Ben Gazzara, Rest in Peace.

Husbands

Husbands

Husbands

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Opening Night

Opening Night

St. Jack

Tales of Ordinary Madness

Tales of Ordinary Madness

Buffalo 66

Happiness

Permanence Is Relative: SUMMER END SALE!

So it's been a long time since I posted and since I sold a book.

I have a small inventory of Permanence Is Relative still in stock and want to sell them at the discounted price of $9.99 + 1.99 s/h.

That's 5 whole dollars of the publisher's cover price! Ye gads!

Now is your chance to save money, read poems about childhood trauma, pornography, ekphrastic poems based on the pedophilic work of Larry Clark, and suicide for less than what it costs to buy a 12-pack.


But wait, there's more!

• Impress your friends with literature from a local, independent artist. 
• Proudly display an original Stephen Andrew Palermo autograph! (worth at least $2.94 on Alibris and Abe Books!)
• Wow them with your literacy by explaining the significance of the book's section titles like Enucleation and Evisceration! It'll tear their insides asunder with envy!

In today's uncertain economic climate, East Coast earthquakes, tabloidian infanticide cases, and global terror, couldn't we all use a little pick-me-up?

What are you waiting for, click the Buy It Now Button on the right side of this page.

Character Study.

I find myself thinking a lot about the character study lately; those well-paced, cinematic looks at lives on the outer fringe; loners, losers, junkies, and ordinary people wedged into extraordinary circumstances.

My appreciation for  a film's sense of pacing wasn't immediate, so when confronting my first grouping of character studies, it wasn't necessarily a seamless transition from blockbusters and obvious arthouse favorites. With time, it grew, especially in the past decade, due in large part to films like Hardcore (1979), Joe (1970), and The Piano Teacher (2001).

Though very different in tone, the three aforementioned films share similar sensibilities: a sense of dread, suffocation, and lone men and women on a search for something, whether it be a lost child or a sense of power.

The latter, a contemporary study of a woman living in the shadow of an oppressive and psychologically abusive mother, finds the central character's experience dominating what is a superficially standard narrative: woman fears mother, woman meets young boy, tension mounts, woman's world comes apart by the film's close. 

The most basic tenet of the character study is that an individual's every movement counts more than set design, cinematography, and score, although all can still be remarkable. Often, it is the minutiae of daily life that allows the film to work.

The relationships of a single character to the forces that surround them, be it the failure of the American dream, a stifling relationship, substance abuse, or virtually nothing at all, are primary. In 90-100 minutes, a single man or woman's history, desires, fears, and breaking points are revealed and unravel, typically in ways unfavorable to the viewer.

If honesty and an overarching sense of the genuine are to be found on film, they most definitely are in the successful character-driven story.

While the 1970s were overflowing with these stories, this is not the only point in cinema's history to uncover this type of narrative, but the work of that decade and its fearless directors certainly brought the most amount of courage and risk to the screen.

This still remains one of the few extended (and most rewarding) periods in filmmaking that understood and embraced the slow-burn; the rise and fall of action, inaction, experience, and conflict that finds the viewer being careened into a film's close left with one of two things: redemption or destruction.

"Happines is a"

As someone who has known James Black for close to a decade, this day was always a certainty.

And quite frankly, it has taken way too goddamned long for it to come.

Happiness is a, Black's first full-length collection of short fiction is on its way and I want to promote the shit out of it.

And not because of any personal affinity to the man. If I was a complete stranger, I would want to promote this book.


Being close to someone engaged in the craft of writing that is also gifted, prolific, and downright brilliant can do a number on a writer's sense of worth. It's also a fucking rarity in a world of one-trick ponies and next big things.

For an example of Black's prolificity, see my bedroom closet stuffed with hundreds of pages of early drafts, completed works, a collection of poetry, and other published works all with his name punched into them.

And most of them were complete in a year's time.

How many people can say they've written a novel only to trash it upon completion just to say they could? He can.

As long as I've known him, he's been in the game. It's one of the main reasons we're still milling about in one another's lives; recognizing the writer's innate need to connect with at least one other soul doomed to give itself over to the act. 

To sum up my excitement about the release of Happiness is a would fall short of the mark.

In summary, be prepared for what a lucky few of us have already seen at work for years: dizzying concoctions of wordplay, rhythmic grace, a devastatingly real sense of people and place, and a voice all unfairly his own.

To my own dismay, Black is possessive of a gift that makes this particular writer ashamed to call himself such.

