For What It's Worth

Some shots.


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Jack Spicer/Bob Thomas

The poet Jack Spicer as drawn by Bob Thomas, a friend from my Ashland and Southern Oregon College days, 1969-1970.

I rented a room from Bob in 1977 in Lebanon, Oregon as I transitioned from San Franciscan to Portlander.  I think Bob made the drawing that summer and let me snap a photo of it.

I found the photo in my papers recently as I looked for material for my video project.

I'll have to write Bob a nice letter and ask him if I can use it in the project.

Bob might tell me to fuck off.  I hope he doesn't, but he might.


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A Few Beers Later/Charles Lucas

I have a point to make, dammit!  Let me speak or I'll throttle you!







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Hawthorne Bridge/Charles Lucas

I may use this image by Charles Lucas in my film.










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On MFA Poetry/Nin Andrews

If you do nothing else today, read this epic poem by Nin Andrews posted at Tom Clark's Beyond the Pale.

The MFA poem (or the anti-MFA poem) doesn't get any better than this.

Here is the writer's blog.



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Because You Want to Know

Editing, if you are searching as I am for answers, can be a slow, arduous process.  I worked all morning on "The Project," and I think some things are starting to come together.

I don't have nearly enough video yet, which means big gaps fill the timeline at this point, but I'm working up sequences that make sense and have potential.

Not bad in my estimation, which as you know may not count for shit with all the critics out there.

Later in the day, I caught a little NBA action.  The conference finals are in full swing now.  I was a little disgusted earlier this year when the owners locked out the league, and I lost a tick more of my old enthusiasm for the pro game.

Never quite recovered from that and likely never will.

I think the American consciousnesses has moved on.  We're pretty good at that, but we're usually just as wrong in the next phase anyway.

The big wheel keeps on turning, in other words.

It's like, can you find anybody who voted twice for George W. Bush for POTUS?  Even if you have friends who did such a ridiculous thing they likely wouldn't admit to it.

By the same token, how many people do you know who are still hardcore professional basketball fans?

I sneaked a peek today.  LeBron James is certainly still a good player. But the point is why should I give a damn at this late date?

Though I'll never be an intellectual heavy like some people I know, I certainly understand why they disdain sports these day.

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to the college football season.


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Worth Seeing Again

Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) is a brilliantly effective feature film in the manner in which it intercuts location footage, newsreel and re-enactments of the Bosnian War.

Filming began shortly after the Siege of Sarajevo ended in 1996, creating a brutal realism in the location shots.  A sense of documentation permeates the film, which is based on Michael Nicholson's Natasha's Story. Michael Winterbottom directed from a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

It's an uneven movie to be sure, with several underdeveloped characters, most notably the star reporter Jimmy Flynn played by Woody Harrelson, who comes across as cartoonish and somewhat extraneous to the story.

Stephen Dillane's character, Henderson, and his relationship to a 9 year-old Bosniak girl named Emira, is the focus of the movie. The riveting scenes in which he works with an aid worker (Marisa Tomei) to evacuate a group of orphans from Sarajevo via a long bus ride to the Adriatic are heart-wrenching.

The UN and NATO classified the Bosnian War as the fourteenth most important concurrent humanitarian disaster in the world at the time of the war, a bureaucratic absurdity that the characters recognize throughout the movie.

The first movie made about the Bosnian War, Welcome to Sarajevo is definitely worth a second look.


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Diane and Harlan

An important shot for the docupersonal. Diane and Harlan in Boston, 1975.

Diane was affiliated with the Lewiston, Maine Tenants' Union, while Harlan Baker was the union organizer who introduced me to Michael Harrington when the brilliant and prolific socialist writer and activist appeared in Portland, Maine for a speaking engagement in 1976.

The memoir's New England, San Francisco and European chapters will be the most difficult to cover from an original imaging standpoint.

But, we shall do what we can.


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The Original Buddy

This is the original Buddy, circa 1974.

I liked the name "Buddy" from the get go, so I would eventually appropriate it for various causes.

The original Buddy wouldn't have minded, but his last name wasn't Dooley.

Buddy was a fellow community organizer in Portland, Maine when I worked there, 1974-1976.

A no nonsense guy and social activist, his work was golden. So was his word.

You did not give Buddy crap, just as today you do not give Buddy Dooley crap.

And you thought I was merely being flippant...


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Training Wheels

(By 19 months I was already in the driver's seat.)

A neighbor who has read my memoir wants to be in the movie!

