“Artists work best alone. Work alone.”

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“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education.
It’s history. It’s poetry.”

Most moviegoers are familiar with the found-footage formula by now (i.e., a series of slow-building twists all leading to some big reveal). What’s more? The majority of film buffs have seen this entertainment through and through. They’ve seen Blair Witch or Cloverfield, End of Watch or Paranormal Activity. In fact, at this point, I’d venture to say the majority of constant fans have grown completely numb to the sensation, specifically because they see that final wrap beat coming up a mile away. They brace themselves against the fervor. They revel in the guessing. And, eventually, they either find themselves desensitized or validated by what happens in the final frame.

And so it goes with Sebastian Cordero’s Europa Report, an outer-space suspense movie so married to found footage that it squanders plot integrity in the process. Here we find an entire screenplay based around the notion that some privatized corporation has recovered uploaded footage from one of its long-lost deep-space capsules (This one bound for one specific moon of Jupiter). The ensuing plotline plays like an apologetic document; a manufactured piece of propaganda from the corporation that funded this doomed mission. The point of this apology, one can only gather, is to deflect mass media criticism by portraying the ill-fated crew as a company of heroes.

Beneath all of the hoopla lies a fairly tight-knit cautionary tale about the depths mankind will plumb in the name of untold resources, the major sticking point being that said story is very often obscured due to the unnecessary found-footage angle … an angle which distracts from what might have been a quasi-relevant story with an infinitely more alarming takeaway.

(Europa Report is currently showing in limited release. It is also available via most OnDemand platforms.)

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Most Breaking Bad fans are intimately familiar with the phrase “I am the one who knocks,” by now. That phrase is indicative of not only Walter’s White transformation into Heisenberg, but his bottomless descent into the underworld. From now until October 27th (more than long enough to cover Breaking Bad‘s final eight-episode run), that transformation will continue on full visual display at the Museum of The Moving Image. Curators have assembled everything from authentic hazmat suits to Heisenberg’s iconic porkpie hat. Given the venue, this exhibit also includes several key video loops highlighting seminal, or perhaps even symbolic, moments from the show’s first five seasons. It’s a unique and up-close opportunity to go behind the scenes of one TV’s most fascinating anti-heroes – one whose time is running low (Breaking Bad‘s final eight episodes premiere on AMC Sunday, August 11th).

(Mr. Chips to Scarface: Walter White’s Transformation on Breaking Bad continues until October 27th at the Museum of The Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue @ 37th Street, Astoria, Queens, $12 general admission.) 

Five More For The Offing: 

• Alchemical featuring various artists @ Steven Kasher Gallery (Free, through 8/10, 521 West 23rd Street)
• Fragments by Renzo Piano @ Gagosian Gallery (Free, through 8/2, 522 West 21st Street)
• Staff Picks featuring various artists @ Howard Greenberg Gallery (Free, through 8/31, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406)
• Spectrum Suite featuring various artists @ Nicelle Beauchene (Free, through 8/16, 327 Broome Street)
• Summertime @ Jenkins Johnson Gallery (Free, through 8/30, 521 West 26th Street)

Zelig may not be Woody Allen’s most entertaining movie, but it is certainly his most brilliant (if not his most involved). Compared with traditional Woody Allen vehicles, projects rife with A-list appearances and recognizable locations, Zelig remains a bit of an anomaly – uncharacteristically complex to the point of exhaustion (Allen actually completed work on two additional movies – A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Broadway Danny Rose – before wrapping Zelig).

Consider Zelig‘s attention to detail – splicing characters into newsreels, inserting still-frames into photos, shooting – and then transferring – entire sequences onto blue-screen, making use of antique film cameras and lenses. Zelig‘s first full hour required an entire warehouse of elaborate costumes. It required location shoots and clearances and historical accuracy based on research. It required an original score and jazz-age arrangements. It required the false invention of a post-World-War-I dance craze. It required all of these things and so very much more. And yet, the final product appears almost impeccable – a near-perfect document save for Allen’s cringe-worthy parade of one-liners (e.g., “I have this masturbation class. If I’m not there they start without me.”).

“I feel more secure with the funny stuff,” Allen explained during a 1979 interview. “I feel that if an audience pays their admission, at least if they laugh they won’t feel cheated.”

To that end, Allen injects Zelig with constant fits of cornball humor … time and time and time again. And yet it works. One way or another, the whole damn thing just works. In fact, Zelig works to the extent that it was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1984 (It was nominated for a pair of Golden Globes, as well). Zelig works to the extent that it’s the only Woody Allen movie to be included on Spike Lee’s List Of Films You Must See If You Want To Make Films. Zelig works to the extent that critically-acclaimed motion pictures like A Mighty Wind and Forrest Gump would not exist without it.

And yet – despite all of the brilliant cinematography – it is Zelig‘s central premise that lends the film most of its radiance. For here we find a blue-collar schlub so desperate to be liked that he assumes the actual mannerisms and appearance of any group he happens to infiltrate. What’s more? This schmo is suddenly embraced as a celebrity, revered the more adept he proves at imitating mass culture. Zelig is social commentary at its best, particularly acute throughout one scene during which Dr. Eudora Fletcher (played by Mia Farrow) attempts to convince a room full of academics that Zelig’s behavior is actually an involuntary response. The entire audience, every member of which is dressed and groomed identically, furrows its brow in disbelief.

Therein lies the beauty of Zelig. There are just so many depths to be explored here, so many caverns to be mined. Despite all the various hills and valleys Allen has experienced since, all the various phases and film muses, Zelig remains the absolute pinnacle of his genius. It is so simple, yet complex, to chronicle the human condition in this way.

“I just wanted to be liked,” Leonard Zelig explained.

