Weblog 50
January 21, 2007~ 4:30pm
I watched the most fascinating film last night. It had been in my queue at Blockbuster since before Christmas, and I'd been anxiously awaiting it. It seems my fascination for the film director Werner Herzog continues from the day I first heard him interviewed on NPR by Terry Gross and he was talking about his film, Grizzly Man. Afterward, I rented the film for myself, and fell totally, hopelessly in love with the man and his work.
Seeing so much of him, listening to his commentary- mostly about his own body of work-(and yes, I do hear exaggerations and egocentricity and disparity between what he himself reports and what others who knew and worked with him have to say)- yet he remains one of those intoxicating geniuses a person like myself cannot seem to get enough of, and this film only served to deepen all my feelings and observations.
Here you see a still from the movie "MY BEST FIEND", which is a captivating look at two very strong, brilliantly talented men, who both love and detest one another. (Actually I think 'detest' is not the right word at all. Perhaps, 'challenge to the limits' is a much more appropriate description of their mutual conflicts over the years.) Herzog continued to choose Klaus Kinski as his leading man despite the overwhelming difficulties Kinski's uncontrollable, explosive temperament caused in finishing a film. Herzog was smitten with Kinski after seeing him in a film while he was still a very young person, and in "My Best Fiend' he shows the scene in which Klaus Kinski, playing a German officer, wakes up suddenly after sleeping with his head on his arms while seated at a table. "It was the way he woke up. It was so compelling, so perfect-- I've just never forgotten it." Honestly, in watching that clip myself, I could see none of what Herzog saw, and in fact the scene is so insignificant, I can only speculate that something else was going on when Herzog watched that in his youth.
I think Kinski represented something. Some symbol, some archetype- some sexual energy perhaps, because I do think that Herzog harbored more than a little homoerotic feelings for Kinski. He never mentions that, but it felt palpable to me in his reminiscences.
The film begins with a very reflective, much, much older Herzog looking reflective on the train taking him back to the area of Peru where he'd filmed both "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre, The Wrath of God" with Klaus Kinski. There is such a melancholy sense of sadness that you can see in the picture above- and a kind of demand to justify his past judgements of his dead friend. (Kinski died in 1991 in Los Angeles) I see this entire film as an attempt to come to grips with feelings he never fully understood- an attempt to exhibit to others just how mercurial and impossible his friend was while showing a justification of Kinski's genius and love affair with the movie lens, and most of all- probably more personally- an attempt to be in that time again, back when both Kinski and he were impossible madmen.
The sparks that flew between those two giants are fascinating to watch. I was very touched by the end of the film where Herzog shows one of the most remarkable scenes of a candid capture of Kinski "playing" with a butterfly. The butterfly would light on his finger- hop onto his shoulder, fly back onto his collar- and was dancing and communing with Klaus in the most magical way. Kinski looks young, relaxed, and beautiful in the sequence. I think Herzog understood totally the butterfy's joy.
I think it reveals the way Kinski isremembered by his friend, who fixates not the beast, but the enchanting golden 'boy' he'd been, in a self-constructed world of his own making. This film is a captivating study of the tensions inherent in close, volatile relationships- and although the film is almost entirely in German with English subtitles, somehow it contributes to the strangeness of watching these two. It exhibits how we can both despise and love at the same time, and can be caught wrestling between the two unable to ever say fully whether we love or hate a person whenever that kind of primal conflict occurs. What can be said is that we are stuck, and probably will never be released from such entanglements of hurt and love, disappointments and anger that such relationships create. (This was brought home to me just this weekend when I read online how a movie I'd recommended to someone had finally been watched, but not remembered at all that it had been me who had first encouraged its viewing.)
How much past closenesses hurt way down when they are forged with difficult though fascinating people whose egos clash with our own, whose ideals may be quite different, yet there are bonds tougher than those painful differences that become impossible to throw off. I feel I know Werner Herzog even better than before I watched this film, and I'd like to say I understand.......because I do.
January 23, 2007~ 7:00am
Favorite Quote Of The Day
QUESTION: What do you get when you cross the Godfather
with a philosopher?
ANSWER: An offer you can't understand.
