Colin Marshall

Choice thoughts: Peter Greenaway

This passage, from a 1988 Zoom interview, demonstrates more clearly than I ever could why Peter Greenaway is a genius:

In an interview, you said that cinema is too important to hand over to the storytellers.

That statement has brought me grief, especially in England. It appears that English and, even more so, American films are perfect in recounting a straight line narrative. They achieve it through the use of suspense and asking the viewers to identify with the main characters. That accounts for all those psychological dramas.

I think that the greatest art works — and I exclude those found in film — have had far greater means at their disposal. Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure. Artistically, film is a very rich medium; it has so many indescribable possibilities, and hardly anyone uses them. It seems to me that the majority of directors make their films with only one eye open and their arms tied behind them. The capability of film to become an extraordinary and astonishing medium is completely ignored. One should not tell stories as straight line narratives. There are so many other possibilities, and film would only enrich them. Most of the time, I am utterly bored in the cinema; I think that most films are poorly made.

But your films also tell stories.

That's true. But for me the stories are only the hook on which to hang one's hat. After a very short time, one understands the plot of my films; it isn't that important to me what happens, only how it happens. Most films insult the viewers whereas I believe the public is far smarter and receptive than many producers and directors give them credit for.

BRB, going to get all this tattooed on my back now. (I don't suppose Precious Slut will be able to handle it?)

Choice thoughts: Alan Watts

One cannot act creatively, except on the basis of stillness. Of having a mind that is capable from time to time of stopping thinking. And so this practice of sitting may seem very difficult at first, because if you sit in the Buddhist way, it makes your legs ache. Most Westerners start to fidget; they find it very boring to sit for a long time, but the reason they find it boring is that they're still thinking. If you weren't thinking, you wouldn't notice the passage of time, and as a matter of fact, far from being boring, the world when looked at without chatter becomes amazingly interesting. The most ordinary sights and sounds and smells, the texture of shadows on the floor in front of you. All these things, without being named, and saying 'that's a shadow, that's red, that's brown, that's somebody's foot.' When you don't name things anymore, you start seeing them.

Thought has identified itself, in recent months, as a necessary but quite accidentally destructive tool in my armory. But I suppose I've written on the damage caused by thought gone astray before. I recoil somewhat at the potential conclusion that I must choose to think less sometimes, but so be it.

Choice thoughts: James Benning

From an interview in Cinema Scope in which he discusses the making of his latest film, RR, which comprises a series of 16mm landscapes cut by moving trains:

It’s like I always work: I’ll set up a problem for myself. Here, I’m going to basically collaborate with the train in that it’s going to suggest the length of the shot. And then, okay, I’m going to shoot 165 or 166 trains and I used 43 of them, but the idea is how can I keep this simple idea interesting. So I thought that I could vary the distance the camera was from the train, vary the angle that the train approaches the camera from, then change these angles from shot to shot and build rhythms that way… and play with how noisy or quiet the train is. And then like you say all of a sudden this large amount of variables makes it possible to take this idea that is confining and make it grow. I think the same thing happens with earlier films like 13 Lakes where I set up an idea — to shoot a lake with the same amount of sky and water — and then the problem is how do I get a frame that will show the uniqueness of that lake; that’s what gives an opening to this beginning idea, one that really closes everything down. It’s kind of a pattern in my work.

Work as the setting-up of problems for oneself. Opening as closing. Fixing a few variables to reveal all the rest. I like how this fellow thinks. Unfortunately, I've never been able to actually watch his films, since (a) Neftlix won't get on it re: carrying them and (b) Santa Barbara has no decent video stores left. Halp!

Choice thoughts: Huell Howser

Though Huell Howser is an easy (and frequent) target for ridicule, I've got nothing but admiration for his production sensibility:

"We have two agendas," he told me. "One is to specifically show someone China Camp State Park or to talk to the guys who paint the Golden Gate Bridge. But the broader purpose is to open up the door for people to have their own adventures. Let's explore our neighborhood, let's look in our own backyard, let's go down to Koreatown and buy some kimchee. We won't do a story on what it's like to spend the night in a $10,000 hotel suite. We do things to put the spotlight on the fact that every single person we meet potentially has a great story to share. Can I repair a car? No. Can I cook a meal? No. Can I paint a picture? No. Can I talk with people? Can I help them tell their stories? Absolutely."

It is all very lo-fi and DIY. "I don't have an agent," said Howser, 58. "I don't have a manager, I don't have a press agent, I don't have a wardrobe guy, a makeup guy, a parking space, a dressing room. It's basically me and a cameraman and an editor and a couple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talking to people on the street and have it on the air tonight. It's an economic model that's a production model, but it's a model that I believe in philosophically as far as what the viewer should see."

[ ... ]

[It's] long takes, few edits, as much unaffected experience as possible. "It's not unusual for us to have 6-, 8-, 9-, 12-minute sections, just edited head to tail," he said. "I did an interview with David Hockney where he showed me around his studio that didn't have any edits. And we always shoot wide because I want the viewer to see what you would see with your eyes if you were there, so when I'm sitting here talking with you" — meaning me, across the table — "I see you but I also see the bush over your shoulder. I see the Brinks trucks behind you. That's life."

Cheap, simple, quick and full of life; not terribly far from Robert Fripp's endorsement of music made by "small, highly mobile, independent and intelligent units." The question is less "What other ventures can this model be used for?" than "What other ventures can't this model be used for?" For those interested, by the by, Howser's show California's Gold also goes out as a video podcast.