8:6:21


Soon everyone from before will be gone. And the past will be gone with them. And we'll just be left with the post-human big-tech nightmare that is today.


8:5:21





8:4:21


One of the truest things I've ever seen. The integrity of it, the lack of pretense. The honesty. The embodiment of words. His sweetness and shyness. It always make me cry.

All the great dancers used to smoke; all the great singers used to smoke. Hard to imagine now given the incredible stamina of former-era performers.





8:3:21


The Exorcist III, 1990


























8:2:21


Gregory Borse on Hitchcock's Rear Window as a premonition of today's digitally mediated world. Jefferies is only interested in Fremont when he can objectify her. When she is on the other side of the peeping window, positioned in the lens of Jefferies' camera prosthetic. Desire is now impossible without extreme 24/7 objectification, which is why social media and porn rule our world and our optics today. As Adam Phillips would say, fantasy is not a real relation, and we have built a world where there are no real relations. Only real relations, which are frustrating, can give us real satisfaction (pleasure).

And on that note, off to see De Palma’s version of Rear Window (and Vertigo), Body Double. First movie in a theater in 2 years!































8:1:21

July viewing:

1. Eat the Document, 1966
2. One Day Pina Asked…,1989***
3. Tokyo!, 2008
4. Good on Paper, 2021
5. Berliner Ballade, 1990
6. WTF with Marc Maron –Todd Haynes, 2015
7. Don’t Look Back, 1967*
8. WTF with Marc Maron –Jason Bateman, 2015
9. Married to the Mob, 1988
10. WTF with Marc Maron –David Spade, 2016
11. Manhunter, 1986 (Rewatch)***
12. Demolition Man, 1993•
13. A Story of Children and Film, 2013**
14. WTF with Marc Maron –Craig Ferguson, 2012
15. Pressure, 2006 (Lena Dunham short)
16. WTF with Marc Maron –Eddie Murphy, 2021
17. Pressure, 1976**
18. The Last Unicorn, 1982*
19. WTF with Marc Maron –Martin Short, 2020
20. WTF with Marc Maron –Rob Reiner, 2016
21. Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes, 2021
22. The White Lotus, 2021
23. Fatale, 2020
24. WTF with Marc Maron –Billy Crystal, 2016
25. WTF with Marc Maron –Will Ferrell, 2017
26. WTF with Marc Maron – Jerry Seinfeld, 2020
27. Virgin River, S3, 2021
28. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997 (Rewatch)
29. Duplex, 2003
30. Farewell My Lovely, 1975
31. Workin’ Moms, 2017-2021
32. Supermensch, 2014
33. The Four Seasons, 1981
34. The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, 1972
35. WTF with Marc Maron – Mike Myers, 2014
36. No Sudden Move, 2021
37. Lightning Over Water, 1980***
38. WTF with Marc Maron - Conan O'Brien Interview, 2011
39. The Onion Field, 1979
40. The Big Sleep, 1978



7:31:21


Dylan electric. The teenage girl (a fan!) calling Dylan a "fake neurotic" is pretty amazing and ahead of the curve when it comes to critiquing white post-war masculinity.





7:30:21


The greatest. I worshipped her as a kid.





7:29:21


It's Chris Marker's 100th birthday today.

Berliner Ballade, 1990.






















































7:28:21


Don't Look Back, 1965. Bob Dylan was the very definition of mercurial. Another Gemini singer (there are so many of them! And like Dave Gahan and Boy George, his Jupiter ruler is in Taurus) and shape-shifter with multiple planets in Gemini. I've never seen a more verbally confident person. He had an answer for everything, which was ultimately no answer. Or the art of not answering. Of eluding, evading, riddling. Turning everything around and back onto the person asking the questions.







































































































































7:27:21


Married to the Mob, 1988





























7:26:21


Never better. Never again. His face. His teeth before he straightened them. The purple light. His female drummer. Sparklers instead of iPhones. "No love, no hope in sight. Don't cry, he is coming."





7:25:21


He is funk-Beethoven here. He was playing this way--performing this way---before it was predictably/self-indulgently theatrical to do so. Before it could go viral, so it it feels eye-opening, surprising--especially with the posthumous time delay. He didn't do this for show. He did it for THE show. The show that was his musical stage.





7:24:21


They never played this live. Rockabilly electronica.





7:22:21


“Ordinary acts of fun have been diluted.
Place it in your memory
Leave it in your past
But don’t forget.”


-Depeche Mode, "In your memory," 1984


7:21:21

Interview with Mike White about The White Lotus. Era of infantilism.

















7:19:21


"Tell me, how did you lose your great nation
so quickly?
Because new speakers came forth, foolish young men."


-Naevius, The Game, 3rd century BC


7:17:21


Mark Hurst's amazing list. Start with DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. It doesn't track your web history at all.


https://goodreports.com/


7:16:21


Marc Maron: Haven't we been entertained enough?
Garry Shandling: We have been entertained enough. But we've forgotten that enough is enough.

-2011





7:15:21


"Sitting praying


God is saying


Nothing."


-Depeche Mode, "Nothing"


7:13:21


Soho 1979. From Wim Wenders' Lightning Over Water--his film about Nicholas Ray. My childhood best-friend lived on the same street.

The way Wenders watches the movies he loves with us in his 3 truly amazing and inimitable documentaries Tokyo-ga, Lightning Over Water, and Notebooks on Cities and Clothes is so touching.

In Lightning, after watching Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, Wenders steps outside of the Vassar screening to tell Ray, “It’s more about coming home than anything I’ve seen.” In reply, a terminally ill Ray tells the Vassar students: “This film is not a Western. It is a film about people who want to own a home of their own. That was the great American search at the time this film was made.”

The only time Soho was empty and peaceful like this again was during lockdown. Now it's back to being a shopping mall.





































































7:12:21


Highlander (1986) is such a great science-fiction film about mourning and time, past and future, though people mistake it for a silly 80s fantasy movie.














































7:5:21





7:4:21


Homicide, 1991. I hate Mamet, but this was an interesting moment between cop and criminal. Criminal asks about the ontology of evil. Why does it happen? How can we stop it? Cop says we need evil in order to subsidize the business of suffering.




















































7:3:21


"Everyone knows the power of things."


-Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death


7:2:21


John Hurt in The Hit, 1984



























7:1:21


June viewing


1. The Hit, 1984* (Incredible film. Stephen Frears' first. Feels like early Peter Weir. So deep. Amazing actors).
2. Homicide 1991
3. Broadway by Light, 1958*
4. The French 1982*
5. Sneakers, 1992
6. The Aviator’s Wife, 1981
7. The Wedding Singer, 1998
8. The Devil’s Advocate, 1997
9. Pacific Heights, 1990
10. The Firm, 1993
11. The Pelican Brief, 1993
12. Wallander, 2008
13. Palermo Shooting, 2008
14. The Set It Up, 2018
15. Fatherhood, 2021
16. Kanas, 1988
17. Spies Like Us, 1985
18. Malice, 1993
19. Presumed Innocent, 1990
20. Brother to Brother, 2004*
21. O Phantasma, 2000
22. Personal Best, 1982
23. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, 2003
24. Matchstick Men, 2003
25. Old Enough, 1984*
26. Honeymoon in Vegas, 1992
27. Bernice Bobs Her Hair, 1976
28. Addicted to Love, 1997
29. Bo Burnham: Inside, 2021*
30. Country, 1984*
31. Secret Honor, 1984
32. Hard Eight, 1996
33. Orson Welles in Spain, 1963*


6:30:21


Mark Hurst does a wonderful radio hour on WFMU.org called Techtonic on Mondays 6-7pm (EDT).





6:29:21


“Physical’ is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor approved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof.”

-Answer to Job, Jung


6:28:21


"Behind the scenes now is a presentation by the athletes on Instagram to reinforce their brand. So you have no idea what is actually real...What you're seeing in The French is an actual behind the scenes."


-Gerald Marzorati on Metrograph's screening of the tennis documentary, The French, 1981.


6:27:21


Fran Lebowitz on the true role of the critic. The critic as true discerner--not another version of the conformist. I think this is why talent is so politically incorrect now, and is never talked about anymore when it comes to art.

People pretend that the social disavowal of talent is some noble strike against elitism, when really talent is despised because it is uncommodifiable. It sets you apart. You can't buy it, as Lebowitz says. Talent is "bad" but social climbing and constant networking is fine because social climbing makes us all the same kind of corruptible monster.

The only "talent" most people have today is knowing how to successfully market and brand themselves despite their mediocrity and emptiness.


































































































































































































































































6:26:21


Remember Marvin Gaye, 1981



























6:25:21


Zodiac, 2007



























6:24:21


I have never had a TV-watching experience of emotional intensity comparable to my great movie-going experiences. Television is not just a first-class way to watch movies. The screen is too small. The image is technically inferior. The sound is disgracefully bad. As the viewer I can contain television, but the movies are so large they can contain me. I can’t lose myself in a television image, and neither, I suspect, can most other people. This is why people are forever re-creating movie memories in great detail, but rarely bring the same passionate enthusiasm to made-for TV films.

I believe, then, to experience the movie fully you have to go to the movies.

I was disturbed by some of the things I heard a few years ago during a conference I went to in Colorado. The American Film Institute are taking over the Aspen Institute for three days, and invited 45 people to gather for a discussion of the future of the feature film. By “feature film,” they meant both theatrical and made-for-TV features, the latter including docudramas and TV miniseries.

Many panelists’ remarks were couched in a technological Newspeak that I had trouble understanding at first. Software, for example was the word for TV programming—software to feed the hardware of our new home video entertainment centers. (“Software?” they said. “You know. That’s a word for product.” Product? I asked. “Yeah. Like a movie.”) Television consuming units was another expression that gave me trouble until I realized it was a reference to human beings. Windows was a very interesting word. It referred to the various markets that a new movie could be sold to (or “shown through”) once it was made. First there would be the theatrical window, a traditional booking in a movie theater. Then came the network window—sale to commercial television. After that the windows came thick and fast: the pay-cable window, video cassette window, video disc window, airline in-flight window, and so on. In the hierarchy of these windows, the traditional practice of showing the movie in a theater seemed furthest from everybody’s mind; the theatrical run was a sort of preliminary before the other markets could be carved up.

If this was a pessimistic view, it was mild compared to some of the visions of the future held by the conference participants. An important TV writer-producer, one of the most likable people at the conference, calmly predicted that in ten years people would be sitting at home in front of their wall-size TV screens while (and I am indeed quoting) “marauding bands roam the streets.” I thought he was joking, until he repeated the same phrase the next day.

What is clearly happening is very alarming.

A superior system of technology—motion pictures—is being sold out in favor of an inferior but more profitable system—pay video hardware/software combinations. The theatrical motion picture, which remains such a desirable item that is used to sell home cassette systems, is in danger of being held hostage. Truly daring an offbeat film subjects will become increasingly risky because they can’t easily be presold for showing through other “windows.”

The two edges that movie have enjoyed over television are greater quality and impact of image, and greater freedom of subject matter. No television is poised to absorb and emasculate the movies, all in the name of home entertainment.”


-Roger Ebert, prologue to A Kiss Is Still a Kiss, 1984



6:23:21


What we’ve watched on the Antenne 2 show Les Sept chocs de l’an 2000 is one possible direction of the future, not the only one. It could be that humanity is at the infancy stage of electronics but that, very quickly, like a child growing up, it will get bored of playing. Robotics, telematics, computer science are developments that, at each stage, are made once and for all. Because of one man’s invention, all other men will be deprived of inventing. Everything seems to be done in order to spare man the effort of living, both in his work and in his daily life. It’s terrible.

There are no longer any villages in Europe. There’s nothing but television. (Actually, this summer, in 1985, the TV shows have been so bad that people have started to read again. Luckily there was a show on the year 2000 produced by Pascale Breugnot, which was very good.). Television is like an herbicide. It has killed all social life. We see each other now, we talk about television, about what we’ve watched. Television is nothing, nothing. And yet we watch it anyway, and we watch it along with the rest of the country, we are there listening to the same things at the same time.

And what about God, what’s the plan there? This word that opened up the legendary void of man’s destiny, from person to person, will it still be uttered?…There let it be said, no “progress” whatsoever is possible.

That’s what I think.

-Marguerite Duras, “The Men of Tomorrow,” 1985


6:22:21


The Pelican Brief, 1993



























6:21:21


Palermo Shooting, 2008

































































































































6:20:21


Set it Up, 2018




















































6:18:21


"You don't get punished for your sins, your sins punish you." Chris Rock to Aziz Ansari about S3 of Master of None, 2021. 

