WTF

So, Bad Lieutenant, the 90s classic (that I desperately need to see) with Harvey Keitel as the tortured deeply flawed police dude ibeing remade by Hollywood with Nicholas Cage. Val Kilmer also has a role, and, browsing imdb, I see that Xzibit is in it. (For those who don't know, that's the lovely fellow from pimp my ride. He also, once upon a time, was known as a rapper, as seen here.) Also, the setting has been moved to New Orleans. The movie is called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Abel Ferrara, director of the original Bad Lieutenant has expressed his feelings that the people remaking this should "die in hell".

Now, ordinarily, this seems like it could be a fair statement. However, the person signed up to direct this film is.....................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................

Are you ready for it?

WERNER HERZOG!!!!!!!!

It's like the person writing the story of the world just got really, really wasted one night.

Even better is this interview.

Add this to the music video above, and I think we have a new reason the universe should be allowed to exist for at least a couple months until this project is completed.

Movies watched since Saturday

Repulsion

Really creepy Polanski thriller starring Catharine Deneuve as a woman who goes insane when her sister and her sister's boyfriend go on vacation, and she is left alone. The movie does a really good job of setting things up. Little hints are dropped. The movie's greatest accomplishment is that when men look at Deneuve and objectify her, the viewer can understand how violated she feels. It's also just full of really fucked up shit. Will never see rabbits the same way.

Clerks II

Watched this on youtube somewhere around one in the morning. Much better than I expected. It does seem a bit odd that a big part of the main character's troubles is that he's caught between two attractive women. (Lookithim!) But at the same time, one of them is played by the wife of Kevin Smith, so ya. It was a lot different than Clerks, though, because that one almost seemed like a New Jersey version of a Jim Jarmusch movie at times (this was pointed out to me by a friend, and I thought that it was perfect), and the plot seemed more incidental. Not a huge fan of either film, but I can;t understand why anyone would really hate them, they're very good at what they do.

La Haine

FUCKING MASTERPIECE. Three guys in the projects in France wander around after their friend is beaten until comatose by a cop. one of them finds a gun a cop lsot during riots, and vows to kill one if the friend dies. Extremely tense, and very sad. Also, very fleshed out, three dimensional characters. It's like a road trip movie pervaded with a depressing sense of aimlessness, because the characters are in constant motion, but don;t go anywhere, except on one trip to Paris, and I won;t spoil any of their misadventures there for you. See if you can figure out what that cow is, though. In lovely black and white.

Life of Brian

What can be said? The Pythons are generally hilarious. Veddy silly.

Whath tho funny about the name of my fwiend?

Clerks

Wanted to find something to fall asleep to, and I had seen this before so I wouldn't need to pay much attention to it. It's a nice laid back sort of movie, and I don't really have much to say about it that I haven't said above.

This is England

Great movie, set in England in the 80s, about a preteen whose father was killed in the Falklands. He falls in with some friendly skinheads who are nice to him after he gets made fun of in school. Then, an old friend of his new friends gets out of jail spouting racist, nationalist garbage, splitting up the group. He is joined by Shaun, who is confused and upset. As coming of age movies go, you really can't get much better. Shaun's journey of self discovery is brilliantly conveyed, with not a wrong note.

The development of The Prodigal Son as a conversationalist

From zero years to one year old, most of my communication consisted of the standard gurgles. Sometime after that, I said the word "ball." It's just been uphill from there.

My very first communication was about superheroes. This is because my father taught me the secret identities of the superheroes. He used to parade me around like a prize poodle who knew one trick, supplying me with the names of costumed vigilantes.

"The Hulk!"

"Bwuce Banna!"

"Spiderman!"

"Peta Pahka!"

"Batman!"

"Bwuce Wayne!"

I also knew many of the theme songs from the TV shows. I used to go around singing them. Adults seemed to like this. It also, along with, later on, my spelling abilities, seemed to garner grudging respect from my peers. I learned that if you knew something that not everybody did, it made you cool. Of course, it was a lot less cool when I turned eleven or so, and still tried to impress people with my knowledge of comics, which exploded into obsession passed its beginnings as a kind of parlor trick for my dad.

Then, I got into movies. Suddenly, everything related to films. I would go out of my way to direct conversations to the topic of cinema, constructing extended metaphors that made no sense whatsoever. Also, in my beginnings as a cinephile, I got very self-righteous, yelling at girls who thought Johnny Depp was "like, so hot in Secret Window," telling them to watch Edward Scissorhands.

I was cool and smart.

My teachers said I had a lot of potential, and they told my mother I was very handsome, which made up for the hatred from most of my peers.

