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Heaven’s Gate
I have just watched Heaven’s Gate as an act of curiosity, having it praised as a kind of masterpiece even with its tattered history of a fiasco by a friend. Lots of movies did not get their just due until years after their making — The Magnificent Ambersons comes to mind as well as The Touch of Evil. Some movies I have seen I did not “get” or appreciate until I saw them two or three times, such as La Dolce Vita ( first viewed in 1960) as well Jarmusch’s Dead Man (a masterpiece of deconstruction of the west).With this…
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Comments on Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts
Todd Tarbox, grandson of Roger Hill, headmaster of the famous Todd School for Boys, Woodstock, Illinois, along the progressive approach of A.S. Neill’s Summerhill, and the son of Hascy Tarbox, younger classmate and perhaps rival to Orson Welles contacted me after seeing some reference to Welles by me. Over the years, hear and there, I have written about Welles and Citizen Kane. I devote one chapter in my recent book to Welles. And what is that attraction? I am appalled by what this culture, other cultures, do to the artist. The average Joe may or may not be emotionally impoverished; however, the…
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The New Novel Died Aborning
As usual I dated the first page (April 1,2013), an historical thing with me as I have always dated new work since I began writing more than four decades ago. I wrote in spurts with several days between new writing and this was not my usual way which is to pour it out in blasts and then go back and revise. It was also the first work I did directly onto the computer as opposed to my usual yellow pads and pen. So everything was different to begin with. Within one month I had written about 25,000 words, figuring I’d…
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Memory Traces
I went to Starbucks Sunday because I had an attack of spilkes. I ordered a cappacino grande and a piece of cinnamon cake most of which I threw away because I had to begin fasting for a blood test tomorrow, my semi-annual anxiety trip. In addition to which my physician retired with very short notice to all his patients, without a letter, just employing a nurse to inform me that the doctor was “tired” (he’s in his seventies). It was a very sloppy way of ending a medical relationship, but this is Nevada, a third world country, especially in terms of…