About The Omnipresent Phillip Glass

Glass: A Portrait in Twelve Parts, a film produced and directed by Scott Hicks
By Tom Savage

This excellent documentary/interview film with and about Phillip Glass starts with him going down the Astroland roller coaster in Coney Island with a smile on his face. All those years of involvement with Buddhism and other spiritual traditions would seem to have paid off. But why subject one’s life to danger gratuitously? The question is neither asked nor answered. Glass claims not to be a Buddhist. Nevertheless he has a Buddhist teacher named Gelek Rinpoche and is on the boards of numerous Buddhist organizations including Tibet House and a magazine I get four times per year about Buddhist topics called Tricycle. The film features Chuck Close, the famous artist who paints portraits mostly in black dots that look like blown up photographs. Close has known Glass for many years, since they were young and unknown, and has painted many portraits of him. The gallery at the Metropolitan Opera was given over this spring to these portraits. I don’t remember how many there were but they filled the small gallery. In the film, Joanne Akalaitis, the director, is interviewed. She was once married to Phillip Glass. Glass is quoted as saying “a new language requires a new technique.” When he was young, Glass made his living as a cabdriver. He talks about his early concerts in lofts. It so happens I went to one of those over thirty years ago. His music at first seemed loud, repetitive, and boring. I didn’t get the point then, as many people still don’t now. It so happens I love Glass’s many operas, a good number of which I have seen over the years, but find his Symphonies boring. Close and Glass say they like negative reviews. They must be kidding. Still, I suppose the early non-comprehenders contributed to their fame. Asked about fame through “vilification”, Glass says “it helped.”

This is a good film but has some drawbacks as a movie. A lot of talking heads. I couldn’t help wondering if this film will be shown eventually on the public television series American Masters? It looks and sounds very much like one of those programs which is okay, I suppose, but this is supposed to be a movie I’m seeing in a movie theater. Glass inherited money, after which he bought a home in the country, in Nova Scotia. He hasn’t driven a taxi in a long, long time.

What is music “about” anyway? Glass is shown working with the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, a champion of many new music composers, on a piece called “Waiting For The Barbarians”, a piece not based on the great Cavafy poem of that name. Glass cites Ginsberg as an influence and a friend. Allen never wrote a poem of that name.

Glass’s father knew and liked classical music. Glass was the youngest student at the Peabody Conservatory and then moved to Juilliard. A dead wife is mentioned briefly named “Candy.” His current wife is interviewed at length. Glass claims to be open to suggestions from his co-workers and collaborators, also filmmakers. Glass has scored many films in recent years including at least one by Woody Allen. Glass calls himself an “impersonator” and an “impostor” then laughs. Erroll Morris and Godfrey Reggio, filmmakers are interviewed. Also Martin Scorsese who made Kundun, about the Dalai Lama. Although influenced a great deal by Ravi Shankar’s music, Glass also studied with Nadia Boulanger, the great French teacher who taught most of the important American and French composers who have emerged since the 1930’s. Glass says he was afraid of her although she, somehow, gave him self-confidence. But to him Shankar is as important a teacher as was Boulanger. Although to many of us the music of Ravi Shankar seems like a dated fad now, if one listens to it again, one can see that there is a relationship possible between it an Glass’ music. Some of this film, however, is about Glass as a person. He does the Chinese meditative exercise practice chi gong every morning. This Taoist practice brings us to Glass’s other spiritual interests, including a Mexican Toltec shaman.

Also, it turns out that Waiting For The Barbarians is a novel by the well-known South African novelist J.M. Coetze. Finally, Glass comes off as a truly unpretentious and even humble man. He still seems surprised by the good luck that brought him fame after his opera Einstein on the Beach was produced and directed by Robert Wilson years ago. Although he is certainly now the best-known American composer of his generation, it is not one hundred percent certain that his music, outside his operas, will last. It’s initial hypnotic effect has given way to official acceptance, in that his twenty year old opera Satyagraha about Gandhi was done this year by the Metropolitan Opera company itself, which had never produced one of his opera before. Although done at the building which houses the Metropolitan Opera during a period when the company was not in residence, Einstein on the Beach was actually produced independently.

Although the film was informative, it added little to my understanding of Glass, as I’ve been listening to his music with pleasure for nearly thirty years.

You are supposed to start at the top and go down — work your way down as opposed to up. I suppose it is easier. I might have been reminded of this convention by the artist list, which begins with the fourth floor and ends with the lobby, had I actually gone through the formality of paying. Instead, I grabbed it on the way out when no one could bother me about my missing green sticker and didn’t realize my mistake until I was well on my way home.

As it were my friend and I walked down into the gift shop and took the elevator up to the second floor where we began our tour with what I realize in retrospect, was meant to be the grand finale. After an exhausting confrontation with broken museum walls (thank god we took the elevator up and walked down the stairs!) difficult to view tropical landscapes and a dark recreation of the 1938 Exhibition of Surrealism consisting of imitation Duchamp ready-mades, we are finally rewarded by the appearance of Benicio Del Toro, Courtney Love and Gore Vidal among others.* And there are seats!

The trailer for a remake of Caligula that was never intended to be made, with its high production value is a welcome bit of entertainment after all that non-sensical ugliness. Posing as a clever commentary on reproduction, Caligula is no more than an over-priced joke hidden behind representations of sex that could only be seen without an ID in a museum. Responding to the criticism that Caligula looks too much like an actual movie trailer to be art, Mr. Vezzoli stated in a NYT article that the viewers clearly “did not get the joke.” “The art world has become a place that has turned itself, willingly or not, into some sort of entertainment industry,” and this is what he claims to be commenting on. I do get the joke. I just think it is too poorly thought out to actually be funny. This is not commentary it is acquiescence.

