Prueba de fotos para Patri

Nothing but bones in the way

“Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?”

I stole the CD from my best friend’s apartment about 8 years ago. I don’t really know why I just took it without permission. F. would’ve given it to me had I had asked for it. I guess I was high and I liked the cover, which featured a black and white and gray out-of-focus image of a man shouting with blinders on. I tried to listen to it back then, but I never did get much into Tom Waits. To me it sounded like a Bob Dylan cartoon, a send-up and a self-serving homage to the raspy untuned “three chords and the truth” school of American bards.

I have recently gone back to BoneMachine and found this song, “Who are you?” and I can’t help but associate it with my nightmarish mid-twenties: a certain art-deco Miramar apartment languishing in the sticky-humid Puerto Rican nights; the drugs and my lesbian roommates, and a year and a half without sex. There was desperation in the air. I haven’t been that desperate in a long time. Maybe I haven’t been as alive either.

The album also makes me think about love, the ones I’ve lived through, the one I live with right now. Lies and masks and love and Tom Waits wailing in his broken voice “tell me what did you do the last time?/Why don’t you do that/ well go on ahead/take this the wrong way/time’s not your friend”. Not bad for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Thanks F., for BoneMachine, which is a way of saying thank you for so much that cannot be clearly articulated, except –perhaps- through a Tom Waits song that I stole from your apartment all those years ago.

Adolfo Pinch is my friend

Coming soon to a blog near you:
I like to think that in a past life he was one of Leni Riefenstahl's lovers, much to the detriment of his arch-rival within the party, José Huebels (that's Goebbles, for the non-Hispanics). In fact, it's no secret that Triumph of the Will was a work that featured his behind-the-scenes talent for agit-prop. He may have died in shame as an ex-Nazi hiding out in Paraguay, but he has come back, to Puerto Rico, to make up for it all. A closeted Catholic with a passion for Pope Pious XII, the Caribbean sun is now his purgatory. Visit him and enjoy his attempts at rehabilitation as they are crushed by the San Juan morass:
http://adolfopinch.blogspot.com/

Adolfo's lives are a morality play that holds valuable lessons for us all.

1. Myspace Friend Request

Uno pensaría que lo bueno del MySpace es la oportunidad que esa herramienta brinda de ponerte en contacto con amistades perdidas a través del tiempo y/o la distancia, reunidas nuevamente en el espacio cibernético. Por eso fue que me alegré tanto cuando recibí el mensaje: Guanina se unía a mi grupo de amigos myspeicísticos. No la veía en unos cinco años. Pero me acordaba de la fiesta de despedida que le tiramos el círculo de amistades de aquel tiempo en su mítico apartamento de la Calle Manila, en Santa Rita. Lo de mítico es una exageración, claro. Es una concesión que surge del hábito un tanto irritante de crear epopeyas de mi pasado personal, que en realidad es tan tedioso y mediocre como el de cualquier otro joven puertorriqueño clasemediero nacido a finales de los setenta.

En todo caso el apartamento de la Manila ocupa un espacio privilegiado en mi memoria y ahora es terreno fertil para la imaginación. Guanina, Marcos, Mara y Tito lo ocupaban, todos graduados de la High de la universidad, y allí crearon el centro gravitacional de mi pequeño universo riopedrense. El círculo de amistades que se reunía consetudinariamente allí para fumar pasto y quejarse crónicamente de lo aburrido que es San Juan de Puerto Rico estaba unido, me parece ahora, por un aborrecimiento colectivo, como si todos los presentes en aquellas tardes llenas de humo y South Park estuvieran absolutamente convencidos de que estábamos tan por encima del rol que nos había tocado en la ciudad de mierda que cobijaba nuestra existencia. Los que proveníamos de escuelas privadas y católicas acudíamos a la Manila para lamer nuestras heridas: nos sentíamos privados de la experiencia que tantos otros compañeros tenían de estudiar en universidades americanas, y lo resentíamos. Soñábamos con Nueva York, París y Barcelona, ciudades dignas de nuestra sensibilidad. El contingente de la High de la universidad, por su parte, se paseaba por la vida con un fronte izquierdoso heredado de padres peceperos venidos a más, abogados y periodistas nostálgicos por su Gran Momento de Gloria en la huelga del 81. Ellos soñaban con Nueva York también, pero sus referencias abarcaban el DF, Rio y sobre todo la Habana, donde habían visto la luz al haber sido enviados a Congresos de la Juventud cuando eran pre-adolescentes.

Guanina, teatrera, extrovertida y morena era el centro de la prole de los izquierdosos. Juanca, hedonista, con carro y ojos verdes asumía el puesto que naturalmente le correspondía como capataz de los exalumnos de colegio. Guanina, toda ella niñez formada a base de Colegio Montessori y actitudes esotéricas de neo-hippie, y Juanca, todo él forjado en los suburbios de Montehiedra y las valium que la mamá le alimentaba cada vez que se quejaba de dolor de cabeza, fueron amantes. Era un suceso inevitable. Cuando dejaron de serlo se mantuvieron en plano de mejores amigos y consejeros, la suerte del grupo que lideraban dependía de ello. Y yo, como siempre, en el medio, estancado entre la fidelidad que sentía por mi mejor amigo de la infancia y una chica que que me volaba los sesos a secretas por representar todo lo que yo nunca sería. Nunca le dije a nadie de la lujuria que me provocaban las caderas morenas de Guanina, nunca confesé la ternura que me despertaba cada vez que se quedaba dormida por el arrebato, el esfuerzo que tenía que hacer para no acercármele y removerle el pelo lacio y negro e insondable que le invadía la cara.

