Oh the travesty... There was a tornado and an earthquake and a severe lack of tickets and the three cataclysmic terrors forced me from the warm embrace of Dorthy Parker's loving arms. Sigh... Sold out film events... what can I say, they blow... I so wanted to go to this, but the AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL's overlapping schedule made me not get a full pass... and if you didn't have a full pass.. you were not getting into this night of film... sadly enough. Here's what happened, tis the only way I can experience it...
Well Harry, my love, I caught another Cinematexas5 program tonight, and I thought I'd send you the tidbits so you could grieve over what you missed. (See if I ever venture out in the pouring rain to be stood up by you again! ...Well, for celuloid magic and Jarmusch, I might...)
Tonight on the plate we have:
"Love and Sprockets: Jim Jarmusch's Favorite Short Films"
Texas Union Theatre
P.M. (A banned Cuban Film from 1962) Dir: Orlando Jiminez Leal and Saba Carera
Towers Open Fire Dir: William Burroughs and Brian Gyson
They Caught the Ferry Dir: Carl Dreyer
Bimbo's Initiation Dir: Max Fleischer
Film Dir: Samuel Beckett
The Bowery Dir: Sara Driver
Little Flags Dir Jem Cohen
Got Your Money Dir: Ol' Dirty Bastard
The High Sign Dir: Buster Keaton
Let me say right off, the turn out for this was astounding. Pass holders showed up at five, and by the time for the screening three hours later, the line snaked from one end of the Union to the other, with many folks being turned away. Jarmusch gave a brief introduction, saying that the shorts on the program were not necessarily the best ever, but that they were personal favorites of his, and then he told us we could rip them up during the Q&A because he didn't make them. He assured us he would return for a Q&A, and he expected us to have questions AND answers.
I was very excited about this screening. I have been facinated with Jarmusch's films ever since I saw the first Coffee and Cigarettes on Cinemax a billion years ago, so I've been extremely curious about what other filmmaker's work turn him on. I was not dissapointed. Without falling into any sort of genre, the selection of pieces showed a broad range of style, pacing, and concept. It's about 4 am now, so I'll try to give the highlights of the evening before I crater. Please excuse me if I don't make it to all of the films before my head hits the keyboard.
P.M. is a vision of Cuban nightlife in the 1960's. It's not scripted, or narated. The viewer is simply visiting a bar, watching people drink, dance, smoke and talk. The camera floats from one person to another, just long enough for the subject to feel familiar, sometimes with humorous effect; the audience especially seemed to enjoy the focus on one dancer, a man who appears drunk, on the verge of sleep, but keeps dancing anyway, drink in hand.
Towers Open Fire features Willian Burroughs as the guide through a nightmarish experimental film offering images to press all of your paranoia buttons. Unfortunately, the sound on the print was pretty foggy and muffled, so it was difficult to make out all of the voice over, however the visuals of gas masks and shooting up were still plenty arresting enough to carry the piece.
They Caught the Ferry is a Danish film that's an equivalent to our Blood on the Asphalt or any number of those cautionary shorts they try to scare the bejeezus out of us with in Driver's Ed.--only this one has style. Sort of like if Ingmar Bergman made a scared straight short. In it a young man takes his girl on a motorcycle ride and makes a game of pushing the bike, seeing how many cars he can pass, until he passes a black car with the fading design of a human rib cage on the back. In a very cool twist, the rode forms a Y and the cyclist goes one way and the car the other without incident. Just as the audience feels relief, the biker turns around and follows the car, and meets his fate in the form of a large tree. During the Q&A, a student asked why the driver of the car when he was finally revealed was wearing gaunt make-up, and after rolling his eyes, Jarmusch cupped his hands around the mic and intoned, "Maybe because he was the GRIM REAPER..."
Bimbo's Initiation. If you are an animation fan or a horror fan and you have not seen this short, go rent one of the Max Fleischer Betty Boop collections right now. Austin is lucky in that a reel of this has been floating around and screened at the Paramount and everywhere else--I've seen it on the big screen four times now and it just gets better, especially in a room full of people who haven't witnessed it yet. I can't spoil it. Just go rent it, and if it turns your knobs, check out a Flip the Frog collection if you can find one--many of the Flip cartoons have a lot of the same wonderfully bizarre flavor.
Samuel Beckett's Film is an interesting piece, especially in this collection, because it stars Buster Keaton, considerably older than we saw him at the end of the program in The High Sign. The unfolding events create a mystery around a figure who retreats to his room and begins to eliminate all aspects of sight and recognition. He shuts a dog and cat out of the room so they won't stare at him and covers his bird and fish when he feels their eyes on him. Sometimes the audience sees through the figures eyes, and other times it follows behind him, but the camera never shows the character's face until the climax.
The Bowery is like a mini documentary and love letter to the neighborhood in New York. It gives both a history lesson and a tour, which felt like a jumping off point for an expanded film. My favorite part was the visit to artist Joe Coleman's Odditorium, a dime museum throwback whose roots predate the sideshow and lets you have a peek at a two-headed calf and a pickled baby with no brain.
The High Sign is probably my favorite Buster Keaton short. Considering this was included with Bimbo's Initiation, I'm wondering if Jarmusch has a facination with secret societies, or if the common thread is just a coincidence. In this one, Buster is inducted into the Blinking Buzzards, an underground crime group, and is then told to kill a man that he's just moments before been hired to protect. It has some great gags, some similar to those in the Felix the Cat comics, like when Buster uses a cigar as a nail or when he needs a coat hook and simply paints one on the wall and starts using it. During the Q&A Jarmusch pointed out that Keaton's shorts and comedy don't have the more heavy handed sentimentality of Chaplin's work, and also that Keaton worked on a budget where he had to perfect his stunts to work in the first take without the luxury of reshoots.
The Q&A following the program was, for me way to short. Many people asked questions that were open-ended prompts to try to get Jarmusch to talk about working with Sam Fuller, Tom Waits and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Due to the time constraints and the scope of what he was being asked to just start talking about cold, Jarmusch seemed a bit at a loss of what to say, but he handled it with good dry humor and a nice sprinkling of sarcasm. ("Could you be anymore vague?") He talked about how he tracked down Screamin' Jay and became friends with him and shared profits with him from Stranger than Paradise since he knew Jay didn't see a dime of what was paid for the rights to I Put a Spell on You. He also did a great impression of Jay when he described Hawkin's telling him about riding his motor scooter in Paris.
When he concluded the Q&A, he joked that this was his first time in Austin and that everyone had been so nice to him he was beginning to suspect something-- I thought this was a great cap to the evening and it really struck me as funny and ironic. I know that Austin is a very gentle city. I've lived here all my life and everytime I've left and been in places like Philly or DC, I'm always reminded of how much harder and suspicious people from other towns are. It's their background where they grow up. I always thought I felt out of place not being more hostile. I loved the fact that when Jarmusch came here the shoe's on the other foot and he's baffled by the good will.
So there it is Harry dearest--you missed it and now I'm off to fall into bed before more festival tomorrow! Sweet Dreams!