It isn’t so much that it misses its mark. From the reproduced faces to the reproduced author this un-kept promise of a filmic reproduction of an historical film remains faithful to the plaque lying to the right of the theatre entrance. What is upsetting, on the contrary, is that its aim is so flawlessly accurate. The reproduction of Duchamp’s ready-mades wasn’t exactly a coup, but at least its subject matter retains a certain amount of ambiguity — and at the very least you have to stand up and walk around to see it. You even have to squint a little.

I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this little bit of popular entertainment and I am, like the rest of my generation, reluctant to actively distinguish art from non-art. But there comes a time when these distinctions need to be made by the spectator because they are in fact being made all the time by the producer, consciously or not — and the viewers’ resignation to the idea of art as something that can no longer be defined is no more than a refusal to acknowledge the aesthetic choices that make up the Whitney Biennial, among many other things.

What does it mean to install something so blatantly entertainment driven in the middle, or rather at the end of an art show? It is not completely misplaced — the rest of the floor devotes quite a bit of space to video, and very involved videos at that (one piece, shown on a small monitor near the elevator, runs over forty minutes, a curatorial choice that seems odd to me) so we could draw the conclusion that it is an attempt to encompass a whole spectrum of visual culture, to show the grainy, narratively confused videos along with what they are reacting against. But I suspect that Caligula is not meant to provide an illuminating social or historical context for the rest of the videos that we clearly do not have the time to watch (standing up and sometimes with headphones). Whether intentional or not, Caligula serves to eclipse the rest of these projects, making them seem diminutive in comparison.

When we go home this will be the easiest thing to relate to our friends and family, not to mention the most potentially entertaining. Who isn’t fascinated, in one way or another, by porn? The story is familiar, you barely have to say anything about it — this added to the fact that it was the last thing that you saw on the way out and more than likely the only project that you watched from start to finish because it was the only thing you could sit through.

Because the Biennial itself does not seem to be making many positive claims about what art is, it is impossible to say that Caligula is not. But while I cannot say that Caligula should not be there for aesthetic reasons I can say that it should not have been included for ethical ones. To put it very simply — this is not fair.

Everything in that museum is at an automatic disadvantage and while I do not want to think about this as nothing more than a juried competition it is difficult to ignore the discrepancy in budget and expertise. Even more upsetting to me than its obvious financial advantage is the comparatively large amount of public space already given to Benicio Del Toro’s face and Gore Vidal’s name. This type of money can afford ad space — where most can only afford to be the consumers of images these people have the opportunity to be producers. Not surprisingly, the images they produce are, in their style and clarity, identical to the billboards and movie trailers that one sees whether they want to or not, and in their content part of a narrowly defined tradition of Hollywood’s historical film. A genre so rigidly defined and absolutely recognizable at this point, that one need no more than a trailer to have a good idea of what they’re in for. The immense store of images that this one piece taps gives it a specific, well-defined (over defined really) meaning to which anyone who rides the subway or walks down the street has immediate access. And I suppose here I am indicating some sort of aesthetic criteria — if the images are not challenging neither is the content.

Claiming that something’s availability necessarily decreases its value as art or more accurately the commodified art object, is patently elitist, but I do think that there remains something wrong with the immediate readability of Caligula. Or actually that lack of readership that goes into its interpretation. We are so familiar with these images that we don’t even have to confront the production in front of us. It made sense before we walked through the door. And upon leaving there is not much left to the imagination. By not only using the story of Caligula (which could potentially play itself out in a million and one ways) but specifically Gore Vidal’s version, the piece pre-empts any creative narrative reconstruction by the viewer. In fact it pre-empts any active involvement at all. Instead of loosely suggesting a story to be filled in by the spectator, the trailer (and specifically the re-appearance of the author) pre-empts the very possibility of creative engagement.

I do not believe that the rest of the world should be left at the entrance of a museum, but I do not expect to see an exact reproduction of the images that bombard me on a regular basis — ventriloquy does not count as confrontation. This does not produce dialogue because it refuses to ask questions — it merely fulfills the essentially empty yet definitive statement on the door while satisfying our voyeuristic pleasure, accomplishing its dual function of art and popular entertainment. The problem is that I don’t think the two can co-exist if only because of this major advantage on the side of Hollywood — this image bank that does not exist in the same capacity for its secondary function as art. Art is therefore subsumed by popular culture and limited by its demonstrably narrower field of aesthetic expression.

If you can say nothing else for the rest of the show it didn’t lack in variety. In striking contrast to the story of Caligula the biennial was totally lacking in coherence. The story told by the other pieces defied definitive summary of the Cliff’s Notes variety to which the story of Caligula is so easily lent after decades of preceding notoriety. To say that exterior narratives do not enter into the interpretation and enjoyment of art is naive. But the incorporation of visual culture lying outside the walls of the museum is not synonymous with an enforcement of received narratives.

—
* The Intelligence of Flowers, by Urs Fischer, consists of broken walls of the Whitney — literally exposing the structure that houses the art on display. Incidentally, this hole in the wall is owned by the Ringler Collection, Switzerland.

The film is over and the credits have begun to roll up past the last shot.   There is no sound save for the unintelligible babble of a semi-distant crowd on the steps of a school.  The only familiar characters have by now walked from the bottom left hand corner out of frame, but very few audience members have begun to leave.   Some may of course be people who regularly stay for the credits, but cinephiles sans internet access are few and far between and the remaining crowd is not sparse.   The problem is that no one knows what’s going on. We are sticking around in hopes that something will happen to resolve this narrative.  A sort of hidden track or special clue reserved for the particularly dedicated viewer; something that will end the movie and tell us who was behind the video tapes around which the action of the story revolved.

