Mar 20, 22, 25, Apr 2, 3, 5
Heya,
I ran across your blog while trawling for random "100 Things" lists on
Google; of the fifteen or so I checked out, I think I read more of
yours than any of the others.
Anyway, I've blogrolled you on my own blog -- http://www.portapulpit.com
(I generally like to confirm that that's cool with the blog owner when
it's not implicitly understood.)
Nice stuff... I'll keep checking in from time to time, eh?
Take it easy,
Amy
> Hi Amy,
Heya Dave! A pleasant surprise... wasn't expecting a reply. :)
> Thanks, nice to know it's not all just going into the void. The internet's
> like a massive brain with hyperlinks as dendrites linking it all up, the
> more links the stronger the web. I'll reciprocate a link to yours.
Oh, hey, cool... thanks. I agree completely... I'd go mad with isolation
if I didn't have this source of contact with the rest of the world. I
can barely remember how I got around without the internet. (I know,
that's partly a weakness, but a justifiable one I think.)
Had a
> quick look at it, interesting how you say you've gained a political
> consciousness since 2000 (wonder why that year, hmm),
I find I've shedding
> my own apoliticism recently too. Also helped that I abandoned trying to get
> into the NZ film industry in favour of conservation work... 11 Oscars for
> Lord of the Rings hasn't changed my mind. I'm starting some preliminary
> research for a piece of investigative journalism on health &
> safety practices dealing with toxic non-biodegradable materials in the art
> departments. Could be a great party pooper if there's anything in it.
You might well be right... I have a few friends who work in special
effects make-up and various other parts of the art department, and while
I've never heard them talk much about the safety of the materials they
use (they tend to just use 'em and not think too deeply about it), I can
imagine that some of the stuff is a bit unpleasant. I'll be curious to
see what you come up with.
> Isn't Ulysses great? 100th anniversary of Bloomsday this year, not that
> that means anything. Gravity's Rainbow's a serious time investment but well
> worth it. The difference with Ulysses is that that's a very simple story
> told in a complex way while GR is just complex - a lot of fun though. Mason
> & Dixon is Pynchon’s other big one, a bit lighter in tone.>
I am ashamed that I lived in England for three years, swearing each year
that I would get to Dublin for Bloomsday... and I never made it. I
probably even know a Joycean scholar there, and I _still_ didn't manage
the trip. How pathetic is that? (My excuse: I was in film school at the
time, and June 16 invariably fell right in the middle of the summer term
production grind.)
Y'know... your writing is really quite good. (She says, as if she were a
reliable arbiter of such things. But hey, I like Mr. Joyce, and I like
this, so that's a solid compliment, right? ;) ) I haven't had time to
read in depth, but so far, I like what I'm reading. (I'm guessing
you've spent some time on Finnegan's Wake, too, huh? ;))
Anyway, take it easy, regards, etc.,
Amy
> Hi Amy,
Heya Dave,
> Caught you out - you know that Finnegans Wake deliberately doesn't have an
> apostrophe?
Oh dear... there's my literary cred shot to hell. ;)
>Gives more multiple meanings to the title.
Say, have you ever read Stanislaw Lem's "Gigamesh?" (Not Gilgamesh,
Gigamesh... pretty sure, anyway.) It's in his collection "A Perfect
Vacuum"... it's a satire on Joyce and Joycean scholarship, and that
whole kind of Derridean deconstructionist (ha! I can use big words! ;))
postmodern sort of writing and criticism... if you haven't read it, I
know I'm sounding completely wanky right now, but you oughta give it a
look. I have a sneaky feeling you'd get a little bit of entertainment
out of it at least.
God, I must sound like a pretentious fuck... I'm overcompensating for
having buggered up "Finnegans Wake" ;)
I've read bits of
> it and it's brilliant but gives me a headache after a while so I haven't
> been able to take on the whole thing.
> Great that you like NZ films, there are some good ones, personally Meet the
> Feebles is my favourite of Peter Jackson's. He's worshipped as a demigod in
> Wellington these days & it can be a bit tiring seeing him in the newspapers
> every day,
I can imagine. Although he's a cuddly, friendly-looking guy, so maybe it
could be worse.
sometimes hard to remember that he does have talent &
> originality. His big innovation is in not going away to work in Hollywood
> like other major NZ directors, but bringing Hollywood here.
