In reference to Rudy Wurlitzer‘s ‘69 debut, Nog, none other than Thomas Pynchon said: “The novel of bullshit is dead.””  A not bad start for Wurlitzer, the sole member of the piano-making clan who never saw a dime (or not many) from his family name.

Tracing the often-psychedelic wanderlust of its title character who was either insane or drug-addicted (or both), Nog brought Wurlitzer a certain degree of fame as a novelist, but he’s perhaps best known, and celebrated, for his screenwriting.  His collaboration with Sam Peckinpah yielded the Bob Dylan-scored Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  Two years before that, though, he and Monte Hellman pulled off one of my all-time cinematic favorites, Two-Lane Blacktop.

Starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson (both looking shockingly boyish) as eternally drifting drivers, Two-Lane featured sparse dialogue and even sparser performances.  Visually, though, it’s pure poetry, and, to me, a still-vital piece of American existentialism—especially in its final moment.  The trailer for Two-Lane follows below.

And just up at Chuck Palahniuk‘s website, an excellent, yet typically elusive, interview with Wurlitzer where he discusses everything from Dylan to Pynchon.  Regarding his new-ish novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder, Wurlitzer also addresses, politely, “l’affaire de Jim Jarmusch.”  Apparently, the director “pillaged” from Wurlitzer the raw material he’d later shape into Dead Man.  You can read the interview here.

 
See also in Arthur Magazine: ON THE DRIFT: Rudy Wurlitzer and the Road to Nowhere

 
Instead of Hal Ashby, what if Nick Cave (circa And The Ass Saw The Angel) directed Being There?  It might look something like Rolf de Heer‘s Australian ‘93 cult comedy, Bad Boy Bubby.  We first meet Bubby (fearlessly played by Nicholas Hope) as a 30-something man, imprisoned by his mother all his life in a shitbox room for reasons never fully explained.  Maybe it’s ‘cause “mum” so enjoys bathing and having sex with him?

Anyway, even as an “outside-fearing” captive, Bubby’s got his hobbies: he’s a gifted mimic, and he enjoys wrapping cats in cellophane.  To say any more might spoil this film’s many, often moving, surprises.  The arc of Bubby does, though, follow the familiar “holy fool” trajectory: change brings growth and maturity, which almost by definition entails some loss of innocence.  Still—cellophaned cats!

Birthers are the gift that keep on giving for bloggers. This item comes from The Washington Independent:

On Aug. 4, President Obama?

The Mystery of Picasso is one of the most mind-blowing art documentaries I’ve ever seen. You actually get to witness Picasso paint twenty pieces before your eyes. It’s really astonishing:

Like a matador confronting a bull, the artist approaches his easel, his eyes blazing. As he wields his brush, we see through the canvas as the artwork unfolds, erupts, dances into being before our eyes. Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, is making a painting, and Henri-Georges Clouzot, the famous French director (Wages of Fear, Diabolique), is making a movie. In 1955, Clouzot joined forces with his friend Picasso to make an entirely new kind of art film “a film that could capture the moment and the mystery of creativity. Together, they devised an innovative technique” the filmmaker placed his camera behind a semi-transparent surface on which the artist drew with special inks that bled through.

Clouzot thus captured a perfect reverse image of Picasso’s brushstrokes and the motion picture screen itself becomes the artist’s canvas. Here, the master creates, and sometimes obliterates, 20 works (most of them, in fact, destroyed after the shoot), ranging from playful black-and-white sketches to Cinemascope color murals “artworks which evolve in minutes through the magic of stop-motion animation. Unavailable for more than a decade, The Mystery of Picasso is exhilarating, mesmerizing, enchanting and unforgettable. It is simply one of the greatest documentaries on art ever made. The French government agreed, in 1984 it declared the film a national treasure.

“When we are all dead, you and me and everyone,” said Clouzot to Picasso, “the film will still continue to be projected.”

This is probably my favorite section from the film. I especially like watching the painting of the nude reading come to life. When I first saw it I kept thinking he was finished and then he’d make it even better:

 
“Pink” films, that brand of cutesy, cuddly, Japanese softcore, hold, for me, limited cinematic appeal.  But I do adore Mitsuru Meike‘s bravely outrageous, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai from 2003.  In it, the director of such fare as Bitter Sweet, and, of course, Lascivious Nurse Uniform Diary: Two or Three Times, While I’m Wet, injects the genre with a (needed?) dose of political commentary. 

