THE BRAIN

Still working hard on this script. First draft done and now refining everyday. This will/can go on all the way until production. How will I get this movie made is the big question. There are many avenues that need to be explored. Most important is too find a producer(s) into making small, dark pictures. It is FAR from perfect but I am feeling accomplished with the completion of such a feat. I'll feel even better after the film has been made!

I'm not really sure why I want to make movies, but something compels me to try. My brain has been feeling alright since nearing the final process of this script. The brain is certainly an amazing entity and I find life for me to be most stable when I am working on a civilized project. It might even just be the process and not a goal, but setting goals gives way to the process - right?

My brain is still longing to be busier with good stuff and so I hope that I can get to that point in life somehow and sooner than later...

MUSIC SUCKS NOW

The other night I noticed a billboard for a radio station here in NY, 96.3FM, which used to be a commercial classical music station that I grew up listening to and so did my dad. It now plays some kind of Salsa music.

Although I am guilty of not listening to the station over the past years and I feel that all they were playing was Mozart, and that they, like most radio stations killed themselves in a desperate attempt to attract more listeners...I'm still saddened by this billboard. It is simply another sign of the decline of Western creative music. Many people will rejoice, I'm sure. In fact, most probably will since people think of "Classical" music as some kind of background lightweight bullshit. It is only ignorance that breeds this notion, of course. What a bummer.

As a musician for the past 20 years trying to play and compose music of a refined type I can say that it is no surprise. Music like Jazz, Classical, hard core ethnic and folk music is in such a minority these days and only diminishing that it has rendered most of the work I have done useless and meaningless.

I'm all for popular music (and that is anything other than what I'm talking about because when someone says to me they went to hear some underground band and I ask them where, and they tell me at some venue that holds 500-1000 mother fucking people then I cannot consider that underground when a famous Jazz club holds 150 for example)...Please. I'm so tired of this and no longer voice my opinion. In fact, I don't care to discuss music for the most part and usually just nod my head and go along with whatever.

My musical experience has got me so down that I don't care to go hear anything anymore except classical, so I'm obviously biased and my opinion is strong in the negative way.

I still have a letter I wrote to WQXR thanking them for providing a place where I could listen to some great music and the letter they wrote back, along with a baton they gave me. I was a kid and so grateful.

So long WQXR. You were a big part of this city and another link to the past gone...

KAZAN

So it's been awhile since my last post. Been a crazy month working and traveled to California and back for a video job. Fortunately, before I left I went to see On The Waterfront at the Film Forum with a good friend. The experience was so awesome that it kept me going during the grueling West coast gig. I've seen the film many times, but never on the big screen. My father used to speak so highly of it when I was a kid and so when I finally reached the right time in my life I began watching films that I remembered my father talking about. On The Waterfront stood out among them, just as he described. Sometimes I wish my father was still around to discuss things with. God damn it that really stinks, but at least I'm able to check the shit out here in NYC.

Everything about that film is intense and so well crafted. Superb script. Superb acting. Superb cinematography. Superb score by Leonard Bernstein and so on. And, of course, Kazan's direction is without a doubt an historical moment in cinema. I won't get into all that McCarthy era crap as I prefer to think about the work, since that is what survives in the end.

In the early 50s there was quite a bit of greatness going on in American cinema...Sunset Boulevard comes to mind as a masterpiece. Billy Wilder was able to work that Hollywood machine and the production value of that film shows it.

On The Waterfront, however, is a gritty portrayal of life on the docks in the mob controlled union. Most of us know the picture so I don't need to go into details. I only need to express my gratitude that the picture exists. The black and white pictures are so fucking slamming to look at. I miss black and white sometimes. Although I love color I feel that black and white often leaves things more open for interpretation and my brain connects with this.

It is undoubtedly a powerful piece with many levels of expression and I think it is even better than Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar is also an amazing movie, but for me On The Waterfront goes down as that all encompassing marriage of human art forms that make for a truly sincere and deeply moving film.