notes for novel

19/07/08

A book about a writer overlooking the shooting of the movie adaption of one of his novels.

He comments intelligently about the ontology of adapting a novel for the screen. He comments thoroughly on the validity of the director’s cinematic interpretation of his novel. At the same time, he comments on his novel and on the ontology of the novel, of language, of writing.

Basically, he outlines his novel’s characteristics, he witnesses the shooting of the director’s interpretation, and as he witnesses he narrates along the accuracy of the interpretation.

A novel about novels, about the filming of a novel.

The coup de theatre is that the account of the filming is the story (so what can they be filming?).

The other coup de theatre would be if Fincher decided to adapt it!

23/07/08

…And the third coup de theatre would be if there was a film about Fincher’s adaptation.

One question might be…What is the story of the novel they are adapting?

This is a problem that must be solved because

If there is an actual story: everything becomes allegorical because by introducing a proper story the audience can clearly make out the seams of the levels being overlayed. There is a writer. A novel he wrote that is being adapted. He is at the shooting of this adaptation and he will walk us throughout the story, commenting on the director’s interpretation. The fact that there is a story seduces the viewer into an immersive state (the urge to experience the story of the novel being mounted in a hopefully compelling film). The real question would become: how do we make this metanovel be as compelling as the story. A weak solution in the past has been to simply have a compelling inner story…and to have the outer story not be an actual story but only a mere framework. Weak.

The challenge is to make the outerstory as compelling as the inner one.

But the initial problems are these:

1. What is it they are shooting?
In order to answer that question, the narrator would have to reveal the story of the novel they are adapting. Yet, there is not supposed to be a novel. The only novel is the one about the novel being made into a film.

The reader wants to know the story of what is being filmed. But the narrator is only giving the story of the shooting, not the story of what’s being shot.

(That is because there is nothing being shot. It is only an excuse to wax philosophically about the nature of writing, the nature of filming, the nature of filming writing, and the nature of self-refexive art.)

So what to do? How to reveal a story that does not exist?

… … …

****
Update: The character-director rewatches his own movie several years after having made it and does not recall directing it. Did he produce those images? Did the camera fail him by failing to etch the images in his mind? or did he fail himself? …

Detective

***

First Films

You sort of have to make that first film your sort of empty canvas film, with a lot of whitespace, white backgrounds, minimalism. When people see it they think it’s just low production values but it’s not. It’s really you working out the canvas. Being tentative with colors. Trying to fill up that space you don’t know how to manage just yet.

The problem is everyone makes one of those. Godard his Breathless. Rohmer his Signe du Lion. Truffaut’s miston. Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. That’s just how some of these work.

Critcism

-Desfois j’ai envie de regarder des paysages, desfois j’ai envie de regarder des gens.

Joell Ortiz ft. Joe Budden – Move On

“Move On” feat. Joe Budden

I wish my mother never sniffed
but the pain is makin me better with this gift

http://www.zshare.net/audio/53008961af5e7bd5/

Young Chris – “Never Die”

song

Never die…never die

I wish I could say that…This my life

Easy to get addicted to the game
Addicted to the girls, fast cars and the change
Don’t get lost in the game

You know that old saying: let it pours when it rain
‘xactly what happened taking loss in this game

Whole life full of pain
niggas gotta spend their whole life in the bing
young niggas threw their whole life down the drain
never lost again, never sold ya for my game
y’all, shit ain’t the same…

My nigga Da, Bird, pray everyday nigga, as long as I’m alive the squad will never die

It be the same niggas you thought would never ride
All the funerals before LA’s, I never cried

The neighborhood beefs in the bars, I never slide
My nigga got stood over top but never died

My other nigga Cal, it’s been a while, funny nigga
used to roll with Big Bro, we call him Wild Style

My nigga said he never see no ratchet
Niggas hit him in his head for his Moschino jacket–he never died

So we ain’t never seen it comin’
Comin’ out the bar drunk, all we see is niggas frontin’
Say they hit him close range bottle flew in his face
Walked his self to the hos’pital, next day he awake
He never died–he still alive, thank God, to all my niggas that survived

My nigga Cash, took five (bullets), but never died
My nigga Hove got paralyzed, he never died
Shit, I try to ease my pain through the la, but it’s constant
That’s why I’m addicted to the high

