(First of a several part photo essay based on the shooting of Plain Songs by Daniel Levine with Brian Spellman. Enjoy.)










(First of a several part photo essay based on the shooting of Plain Songs by Daniel Levine with Brian Spellman. Enjoy.)
Film moments re: revolt #1:
The moment in Renoir’s “Boudu Saved From Drowning” when the titular Boudu is finally readied for the terminal acclimation to bobo aesthetics, almost arranged marriage, and place in monied society nearly all romantic comedies gravitate toward with the sort of single minded doomed determinism that makes something like Melville’s “Le Samourai” seem loose and easy going by comparison, and decides to reject all of it to go be a hobo with his dog again.
Film moments re: revolt #2:
Godard’s unreluctant willingness to loathe his rural militarist protagonists in “Le Carabiniers”. The singularly unpatriotic tone of the film is most famously summed up in the inverted shots of fireworks. A revolt against the well-meaning lies and sentimentality of earlier war films, even the purportedly anti-war ones.
Film moments re: revolt #3:
Bruce Conner’s montage in “Report” shifting between the Kennedy assassination, a matador killing a bull, and a space age refrigerator commercial. A revolt against the commercial transmigration of the dead. I sometimes fantasize about another universe where Reagan was actually assassinated and Conner made a spiritual sequel. As it was, Reagan died much later, with most of the press up to and including NPR eulogizing him beatifically. Having died of old age I guess he was entirely the refrigerator.
(Guest post by Daniel Levine. His first book “Every Time I Check My Messages Somebody Thinks I’m Dead” is available on Etsy.)
“Herman Melville’s “The Confidence Man”:
It’s all set on a merchant ship (Melville loves his boats) and in one part two middle class men see a wretched looking black man who is both crippled and lame dancing to get people to throw coins at him so he can catch them in his mouth. One of the middle class men throws a coin and the cripple catches it in his mouth. The middle class men walk off and have a long conversation about the importance of confidence in fellow men and voice their paranoia that the cripple wasn’t actually crippled and had scammed them out of the coin.
I realized the significance of this at a Mexican bakery in Brooklyn with my father once. I realized that the girl behind the counter had misheard my order and undercharged me. I mentioned to my father that this had happened and he said “It makes it taste better, doesn’t it. That feeling you got one over on somebody. That’s the beauty of America,” and then ate several sugar donuts.
(Guest post by Daniel Levine. His first book can be purchased here.)