Machete trailer
If you’re a fan of my blog, you’ve probably already seen this. That said, what a wonderful trailer.
EDIT: Okay, for some reason YouTube isn’t showing it. You can watch it here instead.
And, for those coming in late, this is not the trailer from the fake movie from Grindhouse, this is the trailer for the real movie coming out in September.
Television
Speaking of monologues I did for the TV show The 90s, the one with the oddest trajectory is “Television.”
The director of the piece, Skip Blumberg told me that the theme of the episode he was working on was “television,” and could I write a piece for it? My thought was, well, if I were a television, what would I say? What does a television want?
Since I did the piece, it’s taken on a very strange life. I used to open my monologue show with it, since it was a great way to get people’s attention.
Me doing it in my monologue shows got the attention of the editor of The Spoken Word Revolution, an anthology of slam-poems, intended to get high-school students interested in poetry.
It seems to have worked to a certain extent. Every now and then I get a message from a student, of both the high-school and college variety, about an adaptation of the piece they’ve done. Beth Fulton’s is the best I’ve seen so far.
Television is a drug. from Beth Fulton on Vimeo.
Nota bene!
There is a new quarterly humor publication, The Devastator, put together by a couple of pals of mine, Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows. I’m in the first issue, along with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
r_sikoryak and about six million other fine talents.
The first issue is all put together, but they need a “kickstart” campaign to get it printed and in stores. In any case, here is James urbaniak to tell you more!
(Props to Geoffrey for working in a “venture” pun.)
Money
This turned up on Youtube today.
I shot it about twenty years ago for a TV show called The 90s. It’s a monologue from a play I wrote called High Strangeness. It was directed by a great director named Skip Blumberg, who was completely fearless about just walking out into the street, pointing the camera at something and assuming something interesting would happen. In my case, I had all these monologues I used to do and I had them all memorized, so he could just turn the camera on and I would just do the piece and everything would be done in a few minutes. I don’t remember us ever doing a second take, which is how he could do things like shoot me, literally in the middle of Wall St in the middle of the afternoon, without either of us getting hit by a car.
As I recall, he didn’t even plan out the shot — he just said “How’s this?” and I said “Okay,” and he rolled camera and started walking backwards and I followed him. New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, knew better than to make faces at the camera or anything like that.
query
For a new project I’m working on, I need to watch some espionage thrillers. My focus is on espionage thrillers where an “ordinary person” gets tangled up in the world of espionage.
North by Northwest is a classic of the genre. Three Days of the Condor is another, Frantic is another, Marathon Man is another.
As always, I invite my readers to make suggestions, and thank you in advance.
Mamet master class
The memo is a good distillation of Mamet’s altogether straightforward thoughts on the nature of drama, for those of you too poor to buy (or too honest to steal) copies of Writing in Restaurants, Some Freaks, Three Uses of the Knife or On Directing Film.
Nota Bene
For my readers who enjoy crappy puns and entertainment-related jokes, I now tweet a lot more regularly than I used to.
Coen Bros: A Serious Man part 11
So, things are pretty bad now for Larry. His wife is divorcing him, she’s cut off his money, she’s thrown him out of his house. His kids barely notice he’s gone, he’s got to pay for his wife’s lover’s funeral and his brother’s criminal trial. But, as bad-off as Larry is, his brother, who is like Larry’s dark reflection, is worse. He’s still got his cyst, and, as he explains in a tearful (empty) poolside confession, Larry is a lucky, wealthy man compared to him: he’s got a wife, a family, a job. Arthur has nothing, and now he’s going to go to jail for solicitation and sodomy. Larry never "did anything," and now he’s in danger of losing everything. Arthur, on the other hand, apparently "did" a great deal, none of which Larry knew anything about, and never had anything, and on top of it faces imprisonment. Larry counsels Arthur with a bromide no wiser, nor more foolish, than the advice he’s been given by the rabbis. "Sometimes you have to help yourself," he says, but, of course, that’s exactly what Larry has not done — he’s let everyone walk all over him.
Coen Bros: A Serious Man part 10
Larry takes the lesson of the goy’s teeth to heart — in his own way. He decides he’s going to "help others," starting with his nude-sunbathing neighbor Mrs. Samsky. Mrs. Samsky either is, or is not, a lonely, sexually frustrated housewife. Larry’s motivations toward her aren’t so hard to read: he’s sick of being "good," he’s going to get back at Judith for what he believes she’s done to him. On her end, Mrs. Samsky seems pliable and ready to go. So ready to go, in fact, that she tires quickly of Larry’s stammered words, preferring to get on with the business of getting high.
Coen Bros: A Serious Man part 9
Sy Abelman, Larry’s romantic rival, is dead. Rabbi Nachtner, he of the goy’s teeth, delivers the eulogy. Larry sits by himself, a few rows back from his estranged wife Judith. The kids are not in evidence. I can’t imagine they were keen to attend. Larry, on the other hand, is paying for the service, so he might as well be there.