Reminds me of James Baldwin's: "People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead."


6:17:21


I miss the old world every day. Dark empty bars, no smart phones, long conversations, real faces, person to person. I don't know where I am anymore. Everyone feels like an alien. Everything that was once considered laughable, rude, pathological, and narcissistic is now the norm.

Malice, 1993.



























6:16:21


Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune, 1990, on Presumed Innocent.

I have been rewatching a lot of early 90s thrillers that I grew up with. The spell of misogyny that belongs to this decade is so intense it is haunting.

The great Gordon Willis is the cinematographer behind many of these beautifully terrible films.



























6:15:21


Presumed Innocent, 1990




















































6:14:21


Chris Rock, 2021 (with Nicole Kidman)

























6:13:21


Personal Best, 1982



























6:12:21


Murder by Television, 1935



























6:11:21


Matchstick Men, 2003



























6:10:21


A great New York film about 80s childhood with an amazing opening score.





6:9:21


Listening to an old radio every day really does restore the element of surprise. It's completely different from listening to music on a computer.

































6:7:21


Pete burns to Boy George in 2003:


"i can't see any benefit to being famous...I think mystery has gone from stardom, whatever stardom may be."


6:6:21


In Hard Eight, Paul Thomas Anderson lights Gwyneth Paltrow and styles her hair like Gena Rowlands. Paltrow had a tragic look in her eyes in the 90s that she hasn't had since. That look is most evident in Hard Eight and Se7en. People always fixate on eye color when talking about eyes--never the "look" in someone's eyes, which Russians, for example, see as essential to character and depth. Windows to the soul, not windows to color.


6:5:21


I normally can't stand Bo Burnham, or his work, but there is something good about his new comedy special, Bo Durnham: Inside. It has some pathos and substance. Burnham in this is a bit like Graham from Sex Lies and Videotape for the internet generation (all the camera equipment, wires, and screens on the spartan floor of his apartment). There is also a great scene of him watching a digital clock in real time. When it hits midnight, he will turn 30. I also like that he has no tattoos on his body, at least none that I could see.

Best of all: the special features an Intermission sequence in the middle of the film. A title card followed by a 2-minute window washing of the camera lens--our screen


























An early YouTube star and internet prodigy, I think Burnham may be coming around to the idea that life on the web is a soulless nightmare. He is both part of the problem as well as a casualty.

As an Egyptian cabdriver put it to me yesterday during our discussion about social media and smartphone addiction post-pandemic: "The good people got better and the bad people got worse."




























































































































































6:4:21


"I think it gets very bad when you have to pretend in your own real life."


-Boy George, 1995



6:3:21


My mother on the Today Show in 1990. Our friends woke up at 6 am to take a photograph of the TV when she came on. She followed Bill Cosby. I remember her telling me even then that she thought he was really weird. But I didn't want to believe it as a kid because I loved Dr. Huxtable.





























6:2:21


"Is it possible to talk about a musical translation? We talk about musical interpretations. It's a shame that when we talk about translation, we stop at literal meaning. As if meaning could only be found in texts, and not in music." 


-Marguerite Duras, "Translation," 1987


6:1:21


May viewing


1. Trouble in Paradise, 1932*
2. The Hot Rock, 1972*
3. Jeremiah Johnson, 1972
4. The Kominsky Method, S3, 2021
5. White Boy, 2017
6. State of Play, 2009
7. The Comeback, 2005
8. Friends: The Reunion, 2021
9. Little Fires Everywhere, 2020*
10. Tale of Cinema, 2005
11. Master of None, S3, 2021
12. The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1996
13. Mare of Easttown, 2021
14. Hello Again, 1987
15. Miss Firecracker, 1989
16. Around the World With Orson Welles, Ep 1-6, 1955*
17. Woman is the Future of Man, 2004
18. The Woman in the Window, 2021
19. French Water, 2021
20. Daddy Longlegs, 2009
21. What Happened Was, 1994*
22. Halston, 2021
23. Mystery Date, 1991
24. Hacks, 2021
25. Caddyshack, 1980
26. Lawrence Anyways, 2012
27. Empire Falls, 2005
28. Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal, 2008
29. That Damn Michael Che, 2021
30. My Love: Six Stories of True Love, 2021
31. Audrey, 2020
32. Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness, 2021
33. I Confess, 1953
34. Bells of Atlantis, 1952-1953
35. The Rebels: Montgomery Clift, 1983
36. Wild River, 1960
37. The Searchers, 1956*
38. Killing Michael Jackson, 2019


5:31:21


Sydney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson (1972) opens with a 2:55 minute overture. Like the fades that were once used to exit a song, musical overtures prepared the viewer for the Time (world) of the film.

At one hour and 17 min there is also an Intermission/Entr'acte, which lasts for about a minute and 20 seconds.



























5:30:21


John Cale on the dream of music:

“Music became a very enticing language for me because I could communicate with people without having to say anything in English or Welsh.”


-The Guardian, 2011


5:29:21


Hacks, S1 E6, 2021


All men are good actors















































































5:28:21


Master of None, S3



























5:27:21


Tale of Cinema, 2005



























5:26:21


"It's absolutely horrible to find yourself before a book you can't write. I was alone with myself. No one could help me. There is no writing when there's no difficulty or else it's worthless, it's school kid writing, it's not writing...The fear you feel when you write, it's normal. You shouldn't fear that fear. If the fear didn't exist, you wouldn't write. When I reread my books, I feel fear. You have to trust this unknown, the self...Where do certain books come from? There is nothing on the page and then all of a sudden there are 300 pages. Where does it come from? You have to let it happen when you write, you can't control yourself, you have to let go because you don't know everything about yourself. You don't know what you're capable of writing. I've known some of the great writers, they never talk about it--I knew Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille intimately, I knew Genet, but I'm less sure about him. They never knew, they never talked about it. I think that's wrong actually. 30 years ago it was a kind of modesty talk to a certain extent and start training school of thought, you couldn't talk about what you were writing, it wasn't proper--and I think that Woman to Woman was the first time someone talked about it, one of the first times anyway. It's great to talk about it and at the same time it's very dangerous to have your books read before they're finished...At the end of every book, it's like the end of the entire world, it's like that every time. And then, like life, it begins again...I can film, it seems to me, more easily than I can write. For a film, I can always write, it's true, always. For a book, no. A book that remains to be filled always terrifies me, will always terrify me. The film, no. And yet, when I watch my films, I find them just as written as my books. Before a text, there is the naked wall of the book...It's the black of the book, always there, with each line, with each word. The film is open, public, you can see how it's made, how it's viewed, you are under the illusion that you are witnessing the verification of its creation."


