Did I Really Just See That?

On this past Saturday I had the rare opportunity to see a live performance by the sketch comedy quintet The Kids in the Hall at The Riverside, their second performance in their current tour--only their second appearance in Milwaukee, and the first since 2002. I, myself, write, produce, and act in a sketch group, so its a medium of particular interest to myself. If sketch comedy is not an art, then this show would have required a new classification. It is a difficult thing to write about--good sketch is something that needs to be experienced, and I have no desire to anecdotally reflect on the funniest moments or best lines of dialogue. Even old jokes, like the video of Bruce McCulloch over-dubbed to say "Milwaukee" at the right time, carried a freshness with them born purely of sincerity.

The trap in writing sketch is soaking yourself in sarcasm. It abounds in sketch, and, without it, sketch would probably suck. Hardcore. But there is a difference in writing sarcasm and performing sarcastically. When you perform sarcastically, you appear disinterested, like you're just doing this because you have nothing else to do, like you don't really respect the audience's ability to interpret you, or any number of other bad things. Some genres might benefit from a sarcastic performance--like soap operas, for instance--but in sketch it just makes you look like an ass. The Kids in the Hall have been doing this for 24 years--22 with the current lineup--in which time they've become the most well-recognised sketch group in the world behind only Monty Python. To still play with the same enthusiasm and commitment after that long--not to mention keeping the humor fresh after they've established their own canon--is incredible.

We're lucky to have had them (though Dave Foley did express amazement to me after the show that they'll be doing a show in Green Bay [followed by shrugging and shaking of head] later in the tour), because their live performance is a very unique and worthwhile experience.

James Benning

I would lie if I said I wasn't intrigued by the idea of a film class featuring a math lecture from a very prominent experimental filmmaker. What James said about the disengagement of math teachers and lecturers from their audience really rang true with me. If he had been my 8th grade Algebra teacher, I might not be in film school--I guess I can count my blessings. While the math he did really was not advanced at all (it really did feel like a condensed version of 8th grade Algebra--never mind I failed 8th grade Algebra), my attention was held just by the energy he radiated long enough to let him apply the lesson to my reality.

He held a particular fascination for the elegance of simplicity in mathematical logic. Math and the sciences always work from specific to general in their proofs, applying a hypothesis to a very specific set of circumstances, then broadening their proof of concept to cover a much more general set of circumstances--the ultimate goal of which is to develop a unified "theory of everything." That elegance of simplicity is a philosophy I've held for a long time myself. In my work, I try to express the most I can with the least--a glance, a raised eyebrow, a camera angle, and pencil stroke, a sound effect, or simply silence itself--which, I think, is what he meant when he said we should look for that kind of elegance in our own work.

Splitting/Spiral Jetty

I felt a couple different reactions for Splitting and The Spiral Jetty. To me, though it was filmed, Splitting seemed like a performance piece more than anything. Like how much of his "anarchitecture" had to be experienced first hand, I feel like Splitting was more of a total experience that couldn't be as well approximated on film as in person. The concept alone, "this guy is going to cut a house in half," is provocative and exciting, but the matter-of-fact workmanlike editing of the piece sucks that excitement and intrigue dry.

The Spiral Jetty certainly had much more of a story to tell, and I felt it was primarily narrative in form. The early focus on dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures gave the proper undercurrent of motivation as to why Smithson may have been interested in building this object, and the bulk of the film is more or less the story of physically constructing it, with the climatic moment being the person (presumably Smithson) traversing the length of it.

That said, I think the "denouement" of the piece--the protracted helicopter shots--ran long and hinted of ego. If not ego, then a lack of objectivity in looking at the formation--pride is uderstandable, but it overshadows the rest of the film when it leaks through the final minutes.

Tabletop Artist's Statement

Sorry for the lateness of this entry--without further ado:

Obviously, I took a very minialist approach to this assignment, because that is always my preference. My project, essentially, was a live-drawn picure of a scientist holding a film canister, excaiming "This is my most experimental film YET!" I didn't know I could have adjusted the zoom prior to shooting, so the text was mostly cut off of the video, but this is what it intended to say in entirety. The message is a kind of double-edged satire, both of the heavy emphasis of experimental film, virtually to the exclusion of studying contemporary commercial film in a program filled with people trying to take advantage of contemporary commercial film moving to the State of Wisconsin, but also of the idea that the "experimental film maker" is nothing more than a petty novelist who peddles an amorphous artistic sensibility in place of a more tangible meaning in their films.

I feel as though several my numerous rough drafts were much better than the final product, because I underestimated to amount of concentration required to maintain a whistled tune, a last-second addition, throughout the process. Given a second chance, I'd have done it silently. Still, I think the scumbly nature of the line made it difficult to discern exactly what I was drawing until the end, which should serve to maintain interest until the end.

Reflecting on The Amatuerist

As I watched Miranda July's "The Amateurist," I couldn't help but impose my own narrative outside the limited frame. To me, the character of the Professional didn't seem unsure of herself in her technical expertise, just of her ability to communicate that expertise on a human level. This seemed like a textbook case of a "techie," someone so engrossed in the techincal aspects of their field that they lose (or fail to develop) their interpersonal skills. The character also expressed a kind of forced contentment. More to come...

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Furthermore, the character of the Amateur as depicted seemed like a representation of caged freedom, restrained against her will, forced to bid by outside authority, but retaining the anger of wanted liberty.

Based on these observations, I constructed an Orwellian dystopia outside the frame. (It helped that the surveillance cam was in a grainy black and white, suggesting a vision of the future from the 1950s.) The movie, to me, was as though a hand-held first-person documentary were being made about the ordinary people who make the Big Brother network operate, as ironic a concept as that might be (since the overall tone was one seemingly of ironic humor, that didn't bother me very much). The Amateur was a free-spirit, brought to wherever she was for the purposes of re-education or just observation and experimentation. The Professional was just a technician doing a job, one she was particulrly skilled at, even though she may be aware of the dubious morality. Any such inclinations would need to be forced back, of course, or else it would be her on the other side of the monitor.