THE POWER OF STILLNESS

I just went to see the new print of Taxi Driver at the Film Forum.......I've seen it many times on DVD, but not for many years up on the big screen..........it always surprises me how much difference seeing a film in a theater makes. I remember seeing Citizen Kane on the big screen for the first time.  I was floored by the power of the imagery that took on a different dimension when viewed through the wonder of the big screen. I truly understood the immense impact and magnitude of Welles accomplishment as a film maker and how it changed the way we think of telling stories.....

In seeing Taxi Driver again, I was struck by the stillness of the film and the performances.  If I would think of this film, stillness is not what I remembered.  It is often portrayed as more frenetic and a bit over the top.  But what I found to be so jarring and powerful, was the quiet intensity instilled within every image and every performance.  Combined with the poetic masterpiece of Bernard Herman's last and greatest score, the film carries you into another realm, dizzying in it's poetic brilliance.  Even DeNiro's famous  "you talkin' to me" scene, is underplayed.  After hearing it so many times and seeing so many comedians parody it, it takes on a different and almost comic  sense.  I was overwhelmed by De Niro's underplaying of the character.  Every scene, and every interaction was built on a quiet stillness and intensity.  Even the violence which was so shocking at the time, was shocking to me because of its relative underplayed intensity.  Compared to the non stop gun play and violence of so many current films, this movie stands out  by it's shocking but quick and underwhelming massacre.  That's what makes it seems so real. A small and lost taxi driver shooting several small and lost people, and life goes on. Not such a big story.  And as the film ends, several small articles in different newspapers, no glaring headline NY Post covers or glorified press fueled heroics, just a few small articles.   This makes the story much more intimate and at the same time, it elevates it to metaphoric status.............but what continues to haunt my memory, is that unique stillness................it makes me realize the power in performances and images that are free to linger and sit, and slowly work their way into your subconscious.  The new fascination with quick cutting, loud music, and overblown emotions, hammer us with a moronic emotional palette which quickly becomes false and overbearing.  When stillness is allowed to live and breath, a truth rarely seen, begins to creep into our psyche and a deeper understanding of human nature is allowed.

In life as well as art, I think the lesson of stillness, quietness, and listening instead of posturing would go a long way in helping us all understand ourselves and each other a little better.



  

WE ARE ALL ARTISTS AND MYSTICS

I've been working on this documentary about a couple of graffiti artists in NY from the late 1970's and it's made me look at graffiti and art in general in a different way.  We were shooting in Astoria and went by the subject's old house and he started looking at rocks in his old garden.  He then went on to explain that when he was a kid, the first time he realized that his father had any artistic talent was when he found intricately painted rocks in the front garden.  His mother explained to him that his father was the one who was painting detailed pictures of ships onto the stones......a fascinating moment, when the graffiti artist realizes that his father was scribbling on stones before he was spraying his murals on the sides of trains...........it made me think of the creativity inside all of us and how we in this society are so quick to label things.............native americans have no word for art and no word for religion......there is no separation  between who they are and what they create and how they express their connection to the spirit......art and spiritual connection are a constant which runs through their being in everything they do in every way they act.........their is no specific time to create art or to praise they beauty of creation ...........everything that is created, is created with the inspiration of a creative greater energy.........there was no such thing as creating something for the sole purpose of being observed........but instead every item had its purpose whether it was clothing or utensils or tools and all were created with the utmost attention to detail, a high visual aesthetic, and an instilled spiritual energy..........this interconnectedness between art and the spirit created full and contented human beings with a deep respect for their environment and a subtle but powerful way of adding an inner artistic vision to everything in their lives.

It made me think of those paintings on the cave walls in France.....I think the simple act of being human drives our whole being to create....from the moment we are born, we are expressing our unique vision in everything we do and everything we say....so let's all embrace that creative vein that flows through us all, and realize that art is the beauty that a life well lived creates......let's create in every moment of our lives and let's not do anything without total concentration and pure purpose........let us all start writing on stones and instilling our environment and our lives with the mystery of divine inspiration once again...........

Why do we want our women raped and bloody?

