Meetings With Remarkable Men
Jun. 13th, 2005 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraGood weekend. The store made pots of money and the sun was out.
On Saturday night Ben and I actually went out on a date, something we hadn't done in a long, long time. The State Theater – purchased last year by a film buff who tore out the multiplex partitioning, scraped the grey paint off the walls and restored the film palace to its former El Granada grandeur – is doing a noir series, films paired with writer Q&A's. We did LA Confidential and James Ellroy. Ellroy moved to Carmel two years ago for the golf. Like Bill Murray, Ellroy caddied for a living until he hit the big time.
In interviews, Ellroy always comes across as a humorless Nazi. But in person, Ellroy is a Nazi with a good sense of humor and a kind of aging hipster rhyming act (great-great-grand-daddy of street rap?), self-styled "demon dog." And LA Confidential, the movie, is still compelling. I'm not sure why some films survive the test of time while others don't. The other day I had a strong hankering to see Thirteen Monkeys, one of the few movies I actually own on tape, a movie that really owned me for a while when it first came out. No shit, I think I saw it five times in the theater. Only it's no good anymore. It's stilted and disjointed, I could only watch for half an hour.
In contrast LA Confidential is all of a piece from the supersaturated cinematography palette to the dense but perfect plotting through the strangely stylized performances. I could bleed to death happily in Kim Basinger's all-white fifties living room. I'm still trying to figure out why the violence didn't bother me here. To this day I can't watch Reservoir Dogs. Violence only makes sense to me within the confines of a moral universe, I suppose.
Ellroy is whimsical about his own success. "When your book is optioned, it's like that first kiss. And the chances it will end up being made into a successful movie are roughly equivalent to that kiss leading to fifty years of happily monogamous marriage."
He liked that line so much, in fact, he repeated it three times in the course of the evening.
He also said that he writes in longhand from an extensive outline that's often as long as the finished book. "That way the only things I have to concentrate on in the final draft are style and dialogue."
I spent yesterday writing and formatting a cheesy press release. Kind of embarrassing. But I mean, honestly? How do you write PR for a circus? You can go the po-mo route, I suppose, superlatives that evoke P.T. Barnum ("For a Modest admission you will be privy to Miracles of Masterly Mummery!") or work the Ray Bradbury angle ("Remember when you used to have an imagination?") but both of those depend on branding decisions supported by artwork. My little circus has no branding.
They are trying to get hip though.
"What do you think?" JDK asked me last week, showing off the new poster.
What does it matter what I think? I wanted to ask. I'll run with whatever you give me.
It's an odd thing, I suppose, but JDK lives in my brain. This is something that happens to me with some people every once in a while. It has nothing to do with affinity or even attraction. Maybe it's a past life connection.
"I think it's very well done," I said, choosing my words carefully. "Like something you'd see hanging near the kitchen downstairs at Chez Panisse."
"But –" he prompted.
"But," I agreed. "It's designed to appeal to an upscale audience, say professors of comparative lit at Chico State. It's the Chagall circus take. But it won't do a thing for you for you with the almond pickers in Corning, and they make up half your audience."
"Deanna" – the new brand identity consultant – "says it will double our audiences within eight weeks."
Ooooh! Bad JDK! Triangulating!
I shrug and smile.
"She didn't want me to hire you," he said, staring at me. "She asked, 'Can't you hold off for a month?' She's so certain that the posters are going to work and she wanted to make sure she got the credit for it."
"Whatever," I say.
"The thing is I don't know whether to trust her."
I shrug again. "You hired her for a reason. Presumably because she knows how to do something you don't. You've got to learn to delegate some time."
In other news, Thomas Kinkaide, acclaimed Painter of Kitsch, wandered into the store last week. I wasn't there. Ben reports that in person, Kinkaide – "Call me Tom!" – is an affable and charming guy, obsessed with Fiery Food reportage on the Food Network and in despair over the commercialization of Cannery Row. To which I can only say: well, pal, you did your part.
