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Recently I've become aware of the fact that Nothing Lasts Forever, an unreleased 1984 feature by Tom Schiller is up on You Tube.
(Tom Schiller)
Re Schiller Wiki sez:
“Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live (following the show's original short film makers Albert Brooks and Gary Weis). His films, often featuring members of the original SNL cast, aired on the program in a segment titled, "Schiller's Reel." Schiller was part of the original 1975 writing team when Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC. Notable films included the Federico Fellini send-up "La Dolce Gilda" and "Don't Look Back in Anger", which depicted an elderly John Belushi as the last living "Not Ready For Primetime Player" and dancing on the graves of his deceased castmembers. (Belushi would become the first SNL cast member to die, four years after the film first aired). Another favorite was "Java Junkie", a send-up of a 50s style cautionary film about a coffee addict (played by Peter Aykroyd). Schiller wrote and directed the short film "Love is a Dream" for SNL with Phil Hartman and producer/cinematographer Neal Marshad. Schiller also wrote and directed a unique feature film, Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). The film, which was unreleased at the time and featured Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Zach Galligan, Sam Jaffe, Mort Sahl, Lauren Tom, Imogene Coca, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Eddie Fisher, has gained a cult following and influenced a number of young directors in recent years.”
Starring Zach Galligan at the apex of his loveliness
(Zach Galligan)
Nothing Last Forever suggests what Joseph Cornell might have made were he put under contract by MGM. Enjoy!
(Nothing Lasts Forever Tom Schiller)
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On an entirely different yet somewhat related level, Twice a Man by Gregory Markopoulos has also become YouTube available
(Gregory Markopoulos)
About Gregory, Wikie sez:
“Gregory J. Markopoulos (March 12, 1928 - November 12, 1992) was a Greek-American experimental filmmaker. Born in Toledo, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents, Markopoulos began making 8 mm films at an early age. He attended USC Film School in the late 1940s, and went on to become a co-founder -- with Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage and others -- of the New American Cinema movement. He was as well a contributor to Film Culture magazine, and an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1967, he and his partner Robert Beavers left the United States for permanent residence in Europe. Once ensconced in self-imposed exile, Markopoulos withdrew his films from circulation, refused any interviews, and insisted that a chapter about him be removed from the second edition of Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney's seminal study of American avant-garde cinema. While he continued to make films, his work went largely unseen for almost 30 years.”
When it premiered in 1963 Twice a Man was well-regarded by critics and popular with audiences - many of whom compared it to Alain Resnais. But Gregory (who felt Resnais had ripped off his earlier filmSwain for Last Year at Marienbad) had very different ideas about the cinema.
The Summer 1963 issue of Film Culture (number 29) contains excerpts from Twice a Man's original screenplay. It apparently began as a “coming out” story in which a handsome youth (gorgeous fashion model Paul Kilb) goes to visit his mother (Olympia Dukakis in her motion picture debut) to discuss his relationship with his lover, identified as an “artist/physician” (Albert Torgessen)
Mother: Why do you keep seeing the physician?
Paul: When you get to like a man's face there's nothing you can do about it.
Clearly Markopoulos changed his mind mid-production. And so instead of post-synching dialogue we get fragments of speech only. It was the impact of mages alone that interested him - especially at the start when after several minutes of solid black we see our hero on the Staten Island ferry. Though widely seen from 1963 to 1968 or so, Twice a Man, like all of Markopoulos's work, was withdrawn from conventional exhibition after he and his lover Robert Beavers moved to Europe. It's such a delight to see it today once again.
(Twice a Man)
Wiki sez:
“Robert Beavers (born 1949) is an American experimental filmmaker. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he attended Deerfield Academy which he left before graduating to move to New York in 1965 to pursue filmmaking. He lived in New York until 1967 when he and his partner, Gregory Markopoulos, left the United States for Europe, where they continued to live and make films until Markopoulos' death in 1992.
Both filmmakers restricted the screenings of their films after leaving America, and instead held yearly screenings of Markopoulos' and Beavers' work from 1980-1986 at the Temenos, a site near Lyssaraia in Arcadia, Greece. After Markopoulos' death, Beavers founded Temenos, Inc., a non-profit devoted to the preservation of Markopoulos' and Beavers' work. Beavers has worked extensively on re-editing his films to create the larger film cycle My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure."
Beavers made his first appearance, stark naked in Gregory's rarely screenedEros O Basileus
Here he is today speaking of their Temenos project.
(Robert Beavers on Temenos)
And here's a clip about Temenos
(Temenos)
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Last but not least.
It's a great point of contrast to Twice A Man AND Nothing Lasts Forever
*
p.s. Hey. This weekend, Mr. E is back to turn the blog into a cinema with very cool programming. Please de-glare your screens, settle in/back, enjoy the rare and savvy triple feature, and pass your thoughts along to our special host and programmer. Thank you, and very heady, hearty thanks to the d.l. in charge. ** Wolf, No, you weren't being a ... wow, you did just say that, and God love you, ha ha. I like the cold too, or I like it more than the hot. I still have a Los Angeleno's sense of wonder about the lower temperatures. It's mostly just my feet and hands that object to them, but I'm just going to tell/telepath them to pipe down on the whining and man their goddamned posts. Well, enjoy the next three days then. Gosh, it might be only two now. Maybe the fourth day will surprise you with its welcoming attitude? I got a softy of a heart when it comes to Xmas trees too. Nah, we're not getting one. You've seen our cramped, stuffed place. Even if there was somewhere to put one, it would just look like a green article amongst our junk heap. Sad. When do you guys split for China again? That's so amazing and crazy that you're going there. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, B. Geez, that's expensive. Wtf?! Yeah, I've been eyeing those digital turntables. I need to see one in the flesh. Definitely alluring. I might just make a zine, and the trade w/ you is more weight on my jones to make one. I need to figure out some way to mark the occasion of my upcoming, scary birthday, and maybe a zine would be the ticket. Hm. Oh, right, about the rules re: internet uploading. Yeah, makes schoolish sense. Ooh, your secret Soundcloud. I won't link everybody up since that would make it unsecret, I guess, but I'll do an auditory devouring of the contents with your reminder of their unfinishedness in mind. Thank you! Ha ha re: the 'he's going down'. All is fair in love and war or something? What did you eat? Did it bring you peace? ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you ever so much for the great weekend ahead, sir! I don't know if it's a generational thing. I know people of all ages who feel the way you do and even a few who are in relative line with my pov. And your generation and mine are pretty close in time. Ever since I realized I was gay as a kiddo, I've always felt my gayness spoke only to my personal romantic and erotic leanings. That's just always been the only thing that rang true to me. But that's just me and mine. To each gay his own, is, I guess, my attitude. ** Steevee, Cool, heads up when it goes up, please. Bret is still coy and a bit all over the place publicly about his being gay, so the confusion about that makes sense and is likely the way he likes it. Well, I guess what I was saying is that it's possible to view my books as housing mostly gay characters living in phobia-free realistic worlds the way you do even though I don't intentionally build books thinking about the characters' gayness or about making worlds that are gay-exclusive. To me, the sameness of their romantic and sexual leanings is just part of the importance to me of being honest and personal in my work, and their worlds are highly edited constructs that allow me to study and represent my ideas. On rare occasions, the characters acknowledge and play in different ways with the fact that readers might well identify and pigeonhole them as gay in a collective identity sense. The fact that the books can be interpreted in both and different ways might explain why I have as many straight readers as gay ones, is what I was saying. ** Kiddiepunk, Ha ha. Thank you. You got a teeny tree? Take a teeny photo and put it on teeny Facebook. And I will see you downstairs in just a few hours! ** Casey Hannan, Hi, Mr. Hannan! Oh, you should. What would you make the tree out of? I mean, would you try to do nature one better and construct the perfect tree using the tree's natural ingredients, or would you ... gosh, I don't know, make a blown glass tree, yuck, or a paper mache one, hm, or ... ? Sorry for the impossible question. You got my imagination riled up. That makes total sense about the toenails thing. What an interesting way to secretly gain a deep understanding of your visitors. The 40s. Okay, rather than tell how cold it is here and how cold it can get, I'll say I know that's cold. I do. In LA, where I come from, people die en masse of frostbite when the temps are in the 40s. What kind of blanket? I mean, what will it look like? Will it have a pattern or ... I don't know? I do eat pastries here much more often than I do when I'm anywhere else, yes. Oh, let me see if I can find a photo online of my favorite pasty of the moment. Hold on. Oh, I did. If you click this, it's the pastry in the middle, the silver one. It's crazy good. I would dematerialize it and have it materialize on a plate in your kitchen if I could. ** Mark Doten, Hi, Mark! Oh, okay, I'll go check my email then. Happy weekend! ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Mr. P. You told me about your writing, cool, thank you. Yeah, you've got to get round that self-defeating nerd for sure. Blind fatigue is an interesting weapon. I tend to mostly write in the mornings while my coffee is still kicking in, which might be a related way. Okay, those fragments sound quite interesting. I.e., I'm definitely still with you. I mean, sometimes ideas play out really fast, and you end up just belaboring them if you try to push them to traditional lengths. And flash fiction has become a totally legit form in these past years, so there's really no need to overbuild your ideas. So, I think a piece that consists of somehow interrelating fragments is a great way to go. I do those kinds of pieces, at least. There are a bunch of similar kind of short burst pieces in my book 'Ugly Man', and most of them were originally going to be the beginnings of longer things. I don't think there's anything artistically lazy in that approach. In the US, there's this kind of fascist idea that the longer something is, the most important and weighty it must be, but that prejudice is not so in play in the literature of most other countries. I say go for it, in other words. Diane Williams, exactly. There are many great examples. If you want to try out the connected fragment thing, you could always put it in one of my blog's writers workshop posts and get some feedback and responses, if you want. I'm staying warm whatever it takes so far, thank you. Plastic Xmas trees are totally legit, yeah. Much better than those horrible tinfoil and wood fake trees you were mostly stuck with when I was a young lad. Any photos of yours? Okay, a fine weekend to you, man. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. It was nice having you here many times. Fake gun, yes. There were all kinds of things hidden and blurred out in there. Some of the images were sort of like those Magic Eye posters that were a fad ten years ago or whenever. I do like that Rimbaud translation a lot, but it's controversial among Rimbaud scholars. Happy weekend! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I know, me too. The only Xmas I have in my room is Sypha's Xmas card, but that'll do. A Unica Zurn intro sounds like a most excellent piece, of course. Kind of hard to tell about the work from a quick glance at those Trisha Baga show photos, but I'll look more carefully later. Jury duty, yikes, or maybe not yikes, I don't know. I've always thrown away summons when I've gotten them, and I'm still not in jail as far as I know. ** 5STRINGS, Ha ha, dude, wow. I think I'll pretend to yawn 24/7 and see who follows me home. Is that a real word: coherentist? I got a red line underneath it when I typed it, so maybe not, but I like it. Elektra Blue? Don't know that. Looks like Bill Kaulitz? I will most assuredly check it out. Or at least google-image-search that name. What are Charlie Brown Xmas trees? I'll google-image-search yet again. Much love backwash, buddy. ** Misanthrope, Well, if the greatest gay person ever doesn't know even know what gay identity is, then I'm sated. Either sated or a monkey's uncle, depending on which d.l. is reading this sentence, ha ha. Bret was trying to score coke off one of those Xmas trees, yes! Good eye. Oh, the 1D store is a giant, flashy thing. That is gross. The Menudo store was tiny and sad looking. Anyway, you are so going to go back home from NYC with a tube of 1D toothpaste in your suitcase, don't lie. I've never heard a Taylor Swift song as far as I know. I know she's the one who Kanye West was rude to on the MTV Awards or something, and since I don't like Kanye West, I'd hoped she was actually sympathetic. She seems sort like a cross between a pure celeb/Kardashian type and Lana del Rey or something? I have no idea. The Natural History Museum is really cool. Yeah, I recommend it or whatever. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, man. About the stack/scroll. That was actually one my favorite of my stacks even if it didn't seem to bring the house down. Great to hear that about 'Django Unchained'. I'm excited to see it, for sure. I haven't yet seen that last Tarantino, whatever it's called, the long one, weirdly, but I really like his films pretty much always, except for maybe 'Death Proof'. That wasn't so hot, although Kurt Russell was awesome in it. No Xmas tree for us, no. No room at all. So, I'll just go look at the ones that the public gets to look at. That's fine. I don't really know if Parisians buy Xmas trees that much anyway. I've only ever seen one Xmas tree lot in Paris the whole time I've lived here. You have a silver one? Take a pic! Show me! ** Postitbreakup, Yeah, man, like I said to Bill P., do the fragment connecting up thing. It's a heck of a form ,really. And, oh, wow, thank you the Xmas carol! That totally warmed my heart. You're so nice. ** Jebus, Holy shit, Jebus, that is fucking amazing! That's kind of like the ideal ultimate destiny of that stack with the unexpected huge honor of your of your sonic genius input. Holy shit! That's fantastic! I'm going to ... hold on. I just put it on my Facebook wall, and now I'm ... hold on ... going to embed at the bottom of the p.s. for everyone. Hold on one more time. Everyone, mightiest d.l. Jebus took my humble tree stack yesterday, worked in a great cover version of -- and here I quote him -- '"You and I" from the Twin Peaks series (that scene in season one where Maddy, Donna and James are singing together on the floor)' -- by his magisterial music project New White Light, and created the stunning video you see just below you. When you're not clicking on the movies in the cinema up above this weekend, click it. It rules. Wow, really, that is such a total treat and boon and everything else. Thank you so much for making wine out of my water and so on. You have an especially great weekend, okay? ** Sypha, Sorry about Harry and Taylor. :-( Well, you know that I think you will be glad that you finished 'IJ'. Are you feeling better, I hope? ** Bollo, Thanks, big J. Yay about your mental work planning, obviously. Well, I do occasionally get a wish going on about making a zine, and the Magcloud thing really pushed it to the forefront, so, yeah, maybe so, yeah. I need to dwell in zine head and see what happens in there. I saw The Wire's list too. Yeah, some surprises. Trying to branch out or something? Curious. I just finished my 'best of' lists for my annual blog post, I think, barring any masterpieces that come out between now and next, uh, Wednesday or whenever it's set to go. Great freelance weekend of frolic and finery to you! ** Right. Intermission is over. The house lights are flashing. Back into Mr. E's theater now, please. See you again come Monday.
New White Light 'Dennis Cooper Xmas Trees'