Filming Detroit III
Filming Detroit III
—for Joseph Cornell
“The emphatic truth—
of gesture in the important
moments of life”
—Baudelaire
_________________
Language seems to go thru a dark passage to beauty but the creative act of the filmic itself seems to find a way. Since we’ve been forced to see movies as “talkies” rather than “silent” stills (boxes)—is it any wonder that the filmic should be so rare?
A few flashes come from Cornell’s work—perhaps elsewhere? Not much though—so that one might have to say that the “filmic” doesn’t exist—there’s only “talkie” cinematic language, cinematic narrative, cinematic dialog, cinematic plots, cinematic acting, cinematic direction.
The cinematic isn’t the same as the silent surrealist filmic—it’s as far removed from the filmic as the novelistic is from the novel. Can one write & exist in the novelistic—while not writing novels?
Paradoxically, the filmic doesn’t seem to be able to be grasped while its happening, in the movement, in its “motion picture” state—but only as artifact, the “still.” Perhaps Cornell sensed this after “Rose Hobart”—and concentrated on his surreal boxes after that?
After Miss Dali acted out her bitch-scene tipping over the projector & then complaining that Cornell had telepathically stolen the same “Rose Hobart” idea for a film from him, well…can one blame Cornell from concentrating on surreal box-art after that?
What is a still? A photo from a film? Something from the pages of Cahiers du cinema? Pictures in a textbook? A department store catalog? A pornographic picture from “My Baby Is Black”?
What if the so-called obtuse filmic lies not in movement or catalogs of picture books or porno? What if a diegetic horizon is needed to “freeze-frame” & configure the filmic mobility theoretically as a framework for a presentational unfolding combining the stills with a story (diegesis) so that a new “third obtuse meaning” is born from the lower depths?
In some ways this has already happened with graphic novels & comix. Such innovations represent the “still-shot” as filmic when “doubled” within a series of frames not necessarily arranged horizontally but rather vertically. As with this Crazy Kat cartoon. Notice it’s vertical storytelling schematic.
The last “still” of Krazy Kat in the pond offers us the inside-story as a fragment of the whole vertical narrative. In this shot the center of gravity is no longer between horizontal frames of other stills but rather “inside the shot”—the accentuation of the last fragment expands the absurdity of the whole story..
This vertical “diegesis-complexity” lies with accentuation within the fragment—as Cornell does with his vertical boxes composed of various “frames.” Each box has a vertical reality of articulation—as opposed to the cinematic horizontal narrative effect.
Cornell’s vertical filmic narrative is at once parodic & absurd. The obtuse or third meaning isn’t “a specimen chemically extracted from the substance of the film,” but rather “a trace of supercilious bits, hints, clues” experienced in a “stop-action” still-shot.
The “stop-action” still-shot is the fragment of a second text whose existence never exceeds the fragment. Both film & still find themselves in a palimpsest relationship without being on top of each other or extracted from each other. There’s a surreal co-existence of images—doing their Cornell box-thing.
The “still” throws off the constraint of cinematic time—as with Cornell’s boxes which are aesthetically as well as technically & theoretically like a silent text or screenplay that’s not committed to logico-temporal order while readymade time is free.
The “still,” Cornell’s boxes, institute a readymade reading at once both instantaneous & vertical—what happens when this happens?
Cornell’s boxes as well as his “Rose Hobart”—perform a vertical mutation of filming degree zero. But what is that?
________________________
Collage of Detroit’s Lee Plaza Hotel
—“Detroit’s Beautiful,
Horrible Decline,” Time
Once one of the most luxurious residential hotels in Detroit, Lee Plaza closed in the 1990s.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089,00.html#ixzz24wxyHTDk
Filming Detroit II
Filming Detroit II
—for Joseph Cornell
“A bad event
happened to me
but its having
occurred became
even more complicated
in my thinking
about it.”
—Barrett Watten
Bad History
This Barthes-esque “third meaning” has its own way of structuring the film differently as Cornell does creating his “Rose Hobart” film out of the “East of Borneo” talkie motion picture.
Cornell’s “third meaning” emerges with the “stills” & condensed imagery of “Rose Hobart” (15 minutes)—compared that of Borneo (1 hour 10 minutes).
Cornell’s “film” begins only when language & “talkie” metalanguage ends.
Everything that can be said about “East of Borneo” can be said in a written text entitled “Borneo”—except this third or “obtuse” meaning. One can gloss everything in “Borneo” except the obtuse quality of Rose Hobart’s face, her gestures, her actions.