Nunca se lo dije a nadie excepto a Juanca… aquella vez.

To-Do List Days

Days like these I am glued to this small apartment. I write extensive to-do lists: finish grant proposal, get on with the paper, fill out taxes, drop off laundry, etc. And then I proceed to ignore each and every one of the items on the list, preferring to worry about not getting any of it done. I make deals with myself, “if you finish that response paper for the Arabic Cinema class, or at the very least get it started, then you can go see Max Ophuls ‘The Earrings of Madame De’ at the Film Forum”. Of course, I will end up opting for niether. Everything’s such a chore on days like these.

In truth I would go see the Ophuls film, if I had someone to go with. I enjoy going to the movies by myself, but it gets tiresome after a while. I think about my love, I fix her features on my mind, waging war against abstractions borne out of distance and time. I want to account for every single pore on her face, but there is no such thing as High Definition memory.

The other day I caught myself complaining to some class-mates that the problem with our class is that everyone’s too damned nice. I almost choked on my beer as I said it. Is that really what I’ve been reduced to: complaining about that standard Ivy League politeness?

A lot of things I’d like to share, the insignificant, monotonous details that nobody cares about. My love does, but a lot of these I forget before our nightly call. Maybe I need more drama in my life, maybe the lack of it is what is so difficult to write. Maybe that’s the problem, I like to see it on-screen, on the page, but I eschew it within myself.

I used to think that this ennui, which I am so intimately acquainted with, was a San Juan thing, the usual Puerto Rican morass. I now realize that it’s me. It has been me all along. One more thing for that to-do list: snap out of it.

Motherless Writing

Finally finished reading Jonathan Lethem´s sprawling Brooklyn bildungsroman last night. I can now return to my life, which I had taken a break from in order to delve obssessively into this book. The goddamned novel had me missing class because I was staying up till 5am reading it, and it´s a wonder I didn´t brake a leg as I walked down subway platforms without putting the book down. Lethem is quite the wordsmith, a word-fucker in fact. His novel before this one, "Motherless Brooklyn", starred an orphaned, tourettic private detective who couldn't stop spitting out freely associated words and phrases. Fortress of Solitude is just that without the Tourrett's: verb-o-rrhea (of the finest quality) just for the sheer fun of it, like catching a spaldeen in mid-flight, which is precisely what its young, white protagonist likes to do in his all-black block.

The novel is certainly uneven, I'm not sure about its supernatural aspects tagged on top of such a clearly autobiographical conceit. For some reason Americans, and Anglos in general, never seem to get Magical Realism quite right. Still Lethem manages to pull off some fine tricks. The novel is composed of sequences, with elliptical jumps of varying degrees in between. The novelist launches into these without giving any expository information, in media res-style. It has a disorienting effect where characters, situations and plot emerge a piece at a time and come together a page and a half after the sequence has begun. The reader is left to pull it all together, forced to make sense of the Brooklynite mid-seventies, much like Dylan Ebdus -the main character- is trying to do.

Not least in the bag of tricks is a white writer giving race relations such a genuine gaze. White guilt, black oppression, ghetto mentality, alternating victim/victimizer attitudes: all of these fuse to create the muddle that was the gaffitied, funkified, proto-gentrified, hippie communed world where the action takes place. And then there is the loneliness and the yearning, two irresistible Lethem staples. Candid and crushing in his portrayal of motherlessness, Lethem might easily fall prey to his defensive hipsterism, but he is always moving.

My thoughts exactly...

"I was sort of a half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one."

That sinking feeling...

Disclaimer: if you don't want to hear a sulking, self-indulgent story about a guy laying down his sorry trip - well if that IS your mindset you wouldn't be in this blog right now anyway, so just forget this disclaimer altogether, it's not necessary.

So I spent a fair amount of time during Spring Break working on my feature, the one I had been obsessively outlining. It wasn't as much time as I'd like, but there was effort put into it. Didn't get the whole first act, but got the first 20 pages in. Here's the thing with "the process": as you write it, it doesn't feel right, intuitively you know it's not working. Your characters don't sound like they speak like people, it's just words on the page. But you barrel on, convinced that that's the thing about a first draft. Then you reread it (and here the delusions begin) and you think "it's not as bad as all that". So you change a thing here, maybe switch a sentence from the passive voice to its active counterpart, maybe add a couple of adverbs. Then you re-read it again, this time it doesn't feel half-bad, hell it's almost good. Sure, there's a lot of work to be done, but you figure the idea's there and it works. But still there's that tiny little voice in the back of your head pushing the brakes. You muffled it.
Cut to:
Presented my screen pages in class today. It was horrible. Soapy melodrama: the people reading it couldn't say the lines with a straight face. It was bloody massacre, and I don't blame my classmates for spoofing the hell out of the reading. Fuck, that's the kind of treatment over the top nonsensical lines like the ones I just wrote deserve.