I’d be back to back, rolling swishes of that good
Pourin’ liquor on my liver with my niggas down the hood
All these snitch niggas livin’ never die, but they should
Never been through the drama, never ride, never would

It’s time to put my heart and soul in it
Living out a hood flick
Playing the artist role in it
Street chemist, does the engine, push it to the limit
Living it from beggining to the ending–shit I never die

It’s tough coming back from a hit
Put effort, stay impressive and you’ll be that shit

Rest in peace to my loved ones
Your name will stay alive
Till I touch the skies like ‘Yay

I ain’t ready for judgement day
Gotta get out the ghetto, somehow someway

Hope for the better, everynight I’ll pray
Niggas ain’t survive in every night where I stay

This can’t be life
This can’t be love
This can’t be us, my nigga
Industry niggas, it can’t be trust
It’s now the…

And this time it can’t be rushed
Got that ‘get high’ music ‘cept it can’t be puffed
Got my head in the clouds, and I can’t get enough
Ready to apply pressure like this 4th quarter clutch

G-I-F-I, R-O-C-
ROC still alive, let’s pray to God that we never die
never die…roc still alive…never die…never die….never die…

dsir

à qui dois-je parler si je désire filmer ici?

qui dois-je filmer si je désire parler ici?

si je désire parler, qui dois-je filmer?

JLG on HAR

La peur est la fille de Dieu, expiée à Pâques. Elle n’est pas jolie, mais détestée, maudite, et désavouée par tous. Mais détrompez-vous, elle veille sur toute agonie, elle évalue pour l’humanité; Car il y a la règle et il y a l’exception. Il y a la culture qui est la règle, et il y a l’exception, qui est de l’art. Tous disent la règle, ordinateur, T-shirts, télévision, personne ne dit l’exception, cela ne se dit pas. Cela s’écrit, Flaubert, Dostoïevski, cela se compose, Gershwin, Mozart, cela se peint, Cézanne, Vermeer, cela s’enregistre, Antonioni, Vigo. Ou cela se vit, et c’est alors l’art de vivre, Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. Il est de la règle de vouloir la mort de l’exception, il sera donc de la règle de l’Europe de la culture d’organiser la mort de l’art de vivre qui fleurit encore à nos pieds.

“In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday. She is not beautiful, mocked, cursed or disowned by all. But don’t be mistaken, she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind; for there is a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule; cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn’t spoken, it is written; Flaubert, Dostoyevsky. It is composed; Gershwin, Mozart. It is painted; Cézanne, Vermeer. It is filmed; Antonioni, Vigo. Or it is lived, then it is the art of living; Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for cultural Europe is to organise the death of the art of living, which still flourishes” – Jean Luc Godard, “Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo” (1993).

Le papier blanc est le vrai mirroir de l’homme.

En fait dans une rhyme, il y a toujours trois choses:

Le crève-coeur

Quand il faudra fermer le livre
Ce sera sans regretter rien
J’ai vu tant de gens si mal vivre
et tant de gens mourir si bien

“Now, I have to sacrifice myself so that trough me the word “love” means something, so that love exists on earth.”

On TV there is projection, there is a re-jection–you are rejected to your armchair or on your bed. In pictures you are projected, but you still have to decide what to be. In TV there is just transmission of something. It’s peculiar to cinema to project, yes.

ecrire sur le cinema. les mots. une regression. epoque littéraire à époque imagée. comment écrire de la litérature de cinéma. comment écrire des mots, comment former une histoire de mots. de mots qui parlent de son+image.

on trust

there’s no war for the best. if you are good, you are good. you just have to keep working to get better. but if u start out good, you just are, you can only get better. but i tend to forget that.

there is no rush either. life has its course. if you’re not meant to do everything you’ve wanted to, youre not. if you complain because work is keeping you away from art, don’t. art will keep you away from sustenance. it all makes sense. trust it.

get interested in the things that people you love, love. there is something waiting for you. it wont be the same thing as them but it will have the same spirit. that’s the beauty of it, how your unique self can pick up that thing they didnt see themselves.

Theory – Ideas

film as a living sculpture, a 25-hour film you can just project on your living room wall, come back to it whenever you want to, decoration, work of art.

experiment film = third world film

equipment. equipment leads to control by the rich owners of the equipement.

the cinema enables them to exist, rather than their enabling the cinema to exist.

a television series isnt produced, it is produced for distribution