January 24, 2007~ 5:00pm
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, yesterday was officially "Blue Monday"-- meaning the bluest, most depressing day of the year for most folks. (Don't know how they got that statistic. I know nobody polled me, but there have to have been some studies done. Yesterday had a few bad things going for it: it was Monday, first of all. Add to that the fact that it is now 3 weeks into the new year-- past the holidays and the extra freetime and celebration, we've now had 3 weeks to think about how this year is really no different than last year, and most resolutions have been broken after the first flush of virgin determination-- the holiday BILLS have begun to filter in so that all the extra cash put out for the yulelog et al has come knockin' at the door-- and the bad winter is here. Not the pretty Suzie Snowflake, Charlie Brown Christmas winter, but the "To Build A Fire" kill-your-dog-and-stick-your-frozen-hands-into-his-entrails sort of bleakness. 'Tis the season I suppose, of despair, and yet other than it being a Monday (which is always a wrist-slasher day for me, second only to Sunday evenings which are the gallows themselves)- this time of year is peaceful for me.
It's quiet. It's subdued. It's private by god. Even the colors are muted; never loud at this point in the year, and I don't have to listen to everyone's BOOM BOX shrieking some godawful song I would never in a million years listen to ordinarily without being sedated. It's the silence that woos me in January, February, most of March-- I like it. Statistics be damned, I paid cash for my Christmas (at least I will have when the income tax refund comes back) and everything else is just less shrill, less 'party-fied'---- and I'll egg the first bastard approaches me with some cute invitation to this or that. THESE ARE MY MONTHS, goddammit....and I dare anyone snatch any of it away.
Of course, in talking about this at work, it was pointed out that February is the month for the highest divorce filings. Too late!! Ha ha! I jumped ahead of the curve on that one many, many moons ago- but when you think about it, it makes sense. More winter, more staring at eachother, none of the red satin, lace and chocolates the advertising folks would have us believe is out there for every Cupid lover. It ain't so. So stop waiting for that nonsense. Pick somebody you feel comfortable reading around; who likes you just as well with make-up on or off, and gets your jokes. That's it. The secret to love's longevity. Fee please......
January 25, 2007~ 7:00pm
I chickened out again. The weather has just been terrible for driving. So unpredictable and deadly on the roads- and tonight was my 'pizza night' with my daughter, her husband Gary, little Mr. Bill and Ms. Kay. But driving home it was blindingly sunny, the roads salted and wet- and then as I approached the South Side a dark HUGE front moved in, creating a blizzard: no visibility! The nicely wet, black roads disappeared into two thin tire tracks in front with everyone creeping along frightened of ice and sudden movements behind the wheel. It's predicted to do that all night long- over and over- these nasty squalls of fierce, blown snow and temperatures plummeting to a freezing 11 degrees.
I cancelled last week due to just getting back to work after being sick, and this week because of weather.....next week I'll have to hang a big sign on myself that says "GRANDMA" when I visit. No.......make that "BIG SCAREDY-PANTS GRANDMA". Sheesh. I didn't even get to talk to them- just left two messages after listening to Bill's answering machine recording: "Bill and Mommy and Daddy and BILL....and Kay....are not here! (My daughter then whispers to him in the background and then, "LEAVE A MESSAGE!"- (very abruptly and proudly...lol) I love to listen to that and would make multiple calls a day just to hear it if I didn't think it may be the one, ten second interval when everyone is resting comfortably. Oh well....Holl...if you ever see this....mum ain't lyin'. Here's the National Weather Hazard warning-
Special Weather Statement
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PITTSBURGH PA 404 PM EST THU JAN 25 2007
...SNOW SHOWERS WILL CAUSE SLIPPERY ROADS...
SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE THROUGH THE REGION THIS EVENING. EVEN THOUGH THE SNOW SHOWERS MAY ONLY LAST A FEW MINUTES, THEY CAN QUICKLY COVER A SALTED ROAD AND CAUSE ICY CONDITIONS. THIS WILL BE ESPECIALLY TRUE AS THE SUN SETS. ALSO,GUSTY NORTHWEST WINDS WILL BLOW AND DRIFT THE SNOW, CAUSING ROADS TO REFREEZE.
IF YOU PLAN TO DRIVE DURING THE LATE AFTERNOON RUSH, OR AT ANY TIME THIS EVENING, ALLOW FOR EXTRA TIME. DRIVE WITH CAUTION AS YOU MAY ABRUPTLY ENCOUNTER A SNOW SHOWER AND SLIPPERY ROAD.
Life in winter............sure does get complicated. And for the past several days one of my image hosts is down.....so if you've been looking at any of my pages and the pictures are GONE!- I know. I'm slowing loading them onto yet ANOTHER free linux server somewhere, where (I'm sure) THEY'LL crash after being laden down with endless teen tunes and candid, rique or outright pornographic mini-films. ah.......the joys of internet publishing on, not even a shoestring- air. Just air, is all. Costs nuthin'....lasts, oh, a month or two. LOL!