He has balls of steel for doing that... if he'd caved and headed for
California, I doubt we'd be sitting her discussing LOTR now. Wouldn't be
worth discussing, even with Peter at the helm.
Only problem now, of course, is that he's convinced much of the world's
young filmmaking talent to move to NZ, and now they all want to stay (I
don't blame 'em, I would too.) I'd think that would kinda clog up the
industry, though... Mr. Jackson's managed to make it ten times bigger,
but it's still pretty small relatively speaking.
The LOTR films
> I find slightly frustrating though in their mixture of moments of genius and
> moments of appalling banality. So you're a film student?
Well, not anymore... I mean, I guess technically I am, since I haven't
handed in my graduation film yet, but I haven't actively attended film
school for a year and a half now. No, right now, having sailed out
gung-ho into the seas of modern filmmaking, I have hit the traditional
post-film-school doldrums, and now I'm sitting here with a limp sail and
no current. (How's that for a florid analogy?) I did a stint out in LA,
and it went pretty well professionally. Didn't go so well on the
personal level, though, and after three months I had to make the choice
to either head home to Memphis or start living out of my car. Obviously,
I chose Memphis, which is the spiritual equivalent to living out of your
car, but safer.
Now I'm serving on the (unpaid) staff of the Memphis Digital Arts
Co-operative, which is a little filmmakers' collective that gives free
filmmaking workshops for the public, holds screenings of non-Hollywood
films, puts on an annual film festival, makes resources and equipment
available to the community, yadda yadda yadda. I'm in charge of the
workshops. And occasionally we even manage to produce an honest-to-god
film.
And I do other stuff, too... I'm gradually worming my way into the
independent documentary film world. It's a completely different vibe
than the dramatic film world... there are lots of quiet, introverted
types in documentary. Generally I feel quite at home there.
>Where do you want to end up with that?
Wow... that's such a hard question. The simple answer, I guess, is I
don't know. I think we're on the cusp of a major revolution in
filmmaking, and I have a feeling that all of the current models for
"success" aren't really going to apply anymore by the time I hit the end
of my career. At the Co-op, we're all basically DV revolutionaries to
some degree... which isn't to say that I don't value the film industry
as we know it, just to say that I think we're getting to the point where
technology is going to cause huge changes, and I think that's probably a
good thing.
In fact, I've argued before that LOTR is quite possibly the Pinnacle
Film of the film industry as we now know it. In terms of the mass-market
epic movie, I think Pete's about done all we can do in that direction...
which, I know, sounds like one of those sure-to-be-proven-wrong sweeping
predictions, but I think things are going to start moving in such a
vastly different direction in the next decade or so that these kinds of
films will become less important, and I doubt that anyone will top it
before we hit the change.
Anyway, the answer... I don't know, but if I could just make a modest
living making good films and hopefully some small contribution to the
art of cinema, that would be enough for me.
I got
> frustrated with the pyramid power structure of film crews, juniors are
> manual labourers with no creative input while people at the top take all the
> credit. It's a microcosm of capitalist society in general with the majority
> of the money going to a minority of the people.
Yeah... that's what the Co-op's for. We all work on bigger productions
when something comes along, just to pay the bills, but none of us look
at it as a way of breaking into what we all consider an industry on the
wane. The whole point of the Co-op is to put the means of production
(there's a nice Marx reference for you) in the hands of... well, anybody
who wants to make a movie. We try to keep up networks between people who
know their way around various aspects of the burgeoning film scene --
indie distributors, festivals, effects people, etc. -- so that we can
get our stuff seen by as many people as possible, but we've mostly given
up on the idea of breaking into "The Industry" on any level.
Also it helps if you can
> get by on 4 hours sleep per night, which maybe I don't have the constitution
> for. And there's the way people get an overinflated ego... Sorry I'm
> ranting.
And I'm babbling. If you're curious to see what we're doing here, and
you have a reasonably fast connection, you can go check out
http://www.bluecitrushearts.com
This was actually done by fellow Co-oper Morgan, but I did my part on it
as well. Hell, if I remember correctly, BCH actually aired in New
Zealand (only in Auckland, though) as part of some GLBT film festival
thingy.