In short, we are waiting to find out who is at fault.  The simplest answer, the one that would fit most easily into a neat linear narrative supported by received concepts of cause and effect would be this:  Majid (Maurice Benichou), the son of Algerian immigrants is angry at Georges (Daniel Auteuil) for preventing his adoption after the death of his parents.   It could be the quintessential revenge story.  Childhood trauma and adult psychosis. Blackmail, not for money but for personal satisfaction; for the sake of terrorizing someone; a pathological fixation that accomplishes nothing outside of itself; an action with no rational reason that can nevertheless be explained away by the psychological expertise of popular narrative cinema.    This is, it seems, what we expect as an audience.

This is also exactly how Georges imagines the situation.  While we have to wait a while for him to relate this information, the reason for these tapes comes to him almost immediately.  The image of a child spitting blood is edited into one of the surveillance videos early in the film.  Later, we learn that this child was Majid.  Bit by bit Georges reveals the whole story.   After Majid’s parents died, Georges’ parents make plans to adopt the son of their recently killed servants.   Jealous, he convinces his parents to have him sent away by cleverly framing him (an accusation he later launches at Majid).   After several failed attempts to get him removed from the house by claiming that he has a communicable illness, the young Georges convinces him to chop off the head of a rooster by insisting his parents want it dead and then tells them that this was an attempt to frighten and intimidate him.  The young Algerian orphan was then sent away.

Majid was clearly involved in this surveillance/harassment in some way.  One of the tapes leads directly to the door of his apartment and ultimately allows Georges to confront him as an adult.  But while his involvement is clear at this point his guilt surely is not.  In fact, the only evidence for it is Georges’ testimony, which is backed up by nothing more than a guilt-ridden nightmare.  “Stop terrorizing me,” he says despite Majid’s denial of involvement.  Why this “pathological hatred” of my family, he demands.   And later, when confronted by Majid’s son he refers to the obsession (idée fixe) inherited from his father.   This rhetoric should be familiar to us, for we are daily reminded of the irrational nature of Arabs and the pathological hatred they harbor for the western world.   French colonialism was marked by similar diagnoses.

On October 17th, 1961 an estimated 200 Algerian protesters were thrown into the Seine and drowned by Parisian police.   Pathological? I would argue yes and I can think of very few things that are more opposed to both rationality and democratic values than dumping two hundred un-armed protesters into a river.  This was the protest from which Majid’s parents never returned.   While the childhood relationship between Majid and Georges, and France’s political actions are not interchangeable they are undeniably interconnected and  the guilt felt by Georges is both of a political and a psychological nature.

Just as Georges’ attitude toward Majid cannot be wholly explained outside of the context of French politics, the annihilation of innocent people cannot be entirely explained by rational political decisions.   Not allowing the audience to understand the film in terms of popular, linear narrative is more than a pretentious, empty attempt to disorient the spectator or talk about narrative in film.    In the context of French colonization and our current political situation, questions concerning who is holding the (surveillance) camera- who is controlling the story- not to mention a population’s interpretation of visual documents and the psychology that motivates it, are crucial.   What stories are we telling ourselves when we see footage of Iraqi militants? How are we filling in the blanks left by the media?  Where is this extra information coming from?    Undermining the assumption that what is seen on a screen provides an entire story by emphasizing how much information is assumed is an important project that extends beyond the fictional world of film.   The confusion between what is surveillance footage and what is happening in the presumably unrecorded “reality” of the film, creates a space within which these issues can be seriously considered, and the story’s lack of conclusion demands that we take advantage of it.

Broken Flowers is Jim Jarmusch’s latest American mainstream/art film, which tells a story of Don Johnston (Bill Murray), a middle-aged bachelor who finds himself single again after his latest girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), dumps him because he cannot commit. Upon her exit, Don doesn’t even attempt to win her back. Rather, he just sits back on his luxurious leather sofa watching The Private Life of Don Juan in his huge, soulless house, which reeks of emptiness. This same day, incidentally, he receives an anonymous letter in the mail with no return address from an ex-girlfriend of 20 years ago that says he has an 18-year old son from her. It also says that her son (or is it his son?) is in search of meeting him.A couple of days after receiving the letter, Don opens it in front of his next door neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an immigrant from Ethiopia who has a Sherlock Holmesian persona and a serious interest in private eye work. Don’s initial reaction to the letter — like every other reaction to his life — was deadpan. As he started to give the letter some serious thought, it began to have a deeply and emotional affect over his present reality. He began to regret the past, and cursed with bewilderment, he was mystified with unanswered questions and complex thoughts. As the film progresses, the viewer comes to the realization that this Don Juan like character is more sullen and withdrawn — a kind of disgrace rather than a reverence. Nevertheless, Winston’s private eye investigations to finding a solution to the mystery of the pink letter, embarks Don on a cross-country journey to revisit four of his past girlfriends. In fact, Winston sets up the entire trip, including renting cars, and booking hotel rooms and airline tickets in order for Don to find out which of his past girlfriends was the author to this anonymous pink letter. Don, at first, is reluctant to even set out on this journey, but, nonetheless, he gives in to Winston’s ambitious persistence and determinate coaxing, and arrives unannounced at four of his ex-lovers houses with pink flowers in order to solve the mystery of the pink letter. Therefore, without Winston’s private eye ambition, Don would probably just continue to ignore reality, and, rather than facing his problems, would let life pass by.

