Bedbugs LXXXVIII

Bedbugs LXXXVIII


Click here for an explanation of how Bedbugs is created.

Click here for the previous Bedbugs.



We've waited and wondered and stood atop this hill
until it began to turn to mud and ash, but we held
our positions, ruining your happiest day would all
I'd be thinking about if I didn't have these goals.
Left behind, locked in the room nobody'd hear me
in..looking at that same tattered picture glued to the
wall next to me..what differentiates this from any
other cubicle/cell/state of mind, pleasure taken in
only the two weeks the faceless man allows you.
Don't fall for it! Walk out when he's not looking, and
without his features he's never really seeing for himself.
Outside and looking down, worried but captivated
by the view. Two years, tops..but still you're fighting.
As it should be. The good times are nearly here, still
time to fix the city in your head if you think you've
got the proper material to rebuild. Applause broke out
the moment you actually gave it your all. Tune it out anyway.
Surgical rooms before me have no shortage of willing donors.
Avoid. Avoid. Run. Or simply don't go in. I am
h0lding my position like only a few others have. She somehow
picks up on this. How long it's been is unimportant.


-misled many times
-she's turned the record off
-who gave you that scar
-mental pornographic endeavors
-color got darker outside
-sounds like rain outside
-you can go anywhere


-Adam

Bedbugs LXXXVII

Bedbugs LXXXVII


Click here for an explanation of how Bedbugs is created.

Click here for the previous Bedbugs.


Age is forcing one of us and all of us
to choose solid paths, it seems.
Take a deep, healthy breath and
lean in to the brothers buried him
with all his secrets. It was no
secrets in this town, they thought.
It was a decision. That alone
she will sleep with you, you think
as her memory flashes by, but
it's not true unless she needs something.
Ambient. Noises think it over before
you earn it. You'll probably take five years.
Curious about what you said
when we were killing together. Overcast
again, and this time indoors.
Who can read my thoughts? It truly
won't hurt for long.




Next week's seven phrases/groups of words:


-ruining your happiest day
-pleasure taken in
-two years, tops
-still time to fix the city
-applause broke out
-surgical rooms before me
-how long it's been is unimportant

-Adam

Bedbugs LXXXVI

Bedbugs LXXXVI


Click here for an explanation of how Bedbugs is created.

Click here for the previous Bedbugs.



Trusted advice given down by the riverside:
never depend on anyone else for
happiness or money or she'll get hers but only
if she knows somewhere
she did wrong. It's cooling down and
we are, for your happiness and mine,
beginning to focus. Clarity hitch
up to the dream once more and meet
old friends on the path. Soon it will be like
no time has passed. You'll forget the record and its-
no scarcity to be found! Kill that thought and
embrace an abundant one.
Come closer- still think of ya from time to time
as my spine distorts- is that noise
coming from outside?


Next chapter's seven phrases/groups of words:

-the brothers buried him
-no secrets in this town
-she will sleep with you
-think it over before
-curious about what you said
-overcast again
-it truly won't hurt for long

-adam

"Aaron Bacon" Promotional Video

A look at the short film Aaron Bacon, based on the true story
of a young man who was abused and passed away at the hands
of untrained staff at an unlicensed 'rehab camp' in the wilderness of Nevada.

Aaron Bacon premiered last week at the Shanghai International
Film Festival and will premiere in the US very soon.

Aaron Bacon is written and directed by Nick Gaglia(Over the GW).
Promo video was directed and edited by Adam Barnick.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 by Frank Palmcoast

When he's not watching, with beads of sweat, his fellow, legally blind, senior citizens parallel park, Frank Palmcoast is catching seven dollar movies at the local multiplex from sunny Pompano Beach, Florida. He's retired, he's angry at the world, he can't spell to save his life, and he hates Hollywood almost as much as Hillary Clinton, but that will not stop our irreverent, dementia fightin', AARP card carrying everyman from giving us a fresh take on all things Hollyweird. Besides, how can he pass up that marvelous senior citizen discount?

*****************************************

A fellow native of the Bronx, Palmcoast was eager to sink his manchops into this latest "Hollyweird" remake.

*****************************************

Recently saw the original masterpiece on TV and I thought hollyweird must be thinking,"let's make another remake and make a lot of money" The original was written by a Brooklynite and the new version by hollyweird,west coast and the British, not the same. Robert Shaw as a mercenary out plays Travolta's stock broker and although Denzels performance was good, could never match Mathau's real New Yorkers acting. For me the unnecessary use of the "F" word by Travolta was like a thirteen old trying to impress his peers! This was not the train wreck I was expecting but it certainly looses it's third rail juice before it reaches the station. Jerry Stiller today at 88 looks better than when he was in the original and 53 years old!
Hollyweird should concentrate on making remakes of original bad movies and leave classics like this alone. Two suggestions: screw David Letterman, go see a movie and don't forget to bring home a gallon of milk!
The Original, The Palmcoast!