This obtuse filmic lies in the region where Rose Hobart herself pauses, stops, smiles, looks, moves, lives & performs for us her own story—and language or cinematic dialog or the soundtrack can’t really describe this third world of nuanced, obtuse meaning that’s seeable but not describable.
Except with Bad History surreal aesthetics & readymade filmics…
________________________
Collage of Detroit’s William Livingstone House
—“Detroit’s Beautiful,
Horrible Decline,” Time
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089_1850985,00.html
Constructed in 1893 in the once elegant Brush Park neighborhood, this home, designed by architect Albert Kahn, was moved from its original location several years ago by preservationists who hoped to maintain it. It was demolished last year.
Filming Detroit
Filming Detroit
—for Joseph Cornell
“Me? I pursue an
image, no more.”
—Gérard de Nerval
“The still offers us
the inside of the fragment.”
—Roland Barthes,
“The Third Meaning,”
Image-Music-Text
_____________________
Cornell’s boxes institute a reading that is at once instantaneous & vertical—it scorns cinematic narrative “talkie” horizontal time.
The boxes are “stills”—still-shots that show us how to dissociate technical restraint from what is cinematically indescribable: the “third meaning.”
The boxes are “silent” screenplays—they’re “stills” from a film that isn’t simply seen & heard cinematically, but rather stops in time & space so that the “fragment” can be scrutinized and listened to attentively.
This seeing & hearing enables the “box” to be a “still” that’s a “ready-made” object, a ready-made scene within a film that exists in a new way, i.e., thru the “third meaning” which is vertical not horizontal narrative.
_________________
Collage of Detroit’s Michigan Central Station
—“Detroit’s Beautiful,
Horrible Decline,” Time
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089_1850985,00.html
The New Constructivist Moment
The New Constructivist Moment
Compare the ArcelorMittal Orbit (2012):
“According to Anish Kapoor, the design brief from the Mayor's 2012 Olympics office was for a "tower of at least 100 meters (330 ft)"—looking for an icon to match the Eiffel Tower or the Tower of Babel with the sense of "building the impossible" that "has something mythic about it" and that the form “straddles Eiffel and Tatln.”
With Tatlin’s Constructivist Tower (1919):
Tatlin's Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and steel. In materials, shape, and function, it was envisaged as a towering symbol of modernity. It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height, around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended geometric structures.
These structures would rotate at different rates of speed. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings, and this would complete a rotation in the span of one year.
Above the cube would be a smaller pyramid housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. Further up would be a cylinder, which was to house an information center, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. At the top, there would be a hemisphere for radio equipment.
There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcelorMittal_Orbit#cite_note-OrbitBrochureP11-13
Psycho IV
PSYCHO IV
“I masturbated. In
fantasies,
my adolescent form was
replaced by Janet Leigh's
from Psycho"—Scott Heim
The Death of Anthony Perkins
________________
Stuffed owls creep—
Up and down the old
Ratty-carpet stairs
Mother smells—
Something cheesy in
The motel down below
_______________
Stuffed swallows blink—
Norman smiles as he
Unlocks Gavin’s door
Gavin’s taking a—
Nice hot shower
It’ll be his last one
_________________
The shower curtain—
Slides back and what
Does Norman see?
It’s handsome Gavin—
Beating off and starting
To fuckin cum
_______________
He’s got soap in—
His eyes & can’t see
The big butcher knife
Besides his eyes—
Are closed as he
Shoots out his brains
_____________________
Norman’s heart—
Pitter-patters away
Gavin’s going spaz
Then comes the—
First stab deep into
Gavin’s flexed ass
_________________
A floorboard snaps—
Like a backbone up
There in the mansion
An antique banister—
Creaks with sharp pain
As Gavin screams
_____________
With each fatal stab—
John Gavin falls to his
Knees in the shower
Ending up with his—
Eyeball gazing down
Into the swirling drain
__________
Tony plays the role—
Transvestite Murderer
So very perfectly
Taking his time—
Taxidermy for Gavin
The hot young Toughie
Psycho III
PSYCHO III
“The cinematic murder lasts a
total of forty-five seconds, but
seems like an eternity"
—Scott Heim
The Death of Anthony Perkins
________________
Gavin plunks down his—
Billfold and his big
Black Luger
He’s hot and gritty—
The shoddy Bates
Motel stinks
________________
John Gavin—
Takes a shower
Next door
Norman ogles thru—
The secret peephole
At the stud!!!
____________
John Gavin’s—
A hot Number #1
Undressing himself
His curlicue pubes—
Sizzle like hot
Frying bacon
_______________
Gavin strips off—
His tight shorts
His Speedo underwear
His nice ass—
Whispering invitations
To the motel walls
________________
Norman is pretty—
Persnickety when it
Comes to Tricks
But John Gavin’s—
Ten inches makes
Things simply perfect
___________________
Saguaros and yuccas—
Pose like sinister statues
In the parking lot
The VACANCY sign—
Blinks neon blood-red
Nervously outside
_________________
It all seems filmic—
Somehow deliberate:
A coyote howls in the dark
Norman plays with myself—
Smokes a big fat joint
Cruising Gavin’s groin
______________________
Mother waits up there—
In her rocking chair by
The mansion window
Back and forth—
The creaking sound of
Death approaching
Psycho II
PSYCHO II
“I lingered under—
needles of scalding water”
—Scott Heim
The Death of Anthony Perkins
__________________
Anthony Perkins—
Pretty much seemed
Dead already
Not as dead—
As Vera Miles was
Dead though
______________
Snooping through—
The Bates basement
Only to meet her doom
A butcher knife—
That bulls-eyed her
Screaming mouth
________________
I spend all my—
Time in the asylum
From day to day
Drugs simmering—
In my arteries and
Varicose veins
_________________
Miss Hitchcock—
Superimposes a grinning
Skull on my face
And then Scott Heim—
Crawls into bed with me
No Vacancy in this place
Psycho
PSYCHO
“I won’t even
harm a fly”
—Norman Bates
Psycho (1960)
__________________
Mommy Dearest—
And I live up here
In the mansion
On the hill—
Above the nice
Bates Motel
_________________
We both simply—
Adore toasted
Cheese sandwiches
She likes to—
Crochet in her
High-backed rocker
__________________
I dress up—
As Mom on Halloween
It’s great fun
Drag is the—
Only way to get
Off these days
____________
Taxidermy—
Turns me on too
Gutting dead people
Just the other day—
I stuffed a really cute
Nosy Detective
_________________
I got him real good—
Coming up the stairs
Nice slice and dice
Then I took him—
Down in the basement
And did him nice
___________________
My attractions—
Seem to center on
Tony Perkins
He’s my Hollywood—
Gay Silver Screen
Heartthrob Queen
________________
I’m not much—
Attracted to that
Slutty Janet Leigh—
I really prefer—
Her hot boyfriend
Cute John Gavin
_________________
His broad shoulders—
Those sexy tight hips
His bedroom eyes
I’d sure like to—
Get him in the Bates
Motel showers
.
Latter Dayz
LATTER DAYZ (2012)
________________
Christian
Markelli: This is me not talking to you.
[This is the story about
me falling in love with a young Mormon guy. Him and his buddies moved into my
apartment house here in SF. It was love at first sight.]
[joking around with
Christian]
Elder Aaron Davis: Dude, you're way too easy.
Christian Markelli: [seductively] So I've heard.
Elder
Aaron Davis: Well, I'm already going to hell for kissing you
so I may as well take the scenic route.
Christian
Markelli: I don't believe in coincidence. These days, I
believe in miracles.
Elder
Aaron Davis: Well, here it is. [pulls it out] You want a
miracle—well, here it is. Some nice virgin Grade-A Mormon Utah dick. C’mon,
suck it.
Elder
Aaron Davis: Oh, honey. Thank you Heaven!!!
Elder
Aaron Davis: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just some doodah pudknocker
Prick from Pocatello. They ship us here from Dick Island.
Christian Markelli: What?
Elder Aaron Davis: C’mon don’t be so retarded will you? You found me out, all right? My worst secret. Now I'm humiliated so get to work. Do me, man, and do me quick.
Christian Markelli: Wait, I don't think you're a dick.
Elder
Aaron Davis: Shut up. I don’t care how ridiculous it looks, I
need it bad, right away.
Christian Markelli: Don't you believe in anything?
Elder
Aaron Davis: Yeah! Getting
off.
Christian Markelli: [sucks him off]
Elder Aaron Davis: Now then, tell me! You tell me one thing in your life beyond a shadow of a doubt that you really believe.
Christian Markelli: I believe Lady Gaga has never been given her due as an actress.
Elder Aaron Davis: Duh, what the fuck, I mean didn’t you see her when she was doing “Alejandro”…
[catching himself]
Elder
Aaron Davis: Man, cocksucking isn’t something you can build
your life on!! Look at yourself! You're so pretty and colorful on the outside,
but inside you're nothing but a swishy Fag!!! You're like... You're nothing but
a walking, talking, swishing, faggoty Perp!!!
