On Film

Linda had warned me that it was strange seeing yourself on film. In this case the movie is so wonderful I almost forget myself, watching what is happening. Excellent work. I've known Glenn for 40 years and expected GOOD, but it is far better than that. He gets it all, drainage, process, artistic temperament: The Wrack Show from conception through installation to destruction. Great interviews, great use of Barnhart's music, and I read well enough not to embarrass myself. There's quite a bit of me in there, talking, reading, collecting. The Neo-Romantic lead. This is a must see, but Glenn took to master back to remix the sound a bit. He mixed on earphones and hadn't heard it through a sound system, but copies will be available soon. He makes the museum look great. And the staff. A nice janitor sequence. Catches the spirit and the place so well many people at the screening were speechless. This is like festival quality stuff. Love the way he catches the child-like attitude many of us had in the creation of the show in the first place. You are also made aware that this a movie about an event, not the event, not even the take on the event that the creators might have, a separate thing, another monad, or another Venn Diagram, because there is overlap. Screening on Friday was fantastic, I thought, then Glenn and I went back to town to lunch with Sara and D on Saturday and talked for hours, then back home where I grilled a London Broil in a drizzle. We ate and drank well. We talked about particular scenes, particular shots, there's a silhouette shot of Sara that is breath-taking, a shot of me clipping bull-vine at my graveyard, that Glenn had mentioned back at the beginning of the editing process. That he had the ending, the graveyard and that sound of me clipping, fade to black, and then a couple more snips with the clippers, then the credits. I want to work this way again, and Glenn wants to work together, so last night, late, we kicked around ideas. When I woke up this morning he was gone, left at 4, trying to get back to the Twin Cities by 6. Life is parsed this way. Take it or leave it. There was a guy at Janitor College, Frank, from Queens, everything to him was a scam; he was laughable in his predictability, we knew way more than we wanted to know about him, and he fucked everything he ever touched. A recipe for disaster. He retired at 28, on full disability for a cut foot he suffered from a piece of glass he'd missed cleaning up after a spill. I'm sympathetic, but I can't excuse rude behavior, or bad technique. Too far down the road. Listen, the birds are coming out, the rain is over for a while.