Dennis Potter, you are missed...

Dennis Potter, dying of cancer, talks about his last wish: To be able to murder Rupert Murdoch.

What it is like to bomb...

Allan Havey, from Marc Maron's essential podcast...(only 1.5 minutes)

Memorial Day

My first paid job in the film industry was as a P.A. on a Larry Cohen horror movie: "Return to Salem's Lot", that just happened to star one of my heroes, the director Sam Fuller. Part of my job was to drive him to and from the set. Boy, could he tell a story. My first film job, and probably my best film job.

Mad Max 2 / Road Warrior dialogue word cloud

Ratf*cking in Madison

Communication is war by other means. Clearly, there is a war going on in Madison, WI. A right-wing radio talk show named Mark WIlliams is being quite open about his willingness to engage in what are called "false flag" techniques to de-legitimize the anti-Gov Walker protests. (The term "ratf*cking" was coined by Donald Segretti, a lawyer who worked for Richard Nixon) Williams wrote, in a message to his audience:

…  (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an "in"  (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don't have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there)  (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there  (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like "screw the taxpayer!"  and "you OWE me!" to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.  (7) if I do get the 'in' I am going to do my darnedest to get podium access and take the mic to do that rant from there…with any luck and if I can manage the moments to build up to it, I can probably get a cheer out of the crowd for something extreme.

WARNING: When around these union events do NOT instigate ANY physical confrontation, walk away from anyone who tries to start one with you. These people WILL have a mob mentality and ARE dangerous. [...]

Chances are that because I am publishing this they'll catch wind, but it is worth the chance if you take it upon yourself to act…there's only one of me but there are millions of you and I know that you CAN do this!

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines.  Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

Williams is also notorious for making racist blog posts, which seems to be okay with CNN, where he continues to be invited to speak.

Editing

A great blog post, about a course we all need to take. Who could teach it?

"It would be a writing course. Every assignment would be delivered in five versions: A three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.

I don't care about the topic. I care about the editing. I care about the constant refinement and compression. I care about taking three pages and turning it one page. Then from one page into three paragraphs. Then from three paragraphs into one paragraph. And finally, from one paragraph into one perfectly distilled sentence.

Along the way you'd trade detail for brevity. Hopefully adding clarity at each point. This is important because I believe editing is an essential skill that is often overlooked and under appreciated. The future belongs to the best editors."

The Leviathan

The white whale of Melville's imagination symbolized many things, but above all it symbolized the American propensity to extend itself far beyond the point of diminishing returns to the point of absurdity and collapse and mass-destruction.

Ahab pursues the Moby Dick across the world, beyond the point of no return, risking money, sanity and the lives of his crew in his obsessive quest. His multi-cultural crew nevertheless accepts the situation and throws their lot in with him, mesmerized by the unfolding disaster.

The reason why Melville succeeded in writing the Great American Novel is because he found a perfect metaphor to describe an essential aspect of the American character. The white whale can serve as a proxy for the American military, who "destroy a village in order to save it", the financial system, which seems to be built on a foundation of vapor, which can implode inexplicably, the art or literary worlds, which on their upper margins manufacture artifacts with no intrinsic beauty, but nevertheless "comment" on themselves. The Leviathan of America's celebrity culture is also a subject that fulfills, again and again, Melville's prophecy, ending on a stainless steel gurney in a morgue in Hollywood. This was the final stop for performers like Marlyn Monroe, River Phoenix, and Jayne Mansfield.

The revelation that Joaquin Phoenix's last two years of public meltdown may have all been a hoax is a facinating development that could be an important event - a piece of satire and performance art that played out across a stage that spanned geography and the internet - far from the rarefied world of PS122 and The Kitchen. If it is a masterpiece of public theater that I think it is, it has interesting antecedents in the work of Andy Kaufman, whose work, best seen in the documentary "I'm From Hollywood", depicts a true misanthrope and satirist running amok in the absurd world of pro-wrestling.

Note to those in Hollywood who are pissed off: Artists are supposed to hold a mirror up to life.