Pen there for a second. Books in the bedroom is a good move. Books can be great lays. Yoga, cool. That worked really well for me back when I did that. Aw, thanks, man, for the sweet words. You do need to write. Get on that pronto. ** Derek McCormack, Yay, Derek, my dearest Derek! Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have to come to Paris this year and visit me! You so deserve a Paris trip! I'll show you everything! Your eyes will be wide and misty and sparkly! Guaranteed! Exquisite and crushing love to you from me! ** Bill, Thank you, Bill! How's the jetlag treating you? I think my memory says that jetlag is generally pretty nice to you, no? Butoh bits will be amazing whenever you're ready. Welcome home! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, I just laid out how I spent my day to Randomwater just a few comments back, if you're interested. It was a really, really good day. Huh, your group were at least somewhat into Maya Deren? That's a promising sign, no? Let me know how that first Trier movie is. Very curious. I haven't seen any movies lately. I've gotten out of the habit, but I think I'll be hitting a theater or two this weekend. ** Alan, Thank you a lot, Alan. Hugs and love to you, my friend! ** Misanthrope, The second time is the charm or whatever, so thanks. New Suede song, oh yeah, I read about that. I'll imbibe it in a few minutes. Thank you, G. Oops, re: the deleting, but Tuesday is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. Cue you hopping, skipping, and then jumping. ** James, Thank you a ton, bddy boy! Lots of love to you! ** Sypha, 'The Tunnel' does look dense. I wanted to read it before Gass's next gigantic, years-in-the-making novel comes out, but that's soon now, so I waited too long. You're back into Sotos! That is big unexpected news! Wow! Good news, I think. Sorry about your browser! ** Dungan, Hi, Sean! Oh, thank you so, so much for the totally beautiful New Years card! I'm so happy to have it! How are you? You good? I sure hope so. I'm good. Take great care, and take some love. ** Jebus, Hi, man! How are you? What's going on? What are you working on? How is everything? Thanks for your birthday greeting! ** Postitbreakup, Husker Du and Banjo-Kazooie are the hands across the water of awesomeness. Wow, that was a terrible metaphor kind of thing. But, ... you know. Thanks, Josh! ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Thank you so much! I had a great day! Oh, man, thank you for saying that. That means so much. Seriously, getting to know you and become friends and comrades has been such a great thing for me too. Really, really. Hugs galore, and you take care too. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Thanks! Uh, yeah, I said what I did up above a bit. It was a really good day. Couldn't have been nicer. ** Armando, A hour, yikes, sorry about that. Shit. I'm glad you stuck it out, though. It's great to see you. And thank you for existing too. I don't know who those kids are really. Amateur prankster magicians. I found their youtube channel a while back, and I became a fan. Have a really good day! ** Starlon H, Hi! Wow, it has been a while, and it's super nice to see you! Thank you a lot! I'm good. More importantly, how are you? What's new? I'd love to hear/read a catch up on you and yours, if you feel like it. Take care! ** Right. My birthday is now officially history! We move on to the extraordinary Isabelle Huppert today. Give her your best. See you tomorrow.