Sean Price Williams (Cinematographer, Tesla, Good Time)
Sean Price Williams
Well, it’s summertime. The seasonal excuse to accumulate books with the awesome intention to consume. Again. The piles grow. I have a new apartment. Even more room to fill. No, that’s certainly not true. I have, for many years, a habit of never finishing a book. I don’t feel good at all closing the final leaf. Closing the back cover. There is no satisfaction in that for me. I remember reading The Dice Man by George Cockroft and just absolutely loving every bit of it, and deciding 11 pages before the end that there was no way on Earth that knowing the end could possibly make me happy. Maybe the books are like friends and I would rather just never know their final moments. I guess I won’t read my own final page. So now I have a clear understanding of my laziness when it comes to tackling my stacks of books. It’s a deep fear, in fact. However, let me suggest a few reads that have me currently engaged all at the same time.
Flowers of Perversion, Volume 2: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús France by Stephen Thrower
As a middle-aged cinephile, I have pretty much settled on who I think are worthwhile filmmakers and who are a waste of time. Overwhelmed in my early 20s by Eurosleaze and sexy trashy films, I had to take some stands, just so I could prioritize time and energy. After watching about 15 films by Jess Franco, ranging from the newly discovered, newly restored, to the wretched blurry bootleg, I decided I had had enough. He was just an inept horndog. I fell off the wagon, and decided to give him another try. And now it all clicked. Franco was an absolutely liberated artist — liberated but also completely driven by pure musical impulse. Luckily, there are so many beautiful Blu-rays now of his early ’80s Spanish films, which I find the most full of treasures. And they feature great interviews with Franco, usually lounging very awkwardly and smoking cigarettes. Often also featured are discussions by Stephen Thrower, who has written two brilliantly researched and enjoyable tomes on Franco. Unusually, I enjoy the second half of the career even more than the much more celebrated first half. It’s rare that a filmmaker gets better with age. So it’s this second volume that I suggest.
Rumors of Noizu: Hijokaidan and the Road to 2nd Damascus by Kato David Hopkins
Of course, I wish I had been a guitar god. Many of my heroes are guitar geniuses. Inventors. The more untraditional, the more I am in awe. And I love reading music bios and histories. I am happy to not know the facts from the fictions. A few months before Little Richard died, I read the very outrageous and wonderful biography by Charles White, called The Life and Times of Little Richard. Not limited to American music history, I followed it up with Dokkiri! Japanese Indies Music 1976- 1989: A History and Guide.
It’s a very lively account of exactly what the title suggests, by Kato David Hopkins. A strange and colorful writing style adds to the alien scene documented. I had been familiar with some of the music in the book, but I came away with hours and hours of downloaded material that I still gleefully digest. Hopkins followed up the book with Rumors of Noizu. It’s also very fun to read — and to imagine the late ’70s coffee shops in Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka where one would go just to hear a new import record, or a brand-new underground cassette recording.
Within these scenes, a new music is born, and it is Noizu! I have been gathering up as much of the music mentioned in this book as in the previous book, but there is a difference — I am not enjoying almost any of this Noizu. The worst part of listening to these endless squeals is that I want to like it so much. In fact, I need to like it. If I don’t like it, what kind of a listener am I? Do I have any real taste for the extreme? Don’t I want to define myself by not just tolerance, but deep appreciation for such pure expression? I hope I live another 20 years and finally have the ears to hear.
Bombast #1: “A Journal of Film and Funnies”
A new zine by Nick Pinkerton, featuring art by Caroline Golum, Nathan Gelgud, Demian Johnston, Jasper Jubenvill, Owen Kline, Casey Moore, Marc Palm, Gina Telaroli and Thu Tran, along with assorted conversations.
It’s a zine in spirit, though it’s quite a handsome little nugget. I am eagerly anticipating this. And not because it contains a lengthy conversation between myself and Nick Pinkerton on the subject of the later films of Blake Edwards. I think this is going to be a very healthy, funny, beautiful collection of singular points of view that may challenge a very stuck film culture. Necessary. Order yourself a copy pronto.
Stevie Szerlip (Writer-director, “Young Forever”)
Stevie Szerlip
Getting Away With It by Steven Soderbergh
Soderbergh transcribes a career retrospective interview with the filmmaker Richard Lester, intersplicing it with his own journals from the period 1996-97, as he is running out of money from writing jobs and has just finished the low-budget Schizopolis, which he is trying to get distribution for. It’s a funny, candid and self-deprecating peek into his professional life and a great hang with both filmmakers as they make jokes and talk shop.
Also:
• Speedboat by Renata Adler
• Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Sean Durkin (Writer-director, The Nest)
Sean Durkin
The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
I love this collection of short stories. I pick it up every couple of weeks and read a story when I’m in search of some inspiration. Subtle, specific, human. I find myself immediately lost in each character she depicts.
Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley by David Browne
A stunning portrait of father and son, plagued by demons, linked by tragedy, trying to communicate with each other through time, space and music. I have thought about this book every day since I read it.
Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
A perfect summer read: It is transporting. You feel the heat of NYC and Fire Island in the 1970s. A visceral journey to such a specific place and time. When I think back on the book, I feel it isn’t something I read, but something I witnessed. Detailed, graphic, humorous, celebratory and devastating.
R . Emmet Sweeney (Associate director of media production and operations at Kino Lorber)
R. Emmet Sweeney
Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City by Debashree Mukherjee
A kaleidoscopic portrait of Bombay cinema from the 1920s-40s, offering deeply researched histories of the studios, performers, technologies, and below-the-line workers who built the infrastructure of what would become Bollywood.
Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit by Mark Leyner
Bowel-bustingly funny.
The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Crack some cold ones and read this one-of-a-kind, centuries-long epic, in which a rotating cast of bickering nuns survive the Black Death along with the daily annoyances of living.
Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure by Maria Golia
Not a traditional biography, but offers an expansive look at the aural landscape and cultural milieu that nurtured Coleman’s young genius in Fort Worth, Texas and beyond.
Courtney Stephens (Director, Terra Femme, The American Sector)
Courtney Stephens
Basic Black with Pearls by Helen Weinzweig
This 1980 Canadian novel, which disappeared for 35 years, was recently republished and accurately praised as a feminist landmark. A woman must decipher the clues left for her by a shape-shifting lover, a man of international intrigue, in the pages of National Geographic issues, airplane freebies, and academic conference notes. She will follow these signs around the world, and to the most intimate spaces of her psyche.
The Buenos Aires Affair: A Detective Novel by Manuel Puig
Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together was originally conceived as an adaptation of this formally inventive Argentine novel about a closeted art critic and a one-eyed sculptress. A novel of high pulp and sexual pathos. By the time Gladys discovers her truest mode of expression — collecting jetsam and flotsam on the beach by moonlight — she is in too deep in a manufactured mystery. She channels the tragic glamour queens of Von Sternberg and Cukor as a pathway out.
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
A classic novel about the search (“to become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something”). An adaptation of this book was proposed by Terrence Malick in the ’90s but never made, and Percy similarly received training in philosophy before applying it to the Southern psyche in search of a sensibility. In the word of protagonist Binx Bolling, “Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”
Share:
