Hey guys,

Here’s a picture I found on the internet today.

Love,
Whitney

Jean Renoir’s 1927 film SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON blew my mind long before I saw it. I read about it way back in Art of the Harlem Renaissance class and have been thinking about it ever since. Our last video piece IM UR SLAVE had something to do with it.

Now I’ve finally seen it. Holy shit.

Here’s the plot:

In the future, an explorer from Central Africa (played by the African American dancer Johnny Huggins, in blackface) flies his space-pod to post-apocalyptic France. There he meets a wild child (Catherine Hessling, Renoir’s wife) and her monkey friend. She ties the explorer up and dances for him. He recognizes the dance as the “traditional dance of the aboriginal whites”, the Charleston and offers to take her back home with him if she teaches him the dance. As you can guess, dude learns pretty quick.

Basically, Princess Tam Tam with the colors and locations reversed.

Its goodness inspired me to finally learn how to make torrents. I posted a torrent of the film to Cinema Obscura. My posting awesomely got somebody to call me an “upload provocateur.”

I highly recommend you download this film. The dancing is amazing and often in slomo, the special effects are way inventive and post-apocalyptic France back then looks just like post apocalyptic France nowadays.

Oh, and:

NOTES ON THE BLACKFACE

People tend to be squeamish about blackface, and with good reason. But I would argue that in the case of SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON - not only is the film not racist, it’s not racist only because of the blackface. Seriously.

In terms of the plot, Huggins’ character doesn’t need to be in blackface. He definitely shouldn’t be wearing the ‘tramp’ outfit he’s in. My guess is that Johnny Huggins always performed in blackface - it was his uniform. That alone could let everyone off the hook. But I think it goes deeper.

Huggins might not have been recognizable to the audiences of Paris. A first level google search suggests he wasn’t a superstar. If he read to the audience as a nobody, then the joke of this film would be that black men are naturally good Charleston dancers. But in blackface, he’s not just any African, but unmistakably a professional African-American performer.

In other words, in SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON, blackface is a constant reminder that the story is an artificial setup for the real purpose of the film: beautiful ecstatic dancing.

Now get some shoe polish on your face. It’s Halloween!

L

I’ll tell you. The temptation is SO HIGH, esp as an indy-as-fuck director, to think of music videos as a showcase for how unique and talented you are. And while sometimes (and I’d like to think sometimes in our work) that ambition results in videos that bring out things in the music that wouldn’t come out otherwise, it usually leads to videos that are really just business cards for the production company - the next Levi’s ad done on spec (which is ok except its unfair to the music.)
Cuz really…humbling advice to me and Whit: these two Soconventional videos are REALLY, REALLY nice.


Riiiight?

WARHOL’S WORLD
October 20 - November 11, 2007
at the Museum of the Moving Image

Early this summer, a person I very much respect advised me that it might be a good idea to wait before shooting BLONDES IN THE JUNGLE. Then I didn’t want to hear it…

But circumstances did conspire to make us wait (with at least the main part of the film), and now I’m starting to see his point of view.

Like, there’s no way BLONDES won’t be a much better film for me and Whitney seeing these Warhol films. Every film of his we have seen: Chelsea Girls, Lonesome Cowboys, Poor Little Rich Girl, Lupe, Screen Tests, Beauty #2, and Outer and Inner Space has significantly made us reconsider our work (esp. Blondes) for the better. For serious.

So see you dudes in Queens,
L
(c-c-changeIcanchangeIcanchange)

P.S. Tangiers Simona points us to this, which nails it with: “To watch a Warhol film is to rediscover cinema’s plasticity, boundlessness, mystery and possibility.”

Our Hollywood connect Chloe (who’s said to “have the ear of Brad Pitt” - gross) was recently advising us on a project. She told us that everything that’s ever gotten sold has pitched as “this meets that“. Of course this led me and Whit to rethinking all our ideas in those terms, but maybe slightly more interesting…

If everything with commercial backing, TV Shows, Movies (both studio and indy), Video Games, etc, is “this meets that” - then we really shouldn’t think of them as primarily the result of some creator coming up with a unique idea. Not that it doesn’t happen, but that idea is useless until it is reformulated as a pairing. So…

John From Cincinnati = Twin Peaks meets Point Break;
Twin Peaks = Blue Velvet meets Dallas;
Blue Velvet = Body Heat meets Un Chien Andalou;

In other words, the history of film/tv is more like a genealogy of previously successful shows/movies than one of immaculately conceived Great Ideas by Geniuses. And places like Hollywood are petri-dish environments that allow TV shows to fuck freely, through the gooey medium of producers.

Now we get it…
L

If you had the club night of your life last night…an intensely warm mix of your favorite people and dream DJs…which you somehow managed to leave before the (natural) ecstasy feelings wore off…may I recommend you turn off your lights…mix the last of your summer bottle of Campari with a can of Orangina…and watch the sunset through your window while listening to this…surprisingly Tron chillout by the Avalanches…

“THE AVALANCHES YOGA MIND MELD ZOMBIE RELAXATION TAPE (2006)”

Or as their website says it (very similarly):

Finally a relaxation tape that isn’t all frog noises and pan flutes.
When the party’s over and everything is strange, hop aboard darren’s slow motion roller coaster.

Not that there’s anything wrong with pan flutes (see ****** and ****)

L

I think they might.

L

Sometimes you make something just cuz it would be helpful if it existed. That’s the case with our new video I’m Ur Slave.
We really like what turned out and we hope you do too.

L + W

Watch the video at BALLDEEP.TV
Or, if you prefer on YOUTUBE.

The combo of seeing Terminator 2 again and reading Raplh Rugoff’s Circus Americanus has got me revisiting the Disneyland Locals vids MBS posted a few months back.

Here’s the director’s(?) superlong but worth-reading description of the videos (w my emphasis)

There was a guerrilla documentation made of the Orange County phenomenon usually refereed to as “the Disneyland Locals”. The video documentation started in 1995 as an alternative to the afterschool task of filming skate videos.
Now over 10 years later videos shot at the park between 1995 and 1997 serve as a glimpse into a piece of Southern California history overlooked by mainstream media but never forgotten by the Generation who experienced it. It always seems pretty hard to explain this to someone who wasn’t there during this time period but everyone who was anyone used to hang out in the old broken down tomorrowland. Sort of like the zephyr surfers who would surf at the brokendown theme park “POP” in dogtown z boys.
To hang out in tomorrowland you had to have an annual pass that would grant you admission for most if not all days of the year (depending on how fancy your pass was passes were gernerally $100-$200). Most of the people who would hang out in Disneyland grew up going to the park during their childhood in Orange County and to find this as the main hangout as teeagers was very unlikely.
During the summer of 1996 security guards started revoking the passes from teens who would hang around most often siteing it as “loitering”. There were a number of ways a Disneyland security guard could justify revoking your pass but most popular were “loitering” and using “illegal dance moves” on the tomorrowland dancefloor basically no touching the ground with your hands but pretty much any dance move they didnt agree with. At this point it was already to late to take away passes, the secret was out everyone knew the park like the back of their hands by now .As hundreds of passes were revoked in an attempt to put an end to Disneyland Local culture the locals would comically sneak right back in.
As you can imagine the inapropriate clearence of Disneyland locals was sharply responded to by the angery teenagers….and that is when things really started to get interesting. This was the time period when the Disneyland Locals returned the lack of respect and took it out on the park…this would be anything from sneaking in a high volume of people through the re entry with used handstamps Transfered by a wide range of materials and damaging park property to getting off on the rides and re-arranging the puppets into differnt locations (ussually on “its a small world”) and other restricted behaviours some more innocent than others. Mostly weak things that teenagers would think funny but still good for a laugh.
You can mark the the removal of the peoplemover (the main make out point for all teeagers) as the start of the decline in the “Local Culture”. As the groups grew there were Territorial spots that would sometimes move form one side of Tomorrowland to another like a pack of Gypsies. The most well known rivalry between The straight edge groups and the teen smokers would have confrontations often resulting in countless kids getting Maced.
The renovation of a new more name fitting Tomorrowland came in 1997 at this time the thousands upon thousands of kids who had set up after school and summertime residency at tomorrowland rapidly declined until it completely seized to exist. Now you can walk through the new highly different tomorrowland as if these moments never happened. Enjoy a look into the past at http://youtube.com/profile?user=disne… where videos will be added as they are edited since myspace video sucks.

Ball Deep’s California expert Casey did some hanging out in Disneyland back in 1985-87. He says, “You can really draw a distinction between the kids who were locals - who were there all the time like it was their home and in that way were sorta pacified - and the kids from a little further out. They really didn’t give a fuck.” (Casey’s from Long Beach.)

He adds:

I really like that image. Anywayz, here are the videos:
Disneyland Locals
Episode Two
Next Episode - By far the best.

Casey also points us to Disneyland interventions of artist Banksy, whose work is “Not as cool as it ought to be, but still pretty cool.”

L

Dag - Why if I’ve only really hung out in L.A. once, do I always think about how I need to be “going back” there?