Attention all of you in the greater Massachusetts/Infinite Jest area: go check out the Giant Sale show at APE Gallery – for a number of reasons, but like one for example is the DVD of our short films now for sales for $5! Here’s the covers. The letter on the front is I think the best explanation of ourselves we’ve written:

Here’s the O, Nurse! trailer (btw, Happy Bastille day! O, Nurse! takes place 6 years ago today)

L

Seeing this, I just ran the Blondes script through Worlde. It looks like a Godard poster of Whitney’s!

(click to see fullsized)

Sweet,
L

Oh, wait. Here’s Jazz Christmas:

Last week, Wayne & Wax, on his endlessly productive and useful blog, pointed out “The term hipster has become, almost exclusively I think, a pejorative. (Are there any self-identified hipsters out there? I don’t think so.)”

An in-DEPTH discussion of the race/gender politics of the MP3 blogosphere and its manifestations in the NYC/Bos/Philly/Bmore party scenes followed (see the laser-precise comments of Jazz Christmas stars John (here) and Alexis (here), and somebody named Dominic (here)).

But I thought I should say something as, and for, the self-identified hipster - I mean, who’m I kidding, right?

Here’s an excerpted, revised version of what I wrote. The original discussion is here. I hope you enjoy/disagree…

What me? Hipster?

When I got to college in 2000, people described my style as indie - which was ok but weird cuz I really wasn’t listening to that much indie music, mostly just new wave and rap (back then I called it hip-hop). Sometimes I’d get called “poseur” too (might have been the tube sock on my wrist). But after the Strokes blew up, people switched to calling me ‘hipster’. I thought it was an improvement. Now my identity wasn’t tied to the things I liked, but to a kind of practice.

I’ve held onto that meaning of hipster and sort of have worked out a description for the practice. I’d define ‘hipsterism’ as a set of methods (including improvisation, appropriation, role-playing, repurposing, inside jokes, double meanings) for changing or reversing conventional values. Hipsters believe that to do things with the right STYLE could have great, even magical, effects.

In my life, these effects have been huge. When Whitney and I think our work in terms of a tradition, its the Hipster Tradition of Filmmaking. Plus, I can’t imagine having the friends I do, the life I lead, or a single date with any of the girls I’ve ever loved if it wasn’t for my being a hipster. Talk to 16 year-old, prehipster Lev if you don’t believe me. I’m all for it.

What me? Die?

From the above list of methods, it’s clear to me that hipsterism was brought to its first mature level of expression and complexity in the Jazz Age - and that much if not all of the roots of hipsterism are African American. So even when hipsters aren’t ‘acting black’ they are still doing something that black people taught the world. That’s what Mailer’s acknowledging in ‘White Negro’ (cuz he doesn’t ‘act black’ does he? Not on Gilmore Girls, he didn’t). Of course Mailer didn’t say “some negroes” and he’s only writing for the benefit of white men. But these are unfortunately a regular kind of white man’s mistake - not one particular to the hipster.

Which is part of my point. A lot of hipsters - maybe most - are bigots, idiots, chauvinists, callous morons, know-it-alls and thieves (like forreal: of $$$s). And hipsterism’s methods are rich in their potential for misuse - especially by those in power. But I’d be way in favor of the debate shifting to ‘good hipsters’ vs ‘bad hipsters’ instead of now, when ‘hipster’ seems to stand for ‘everything I hate’ by whoever says it.

I mean, if TIME OUT really means “HIPSTERS MUST DIE”, ok - I’ll prepare myself to fight. But then they gave the gAame DVD a good review the month before, so I dunno. Do they really wanna kill me?

Cuz…yikes.
L

ADDENDUM: There, a hipster died. Happy, TIME OUT?

The day after posting this I remembered that Italian-American actor John Atkinson very compellingly portrayed a Jew with the weight of the world on his shoulders in Jazz Christmas. Wow, that seems like a long time ago…

Please enjoy the haunting Leonard’s Theme, performed by John and inspired by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (MP3).

Jazz Christmas will totally be screening at Ned’s Free For All tomorrow.

Ned’s Creative Free For All
This Saturday, July 8 at 9 p.m.
In the backroom at Jimmy’s No. 43
(43 E. 7th St. btwn. 2nd & 3rd Aves.)
FREE!
“A night of spontaneous, offbeat entertainment
of all stripes”

CHEERS!

Based on that movie she made (i didn’t see that other one) I declared Sofia Coppola to be a shallow talent, whose one move was the pretty-girl-gazes-through-the-window shot.

But then she nailed this trailer. I mean — that shit looks like Jazz Christmas!

Man…it’s easier when people don’t surprise you.

(CREDIT: L wrote this, but W saw the trailer first and said the same thing)

It’s kinda warm out! That means the SUMMER (film festival season) is coming. So L & W need writeups of all their recent movies.
Last night, using methods of creative (mis)watching, about twelve beers (many from Russia!) and their imaginations, Lev and Whitney wrote these funabled synopsis:

Music video for Book’s On Tape’s “Stones to Turn /
Bridges to Burn”
With XXXtended love scenes, intricate vampire plots
and 90s-music shoutouts, Stones to Turn / Bridges
to Burn is too soft-core  to be a music video, but
too hardcore to be pornography.

Fun’s Over
File under science-fiction, beach, romantic comedy.
The future is fun, when you’re in the sun. But not
when you’ve got gonorrhea.
Fun’s Over: life’s a “beatch”.

O, Nurse!
Nobody listens to the doctor
because there’s a speedboat, and it’s Bastille Day, and
Batman Returns is on, and we’re at an apple
orchard, and there’s Liberia, and it’s in color…
The punchline is gay sex.

Jazz Christmas
Looking back, it’s clear the young NYC hipsters of
the 1920s were earnest with their own dramas, fads
and fetishes but totally unaware of their fate (Crash!)
Anywayz…
Presenting for your pleasure, Jazz Christmas:
the Beautiful and Damned, before they knew about
that second part.

That’s right — crazy slang poems!
But really seriously. Are you on the selection committee of any film festivals? Do you just “know” about some “cool” ones?
Lev.and.Whitney@gmail.com!

Lev tries to direct Tim Bean and Andre F-Scott while wearing an elephant mask and his mother’s pajamas.

Lev (dressed for the role of Morris, the communist playwright) and Whitney pose with the movie’s star set-piece.

View the whole photo-album here…
Big thanks to Easy-E Nicolas for these photos of January’s Jazz Christmas re-shoot!

Seriously. She’s really easy.