up down
Finals was intensely busy, not just because of grading papers but because so many things converged those last two weeks of school. I’m still behind on my emails and do lists, but now I have some time to attend to them as my schedule returns to something manageable. Last night for example I relaxed and watched a film with my roommates. Up the Down Staircase, with Sandy Denis as a teacher in an inner-city New York high school. It came out the same year as To Sir with Love (1967) and ends on the same note, the same note as most “inspirational teacher films,” with the first-year teacher, who was determined to move onto a better job after a taste of juvenile delinquency, deciding she (or he) is needed there, in the trenches.
One thing I liked about this one was that there is no attempt to tie up the various stories. In fact all of them are left open-ended as the school year is so hurried that there’s really no time to give each case special attention. People’s lives are hinted at, full of unhappiness, unfairness, and indecision, and then they just aren’t there. They either solve their problems or they don’t, but they do so on their own time without the camera there to suggest happy or unhappy results: no dramatic comebacks, no violins (though lots of incidental flute), no meaningful pauses. The story keeps the pace of this teacher with an overfilled class, and the tone is believable.
Next on my see-list is Pickpocket (1959), a film that Margaret put a clip of on her entry in the SF MoMA blog. It looks great.
What else? Well, I feel anxious. There’s a January deadline for a grant so I’m getting stuff together for that. Richard put together a nice demo clip, taking the techniques we’ve talked about and applying them to the existing monologues we’ve shot so far. It’s very helpful, both in demonstrating that what we are going for is possible, but also-of course-making me reassess what I want to go for. I wish I could find a more direct and steady path to be creative on. I’m always rewriting, restructuring, fine-tuning and even overhauling concepts. It leaves me in a state 80% of the time of being able to make nothing at all, because I’m too busy researching and altering the game plan.
For this reason, it’s been forever since I made a new drawing. I also have a half-finished novel, one I don’t like anymore so it might stay unfinished. That’s a side note but parallel one. I need to be someone who makes quick art (like this blog for instance), something I do instantly and then move on to the next thing. At least the advantage of doing a video project is I’m not working alone, so I have Richard and Susan, and the others to keep the fires going. I want to start in on the Kevin Killian scripts, while the idea feels fresh … get them shot and “in the can” so to speak. But of course we’re waiting to hear about the grants. Maybe though we can up the shooting date to sometime in the next few months.
.
One thing I liked about this one was that there is no attempt to tie up the various stories. In fact all of them are left open-ended as the school year is so hurried that there’s really no time to give each case special attention. People’s lives are hinted at, full of unhappiness, unfairness, and indecision, and then they just aren’t there. They either solve their problems or they don’t, but they do so on their own time without the camera there to suggest happy or unhappy results: no dramatic comebacks, no violins (though lots of incidental flute), no meaningful pauses. The story keeps the pace of this teacher with an overfilled class, and the tone is believable.
Next on my see-list is Pickpocket (1959), a film that Margaret put a clip of on her entry in the SF MoMA blog. It looks great.
What else? Well, I feel anxious. There’s a January deadline for a grant so I’m getting stuff together for that. Richard put together a nice demo clip, taking the techniques we’ve talked about and applying them to the existing monologues we’ve shot so far. It’s very helpful, both in demonstrating that what we are going for is possible, but also-of course-making me reassess what I want to go for. I wish I could find a more direct and steady path to be creative on. I’m always rewriting, restructuring, fine-tuning and even overhauling concepts. It leaves me in a state 80% of the time of being able to make nothing at all, because I’m too busy researching and altering the game plan.
For this reason, it’s been forever since I made a new drawing. I also have a half-finished novel, one I don’t like anymore so it might stay unfinished. That’s a side note but parallel one. I need to be someone who makes quick art (like this blog for instance), something I do instantly and then move on to the next thing. At least the advantage of doing a video project is I’m not working alone, so I have Richard and Susan, and the others to keep the fires going. I want to start in on the Kevin Killian scripts, while the idea feels fresh … get them shot and “in the can” so to speak. But of course we’re waiting to hear about the grants. Maybe though we can up the shooting date to sometime in the next few months.
.