I was flipping through the channels the other day and started watching the film The Watchmen.  After one woman was beaten and almost raped and another pregnant woman was shot to death, disgusted and repulsed I turned off the film.   What is it with the way we treat women on film?!  It seems that every TV show and so many movies are filled with images of beaten, raped, and mutilated women.......I remember watching the film "Breaking the Waves" a bunch of years ago and being so angry that I started yelling at the screen.  A few years after that, I barely made it through a screening of The Piano Teacher with the excellent Isabelle Huppert...what a vile film of a self mutilating, genital mutilating and self desecrating sex performed by Huppert's character...........I remember watching an episode of the highly praised "The Soprano's" where a young and vulnerable stripper is naked and being entered from behind by her abusive Mafia boyfriend while she is giving oral sex to someone else as she is being verbally abused....a few minutes later, her boyfriend drags her outside and beats her to death as he slams her head against a metal barrier.......that was the last time I watched that show........it is so disturbing to me that this is becoming so common in all our art, that it has ceased to become shocking and we just accept this deplorable treatment of women.........what does this say about us as men or as a society which so willingly accepts and supports these depictions......does art imitate life or does life imitate art, or does it become so entwined that we cease to see the distinction.........in addition to subjecting our children, our wives, girlfriends, mothers and sisters and daughters to these" artistic creations", we are subjecting our actresses to what I considered to be the equivalent of rape , abject disrespect. and sexual abuse. How can we as men and fathers hope to create a world in which our daughters are respected and valued if we continue to create and crave images in which women are nothing more than carnal objects created for the sole purpose of fulfilling our most base sexual desires and then being disposed of at the end of a fist o by the blade of a knife or tortured in the most horrific ways.  And we reward these stories with critical praise and awards, praising the way they push the envelope and always look for something that crosses boundaries just because they can...........lets start to explore stories which live up to our potential as men and women and begin showing us another way to relate to our female lovers, mothers and sisters. We have put so much energy into these truly disturbing portraits that I am concerned that it doesn't bring us all down that dark and soulless road and give our children such a bleak and heartless view of a man and woman's relationship that their only course of action is to live out these depraved versions of truth  as their only possible actions............let us realize how much power and influence we as artists have on each other and society in general and most important of all, our children, our future.....and let's not buy into that "it's just a movie or just a song"......no I do not believe in censorship, but I do believe we all need to begin to take responsibility for the power of what we say and what we create to influence others.......

SUFFER FOR YOUR ART

I've been thinking about what gives certain artists that spark that draws us in and makes us want to see more, makes us want to understand, makes us want to go on a journey.  I see so many films, so many actors, so many directors, just going through the motions, some of them even believing they are really doing something important, just to leave me cold and bored.........when I audition actors, so many come in prepared and professional and their auditions are good, but they leave me cold......but then that one comes in and touches some mysterious place and I realize why I do this.................what is that mysterious flame that burns inside those few who inspire me to create, to think, to watch, to want to explore?    I've been seeing that  quality in the last few years in actors who aren't American.........for some reason, the people who come from other countries seem to be connected to something that most American actors aren't.........I wonder what that is.....do we have it too easy here?  Are we disconnected from our true emotions?  I'm thinking that what we are disconnected from is the experience of each other.  I think we have become too caught up in ourselves, that we no longer realize  how to connected to the larger community to the struggles and pains of others.............I think that people who come to this country usually have experienced struggles and hardships that we only read about and this builds, their care, their spirits, their character, their compassion, their empathy.......................of course I'm not saying that all Americans are like this.  I have met and worked with several very talented people who are true artists and who are open to the depth and complexity and beauty of what it is to be human........of course there are many people in this country who struggle and whose hardships and journeys are daunting.......it just seems that not too many of them are creating art.

I know for myself, that I needed to be honed, and shaped by life, before I was able to create anything I deemed good enough to be considered up to my own standards and judgements.  I look back on some of the things I wrote back when I thought I knew it all and I want to vomit.....I'm so glad no one has ever seen them.

I see too many young film makers going to film school and coming out with no connection to anything except a very cerebral notion of movie making and story telling.  The actors and directors of an earlier time, and actors and directors from other countries seem to have come into their careers more by an inner need, an almost urgent desire that they have no control over to create.....the art draws them in, instead of them pursuing an idea that maybe they should become film makers or musicians or artists or actors..........maybe we should change the idea of what a real film school or acting school should be......it should be a place where students explore the world, give service to human kind, study psychology, philosophy , human nature, travel and see the world, work with the sick, those in need, experience life and what it meanS to be alive, what it means to be a human being on this vast and diverse planet.....live, love, feel pain and joy, search for the deeper meaning of life and who we are, and come back with some battle scars and embrace the joy of humanity.........from this, I think we would train true actors, directors, artists and human beings........

Academy Awards

The Academy Awards are such a weird thing.  Now with all these other awards shows, do they mean anything? Of course they do for a career, but they are and have always been so caught up in all the Hollywood bullshit, that I have ambivalent feelings about them.  Once we begin to lobby for ourselves to win, and once we start thinking that our creations deserve to win anything, i think we sabotage ourselves and our projects.  We then start honing our stories and ideas and actors to an accepted paradigm. In the long run, I think we cheat both ourselves and our audiences..........but I think we all grew up watching them and anticipating the outcomes......I think it is an interesting time to assess what the Hollywood vein of film makers are doing and thinking......it's a time to get a feel for the pulse of the industry and how we fit or don't.......and it's also a time to discover some new talent and maybe get pissed off at some of the old..............what I think the show has forgotten, is that the awards should be a celebration of film and film making.....instead of creating lame  comedy routines and t rying so hard to appeal to a certain demographic, why don't we go back to what we all love....FILM......show more film clips....show long enough clips of the actors and movies to get a real feel for the performances and the stories......and encourage the winners to hold down all their long lists of thank yous and talk instead about the films or the process or their inspirations.....the most memorable moment shave always been off the cuff comments or interesting stories, or heartfelt emotions.....if you're reading an unending list of thank yous, then you should be cut off, but if you are engaging the audience with something more original, lets hear it.........let's bring back a little more intelligence and a little more class to an industry which is sinking into hurtfulll humor and boring
celebrities so out of touch with everyday life...........and let's start celebrating the brilliant film makers and actors of the past a bit more....not just American, but all of the foreign geniuses .........we should finish watching the show filled with the passion to explore more films and more directors.............and more unknown artists who are creating brilliant but unseen work.............................and talk about brilliant work, the single best performance I saw all year by any actor was John Hawkes in Winter's Bone...........to me, his performance soared into another stratosphere........it was so good that I went home and googled him after seeing the movie to see if he was a real actor or a real life character from those Missouri mountains.....his performance left you constantly uneasy, off balance and was so unpredictable from moment to moment that  it brought that film to another level of immediacy.  Seeing a performance like that is such an inspiration to me to push my ideas and art to another level, to never accept the comfortable, but to take the chance and go for something you are not sure you are able nail.   But just the attempt is invigorating and exciting for us as artists and the audience as viewers...............