Which is not to say that it wasn't a huge dissappointment. Talked with the professor afterwards, because by the end of the workshop I didn't even feel like it was worth continuing with the damned script. "Don't be afraid of your own ambition" was all he said. What the fuck does that mean!!!! Sounds precisely like something you would tell a student who had just come up with a hideous, half-assed, half-baked, dead-end piece of writing. Suffice it to say that it wasn't a very healthy meeting for me. In fact, it's a wonder I still haven't burned the text.

So now what? I'll plough on with the script, I'll rewrite those first twenty pages this week. Do I have any options? It's not like I have any other ideas. Also: I'm working hard to keep the ego in check. What did I expect? A masterpiece on my first go? So it's back to the drawing board. That's writing: rewriting, taking in all the derision and flattened expectations and going back to rework it all... until it works.

Still, it was a terrible, sinking feeling the one I felt in class today. I hate that gurgling sound, you know, the bubbles a sinking paper boat makes... I guess it's the sound of failure.

Este sofa tiene historia...

...exclamó Tufiñito a boca de jarro cuando nos vio jalando con él pa' la calle. No le pregunté cual era porque francamente me dio miedo de lo que me pudo haber contestado.

Sin Garantias/No Assurance

This is my final exercise from last semester. We stole our shots in the streets of Miramar and then headed to the Port O Call, where we shot the last part. It was a shoot filled with problems, headaches, tension, people storming out of the "set" (if a back-street in Santurce can be called that), fights and other "fun" stuff. However, I did get to collaborate with some very good friends with whom I go way back and I must say that the result of our experimenting came out all right. Hey, at least we learned that you can shoot at night on the street without lighting and you'll still get some exposure.

Como si fuera un Danes pana de Von Trier haciendo un statement sobre el cine...

El cine narrativo es la más efímera de todas las artes. El empeño en hacerte sentir en el momento, en afectarte sensorialmente para provocar una reacción ante un evento que ocupa escasos segundos en la pantalla hace que su impacto sea tan intenso como irremediablemente pasajero. Uno vive lo que sucede en la pantalla, pero vivir es así, una acto momentáneo que se olvida tan pronto se encienden las luces del local.

Andrew ("Citizen") Sarris on film acting

A trick accent, a beard, an eye-patch, old age make-up- these are the accoutrements of acting to many people. And that is why the worst acting is often mistaken for the best, particularily on the screen, where being transcends pretending, and just standing there can often be more effective than doing something.

questions to write by

Lately I find myself repeating these questions like a creed, like a mantra. I look like a crazy person in the subway, or an actor on his way to an audition, which pretty much amounts to the same thing. Of course, the most important is the last one, and the hardest to answer.

who's the protagonist (whose story is it)?
what does he/she want?
what's keeping them from getting it?
who's your antagonist/antagonistic force?
what's their motivation in engaging the protagonist and vice versa?
what's at stake?
why now (why does the story start/end when it does)?
is it clear without ceasing to be concise?
IS IT INTERESTING?

Diagram This

I am currently in the midst of doing prep work for the writing of my first feature script. I have been outlining the hell out of the story for two weeks now. I look awful: unshaven, unkempt three days' stubble, baggy eyes with dark circles beneath them and the perennial beer gut growing bigger by the second. Good news though, I am ready to start writing now. This diagramming stuff is a new thing for me, but I've found it to be very useful. I am hoping that once I open the Final Draft program and begin the screenwriting process in earnest it will be more like filling in the blanks or connecting the dots. I guess that's the wisdom behind the outline, it helps you get your story's structure straight rather than diving into the screen pages and trying to find it in the writing. That's a recipe for disaster, it might be o.k. for stream-of-consciousness type novelists, but if you're trying to convey a visual story you better know where you're going. As my proffessor last semester commented, everybody knows where their story starts, the important thing is to know where it ends.

On that note, I must say that I'm not sure about how I feel about my story's ending, but at least I have one, and it is very specific. Spring Break is this upcoming week and I plan on bulldozing through my first act... 30 pages more or less. I don't think it's an unrealistic goal. At any rate, I need all the good vibes I can get.

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE CHILANGOS

IMDB is a very useful tool for the chronically bored cinephiles with a penchant for online procrastination like me. Filing through the seemingly endless dentrytes of this meta-search engine devoted to cataloguing films and the people who do them, one begins to connect the invisible dots that reveal the film industry, and not just the one in Hollywood mind you, as a very small world after all. It really is just like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but on a much grander scale.

It was while surfing this world wide web of end credits that I discovered that the current holy trinity of Mexican cinema, the filmmakes Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo Del Toro are credited in each others films. I had heard that they were friends, but the IMDB made it official, these guys form a loose collective in which they executive produce and/or dispense story and editorial advice on each other’s projects. This, of course, struck a resonant chord in my Hello Kittyish movie buff heart, being as fond as I am of elite groups of directors who, sharing a particular time, nationality and sensibility, have gotten together to play out their ideas at certain pivotal moments of movie history. In doing so they have created specific movements shrouded in the haze of mythology.