The primary conflict of the film comes from the interplay between Don and Winston (the beating heart of their relationship), a relationship that is filled with frustration, drama, and comedy. In fact, Winston is the complete antithesis of Don being a happy middle-class family man with a great wife and a house filled with kids and pets. Don, on the other hand, is a single, white, unlively middle-aged guy, who made a wealth of money from computers.
Don’s journey turns out to be an emotional roller coaster. His four unannounced visits bring various new surprises, let-downs, and learning lessons to his present reality. The four women of the film include Sharon Stone, who plays Laura, a sensual and widowed closet organizer; Dora (Frances Conroy), a former hippie who became a bland real estate developer; Carmen (Jessica Lange), an animal communicator, and Penny (Tilda Swinton), an angry rural biker babe. This last visit is brief but turns out to be the most brutal. The film presents each acquaintance with awkwardness and humor, while maintaining a realistic quality that the audience can relate to and embody. As a whole, the movie has a mysterious quality to it and the scenes contain, like Don’s house, emptiness and longing. The audience experiences each scene with moods of laughter and forlornness, a quality unique to Jarmusch’s directing. One also gets a sense that the women in the film are all longing for love. Perhaps they are not begging for Don’s love, but they are still longing for it.

Jarmusch specifically wrote the role of Don Johnston for Bill Murray. Jarmusch says, “I don’t love Don Johnston. I don’t care about some rich guy that made money off computers, had pretty girlfriends and doesn’t know what he’s doing.” He continues, “I didn’t feel for him in the beginning, but I want to feel for him in the end.” At the beginning of the film it is hard to relate to Don or have any attraction or sentementality for him, namely because Don is more of the silent and passive type, not doing much and not saying much. He just mopes around appearing unaffected. He is more of the reactive type rather than the proactive type. As the film progresses we come to know that Don’s self is fragmented, but we don’t know why — it could be from any number of reasons. The ending of the film is left open-ended. We are left with some unanswered questions: does Don even have a son; has he forgotten an ex-lover? It is possible that Don may have a son, yet we are not exactly sure because the letter does not say that it is definite. And Don never thought to interogate the girls about the letter or about them having his son.

By the end of the flick, one does develop a kind of sentamentality for Don. And eventhough Don has self-created problems and he may not be a guy that we would want to be our partner or our father, we have a kind of likabitlity and affection for him. We feel for him. This raises two questions: what is there to like about Don, or better, how is Don a heroic character? One answer is that Don is more of a realistic character. That is, he is more human because he struggles, he’s flawed, and he has problems. Many critics interpret the ending as one without closure. On the contrary, I see the ending as very real and common to our lives. The reality is — and this is why the ending is a kind of climax for me — although our lives contain contradictions and our are selves are dirempted from our relationships with others, we are not always left with answers to our questions to why things are the way they are. Thus, we are forced to face acceptance. So, we need to take life as it comes and accept it for what it is. That’s why we must continue to move on — life goes on.

As a whole, the film, which mainly shows Don tracing out his past, is even more focused on living in the present moment. The audience is able to see this clearly, that is, they see Don for who he really is. So, the film teaches us that by not facing reality and accepting reality, we will get no where except wrestling with reality. In other words, when we do not face life problems or we run away from reality — like the dilmma Don is experiencing — the past will come back to haunt us. By the end of this film, Don, like the audience, is still left with open-endedness, unanswered questions, and not getting what t(he)y want(s). Although the film is slow-moving and deadpan — another common quality to director Jim Jarmusch, the film is loaded with unexpected surprises, fun, and laughs.

The lead-in song to the movie, which features Holly Golightly, is titled “There is an End” by The Greenhornes. The soundtrack features a wide array of artists, which gives the adding a Jamaican jazzy and upbeat feel to the film. Some artists include the Ethiopian composer and musician Mulatu Astatke, the legendary Marvin Gaye, the indie-rockers Brian Jonestown Massacre, Gabriel Fauré, and many more. It also features a three minute segment of Sleep’s “Dopesmoker.”

About the Director

Jim Jarmusch was born in Akron, Ohio on January 22, 1953. At the age of seventeen, he moved to New York City to study at Columbia University, and in 1975, he received a B.A. in English. He then went to Tisch School of the Arts at New York University to study film. This is where he made his first feature-length film, Permanent Vacation (1982), which was his thesis project. The film following this one, Stranger than Paradise (1984), was by far his most popular. Other feature-length films directed by Jarmusch include Down By Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night On Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). He also made the rock video and documentary The Year of the Horse (1997) about the rock band Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

      “The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)”

      Directed by Zacharias Kanuk

      172 minutes

      in Inuktitut with English subtitles

      Produced by Zacharias Kanuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, and Norman Cohn

      Written by Paul Apak Angilirq

      Director of Photography Norman Cohn

      Edited by Zacharias Kanuk, Norman Cohn, and Marie-Christine Sarda

      Music by Chris Crilly

      Art Director James Ungalaaq

#Review by Diane Burns

 fastrunner

The story begins with the arrival of a stranger from the North. As in any culture where survival often depends upon the kindness of strangers, this stranger is welcomed into the largest igloo and entertained. This stranger, however, is an evil shaman, who kills the patriarch, and curses the village of Igloolik (three or four interrelated families) with a generation of hate, revenge, spite and envy.

Winner of the Camera d’Or for best first feature in Cannes last year, this epic movie is as comfortable as the best story your grandmother ever told you while you were sitting on her knee on a cold and stormy night. In the village of Igloolik, a thousand or more years ago, Oki (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq) and Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu) are promised to each other. Atanarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq) desires Atuat also. In a moment of hubris, Oki bets his right to marry Atuat, and he and Oki trade blows to each others’ heads. The outcome is disputed by Oki’s father, the chief, but his mother sides with Atuat, whom she believes to be her own mother reborn (”I recognized you right away, that’s why I named you,” she tells her “Little Mother.”) The young lovers happily begin their family, living with Atanarjuat’s brother Amaqjuaq ( Pakkak Innukshuk) and his wife. Oki’s sister Puja (Lucy Tulugarjuk) attempts to break up the couple and becomes Atanarjuat’s second wife in an escalating series of trickery that Atanarjuat is not wholly unresponsive to. The irascible son of the chief soon whips together his dog pack of peers, murders Amaqjuaq and chases Atanarjuat into the frozen North Inland of the Inuit, naked and barefooted.