(Yep, I'm right... here's the listing. BCH is second to last.
http://www.tritv.co.nz/gay.asp )
Looks like there's a fair bit of information about the dangers of
> synthetic materials around - they used vast quantities of polystyrene in
> LOTR, as well as non-water-based paints etc.
Y'all should build a city out of the leftovers; that's pretty much what
Los Angeles did. And if it's polystyrene, when the oceans start to rise
you can all just float away... ;)
> Thanks for vote of confidence in the writing, I tend to get a lot of people
> finding it incomprehensible. I (sort of) know what I'm doing anyway.
I kinda figure that's all any writer knows... it's as good a place to
start as any. Like I said, I think you're quite good... I think I get
where you're going with it, and as a reader I don't object to tagging
along. Now, to turn the question back on you... where do you want to end
up with that?
I'm
> studying journalism this year and part of it's about putting information
> across clearly & simply - the non-fiction provides a balance to the stories.
> I feel like shit today, I'm at home sick. Hopefully it's just a cold rather
> than flu but I'm all clogged up & aching all over. Time to have another hot
> drink and go to sleep yet again...
Damn... spring colds suck, too. Except, it's autumn there, isn't it...
nevermind. Hope you're feeling better, anyway.
> Dave
Take it easy,
Amy
> Hi Amy,
Heya Dave,
> Actually I have read the story Gigamesh (title = very big mesh?) - somehow
> you picked the one piece of Lem that I did know!
> Your co-op sounds really interesting, will have to get around to your
> website next (I'm on work computer here so can't do everything).
It's pretty good... it keeps me sane, anyway. Something to do.
There's a
> no-budget DV scene here in Wellington but it still seems to bring about a
> cult-of-personality thing around the director. I'm sure my problem is that
> I'm slightly bitter about my experiences in the Wgtn film scene, doing a
> bunch of work for free and not getting it acknowledged,
Yep, done that.
and struggling to
> get employment (and then finding it boring once I did),
I've never minded the work -- I even find it fun -- but it's gotta be on
a project that offers me something. Either it has to be something in
which I can invest myself, even if it's not "my" project, or it's gotta
pay (and pay well) in some form -- cash, contacts, reciprocal
assistance, something. Sadly, there's very little of either in Memphis,
especially the latter... professional productions pass through, but
usually in the manner a plague of locusts; they tend to treat local
crewies in exploitative ways, expecting them to work long hours for
nothing, etc.
and of course the
> way it drove my girlfriend & I apart when she got a job & I didn't.
> The long hours and bullshit pseudo-glamour turned her into an alcoholic
> promiscuous speed-shooting egomaniac... Not that I was in a good state at
> that time either (see story 'Overgrowth' on my website).
Ohhhhh... well, no, that's not good. Not good at all. I suppose, then,
that I'm quite lucky... around here, the most anybody does is smoke a
bit too much, overdo it with the coffee, and maybe get a bit shitfaced
now and then. Pretty pedestrian habits... there's not even much pot
smoking going on. At least, not that I've seen... pointing out that I
rarely do any of the above myself, so maybe they wait til I'm gone. ;)
Morgan, however, can put away vegan tofu nachos like a man possessed. As
for promiscuity... phhht, I wish.
> Anyway the idea of turning my back on film to become a conservationist
> appeals in its perversity. Looking after the natural environment seemed to
> me to be a kind of bottom line, something real as opposed to artificial.
Can't argue with that... you don't get much more artificial than movies.
(That goes double for documentaries in many respects.) What kind of
stuff do you do in your conservation work?
> My first job at Dept of Conservation was writing press releases and a
> guidebook about Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, organising
> community events, media liason etc. Great thing about DOC though is the
> chance to do a range of work indoors and outdoors. I like doing physical
> work but get bored if I do nothing but, likewise communications work is
> probably where my skills lie but I wouldn't want to be in an office every
> day. I spent the summer removing exotic weeds from a hillside and growing
> native trees to plant on it. I find it really interesting, the idea that
> human intervention can not only destroy but also manage or recreate an
> ecosystem. It's actually likely to be a 'growth industry' over the next
> couple of decades, especially once climate change starts wreaking havoc
> across the world, not just seas rising but things like changing weather
> patterns, increased fire danger, spread of weeds etc. Trees hold the soil
> together, give a home to birds & insects, extract CO2 from the air etc.
