I find it difficult to watch Adam Curtis‘s various acclaimed documentaries without thinking: how much has he taken from Bruce Conner?

Indeed without Conner, would Curtis have developed his magpie, collagist-style of documentary making?

I doubt it, but you (and Curtis) may disagree.

The late Bruce Conner is the real talent here - an artist and film-maker whose work devised new ways of working and presciently anticipated techniques which are now ubiquitously found on the web, television and film-making.

Conner was “a heroic oppositional artist, whose career went against the staid and artificially created stasis of the art world”. Which is academic poohbah for saying Conner kept to his own vision: a Beat life, which channeled his energies into art - with a hint of Dada, Surrealism and Duchamp.

Conner was cantankerous and one-of-a-kind. He would wear an American flag pin. When asked why, he said, “I’m not going to let those bastards take it away from me.”

He kicked against fame and celebrity, seeing art as something separate from individual who created it.

“I’ve always been uneasy about being identified with the art I’ve made. Art takes on a power all its own and it’s frightening to have things floating around the world with my name on them that people are free to interpret and use however they choose.”

Born in McPherson, Kansas, Conner attended Witchita University, before receiving his degree in Fine Art from Nebraska University. At university he met and married Jean Sandstedt in 1957. He won a scholarship to art school in Brooklyn, but quickly moved to University of Colorado, where he spent one semester studying art. The couple then moved to San Francisco and became part of the Beat scene. Here Conner began to produce sculptures and ready-mades that critiqued the consumerist society of late 1950’s. His work anticipated Pop Art, but Conner never focussed solely on one discipline, refusing to be pigeon-holed, and quickly moved on to to film-making.

Having been advised to make films by Stan Brakhage, Conner made A MOVIE in 1958, by editing together found footage from newsreels- B-movies, porn reels and short films. This single film changed the whole language of cinema and underground film-making with its collagist technique and editing.

The Conners moved to Mexico (“it was cheap”), where he discovered magic mushrooms and formed a life-long friendship with a still to be turned-on, Timothy Leary. When the money ran out, they returned to San Francisco and the life of film-maker and artist.

In 1961, Conner made COSMIC RAY, a 4-minute film of 2,000 images (A-bombs, Mickey Mouse, nudes, fireworks) to Ray Charles’ song “What I Say”. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, Conner produced a series of films that were “precursors, for better or worse, of the pop video and MTV,” as his obituary reported:

EASTER MORNING RAGA (1966) was designed to be run forward or backward at any speed, or even in a loop to a background of sitar music. Breakaway (1966) showed a dancer, Antonia Christina Basilotta, in rapid rhythmic montage. REPORT (1967) dwells on the assassination of John F Kennedy. The found footage exists of repetitions, jump cuts and broken images of the motorcade, and disintegrates at the crucial moment while we hear a frenzied television commentator saying that “something has happened”. The fatal gun shots are intercut with other shots: TV commercials, clips from James Whale’s Frankenstein and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The film has both a kinetic and emotional effect.

REPORT revealed “Kennedy as a commercial product”, to be sold and re-packaged for arbitrary political purposes.

REPORT “perfectly captures Conner’s anger over the commercialization of Kennedy’s death” while also examining the media’s mythic construction of JFK and Jackie — a hunger for images that “guaranteed that they would be transformed into idols, myths, Gods.”

Conner’s work is almost a visual counterpart to J G Ballard’s writing, using the same cultural references that inspired Ballard’s books - Kennedy, Monroe, the atom bomb. His film CROSSROADS presented the 1952 atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll in extreme slow motion from twenty-seven different angles.

His editing techniques influenced Dennis Hopper in making Easy Rider, and said:

“much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films”

The pair became friends and Hopper famously photographed Conner alongside Toni Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Mitchell.

Always moving, always progressing, having “no half way house in which to rest”, Conner became part of the San Francisco Punk scene, after Toni Basil told Conner to go check out the band Devo in 1977. He became so inspired when he saw the band at the Mabuhay Gardens that he started going there four night a week, taking photographs of Punk bands, which eventually led to his job as staff photographer with Search ‘n’ Destroy magazine. It was a career change that came at some personal cost.