The resolution of the story has the feeling of kismet–Atanarjuat is rescued and hidden from his potential murderers by the murderer’s own great uncle. When he returns, he gives Puja her just deserts, and redeems his village by telling Oji, “The killing stops here.” By refusing to pander to the shaman’s methods, the shaman’s power over the people is broken. In a moving exorcism, the northern stranger is chased from the town’s igloo, and his power negated.

In this Shakespearean, convoluted story of thwarted love and honor, the palette of the cinematographer becomes the star of this movie. The colors and textures of ice and snow reflect the emotional contradictions of the film. The breadth and scope of this epic is remarkable considering that it is the first produced by the all native crew. Underwritten by the National Film Board of Canada it provides incredible native insights into themselves! The music is endearing, featuring native throat singers and a group called the Bulgarian Voices. Violins and the incredibly difficult art of throat singing underscore the film’s emotional and psychological gestalt.

At the Sunshine Theatre, where I saw the movie, the Director Zacharias Kunuk has on display his own soapstone sculptures of various scenes in the movie, such as “Headpuch Scene,” ” Shaman Spirits” (which features walrus whiskers–if you’ve never seen walrus whiskers, you owe it to yourself to view them before the show moves on), “Love and Hate: Atanarjuat and Atuat Reunited, Looking at Puja.” Also on display are various native implements used in the movie, such as the savik, a caribou bone knife; the quilliq, a stone lamp; the ulu, a stone knife; and cooking pots of soapstone and children’s toys made of caribou vertebrae.

Like the green boogie, it reveals the strengths and the human attributes of native artists. Just like boogers can be identified to their source by DNA analysis, well, if I wanted Ice Capades, I’d have gone to Madison Square Garden.

A Miramax Film Directed by Leon Ichaso
Review by Aurora Flores January 2002

Hollywood pulled a sucker punch on Latinos once more in this disjointed and undeveloped portrait of a psychopath. Worse than West Side Story, Badge 353 or Fort Apache, Piñero takes us on a walk on the wild side of hell without so much as a whisper of the rampant rumors of pedophilia at the essence of this twisted, demented sociopath celebrated in this film as an artistic icon of Nuyorican creativity.

Miguel Piñero appeared on the New York artistic scene in 1974 with the presentation of “Short Eyes” a play he wrote in a prison workshop while serving time in Sing Sing for armed robbery. Presented first by La Familia, then Lincoln Center and Joseph Papp’s Public Theater it became a hit winning the N.Y. Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play before turned into a movie.

The work (interestingly enough) was about a pedophile who abused boys only to find himself in jail among prisoners who can forgive anything but. Piñero (who always told writers to write what they know and surely he knew more on this topic as both victim and predator) was tapped by Hollywood to write and act about crime and criminals for shows like Baretta, Miami Vice and others.

The film opens with the multilayered beats of Hector LaVoe’s salsa pulsating in scenes that slice like a blade in and out of Piñero’s black and white past with technical wizardry that masks the lack of infrastructure, stunted script and character development that these quick paced, eye blinking MTVish frames disguise.

We move from a jive time hustler in jail spewing smart-alecky street rhymes of life to a troubled childhood of transplanted poverty and incest. We then see a strung out junkie in a dope den of squalor pimping the talent that took him out of jail back to his mother who is holding onto five children calmly telling the father to leave after bearing witness to the rape of her eldest son at his hands. Welcome to the avant-garde.

Actor Benjamin Bratt’s total possession of Piñero’s spirit, however, is brilliant, electrifying and shocking. Bratt breaks through his previous “papi chulo” roles, bringing Piñero to life as vividly as the heroin that danced with “Mikey” through decadent degradation and debauchery. Like a lightweight boxer, Bratt pounces and punches his posse with words heard only in the deepest and most desperate layer of urban subculture. “I have to keep doing bad to keep the writing good,” Piñero justifies his anti-social behavior. But his writing was never “all that” to begin with. The topic of pedophile as underdog has been done many times over. “The Quare Fellow,” Brendon Behan’s play about a child molestor murdered in prison by his fellow in-mates was produced in New York before “Short Eyes.” And while Piñero’s poetic rhetoric spoke of strength against oppressor and society’s hypocrisy, his soul was corrupted by his total weakness and enslavement to drugs and dereliction.

But there were moments of lucidity as in the Puerto Rico/Nuyorican poets encounter. Piñero comes face to face with Puerto Rican scholars on the Island who repudiate his art and lifestyle. Piñero, the defiantly cool captive of his own dysfunction, “outs” the colonialized slavery of the Island’s academia as definition of a sanctimonious identity not their own. In contrast, the scene where Piñero’s play is presented by Papp to a packed audience is most telling where in his moment of triumph, Piñero shows his “ass” to the world. The sun was not always shining for this cool dude.

Piñero’s sickness and arrogance never recognized his self-described “junkie Christ” as anti-Christ. Even in death, this unholy alliance with mainstream American media once again contemptuously maligns the hard working, self-sacrificing Latino artistic community that rises above its horrific childhood traumas to create works of true literary insight, craft and artistry as legacy of our pride and courage. Understandably, sensationalized commercial films sell tickets, but for a community still invisible on the screen, marginalized in society and misunderstood by its neighbors, this is one more attempt to show only the pus-infected cancker sores of a debauched existence.

On some deeper level, maybe Piñero knew he was being patronized and displayed like a curious monkey with humanlike qualities by the “culturally elite” who saw him more as freak than peer. He may be laughing right now at how, in death, he can still steal $10 from everyone who sees this film.

