Wednesday, April 10, 2019

It's the middle-of-the-week, and I'm feeling the time is slipping between my fingers.  I have been editing my journals of 2014, which is part fiction, and non-fiction, with observations on various aspects of culture.  I also wrote a piece on music publisher/manager Irving Mills, who worked with Duke Ellington among other jazz greats of the early 1930s and so forth.  So it has been a productive week so far, but I have this feeling that I'm missing something urgent, and I just can't place my finger on it.  It's a time like this when I need to sink my body into a tub of hot water.  Alas, I did that already this morning.

Lun*na and I watched this film last night "The Great Silence" (Il Grande Silenzio) and it's a remarkable film on many levels.  For one, the hero dies at the end of the film, and the bad guy wins.  Klaus Kinski plays the bad bounty hunter who is a ruthless murderer.   Jean-Louis Trintignant is the voiceless gunslinger who is on the side of the persecuted outlaws.  The ending of the film depressed me, which caused some disturbing dreams throughout the night.  Also, it was extremely windy, and I was hearing sounds that I never heard before in Los Angeles.  Banging, and just the whistle of the wind itself.   It fits perfectly with the mood of "The Great Silence."  The film is directed by Sergio Corbucci.

The night before we watched Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie" which is sort of a home movie of Topanga life, but of course, filmed in Peru.  I have seen this film at least twice, but some time ago. So, watching it now, especially after my memoir came out (TOSH: Growing Up In Wallace Berman's World) it is really a visual and moving scrapbook of my life during those years, which is the early 1970s.  It is truly the last movie because I feel everything afterward had changed into another era.  Dennis wasn't the Easy Rider Dennis anymore, and in many ways, "The Last Movie" put a wrench in his career as a Hollywood film director.  Dennis was never an artist filmmaker, like Bruce Conner or even my dad, but more of a mainstream visionary who built a rope bridge between the two cultures. One is old studio Hollywood, and the other was 'new' Hollywood, and after the Last Movie, it went back to just the old world.  There were blimps here and there, but nevertheless, things went back to the old life.

Today, I visit my Uncle and go to a work-related party for the upcoming Printed Matter Art Book Fair, which will take place at MOCA.