On Saturday night Ben and I actually went out on a date, something we hadn't done in a long, long time. The State Theater – purchased last year by a film buff who tore out the multiplex partitioning, scraped the grey paint off the walls and restored the film palace to its former El Granada grandeur – is doing a noir series, films paired with writer Q&A's. We did LA Confidential and James Ellroy. Ellroy moved to Carmel two years ago for the golf. Like Bill Murray, Ellroy caddied for a living until he hit the big time.
In interviews, Ellroy always comes across as a humorless Nazi. But in person, Ellroy is a Nazi with a good sense of humor and a kind of aging hipster rhyming act (great-great-grand-daddy of street rap?), self-styled "demon dog." And LA Confidential, the movie, is still compelling. I'm not sure why some films survive the test of time while others don't. The other day I had a strong hankering to see Thirteen Monkeys, one of the few movies I actually own on tape, a movie that really owned me for a while when it first came out. No shit, I think I saw it five times in the theater. Only it's no good anymore. It's stilted and disjointed, I could only watch for half an hour.
In contrast LA Confidential is all of a piece from the supersaturated cinematography palette to the dense but perfect plotting through the strangely stylized performances. I could bleed to death happily in Kim Basinger's all-white fifties living room. I'm still trying to figure out why the violence didn't bother me here. To this day I can't watch Reservoir Dogs. Violence only makes sense to me within the confines of a moral universe, I suppose.
Ellroy is whimsical about his own success. "When your book is optioned, it's like that first kiss. And the chances it will end up being made into a successful movie are roughly equivalent to that kiss leading to fifty years of happily monogamous marriage."
He liked that line so much, in fact, he repeated it three times in the course of the evening.
He also said that he writes in longhand from an extensive outline that's often as long as the finished book. "That way the only things I have to concentrate on in the final draft are style and dialogue."
I spent yesterday writing and formatting a cheesy press release. Kind of embarrassing. But I mean, honestly? How do you write PR for a circus? You can go the po-mo route, I suppose, superlatives that evoke P.T. Barnum ("For a Modest admission you will be privy to Miracles of Masterly Mummery!") or work the Ray Bradbury angle ("Remember when you used to have an imagination?") but both of those depend on branding decisions supported by artwork. My little circus has no branding.
They are trying to get hip though.
"What do you think?" JDK asked me last week, showing off the new poster.
What does it matter what I think? I wanted to ask. I'll run with whatever you give me.
It's an odd thing, I suppose, but JDK lives in my brain. This is something that happens to me with some people every once in a while. It has nothing to do with affinity or even attraction. Maybe it's a past life connection.
"I think it's very well done," I said, choosing my words carefully. "Like something you'd see hanging near the kitchen downstairs at Chez Panisse."
"But –" he prompted.
"But," I agreed. "It's designed to appeal to an upscale audience, say professors of comparative lit at Chico State. It's the Chagall circus take. But it won't do a thing for you for you with the almond pickers in Corning, and they make up half your audience."
"Deanna" – the new brand identity consultant – "says it will double our audiences within eight weeks."
Ooooh! Bad JDK! Triangulating!
I shrug and smile.
"She didn't want me to hire you," he said, staring at me. "She asked, 'Can't you hold off for a month?' She's so certain that the posters are going to work and she wanted to make sure she got the credit for it."
"Whatever," I say.
"The thing is I don't know whether to trust her."
I shrug again. "You hired her for a reason. Presumably because she knows how to do something you don't. You've got to learn to delegate some time."
In other news, Thomas Kinkaide, acclaimed Painter of Kitsch, wandered into the store last week. I wasn't there. Ben reports that in person, Kinkaide – "Call me Tom!" – is an affable and charming guy, obsessed with Fiery Food reportage on the Food Network and in despair over the commercialization of Cannery Row. To which I can only say: well, pal, you did your part.