-Marguerite Duras, "Flaubert Is" and "Atlantic Black" (from Me & and Other Writings)


5:25:21


Miss Firecracker, 1989



























5:24:21


Orson Welles, Around the world With Orson Welles, 1955:

“I don’t think progress and civilization go together, per say… I think if you move forward, you are not likely to be very civilized in the process. I don’t think everybody, we grown-ups, or kids either, should be hustled through our lives.”

Hustle/r, today's word par excellence, let’s not forget, originally meant: "To move in a quick, illegal manner." "To sell goods aggressively."

"Pushing activity in the interest of success; or swindle."

Maybe if we paid attention to the history of words, we wouldn't use them to define our lives and interests in such gross ways.

Like a lot of things, hustler used to mean what it meant. Now, since nothing makes sense, including the way people talk, hustling represents some kind of idealized, reputable drive. Like when everyone respectfully--reverently--refers to some popular celebrities and influencers as hustlers.

Call a spade a spade. Don't call a spade a gem.


5:23:21


Nothing vets like Time. Time is the long game. Only no one gives a shit about time anymore, or has time for it.














































5:22:21


The art of song titles. From 1987.























5:21:21


The Future of Man is a Woman, 2004.

I was disappointed in this film, but liked some of the reflections on time and fate. Why is every woman in the movie asking to suck the lead character's dick??? Does Hong Sangsoo know the men in his film are hopeless, insufferable, boring losers with nothing to say? Do the Safdie Brothers, whose Daddy Longlegs I watched the day before? At least the hapless, egocentric father in Kramer vs Kramer got his shit together, had a catharsis (remember catharsis?), and learned something.









































































5:20:21


"When you're young you see press as proof that you're good."


-Boy George, 1990


5:19:21


I think we need to start addressing injustice not purely by identity, but ethics to which everyone should be attendant and equally bound. Ethics means no one is off the hook. Ethics covers all bases. There is no group that can empower you away from it. Ethics are daily and forever.


5:18:21


What Happened Was, 1994



































































































































5:17:21


Hacks, 2021. The joke is that one generation has resilience, a sense of humor, and a backbone, and the other doesn't.















































































5:16:21


Pete Burns, 2004














































































5:15:21


When perpetrators act like victims. That's most of the culture now.

But as Pete Burns once said: "I'm not very good at playing mop for people."


5:14:21


Kim Wilde, 1992



















5:13:21


“Now music is phantom.”


-Charles Shaar Murray to Boy George in 2010


5:12:21


Caddyshack, 1980



























5:11:21


Successful people monopolize the discourse and narrative of suffering, failure, and pain. It is a power move and a power grab. You can only talk about failure if you are not a failure. You can only call out power if you have power. If you are actually strong, fair, and honest--struggling--you are attacked and marginalized.


5:10:21





















5:9:21


That Damn Michael Che, 2021




















































5:8:21


Peter Bogdanovich on Audrey Hepburn and the golden age of Hollywood in Audrey, 2020.















































































5:7:21





5:6:21


"There were many cultures that believed that the center of the mind was in the heart."

-Demetra George, 2021


5:5:21



















5:4:21


No one chooses their themes. People can only choose to pursue them--or not. And even that doesn't involve much free will. Your themes are your destiny. Your astrology.


5:3:21


Sarah Schulman on teaching in the post-millennial world. This was largely my experience teaching and being a grad-student in neo-liberal NYC institutions. All the students stressed and weaponized fragility rather than resilience. They leveraged and clung to their traumas and complained to the chair or dean the minute you said something they didn't like or understand. Instead of working through a conflict, or giving dedicated teachers the benefit of the doubt, or talking to the teacher first. Meanwhile, the actual predatory, narcissistic male professors got away with everything and attracted student cults. The New School is a corporate university that thrives off of this kind of power manipulation and nepotism.














































5:2:21





5:1:21


April viewing. Stars for things I loved. Had to take a break and process all the films and series I watched in Jan-March. I couldn't take much more in. I was tired. People forget how much energy all this content and input takes. As Axl Rose put it in 1988: "Do you ever wonder why you're given so much shit to read?" We need rest but the entire culture is upstream 24/7. Sink or swim--even during the pandemic. I always feel behind because there is no way to keep up, much less "get ahead." And what does it even mean in an age where everything is being obliterated? When we're behind masks all day. What is the point? Can we ever ask that question outside of suicide? What if stopping, breaking, refusing were anti-suicidal? What if it was pro-life, in the truest sense. We "hang in there" and "keep going", keep doing--slaves to adaption--as if any other way of thinking about the pandemic age is anti-life. As if thinking is anti-life. Anti-success, which I guess it is now. What the fuck is this American life? Do we even have it within us to ask that anymore?

We need time to make sense of it all, especially as "all" keeps expanding. All is a full-time job. All grows every second. All is everywhere, all the time. All has replaced love and relationships. All has replaced time. All has replaced life. All has replaced future. All has replaced originality and grace.

All has taken its toll. Even the things I love--the things that give me strength--take strength. Take so much time.


1. Logan Lucky, 2017
2. Jazz if Lights, 1954*
3. Home of the Brave, 1986*
4. Bent Time, 1984*
5. Ready Mix, 2021*
6. Booksmart, 2019
7. 50/50, 2011
8. The Trip to Greece, 2020
9. The Blue Room, 2014
10. Clockwatchers, 1997
11. The Night Visitor, 1971
12. Amy Schumer Learns to Cook, 2020
13. Expecting Amy, 2020*
14. Mare of Eastham, 2021
15. The New Romantics: A Fine Romance, 2001
16. All is Lost, 2013
17. A Shock to the System, 1990
18. The Nevers, E1
19. [Thelonius] Monk in Europe, 1968


5:1:21


Watched and rewatched 3 exquisite things today. Lucy Raven's new film installation at Dia, Ready Mix, Barbara Hammer's Bent Time (1984), and Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave (1986), which I loved so much as a kid, I had it on cassette.

Of course Anderson is a Gemini/Gemini rising.

Boy George in the 80s was pop-avant. Laurie Anderson in the 80s was avant-pop.



























