making crazy*** work for you

john fleuvog's.  hand made.  half price.

my friend andi told me about  the maria bamford series.  maybe you already know about it?

when i watched the first episode, i was all

YES.

because this is what it's about, people.

to make good art, you have to embrace the mental, but not let it destroy you.  a very, very fine line.  i've been walking both sides of it for as long as i can remember.

so have a lot of other cool people i know.

while i don't want to make generalizations that are too sweeping or unsubstantiated

(YES I DO.)

it just seems like

to make art,

you have to know how to work the continuum of normal to freaky really hard and well.

does that make a modicum of sense?????

(NEW NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION:  LEARN TO WORK THE CRAZY REALLY HARD AND WELL.)

so, here's your saturday goal:

watch an episode of the maria bamford show.

totally attainable goal.

you're welcome.

*** i know "crazy" can be an offensive.  i've searched for an alternative, but haven't come up with a good one:  "mad" is too hipster, "insane" is too crazy, "kooky" too frivolous & perky, & c.  what's the word that means: fun, stupid, sad, manic, depressed, staying in bed all day and staying out all night, crashing and soaring all at the same time?

lady directors

lynn shelton shows touchy feely at the festival this year.

gals, i'm super excited that we're representing at full parity at the 2013 sundance film festival--for the first time ever, 50% of the directors are ladies.

here's my full preview of the festival at the gate.  i'll be posting reviews and interviews there for the next ten days.

freida lee mock directs a documentary about anita hill.  still trying to score an interview with her.

lot's of great looking films this year from guys & gals.

so excited for tomorrow!

Unusual Routes: Christmas on Earth

Barbara, with her hand in Dylan's hair

I discovered a new girl artist tonight.

This was because instead of biking home along my usual route, I went along Canal, which sucks to travel along.  It's all Robert Moses-ey and alienating and dangerous, especially in the dark.  But I needed to be on Canal to go to Boo-Hooray where they were having an exhibit/screening of Barbara Rubin's Christmas on Earth, and related Rubin ephemera.  Xmas on Earth is an experimental film that was once shown over a Velvet Underground performance in 1965.  Barbara Rubin, a precocious young New Yorker, made it when she was 17.  To say the film was erotic, would be an understatement.  But that's all blurred by its super artiness.

(To interject, curatorial cards in the exhibit reminded us viewers that the Rubin was working in an era in which a "money shot" in porn could get you arrested.  The audaciousness of this 17-year-old young woman is stunning.)

Barbara Rubin seems bold beyond her years.  Look at her above, tousling Bob Dylan's hair on the back of his record.  Supposedly, she introduced Ginsberg to Dylan--two boys who became far more famous than she, but who were far less brave in their art.  Even Ginsberg--can I just say it?

Rubin died at age 35 in childbirth in France.  She had become an orthodox Jew and wanted Christmas on Earth destroyed.  Anthology Film Archives hero and experimental filmmakerJonas Mekas, who had retrieved and kept the film, refused to do so.

This kind of thing, this kind of pain-in-the-ass detour from my usual route, is I want to keep doing into next year, Lara.

Here are Rubin's words:

so i spent 3 months chopping the hours of film up
into a basket
and then toss and toss
flip and toss
and one by one
Absently enchantedly Destined to splice it together
and separate on to two different reels
and then project one reel half the size
inside the other reel full screen size
and then i showed it
and someone tells me, 'my what a good editing job that is indeed!

          - Barbara Rubin, from "A P.S. to Christmas On Earth" (1966)

Still from Christmas on Earth

"I Hope I Don't Intrude"--the front door of Boo-Hooray