Just think of Eisenstein, Kuleshov and the rest of the Soviet gang getting high on montage and revolution. Or the too cool for school French spear-headed by Godard, Truffaut and Rivette, who smoked their Gauloises and wore their shades even as they rewrote the visual grammar of movies together. Much has been written about the friendship of the bearded American auteurs of the Seventies. The first generation of directors to come out of film school formed a series of strategic allegiances that led to many of their opera primas getting made. In this way Coppola gave a helping hand to Lucas, enabling American Graffiti, and he, in turn, coached Spielberg through The Sugarland Express.

In the past fifteen years we have seen the rise of two groups of friends who have shaken the panorama of current film art. On the one hand you have the subversive Danes, who brought cheap, democratizing DV to the forefront of filmmaking with their early-nineties Dogma. It could be argued that theirs has been a dubious contribution: a glance at the crappy, wobbly-scope, masturbatory excesses of so many student films espousing the “vows of chastity” manifesto held forth by Von Trier, Vitenberg and their acolytes seem to confirm this. However, the widespread influence they exerted, and continue to wield to some extent, tends to underline their importance. On the other hand you have the rebel of the backlot Americans: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Having exploded into the scene in the mid-nineties, they led the American independent film explosion that revitalized the U.S.’s tired dominance of the film world. The two eternal teen agers at heart share a love for Sergio Leone, girls with guns, and ultra-violent stories peppered with brilliant, pop culture induced dialogue. Nowadays they work on each others films just for kicks, crediting their collaborations with the ludicrous title of “guest director”.

The international film festival circuit forms the backbone of “world film” (which in essence, is just an euphemestic phrase to refer to films which are not American, but which, despite this crushing setback, are a common occurance). In many ways the major festivals, with their Palme D’Ors, Golden Lions and Silver Mormons (isn’t that how Sundance’s grand jury prize is called?) –not to mention the travelling court of international critics that hand these out- have become the self-proclaimed arbitrers of which region is annointed as the next world film powerhouse. It is a cyclical affair. In the past fifteen years a line could be drawn from the Dogmatic Danes to the neo-realist Iranians, to the hyper-violent Asians (Park Chan-Wook, anyone?). With the release this year of Babel, Children of Men, and Pan’s Labyrinth, it is now, unquestionably, the far out Chilangos’s hour.

Chilango is actually a derogatory term used in Mexico to describe the inhabitants of Mexico City, which are viewed as somehow different from the rest of the country. Well, it could certainly be said that those who hail from that notoriously oppressive megalopolis, brimming as it is with pollution, twenty million souls, and its staggering contradictions, are not just aliens to the rest of their countrymen but to the rest of the world as well. In any case, they are obviously treated that way by their powerful neighbor to the north. And yet, that is precisely the gritty, urban energy that the filmmaking triumvirate of Iñárritu, Cuarón and Del Toro have harnessed to take the film world by storm in 2006.

Clearly, their rise is no overnight success. Each of them has been developing their careers, honing their style and tackling increasingly diverse themes for years. Cuarón, for example, has been working in the film industry for the past twenty-five years, climbing up the ranks in Mexico, first as an assistant director, although he continued to write and direct his own short films. His first feature, Sólo con tu Pareja, came out in 1991. It is a dark RomCom of manners that deftly showed Cuarón’s power of observation as well as a willingness to play against the traditional, melodramatic Mexican character. Guillermo Del Toro also spent the early Eighties developing his short films even as he put his quircky obsession with movie monsters in the service of the make-up/special effects department of low-budget Mexican horror ficks. His first ping in the critical radar came with the release of his first feature in 1993. Cronos is a pop-gothic tale with Bogesian undertones that goes from the 16th Century to the mid-nineties featuring a couple of scorpion shaped devices that could unlock the secret of eternal life to those who would learn how to manipulate them.

Cuarón’s and Del Toro’s more familiar trajectory of film kids going at it until they got their first break stands in sharp contrast with González Iñárritu’s entrance into the film world. Iñárritu was actually the youngest executive ever to be in charge of production at Televisa, Mexico’s most important TV station, and one of Latin America’s leading “telenovela” factories. After leaving Televisa he founded Zeta films, one of the biggest producers of TV ads and music videos in the country. So it wasn’t until after he had forged a career as Mexico’s foremost director of commercials that he got the urge to make a feature. Through his search for good scripts he partnered with writer Guillermo Arriaga, and out of that collaboration Amores Perros sprang forth. That film, with its fractured three story narrative and exuberant hyperactive style, shook the film world in 2000 and cemented a stormy relationship between the director and scribbler Arriaga that has recently come undone with the post-release controversy over Babel’s auteurship.

It is no secret that Hollywood’s headhunters search far and wide for emerging talent. The West Coast industry’s history is littered with outsiders, wether they be artists from other fields such as literature or foreign filmmakes who have been brought over in order to cash in with their talents. It is, however, a tricky transition. It could be said that the road to Hollywood is paved with the washed-up work of many a genius. For example, both Brecht and Faulkner tried to fatten their paychecks with screenwriting work during the Major Studios’s heyday only to encounter frustration and resistance. Eventually they left town with a whimper rather than with the Big Bang they had set off respectively in Western Theater and the American letters. Buñuel, to my mind one of the masters, tried to get work as a director only to leave for Mexico after hitting a wall of incomprehension in Hollywood.