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
I watched the most fascinating film last night. It had been in my queue at Blockbuster since before Christmas, and I'd been anxiously awaiting it. It seems my fascination for the film director Werner Herzog continues from the day I first heard him interviewed on NPR by Terry Gross and he was talking about his film, Grizzly Man. Afterward, I rented the film for myself, and fell totally, hopelessly in love with the man and his work.
Seeing so much of him, listening to his commentary- mostly about his own body of work-(and yes, I do hear exaggerations and egocentricity and disparity between what he himself reports and what others who knew and worked with him have to say)- yet he remains one of those intoxicating geniuses a person like myself cannot seem to get enough of, and this film only served to deepen all my feelings and observations.
Here you see a still from the movie "MY BEST FIEND", which is a captivating look at two very strong, brilliantly talented men, who both love and detest one another. (Actually I think 'detest' is not the right word at all. Perhaps, 'challenge to the limits' is a much more appropriate description of their mutual conflicts over the years.) Herzog continued to choose Klaus Kinski as his leading man despite the overwhelming difficulties Kinski's uncontrollable, explosive temperament caused in finishing a film. Herzog was smitten with Kinski after seeing him in a film while he was still a very young person, and in "My Best Fiend' he shows the scene in which Klaus Kinski, playing a German officer, wakes up suddenly after sleeping with his head on his arms while seated at a table. "It was the way he woke up. It was so compelling, so perfect-- I've just never forgotten it." Honestly, in watching that clip myself, I could see none of what Herzog saw, and in fact the scene is so insignificant, I can only speculate that something else was going on when Herzog watched that in his youth.
I think Kinski represented something. Some symbol, some archetype- some sexual energy perhaps, because I do think that Herzog harbored more than a little homoerotic feelings for Kinski. He never mentions that, but it felt palpable to me in his reminiscences.
The film begins with a very reflective, much, much older Herzog looking reflective on the train taking him back to the area of Peru where he'd filmed both "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre, The Wrath of God" with Klaus Kinski. There is such a melancholy sense of sadness that you can see in the picture above- and a kind of demand to justify his past judgements of his dead friend. (Kinski died in 1991 in Los Angeles) I see this entire film as an attempt to come to grips with feelings he never fully understood- an attempt to exhibit to others just how mercurial and impossible his friend was while showing a justification of Kinski's genius and love affair with the movie lens, and most of all- probably more personally- an attempt to be in that time again, back when both Kinski and he were impossible madmen.
The sparks that flew between those two giants are fascinating to watch. I was very touched by the end of the film where Herzog shows one of the most remarkable scenes of a candid capture of Kinski "playing" with a butterfly. The butterfly would light on his finger- hop onto his shoulder, fly back onto his collar- and was dancing and communing with Klaus in the most magical way. Kinski looks young, relaxed, and beautiful in the sequence. I think Herzog understood totally the butterfy's joy.
I think it reveals the way Kinski isremembered by his friend, who fixates not the beast, but the enchanting golden 'boy' he'd been, in a self-constructed world of his own making. This film is a captivating study of the tensions inherent in close, volatile relationships- and although the film is almost entirely in German with English subtitles, somehow it contributes to the strangeness of watching these two. It exhibits how we can both despise and love at the same time, and can be caught wrestling between the two unable to ever say fully whether we love or hate a person whenever that kind of primal conflict occurs. What can be said is that we are stuck, and probably will never be released from such entanglements of hurt and love, disappointments and anger that such relationships create. (This was brought home to me just this weekend when I read online how a movie I'd recommended to someone had finally been watched, but not remembered at all that it had been me who had first encouraged its viewing.)
How much past closenesses hurt way down when they are forged with difficult though fascinating people whose egos clash with our own, whose ideals may be quite different, yet there are bonds tougher than those painful differences that become impossible to throw off. I feel I know Werner Herzog even better than before I watched this film, and I'd like to say I understand.......because I do.
January 23, 2007~ 7:00am
Favorite Quote Of The Day
QUESTION: What do you get when you cross the Godfather
with a philosopher?
ANSWER: An offer you can't understand.