4:30:21


Boy George's first Culture Club looks in 1982 are uncanny queer replicas of Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun and Cleopatra. I never noticed it before--I was too young when I first saw him in his Do You Really Want to Hurt Me video and I hadn't yet seen Taylor's films. Now I see his references and want to melt. George has often talked about how his favorite singing voices are the "suffering voices." The "laughing-crying voices." His young face was the suffering face. The laughing-crying face.













































































4:27:21


When people were masterpieces and total surprises. I have to rub my eyes when I watch this. It's hard to believe.





4:26:21


Great singers almost never understand the beauty of their old (as in young) voices. The "singing from the nose" thing always gets to me (see interview excerpt with Boy George below). Now everything is in tune and what of it? It sounds like "perfect" hell and offers no solace to me as a listener. I can't feel it.

Older pop singers always think their younger, untrained, voices were worse. What are they supposed to think, I guess. The truth hurts. A voice is not simply an "instrument"--your instrument-- to fine tune and master--it's the whole world meeting that voice at a specific moment in time, in a specific way, The voice catches what's in the air and reflects it. Sounds it. It's almost not-craft, it's mercurial. Alchemical. Zeitgeist. That's why so many of the singers I love are Geminis, or ruled by Mercury.

Literally a way with words. A mouthpiece. Boy George in 1984: "The only thing that's gotten me anywhere is my mouth."

It's all about time. Your voice may get "better," as so many singers insist, but for a pop/rock star that isn't the point the way it is the point for an opera singer, let's say.

The only person that somehow really did get better with age is Tina Turner, who blossomed in her 40s. But again, this was about time. Her freedom from Ike and the confluence of that individual and musical freedom crystallized and peaked mid-age in the 1980s. Right time, right voice. A miracle.

This makes me wonder if true freedom has something to do with the timing of a gift. Or is it the other way around? As in, when is it your time to sing? How will time--as in culture--pass through your voice in just the right way? Intermingling, spinning gold.

People are their best when they're really free. And maybe "growing into a song" isn't the point either. Maybe telegraphing it is. Maybe inhabiting what you only partially know is more important than completely knowing it or explaining it or mastering it. Maybe it's best Imagined, felt, transmitted, embodied. When I watch old YouTube videos of musicians and singers from the 1980s, which I do all the time lately (it helps me live while also causing me great sadness), what I feel--what I hear; what I understand; what I realize--is precisely the beauty and meaning of time. Which is what I need to hear right now and which is allowing me to somehow bear the present. And that makes me really understand the world that was being sung about. A world that has gone silent.

































4:23:21


It's interesting that as soon as pop/rock singers become precious about their voices--how to sing "well"--their voices cease to be interesting and special. They destroy their voices with drugs and cigarettes but also with vocal coaching and conformist ideas of "quality," which are meant to "correct" those damages and indulgences. But the damages are also cultural. They come from outside. An outside that seeps into the inside. An outside that has eradicated any inside. Reality shows like American Idol, The Voice, and America's Got Talent have destroyed even the once-great voices. At the end of the day, a great voice is energy, real emotion, good instincts, and creative independence. There is nothing worse than someone losing their voice. And everyone has lost their voice.


4:22:21


On YouTube, the era of 1980s music is evoked as the last generation of memory.





















4:20:21


"And dreams are made of emotion."


-Culture Club, "It's a Miracle"


4:19:21


Boy George on his drug addiction. "It's hard to be in your life."



















4:18:21





4:17:21


Julian Casablancas on his alcoholism and not remembering the early years of The Strokes.

What does addiction have to do with the damaging effects of fame? Is fame the revered paradigm for modern existence precisely because it is so destructive? Because it requires lying and addiction? Because its so-called rewards are actually punishments?

I am asking all these questions in the third volume of Time Tells.


































4:13:21


I have a feeling that David Fincher's fireworks over a Vallejo, CA skyline in his opening to Zodiac is his version of Woody Allen's Manhattan intro.


4:11:21


Baby Dave



















4:9:21


The first volume of my new trilogy of books, Time Tells, is done. The first installment is on time and comes out in November. You can preorder here on

AMAZON


4:8:21


A recorded reading of "I Give You My Word" and "Famous Tombs" from my 2019 book Picture Cycle.

The readings are in conjunction with the current exhibition of my 2015 24-hr film Love Sounds, on view at the Emmanuel Layr Gallery in Vienna, and curated by Pia-Marie Remmers.

Reading by Caitlin Mulligan.





4:7:21


Tina Turner, 2020. Dave Gahan said the same thing.



















4:4:21


Tina Turner, 1985



























4:3:21


UNREAL. She is 45 here. Nonstop, vast talent. Goddess of energy, life force, and beauty.





4:2:21


March viewing. Stars for things I loved.

March:

1. I May Destroy You, S1, 2020
2. Tina, 2021*
3. Bad Trip, 2020
4. Nate Bargatze: The Greatest Average American, 2021
5. The Palm Beach Story, 1942
6. L’Intrus, 2004
7. In the Soup, 1992*
8. Christine, 2016
9. Skin Game, 1971*
10. The Making of The Thing (doc), 1982
11. Wim Wenders: Interview with Michael Almereyda, 2016
12. Wrong Move, 1975
13. Until the End of the World, 1991-1994
14. I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard, 2012
15. Music Palace, 2005
16. Notebook on Cities and Clothes, 1989*
17. Too Much on My Mind: Wim Wenders on The American Friend
18. Blood Work, 2002
19. Dead Pool. 1988
20. The Pleasure of Love, 1991
21. Charles and Lucie, 1979*
22. Allen v. Farrow Podcast: Part Three, HBO
23. Allen v. Farrow Podcast: Part Two, HBO
24. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, 2019*
25. Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1967
26. True Crime, 1999
27. Rocky Balboa, 2006
28. The Real McCoy, 1993
29. Highlander, 1986*
30. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, 2001
31. Allen vs Farrow, Episode 4, 2021
32. The Dark Knight, You’re Wrong About podcast, 2021
33. Jeffrey Dahmer, You’re Wrong About podcast, 2019
34. The Haunting of Bly Manor, 2020
35. Goodbye, Red Dragon, 2003
36. Merrily We Go To Hell ,1932 *
37. Judas and the Black Messiah, 2021
38. Women Make Film, Episode 1, 2018
39. The Cars that Ate Paris, 1974
40. Allen vs Farrow, Episode 3, 2021
41. The Asphyx, 1972
42. Puberty Blues, 1981*
43. The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945*
44. The In-Laws, 1979
45. Sun Don’t Shine, 2012
46. Brian Regan: Knunchucks and Flamethrowers, 2017
47. Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, 2021
48. Cobra Kai, S3, 2021
49. Moxie, 2021
50. On the Record, 2020


4:1:21


The Queen of Wands. Black cat at her feet. Still gives me goosebumps when I hear her sing this song. The way it starts. Supernatural. I was 8 or 9 when I first heard this cover. The teenage daughter of my parents' friends played it for me in her room while I starred at the album cover. She was a punk, but she liked Tina. She said, "Listen to this." A sorcerer's voice. It actually hurts to hear it again. There is a whole universe in this woman's voice. Will we ever have people like this again? There are many reasons to cry.