“I lost a lot of brain cells at the Mabuhay. What are you gonna do listening to hours of incomprehensible rock’n’roll but drink? I became an alcoholic, and it took me a few years to deal with that.”

Conner continued with his art work and films, even making short films for Devo, David Byrne and Brian Eno. In his later years, Conner returned to the many themes of his early life and work, but still kept himself once removed from greater success and fame. He died in 2008.

Towards the end of his life he withdrew his films from circulation, as he was “disgusted” when he saw badly pixelated films bootlegged and uploaded on YouTube. Conner was prescriptive in how his work should be displayed and screened. All of which is frustrating for those who want to see Conner’s films outside of the gallery, museum or film festival, and especially now, when so much of his originality and vision as a film-maker and artist has been copied by others.
 

‘Mea Culpa’ - David Byrne and Brian Eno.  Directed by Bruce Conner
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘The Loving Trap’: brilliant Adam Curtis parody

 
While it will be for Columbo that the late great actor Peter Falk will be best remembered, we should not overlook his Oscar-nominated performances in Murder inc. or Pocketful of Miracles; his subtlety in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire; or his brilliant work with John Cassavetes in Woman Under the Influence and Husbands.

Made in 1970, Husbands told the compelling story of 3 middle-aged men (Falk, Cassavetes, and Ben Gazzara), who re-examine their lives after the death of a close friend. After bar-hoping and long subway conversations, the trio decide to take a trip to London, in a hope of finding something long lost. It’s a love it or loathe it movie and depending on your point of view it’s brilliant, self-indulgent, funny, boring, frustrating, the best or the worst. When I first saw it, I was blown-away. Here was something more like a documentary, centered around 3 of the greatest improvised performances putt on film. I was breathless at their audacity and brilliance.

Cassavetes wrote the script after improvising scenes with Falk and Gazzara. Falk described his experience of working with Cassavetes as a director “shooting an actor when he might be unaware the camera was running.”

“You never knew when the camera might be going. And it was never: ‘Stop. Cut. Start again.’ John would walk in the middle of a scene and talk, and though you didn’t realize it, the camera kept going. So I never knew what the hell he was doing. But he ultimately made me, and I think every actor, less self-conscious, less aware of the camera than anybody I’ve ever worked with.”

It’s an amazing piece of cinema, an uncensored slice of life in all its humor, pain, emotion, charm and endless subterfuge.

During filming in 1970, the BBC followed Cassavetes and his actors in New York and London making a documentary for their Omnibus strand, examining the unique way this great director made his movies.
 

 
This is descibed as “one of the earliest film[s] that experimented time-slice or bullet-time effect filming technic.” Made by Ryoichiro Debuchi using 18 still-cameras arranged in a 360 degree sweep around one central model. The footage was then transferred onto Super 8 and screened at the Pia film Festival in 1982. Quite impressive, but nothing compared to what can be achieved by Timeslice today.
 

 
Bonus Timeslice demo reel, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Richard Heslop
 

 
Drift is a short film by Max Hattler, a film-maker and artist who is:

“interested in the space between abstraction and figuration in the moving image, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative.”

Max works across film, video installation and live audiovisual performance, and has collaborated with music acts including Basement Jaxx, Jovanotti, Jemapur, The Egg, Ladyscraper, and his dad’s outfit Hattler. Drift is a beautiful and mesmeric film, which examines the human epidermis in close-up, re-imagining our skin, its hair and pores, as landscape - growing, changing, living.
 

 
Film-maker Thorsten Fleisch‘s short film Kosmos, from 2004, examines the mystery of crystals in close-up.

The mystery of the crystals under closer examination. What is it that makes them possess magic powers as claimed by mystics of all ages? Through growing crystals directly on film their mystical qualities shine straight to the screen. Unfiltered, only aided by light which gracefully breaks its rays into rich visual textures.