> Educating people about things like recycling and energy saving are
> important.
Gosh... I wish we did stuff like that here. The current prevailing
social climate in the US seems to look at concepts like conservation as
at best quaint, and at worst a foolish waste of time. I've been reading
a bit lately about the energy expended in food production, and it's
really quite staggering how much energy is wasted for really no purpose
at all. But right now, even the most committed people are so overwhelmed
by the more obvious problems that they have little energy left to put
into the rather extreme environmental problems we've got brewing here.
The whole situation is very disheartening.
My big reservation
> about working in the media industry was that I wouldn't have felt good about
> myself if I went to work on ads.
I worked on ads in LA for a while... if you don't pay attention to what
you're doing -- in the karmic sense, I mean --, it's actually pretty
cool. Quick, always something new, nobody's as ego-driven as in feature
films, and -- not to obsess on the money, 'cause it's honestly not a
driving motivation for me, but if you're gonna sell out, you should be
paid well for it. And ads do pay well.
But, in the end, in spite of my desire to go to Hollywood and sell my
soul for $22/hr., it wasn't to be, and I was driven back to Memphis to
live the life of a starving artist/filmmaker. In retrospect, it was most
likely for the best... I got the gratification of knowing I would've
been able to hack it in Hollywood, but now I get to retain my soul and
make an effort at actually contributing something. I don't have any
aspirations to go back to LA... I'm thinking maybe Montreal (Montreal
sounds really, really nice), or back to London for a while if certain
long-range opportunities pan out.
> Mainly though it's my fault for not coming up with a strong original idea to
> film, in which case I probably could have got people to help me. I think
> it's something I'll come back to.
The "Good Idea" (TM) is a fucking hard thing to acquire, though... me, I
tend to be cursed with only parts of a Good Idea, and then have to let
'em simmer for years at a time before I figure out what to do with them.
Documentary is great for this, though... there's stuff going on in the
world that you would _never_ think up yourself, and it's just sitting
there, waiting for you to turn up with a camera. (Okay, it's not that
easy... but the principle is valid.) I still have dramatic tendencies,
but I think there's a strong argument to be made that with so much
frankly fucked-up shit (pardon the language) going on in the world, who
needs to write stories? It's all here already, actually happening all
around us. And when I say "documentary" I'm not talking about wildlife
shows and History Channel bullshit. There's a place for that, and some
of it's interesting; but I'm referring specifically to independent
feature documentary film, which is a different thing entirely.
Working with prose and music seem to suit
> me better for now since the resources needed are a lot simpler.
This is true. Almost everybody I know who's involved on any level has
done lots of other stuff as well... I've known a lot of comic book
artists, lots of musicians, lots of writers, visual artists, and some
people who did all of the above. Some people spend years doing other
things before deciding to go into film; other people get started in film
before dropping it for something else. Film is a special thing (IMO),
but it has some pretty colossal challenges attached to it even on a low
level... and if you don't find the right people to work with, you're
screwed. The right people make all the difference in the world... but I
suppose that's true of just about any creative endeavor, and probably of
life in general.
I'm still
> having this ongoing identity crisis of trying to work out what my subject
> matter is.
Got any ideas? You must be thinking something... we've all got our
favorite themes. I'm a sucker for religious material (a subject that
both fascinates and unnerves me), and anything that explores
similarities between opposites. You... y'know, thinking about it, I can
maybe see what you mean. Bearing in mind that I don't know you, and what
little I have to go on is the small bits of your writing you've made
available, based on that I do have a feeling that there is a common
thread there... but damned if I know what it is. But, c'mon, what do you
think? You know yourself; give me some insight.
I'm confident that I could sit down and write a good novel once
> I figure out what it'll be about. So far my chosen form has been the music
> album, I guess I'm still heavily influenced by Bob Dylan among others (mixed
> with noisier post-punk and free jazz elements).