Of course, for every Bergman that comes to California thinking that he can make The Seventh Seal on a Hollywood budget with a star-filled cast and is quickly sent back to Sweden, there are Langs, Lubistchs, Wilders and Woos that prove that the transition can be a profitable one, both creatively and at the box office. In fact, the Chilangos have added one more chapter to the Hollywood success story. Moving north of the border Cuarón has flourished with the big-budget imaginative children’s fare that he has turned out such as The Little Princess and The Prisioner of Azbekaztan installment in the monolithic Harry Potter franchise. Del Toro has also been “taken in” by Hollywood. He has turned his turned his inner comicbook geek into a succesful filmmaker helming the transition of alternative heroes like Blade and Hellboy from the comic page to the screen. It is obvious that the latter one is a movie that is very dear to him and all reports point out that he is developing it into an ongoing love-affair with the character.

Meanwhile, after Amores Perros, the Iñárritu/Arriaga team found themselves in the enviable position of making any movie they wanted, anywhere in the world. They chose to go with 21 Grams, a somber drama that features the patented Arriaga fractured plot with three main characters. It was not an obvious choice, either in material, a bleak exploration of lives as they are brought together by death, or setting: the United States. Still, it was financed by Focus Features, one of the leading independent producers in the country and it featured an all-star cast led by Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts. Although it did not enjoy the earth-shattering critical success of Amores Perros and did not do nearly as brisk a business as the more commercial Blade 2 or The Little Princess, it did cement the Iñárritu/Arriaga partnership’s reputation as one of the leading auteurs working in cinema today.

Hollywood notwithstanding, recent developments in the career of the three Chilango filmmakers suggest that they are not satisfied with the benefits afforded by the American industry. Cuarón went back to Mexico and made his best film to date: Y tu mamá también. A loose reworking of Truffaut’s menage a trois story Jules and Jim, the movie exploded in the United States’ cinephile consciousness and brought with it a huge revelation for American audiences: there is a middle class in Mexico City and its sensibility, manners and foibles make for poignant human drama. At the very least it does in Cuarón’s hands. In that film the director introduced the basics of his film style. A curious, roving hand-held camera presents the characters in extended takes. This camera, however, it is not afraid to leave the protagonists in mid-sentence in order to present the character’s context, thereby enriching the narrative with an eye for the seemingly insignificant details. In this sense Cuarón writes a chronicle with his camera of his characters, of their youth, of Mexico and, ultimately, of the tragic dimensions involved in friendship and death.

Del Toro has also cemented his style even as he has found a second home in Spain. His 2001 feature is a ghost story set in a Spanish orphanage in the middle of the Civil War. In this sense, this movie marks the debut of Del Toro’s off-Hollywood penchant for mixing disperate genres within the same movie: the dark horror/fantasy and the political. His camera features smooth and classical motion, ever ready to linger over creatures, jars filled with slime and any other trace of the supernatural. His images are full of gorgeous, art-direction heavy sets that always seem to lead to the unexpected. And yet Del Toro seems to be the most classicaly minded of the three filmmakers. There is little of the grungy, gritty feel that Iñárritu and Caurón lapse into. Echoes of Hitchcock and the b-movies of Vincent Pryce, not to mention his beloved comic books, reverberate throughout his work.

And then the three chilangos decided, almost in a concerted manner, that they would own 2006. From Spain Del Toro delivered Pan’s Laberynth, a historical horror/fable film set during the waning days of the Spanish Civil War. Its young protagonist gets embroiled with supernatural figments of her own imagination even as she gets tangled up by her country’s dark, 20th Century History. The effects are amazing, but much more so is Del Toro’s assured direction that mixes the historical drama with the horror in a smooth manner that shows no fissures. It is not an easy trick to pull, considering the disparity between the genres. Iñárritu fired off another of his disjointed, straight to the gut, grand old statements with Babel. The story takes place everywhere, seemingly at the same time. The message in the bottle is as subtle as a car crash: what divides us is pettiness and misunderstanding, what unites us is a shared humanity. It was one of the most devisive pictures of the year, people either got it or the didn’t, and then they either loved it or hated it. Regardless of which side you stand on it is impossible to overlook the fact that, pound for pound, Iñárritu is one of the greatest directors working today. Babel works precisely because its director knows no boundaries when coaxing fearless performances from stars such as Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchet while the Moroccan kids that are brought in contact with them are just as good. The action is relentless, as is the dramatic tension. I honestly don’t know of another filmmaker that can sustain the tension for such an extended period of time. While Iñárritu ruled the broken up present Cuarón aimed at the future with his Children of Men. For my money, it was last year’s best picture. Cuarón develops the camera style he inaugurated with director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki in Y tu mamá también even further creating a character out of the visual. The dystopian nightmare belongs to that rare pantheon of near future fucked up world movies that includes Clockwork Orange and The Road Warrior. Not a bad company to be in.

Oscar night was two weeks ago. The telecast went off with much fanfare about the “three amigos” and the fact that is was the most international of awards ceremonies. The Mexicans began getting snubbed early, however. Children of Men wasn’t even nominated for best picture or best director, like Babel and Iñárritu were. Del Toro was considered a shoo in for Best Foreign Picture but in the end the German Lives of Others won. Once it was all over, they all came out empty-handed. Fuck it, I say, 2006 still belonged to them, not to Little Miss Sunshine or The Retarded (mercy, overdue oscar for Scorcese not withstanding). Never mind the Oscars, the chilangos are here to stay and they are not content with staying in Mexico. They have their sights set on the entire world, past, present and future.