Piñero’s girlfriend, played by Talisa Soto was as unconvincing as Rita Moreno’s ethereal and flighty mother. Soto’s Versace dresses, supermodel unmarked body, face and makeup belie the junkie/bitch/’ho of her character Sugar. The other players around Piñero appear superficially while Piñero’s “friend,” Miguel Algarin, (played by Giancarlo Esposito) is a one dimensional, totally absorbed and self-serving tributary of Pinero’s dark side. Despite all the people around him, none did anything to help this “great talent.” They all enabled the madness; the lack of morality, values, ethics, discipline, respect and sanity.

The absence of real women characters in this contorted macho nightmare, flies in the face of the founding of the Nuyorican Poet’s Caf√© that counted on the many poems of Sandra Maria Esteves, one of the cultural warriors of the Nuyorican front line never mentioned in this hallucination. Neither are other worthy soldiers such as Victor Hernandez Cruz, Papoleto, Eddie Figueroa, Tato LaViera, El Coco Que Habla, et al. But it’s just as well. Even comic John Leguizamo refused to play the role after he researched Piñero’s life. Vaya Juanito! The last half hour of the film became tediously burdensom never exposing Piñero’s nursery of prepubescent boys he introduced as his “sons,” at functions outside the Caf√© instead laboring on the mundane primal language thrown around the club like eight year olds who’ve just learned bad words. And many times, this was what nights at the Nuyorican Poets Caf√© were about. That it was a creative gathering den for the forgotten is not refuted but there were those who under the guise of free expression relished an unrestrained and undisciplined orgy of depravity. Clearly many of the new breed of poets look to the Nuyorican Poets’ Caf√© as an alternative showcase for literary voices that relate to our reality. And there are many who answered the calling. Piñero was not one of them. And to claim that this was the precursor to hip hop and rap when The Last Poets had already carved a role as political griots of that particular social shift in time is bogus indeed. This is not a film to take a sensitive young artist to. Nor is it a portrait of an exemplary Latino talent that survived New York’s dark reality. This is a film that celebrates the reckless life of someone who was abused by his father, let down by his mother and everyone around him; a deviant who crashed and burned under the weight of living taking a few down with him. Some hero.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, the Institute of Puerto Rican Policy and the National Hispanic Media Coalition presented the community screening I attended. The Village Seven Theater was packed with community leaders from the arts, education,social services and politics. The applause for the movie’s spokespeople, Miguel Algarin, Giancarlo Esposito, Nelson Vasquez and Tim Williams was lukewarm. Questions on Hollywood’s spotlight on negative Latino images and incest were glibly and smugly shrugged off or totally ignored by Algarin, who displayed the same self-delusional aplomb and cockiness as the film’s protagonist. The response was polite curiosity from the crowd. But once everyone dispersed outside, the consensus was transparent. Miguel — the emperor has no clothes.

Now, I’m no catholic or anything, but I do have a confession to make. Right about now I’m not trying to see any movie, go to any play, hear any poetry reading or slam, wander through any pretentious gallery openings for free wine, check out any bands or hip hop acts, nothing, without asking what the shit means to me when I walk out that door. I’m about what kind of rhythm it leaves me with. Period. My patience and attention span have pretty much worn thin. I’m tired.

11-2 trumped 9-11, and it didn’t jump up out of thin blue air. Those star-crossed confederates, those fundamentalists … those gods of the red states. Those southern crackers on fire. Them and their allies out for the kill. It’s all so … West Coast with an East-Coast flair. Finance capital and such. Obscures the yeoman farmer, the middle-man, the eat-dirt road. A case of the Beverly Hillbillies gone mad. Waco. What a team we make. The two of us.

No, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Revolutions came and went. In government, ideas and sound. They predicted God’s death a long time ago. Said it loud and clear. Dionysus. A chorus of voices told us that the devil stuck his fork in Him with art, secular rationalism and industrial profit. Bless their souls. I don’t even believe in their hippy Jesus but it doesn’t take much to see that he’s about to get us all thrown in hell if we aren’t there already. Him along with Allah and who ever the fuck it is the Jews think they’re waiting for. Someone else’s land and self-interest no doubt.

And Georgia, where they won’t even let you buy a fucking vibrator for christ’s sake. They’d just as soon have your cunt sown up as let you play with it, unless you’re having a baby. And you’d better have it too. The price you pay for sin. I’m talking about some outlaw sex. The abolition of desire and shit. No-man’s-land. They have it on their flag, wear it on their hats, their arms, slap it on the back of their trucks and shed blood for it … to this day. \italic{Georgia, Georgia, The whole day through/ Just an old sweet song/ Keeps Georgia on my mind.} Black people and women know what I’m talking about. Some of them. Or at least they used to.

Desire, freedom, space, autonomy, rhythm, love, rage, food, clothes and shelter. I’m talking about a gutbucket. Some low-down basic in your balls longing for shit. So bad it aches. That’s the kind of grind Ray could hit you with. He told the church to kiss his ass. “I’m blind motherfucker, this is my shit.” He took all that good stuff and put it back where it belonged. Stole it right under their nose, beneath their wide-open eyes. Satisfaction and how to get some. Pain and how to express it. The body and how to move it. Struggle. Labor. Hustle. Lust … when they’d just as soon cut your dick off as let you put it to some better use.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever lived with a junky … or been one. But a junkie is a dirty dog that bites. A junkie is a say-shit-out-of-line piss when he ain’t supposed to cranky ass bitter unreliable behind your back two-faced say sorry all the time potentially violent self-centered motherfucker. That’s what a junkie is right there. That’s who you cross the street to get away from. On dope? Ask Bird if you can find him. Dead as a duck. A junkie is X-rated even when he can’t get it up. Nothing PG-13 about a junkie. It does more than just scratch and grin and mumble and make people sincerely vaguely concerned. \italic{But Ray, what about me, what about the children? }At which point, if the movie has any integrity at all, Ray the junkie is supposed to turn around and say, \italic{Fuck you bitch, stay out of my shit from now on and mind your business, or I’ll send your funky loose-tit ass back to the pastor you were with before I met you. }He might have even slapped her or something unseemly for looking in his shaving kit and finding his works. Let’s not even mention the tracks and sores for now. This movie sure doesn’t. But I mean, break a glass or something Ray … goddamn. I hear he followed that shit for over a decade but hey, what do I know? I wasn’t there.