SIN-E-FILE (...no lies)

"I have the sin of the cinephile" - Jean Luc Godard

This posting originated on the Film of the Month Club blog, where this month's film ...no lies is my selection. As such it is my duty to write an introductory post. Which is what follows.

(If you are about to read this having NOT seen the film ...no lies, I would advice you do so before reading further. Watch it below)


In 1972, Mitchell W. Block was working as the Line Producer on Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. This left him little time to complete a full-scale film of his own, which was required to get his MFA from NYU. As he writes in The Truth about NO LIES, he thought he “should do a work that would be ‘easy’ to make. Limited locations, interior practical location, a short shoot, few actors, low shooting ratio, no period costumes, no score, etc. Keep it really simple.” The result is sort of a cinematic miracle.

In the spring of 1995 I was in a similar situation. I was a film student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. I had just completed my third year project, a film that seemed to polarize the class and faculty. Having had little money and not enough sufficient time to devote to a full scale production, I conceived an idea that involved basically a woman against a wall.

I showed it to my boss at the time, documentary filmmaker George Nierenberg. When it was over he didn’t have a lot to say about it, instead he starts to scan his towering piles of VHS tapes in his living room. “You have to see this documentary”, he tells me. “Documentary” is what he calls it. He doesn’t tell me anything more.

When ...no lies was over, I was so shaken by it that I hadn’t noticed the credits. George and I started talking about it. When it became apparent to him that I hadn’t seen the end credits, he told me what they said(the woman played by Shelby Leverington, etc.) and I didn’t believe him. He replayed the tape. Okay, “The filmmaker put that there so as not to embarrass the woman”, I concocted. There was no way this was acted. I couldn’t believe it. Once I watched it again, knowing now that this was, indeed, a performance, I was blown away.

Is it really necessary to go through the process of thinking you are seeing a moment captured on film that occurred in reality, and then, at the end, realize that it was manufactured like most films? How much does this play in its potential appreciation? This can be a point of discussion, but, regardless, it is how I experienced it, so it is, in turn, how I presented it to people when I showed it, on a VHS tape copied from George's.

I showed it to everyone in my life. “I have a documentary to show you. It is only 15 minutes.” I don’t remember all of the reactions but once in a while, it knocked someone out. What was it about this film that impacted us?

When the Film of the Month Club started, I dreamed of being able to present ...no lies, but I knew that it wouldn’t be worth it if we didn’t get Mitchell Block involved. I reached out to him and he graciously granted my request to put the film online so it would be available to us and he agreed to an interview.

In our interview, which I will post later in the month, I tried to find out from him if he intended to trick the audience from the beginning or did he realize, after it was made, that he had a fiction that looked impeccably like fact. After all, there is nothing in the film that leads the audience to the understanding that what they are about to see is real. Block doesn’t outright lie, like other fake documentarians do, by presenting written or spoken documentary style, fact-like information (like Peter Greenaway’s The Falls). Even so much as a date at the beginning would imply non-fiction. Some, however, might consider the title to be the written info that puts the viewer in the mind-frame of “fact”. So, can Block really be called a trickster simply because of the title? What is even leading us to believe that Block’s intention is to fool the audience at all?

Well, ...no lies played at the 1974 Flaherty Seminar, a place where people generally expect to see a documentary. It caused controversy and discussion on what “real” is in film and the emotions wrapped around such notions. If Block didn’t conceive the film as a trick, it certainly was one now. As George Nierenberg and others have theorized, there are three “rapes” that occur with ...no lies; the offscreen rape of the woman, then the figurative one inflicted on her by the “cameraman”, then we, the audience are taken advantage of by Mitchell Block. I would take this a step further and say that Block can’t do the act alone. In my case, Nierenberg himself helped in the violation by calling it a documentary, the Flathery Seminar too. Perhaps if you simply found this film somewhere and watched it, you wouldn’t feel like it was trying to trick you into thinking it was real...or would you? Wouldn't you just think, if you appreciated it, that the actors were just doing their jobs well?