Cultural dichotomy test

In Spanish there is a saying –dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres- which could roughly be translated as “tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are”. The point is (although I’m not sure there is a point, I’m just procrastinating really) that our acquaintances define us. If you have a strong tendency towards solipsism and hermetic hibernation like me, then more than actual people, it is the detritus of pop/high culture that you’re aquianted with. With this in mind (I am very bored, mind you) I have developed a cultural dichotomy test that can help you figure out your place in a bi-polar world. As you’ll see, however, it is totally arbitrary and probably says a lot more about me than I would like, starting with the fact that I actually took the time to write it and then answered it.

Beatles or the Stones?
The Stones, all the way, the Beatles are just too Beatlesque

Lennon or McCartney?
McCartney was the real tunesmith. Lennon is overrated anyway.

Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald?
That’s kind of an unfair question, I know. At any rate, I couldn’t live without Nina Simone.

The Clash or the Sex Pistols?
The Clash, the Sex Pistols was just a good publicity stunt.

Britney Spears of Christina Aguilera?
Christina Aguilera, of course. Not only can she actually sing, but I find her way more attractive. Although I must say that I find Britney’s recent descent into white trash insanity quite appealing.

Biggie or 2Pac?
Biggie, NYC baby.

Chaplin or Buster Keaton?
Buster Keaton is my hero.

Coppola or Scorcese?
Coppola, the first two Godfathers encompass all of Scorcece’s work put together.

Lucas or Spielberg?
SPIELBERG, I grew up on Indiana Jones and E.T.

Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino?
I don’t care too much for the sophomoric chicks with guns aesthetic either way, but I’d have to say Tarantino just on the strength of his first two pics.

Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola?
Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson is just too damned precious for my taste.

Iñárritu or Cuarón?
Cuarón any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Jack Black or Will Ferrell?
When I grow up I want to be like Jack Black.

Penélope Cruz or Salma Hayek?
Interesting, I love Penélope.

Faulkner or Hemingway?
“the world is a tale full of sound and fury told by idiots signifying nothing” Nuff said.

Delillo or Roth?
I have to go with Delillo, although Portnoy’s Complaint was a very important book for me.

Shakespeare of Cervantes?
I challange all of Shakespeare to come up with a single Quixote (and if he does, he still has to come up with a Sancho).

Malcom X of MLK?
Hummm, it depends on which side of the bed I got out from: the combative or the peacefully resistant.

Hillary or Barak?
I don’t even care about this one.

Y para los boricuas…

Hector Lavoe o Rubén Blades?
Hector, all the way.

Eddie Santiago o Frankie Ruiz?
Frankie Ruiz, por supuesto.

Haciendo Punto o Roy Brown?
Whatever.

Silvio o Pablo Milanés?
Silvio, por supuesto.

Don Omar o Daddy Yankee?
Don Omar me parece más real.

Tego Calderón o el Residente?
El Tego.

Superaquello o Circo?
Superaquello, pero estoy viciado.

Polbo o Dávila 666?
He tenido esta discusión 20,000 veces con mi esposa y aunque ella no esté de acuerdo yo creo que Dávila roquea bien duro.

Cocolos o roqueros?
Me voy a tirar un cop-out… rocolos (como yo)

Luis Rafael Sánchez o Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá?
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá

Ana Lydia o Rosario?
Por favor, no voy a dignificar esa pregunta con una respuesta.

Manuel Abreu Adorno o Manuel Ramos Otero?
Abreu Adorno.

Jacobo Morales o Marcos Zurinaga?
Jacobo.

Medalla o India?
No conozco a nadie que beba cerveza India.

Obras perdidas

Debido a que me encuentro totalmente sometido a un viaje shakesperiano bastante terriblón, he estado perdiendo horas ciegas (procrasticanción, creo que así se llama) surfeando el web en busca de información sobre el bardo isabelino, inventor de lo humano en la literatura, según el crítico Harold Bloom. Fue así como volvió a entrar en mi conciencia el hecho que Shakespeare y Cervantes murieron en el mismo año: 1616. Me parece increíble que estos dos genios fueran contemporáneos. Más increíble aún es que, si bien Cervantes no tenía ni puta idea de quien era Shakespeare, Shakespeare aparentemente sabía del manco apestao de Lepanto. Según Wikipedia, siempre una fuente poco confiable pero por lo mismo tanto más interesante como herramienta de investigación nebulosa (la construcción fatula es adrede, para que haya confusión sobre si lo nebuloso es la herramienta o la investigación) la primera parte del Quijote circuló en traducción por la Inglaterra isabelina. De hecho, hay una obra perdida de Shakespeare basada en uno de los episodios del Quijote- ¨Cardenio¨. Según Bloom y Wikipedia ¨Cardenio¨ se escribió en colaboración con John Fletcher y tuvo estreno en Londres a cargo de los King´s Men, la compañía del bardo.

