Shareholder’s Report Pt. 1: I’ve Got Some Good News…
On Bombast #2, The Sweet East, Sundry Other Projects, and the Usual (Distant) Year-in-Review Odds ’ n’ Ends
Those who’ve been lurking around here for a while may remember that in the depths of last winter, I issued a little wrap that summarized my year-in-review—output, media intake, and miscellaneous excuses for laggardness, grumblings, and boasts—while outlining some of my outsized ambitions for the year ahead. Well, guess what, folks? I’m here to do the exact same thing for the last 15 months or so, before 2022 gets too terribly far in the rear-view mirror—as we all know, the true cinephile’s calendar doesn’t turn over until Oscar’s Biggest Night has passed, and all that was best in film arts has been sagaciously and unerringly determined by the brain trust at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More crucially, I wanted to hold off on posting this update until one particular project was officially announced… of which, more anon.
Let us begin with the most pressing matter at hand. The second issue of Bombast, the extremely periodic periodical that I debuted in 2021, published in collaboration with the infallible Casey Moore and Tommy Swenson of Seattle’s Beacon Cinema, is finally in the final stages of layout and, in fact, available for pre-order here. Do not, however, click that pre-order link if you are a paid subscriber in good standing to the Employee Picks Substack; a separate link for paid subscribers only will arrive with the second part of this screed, accessible to this elite group only, in about a week’s time; wait for that, and you will be able to order with a Special Discount TBD. For anyone, paid up or otherwise, who needs to play catch-up on this adventure in print publication, you can also cop Bombast #1 here.
The above should give you some sense of the contents. As with the first go-around, it’s still a hotchpotch of serious-minded film-related material, pawky gags, and “graphic arts”—mostly, but not exclusively, comics, hence the subtitle “The Journal of Film and Funnies.” The short pitch would run something like: “What if late ’70s Film Comment, but also Mad Magazine?”—though this doesn’t capture the full, awesome scope of the endeavor any more than Michael Mann’s famous “MTV cops” pitch encompasses the totality of what Miami Vice is.
Now, the last time I issued one of these missives, I cockily estimated that Bombast #2 would probably be ready in late March/early April of 2022. By way of explanation for the ever so slight delay of an entire calendar year, I will point out that the second edition snowballed into a much, much more ambitious undertaking than the first: about double the page count, in fact, with a far, far greater quantity of original commissioned art inside—about 60-odd pages, by my reckoning. In addition, rather than deciding to rely on “outside contributors,” I was involved in some aspect of very nearly every piece that appears in the finished product—writing the copy, scripting the comics, conducting the interviews, and so forth—and it turns out that takes a bit of time. This won’t be the last Bombast, but I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to writing checks with my mouth that my ass can’t cash, so let’s just say you’ll be the first to know when #3 is getting anywhere near to hitting the presses.
The other Big Project of 2022 that is poised to bear fruit in ’23, the major motion picture The Sweet East, has been averred to in a couple of public forums over the preceding months—in a paragraph from an August GQ cover story on actor Jacob Elordi as well as in a recent appearance by Simon Rex on the hit The Adam Friedland Show—but is now, at long last, a matter of official record. The Sweet East, whose forthcoming premiere in the Quinzaine des cinéastes section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival was announced today, began its life as an original screenplay that I began writing in February of 2017, with the idea that my friend the noted American cinematographer Sean Price Williams would direct and photograph it—which indeed is what happened after a few years of fumbling around and half-assedly trying to drum up interest in the project. In addition to Messieurs Elordi and Rex, it features the talents of Talia Ryder, Jeremy O. Harris, Rish Shah, Ayo Edebiri, Andy Milonakis, Earl Cave, and Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, as well as those of several young up-and-comers whose work I anticipate the world soon coming to admire as much as I do. I was knocking around on its set for pieces of the last two years trying to make myself useful and, barring unforeseen catastrophe, I hope that it will be seen by audiences beyond the Croisette before the year is out, at which point I will perhaps write a little more about its genesis and production. I hope you will enjoy it and, barring that, at the very least watch it; I am as pleased with how it turned out as I have been with any other venture I’ve been involved with, and I’d like to keep writing the sort of films that interest me as well as writing about them, if they’ll let me.
For whatever it may be worth, immediately below is a picture of a “poster” for the film that I drew as an assignment at the Oxbelly screenwriting and directing lab in Messinia, Greece, headed by the brilliant Athina Rachel Tsangari, which I attended with Sean in 2019. Perhaps it will help you glean something of what’s in store. A couple of paragraphs up you can clap your eyes on the first and presently only official still from the film, showing the two faces of the mysterious Ms. Ryder.