And I can’t speak for you, but I sure ain’t never been blind … at least not in the literal sense. It’s pretty hard to say something bad about a guy who couldn’t see anything … even if it is only about a movie someone else made after he died to cash in on a profit … a cheap shot. A cheap trick. Trust me, I feel like a creep. But I bet working night-clubs and trying to get paid or starve would make you a hell of a lot tougher than what comes across from a 36 year-old neo-vaudevillian comic who went to church every week, sang in the choir and joined the boy scouts when he was a kid. Which is true. A guy who was the star quarterback on his high school football team … a guy who got all the leads, all the breaks, all the head behind the bleachers … a guy who played classical piano at Julliard to boot. That’s Jamie’s bio. It shows. Now don’t get me wrong, he does an admirable job as an impersonator. He made his reputation as a flaming queer vamping all over national television for christ’s sake. Imagine that. Outlaw sex made safe.

\italic{Stage directions: Actor bows out to Thunderous applause and a shower of gold coins}.

I can’t hold it against him. After all, as I sat there waiting for the music to play, he’s the one who tried to make sure I wasn’t completely bored watching this film. And I sincerely appreciate him for that. He did the best he could given the circumstances. He’s easy to look at, he’s good at what he does, he’s a professional. So is Kerry Washington, who plays his ever-tolerant, sweet as can be naive wife. Both of their careers are secure … should be rolling in it from here on out … but that’s the point. In the absence of the blues, the only place left to go is sentimentality and outright lies. Kind of like a junkie but with a different agenda. Safety. A cover-up. Fakin’ it till you make it. Not the soundtrack that fills in every time Jamie opens his mouth to lip-sync mind you, but the cheesy, formulaic, predictable stuff that takes over when the music (by far the best part of this movie) isn’t playing. This film is down on its knees, arms outstretched singing “Mammy.” No doubt it will join the canon of late night VH-1nders. But shit, I’d rather give the part to Harvey Keitel and let him do it in blackface. He’ll show you a blind nigger junkie alright.

It’s not Jamie’s fault. Like I said, he didn’t have much to work with. The lack of spine in this film can be traced straight back to Hackford and White. I mean, it took them 15 years to make this movie. That’s before Nas and Old Dirty hit the scene and even before some of the kids this movie was made for were even born. He even met Ray himself. I’d rather hear the interviews personally. Maybe they’ll release them as a box set or something.

So, the foundation is missing. Words are a structure and if you don’t have that you better be a committed anarchist. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing mind you. Sometimes words get in the way. But flat dialogue and high melodrama will only take you so far and then you better start dancing and singing again. Fortunately this movie has plenty of that.

And what about the fuckin? Ray dropped 12 kids with five women. There isn’t a sign of those snotty noses running around on Christmas in August let alone the urge that made them. Of course, I wasn’t there mind you … so what do I know about his family values and such. Yeah, I understand the art of reading between the lines. Even the bottom ones. Like the money General Electric is afraid to lose by telling the truth about Ray. “We might bring good things to light but we’ve got a commodity to protect after all … Ain’t nothin’ free in this world but Jesus.” And even that will cost you these days.

Our journey starts off in Northern Florida, 1948. Somewhere down by Universal Studios in Orlando … right where it ends. A full circle. You ever been there? Jeb Bush and theme parks is what I’m talking about. The dark ages for sure. They still make niggers and silence go hand in hand for ten dollars a ticket. You can walk around all day with your eyes closed … the more things change …. Anyway, Jamie, I mean Ray, I mean Jamie (the butterfly effect working its way into the frontal lobe, REM, the beauty and danger of film), is trying to take his black ass up to Seattle for a gig but some redneck bus driver, you know, the rank-and-file, is not about to be any Seeing Eye Dog for a blind nigger and he won’t give him any play. So Jamie tells him he lost his sight in the war and receives the double-VIP treatment straight to beer halls, sluts and Quincy Jones. Hmmm. Poetic justice, poetic license, I understand. But why would you need to make some fable with a mythic subject like this. Take it into a never-never land of hallucination. Afraid to look it in the eye. We’re all fair game. Ray, the civil rights hero working the Chitlin’ Circuit, reading the Bible in braille, cutting a path through Seattle, Los Angeles, Harlem, Atlanta, Dallas and the Newport Jazz Festival. Being a victim of dope fiends, managers and women … standing up to Jim Crow in Georgia … coming to self-realization when it all fades to subtitles and black … 20 million dollars to charitable institutions, a parade at the Georgia State Capital with Julian Bond … earning his stars and stripes.