3:31:21


Tina Turner to Kurt Loder in 1985, at the height of her success and shortly before she found true love.

Listening to Tina for my birthday, "Ask Me How I Feel."






































































































































































































































































3:29:21


Wim Wenders on Paris Texas, 2001



































































































































3:28:21


The Palm Beach Story, 1942
























































3:27:21


It took 6 years but they got their answer.



















3:26:21


Wim Wenders, 2014













3:25:21





3:24:21


Until the End of the World. 3 hours in. 2 more to go.





























3:23:21


Until the End of the World, 1991-1994





























3:22:21


Wim Wenders on Kings of the Road, men, Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, and The American Friend. Wenders' account of the American Friend shoot is priceless, including having to detox Hopper from drugs and his Apocalypse Now character before he could start shooting his movie.

















































































3:21:21


Julie Miller on the horrible Hammer men, Vanity Fair, 2021















3:20:21


Kim Basinger on feminism. I agree.



















3:19:21


Charles and Lucie, 1979



























3:18:21


Charles and Lucie, Nelly Kaplan, 1979



























3:17:21


"She fought to protect herself, but how do you protect yourself from isolation or loneliness?"

-Hilton Als on Toni Morrison, The New Yorker, 2020


3:16:20


Match-dissolve, Highlander, 1986. Time spits him out 5 centuries later onto Soho's Broome Street, only blocks away from my house in NYC. The exterior of his beautiful loft is real, the towering interior is invented. Another time, another place. To be modern is to be lost, alienated. To be old-fashioned is to feel banished. Homeless. The 80s and 90s were full of movies about spirits in the modern world--what Victoria Nelson (in The Secret Life of Puppets) argues is the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture. If we had faith, maybe we wouldn't need religion, or fame. Highlander: "When only a few of us are left, we will feel an irresistible pull towards a faraway land."

PS. It even has a Barry Lyndon moment.















































































3:15:21


The Haunting of Bly Manor, 2020



























3:14:21


"The Road to Reckoning," Maureen Orth, 2021:

"Before publication, Vanity Fair’s legal team helped to make sure that, if we were sued, our case would stand up in court. So we went over the piece line by line for two days, spending eight hours in one session, to make sure everything checked out. It’s hard to overestimate the idol worship of Woody Allen in those New York–centric days. To all the nerdy males in charge of the cultural desks of major media outlets, Woody was a god, not just for his undeniable talent and intellect but because he always ended up with the beautiful blonde in his movies...To me it’s always been disturbing to see just how effectively the celebrity industrial complex protects its gods. Like Michael Jackson (whom I chronicled five times), Woody Allen was considered such a universal genius that his entitlement was complete—he carried on with total impunity, no matter how undeniable the facts might have been."


"My Woody Allen Problem," A.O. Scott, 2018:

"The man himself was a plausible definition of sexy. The achievement of his early movies, culminating in “Annie Hall” (his seventh feature as a director) was to turn a scrawny, bookish, self-conscious nebbish into a player. His subsequent achievement was to turn himself into a serious filmmaker without surrendering that initial cachet. The Allen character in his various incarnations might be insecure, childishly silly, socially hapless (or all of the above), but he was never single for long. The aspects of his temperament held up for mockery — the hyper-intellectualism, the snobbery, the irreducible Jewishness — doubled as weapons of seduction. His self-deprecation was a tactic, a feint, a rope-a-dope, and he was plagued less by the frustration of his desires than by their fulfillment. As soon as the heart got what it wanted, it wanted something else. What impressionable, heterosexual, unathletic adolescent boy would not want a piece of that action?

O.K., fine. Not all adolescent males. But underneath the neurosis and the shrugging, stammering self-directed put-downs was a powerful sense of entitlement. The Woody Allen figure in a Woody Allen movie is almost always in transit from one woman to another, impelled by a dialectic of enchantment, disappointment and reawakened desire. The rejected women appear shrewish, needy, shallow or boring. Their replacements, at least temporarily, are earnest, sensuous, generous and, more often than not, younger and less worldly than their predecessors. For a very long time, this was taken not as a self-serving fantasy but as a token of honesty, or freedom from sentimental conceptions of domestic love."


"Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, and What Popular Culture Wants You to Believe," Alexis Soloski, 2021:

"There are two stories. In one, a father molests his 7-year-old daughter. In the other, a mother coaches that daughter to falsely accuse the father. These stories, one proposed by Mia Farrow and her advocates, one by Woody Allen and his, clearly contradict each other. No sane person can accept both. Crucially, only one lets you feel mostly OK about watching “Annie Hall” again.

I was a teenager in 1992 when this particular scandal broke, so I experienced it through the cracked prism of gender narratives absorbed from the movies and shows and stealthily read supermarket tabloids of the day: That a woman should be pretty but not too pretty, sexy but not too sexy, smart but not too smart, empowered but mostly in a way that means wearing boob-forward dresses and high heels — but for you! because you want to! — and doesn’t trespass on any actual power. A fun fact about high heels: They make it harder to run away. There were limitless ways, the culture informed me, that a woman could get it wrong — “it” being her body, her career, her accusations of abuse."


"What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?", Claire Dederer, 2017

"The men want to know why Woody Allen makes us so mad."




