A thousand words

Coming in May 2014 (I can't wait!)...

Described on Amazon and Barnes and Noble for pre-order customers:  Girls Standing on Lawns is a unique collaboration between renowned artist and bestselling children’s book author Maira Kalman and New York Times bestselling writer Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket. This clever book contains 40 vintage photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, more than a dozen original paintings by Kalman inspired by the photographs, and brief, lyrical texts by Handler. Poetic and thought-provoking, Girls Standing on Lawns is a meditation on memories, childhood, nostalgia, home, family, and the act of seeing. The gorgeous visual material sets the stage for what Handler succinctly describes as “a photograph, a painting, a sentence, a pose.” Girls, women, families, and even pets from days gone by grace the pages, looking out at us, enticing readers to imagine these people, their lives—and where they have gone.

I love the idea that a picture (photograph or painting) often contains a moment, a story, an entire world. I bought a book years ago, Transforming Vision: Writers on Art,  a delightful collection (pub. 1994) of poems and prose, inspired by familiar art from our country's finest museums. Joyce Carol Oates wrote a wonderful piece on Edward Hopper's painting, Nighthawks:

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942

Joyce Carol Oates

The three men are fully clothed, long sleeves, even hats, though it's indoors, and brightly lit, and there's a woman. The woman is wearing a short-sleeved red dress cut to expose her arms, a curve of her creamy chest; she's contemplating a cigarette in her right hand, thinking that her companion has finally left his wife but can she trust him? Her heavy-lidded eyes, pouty lipsticked mouth, she has the redhead's true pallor like skim milk, damned good-looking and she guesses she knows it but what exactly has it gotten her so far, and where?--he'll start to feel guilty in a few days, she knows the signs, an actual smell, sweaty, rancid, like dirty socks; he'll slip away to make telephone calls and she swears she isn't going to go through that again, isn't going to break down crying or begging nor is she going to scream at him, she's finished with all that. And he's silent beside her, not the kind to talk much but he's thinking thank God he made the right move at last, he's a little dazed like a man in a dream--IS this a dream?--so much that's wide, still, mute, horizontal, and the counterman in white, stooped as he is and unmoving, and the man on the other stool unmoving except to sip his coffee; but he's feeling pretty good, it's primarily relief, this time he's sure as hell going to make it work, he owes it to her and to himself, Christ's sake. And she's thinking the light in this place is too bright, probably not very flattering, she hates it when her lipstick wears off and her makeup gets caked, she'd like to use a ladies' room but there isn't one here and Jesus how long before a gas station opens?--it's the middle of the night and she has a feeling time is never going to budge. This time though she isn't going to demean herself--he starts in about his wife, his kids, how he let them down, they trusted him and he let them down, she'll slam out of the goddamned room and if he calls her SUGAR or BABY in that voice, running his hands over her like he has the right, she'll slap his face hard, YOU KNOW I HATE THAT: STOP! And he'll stop. He'd better. The angrier she gets the stiller she is, hasn't said a word for the past ten minutes, not a strand of her hair stirs, and it smells a little like ashes or like the henna she uses to brighten it, but the smell is faint or anyway, crazy for her like he is, he doesn't notice, or mind....She's still contemplating the cigarette burning in her hand, the counterman is still stooped gaping at her, and he doesn't mind that, why not, as long as she doesn't look back, in fact he's thinking he's the luckiest man in the world so why isn't he happier?

The Returned

What makes a human, human?

With that in mind, what makes a zombie, zombie?

Victor, you're creeping me out!

The Returned can be seen on the Sundance Channel

or purchased by episode on Amazon.

Victor loves to draw, play on the trampoline and hold hands when he walks.

Like other young children, he is shy around strangers and is afraid of the dark.

He is handsome, yet unnnerving. 

Maybe because he is dead, having died some 35 years ago.

The French series The Returned offers a new and disturbing version of

the dead returning to inhabit the world of the living.

I love fast zombies.

I love slow zombies.

And now, a new love: zombies that talk, make themselves sandwiches, crack jokes

and get into fist fights. They seem just the way we remember them before they passed away.

Only different.

Fictional food

 A few of Dinah Fried's "Fictitious Dishes"

Fried painstakingly creates meals from text, with a flair for styling

using interesting cutlery, tableware and props.

...the old man held a large piece of cheese on a long iron fork over the fire, turning it round and round till it was toasted a nice golden yellow in color on each side.

Heidi, Johanna Spyri

It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit

and salted pork cut up into little flakes: the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

After I had left the skating rink I went to a drugstore and had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk.

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

Parks and Recreating

Adventureland, 2009

Written by Greg Mottola

The Way Way Back, 2013

Written By Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

Both Adventureland (2009) and The Way Way Back (2013) can be synopsized as: A sweet coming-of-age story about a young man who makes new friends and surprising epiphanies while working at a schlocky amusement park.

Both films feature familiar comedians, pretty love-interests and dependable character actors. Most viewers will identify with the nerdy lead: hasn't everyone felt misunderstood, invisible and angry at their parents for ruining their lives?

With so much that's similar, the difference between the two films can be found in the writing. Adventureland feels more polished, with a believable backstory for each of its central characters. The Way Way Back filters its emotion through its main character, while the supporting cast remains largely mysterious and backstory-less.

Both films play on nostalgia and muse what it's like to be on the cusp of maturity. Adventureland uses a confident adult point of view and identifies with each player in its little world, while The Way Way Back takes an innocent look at one summer, recognizing its importance but not its depth.


PS The amusement parks Adventureland and Water Wizz really do exist!

