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July 03, 2006

Perfect Day

We went to see Sergio Machado's Lower City this evening. It was good, with a particularly wonderful ending, but what I loved most about this particular theatergoing experience was the trailer for Francois Ozon's Time To Leave, which put me right on the verge of tears. It's a perfect combination of juxtaposition, implication and Lou Reed. I only hope the film is as good.

We also went to see the opening of Larry Clark's Wassup Rockers the other night, which was as sweet and pleasant as I hoped it would be. Clark offered a brief introduction, after which Jim leaned over to me and whispered something to the effect of: "See, it's okay to be inarticulate and awkward, as long as you make a good movie." Oh, he knows me too well...

While wandering around the house, I found a copy of Susan Sontag's Regarding The Pain Of Others and started reading it. I'm only a few chapters in, and thus can't comment on the work itself except to say that it's always such a thrill to read Sontag's work that I can't believe I don't make a more regular habit of it. She's the sort of writer whose prose you can feel inside your head, entwining itself around your cortex so tightly it might as well have always been there. Even when I don't agree with her, she has a way of making me need to hear what she has to say; in that sense, her work is the most intellectually exciting comfort literature I've ever read.

This particular book of hers is about our relationship to atrocity through photograpy, and within a few pages, I knew that it would seep its way into my current project. I even went ahead and posted a quote from its beginning on the first page of the script: "Ever since cameras were invented in 1839, photography has kept company with death." This is one of those scripts that needs to be simple; but its storyline tip toes so closely to big ideas and universal concepts that I've found it helpful to gather as many perspectives on the subject matter as I can, just so I know precisely, verbatim, what needs to be left unsaid. I get hooked on the idea of trying to make the ephmeral too literal; that's why this thing is taking so long to write.

* * *

I'm ready for this long weekend to be over; I have it somehow fixed in my head that the weather will cool down once the fireworks have died down. I feel like I've been working harder than usual, just because I've been sweating more; but the word count's staying pretty much the same.

Posted by David Lowery at July 3, 2006 03:11 AM

Comments

Posted by: Johnny M. Meyer at July 5, 2006 07:38 AM

Posted by: Ghostboy at July 5, 2006 06:53 PM