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be the movies

i guess it's because i've been watching too many movies about relationships. or that most movies are specifically about relationships ,and i've just been watching too many movies. whatever: recently the screen seems to invade my imagination. too often.


i thought maybe i was a character from Closer. only in a few scenes, not the whole thing. "there's always a moment." in my film class this quarter, we read shit about the overwhelming sense of realness in film. how and why it can surpass literature, visual art, stage, and tv. nothing can manipulate as effectively. it controls time and perception (you cannot go back and re-read a page at a movie theater - but i'm re-reading a book stanza now).


And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury


other forms often suggest to us that "we are there," in a moment. but the experience of directed gaze at a photo or painting, this is limited to 1 sense, and we are responsible for moving our eyes. film gets inside our heads, moves our eyes for us. and the experience of imagining the scenes and characters of a novel, film does this for us, as well. the film's images step in the middle, the point where our imagination usually is, and take over. when we say a film is "not as good as the book" we often mean that the way we imagined it actually looks better, and, if filmed, would be a more convincing movie.


the disorientation after a good movie is like being startled from a dream, or hearing terrible news. we perceived the world in a certain way just a moment ago, and now, the basic assumptions have become irrelevant.
  • Alice Ayres is not strutting down a street in manhattan (it was just a movie).
  • there are not actually bugs crawling all over us (it was just a dream).
  • our brothers or cousins or lovers really have died or abandoned us (that phone call was real/this will not be undone).
Ask the Dust last night. watching an asshole protagonist, rooting for him to be a better man, even though we knew he's senselessly cruel. what is it that makes such a man seem rebeemable, even momentarily? if you and i saw a man doing these things in reality (harassing and shoving a Mexicana he calls "greaser") would we root for him to "get the girl"? or would we call the police, or a domestic abuse hotline? would we want to see our good qualities arise in him, as we hope that we, too, can "get the girl"?


what makes someone worth a second chance? a face like Colin Farrell? A talent for writing? vague promise of a future? that burn of passion, which knows no logic and cannot be denied?


Romanzo Criminale sunday. a fun hour flipping through a record store, another hour in line at that damn italia film festival. mann's cinese theater, making fun of the french bastards who cut in front of us. i'm sorry for the time it took. but "il Lebanese" was badass, right? really, i just wanted to slide through the screen, to Rome in 1972, and walk those curving streets holding hands, then make espresso with the machine you gave me.


just a couple days before that, saw The Factory Girl avec vous. i used to think Warhol was cool, but i was amazed by Dylan. he was smart, snooty, principled, frightening, juvenile, and profound - all at the same time. not that i ever thought i was his equal. i listened and read so much on Dylan, i just understood him in a way that meant he was no longer an idol to me. merely human. sometimes a force of good, sometimes just a dick (especially to those who loved him).


Warhol is different, right? maybe because he covered up his past so much? but no - they both changed their names, invented a persona. Robert Zimmerman, nasal Jewish-school beatnik of Minnesota, becomes Dylan, protest voice of a generation. and Andrej Warhola, effeminate sickly child of Polish peasants in Pittsburg, invents Pop Art and the postmodern conception of Fame. They both head for new york, escape the past, spread romantic gossip about themselves.


destined for greatness? yes. kindness? no. nobody moves to new york - or los angeles, for that matter - to learn how to be kind. my theory, you better know that already. some people, the better they know you, the easier they can destroy you. Edie Sedgwick, Joan Baez, Sara Lownds Dylan came back again and again (misery doesn't care if he was a Beatles Man or not).


anyway, Dylan's charm isn't so charming when it's turned agaisnt you, i thought during Factory Girl. when i was 17, i wanted to be a new Bob Dylan. and since Dylan was his own invention anyway - an extended pose - who's to say i wouldn't have come close? as far as Warhol goes, i've never been anything like him. i've never exploited people like that, vampire-sucked their dreams, acted like i was too good for anyone. now i sound defensive.


by age 22, i wanted to be Hank Williams. his love songs are just more sincere (plus i can look a lot like him, si vous plait). but by age 29, Hank Williams was dead. now, i don't need a movie to hijack my visual cortex. and i don't need a character to "be." you know how to "be" people, but that's not what you need.


i won't have Fame like you, but you and i will "be" a force of good. i swear. you are not an eternally miserable character from Closer. maybe - just maybe - you are an eternally loved character from The Fountain. who can say? i am grateful for all love and support shared. a pesar de todo.

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