Here’s the shorthand: out making the rounds one night, sexy tutor-slash-call girl Sachiko Hanai (played by the adorably game Emi Kuroda) winds up with a bullet in her brain.  She’s cool with that.  In fact, the bullet gives her a genius-level IQ.   She even—if I’m remembering things correctly here—starts quoting Nietzsche.  But the plot really kicks in when Sachiko learns she’s come into possession of George Bush’s severed finger.  His cloned severed finger.  Unlike what I’ve seen of Bush the man, though, his finger has an unstoppable sexual appetite.  Oh, and it’s also wanted by North Korea to trigger a nuclear holocaust.

What’s Meike saying with all this?  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  But here’s both a warning and a possible enticement: Bush’s finger winds up exactly where you think it will.  The (vaguely NSFW-ish) trailer for Sachiko Hanai follows below:

(via HYST)

Apparently people are losing their shit over “District 9.” Deservedly so. I caught it last night and it’s got to be one of the best science fiction movies I’ve ever seen, and probably the best movie I’ve seen this year, too.

The big hype this weekend was for “Inglourious Basterds,” which was good (well-made, though rather questionable revenge pornography… like a big-screen version of “Wolfenstein 3D”), which I saw, and then decided to go see “District 9” the next day because it’s hot as hell in LA and why not. And oh my dear lord. You cannot be prepared for this movie. I won’t say too much about it?

(via Peter Serafinowicz)

Awesome Tim Westwood-produced UK documentary focusing on the 80s hip hop scene. 

Bad Meaning Good appeared on the BBC back in 1987 and has gone on to become a seminal document of the fledgling London Hip Hop scene. Shown here in its entirety, it features Tim Westwood, as well as key figures in the scene at the time. Check out a baby faced Trevor Nelson!

 
Yes, Woodstock, but last week also saw the 40th anniversary of LA’s darkest campfire tale.  You probably know the story by now (and if you don’t, you can read about it here, or here), but the shorthand goes like this…

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson disciples Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian stormed the rented home of Roman Polanski on 10050 Cielo Drive.  Once behind its gates, they brutally and systematically took the lives of 5 people—including the life of Polanski’s eight-and-a-half months pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate.  Tate was the last to die, knived by Watson while she was pinned down by Atkins, who then took some of Tate’s blood and used it to scrawl “PIG” on the porch wall.  Manson had ordered her to leave behind a sign, “something witchy.”

The tragic events of that night, spilled into the following night and continued to ripple out through the decade(s) to come.  Even today, the events of August ‘69 provided Pynchon with the darkly seismic backdrop to his new novel, Inherent Vice.  The fallout was felt everywhere—even I had nightmares.  Not about the events themselves (I was too young to remember those), but about Manson someday going free, and moving down the block. 

After losing his wife and unborn child, Polanski was understandably devastated, and his life, eight years later, would go on to take another troubled turn.  And Sharon Tate’s legacy?  Beyond a still-loyal fanbase, all she left behind is a smattering of films and the promise of what might have been.  And that promise, in my eyes, is at its most tangible in Tate’s American debut, Don’t Make Waves. 
 

 
What’s it all about?  Not much beyond The Byrds’ winning title track and Tony Curtis’ “Carlo Cofield” moving to Malibu and mixing it up with the town’s free-lovin’ oddballs.  It was directed by Brit Alexander Mackendrick, a decade past his Sweet Smell of Success, and features one of my all-time favorite character actors, the criminally underappreciated Robert Webber.  Curtis and Webber aside, though, it’s Tate who steals the show as the always-bikinied skydiver, “Malibu.”  In fact, Tate made such a strong impression, she served as the inspiration for Mattel’s “Malibu Barbie.”
 
A physical copy of Waves is hard to come by.  But you can still catch it for yourself, in its 10-part entirety, on YouTube.  Part 1 starts right here.  The trailer follows below.

 
In The LA Times: Restoring Sharon Tate