March 2010
49 posts
Currently remembering:
That wobbly leg, tired tourist daze where I sit on street curbs or cold museum floors and riffle through my bag for that half-eaten sandwich that has inevitably stained my Lonely Planet.
Excerpt from my interview with Edward Norton and...
NELSON: Yeah. You know my mother once said when I was reading Huck Finn for the first time, my mother said, “I’m so jealous of you because you’re going to get to read Huck Finn and you’ve never read it before.” The real bummer here on this movie is that I kind of used up so much material and so much subject matter, and so many jokes that are dear to me and kind of lifelong. You know, I can’t do...
Career counseling
Job vulnerability and life-choices vertigo can sometimes fool me into thinking that a career in customized gift baskets wouldn’t be half bad.
My penchant for researched themes, idiosyncratic lists, and last minute editing decisions could prove invaluable.
Juxebox Dickens
Haven’t yet committed entirely to Audible.com, so I’ve spent my morning listening to Great Expectations sampler excerpts, unordered yet easily contextualized.
I might just spring for the Hugh Lorrie narration; he does a great Joe Gargery, he says madman, “mad-mun,” and his tone is accurately smug when describing Pumblechook.
Wind-up sounds and Stunts:
Two other David Lowery SXSW film bumpers:
MUSIC BOX: This one’s more forlorn and a bit tragic, but I’ve always loved that sound of pins plucking the teeth of steel combs.
SOUNDSTAGE: One take! Noroomformistakes.
pre-view.
Before each film would start at this year’s SXSW, a brief bumper with the festival’s tag line would screen. This one was my favorite.
Credit: David Lowery
Slow dancing in 1998
After school we would play baseball without a bat. Instead, we’d curl our fingers into our palms, leaving a little room to hit the tennis ball with the inside of our hands. I can’t remember if it was embarrassing to swing your arm and miss the ball. If you didn’t want to play, there was often a group of us sitting beside the fence; someone would inevitably be singing or humming...
Irked
Recent manifestations of my impatience:
-Refusing to give the old man in front of me change for a dollar and instead putting quarters in the machine for him so he could fill up his Metrocard.
-Couldn’t wait until Monday and emailed the New Yorker, asking them when we would hear what April’s Book Club selection is.
-Eating things that should be heated or toasted, cold.
The moment I...
She cooks, I clean.
I told Maxine that I plan on visiting her very soon in Boston:
“But really all I wanna do is look at the Massachusetts State House like Matt Damon did in The Departed, and feel like I’ve really made it.”
Her response:
“Please do come for food and booze. And we can sit up on my roof and get drunk, and I can point in a bunch of directions and be like someday Simba all of...
New Obsession:
-Doggedly reading reviews of books and films I have no interest in ever opening or seeing.
The Ballet
One of the highlights of SXSW was seeing this film, NY Export: Opus Jazz.
It premieres tonight on PBS Great Performances as part of the Dance in America Series.
I interviewed the creators Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, as well as co-director Jody Lee Lipes, whose camerawork eludes those imagined and syrupy takes on New York, and offers something so much more palpable. I highly recommend!
I wish my...
SHOW AND TELL:
We used to steal fries from the cafeteria as we waited in line to pay for our italian wedding soup and sour patch kids.
Now we conduct motorcades, quit our jobs, and get tattoo licensed to tattoo our friends.
My default point of view is our parents, who never get to see us pull out our phones and divide the bill.
Ratcatcher
Dramatic, perhaps overextended reactions to the film Ratcatcher are inevitable. In its wake, few things appear to compare, and during its length, the anxiety of influence peaks, leaving little to no room to store and support that kind of inspiration.
Ever left a museum feeling dizzied and exhilarated? Each piece perfectly placed, curated, lit? The whole as well as the individual paintings, an...
HOMECOMING: roommates reunited.
-filling out the census as we channel surf between the health care bill and oprah narrating about komoda dragons eating water buffalos.
CHECKED BAGGAGE
Will cure my flight fright and sense of gutted goodbye, and ten day Austin binge, with an unreasonable and unprecedented purchase at Hudson News. I will catch up on summer trends and read a piece of short fiction, and eat a bag of highly saturated sugar that sticks in my teeth.
In some ways, going away has only reaffirmed the anchor that is my first impasse: I am impossibly unsure of my next...
CYRUS part 1:
There was a moment during my interview with Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, for the film Cyrus, where this guy, rosacea-faced, white t-shirt, jeans, lost and confused, entered the room and sort of looked around. John was very polite, as was Jonah. We informed the guy about the press suite next door with breakfast and coffee, and company, but he simply nodded and backed out, quietly. He said...
Cycle:
I am due for a moment of remembrance brought on by the discovery of an object from my past.
Sudden memory of vulnerability:
Growing up, if you weren’t flexible as a kid, you were never the girl at sleepovers who could fall into back stands or do the splits.
But you also never practiced at home in front of the mirror, because that too was just as humiliating.
Sentencing:
I have been in Austin since Thursday. For the first time tonight I missed New York. Why? Because it was raining and therefore impossible to find a cab.
Conclusion: I miss efficiency and the preparedness of northeastern urban climates.
Guilty.
