Friday, November 22, 2013

Dallas Buyers Club Review

Dallas Buyer’s Club

Lots of college kids wanted to grow up to be cowboys.

Even the most composed liberal sneaks a glance at a swaggering cowboy. In his slouch, he exudes desultory confidence. Despite suspicions that he is a bigot, a lech, a lush and a fool, his mischief is dead sexy. He has something to teach Americans about our country. He’s not a thinker, but he does have the power to inspire political empathy. <i> Dallas Buyer’s Club </i> is about one of those cowboys. In a way, the film is a metaphor for a throttled America, and why we still feel tenderness for it, even though we should know better.

You could almost smell the beach, with a hint of stale hydroponics when Matthew McConaughey first saddled up onto the screen in <i> Dazed and Confused </i>. He looked tanned and corn-fed, the kind of guy that made even the highfalutin male consider a pair of skin tight Wranglers for an hour and change. Perhaps it’s something about reaching forty, but he’s turning into a proper actor. These days, he’s been bringing the business. In <i> Dallas Buyers Club </i> McConaughey plays Ron Woodruff, a coke snorting, Stetson sporting, string bean misogynist, whose serpentine frame must’ve required McConaughey to adopt a very abstemious lifestyle in preparation for the role.

At the movie’s start, McConaughey is posturing and punching, but you can tell something’s rotting away inside him. His teeter totters dangerously on the brink of healthy. The bags under his eyes give it away. After one particularly bad fainting spell he ends up in the hospital. Ron flirts with the demur doctor Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) as she tells him he has tested positive for H.I.V. and has thirty days left on earth. Garner is muted and shy. Seemingly without makeup, she is a tough foil for Ron’s blustering. Incensed and incredulous, Ron goes on a bender, perhaps realizing on some level that his reckless shirking of the doctors’ orders reveals his own suspicions about his health. It takes some serious physical deterioration and a trip to the public library, where he learns that H.I.V. can be transmitted through unprotected heterosexual sex to bring him back to the doctor’s office.

Ron has done his research. He knows about AZT, a new drug being pushed for human trials. It hasn’t been cleared by the FDA, but it has shown some promising results and AIDS patients are dropping like flies. He pleads with doctor Saks. She says no, even if she wanted to she can’t. So Ron does what anyone with a death sentence would do- he goes to Mexico. It’s hard not to see the parallels to modern day America here. Scarce are the misguided souls who sympathize with pharmaceutical companies. There is a growing discontent with government and it’s labyrinthine bureaucracies that confound seemingly common sense procedure at every level of life. Ron is, in some ways, a Republican’s wet dream. He’s a cowboy entrepreneur. Sure, he’s got AIDS, but he’s straight and he’s graceful under pressure.

Yet the film is not a romanticization of an anachronistic vision of the American Man. It is much more nuanced than that. Ron brings back a huge supply of unapproved AIDS drugs from Mexico for sale in the U.S. On his return, he meets Rayon (Jared Leto), a transsexual suffering with the disease, who becomes his business partner. In the 1980s, when the film takes place, it was common parlance to refer to AIDS as “The Monster”. One look at Leto’s alarmingly emaciated physique can tell you why. Leto, of Jordan Catalano and more recently New York party boy fame, does a phenomenal job. The striking beauty that hypnotized ranks of teenage girls in the 90s glows through cheap makeup and a gaunt face. Trans people may be one of the last of the truly shunned groups of people in our society today. Leto’s beauty helps, but his devotion to the role is what makes you root for Ron to roll around with him in the sack.

As you might expect, the initially white knuckle partnership with Rayon softens Ron’s heart to people of what he would have previously thought of as deviant sexualities. Once his original crew of dudes learns that he has AIDS, they ostracize Ron. The words “Faggot Blood” are spray painted in red on his trailer. Eventually, he ends up physically subduing one of his old friends in the supermarket. After his ex-friend makes a derogatory comment about Rayon, Ron is not too weak to grab the man in a choke hold and force him to shake Rayon’s hand. It’s a sweet moment, and Leto does the bashfully touched blush with aplomb.  What makes Ron’s transformation touching and not corny is that he maintains his mischievous, little boy swagger, while adopting a grown up point of view.