 
DM pal, Alessandro Cima wrote a post on this short film, about Andy Warhol and George Maciunas by Jonas Mekas, on his excellent Candelight Stories site.

The film consists of three home movies: Warhol at the Whitney, May 1, 1971, George’s Dumpling Party, June 29 1971 and Warhol revisited, May 1971 which show scenes from the opening of a Warhol retrospective, followed by footage of Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and founder of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas at what looks like a fondue party in 80 Wooster St., Soho, before returning back to the Whitney.

The narration is by Mekas, who talks about the relationship between Warhol and Maciunas, Pop Art and Fluxus, which he says are the same, as both dealt with nothingness - “both took life as a game and laughed at it.” Warhol standing on the side, never a part of it, with George “laughing, laughing all the time.”

These beautiful short films are like water-colored moments from pop history, which as Cima points out:

Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.

 
With thanks to Alessandro Cima 
 

 
A moment of cinema history - legendary film director Sam Fuller auditions for the role of Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II. He reads alongside Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, and the pair are superb together. The part eventually went to Lee Strasberg (who was nominated for an Oscar for his interpretation), but Fuller’s Roth has more genuine menace, and a surprising warmth, which Strasberg’s depiction lacked. You sense Fuller’s Roth could stab you as much as smile at you, and Pacino’s Corleone seems genuinely awed.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Director cameos in their own and others’ films

 
With thanks to Christa Fuller
 

 
Dating Do’s and Don’ts is a classic educational film on dating etiquette from the 1940s, which looks rather like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings interpreted by David Lynch.

The film follows teenage-virgin-about-town, Woody, who after receiving an invite for “one couple” to the Hi Teen Carnival, has to decide through a series of multi-choice options, who ask out, how to ask them out, and finally, how to say goodnight. I flunked on all three questions, see if you can do better.
 

 
To coincide with his appearance at this year’s Hay Festival, in Wales, film director, writer, stand-up comic, artist and all-round-good-guy, John Waters has compiled a list of “10 things every role model needs”:

1. History. You can’t have a one-night-stand role model. No one can become a role model in 24 hours. It helps a lot if you knew them when you were young, so they sort of grow or fester with you, like Johnny Mathis was for me.

2 Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art.

3 Style. You can have bad style, but you have to have some style. That’s why I wrote about Rei Kawakubo, who reinvented fashion to be damaged and to be everything you hoped it was not when you bought an outfit. And she quadrupled the price. That’s a magic trick.

4 Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.

5 Humour. It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.

6 Be a troublemaker. All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir?

7 Bohemianism. Bohemia saved my life. And by bohemia I mean all sexualities mixed together, and people who do what they do not to get rich – freedom from suburbia. People who want to fit in but don’t are losers. Bohemians are people who don’t fit in because they don’t want to.

8 Originality. Someone unique like Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, is an easy role model to have. She could fit into any of these categories – her outfit looked like Comme des Garçons, and anybody who could scare children like that… The problem was, I wanted to be her. And as I turn 65, that has sort of come true.

9 Neuroses. I think it helps to be neurotic. Neurotic people always end up being in the arts. If your kid fits in while in high school they’re going to be a dull adult. I still see a few people I went to high school with, but the other ones, when they come up to me I say: “I’m sorry, I took LSD, I don’t remember you.” It works, because then they aren’t offended personally. It’s really just manners.

10 Be a little bit insane. That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.

John Waters will be discussing his book Role Models on Saturday at the Hay Festival at 8.30p, details here.
 

John Waters answers questions from The Big Think
 
Via the Daily Telegraph
 

 
It’s been thirteen turbulent years since Tony Kaye’s controversial first feature American History X nearly finished his career. Now the man who once described himself as “the greatest English director since Hitchcock,” is continuing to confound, surprise and impress with his latest film, the powerful and uncompromising Detachment, starring Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Blythe Danner, Tim Blake Nelson and William Petersen.

Detachment chronicles:

three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students as seen through the eyes of a substitute teacher.

It will hopefully be on national release soon.