Christian Markelli: That's not fair.
Elder Aaron Davis: It doesn't matter whether it’s fair or not. I can't believe I let you do me when there’s nothing, Christian, nothing about you that's not skin-deep.
[leaves]
____________________
[voiceover
monologue from heaven]
God: Sometimes it all seems to be like a mass of dots. But more and more these days, the humans feel like they're all disconnected. And it's crummy... and awfully sad... that’s why I want Mormons to practice Bigamy. I want Mormon men to have lotsa wives to keep them busy and happy with their miserable godforsaken crummy Utah existence. That way they’ll Praise and Adore me…and not Stray from the Golden Tablet’s Sacred Path of Redemption!!!
_______________________
Christian
Markelli: [laughing]
Not again.
Elder
Aaron Davis: C’mon, dude. Do me again… I need a revelation,
baby. Help me get off so I can have a juicy fucking Vision!!!
Christian
Markelli: You want revelations engraved in gold and angels
trumpeting down from heaven. What if it’s just a blowjob you need instead?
Maybe even me telling you I love you, right here in bed? I think that’s pretty
miraculous, don’t you think?
Elder
Aaron Davis: God, I hate wise-ass faggots.
Christian Markelli: I gave you a blowjob. How can you just shrug it off like it was nothing?
Elder Aaron Davis: It's not my choice. We Mormons live in a Home of Shame!!! We live a Life of Fear!!! We’re afraid of being Excommunicated!!!
Christian Markelli: For just a blowjob?
Elder
Aaron Davis: You wouldn't understand.
Christian
Markelli: Jeez Lueez, wait till I give you a rim-job!!!
Elder
Aaron Davis: I’m not good for you. I’m just a guy you can’t
have. You don’t know how bad us Mormon men really are.
Christian
Markelli: Huh?
[Aaron laughs]
Elder
Aaron Davis: In the light of our abnormal and abominable
state of mind, we Mormons refuse to see that we've been duped into a hogwash
alternative lifestyle – the Mormon Church. We wish our shame was enough for
just us, but we’re such Mormon sex maniacs that Bigamy has become our Religion.
Not to mention our shame, the shame we’ve brought to our many wives, our many children,
to the Great Smith as well as to the sacred Golden Tablets!!!
Christian Markelli: Wait a minute, the Golden Tablets?
Elder
Aaron Davis: Yeah, we just discovered them. A UFO landed in
the Beltway right before the election. Out popped an Alien who dropped the
Golden Tablets live on CNN and FOX-News!!!
Christian
Markelli: What about queer Mormons?
Elder
Aaron Davis: We don’t hate queers. That’s just a big Media
façade to butch it up. Some of the highest Mormons in our Church Hierarchy are
fags. And they’ve got huge concubine families with lotsa homosexual wives. Dig
it, it’s the Truth!!!
Christian
Markelli: I’m SHOCKED!!! Simply FUCKING SHOCKED!!! What’s the
World coming to???
Elder
Aaron Davis: Yeah, I'd say us Mormons really live the
original definition of ALTERNATE LIFESTYLE.
Christian
Markelli: That’s okay Aaron. As long as I’m your only wife….
Elder
Aaron Davis: But what if you're not? Huh? What if everything
in my entire pathetic life, which I happen to hate, has led to this point right
now? What if, what if there’s no blinding light in the middle of the road that,
that strikes me like the guy in The Bible? That
I can’t help myself? What if I’m addicted to Bigamy, baby? And I need a dozen
guys all the time to satisfy my miserable so-called life?
Christian Markelli: Yeah, like who?
Elder
Aaron Davis: See what I mean?
Christian
Markelli: Yeah. But what if I can change all that? No more
big time Bigamy for you? You know, just a one-man Mormon Show with only one
guy?
Elder
Aaron Davis: You have no idea what I'd be giving up.
Christian
Markelli: Dammit! What’s wrong with you? You want lotsa guys
engraved in gold and angels trumpeting down from heaven? What if this is it
instead? Me telling you I love you. Right here — in bed?
Elder
Aaron Davis: Forget it. Don’t try to snow-job me. You can
pretend all you want to… but Mormon men never change.
[Christian walks to
the door, but it won't open]
Christian Markelli: God, I hate Mormon guys!!!
[Aaron grabs him
and gives him a passionate kiss]
__________________________
Christian
Markelli: [in an
English accent] Could be worse, could be raining.
Elder Aaron Davis: That's Young Frankenstein.