This is what we all really want out of America isn’t it? It’s beyond time that we all grew up. It’s crazy that Roe v. Wade is even on the table for discussion. We are well behind other developed nations on issues of health care, incarceration and education. The changes we need to make are glaring to the point of being embarrassing. And yet, we still want to ride high. At the end of the day, there are a lot of Americans who don’t really want to sacrifice that, albeit anachronistic, Old West flinty eyed stare.

Childish as this impulse may be, it is at least part of the drive behind a still very real feeling of American exceptionalism. While it is almost certainly fruitless to try to deal with tea party “radicals”, there’s something human about realizing that we can share some small, childish indulgence in fantasy with people from across the ideological aisle.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Review of Bolano's The Third Reich

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/168372-the-third-reich-by-roberto-bolano/

Monday, February 11, 2013

Monday, January 28, 2013

China Heavyweight Review

Here is a review of the film China Heavyweight I did for popmatters:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/167341-kings-for-a-day-china-heavyweight/

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Portrait VI

Plump little dumpling duck stares into her mirror. She cakes herself in foundation. Addicted, she cannot stop applying. She paints and paints to make her hateful face go away. No avail. Arched eyebrows. Tiny slits in stone to see from. Chubby cheeks suffocating in fat and powder. Human bakery. The face mask wafts down in chalky flakes, building up on her shoulders. Eczema of suede. When she shakes the chalk gets on everyone else on the subway. She cannot wait for the day to be over. She hates her job. She wants to be home painting toy soldiers. She, likes everyone from Russia, thinks of World War II vividly.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Davie Lerner Interview


Davie Lerner is an ex-ballet dancer. He lives in an enchanting apartment near Cooper Square. I visited him for coffee with coconut cream and a chat.

Anyone who wanted to could say I’m an artist and just put together a cow in hydrochloric acid and say oh this is art.

Nicholas Thomson: Can you take me through an average day in your life?

Davie Lerner: I start out with about an hour and a half or two hours altogether doing Pilates in the morning. I’m basically nocturnal but I’ve recently discovered that if I did it in the morning it left me free to do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. So it was much more liberating and invigorating to exercise in the morning. And then I have breakfast/lunch combined and if I have a project of work such as calligraphy I’ll work on that. If not I’ll make an effort to go out if it’s a nice day, at least take a walk. And then I come back and will read or continue working and then if I have the urge then I will go up to the top floor studio and paint, but i don’t do that regularly. Only when I’m feeling that there is hope for the art world. I’ve tried to accept or not accept but to try to understand why art is in such a bad state. Then around six o’clock if I feel the need I will take a nap. For one thing I’ve only recently understood that a nap is very good for you. I would have scorned it at one stage in my life. I thought that’s for old age or something. I would have felt guilty but I don’t anymore because I’ve discovered that Charlie Rose takes a nap whenever he feels the need. He finds it’s very constructive and restoring. But I can’t always count on the nap if I have to go out, maybe to the ballet, to a film or just to visit somebody then I will do that. If not, I’ll read some more. I also try to watch television. And then I get to bed at four. I’m nocturnal. Somebody I know is making a film about people who are nocturnal and so I’m one of the people he’s filmed for that. I’m nocturnal and I think that’s genetic. That we’re biologically tuned to be diurnal or nocturnal so it’s best not to try to go against that. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve only rarely had to have a 9-5 job and I’ve had a terrible time when I did have to undergo a 9-5 routine. I walked out of two or three jobs with art agencies because I felt claustrophobic. It was too restricting. I would go in the morning and I would last until lunch and go out to lunch and not go back. So I don’t fight it anymore. But since I go to bed at 4 and get up at 10 that’s only six hours. I’m rethinking whether we need eight hours of sleep. I don’t know where that came about. That’s sort of a typical day but I’m pretty flexible. Oh I forgot about dinner at nine. I go out to restaurants but only when a friend or somebody will go with me.
