Then, I went to a gifted program camp. It wasn't great, but I made a very good friend. The next summer, we did the program again, but at a different college campus. We had both discovered masturbation, and we talked about it constantly, especially before we went to bed. It would be interspersed with references to fairly standard classic movies.

When I went back home, this time to a new town, I had a new topic of conversation.

I was cool and smart.

Somewhere in the middle of eighth grade, I realized that I actually enjoyed talking to people, even if most of them did not like talking to me. How would I be able to have conversations? I thought I found an answer. I would get into music.

That summer, I went back to the gifted program, for the third and last year I would ever go. Someone gave me their Queen best-of CD. People also talked a lot about Pink Floyd, so I found Wish you Were Here when i got home. At school, I found someone who would burn CDs for me if I did the same for them. My uncle lent me Maggot Brain, and they gave me a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico. Soon, I became the same way about music as I had with movies. Both became passions. I spent hours indulging in both, and looking for hours on the internet for information. Funnily enough, this sort of internet research is a solitary activity.

I was cool and smart.

Fortunately, in ninth grade, I did find a group of people, and magically enough, we talked, and still do.

For several years, all I talked about was music, movies, and masturbation. However, I learned to talk about something else as well, somewhere along the line, as this blog will attest to: myself!

Conversations used to start, "You know what would be a great time? Whacking it to Funkadelic."

Now they begin, "I will have a great time whacking it to Funkadelic."

I am cool and smart.

The glorious beginning of my cinematic career.

Being a Jew, and therefore having connections in the seedy Jewish underworld, a family friend who is for some reason quite fond of me found a job filming a Bar Mitzvah. This friend had previously wanted me to photograph her son's Bar Mitzvah, but having no real experience with such a thing, and a friend who is a talented photographer, I declined the offer, and gave it to this friend. Still, she was determined that I make money, and gave me the contact information of the parents of a young Member of the Tribe named Leo who would be making the great Journey into Manhood.

Now, I don;t actually have experience with video, other than my current film class and several "experimental" shorts made on my video camera, mostly of people saying things like "Josh, turn off the fucking camera!" (I like to think I have a very self-aware cinematic voice). Here is how the conversation with the mother of young Leo went, or something like that.

TPS: Hello, my name is Josh. Uh, Jill gave me this number?

Leo's mother: Oh, hello. You're the one who can do the filming?

TPS: Yeah.

LM: So, what have you done?

TPS: Well, um, I have to admit to not having a ton of experience but I am in a film class in my highschool.

LM: Have you ever done this before?

TPS: Actually, this would be my first job. I was jsut wondering, I don;t really have editing equipment, and as for camera....

LM: Oh, don;t worry about editing, and we have a camera. We just want a nice little thing to remember it by.

And so on. She sounded very anxious the whole time, which is a condition many parents suffer from right before their children's Bar or Bat Mitzvahs. I felt as if I was taking advantage of her, and I was afraid I got the job because she didn't want to hurt my feelings. But, most importantly, I did get the job. The party (I wasn't going to be filming the ceremony) was to be held in a few weeks at the local art museum.

So, a few weeks later, I went to the local art museum, dressed in suit. The photographer and I had both gotten there before anyone else, and we began chatting. She was an actual professional photographer, a very small middle aged woman. People finally began to arrive. I asked them to say things into the camera.

"Hello, Leo, it's your aunt Lottie, I just want to say, we're all very proud of you, and you did a wonderful job on your Torah reading."

"Leo! Your cousins and I would like to congratulate you!"

etc.


The party started. I scanned the room with the camera, occasionally waving to people so they would wave back. I was very cautious, so as not to film any cleavage, and to make sure that I didn't seem to have any frightening tendencies. This meant, I didn't try to film any single element too much. For example, I tried not to have too many shots of plates of food. I did not think it was in my best interest for my employers to think I had a cocktail weenie fetish.

Then the candle lighting ceremony happened. In a candle lighting ceremony, if you do not know, relatives and friends are invited to light candles on a cake with little couplets such as, "You're supernice and your cookies are great, Grandma Fanny, come light candle eight."

Then came the neverending dancing.

If there is one thing I can go through life without hearing again, it is a techno remix of "Don't Stop Believing."


Young Mr. Leo may grow up to be our next president. However, he did not look particularly winning crankin' that Soulja Boy. Watching a room full of mostly white seventh graders who look very excited about the prospect of supermanning a ho sent me into a philosophical spiral. Did they know what that was? If they did know, would they do it? How much money would I be paid to film that? Would this tape, years down the line, cause Leo to contemplate suicide?

Then there was a little photo bit. Then I got paid, killing any regrets I might have had.