Come uptown to the Washington Heights Free Radio H.Q. (and living quarters) this Wednesday April 5th at 8 p.m. Your reward will not only be ALL of Lev and Whitney’s movies — 2+ years of work — but a
Root Beer Float Bar!

I know…holy shit!

Wednesday, April 5th
9pm for screening
8pm for root beer floats
Non-dairy alternatives available

R.S.V.P. lev.and.whitney@gmail.com so seating and root-beer can be arranged.

Mental (Mis)watching

Plenty of times, academics, movie critics, IMDB and Critereon Collection boxes encourage (mis)watching. They instruct us to ignore the ending of Brazil, to imagine additional scenes in The Magnificent Ambersons , and they tell us Peeping Tom is about the politics of representation. Reading that tricks our brains into watching movies in new and different ways.

All this is OK, but it isn’t creative (mis)watching, it’s learned (mis)watching. Instead of letting an advertiser or theater tell us how to watch a movie, we let Leonard Maltin (or somebody fancier). Sure, we could all do our own research and analysis. But can we skip all that film-school work and still creatively (mis)watch using only our brains?

Totally. Take camp – the method of creative (mis)watching Hollywood (or other mainstream) movies as Queer expression. What’s awesome about camp is that it provides a method that can be readily applied to a broad range of films. One downside, though, is that the range of potential meanings is somewhat limited.

A different, more flexible strategy is inventing mental games that force creative (mis)watching. It’s like what film critics do – only without needing evidence, theory or logic. For example Whitney and her boyfriend Oliver recently got a kick out of watching History of Violence as if it was a real-time documentary. Like all games, mentally creative (mis)watching takes a sustained imaginative effort. And some games are bound to work better than others. Still, this method frees the mind and, for that reason, is rich with potential.

Last post, I wrote, “I can’t imagine someone loving a movie without creatively (mis)watching it”. Obviously, everybody who loves movies doesn’t play mental tricks on themselves like Whitney. Probably the most common way of mental creative (mis)wathching is identifying with characters. The Fresh Prince isn’t about you. By watching it as if it is, the show’s meaning changes. It becomes is something very different to you than it is to the general audience of watchers. The same goes for having romantic or sexual feelings for characters – the dudes and girls who see Herbie for Lindsay Lohan’s jiggle are creative (mis)watchers, big-time.

More on them in Part Four. Next time: altering a movie. And a final note on academics and critics: the best of them are heroes of creative (mis)watching. And while it is necessarily to be rigorous with theory and evidence, its also important to remember that audacity scores a lot of points – at least with me. I’d definitely read a gender studies critique of Pluto Nash before a Marxist critique of Godard. Scholarship started out in temples, mosques and monasteries…academics ought to take some leaps of faith!

L

Last night’s episode of Lev’s radio show was called “Spring-song of the Electric Birds (or God-damn! Is there a curse on Dungeon Fam?”) DoWnLoAd it (MP3) and enjoy!

Ward 21 - Petrol
DJ C (w/ Gregory Isaacs) – Gone a Jail
Telefon Tel Aviv - What's The Use Of
       Feet If We Haven't Got Legs?
O. Lamm – Steve Albini / Kate
Blevin Blectum – Duckhunted
Blevin Blectum  - Benadrilled and Taking on Water
Toshiro Mayuzumi – Mandara
Electric Birds - Parallelogram
Janet Jackson – That’s the Way Love Goes
Killer Mike – Dungeon Family Dedication
Big Boi w. Killer Mike – Kryptonite
        (DJ Sujinho baile funk remix)
The Clash – Kingston Advice
Can – Laugh Till You Cry, Live Till You Die

W.H.F.R. is amazing.

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!

WHFR makes awesome fondue and plays Lev’s radio show every Sunday at 11pm.

Episode Ten (MP3) of Daddy’s Little Girl Loves Cisco Disco:

Country Teasers - Compressor
Sascha Funke – Boy
Matthew Dear - And In The Night
Capitol K - Capitol Beat Sticky (Posh Mix)
Books on Tape - Sporty But Sensible Car
Suicide – I Don’t Know
Angry Samoans - They Saved Hitler's Cock
Matmos - The Stars And Stripes Forever
Kid 606 - She's Defective
Secret Mommy - Ta-Da Peru
Kraftwerk – Strom
Donna Summer – Turn the Stone
Giorgio Moroder & Harold Falt – Score to Battlestar Galactica

Enjoy!

On Wednesday April 5th Washington Heights Free Radio will present all of L & W’s movies — slightly over 2 years of work — to you.

Save the date. More info to come on the night, along with write-ups and trailers on all the movies!

William S. Burroughs stole Lev’s idea!
Lecture on Creative Reading Part I, Part II

Lev’s radio show airs every Sunday night at 11 (new time!) on Washington Heights Free Radio . Here’s last night’s episode.

Playlist:
Suzi Quatro – Your Mama Won’t Like Me
allhiphop.com interviews Princess – (a Level-K reading)
Crime Mob – Ain’t No Joke
40 Cal – TV Star
Mannie Fresh and Baby – Go With Me
Lil Wayne – Fireman (Level-K’s Art School mix)
Droon – Fuck The Underground
Luke Vibert / BJ Cole – Party Animal
Maurice Fulton – You Saved My Life
Voltio - Voltio
Lil Wayne – Ignition Remix (flow)
Clinton Sparks And The Clipse - Zen
Jay Bezel - Worst Nightmare
Beck – Runners Dial Zero
African Head Charge – Depth Charge

Enjoy!

NOTE: I didn’t study film theory at college and I’m happy about that. But, especially in this intro post, I might be doing work that’s already been done better. Whatever. Oh, and when I say “movies” I mean films, t.v., digital, fiction, documentary, surveillance footage, etc. It all moves.

All movies are interactive - it’s up to us movie-watchers how much. Different kinds of movie-watching allow for different levels of engagement.

The low level of engagement is “seeing” a movie. It’s based on the false idea that every movie has an intrinsic and concrete meaning. So all we have to do is “get” that meaning, and then like it or not. Because of the one-way relationship between movie and watcher, I call this level “un-creative watching.”

For people who like un-creatively watching movies, the worst thing is “miswatching” a movie. It can happen because the DVD skips, because there’s too much noise in the theater, or because the movie doesn’t mean what it’s expected to (”That comedy wasn’t funny!”). For whatever reason, they don’t get the movie they paid for (with time if not money). So miswatching is a failed transaction. That’s why people who like “seeing” movies are so finicky at the theater.

But, if the meaning of a movie is up to the watcher, then there isn’t one right way to watch it. Done consciously, miswatching enriches the meaning of movies by making our creative control explicit. It allows us to explore new ways that movies can mean things — and so, new meanings.

“Creative (mis)watching” is what I call this high level of engagement. It affirms that movie-watchers are producers, not consumers. Creative (mis)watching is a bit of a weird term, but it’s a very common thing. I can’t imagine someone loving a movie without creatively (mis)watching it.

There are countless kinds of creative (mis)watching; each determines different degrees and kinds of engagement. Over the next three posts, I’ll identify methods of creative (mis)watching and explore how they work. The posts will be organized into
three categories of creative (mis)watching: mentally altering a movie, physically altering a movie, and physically altering yourself watching a movie. In other words, soon we’ll get to all sorts of weird shit. I promise.