3:13:21


"Mia's Story," Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair, 1992:


"There was an unwritten rule in Mia Farrow’s house that Woody Allen was never supposed to be left alone with their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. Over the last two years, sources close to Farrow say, he has been discussing alleged “inappropriate” fatherly behavior toward Dylan in sessions with Dr. Susan Coates, a child psychologist. In more than two dozen interviews conducted for this article, most of them with individuals who are on intimate terms with the Mia Farrow household, Allen was described over and over as being completely obsessed with the bright little blonde girl. He could not seem to keep his hands off her. He would monopolize her totally, to the exclusion of her brothers and sisters, and spend hours whispering to her. She was fond of her daddy, but if she tried to go off and play, he would follow her from room to room, or he would sit and stare at her. During the school year, Allen would arrive early at Mia Farrow’s West Side Manhattan apartment, sit on Dylan’s bed and watch her wake up, and take her to school. At her birthday party last July, at Farrow’s country house in Bridgewater, Connecticut, he promised that he would keep away from the children’s table so that Dylan could enjoy her birthday party with her friends, but he seemed unable to do that. Allen, who was a fearful figure to many in the household, was so needy where Dylan was concerned that he hovered over her through the whole party, and when the cake arrived, he was right behind her, helping to blow out the candles.

Calling attention to someone’s birthday-party behavior may seem trivial at best. However, Dr. Coates, who just happened to be in Mia’s apartment to work with one of her other children, had only to witness a brief greeting between Woody and Dylan before she began a discussion with Mia that resulted in Woody’s agreeing to address the issue through counseling. At that point Coates didn’t know that, according to several sources, Woody, wearing just underwear, would take Dylan to bed with him and entwine his body around hers; or that he would have her suck his thumb; or that often when Dylan went over to his apartment he would head straight for the bedroom with her so that they could get into bed and play. He called Mia a 'spoilsport' when she objected to what she referred to as 'wooing.' Mia has told people that he said that her concerns were her own sickness, and that he was just being warm. For a long time, Mia backed down. Her love for Woody had always been mixed with fear. He could reduce her to a pulp when he gave vent to his temper, but she was also in awe of him, because he always presented himself as 'a morally superior person.'

Since the incident, Dylan has burst out, even in the middle of playing games, with statements like “I don’t want him to be my daddy.” “The thing that people have to understand in this case is that it is not Mia versus Woody; it’s just a plain simple fact that a seven-year-old child has told her mother something and that her mother has to choose to believe her,” says a member of the household. “If her mother doesn’t believe her, who is going to believe her?” Lynn Nesbit observes, “Mia says, ‘How can you turn your back on a seven-year-old?’ Believe me, her life would be a heck of a lot easier if she dropped it.”


3:12:21


Goodbye, Dragon Inn, 2003

















































































3:11:21


Shadow































3:10:21


Women Make Film, Episode 1, 2018 (from Merrily We Go To Hell, 1932)



























3:9:21


Research




















































3:8:21


Allen vs Farrow, 2021. Episode 3. These taped phone calls are bone chilling. They tell you everything there is to know about who Allen really is.





























3:7:21


Brian Regan: Nunchucks and Flamethrowers, 2017



























3:6:21


“What is most thought-provoking? How does it show itself in our thought-provoking time?... Most thought-provoking is that we are still not thinking—not even yet, although the state of the world is becoming constantly more thought-provoking.”

-Heidegger


3:3:21





3:2:21


Drew Dixon, On the Record, 2020

















































































3:1:21


February viewing:

1. The Nightcomers, 1971
2. Gertrud, 1964
3. Bugsy, 1991
4. Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy, 2021
5. The King of Staten Island, 2020
6. In Defense of Food, 2015
7. The Driller Killer, 1979
8. The Crazies, 1973
9. Long Weekend, 1978
10. Season of the Witch, 1972
11. Death Line, 1972
12. Brian Regan: On the Rocks, 2021
13. Daughters of Darkness, 1971
14. No No Sleep, 2015
15. Walker, 2012
16. Rebels of the Neon King, 1992
17. Allen vs Farrow, 2021
18. Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, 2021
19. I Care A lot, 2020
20. The Little Things, 2021
21. 10 to Midnight, 1983
22. Get Hard, 2015
23. Les Salaudas, 2013
24. Before the Rain, 1994
25. About Time, 2013
26. Deep Crimson, 1996
27. One False Move, 1992
28. The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946
29. Rosetta, 1999
30. Coup de torchon, 1981
31. Actress, 2014
32. Talking with Ozu, 1993
33. You Only Live Once, 1937
34. Michael Haneke on the Piano Teacher
35. Beau Travail, 1999
36. Life is Sweet, 1990
37. They Live by Night, 1948
38. Watermelon Man, 1970
39. Celebration, 2007
40. Towards Mathilde, 2005
41. U.S. Go Home, 1994
42. When Tomorrow Comes, 1939
43. Olivier, Olivier 1992
44. Nanette and Boni, 1996
45. Chocolat, 1988
46. Back Street,1939
47. Daddy Nostalgia, 1990
48. Rebecca, 2020


2:28:21


Gertrud, 1964



























2:27:21


Jean-Luc Godard: Do you believe in the Devil?
Marguerite Duras: Me? I believe in the Devil, yes. I believe in evil. Because I believe in love, I also believe in evil...Deep down I'm very moral! [Laughter].

-Duras/Godard Dialogues, 1979


2:25:21


Season of the Witch, 1972



























2:24:21


"It occurred to me simultaneously that, of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. In days when juice came into one as an article without duty, one tried to distribute it - but always without success; to further mix metaphors, vitality never "takes". You have it or you haven't it, like health or brown eyes or honor or a baritone voice. I might have asked some of it from her, neatly wrapped and ready for home cooking and digestion, but I could never have got it - not if I'd waited around for a thousand hours with the tin cup of self-pity."

-Fitzergerald on the mysterious origin of vitality, "The Crack-Up," 1936


2:21:21


On Skid Row in Los Angeles, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, 2021












































































































2:19:21


Claire Denis on the meaning of life.

















2:18:21





2:17:21


Grégoire Colin smiling in Beau Travail and Before The Rain




















































2:10:21


Beau Travail, 1999



























2:8:21


The first volume of my new book, TIME TELLS, will be out on Nov 9, 2021. Copies can be preordered now via AMAZON


2:7:21


Precursor to Beau Travail's final dance.





2:6:21


Interview with the great actor Grégoire Colin. This is why Denis frequently gives us dancing scenes to look at. Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, 35 Shots of Rum, Colin's amazing 5-minute dance solo in U.S. Go Home, Beau Travail. So that we can observe what the bodies of people and the way they move tells us about the lives that they lead.