January 24, 2007~ 5:00pm
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, yesterday was officially "Blue Monday"-- meaning the bluest, most depressing day of the year for most folks. (Don't know how they got that statistic. I know nobody polled me, but there have to have been some studies done. Yesterday had a few bad things going for it: it was Monday, first of all. Add to that the fact that it is now 3 weeks into the new year-- past the holidays and the extra freetime and celebration, we've now had 3 weeks to think about how this year is really no different than last year, and most resolutions have been broken after the first flush of virgin determination-- the holiday BILLS have begun to filter in so that all the extra cash put out for the yulelog et al has come knockin' at the door-- and the bad winter is here. Not the pretty Suzie Snowflake, Charlie Brown Christmas winter, but the "To Build A Fire" kill-your-dog-and-stick-your-frozen-hands-into-his-entrails sort of bleakness. 'Tis the season I suppose, of despair, and yet other than it being a Monday (which is always a wrist-slasher day for me, second only to Sunday evenings which are the gallows themselves)- this time of year is peaceful for me.
It's quiet. It's subdued. It's private by god. Even the colors are muted; never loud at this point in the year, and I don't have to listen to everyone's BOOM BOX shrieking some godawful song I would never in a million years listen to ordinarily without being sedated. It's the silence that woos me in January, February, most of March-- I like it. Statistics be damned, I paid cash for my Christmas (at least I will have when the income tax refund comes back) and everything else is just less shrill, less 'party-fied'---- and I'll egg the first bastard approaches me with some cute invitation to this or that. THESE ARE MY MONTHS, goddammit....and I dare anyone snatch any of it away.
Of course, in talking about this at work, it was pointed out that February is the month for the highest divorce filings. Too late!! Ha ha! I jumped ahead of the curve on that one many, many moons ago- but when you think about it, it makes sense. More winter, more staring at eachother, none of the red satin, lace and chocolates the advertising folks would have us believe is out there for every Cupid lover. It ain't so. So stop waiting for that nonsense. Pick somebody you feel comfortable reading around; who likes you just as well with make-up on or off, and gets your jokes. That's it. The secret to love's longevity. Fee please......
January 25, 2007~ 7:00pm
I chickened out again. The weather has just been terrible for driving. So unpredictable and deadly on the roads- and tonight was my 'pizza night' with my daughter, her husband Gary, little Mr. Bill and Ms. Kay. But driving home it was blindingly sunny, the roads salted and wet- and then as I approached the South Side a dark HUGE front moved in, creating a blizzard: no visibility! The nicely wet, black roads disappeared into two thin tire tracks in front with everyone creeping along frightened of ice and sudden movements behind the wheel. It's predicted to do that all night long- over and over- these nasty squalls of fierce, blown snow and temperatures plummeting to a freezing 11 degrees.
I cancelled last week due to just getting back to work after being sick, and this week because of weather.....next week I'll have to hang a big sign on myself that says "GRANDMA" when I visit. No.......make that "BIG SCAREDY-PANTS GRANDMA". Sheesh. I didn't even get to talk to them- just left two messages after listening to Bill's answering machine recording: "Bill and Mommy and Daddy and BILL....and Kay....are not here! (My daughter then whispers to him in the background and then, "LEAVE A MESSAGE!"- (very abruptly and proudly...lol) I love to listen to that and would make multiple calls a day just to hear it if I didn't think it may be the one, ten second interval when everyone is resting comfortably. Oh well....Holl...if you ever see this....mum ain't lyin'. Here's the National Weather Hazard warning-
Special Weather Statement
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PITTSBURGH PA 404 PM EST THU JAN 25 2007
...SNOW SHOWERS WILL CAUSE SLIPPERY ROADS...
SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE THROUGH THE REGION THIS EVENING. EVEN THOUGH THE SNOW SHOWERS MAY ONLY LAST A FEW MINUTES, THEY CAN QUICKLY COVER A SALTED ROAD AND CAUSE ICY CONDITIONS. THIS WILL BE ESPECIALLY TRUE AS THE SUN SETS. ALSO,GUSTY NORTHWEST WINDS WILL BLOW AND DRIFT THE SNOW, CAUSING ROADS TO REFREEZE.
IF YOU PLAN TO DRIVE DURING THE LATE AFTERNOON RUSH, OR AT ANY TIME THIS EVENING, ALLOW FOR EXTRA TIME. DRIVE WITH CAUTION AS YOU MAY ABRUPTLY ENCOUNTER A SNOW SHOWER AND SLIPPERY ROAD.
Life in winter............sure does get complicated. And for the past several days one of my image hosts is down.....so if you've been looking at any of my pages and the pictures are GONE!- I know. I'm slowing loading them onto yet ANOTHER free linux server somewhere, where (I'm sure) THEY'LL crash after being laden down with endless teen tunes and candid, rique or outright pornographic mini-films. ah.......the joys of internet publishing on, not even a shoestring- air. Just air, is all. Costs nuthin'....lasts, oh, a month or two. LOL!
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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