The problem is, every time I started to feel all slowly brainless and “Maybe I kind of like this movie,” you know, deluded about the whole experience, just when I might have been taken in like a sucker biting the bait, falling for the pray, just when the seat was wrapping its arms around me and stroking my thighs real nice, just when the flashbacks to his brother drowning in a laundry bucket and the sprawling five-year old Ray, who lost his sight nine months after the tragedy cries \italic{Mama, Mama, I need you, help }and she ignores it, keeps on making bread to make him tough … \italic{promise you won’t be no cripple, Ray,} never a victim, eyes full of that gooey puss you don’t want to look at but can’t help doing it anyway thinking, “What is that shit, Vaseline?” … some junk at last, nasty, and maybe this starts to bring a tear to your jaded dry consumer eye when … bam! Here comes the Atlanta Compromise, Georgia raising its head again like clockwork. god is out, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler are in. Now you’re fucked kid, even if you are rich. From the frying pan straight into the fire so to speak. They taught him how to be himself all right … Ahmet bending over the piano: “You’ve got to find yourself Ray, your own voice, that’s why I hired you, here let me sing you a song I wrote. Croak, croak. Play it like that.” Ray: “You mean like this, boss?” Ahmet: “Yeah, that’s it kid, now you really sound like yourself.” Some red, white and blue redux shit. You don’t need any more lyrics to understand this pastoral scene. But I’ll play it for you anyway: \italic{Oh beautiful, for heroes proved, In liberating strife, Who more than self, our country loved, And mercy more than life, America, America may God thy gold refine, Til all success be nobleness And every gain divined.} I ain’t making this shit up. The sacred and the secular resolved. And right along with Ray-gun too in ‘84. What a happy family. I told you, I feel like a creep.

If that’s how you like your movies, you’ll have a swell old time at this one. Don’t let me discourage you.

On the Road to Kandahar: a film by Mohsen Makhmalbufo

Given the current socio-political situation, it would be impossible to view “Kandahar” as one would view any other film. This is not your standard cineplex fare. Clearly destined for art house viewing - the pace is slow, the narrative unfulfilled, the actors are obviously amateurs - this film is nevertheless getting a lot of attention worldwide. And although it would be callous to say that the film’s producers are benefiting from’America’s New War”, the timeliness of this release is undeniable. For despite the barrage of email petitions that most internauts have come across in the past three years, never before in the West has there been such an interest in the plight of women beneath the burka.

The arc of Kandahar is mythic; it is a classic quest. Nafas, an Afghan-Canadian reporter arrives in Iran determined to make her way to the Taliban-controlled city of Kandahar in order to find her sister before she commits suicide on the last lunar eclipse of the 20th Century, a choice she has related to Nafas by letter. Nafas hides her money belt, her tape recorder and her identity beneath the veil of a purple burka. She encounters a series of guides who expose various facets of life in Afghanistan. She is taken in as one of many wives in a family of ten, until they are robbed and decide to turn back to Iran. Her next guide is a young boy who has just been kicked out of the Islamic study school that would have kept him fed and clothed. He steals a ring from a corpse they encounter in the sand dunes, and tries to sell it to our repulsed heroine. Nafas drinks well water and falls ill, discovering - in an incredible scene where the female patient is examined through a fist-sized hole in a curtain - that this town’s doctor is actually an African American Muslim who came to Afghanistan to find God. He takes her to a Red Cross tent (similar to the one bombed by US planes a month ago) where we witness a most surreal vision. Dozens of one-legged men madly hop towards a hovering helicopter, in the hopes of nabbing one of several artificial limbs parachuting down to earth. Just outside the camp, she meets a bandit who also dons a burka that they might join a wedding party headed to Kandahar. The party meets a Taliban inspection point where their musical instruments are confiscated and Nafas’ latest guide is captured. And still our heroine is undeterred in her pursuit.

While watching this film, it is hard not to wonder how on earth it was made. The’actors’ are all exiled Afghans living in refugee camps in Pakistan. The dialogue is slow, even stilted at times. It feels more like a documentary then a fiction and for good reason. The principal actress, Niloufar Pazira is in fact an Afghan-Canadian journalist who met the filmmaker when she embarked on a journey to find a childhood friend who threatened to kill herself under the growing oppression of life under Taliban rule. She had suggested to filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbuf that he film her pursuit. He was unable to do so at the time but remained haunted by her quest and spent the next year researching living conditions in Afghanistan, eventually finding Pazira to propose dramatizing her tale. This is her story as it is the story belonging to every Afghan’actor’ in this film. And yet, for all the emotions this film provokes, the acting is not emotional. Harrowing, horrifying details are presented in a matter-of-fact manner indicating that the constant struggle of life in Afghanistan has all but inured its victims.

We left the theatre stunned. It seemed grossly absurd to witness the ravaged territory that US Military hopes to decimate. This is a population of paupers living in clay houses and caves. It is a population of widows and orphans and disfigured landmine victims struggling to survive. As the doctor says in one scene: “These people don’t need a doctor, they need a baker.” Surely there cannot be a single target in this entire country worth the expense of the bombs being dropped. And yet, despite the apparent bleakness of the situation in Afghanistan as depicted in Kandahar, this is a beautiful film full of life, color and hopeful determination.

In light of the September 11th tragedy and the subsequent “War on Terrorism” (whose effects on North American citizens have only begun to be felt),’Kandahar’ is a film that should be, but mostly likely will not be, seen by American audiences. The spectacular destruction of the World Trade Towers and the horrible deaths that ensued are still occupying airtime while images from Afghanistan resemble first-generation video game scenes: a single green beam falling on shadowy buildings. It is a danger to the US Administration’s agenda to humanize Afghanistan and this is precisely what Kandahar does. One cannot deny that the Taliban’s tyranny must end and yet it is tacitly absurd to think that dropping bombs on a destitute, mine-strewn landscape will achieve any good for the people of Afghanistan.

While President George Bush discusses with Hollywood executives how to produce film and television programming in support of the war effort, dissident voices flicker on art house screens. There is no black and white, the truth can only be found by bringing as many shades of gray to our palettes as possible. Witness a film that does not exploit the Taliban’s tyranny for sake of justifying the West’s Babylonian economic interests in the Middle East. Instead, Kandahar is about love, strength and the courage to survive in a world of oppressors who would much rather see you curl up and die.

For more information on this film and other films by Mohsen Makhmalbuf, visit http://www.makhmalbaf.com.

For insight into the history of the Taliban, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East and the hidden repercussions of “America’s New War”, visit http://www.zmag.org.