Wat are you trying to say?

Thinking about movies today and some of the films that have had the biggest influence on me, I remembered a constant discussion in film school.  We would watch someone's film and eventually the question would be asked "what are you trying to say?"........that would start a heated debate about whether or not film needed to have a message or was just plain entertainment acceptable.....alot of my friends making horror films would adamantly dismiss the pretentious assholes making "art"........I was making films about what I knew, Italians in Brooklyn, and trying to balance, the family, the streets, your friends, and some inner morality......looking back, I don't think this was what was going through my mind....I just wrote from the gut, and a story would come out.  I was somewhere between the two camps....I was just trying to create films which were as gritty and true to the reality I knew as best as I could......but as I contemplate on the question, and as I continue to write and make films, I have begun to realize that what I see as film, needs to know what it is trying to say...........

...it's interesting, the last two screenplays I wrote, just sort of exploded out of me....I truly take no credit for this...I just have learned how to get out of the way, and that's when the story comes to me.  It's then just up to me, to be open and transcribe it the best I can.......and when it's finished, I don't really understand what I have written.  It's so interesting to me to begin to understand the true meaning of my own words and stories......as I re read and re write and begin working with actors and musicians, the ideas and emotions of the story begin to coalesce.  And what started as a story I needed to write that could be shot for forty thousand dollars with a minimum of locations slowly begins to flower into a series of ideas and contemplations on the deeper meanings of life and the struggles each person wrestles with as they try to survive in a sometimes difficult journey and balance the call of their heart and spirit with the passions of the flesh.  

So I guess I'm thinking that as artists, we all need to aspire to something more, we all need to know what it is we are trying to see and we all need to become part of the discussion that will create all of our future. We need to quiet down a bit, and be open to hear the stories that are unique to only us.  Let go of our own doubts and stop pushing so hard to please an unknown public or trying to write by some pre- determined screenplay format and start listening to the voice inside us that will create truly unique stories and images. There are enough reality shows that cater to our base emotions, and enough commercial nonsense that caters to a sole financial gain, and enough vacant product designed to inflate egos and support a celebrity culture, that I think it's time that we, who view ourselves as artists, stand up and step up our game, join together, talk, discuss and begin to create art which inspires, infuriates, makes us reflect, makes us question, and dares us to see ourselves, others, and this world in a different way.  Open to the spirit that dares us to be more than we think we can be...........I can't wait to see howt these types of films and this type of art will influence all of us.

                            





 

diary of a country priest

Went to see Diary of A Country Priest at Film Forum....I had never seen it, but knew a bit about Robert Bresson and his exploration of the human heart, and soul, the quest for something more.....Paul Schrader based alot of Travis Bickle"s character in Taxi Driver on this film.......the way he uses narration also........I wasn't expecting the delayed power and emotional affect of the film.......it begins quietly, slowly and continues in this same manner......long takes, extended close ups on the priest.......and not alot happens,  but somehow, the images begin to act like a narcotic.....and through the brilliance of his film making, he somehow manages to bring us inside the soul of this gentle, tortured priest......unaware of it's hypnotic affect, I was slowly transported into the emotional turmoil of his character without much more than a glance, a look, a stare, a gaze, an agonized reckoning.........when the film came to its quiet, understated end, the audience was floored.....you could have heard a pin drop in the audience......it was as if your soul, not your mind had experienced the journey on the screen.....I know Bresson is not everyone's taste, but you have to admire a film maker who has the courage to attempt the impossible, and not cater to the audience's wants......not much action, not much dialogue, outside the voice over,  but he manages to challenge us to go deeper, to see film in a different way, to throw away your expectations of what a film and story should be, and take the leap and go on the emotional journey, which leads deep into your subconscious.................the cry of the soul,an exploration of the dark night of the soul, and the sweet transcendence when the spirit, in love, is finally set free....................as a film maker, I hope I have the same courage to challenge and not pander to a certain accepted  visual cadence, but instead create one which touches each viewer in a much deeper way........................can't wait for the new 35mm restored print of Taxi Driver starting March 18th at the Film forum..........