Visions of Paris

Plan de Paris (1927) by Ilonka Karasz

It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. I was writing about up in Michigan and since it was a wild, cold, blowing day it was that sort of day in the story. I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things. But in the story the boys were drinking and this made me thirsty and I ordered a rum St. James. This tasted wonderful on the cold day and I kept on writing, feeling very well and feeling the good Martinique rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.

A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.


 A Moveable Feast: Chapter One By Ernest Hemingway

In the beginning

The opening titles for a James Bond movie are sometimes more exciting and interesting than the main attraction. 14 of the James Bond films title sequences were designed by Maurice Binder, beginning with Dr. No (1962) in which animation, silhouettes and the James Bond 'theme' were first introduced.

Binder also created the iconic image of Bond as seen through a gun barrel.

Robert Brownjohn designed the brilliant titles for Goldfinger (1964), projecting live action onto various parts of golden girls. Shirley Bassey sang the title song, which was nearly nixed-- film producer Harry Saltzman hated it. With no time to replace the song with another, it stayed with the picture, went on to be a top ten hit across the globe and arguably the best in the Bond franchise.

You Only Live Twice (1967), Sean Connery's 5th turn as Bond is set in
Japan. The Binder title sequence features Nancy Sinatra for the title song,
her mild, thin voice glides over the montage of Asian girls and erupting volcanoes.
Despite a screenplay written by Roald Dahl, Connery seemed bored as Bond, and it showed.

Friend in need

Jeff Nichols, the writer and director of the new film Mud delivers a unique take on a boy coming of age. The boy, or boys in this film, aren't the idealized, adorable, sensitive, misunderstood mini-adults of the Steven Spielberg school, and they aren't the children imagined by Stephen King, that spew only the most wrenching and revealing stuff, destined to become writers one day. Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) have an easy rapport and speak the kind of shorthand that comes from spending lots of time together. They live in the Mississippi Delta, a hardscrabble existence chock full of junkyards, eroded homes, and eking out a living. In the same day they discover an abandoned boat in a tree (the result of a long ago flood) they meet Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a homeless man who claims to be on the run from bounty hunters after killing a man that hurt the woman he loves. Mud needs that boat, the impossibility, irrationality, and absurdity of which is not lost on Ellis and Neckbone. At 14, their hearts and minds are open. The spirit of that untarnished optimism, so realistically portrayed by the young actors, so intelligently written by Nichols, carries the film. The realization? Things happen, people disappoint, plans fall through, and despite waves of change, when you wake up you're still you. And that's okay. In fact, that's terrific.

Close the gap

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.


This applies to creative WORK, not just writing.

The Big Sleep

I was wearing my powder-blue suit...I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I 

didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private 

detective ought to be.

 Philip Marlowe : hardboiled, handsome, works best alone.

Lionni

 Painter

 Sculptor

 Photographer

Accordion player

Designer, art director, editor, critic, writer, artist, dad: there's a lot to adore and admire
in the amazingly prolific and joyfully expressive life of Leo Lionni.


(I love the baggy pants, the beret, the loafers, the chukka boots and the thick glasses too!)

Live your life

Shortly before he died, Maurice Sendak was interviewed by Terry Gross for her NPR show, Fresh Air. Sendak was unusually emotional, recalling lost friends, his love for nature and that he was a 'happy old man'. Illustrator Christoph Niemann who was listening, was inspired to animate the poignant close of the interview.

 

Polymath

Artist-writers, painter-musicians, politician-poets, painter-writer-filmmakers...I admire those talents that have broad interests and numerous subjects of proficiency. The nerve of it! The verve of it! I've been following the work of Oliver Jeffers since his first children's book, he just gets better and more interesting with time.

 

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan inspires animation.

10 List: Covering Dracula

The thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted around it.

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1845-1912)

Chapter 16

Pink Pearl

     Ramona pretended she was riding a stagecoach pursued by robbers until she discovered her eraser, her beautiful pink eraser was missing. “Did you see my eraser?” she asked a second-grade girl, who had taken the seat beside her. The two searched the seat and the floor. No eraser. 
      Ramona felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. “Was it a pink eraser?” asked the boy in the baseball cap. 
      “Yes.” Ramona was ready to forgive him for kicking her seat. “Have you seen it?” 
      “Nope.” The boy grinned as he jerked down the visor of his baseball cap. That grin was too much for Ramona. “Liar! She said with her most ferocious glare, and faced front once more, angry at the loss of her new eraser, angry at herself for dropping it so the boy could find it. Purple cootie, she thought, and hoped the cafeteria would serve him fish portions and those canned green beans with the strings left on. And apple wedges, the soft mushy kind with tough skins, for dessert.

Page 18 Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary

Pink Pearl print by Jordan Crane

Being quiet

During a beginners bookmaking workshop for kids, one parent asked if she might take photos of me during each step of the craft process. She said, "I can see you're shy and introverted, but would you mind if I take photos of you during the class to help us remember the instructions?" I think she mistook my quiet approach. Weeks later, she sent me copies of the photos she had taken. The photos were better than a video. They captured each step, and all that quiet.

Reading list

soul like a rocket

so you want to be a writer?

by Charles Bukowski



if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Stone-faced

It's a good thing that Miroslav Sasek's 'This is' series (New York, Paris, Great Britain, Ireland, Hong Kong and others) has been reprinted and available to a new generation. Hopefully my favorite of his titles will follow suit. Stone Is Not Cold  (1961) imagines great sculpture in ordinary settings.

En francais!

Pictured above, the front and back covers of Inventaire Après Rupture, the French edition of Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman.   The title translation 'inventory after break' sort of gives away the charming plotting device of the main character's description of random mementos outlining her teen romance. Still, being a huge Maira Kalman fan, I may have to order a copy!

Tom's bud

The average man don't like trouble and danger.

—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Among the most banned titles.