Other than issuing occasional scribblings on the bathroom wall that is this Substack, I’ve continued my day-to-day work for Metrograph, which involves ordering for the bookstore (in actual fact basically kept running by my colleague Matt Folden), writing reams of copy, and commissioning for (and contributing to) the Metrograph Journal, on which I collaborate with far more competent colleagues: webmaster Ted Gerike, all-around utility player Gabriel Jandali-Appel, and editor Annabel Brady-Brown. (Ms. Brady-Brown, of Fireflies Press, has also of late been lending her keen eye to my Employee Picks effusions; if they have reached a level of borderline coherency, this is entirely thanks to her.) As I did with the last one of these, I’d like to draw your attention to a few pieces by our fine pool of contributors that I believe particularly worthy of consideration—though I should add that we generally try to hold to a certain standard in what we publish, and I don’t think you can go too far astray clicking your way through the archives. I would recommend the reader to the following, arranged alphabetically by author surname:
Michael M. Bilandic in conversation with Abel Ferrara and Oliver Stone.
Ela Bittencourt in conversation with Flora Gomes.
Giovanni Marchini Camia in conversation with Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Rebecca Harkins-Cross in conversation with Lucretia Martel.
Brandon Harris on the late, Cincinnati-shot DTV “geezer teasers” of Bruce Willis and Del Lord’s 1927 Topsy and Eva.
A.E. Hunt on Christopher St. John’s 1972 Top of the Heap.
Colleen Kelsey on the screen style of Catherine Deneuve.
Gabe Klinger in conversation with Joe Dante.
Phuong Le on Sylvia Kristel’s performance in Just Jaeken’s 1974 Emmanuelle.
Chloe Lizotte in conversation with Helena Wittmann.
Beatrice Loayza on the screen presence of Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Alexandra Molotkow on the screen presence of Joe Pesci.
Chrystel Oloukoi on Sarah Maldorer’s 1972 Sambizanga.
Rebecca Panovka in conversation with Whit Stillman.
Adam Piron on Jamaa Fanaka’s 1974 Emma Mae.
Nicolas Rapold’s oral history of the DuArt processing lab.
Simon Reynolds on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 2001 Millennium Mambo.
Anna Shechtman on Catherine Breillat’s 1988 36 Fillette.
Natasha Stagg on the films of Yvonne Rainer.
R. Emmet Sweeney on Johnny To and Ching Siu-tung’s 1993 The Heroic Trio and in conversation with Ken Jacobs.
Neil Young on Jan Nemec’s 1964 Diamonds of the Night.
Dennis Zhou in conversation with Jia Zhangke.
As for my own contributions to the Journal since the last of these roundups, they’re as follows:
In conversation with Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on 2022’s EO.
In conversation (briefly!) with Sean Price Williams and Ed Lachman.
On the films of Robert Siodmak (expanded from a piece originally published in Little White Lies).
On Claudio Guerín and Juan Antonio Bardem’s 1973 La campana del infierno (The Bell from Hell).
The penultimate item in that list was connected to a Metrograph screening of La campana del infierno which played as part of a series of Spanish “Fantaterror” titles curated by yours truly; you can learn more about the series here, in a short segment featuring my friend Dr. Pervert, the host of Dr. Pervert’s Cinema Dungeon, which airs Tuesdays at 11:15pm on 19 WXIP in Middletown, Ohio. I can also be heard discussing Guerín and Bardem’s film here, on SLEAZOIDS, a podcast hosted—with great poise and acumen—by Josh Lewis and Jamie Miller.