Bueno, todo esto me resulta fascinante, precisamente porque me excita la imaginación el hecho de que ¨obras perdidas¨ como Cardenio anden flotando por ahí, tirando sombras sobre la historia de la literatura. Me interesa sobre todo como éstas, que nadie tiene idea de su contenido, inciden sobre la literatura que conocemos. Un ejemplo famoso es El nombre de la rosa de Humberto Eco, un thriller basado en un monasterio medieval que gira en torno a un manuscrito perdido de la Comedia de Aristóteles. Se trata, quizás, de la obra perdida más importante de la historia, donde el taxónomo por excelencia discurre sobre los elementos que componen la comedia y que servía de volumen hermano de su Poética, donde analiza la composición del drama, la épica y la tragedia.

Claro, en mi cabeza existen más de una explicación para la no existencia de las obras perdidas, más allá de que literalmente se hayan perdido a través del tiempo. Perdida también es una obra que no ha visto la luz del día porque ha sido engavetada, relegada forzosamente al olvido o nunca ha llegado a publicarse o a distribuírse (en el caso de una película) porque no ha encontrado quien la saque a flote. Hay obras perdidas que así lo son por censura, externa o autoimpuesta. Perdida hubiera sido la obra entera de Kafka si su albaceas no hubiera desobedecido las instrucciones del autor.

En el cine purertorriqueño de la DIVEDCO, esa rama gubernamental que produjo un cine educional a partir de los cuarenta y que aún sobrevive como la mejor muestra de la producción cinematográfica nacional existe un caso célebre. Ignacio fue una película que trataba sobre la migración de la ruralía a los arrabales de la ciudad. Se trata de una familia que se traslada al Caño Martín Peña y allí no conoce más que miseria. Según la leyenda el mismo Muñoz Marín, que había desarrollado la DIVEDCO como un ¨pet project¨, mandó a engavetar Ignacio por lo contraproducente que le resultaba la imagen que presentaba de los arrabales sanjuaneros vis a vis su plan-de-progreso-pan-tierra-y-libertad-operation-bootstrap-chijí-chijá. La peli quedó en el olvido hasta que, décadas después, el historiador y cineasta Luis Rosario Albert haciendo investigación sobre una retrospectiva que quería montar sobre la DIVEDCO se topó con una latas de cine olvidadas en un laboratorio de revelado cinematográfico en Nueva York. Allí descubrió uno de los pocos ¨prints¨ sobrevivientes de Ignacio. La peli al fin logró su estreno a finales de los noventa, luego de más de cuatro décadas de haber sido realizada.

En la literatura del patio conozco dos casos que me llaman la atención. Uno es la primera novela de Manuel Abreu Adorno, el ¨escritor maldito¨ par exellance de Ocean Park que fue encontrado muerto en un banco de París. ¨Eleanor Rigby o la noche que mataron a¨ suena como que es una especie de bildungsroman muy particular, un ¨tell all¨ de las vivencias del autor en el colegio San Ignacio a principio de los setenta. Parte de mí sabe que la novela no ha sido publicada porque debe ser bastante mala. Sin embargo, siendo fanático de los ¨blanquitos¨ y su literatura me interesaría leerla si es que a algún editor con un gusto morboso por la miscelánea literaria le da por echarse encima ese proyecto. Un caso muy diferente es ¨La querencia¨ el último poemario de Ángela María Dávila, otra ¨poeta maldita¨ . Según he escuchado, la querencia se trata de poesía demoledora y visceral y puede que contenga poesías de cuando Ángela María ya padecía de una enfermedad mental que la dejó inhabilitada en la última década de su vida. Hay quienes dicen, incluso, que el poemario excede la fuerza de Animal fiero y tierno, su obra maestra. Desafortanadamente, ¨La querencia¨ no se ha publicado porque su manuscrito ha resultado ser tan problemático y lleno de vicisitudes como su autora lo fue en vida. No conozco los detalles de la tortuosa trayectoria del texto, pero creo que está plagado por peleas internas entre la sucesión de Ángela María y los poetas que la rodeaban.

En una nota muy personal, hay una peliculita perdida que llevo muy de cerca y que nunca podré llegar a ver. Mi padre hizo sus estudios de ¨Film Studies¨ en la universidad de Columbia a finales de los sesenta. Como parte del currículo forzaban a los nerds dedicados a la crítica/historia/teoría del cine a coger una clase de producción. El ejercicio final constaba de una cortometraje silente hecho en Super 8 que cada estudiante debía filmar y editar. Podían escoger entre un ¨chase film¨, una historia de amor o una historia sobre la soledad. Obviamente mi padre, que siempre ha tenido una predisposición por lo lúgubre a pesar de su intenso sentido de la ironía y el humor satírico, escogió la soledad. No hay duda en mi mente de que la peliculita debe haber sido un fracaso total. El director así me lo ha admitido en más de una ocasión. Me imagino toma tras toma de una calidad bergmanesca meets the caribbean charrería de un hombre caminando solo por Central Park. Como buen caribeño, el cineasta debe haber concluído con una toma del protagonista mirando distraídamente al río Hudson. Por alguna razón los cubanos/puertorros/dominicanos que conozco en Nueva York se la pasan buscando el agua, como si al encontrarse con ella les llegara la sensación reconfortante de que Manhattan también es una isla. En todo caso el realizador alegadamente destruyó la única copia décadas más tarde, luego de nacidos sus cinco hijos. Alegadamente la destrucción del material fue instigado por mi madre, que lo sometía a limpiezas esporádicas de su atiborrado closet que solía contener una colección impresionante de ¨stills¨ y ¨glossies¨ de estrellas de cine que había adquirido a lo largo de una carrera extendida como crítico de cine.

