Saturday, November 29, 2008

Videophile: Sorcerer

Roy Sheider is famous for his skittish leading role in Steven Speilberg’s Jaws, and director John Friedkin is notorious for his cult classic horror flick The Exorcist (essentially, a fatuous B-movie) and the classy French Connections, but neither of these guys did better in a movie than the lesser known Sorcerer.

This movie is a remake of the arthouse smoke 'em 
Wages of Fear, but I can’t stand the original, even though it’s taught in film classes and dissected from opening credits to closing credits. It’s a great movie, in its own way, but it’s a movie that still misses the best story available; Friedkin hits that, discovers that, and does it.

I think this film, while less politically conscious, is far superior; although it was never a blockbuster in the way I think Friedkin might have imagined, much like Francis Ford Coppola’s under-appreciated jazzy classic 
The Conversation, it’s work in which is able to showcase all his cinema and story talents without the stress of making a movie for Hollywood. He did this after his huge success, and you could tell he did whatever the hell he wanted. (Note Werner Herzog’s diluted new Hollywood movie, the title escapes me, to see what happens when great directors try to make a buck – after they’ve made their slew of independent features.)

The plot here, as always, is what drives me. Sheider plays a crook who ends up in loose ends somewhere deep in South America; he’s given an offer, along with several other low-lifes from various parts of the world, to lead a two-truck caravan down a perilous, mountainous road through a dense jungle. Both of the trucks are loaded with a fragile, highly explosive material; if the trucks bounce too much or overturn, the explosives will go off. They’ve been rigged and positioned very carefully inside the back of these giant old, behemoth trucks. If the motley ragtage collection of desperate, swarthy and unscrupulous men are able to deliver the goods successfully, they’ll be free. But it will take quite a long time, and the money's on the jungle. Over the course of the movie, one by one, each of the men foul-up, and the odds of delivering the goods becomes more and more slim. The most famous scene in the movie involves the passage of one choking truck over a rickety swinging bridge – in a driving tropical storm.

This movie is, in essence, what any half-ass action film can only dream of being; authentic, gripping, compelling, and completely without morals or any notion of good and evil. That seems to be the best environ for fiction. It speaks to me the way any classic narrative does. The only thing to do here is to survive, and in the scenario, the truth of human existence becomes clear, or not. Most importantly of all, to me, is that the film has that dirty 70’s grit; the people here and the story here don’t feel filmed so much as lived. It’s sweat, horrific, and gripping. All great movies grow out of great story, and the truly great ones do what Sorcerer does effortlessly – they tell the story plainly, with splendid human characters, essential details, and unpredictable results.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Special Projects: Two-Dimensional Found Art Journal?

I think that I’m discovering how much I enjoy these small scale experimental writing projects. There’s a sense of immediate pleasure and satisfaction that comes with making something that I don’t get with the novel work and the stories. It reminds me of the pure satisfaction I used to get from developing photographic prints in the darkroom. I had made something, and it would be there forever, and it was physical and immediate. Writing can be so damn abstract and obtuse. What we need really is writing that has the same effect on the writer and the reader as the chef and the five star meal.

To that end, for our Thanksgiving trip to the desolate urban landscape of Granite City, I’ve been keeping a small ‘found art’ journal. I’ve been working on it every day, at every free moment I get, cutting and pasting with scissors and glue stick, and scribbling with a somewhat leaky blue pen.

Some explanation. Recently we were in arty, cozy Asheville, North Carolina, and there in an art gallery I bought a $6, hand-sized journal, the exterior of which had been made from the cardboard of a Bass Ale beer sixpack. So, the outside of the journal is a partial image of a Bass Ale beer box; the inside is about 60 pages of plain white paper. The whole thing is bound somewhat loosely with very light string.

I’ve used this journal to keep track of our trip; but, I’m not really writing your typical (banal?) journal; I’ve decided to paste small found Art onto page and then scribble something below each item in the remaining white space. For example, I took a receipt from a breakfast we purchased 
in the airport lounge and wrote a few sentences about the breakfast.

Sounds off, I’m sure, but the experience has been extremely pleasure. I don’t have any idea why, except that it seems like a small project that I can complete; and it becomes a peculiar testament to our trip; and, perhaps most importantly, it makes me realize that incredible things are happening to us all the time.

I ought to explain that last sentence. What I mean is that there is always a gap between when I collect an item to paste into the journal and the time when I actually paste it into the journal and write about it. During that time, something bad happens. I actually forget the context of the moment in which I collected the item. In fact I tend to chalk up every moment, for the most part, as wholly ordinary. But, when I sit down to write about the item, when I sit down to remember the moment, a whole flood of rich memories and stories and observations return to me—and in turn, I realize, that Rilke was right. There is never a boring moment. If you are not poet enough to bring out the poetry of your life, then it’s your fault. It really is.

So, in short, the journal are an act of defiance against ordinary experience; they are testament to Rilke’s idea. Or, of course, I’m seriously deluded, and the little scraps of paper and casual observations I’m making are quaint, and ultimately, banal. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because, what’s key here is the pleasure I’m taking in the creation. You need to love what you do. Otherwise, give it up, forget everything, and maybe then you’ll fall in love with something totally different in nature.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Travels: Granite City


We’re spending much of the week in Granite City Illinois, a beat Midwestern town across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Jenny’s mother lives here, in the town where she was born and raised.

Ruth drove us from the St. Louis airport into town, but before we could swing by her new house, she insisted we get some breakfast at “The Apple Tree Restaurant.” This cozy joint is situated inside a strip mall about twenty yards from the railroad tracks that run parallel to the main drag through town.

The Apple Tree is an old-school American food restaurant. We got these wonderful ‘advertisement placemats,’ and all the plates and cups were of heavy white porcelain. The jelly came in tiny boxes with foil lids that peeled open, and the waitress poured our coffer at the table from a translucent coffee point stained the color of rust.

I got a dish called a “skillet.” Essentially it was ham cubes, onion slices, chunks of green pepper, gooey American cheese, eggs, and stringy hashbrowns all slathered together with grease in a wide low bowl. I also got four triangles of buttery toast, white bread. Tallulah got eggs and hash browns, and the waitress brought out a brand of ketchup I’d never heard of: Red Gold. I tried it. Disgusting, namely because it tasted just like tomatoes.

I scarfed down my skillet and didn’t say a word to anyone at the table. I had the feeling that all of the grease in the dish slicked up my throat, and so the food just toppled down easily. We sat and talked about sports and family, and I sipped on my sugary lemonade and felt the giant slab of warmth in my stomach churning and gurgling.

After breakfast, we struck out for Ruth’s newly purchased house, a quaint two bedroom in a quiet neighborhood. Neighbors were out raking their leaves and picking up fallen branches.

We drove by this one house where about a half dozen young guys were lounging in the front yard around some Christmas decorations – an inflated Frosty, an inflated Santa in a sled, a white Christmas tree. None of it looked in place on the dead yellow grass. Half of the boys had stripped down to their jeans. No shirts. Forty degrees, and they were bare-chested. They were all smoking cigarettes, and a few of them were drinking from brown paper sacks. One kid was trying to do tricks on his skateboards, essentially riding two of them at once and leaping off the curb. When he spilled, his splayed his long bare arms wildly in the afternoon light, and the whole gang behind seemed to lurch with laughter.