NT: Can you tell me why you lament the state of the art world?

DL: For one thing, it’s been overtaken by the dealers. What they’re doing is they’re using art as a commodity and trading it. It isn’t art. It has to do much more with the commercial aspect. In the late 50s and early 60s it began to go in this direction and it had to do, to some extent with Andy Warhol. He was an illustrator, a very good illustrator. He was doing shoe ads for I. Miller and window displays. He was scrounging around for ideas and he got the idea that he could take the most common objects and present them as art. In a way he was critiquing the state of the art world. At that time some friends of mine had a silkscreen press called Tiber. They were doing christmas cards and wallpapers and I was doing calligraphy for them. He came and asked them if he could learn how to do silkscreen. They said of course you can come and observe and experiment. So he spent a week learning how to do silkscreen. He told them he’d give them one of his prints but he never did. In any case he silkscreened the soup cans and brillo boxes. He didn’t call it pop art he called it commonism, meaning you take an everyday common object and present it as art. But in a way it was a joke. It wasn’t serious. He was a bit like Duchamp who was very tongue in cheek. So it’s a joke but somehow it became almost out of control. He maintained control. He was brilliant at self-promotion. He didn’t make those films. He never looked in a camera or held a camera. Paul Morrissey made the films. They asked Paul why he accepted that. Morrissey said he’s a genius at self promotion. He said that he would never on his own have been able to produce and present these films. And then after that caught on Andy Warhol almost never put a brush to canvas. He was out at Studio 54 and Palladium dancing with Edie Sedgwick presenting her or presenting all his drag queens. So it never got away from him because he was smart enough to maintain a certain control. So he became very rich of course. But not nearly as rich as the dealers are becoming still from exploiting him. Not just him but other artists you know, who follow along in the wake of Andy Warhol. It bothered me so much that I even stopped looking at art books, contemporary art books because I thought it was an insult to art. Anyone who wanted to could say I’m an artist and just put together a cow in hydrochloric acid and say oh this is art. For me art is a discipline and if you don’t have the technique it’s not art and as in everything else I think technique as a dancer, technique as a musician, you can’t just go around saying I’m an artist, I’m a writer, without having a background in it and studying or making an effort. You can be self taught but at least make an effort to develop a technique. So I think it’s not art without technique.



NT: Can you tell me about your time with Balanchine

DL: I was in the Air Corps in WW 2, stationed in China.
]When  war ended I was assigned to Shanghai.    There I was able to
take ballet class with a Russian and an English  teacher and also
learned some Chinese dances.  When I got back to the States, I
enrolled at the School of American Ballet, which was founded by
Balanchine.  The government paid for tuition and subsistence under the
GI Bill.  There were some twenty or so other ex- GI's  taking class.
I was there for five years , during which time Balanchine formed the
Ballet Society.  I was in it for a short period.  It later became the
New York Cilty Ballet.  While it was Ballet Society Balanchine created
some truly great and original .works that are still performed
worldwide.    My performing career lasted  five years and was mostly
with Summer and Winter Stock Companies, an Opera Company and on TV.
It was a wonderful life enhancing experience.  The discipline of  the
Army and Ballet are similar.
I had some art training early on and was able to make the transition
back to the Art world by studying at Cooper Union.