Music has always been something of a mystery to me... I feel its
effects, but I've never been able to get a grip on how it works. It's
reasonable to say music intimidates me somewhat.
I love constructing an
> impressionistic or emotional narrative by putting pieces of music together
> in a certain order... Could go on about this.
Okay... go for it. What the hell, damn the torpedoes... knock yourself
out. I'm curious now, so I offer my inbox as a repository for whatever
it is you care to say.
Take it easy,
Amy
Heya Dave,
Should warn
> you that Gravity's Rainbow gets pretty dense... (& by the way Thomas Pynchon
> makes a cameo in the Simpsons this season apparently)
Y'know, you're the second person to tell me that today... must be
something in the air. I heard he was going to appear with a bag over his
head...?
Anyway, I have picked Gravity's Rainbow up again at your encouragement;
and while the book is indeed dense in places -- Mr. Pynchon wants us to
do a little work, apparently -- to my mind it's an entirely different
kind of dense than Tolkien. Dense I can do; the thing that leaves me
cold about Tolkien, I think, is a certain distant quality to his
writing... it's as if he's watching his characters but choosing not to
get involved. Pynchon stays with us through the tougher bits, which I
appreciate. I always feel like Tolkien is just sitting back and
expecting us to do half his job for him. But that's just me.
> I'm on study break for the next couple of weeks, fair bit of reading & work
> to do but don't have to go to classes. I stayed up til 4am last night
> watching 'Boys from the Blackstuff', a BBC drama miniseries about
> unemployment in the early 80s - pretty intense stuff, families getting
> ripped apart. I always avoided realist fiction growing up, just starting to
> get into it now. British tv definitely puts NZ tv to shame.
To be fair, there is a lot of really bad British television... it just
never makes it across the ocean. (We should all be thankful for that.)
Don't know if
> you know much British tv?
Not encyclopedic knowledge, but yeah, I'm pretty familiar with it. I was
raised on Python, and I _did_ live there for three years. I got a bit
over-saturated in the "Grim Oop North" genre of British drama and so
don't watch it much now, and British SF is more of an occasional
indulgence for me. My love affair with British comedy lives forever,
though... my current obsession is "the League of Gentlemen," which is
absolutely fucking brilliant, sick and black, just like I like it.
A couple of other great miniseries' were
> 'Cracker' and 'Our Friends in the North', which both costarred Christopher
> Eccleston. It's interesting that they've chosen a heavyweight dramatic
> actor to star in the new series of Doctor Who - they must have had good
> scripts to get him onboard so should be worth seeing.
Oh, Doctor Who is so widely respected and revered in England, even the
heavyweights were probably falling all over each other for the part.
> Star Trek has its moments - I thought First Contact was a step in the right
> direction but then the next two movies sucked, and I was impressed by the
> pilot episode of Enterprise but haven't seen the rest. But the British came
> up with Doctor Who, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
Red Dwarf, The Prisoner, Sapphire & Steel, Blake's 7 - all better than Star Trek or Star
> Wars IMHO. As an aside one of the first science fiction books was 'Anno
> Domini 2000', written by Julius Vogel, governor of NZ in the early 19th
> century.
> To be fair to [my ex] she didn't get promiscuous until after she dumped me
> (she was getting a lot of attention from film crew guys and maybe not
> wanting to be restricted to one partner was a factor). I was digging myself
> into a hole at that time so she was right to leave me, but its a pity it was
> such a horrible breakup and we haven't stayed friends.
Well... these things do happen. I think it's incredibly hard to stay
friends after a breakup... I've yet to manage it, anyway, and two of my
three breakups were relatively painless. Anyway, film crew guys are
always trouble... one of the first lessons I learned from the more
senior women at my film school was that while they can make great
buddies, they can't be trusted. I'm sure there are some decent ones out
there, but my personal experience as pretty much borne that out. From
film shoot romances nothing truly good was ever born.
There was a strange
> symmetry between 2002 and 2003 for me, in 2002 I had a great girlfriend but
> was frustrated with unemployment, in 2003 I got dumped and went through a
> lot of loneliness & degradation but also got a great temporary job for the
> Conservation Department which pointed me in a new direction.