TINY FURNITURE
Late in 2009 I interviewed the very talented Lena Dunham. We talked about her web show, Delusional Downtown Divas, and about meta writing, low-budget sewer pipe sex scenes, and life after college. You can read the profile here. We also talked about her second feature, TINY FURNITURE, which was in production at the time.
I was invited on set to sneak a peak at her process, as well as play pretend...
At the Paramount last night:
Jonah Hill holds the mic as if it were one of those phones mounted to the kitchen wall, the ones with very long coiled chords. As if it’s his aunt for his mother on the other line, he let’s it dangle so the receiver hits his knees: “Moooooom, teeeeeleeephooooone.”
John C. Reilly holds the microphone as it were comedy night at the club beside the diner off a highway rest...
Associations
Hotel lobbies with southwest themes remind me of soap opera sets; namely, The Bold and the Beautiful.
No matter what year, southwest themes will always appear dated, will always make you think of television episodes where families go on vacation, or when Dylan needed time away from Brenda and Kelly, and took to the road.
The Annual or Austin Epiphanies
I haven’t had time or schedule to appreciate a new city in a long time.
I might need to start a year long to-do list with things that require money saving and map planning and seasonal advantage; ultimately, the goal will be to immerse myself once a year, in a new and urban place where I know nothing.
Advantages: redefining the term downtown (both geographically and culturally,) stretching...
Emergency networking!
Fire drills (false or real) will always remain a great way to meet people. Nobody knows what’s going on/everyone is amused: I can’t think of a better, more awakened social atmosphere.
And so, as the alarm sounded at the Austin Convention Center, as I was hurrying to the press suite for coffee, I made friends! (We all lived in Brooklyn and our degrees of seperation never exceeded two...
Me on my pedal bike.
My wonderful roommate, Julianne, interviewed gamechanger Nicki Minaj for The Fader cover story.
Minaj’s resistance to convention is part of what makes her one of the most promising new rappers to emerge in recent memory—and certainly the most interesting New York rapper since Cam’ron helmed the Dipset epoch of the early ’00s. With the ubiquitous Lil Wayne as her label head and mentor, and radio...
David Byrne
He stood behind me, enjoying the story of a Rolling Stone writer who was reading on stage. He laughed loudly and deeply; I only have memories of shopping mall Santa Claus’s laughing that way.
Once it was his turn, he walked up towards the lit stage and proceeded to present a powerpoint of the history of sound; I only have memories of TV families sharing vacation photos that way.
Prep work
Just returned to my apartment from a screening of Putty Hill. I read the press packet as I waited for the film to start and once it was done I interviewed the lead. And now I’m transcribing, just a little bit, before bed.
Considerations on hold. Will analyze data tomorrow.
Method
With the same seeking focus I adopt while watching my roommate apply make-up, I study as she carefully builds the last bite on her plate, having saved a little bit of everything for one final and satisfying taste. Both acts are done precisely and produce a proud grin that tucks itself at the corner of her lip.
Her best work: brunch last bites often mixing savory and sweet, and dark smoky eyes...
Highskool.
We agreed that watching the Oscars together reminded us of high school. But we’d only met in college, and in those four years, we often missed the Sunday night award shows.
My friends and I are nostalgic people, and yet, our shared nostalgia is fairly recent. Still, I can match faces to names in California prom pictures, and I know the street names that border neighborhoods and the spots...
Quotidian
“So and so’s” New York is a way used to qualify this city. Some do it in order to daydream about another romanticized time, or maybe a lifestyle read about or seen in movies or on television. And for some, it’s about class, or perhaps self-promised success.
I have to think hard about whose New York I idealize, so hard, that I wonder if I’m meant to be here; the city...
Measured in millimeters
Friends from home (Montreal!) visit and we get drinks and inevitably someone orders a Caesar, which looks deceivingly like a Bloody Mary. But the Caesar’s signature ingredient is Clamato juice, which you cannot find at bars in New York.
Should we start carrying our own, like women do with salad dressing in the movies? I think that might be in bad taste.
Disappointment at a bar, on a...
Act Naturally
Soon, someone will provide us with an illustrated version of Reality Hunger by David Shields. It might even be more elaborate, something mixed media, and include video and drawings, some graphs, some equations, some audio, live recordings, or perhaps even an OST, as well as a few comics, some pop-outs, photography, and collage. Maybe even a scratch and smell?
Soon, each numbered fragment of the...
"Notes from the B train"
Before “A planned Russian-American reality show dubbed “Brighton Beach” … a cross between “Jersey Shore” and “Anna Karenina”” premieres, read an original account by Lucy Morris, in two parts:
Part One
Part Two
Initial thoughts and email exchange about Reality...
My email:
ten pages into reality hunger and all i can think about is how does one become david shields. will re-read after breakfast, and actually concentrate on the material and not the man.
Friend reply:
No, no, you’re doing it right. The book is most interesting (to me) as autobiography. I don’t know why it’s labeled “a manifesto,” especially since the...
Thomas Doherty on The Death of Film Criticism
“For the print-minded film critic who refuses to evolve, the writing is on the digital wall. The jacket cover for Lopate’s anthology shows a pair of analog antiques: a creaky 35 millimeter projector and a clunky manual typewriter. The freeze frame closing out Peary’s film shows Sarris, clutching a cane, and Molly Haskell under a theater marquee, as if about to enter their last...