NT: Can you tell the story of how you came to own this house?
DL: I was living on east 63rd st in a cold water flat from 1950-1960. A cold water flat is against the law or obsolete now but it meant that you had no heat. This was a five floor walk up. It had hot water. The bathtub was in the kitchen, the john was in the hall and you shared it with a next door tenant. So I lived there for 10 years and the rent was 15 dollars a month. It was too good to last. Some developers came along. East 63rd can you imagine paying fifteen dollars a month? In my ninth year of living there I received an eviction notice. They were going to tear it down. I would have to evacuate. So I started to look for a loft. Then it wasn’t so popular. It wasn’t even legal to live in a loft. But I knew it would become legal so I thought maybe I could even do it illegally for a while. So I kept looking and looking for almost a year and I couldn’t find one that I wanted to live in and work in. But in my last year at cooper union, one day in the men’s room during break I looked out the window and I saw this street and I thought maybe I’ll check that out. It looks very special. One of my classmates was living here. It was a rooming house, which meant that every room had an occupant. I asked if there were any vacancies and he told me to come back with him and ask the housekeeper. So I came back and the housekeeper in this house told me I don’t have any but ask the agent. I called the agent and he said we don’t have any but we have four houses for sale. So I said can I see them. He said of course. I checked them out. There were two on tenth and two on Stuyvesant. I chose this one because of the architecture. I could see it even in the horrible state that the house was in that it had this wonderful detail, ornate ceilings you see and beautiful light, which attracted me. So I chose this one although there were thirteen men and a housekeeper living in the house. But the basement was vacant. So I thought well I’ll move into the basement. The lawyer said you’re crazy don’t do it. My mother said I’ll never come and visit you because you can’t live that way. It’s crazy to live in a house with fourteen people. But I said well I’ll see what happens and so I moved into the basement. I bought it when I moved into the basement because the owner wanted to be rid of it. She hated the whole area, hated the house and wanted nothing to do with it. She leased it to the housekeeper who ran it as a business. She changed the sheets and mopped the floor, although not very well. It took about seven years but I one at a time did things to find them other places. I gave them free rent for a few months. They were paying three or four dollars a week. I worked my way from the basement up to the top. I’ve been here for now 52 years. It’s been a wonderful very ingratiating experience. Although Victorian is not my favorite period because it’s too fussy, it’s too busy, it’s anti-design. But I had a friend, an actor who lived here on the upper floors and he immediately took to it with a vengeance, the Victorian. I said I’m never going to have lace curtains but there they are. Gradually I was won over. It fits the house. I didn’t want to go against the architecture, it would be sacrilege. I was able to restore the cast iron fence in the front. I was able to do things to complete the whole project and so it’s been a kind of project and I consider it too to be creative. In a way it’s a form of art. Interior design can be an art form. For me, it’s like a personal expression and as much a work as a painting is you see. I think Flaubert said it better. He said about his novel Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary c’est moi. Flaubert also remarked that every man is worth a novel. And I feel the house is me. I am the house and the house is me.


NT: You have great style.

DL: No, I had it as a kid too in a way but it was pretty much a streak of narcissism. My father was a tailor but he didn’t make new things. He only repaired old things and did dry cleaning and stuff like that. I think I was a bit of a narcissist even then as a kid. But what refined it was that I at one point, I was working at Bergdorf Goodman while I was going to Cooper Union and somebody who was a producer of fashion shows asked if I’d like to work with him on fashion shows and I said of course. So for ten years I worked with him and he died prematurely and his clients asked if I would do the fashion shows and I said yes. So for about ten years I produced and did sets for fashion shows so I was exposed to fashion. I’m not as fashion conscious because I think fashion in a way is a joke. But it’s a joke that has to be taken seriously because for one thing I think it’s the second or third most profitable industry for New York. But it’s very important element in New York’s economy.

NT: You don’t consider it an art form

DL: I do when Alexander McQueen or Balenciaga or Charles James is doing it. But most of the time its rehashed. I have clothes from the 20s or 30s that look like Gucci or Prada. In the hands of an artist it is an art. There are a few out there who are artists, but not too many. But that’s true of the art world in general. Not everybody who says they’re an artist is an artist. If I may re-emphasize you need technique.