(Zelig is currently streaming – along with subtitles – via Youtube.)   Continue reading →

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“Style, when it works, takes the reader to a deeper place than can be arrived at thematically. It takes you to an inner understanding of the writer’s mind that isn’t about words.  In art, style is not superficial. Or rather it is, but it’s also a way into the deeper body of the thing in a way that’s hard to talk about, or write about, but which readers feel.  [Bad Behavior] had a sensibility that disturbed some people, but I don’t think it was truly about ‘hardness’. If anything, they may’ve been disturbed by the very softness I refer to, because it may’ve made them feel something.”

We set out from a two-man launch, just a pair of sunburnt teens, buzz-cutting and running and spraying and splashing across a series of slow-rippling wakes. The wind was whipping past in stringent fits now, playing hell on loose hair and lifejackets as we approached a tiny inlet where the ocean meets the bay. Meghan spun the left-hand throttle, slingshotting clear across my bow. We were zipping now, crisscrossing Jarvis Channel like a pair of wild-west cowboys – high-flying if not fearless, undeterred by flashing lights and floating buoys. Out here on the open seas the sudden shock of water felt like baptism. Out here on the open seas the two of us felt stoned, insatiable.

Meghan and I had fallen into a habit of arriving very late in the afternoon, engaging in several minutes’ worth of small talk with her mother before we mounted dual waverunners, zigzagging clear across the Sunset Lake. Once we reached the gaping entrance to the Intracoastal Waterway, the two of us would throttle down, goosed forearms draped and dripping over miniature black consoles, the constant bob and plunge of lapping currents all around.

And then – without fail – one or both of us would spot them; an entire school of bottlenose dolphin, cycling west to east in parallel factions, smooth heads bobbing up and over just like pistons … up and over, round and through, as they wound their way out past the breakers, our vantage point panoramically shifting, sightlines fading slow from snout to dorsal. Minutes later the faintest trace of them was gone, leaving Meghan and I alone out on the high seas, slow to ponder just how long we might remain before doubling back toward the shore.

Frontier clouds went settling in; the evening tide was taking hold.

***

Meghan and I shared one day off a week throughout that summer. More often than not, these 24-hr periods were considered sacrosanct, perhaps even ceremonial. Early mornings were reserved for sunrise, matching omelets before bike-riding down the promenade. Afternoons were set aside for beach time, summer reading and bodysurfing in between our barefoot tete-a-tetes. Island middays were for waverunning; showering up, then screwing ’round beneath the crisp, fresh-laundered sheets. Early evenings meant fine dining – New York strip steak at the Boathouse or New England clam chowder ala Wharf; raviolis down at Alfie’s or apple crumb at nearby Groff’s. Twilight meant the boardwalk, racing go-karts beneath Surfside after we tripped the air-conditioned stores. Midnight calm, it meant relaxing; Meghan sipping on wine coolers as I downed a lonely six of beer.

The whole thing felt organic – right time and right place, right backdrop for two people fit for falling deep in love. There were no deceptions or distractions, no expectations or conditions; there were no set terms nor term limits, no inset stigmata forming the brand of past relationships. There were only two sun-stricken teenagers, quasi-reveling in the notion they had found whatever it is most people set out looking for.

Certain August evenings, the two of us would simply sit around my table, chain-link Tiffany lamp hanging down from overhead, mapping out a list of destinations we planned on visiting during our upcoming road trip. We’d stack a pile of cassettes up on the radio, sifting through them based on vibe. Every now and again, Meghan would even fall asleep there in the shadows beside me, both of us setting separate alarms to ensure she beat her father home from night work.

***

There was an attraction known as The Slingshot set up along the southwest side of Surfside Pier that summer. This attraction was comprised of a cast-iron gondola held in place by a magnetic lever, the entire mechanism situated in between a pair of 150-ft steel girders. Dual riders were secured via a plethora of belts and harnesses, the two-seat gondola fastened to an intricate network of elastic cables, all of which were subsequently stretched onto their breaking point via a series of slow-grinding pulleys.

Once both riders were secure, a nearby henchman would pull back upon the lever, thereby releasing a magnetic latch, which, in turn, sent the cast-iron gondola hurtling toward space at wind-speed velocities approaching Mach 4. At its pinnacle (approximately 200 ft in the air), the adjoining cables would stretch out like a parabola, forcing the entire gondola to ratchet back upon itself, reversing directions before free-falling to the earth.

The liability insurance was astronomical, which is part of why The Slingshot cost a whopping $25 to ride (the ancillary reasons being slow turnover, combined with a max capacity of one pair of customers per run). Meghan and I had been daring each other to step aboard The Surfside Slingshot since the first week of July, and on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 16th, we finally got our chance.

We had run into The Slingshot’s foreman at a party a few nights before, at which point he insisted he could let us ride for free. True to his word, that foreman welcomed us with open arms that Tuesday – strapped us in, then waved goodbye.

“Three … two … one … FLY!” someone exclaimed.

What followed was a rush akin to taking nitrous; a booming shot toward the heavens with no filter in between … Meghan screaming as the pressure wheezed through purging ears. Nineteen stories high the engines petered out, perspectives churning as the beachfront lots unfurled beneath us – a thousand blocks of island real estate extending out beyond back bay, beyond the bridges and deep marshes, beyond the flatlands and decay, beyond it all until life disappeared onto a point into the sky. We would never feel that high again.

Day 585

(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)

©Copyright Bob Hill

“One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood’. In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function – a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind – then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so. Joyce said of the underlying structure of Ulysses – the Odyssean parallel and parody – that he really didn’t care whether it was plausible so long as it served as a bridge to get his ‘soldiers’ across. Once they were across, what does it matter if the bridge collapses? One might say the same thing about the use of one’s self as a means for the writing to get written. Once the soldiers are across the stream . . .”