Ahora soy yo el que se encuentra haciendo una maestría en Columbia como aspirante a guionista y director cinematográfico. No estoy aquí porque mi padre estudió aquí sino porque fue la única universidad que me admitió (de hecho, estoy seguro de que la única razón por la que me admitieron fue porque alguien en la oficina de admisiones cometió un error clerical, después de todo, desde NYU a la Universidad de Texas me dijeron que no). No obstante, me parece una coincidencia agradable. Sigo pensando en la peliculita perdida de mi padre, quien me dio la oportunidad de crecer viendo a Hitchcock y a Truffaut. Como estudiante de cine todos los días me siento acosado por las mismas preguntas: ¿qué hago estudiando esto? Nada de lo que hago me parece especialmente interesante o bien hecho. La industria del cine es difícil y sumamente competida. Me cuestiono qué pasará cuando me gradúe y tenga más de cien mil dólares en deudas. Lucho con las inseguridades a diario. Es en ocasiones como ésta que la peliculita de mi padre se asoma en la parte de atrás de mi mente y una de las contestaciones a las que acudo para no caer en una parálisis provocada por el ataque de nervios es que estoy tratando de rehacer la película que mi padre perdió, aunque solo sea para destruírla yo también en mi momento.

An honourable murderer, if you will...

Yes, Shakespeare. Yes, I am the living cliche of an aspiring screenwriter, gushing over the bard. Yes, Othello blew me away. Trying to pinpoint why I have to guess it is all about Iago. What an antagonist! He is the prototype of the malicious, power-hungry person who delights in plotting and machinations for his own benefit.

There's a fine line between evil and malicious. The malicious person breeds evil, whereas the evil person can only bring about what is in his nature. Maliciousness is a choice, evil is ingrained. In this sense, maliciousness is more "writeable" since it would depend on the character's actions (like Iago's).

Of course, the thing about Elizabethan theater is that the playwright couldn’t stage that much physical action. Drama is action and with Shakespeare action is in the language, as it should be when writing theater, good theater that is. He had to keep the dialogue dazzling and provocative in order to keep the crowd engaged.

One thing that struck me this time around is the amount of pop wisdom tossed off in the lines. You may not agree with Emilia’s thoughts on cheating, or with the duke's lines about not holding a grudge, but they are both beautifully phrased.

Sooo, being the nerd that I am, I have taken it upon myself to compile my favorite bits from Othello. Here they are:

Iago discloses his nature and motive to Rodorigo (the ballad of the schemer):
O sir, content you,
I follow his to serve my turn upon him.
We canot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
wear out his time, much like his master’s ass.
For nought but ponder, and when he’s old, cashiered.
Whip me such honest knaves! Others there are
Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them, and when they have lined their coats,
Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul,
And such a one do I profess myself. For sir,
It is as sure as you are Rodorigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.
In following him, I follow but myself:
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty
But seeming so, for my peculiar end;
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
No complement extern, ‘tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

The duke attempts to console Brabantio over the fact that his daughter Desdemona truly loves Othello the Moor:
Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence
Which as a grise, or step, may help these lovers.
When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw a new mischief on.
What cannot be preserv’d when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

Iago warns Othello of the passion (the GREEN EYED MONSTER THAT MOCKS THE MEAT IT FEEDS ON, jesus! What a description!) that he is craftily instilling in him as he speaks:
O beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
Bu O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts- suspects, yet soundly loves!

The green-eyed monster eats away at Othello, he ponders marriage:
O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses. Yet ‘tis the plague to great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
‘Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.

Iago comments that his plan is working and says why:
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of Holy Writ. This may do something.
(The Moor already changes with my POISON)
dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
but with a little act upon the blood
burn like mines of sulphur.

Is this where the phrase crocodile's tears comes from? Othello uses it to describe unfaithful (in his mind) Desdemona’s crying:
If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.

Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s trusty companion, discusses the difference between men cheating and women doing so (there really is none, so it boils down to why do men and women cheat):
What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too. And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

Othello, having killed Desdemona in a fit of jealous rage then learns that it was all Iago’s plotting.
Iago
I bleed, sir, but not kill’d.
Othello
I am not sorry neither; I’d have thee live,
For in my sense ‘tis happiness to die.
Lodovico (Desdemona’s uncle)
O thou Othello, that was once so good,
Fallen in the practice of a cursed slave,
What shall be said to thee?
Othello
Why, anything;
An honourable murderer, if you will,
For naught I did in hate, but all in honour.

The Moor's last words…
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing atenuate,
Nor set down naught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Judaean, threw a pearl away
Richer tha all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unsed to the melting mood,
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medcinable gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog
And smote him- thus.
-He stabs himself-

Oh-my-god!!!! What an ending…

Boot Quest 8th St and 6th Ave

con las patas

aquí va, el último intento de hacer una bitácora. Esta vez la concibo como un zafacón, aquí va todo lo que no encuentre un lugar adecuado...