I have a perfect role for her.  In three or four scenes I have loosely sketched out thus far, she'll stand in as my mother.

This is fantastic for a couple of reasons.  One, I've been concerned about finding "extras" for the project from the outset.  Two, this woman looks like my mother looked at fifty-five!

That of course isn't really a prerequisite for the few scenes in which she'll appear, but the resemblance is remarkable and kind of inspiring.

A nice turn of events.  I expect more in the future as this thing heats up, along with the weather, throughout the summer.

Perfect!



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Progress

(My brothers Leo, Dan and Lyle, in 1954.  Lyle, the oldest, died in 1982.  Leo and Dan died last year.  I was 3 years-old when this photo was taken.)

Today I made my best edits yet on "The Project," the docupersonal of my early years.

It is a short sequence, but it finally achieved the look and voice I want the video to reflect.

I need more of these sequences, a string of them for however many minutes it takes to tell this story.  Yesterday I duplicated a series of stills for the project,  pics of family I've kept for years while never imagining that I'd one day be making a film about my life.

Before I found these images I thought I'd given most of my heirlooms to my daughter.  She informed me I was mistaken.  I uncovered over 100 photos that were in storage and now have a trove of images that magically fit the concept.

There is much to do, but a day like this one makes me feel like I'm on the right track.


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Almost Naked

This is a gathering day.  I have over 100 black and white photos of various family members.  I'm sorting through them and shooting images for "The Project."

Ken Burns must pay somebody a chunk of change to dupe all the stills he uses in his documentaries.  It's not the kind of work that brings glory, that's for sure.  It's sort of tedious.

Aside from a few pans and zooms, I'm grabbing images that have length enough to cover a few lines if need be, and plenty of room for dissolves in and out.

There is only so much you can do with the types of images I'm working with.  The quality is not high to say the least.  I don't think there were any natural photogs in my entire clan.  Some images are better than others, of course.

Going for content, necessity and quality makes the decision-making process that much harder.

Too bad Mathew Brady wasn't hanging around my family in the old days.  My mom's maiden name was Brady.  

She must not have caught the artistic bug from her luminous cousin, Matt.

I say cousin, but I don't know whether it's true.  Doesn't matter.  In this business you can lie all you want.  What are people going to do if they catch you in a literary lie?  Pan you?

Ha!  I laugh.

That said, the grunt work could be worse.  I could be working out in Oregon's schizo weather.

No thanks to that.

Taking a break.  I'll be back at it tonight, panning and zooming and doing the best I can with these important elements of "The Project."

Kid in the photo is a handsome devil, isn't he?


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The End of May

Awaaak this weather!

I am regressing now.  Last week and the week before I walked and walked.  I had never been happier.

My body felt good, the exercise framing my mood, my work.  It was glorious, though I nearly died in front of a train.

Even that could not destroy my energy.  I'd had a close call, but I felt alive, perhaps more than usual.  I'd survived that one fated moment to live for the days that remain.

Now this.  I am home-bound, the work is leveling off, my spirit waning.

I can't walk in this rain.

I feel nothing more than a desire to nap.

I'm trying once more to read lines from "The Project."  All I want is tone sense, something to latch onto.

Everything is garbled.  I can't speak under these conditions.  I can't think.

The rain has made me very tired.

Come to me, July!  I need you!


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Wordy Weekend

I spent the weekend working on the script and a few edits for the project.

The film I'm making based on my book shall henceforth be known as "the project."

A common problem among writers who tackle film and video work:  Too wordy!  Too wordy!

The goal is to let the pictures tell most of the story, but like a lot of folks I tend to write it all down.  I just can't allow that to happen, or the beast will be six hours long and sound like a drone machine.

I'm not the most economical writer to start with.  Reading my own posts on occasion makes me cringe, for example.

Why that word?  There?  Then?

Writing is a life-long learning process.  I don't think it's something one ever masters.

I wonder if Dostoevsky could have written movie scripts?

I've read that Faulkner had a little trouble in the field and loathed the work.

Well, all I can do is plow ahead, right?


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Wenders

The Northwest Film Center once paid homage to this scene from Wenders's Wings of Desire for a Portland International Film Festival advertisement.

Characters riding on a MAX train (or was it a bus?) with voice-overs of their thoughts.  It was quite effective, actually, shot in high resolution black and white through a wide-angled lens.

Great ad, but I can't remember who directed.  A committee, perhaps?

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