Portrait V

Illuminating geometric wonder with angles, the Kindle Paperwhite beams cyrillic characters in relief. A lumpen man in a lumpen coat scans with haste and laze, doing everything in his power to keep his eyes off his train fellows. He is coming from Brighton Beach. The depths of south Brooklyn. There is something rotten growing under many layers of skin on his cheek on his face. It is a lump. He has not gone to the doctor to determine whether or not it is malignant. This man would like to send his son to college. This man cares very deeply about his credit score in the way that people born poor do. He drinks to feel metallic buzzing in the mornings. He drinks to kill his tastebuds. He is so hungry; always hungry. He is ashamed of his hunger because he already feels fat. He tries to hold in a fart that his stomach is producing from the digestion of his high fiber breakfast that his wife bought to try to guide him dietwise. He has been trying to spend more time with his family recently. This has annoyed them, especially his son. They think enough is enough. They eat dinner together usually, except on weekends when the son has to go out and his wife is learning Salsa through lessons at a local gymnasium. He has not told them why he wants to spend more time. He has not told them that he is going deaf.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Portrait IV

Little bundled dancing doll; bottled rage chained down with gold. Fur cap firing on all cylinders. The glasses’ tint is a prescription benzodiazapine for her heart. She used to be a ballerina. Her dad used to say all women from Bulgaria lose plasticity after twenty four. She is a serial online dater. A real, what her American contemporaries would have called “man-eater”. Her crossed eyes on the prize. Mascara like war paint. She has seen cruelty and brutality and snow. We all have to die sometime and of something. Hands like pliers, she is not to be lied to. She is an inveterate gambler. She used to play online poker. Up to seven games at a time, betting fractions of cents instantaneously, under the screen name Karenina_Kalashnikov. There were times when this was enough of a supplement to her welfare checks. She sits, stewing over the new amphetamine compound she purchased from Moldova because it is not having the desired effects on her stomach and ass areas. She knows she won’t look this good forever. American girls are so cool. Her feet tucked into stirrups, bounding across the steppe. She sleeps in Queens.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Pale King

Reflections on David Foster Wallace’s posthumously published, unfinished novel The Pale King:

1. While the characters are not three dimensional or whole (or female), the work is moving. Now, you say you are brought along by the language and the dexterity of the writing. I'll ask you this, have you ever read a work that is doggedly post-modern, or obsessed with seeming smart, or arty, or high minded, or impressive or exclusive that you have enjoyed reading? I haven't really. I don't think DFW is doing that here. I think there are two main characters in the work, one is David Foster Wallace, and one is the reader. The book shifts between an omniscient third person perspective and the perspectives of the individuals. All throughout the book though, the polyphany of voices belong to DFW. I never lose the sense that it is him speaking. Who else speaks in any of the ways he does? What is so enchanting, I think, is the sense that he can "do everything", because all of the voices really are his. Something that I have gotten from literature specifically, not from any of the other arts including film, are fleeting moments of feeling not alone, when you really feel that an idea is something that you have thought before but never said. I really disagree with you when you say that Wallace doesn't care if you are there. I think he mainly cares that you are there. I think in the moments where the writing seems beautiful and touching about topics that are so banal and alienating, Wallace is showing you that look, you can understand someone else, even in this society of appearances and being seen. The person you are understanding though is the writer. It is a different kind of connection than relating to one of the characters.

2. Why does he pick the IRS? So we say well, the IRS is the model of a boring job. And yet ...Taxes are a philosophical cornerstone of American democracy. The IRS as a mediating function between the free market and liberal democracy becomes especially interesting when (I'm not sure if this is a real event or not) in the novel it is fashioned after a private sector business to increase equity in order to offset tax cuts and military spending. Very pertinent and topical stuff. On another level, the IRS functions as a synecdoche for a general lack of care or interest in the United States. As Wallace says, taxes are integrally tied in with civic duty. The government knows that if it can make taxes seem as boring as possible, it will be given a free hand by the public to manipulate tax law as it sees fit. There is also a discussion in the book about a general decline in people's interest in being a citizen. This may or may not have to do with people finding it trendy to protest the Vietnam war. In other words, the IRS is an institution of great importance, dealing with issues of both economic and philosophical importance and yet it is disdainfully overlooked by the populace, whose economic destinies it plays a part in shaping. This can be easily expanded into a critique of greater scope that includes more general ethics, neighborliness, etc. etc.

3. The bizarre particularity of the characters names mocks destiny.