The remainder of my film programming activity was focused on City Dudes, a monthly “blindfolded” screening series that I began hosting at the Roxy Cinema New York on 6th Ave. with my co-curator, the abovementioned Sean Price Williams, in February of last year, and plan to continue hosting on something like a monthly basis until we’re shown the door. The premise of the series, for those who have not enjoyed the privilege of being present for this cinematic sacrament, is that no one other than Mr. Williams and myself will be forewarned of the title being shown until the moment when the lights are ready to go down. Without lifting the air of mystery, I can announce that some of the titles that may have been shown might have been:
Feb. 19th: Police Python 357 (Alain Corneau, 1976)
March 26th: Spike of Bensonhurst (Paul Morrissey, 1988)
April 23rd: Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (Adrian Maben, 1972)
May 27th: Unstrap Me (George Kuchar, 1968)
June 25th: So Fine (Andrew Bergman, 1981)
July 23rd: Addio fratello crudele (Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 1971)
August 27th: Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926) (with live accompaniment by Steve Gunn)
September 24th: One P.M. (D.A. Pennebaker, 1972)
October 30th: L’Ange (Patrick Bokanowski, 1982)
November 19th: Dice Rules (Jay Dubin, 1991)
January 21st- In the Spirit (Sandra Seacat, 1990)
March 4th- Jekyll & Hyde… Together Again (Jerry Belson, 1982)
The next installment of City Dudes, for those who celebrate (and are in the New York City area), will be on Saturday, April 29th. That same night, by wild coincidence, Dogleg, the first feature by Los Angeles-based director Al Warren, will be having its third and final NYC screening. (You can see the official poster below.) I mention this because I happen to play a role in Al’s fine film, shot in the summer of 2021, and can be seen in it showing my vast range as a performer by embodying the role of a film critic named “Nick.” Should you be in NYC or LA, or should Dogleg come to a theater or streaming service near you, I encourage you to give it a gander. (I would be remiss not to mention also my 30-second appearance as a handsy film director in Sophia Peer’s television pilot Who’s Annie, which I am told is garnering festival laurels the world over.)
That, dear reader, is most of what I have been busying myself with. What I have not been busying myself with, on the other hand, is pretty much any of the commissioned freelance work that used to pay my bills. Outside the auspices of this here Substack, Bombast, and Metrograph, my writing for the period under discussion amounts to a grand total of two pieces for 4Columns, on Film at Lincoln Center’s Mike Leigh retrospective and Semiotext(e)’s English-language translation of the first volume of Serge Daney’s The Cinema House & the World, covering his output from 1962 to 1981.
As for my commentary track side hustle, that’s more or less a thing of the past, though a track I recorded with Glenn Kenny for the Arrow Video release of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) did finally surface this year, giving the illusion of continued prolificity. Those aching for the sight of me gabbling into a camera in my living room can also see me holding court on the subject of actor Dan Duryea in PowerHouse/Indicator’s Universal Noir #1 box set, which contains George Sherman’s 1948 Duryea vehicle Larceny. I also, rumor has it, appeared on an episode of the Shudder streaming service series Cursed Films to discuss the 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust and the career of its late, lamented auteur, Ruggero Deodato.
All in all, it’s a respectable haul, though I have to admit that a lot of things that I’d have liked to get done in the last twelvemonth just didn’t: the much-ballyhooed Eustache book has made paltry progress, other stated schemes to produce printed matter have languished, and I’ll freely confess I’ve let the weeds grow a bit around here—something I’m going to do my level best to address going forward. Part of this can be chalked up to simple reach-exceeding-grasp stuff, part of it probably accountable to creeping existential dread connected to the undeniable fact that culture is undeniably in the last few swirls of its trip down the toilet—but that’s a discussion for the next part of this missive. Let us accentuate the positive first.
This year-end I continued my cherished tradition of contributing to no outside lists, “Best of 2022” or otherwise. Individual opinion interests me more than aggregated ones do, and as such I don’t see the value of adding another body to another dogpile of consensus; it’s nice that Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) has been coronated as the Greatest Film of All Time by Sight & Sound voters, I suppose, but I don’t see that doing Chantal Akerman much good.
What I’ve instead done, as in my last Shareholder’s Report, is lump together the new-to-me films encountered between approximately January 27th of ’22 and the time of this piece’s publication—including but very far from limited to films that premiered in that period—that I thought displayed some points of interest. Here they are:
Alison’s Birthday (Ian Coughlin, 1981); L’ami de mon ami (Éric Rohmer, 1987); Anatmoie de l’enfer (Catherine Breillat, 2004); Armageddon Time (James Gray, 2022); Aspen (Frederick Wiseman, 1991); Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron, 2022); Barnförbjudet (Marie-Louise Ekman, 1979); Belfast, Maine (Frederick Wiseman, 1999); Die Berührte (Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1981); Black and White (James Toback, 1999); Champions (Bobby Farrelly, 2023); Clerks III (Kevin Smith, 2022); Crazy Thunder Road (Gakuryū Ishii, 1980); Daisy Miller (Peter Bogdanovich, 1974); Dangerously Close (Albert Pyun, 1986); Dark Age (Arch Nicholson, 1987); Death Powder (Shigeru Izumiya, 1986); Deep Water (Adrian Lyne, 2022); De humani corporis fabrica (Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2022); Un delitto poco commune (Ruggero Deodato, 1988); Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981); Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker (Christoph Schlingensief, 1990); Don’s Plum (R.D. Robb, 2001); Executioners (Johnny To/Ching Siu-tung, 1993); Eyes of Fire (Avery Crounse, 1983); Fair Game (Mario Andreacchio, 1986); The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974); Forty Deuce (Paul Morrissey, 1982); For Love of the Game (Sam Raimi, 1999); Funny Pages (Owen Kline, 2022); Galaxy (Masao Adachi, 1967); Giuseppe Makes a Movie (Adam Rifkin, 2014); Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh; 2008); Health (Robert Altman, 1980); Heartbreak Ridge (Clint Eastwood, 1986); The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 1987); Home in Indiana (Henry Hathaway, 1944); The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960); Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann, 2022); In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 (Toby Amies, 2022); Inn of the Damned (Terry Bourke, 1975); The Insect Woman (Kim Ki-young, 1972); Iodo (Kim Ki-young, 1977); Die Insel der blutigen Plantage (Kurt Raab/Peter Kern, 1983); Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023); Lady Stay Dead (Terry Bourke, 1981); The Lightship (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1985); Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978); La Madrigeura (Carlos Saura, 1970); Malice (Harold Becker, 1993); The Man from Hong Kong (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1975); Mark of the Renegade (Hugo Fregonese, 1951); The Munsters (Rob Zombie, 2022); My Six Convicts (Hugo Fregonese, 1952); Les naufragés de la D17 (Luc Moullet, 2002); Nazareno Cruz y el lobo (Leonardo Favio, 1975); Never Talk to Strangers (Peter Hall, 1995); Nienormalni (Jacek Bławut, 1990); The Night, the Prowler (Jim Sharman, 1978); Noose (Edmond T. Gréville, 1948); Of Unknown Origin (George P. Cosmatos, 1983); Orphan: First Kill (William Brent Bell, 2022); Out of It (Paul Williams, 1969); El pantano de los cuervos (Manuel Caño, 1974); Patrick (Richard Franklin, 1978); Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pedro Almodóvar, 1980); The Plumber (Peter Weir, 1979); Poisson d’avril (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1986); Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate (Kirby Dick, 1986); Razorback (Russell Mulcahy, 1984); Samurai Wolf (Hideo Gosha, 1966); La semana del asesino (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1972); Shattered (Wolfgang Petersen, 1991); She Hate Me (Spike Lee, 2004); Slattery’s Hurricane (André De Toth, 1949); Snapshot (Simon Wincer, 1979); Songs for Drella (Ed Lachman, 1990); Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948); Stone (Sandy Harbutt, 1974); Summerfield (Ken Hannam, 1977); Summer of Secrets (Jim Sharman, 1976); Swordsman of All Swordsmen (Joseph Kuo, 1968); Tam Tam (Adolfo Arrieta, 1976); The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973); Una vela para el diablo (Eugenio Martin, 1973); Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters (Chen Hung-min, 1968); Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Andy Serkis, 2021); Violent Streets (Hideo Gosha, 1974); Die Wiebchen (Zbyněk Brynych, 1970); The Witch Who Came from the Sea (Matt Cimber, 1976); Working Girls (Dorothy Arzner, 1931)
Those looking for patterns in my viewing can find some—lots of Australians; a healthy contingent of Spaniards; not a lot of films from prior to 1960 or after 2000. Some of these patterns were driven by professional undertakings; most were just things I happened to see. Along with the promise of a lifetime of still more undiscovered masterpieces still awaiting me, a great deal of what has continued to give me hope for The Future of Cinema was cinemas, the physical spaces, themselves. And while I wish nothing but the best for the ailing multiplex chains and august repertory/arthouse institutions, I am ever more certain that the humble microcinema and DIY spaces powered by amateur enthusiasm are going to be crucial to the cultivation of a flourishing film culture. My 2022 was roughly bracketed by two highly revivifying screenings at such spaces—a screening of Claire Denis’s 1990 S’en fout la mort at Paris’s since-shuttered La Cléf Revival, which I wrote about here back in January, and a group projection-performance/solstice celebration arranged by Bradley Eros at Light Industry’s excellent new space on Stagg St.—and when I look at the work being done by labor-of-love organizations like the Chicago Film Society, Washington, D.C.’s Suns Cinema, Baltimore’s Beyond Video, Paris’s RE:VOIR, and many, many others I could name of similar ilk, I can almost convince myself that cinema can hold out against the continual onslaught on the arts by Silicon Valley creeps and censorious killjoys of all stripes.