Christian Markelli: Mother!!! Blood!!! Mother!!!
Elder
Aaron Davis: [confused
for a while, then gets it] Psycho, that's Psycho, right? She goes a bit
mad sometimes. We all go a bit mad sometimes.
____________________
God: [Nothing’s so bad that you can't add a little
guilt to it and make it worse; and there's nothing so good you can't add guilt
to it and make it better. Guilt distracts these humans from a greater truth:
that they have an inherent ability to heal. They seem intent on living through
even the worst heartbreak.
Christian Markelli: How?
God: Hmmmm. Practice.
THE DAY THE EARTH WENT MORMON
________________
“Klaatu Mirada Nikto!!!”
—Michael Rennie,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
______________
The Day the Earth—
Went Mormon
Was the day Romney—
Became POTUS of AMERICA!!!
________________
An Alien appeared—
With a Golden Tablet
And the Earth stopped—
In a State of Shock!!!
______________
The Mormons got even—
For years of Persecution!!!
The Mormon Tabernacle—
Resounded with Victory!!!
____________
Martian Mitt Romney—
Str8t from Outer Space!!!
So Goes Utah—
So Goes the Nation!!!
The Last Man on Earth
The Last Man
On Earth (1954)
__________________
“there's no
escape from
Vincent Price”
—Scott Heim
“The Death of
Vincent Price”
________________
Bleak as Pasolini—
Kitschy as Sergio Leone
Decadent as Visconti
There’s no escape—
For the Vampire-Zombies
Of Living Dead Rome
Shots of dead bodies—
Strewn in the empty
Streets of the Roma
___________________
The alarm clock rings—
It’s morning once again
Time for Vincent to rise
“Another day” she says—
“Another day to live thru
Better get started”
Thus begins one—
of the most tacky horror
films of Vincent’s oeuvre
_______________________
When a disease turns—
All of humanity into a
Nightmare of Living dead…
Much deader than usual—
Poor bored humans around
The putrid dead dying world
It becomes Vincent Price’s—
Stake-plunging Responsibility
To DeZombiefy the Planet
________________
The Last Man on Earth—
Has to reluctantly become
Limp-Wristed Vampire Killer!!!
Yes, my dears, as Night falls—
The plague victims begin
Leaving their stinking graves
Crawling, shambling, limping—
Whimpering, pleading for blood
Throughout the empty streets
_______________________
The Hellish Undead—
Zombies starved for blood
Thirsting for Vincent Price’s bod
The Last Gimpy Man on Earth—
Lisping, mincing his way thru
One of his most tacky movies
But this time Vincent won’t—
Escape the Living Dead!!!
Like in all those Poe Classics
_____________
Spectral Rome drained dry—
Ancient abandoned Sinful City
Stalked by greedy Bloodsuckers!!!
There’s no escape for Vincent—
“Vincent come on out now!!!”
Comes the Creepy Nightly Chant
Ubaldo Ragona directs this—
Classic Long before the American
Rotten cheap Hollywood version
___________________
Nobody can compare with—
Vincent Price, certainly not
Crummy Charlton Heston
The Omega Man version—
Stinks worse than the ugly
Cheap Zombie-Vampire Dead
The Last Man on Earth filmed—
In dismal black & white shots
Of decadent postwar Rome
________________
Produced by the horror queen—
Samuel Z. Arkoff with a cast of
Millions of Unemployed Italians
The Zombie Cast reads like a—
Spaghetti Western with names
Like Franca Bettoia, Danieli,
Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Umberto
Raho, Antonio Corevi, Ettore
Ribotta, Rolando De Rossi,
Giuseppe Mattei, De Fonseca,
Gen Ruggiero, Franca Silvi,
Giorgio Giovannini, Brunell…
Serena Ulloa, Angiolina
Menichelli, Piero Mecacci,
Linello Meucci, Vico Vaccaro,
Luciano Volpato, Carlo
Grandone, Enzo Silvestri,
Armando Timpani, Bruno
Zanoli, Alfonso Avincola,
Angelo Lannutti, Alvaro
Lanzoni, Renato Pedrini,
Federico Tocci, Carmen
Frosali, Alfonso D’Artega,
Rita Agostini, Franco Rispoli,
Ermete Santini, etc. etc.
_______________
And of course the great—
Hollywood Horror Queen
Vincenti De Pricella herself!!!
“December 1965? Is that all—
It’s been since I inherited the
world? Only three years!!!”
“Seems like 100 million—
You're freaks, all of you!
All of you, freaks, mutations!”
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