 

---

From http://sesquipedalism.com:

In this collection of stories written between 2002 and 2006, James Black investigates the myriad and curious ways people react to the most conspicuous absences in their lives. 

A son suddenly starts seeing his father everywhere, half a decade after the man's death. A deadbeat dad goes to meet his son, but only after the boy has been slain and buried. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a young man decides to pack his life inside a camper, and drag it all to higher ground. A caregiver discovers a typographical error on his birth certificate, which allows him to develop a second self, capable of many things which he is not. 


The fourteen stories in Happiness is a each strive to lay bare the truth in the late Kurt Vonnegut's assertion that loneliness is the worst disease by which mankind has ever been stricken. And in the desolate interior worlds described by Black's texts, the idea that the affliction can be permanently cured is dubious at best.

That Which Can't Be 'Unseen.'

It's been six years or so since I saw Irreversible for the first time. A friend and I went to a matinee at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre, the only place in town with balls enough to show Gaspar Noe's infamous second full-length feature. Around that time, they also screened Takashi Miike's ode to arterial spray, Ichi the Killer.

At that point, I had not been as immersed in the consumption of film as I am now. Thanks to above friend for shoving me head-first into the grindhouse that is his DVD collection. Had it not been for this person, I may still live a semblance of a normal life.

Heading to the Dryden, all we had to go on was hearsay, magazine articles, and poster art. I don't even think the trailer had leaked. If it had, I didn't see it. Anyone that's seen the film knows that I was in for a mindfuck of a cinematic experience.

My buddy had been old hand at shocking, disturbing, and downright disgusting movies. He was the kid that brought a fifth-generation copy of I Spit on Your Grave to school one day for everyone to pass around. At least one of us jacked to it. Not me. I saved that for Shocking Asia.

Knowing how strong his stomach was and how deeply entrenched he was in extreme films, part of me had to walk in without fear. I can admit now that the hype surrounding the film and the Dryden's curatorial disclaimer about the nauseating opening of the film made me less than comfortable.

With its frantic camerawork, excessive use of strobe-lights, and extreme sexual violence, Irreversible completely tore my inability to be shocked asunder. Certainly nothing before had affected me as deeply, and for a long time, I was convinced nothing after would.

---

Enter Srpski film [A Serbian Film].

Last weekend, my buddy and I did the Fred Dekker double feature at the Dryden, then headed home to watch what promised to be yet another title in the long list of movies we'd watch and totally forget. My friend told me of the press it had been getting and how early viewers were either disgusted or amazed at how far the envelope was pushed.  We'd heard it before, hadn't we? I told myself it'd be a cake walk.

I was not prepared.


On paper, the depths of depravity Serbian Film reaches will likely cause excitement to the horror-trained eye. Rightfully so, A Serbian Film is a horror film. Just not in the way Nekromantik is.

This is a truly horrifying cinematic experience, where shock for shocks sake is pushed aside for the good of extreme storytelling and emotional devastation.


Spasojevic's debut has already won many over who read the film as a critique of the Serbian government and the atrocities its people suffer through, the central metaphor for the onscreen depravity the viewer witnesses.

The director intended for his viewers to read his film this way and he has been very vocal about his disgust with the socio-political landscape of his native Serbia.


If A Serbian Film's subtext speaks to institutionalized violence, it is even more superficially about all of humanity's ability to destroy human life and the context in which that violence becomes possible.

Due to the Spasojevic's careful attention to character development and a great deal of restraint, Sprski's first half is something to behold; a world in which Sprski's viewers become invested, even if only on the "I'm watching a movie" level. This is what separates the comical trappings of modern horror via the torture porn vehicle and films like Noe's Irreversible, Breillat's Fat Girl, and now, Spasojevic's A Serbian Film.

If at any point in your life, you've seen something you wish you hadn't, if you've ever tried to erase something from your mind, think twice about watching this.

Not for the faint-of-heart, easily disturbed, or those prone to nightmares, Sprski could very well haunt you for a long time after the credits roll.

I still haven't been able to shake some scenes in particular. As a cinephile, that can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, a film that can actually grab it's viewer by the throat is a rarity, especially in what is on the surface a piece of genre work.

On the other, the viewer is a human being, complete with a memory and maybe a sliver of hope left in humanity. Sprski effectively destroys that hope and burns extreme images into one's brain. To this day, Irreversible still lingers about somewhere in the periphery. And yet, I own it on DVD.

This is the mark of an amazing piece of work.

Once seen, it can never be unseen.