But, once again, we’re keeping things posi here! And so, in further keeping with what is becoming a time-honored annual tradition in these year-in-review jawns, I’ve also lashed together various other highlights of my media intake over the time elapsed since the last one. All of the below are things that, in the recent past, provided me with some degree of pleasure or elucidation or, at any rate, memorable irritation:
Izumi Suzuki’s Terminal Boredom: Stories (Verso); Henry Füssli at the Musée Jacquemart-André; Gérard Lattier: Le voyage en peinture (Les Editions du Chassel); Massimo Mattioli’s Squeak the Mouse (Fantagraphics); Walter Sickert at the Petit Palais; L’Album Pornographique de Michel Simon (La Manufacture de Livres); Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller (Anthology Editions); John Giorno’s Great Demon Kings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); David Nichols’s The Go-Betweens (Verse Chorus Press); Gary Indiana’s Fire Season: Selected Essays 1984-2021 (Seven Stories Press); Nick Zedd’s Totem of the Depraved (Pig Roast Publishing); Matthew Goody’s Needles & Plastic: Flying Nun Records, 1981-1988 (Third Man Books); Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffaloes’ Uganda (Dawn of Rock) (Mr. Bongo); Monday Night Books at Light Industry; Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel (NYRB); Floris Vanhoof at Le Non_Jazz, Café Paris; Kandja Kouyaté et l’Ensemble Instrumental du Mali’s La Grande Vedette Malienne (?); Marillon TK; Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies (Knopf); Martin Parr: Early Works (RRB Photobooks); Cheri Knight’s American Rituals (Freedom to Spend); Clinton Walker’s Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music, 1977-1991 (The Visible Spectrum); The Northern Boys’ “Party Time”; John Hawkes’s The Lime Twig, The Blood Oranges (both New Directions), and Sweet William: A Memoir of Old Horse (Penguin); DWOSKINO: The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin (LUX); BobOnTheHour Twitter (@BobOnTheHour); Dean Tavoularis, edited by Jordan Mintzer (Synecdoche); Daisuke Ichiba’s Heartbreak Regeneration (Hollow Press); Roll N Roaster; Daney’s The Cinema House & the World (Semiotext(e)); Tolerance’s Anonym (Vanity Records); J.G. Ballard’s The Drought (Liveright); Nick Zedd tribute in Tompkins Square Park; Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol (Cult Epics); the squirming theater kids at the Nightmare NYC haunted house; Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist (Fantagraphics); Johnny Depp’s post-cancellation outfits; Jasper Jubenvill’s Dynamite Diva: One-Eyed Wild Ride (Strangers Publishing); Midwest Modern Twitter (@JoshLipnick); Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s Movie Theaters (Prestel); the Try Guys extramarital sex “scandal”; Marcel Storr (Les Éditions Phébus); “Gamer Trump”; Andrew Leavold’s The Search for Weng Weng (The LedaTape Organisation); Old Throat’s s/t cassingle; Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper (Fireflies Press); Takehisa Kosugi’s Catch-Wave (Superior Viaduct); Gustave-Adolphe Mossa: Niciensis Pinxit (Éditions Gilletta); Angii Anargiri feast in Tholarai, Amorgos; John Capouya’s Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture (Harper); Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection: Medical Photographs from Japan Around 1900 (Scalo Verlag Ac); L.G. Mair, Jr.’s Selected Rhythm Tracks 1988-1994 (chOOn!!); Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler: How the Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock ’n’ Roll (Bloomsbury); Alexander Robotnick’s Ce n’est q’un début (Medical Records); Walerian Borowczyk’s Anatomy of the Devil (Rotland Press); Heratius’s Gwendolyne/Les Boniments (Staubgold); Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation (Harper); Zero Kama’s The Secret Eye of L A Y L A H (Nekrophile Rekords); Excavate!: The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (Faber & Faber), edited by Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley; Clint Eastwood Official Twitter rivalries; Cédric Grand Guillot’s and Guillaume Le Disez’s The Cult Films of Brigitte Lahaie (Pulse Video); dinner at Sota Atsumi’s Maison; Paul Fonoroff’s Chinese Movie Magazines: From Charlie Chaplin to Chairman Mao (University of California Press); Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy (Market Square Records); Hans-Peter Feldmann: 272 Pages (Fundacio Antoni Tapies), edited by Helena Tatay…
I could go on, but you get the point: a veritable banquet of enthusiasms! Isn’t it just wonderful that people do and make so many wonderful and interesting and beautiful things that you can enjoy? And presumably will continue to do so!—this even as the social rewards for wrecking things now threaten to surpass those for building them, and when any cultural product that isn’t the result of a process of corporate oversight that strips it of any possibility of risk-taking in form or content is pushed to the extreme margins where only an ever-shrinking cadre of eccentrics will know where to look for it, or even know that there’s anything else out there to look for…? But I’m not going to spoil the love-in; I’ll pick up where I left off next week.
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