Weird... in 2002 everything pretty well fell apart for me, and has
stayed that way since. It's all beginning to look better now -- slowly,
slowly -- but probably fair to say the cycles of my life tend to be more
inclined toward an all-or-nothing model. Either I'm living abroad with a
beloved boyfriend, having a fucking blast at film school with a dozen
close friends; or I'm stuck in Mississippi, alone and frustrated, in a
creative slump, bored and chronically unemployed. Feast or famine, as it
were.
All of which is an oversimplifcation, of course... the boyfriend was
beloved but, frankly, a dick; the friends fell away as soon as the final
term ended; and I do have friends here as well. And while I'm
chronically unemployed now, it has given me a lot of free time to do
other things, and I'm not in nearly as bad a situation as a great many
other people in this country. I'd still rather be living abroad, though.
. I've pretty
> much got my own life sorted out now, I'd rather have a girlfriend than be
> single but I suppose one'll come along when I stop thinking about it
That does tend to be when people turn up. And yet, in a classic
catch-22, if you try to use a strategy of not thinking about it to
attract a mate, that infers that really you are thinking about it, and
so none appears. It's not until you can reach the deep, cosmic "fuck it,
I don't want one anyway" that the magic can work.
Being
> single gets distracting.
I've found that it evens out eventually. I've been willfully single for
-- jeez, I probably don't want to think about it too much, but let's see
-- approx. two-and-a-half years now. Mostly it's been down to Memphis;
I'm dead set against falling in with a Memphis guy, because I want as
few ties to this city as possible. The first year was rough -- I endured
a gut-wrenching crush (on a film crew guy... apparently I had to learn
the hard way), then a good deal of angst and frustration, but now I'm
feeling really quite peaceful about the whole thing, able to wait with
it however long it takes. Maybe this applies more to women than men, but
I think it's good to spend some time alone and untethered when you're
young.
I did go through some strange kind of burnout last
> year and I'm having to relearn how to write. Also I'd been using marijuana
> to get into a productive headspace and now I've stopped using it - it just
> became a depressant after a while.
I've tried pot a total of four times -- it looks like so much fun, I
wanna giggle like an idiot, too -- but all I've ever gotten for my
trouble is a splitting headache. So I don't really try anymore. (And
anyway, the potential penalities for possession in this country are so
ridiculously severe even a giggly buzz almost isn't worth the risk.)
Another factor is you're definitely
> right about the world being so messed up that inventing stories can seem a
> bit superfluous. My writing options seem to be a) be a journalist
> (restrictive form, not subjective), b) make up fiction (seems slightly silly
> next to things happening in reality), c) continue doing distorted
> autobiographical stuff (seems self-indulgent and unimaginative). I'll work
> something out.
Maybe you're just a nonfictionalist? There's some killer nonfiction
writing in the world...
> Option d is keep doing albums - this has worked for me in the past, I guess
> it's my 'poetic' outlet, a chance to fuse words and sounds and also
> packaging & artwork. Words have always been my main tool but sounds can
> express things that there aren't any words for. There's a theory that
> working within restrictions is the essence of creativity - in my case the
> restriction is that I'm so technically limited instrumentally. I can strum
> a few basic chords and I can understand free-improvised music which has
> complex rhythmic interaction and is usually atonal. I'm not much good at
> melody or harmony though, and I'm verging on tone deaf. I never had any
> interest in learning covers, I don't know how to play any songs that I
> didn't write myself (apart from maybe 'Knockin on Heaven's Door', the first
> one I learned). Sometimes I can get other people to play parts on
> recordings which is a good solution and a way to collaborate. I loved
> having a band last year, Mike the cellist is a genius pretty much but he's
> busy with his own ideas, spending the last six months working on a novel.
> It got frustrating how things ground to a halt over summer just when we were
> going so well (but the band's called The Winter - Mike's idea - so it's
> oddly fitting). Good thing about study break is the chance for me to work
> up some fresh material. Should be a good challenge. But anyway, the albums
> I've made are where my real creative energy over the past few years has
> gone. I can send you some if you like.
That would be great, but you should let me trade you something for 'em
at least. I'm not sure what... we'll think of something.