2:5:21


Chocolat, 1988

MASTERPIECE



























2:4:21


Urban Samurai. Your word must be bond no matter the century. The time. The consequences. I saw this film in 2000 in Berlin and it's been in my heart and mind ever since. I always taught it in my film classes. Jarmusch at his best. Forest Whittaker's face (and body) kills me. RZA's score is holy. The ghost dog that looks at Ghost Dog is the ghost dog that looks at Cassavetes at the end of Love Streams.




















































2:3:21


In Tokyo-ga (1985), Wim Wenders makes the touching remark: “The trains, the trains, all the trains in [Yasujirō] Ozu’s films. Not a single film in which there isn’t at least one train.” In 1980, Godard told Dick Cavett: “Time is the space between people and movies are the train, not the station.” If it is because of the camera that we can talk to each other, much of 20th century cinema posits it was because of the train that we could love each other—see each other. Go back.


Back Street, 1932



























2:2:21


Ozu's late-stage camera. Tokyo-ga, 1985



























2:1:21


January viewing:


1. No Fear, No Die, 1990
2. Bigger Than Life, 1956
3. La Promesse, 1996
4. Young Ahmed, 2019
5. One Sings, The Other Doesn't, 1976
6. Bacurau, 2019
7. Daddy Nostalgia, 1990
8. Pretend It’s a City, 2021 (Netflix)
9. Big Mouth (2021, Netflix)
10. Tamborine: Extended Cut, 2021 (Netflix)
11. Martin Eden, 2019
12. Varda by Agnes, 2018
13. Spirits of the Dead, 1969
14. Vitalina Varela, 2019
15. The Silent Partner, 1978
16. Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, 2013
17. Career Girls, 1997
18. Something Borrowed, 2011
19. Ministry of Fear, 1944
20. Jimi Hendrix at Monterey, 1967 (Released 1987)
21. Synonyms, 2019
22. A Christmas Tale, 2008
23. High Hopes, 1988
24. My Golden Days, 2015
25. Meantime, 1983
26. Paul Schrader: Man Alone in a Room, 2018
27. Old Boyfriends, 1979
28. The President’s Analyst, 1967
29. Make Way for Tomorrow, 1937
30. The Cobweb, 1955
31. The Ghost of Peter Sellers, 2018
32. Possessed, 1931
33. My Sex Life or How I got into an argument, 1996
34. Bed, Bell and Candle, 1958
35. Brian Eno - 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell to Earth, 2012
36. Mank, 2020
37. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, 2017
38. Phantom Thread, 2017
39. Kevin Hart: Zero Fucks Given, 2020 (Netflix)
40. Let Them All Talk, 2020
41. The Lake House, 2006
42. Autumn in New York, 2000
43. The 5-Year Engagement, 2021
44. Life Stinks, 1991
45. One hundred and One Years, 1995
46. My Favorite Wife, 1940
47. Still of the Night, 1982


1:31:21


La Promesse, 1996



























1:30:21


Godfrey Cheshire on Young Ahmed's miracle ending.

















































































1:29:31


Young Ahmed, 2019



























1:28:21


One Sings, the Other Doesn't, 1976















































































1:27:21


Kleber Mendonça Filho on Bacurau, 2019.

I always think about this: how can we make viewers feel the violence of violence?



















1:26:21


Martin Eden, 2019



























1:25:21


Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut, 2021



























1:24:21


Varda by Agnes, 2019






















































1:23:21


Spirits of the Dead ('Toby Dammit' segment), Fellini, 1969



























1:22:21


Career Girls, 1997




















































1:21:21


Vitalina Varela, 2019























1:20:21


"Tonight the streets are full of actors."





1:19:21


Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, 2013





































































1:18:21


Desplechin on My Golden Days, generational stories, historical memory, and the expulsion of adults in 80s cinema.























1:14:21


Agnes Varda to Mathieu Armaric, 2012














































1:13:21





1:11:21





1:10:21


Deep into Criterion. Watching a lot of early Mike Leigh and Desplechin (can't get over young Mathieu Almaric).


High Hopes, 1988














































1:9:21


My Golden Days, 2015























1:8:21


Lost versions





1:7:21


Meantime, 1983























1:6:21


Joan Tewkesbury on Old Boyfriends.














































12:31:20


No words. Except that 20 minutes before I found this video, I listened to an interview from 1997, where Dave Gahan, who had just returned from the dead, admitted to borrowing some of his stage moves from Prince. I knew it.





12:30:20


E.M. Forster: "He stopped up in the room till dinner, fighting with ghosts he had loved...Life had proved a blind alley and he must cut back and start again. One could be absolutely transformed provided one didn't care a damn for the past. Farewell, beauty and warmth."

Full moon tonight, the night before the end of a very difficult year.


12:24:20


Merry Christmas





12:22:20


The trailer for my forthcoming film, Bulk Collection.



Bulk Collection trailer from masha tupitsyn on Vimeo.




12:21:20


Depeche Mode, Hamburg, 1984. I return to this amazing concert often. I love the way he holds the mic during this period. Both hands. Eyes closed.







































































12:20:20


Silver































12:19:20


Dave Gahan, 1988, on Depeche Mode getting bad press in the UK. This video is so beautifully lit--the inky black background, the look in his eyes, his light bulb skin. Almost chiaroscuro.

































12:18:20


Snowstorm



































12:17:20





12:16:20


Low tide































12:15:20


Sunday































12:14:20


Susan: Do you know what happened? Does anyone know what happened? Elon Musk…sent many, many telecom satellites into the sky that look exactly like stars, exactly like stars. So now when we humans gaze at the night sky, they won’t know if they’re gazing at a star or at a machine. And we at this table, at this little table, we are among the last, the very last, ever, ever, to have seen the actual, real, the honest, truthful night sky from the ocean. We saw stars. Just stars.


-Let Them All Talk, 2020


12:13:20





12:12:20


Jewel





12:11:20


Sunset. 4 days until the total solar eclipse.















































12:10:20


Sunset































12:9:20


Turn off the lights and listen with your eyes closed.





12:8:20


"This is a high price country."


-James Baldwin talking about America with Maya Angelou


12:7:20


Dave Gahan on making Violator, 1990

























12:6:20





12:5:20


Lately I've been reading a lot of YouTube comments on the videos I watch. I never read the comment section before. They things people write are so weird and tribal. It's like an alternate universe. Who are these people talking to? Occasionally there are some interesting threads. Here are some related to Depeche Mode and the 80s in general.

A lot of my new book is about time travel on the internet.


























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