Let’s forget for a moment about Mitchell Block’s “trick”. This film is (and is about) a performance. Shelby Leverington. Once this performance was made know to me as such, it became, in my mind, one of the greatest I had ever seen on film. Nuanced and complexly structured so as not to appear so, I can write (and just might) a moment by moment analysis of it. Its success does not rest simply on the fact that people think it is not a performance; its authenticity runs much deeper than that. She manages to haul her character through varying emotional terrains with no sign that the “vehicle” is on pre-laid tracks, and in such a limited amount of time. Mitchell Block is also planning on giving us the added honor of viewing the “Rehearsal Tapes”. Would it be weird if I said I am thinking about NOT viewing them? I don’t think it's right. Like reading a first draft of a masterpiece; rewarding on one hand, and forever damaging on the other. As a filmmaker, I am tremendously interested in the work it takes to get to something this successful. But as a viewer, in this case, I'm obsessed with this performance, not with the process.

Last year, ...no lies was accepted into the National Registry, an honor bestowed on only a handful of films from each year. Here’s what the press release said:

Done in faux cinéma vérité style, Mitchell Block’s 16-minute New York University student film begins on a note of insouciant amateurism and then convincingly moves into darker, deeper waters. Opening with a scene of a girl getting ready for a date, the camera-wielding protagonist adroitly orchestrates a mood shift from goofiness to raw pain as an interviewer tears down the girl’s emotional defenses after being raped. One of the first films to deal with the way rape victims are treated when they seek professional help for sexual assault, "No Lies" still possesses a searing resonance and has been widely viewed by nurses, therapists and police officers.

Yes, the film has had a life as a tool to train police officers and others to better assist rape victims. Block has marketed the film for such public service use since its release. A police captain actually asked Block for the name of the officer who interviewed the woman in the film. To reprimand him in some way? We can assume, I suppose. Did he not see the credits? What about the pretty obvious cut? The looped bit of dialogue? Maybe there is a mysterious quality in their performances that reached something that, even if they gave a bow at the end, some would not waver in swallowing as some kind of truth. Mystically, Ms. Leverington speaks a truth for victims that can't speak, or have been hushed. Is this the "fact" that we want to believe?

Indeed, in many ways this film is a lie, but can you think of a film that has this much truth? That is, I think, what makes great film art. And ...no lies, to me, is just that. And I'm excited to know what you think.

-Peter Rinaldi

Bedbugs LXXXV

Bedbugs LXXXV


Click here for an explanation of how Bedbugs is created.

Click here for the previous Bedbugs.


Observation from this room of wood and stain
and green haze: the lesser ones tell everyone
and the true pioneers keep to themselves and
simply get it all done. I find a new one's picture
and from somewhere, I hear that 'that smile
will be for you one day.' I hope more than one day, indeed.
It can't not improve just ask enough people to help
or remind you to keep at it! Why is everyone in the
building crying? Something is running at me but it's too
dark to make out- I wake up, finally, and I bet others do too.
My real room. Pleasant but the dream texture
lingers as it rains and clouds devour each other outside;
atmosphere to spare indeed but what time is it and what
is my purpose now, now that I can write it? Avoid all
temptations for easy shortcuts, pick up the needle
and start again is all too easy for these listeners.
Earning failures today may help more than you think.
I rub the rust from my eyes and clarity returns
bit by bit.


Next week's seven phrases/groups of words

-never depend on anyone else
-she'll get hers but only if
-for your happiness and mine
-hitch up to the dream once more
-no scarcity to be found
-still think of ya from time to time
-is that noise coming from outside?

-Adam

Bedbugs LXXXIV

Bedbugs LXXXIV


Click here for an explanation of how Bedbugs is created.

Click here for the previous Bedbugs.


Who is listening besides the two of us? I have to admit
I don't even know if you're just waiting for your
turn to talk. Who's holding that string at your wrist?
Stop looking back they repeat, like the skipping
record I thought had been left behind in the fog
and the basement's memories. Could enjoyable cast
lined up as a diversion from purpose, or to help
pretend I'm not on this walk alone? I've accepted it;
now the illusions should follow suit. She will sooner
or later face what she's done; did you hear that?
You will, hopefully someone will be there to laugh.
My time is truly coming..keep fighting the fog park
on the right where it's safe. Everything is safe in
between the lines. That's not what we're built for
though. Nothing on the radio but several lies of omission
and I've heard that sickly sweet song before. I sadly
know the words. I pretend I didn't write it.
When do we get to wake up? Notes left in here-
-it got better today, tomorrow you'll notice.


Next week's seven phrases/groups of words:

-the lesser ones tell everyone
-that smile will be for you one day
-just ask enough people
-atmosphere to spare
-pick up the needle and start again
-earning failures today
-clarity returns bit by bit

-adam