When not making his excellent films and documentaries, or painting and campaiging, the bearded, Biblical-looking Kaye has been recording and gigging at various venues in LA and NY over the past few years with his own distinct and original songs, of which these are just a selection.
 

 
More songs from Tony Kaye, after the jump…
 

 
Derek Jarman’s collaboration with Psychic TV Pirate Tape: A Portrait of William Burroughs, from 1982. This experimental film shows William Burroughs in London, cut to a loop of his voice. For copyright reasons, this clip tends to disappear quickly, so watch it while you can.
 

 
Bonus clip, Derek Jarman and Psychic TV’s ‘Force the Hand of Chance’ plus ‘Catalan’, after the jump…
 

 
Fred. L’Epee is a visual artist and experimental film-maker, who has made several short films and documentaries (including Athens December 6th) since 2008. The Passengers is his most recent experimental short, which L’Epee describes as:

The first form of solar love is a cloud that rises above the liquid element; the erotic cloud sometimes turns into a storm and falls down again on earth as rain, while the bolt breaks through the layers of the atmosphere.

When the body lose his shape to become shapeless .... The Endless Aïdos.

Something maybe lost in translation, but it’s worth a watch.
 

 
With thanks to Alessandro Cima
 

 
Richard Summers’ short film Warhol Multiplied is a neat Warholian conceit, in which multiple screens simultaneously run Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger. Summers is a photographer and artist who has a selection of other interesting projects on his website, including Same Spot Skies , a video diary focused on one section of the sky as shot from a window between 2006-2008.
 

 
Bonus clips of ‘Same Spot Skies’ and ‘Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger’ after the jump…
 

 
Film, based on a script by Samuel Beckett, was made in 1965 and stars Buster Keaton. While Alan Schneider gets director’s credit, Beckett made his only trip to America (NYC) to supervise the making of the film and is generally considered to be the film’s actual director or, at the very least, a very present influence on its creation.

Beckett admired Keaton and chose him to play the character of “0.” Keaton, who was old and struggling with alcoholism, agreed to appear in the film despite not caring much for the script. Keaton wasn’t discriminating when it came to money gigs. The fact that Beckett had flown to Los Angeles to woo him was certainly a factor in Buster’s decision to do the movie.  Little did he know at the time, or ultimately care, that he was starring in what is considered by many to be a small masterpiece.

Beckett describes the theme of Film thusly:

Film is about a man trying to escape from perception of all kinds - from all perceivers - even divine perceivers. There is a picture which he pulls down. But he can’t escape from self-perception. It is an idea from Bishop Berkeley, the Irish philosopher and idealist, “To be is to be perceived” - “Esse est percipi.” The man who desires to cease to be must cease to be perceived. If being is being perceived, to cease being is to cease to be perceived.’

According to film scholars Katherine Waugh & Fergus Daly:

Beckett sets his film in the year 1929, the year Un Chien Andalou was made (and of course the first year of the sound film). In addition the film opens and closes with close-ups of a sightless eye which would seem to refer to the notorious opening sequence of Un Chien Andalou in which a human eye is sliced open with a razor blade. In fact ‘Eye’ was Beckett’s original title for Film.

For a detailed and entertaining reflection on the making of Film read this piece by Alan Schneider.

Film is silent. Beckett intended that the script be read live during screenings. Here it is in its entirety.
 

 
David Lynch is releasing two singles Good Day Today and I Know on the UK independent label Sunday Best, as he told the Observer his first solo release Good Day Today came to him unprompted:

“I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, ‘I want to have a good day, today’ came and the song was built around that,” he said. Unlike his famously ambiguous and non-linear films, the song is accessible and, he readily admits, has a catchy “feel-good chorus”, with undertones of angsty electro-popsters Crystal Castles or veteran dance act Underworld. Why did he turn to electro for his first solo single? “Well, I love electricity so it sort of stands to reason that I would like electronics.”

The full interview with David Lynch can be heard here.
 
 

 
With thanks to Tommy Udo