Nathan: [points to painting] You know this guy, right?
Caleb: Jackson Pollock.
Nathan: Jackson Pollock. That’s right. The drip painter. Okay. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between. They called it automatic art. Let’s make this like Star Trek, okay? Engage intellect.
Caleb: Excuse me?
Nathan: I’m Kirk. Your head’s the warp drive. Engage intellect. What if Pollock had reversed the challenge. What if instead of making art without thinking, he said, “You know what? I can’t paint anything, unless I know exactly why I’m doing it.” What would have happened?
Caleb: He never would have made a single mark.
Nathan: Yes! You see, there’s my guy, there’s my buddy, who thinks before he opens his mouth. He never would have made a single mark.
Nathan: The challenge is not to act automatically. It’s to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love…
Nathan: And for the record, Ava’s not pretending to like you. And her flirting isn’t an algorithm to fake you out. You’re the first man she’s met that isn’t me. And I’m like her dad, right? Can you blame her for getting a crush on you?
She eventually dropped out of high school and met the singer Gibby Haynes and the guitarist Paul Leary, who had founded Butthole Surfers in San Antonio in 1981, while renting them space in the downtown Austin warehouse where she was living. In 1983, they invited her to join the band on a tour of California.
During Ms. Taylor’s tenure, which lasted much of the 1980s, the band never scored a hit record. although it eventually found success atop Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart with the song “Pepper” in 1996. But mainstream acceptance was very much not the point — as their name made clear.
Mixing a taste for Dadaism and Nietzsche with a cyclone-force howl, Butthole Surfers proved audacious even by punk standards. Concerts featured transgressive elements like naked dancers, bullhorns, garbage fires and morbid films of surgeries. “Their live shows were an assault on the senses,” the music site Rock and Roll True Stories observed in a 2021 retrospective.
Desert Hearts 1985
While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed professor of literature is unexpectedly seduced by a carefree, spirited young lesbian.
Torch Song Trilogy1988
Arnold is a gay man working as drag queen in 1971 NYC. He meets a handsome bisexual man.
Paris is Burning1990
A chronicle of New York’s drag scene in the 1980s, focusing on balls, voguing and the ambitions and dreams of those who gave the era its warmth and vitality.
Brokeback Mountain 2005
Ennis and Jack are two shepherds who develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Their relationship becomes complicated when both of them get married to their respective girlfriends.
Moonlight 2016
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
Soap Opera Woman: Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven’t met, but I don’t want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. “Here’s your change.” “Paper or plastic?’ “Credit or debit?” “You want ketchup with that?” I don’t want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be ant, you know?
…
Man on TV: A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.
…
Kim Krizan: Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that. Or saber tooth tiger right behind you. We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting I think is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing. What is like… frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I’m saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we’re understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.
…
Boat Car Guy: Man this must be like… parallel universe night. You know that cat that was just in here? Just ran out the door? Well, he comes up to the counter, you know, and I say “What’s the word, turd?” And he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me and says, “I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death. I’m rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life. I’ve been to the brink of total oblivion. I remember and ferment the desire to remember everything.”
Wiley: So, what did you say to that?
Boat Car Guy: Well, I mean, what could I say? I said, “If you’re going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode. And I’m tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me?”
Beau Is Afraid 2023
Ari Aster, if you read this, please DM me!! I would like to connect you to a prayer line! It is a phone number where anywhere from 4 to 13 menopausal, Afro-Caribbean, Pentecostal women from the church I grew up going to will pray with you and FOR YOU on the phone for however long you need. You just dial in. You don’t even have to speak! There is NO pressure. Let them pray for you! Ari, DM me! Please!!! Let these women lay spiritual hands on you! Contact me ASAP!
A24 and Joya partnered to create a scented candle collection inspired by nine classic film genres: Horror, Western, Thriller, Noir, Adventure, Musical, Sci-Fi, Rom-Com, and Fantasy. Each Genre Collection candle sold separately.
A24 is the New York City-based entertainment company behind Minari, Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, The Farewell, Midsommar, Lady Bird, Moonlight, The Witch, The Lobster, Ex Machina and more.
No 10 Documentary – lotus, lavender, vinegar, Chinese coumarin, blackcurrant, brandy, oakmoss
Inspired By: university library archives, weathered newspaper clippings, a timeline of the events. found footage, the opinion of an expert, competing narratives, court documents (newly unsealed), the fog of memory, time.
When people were walking out of Husbands and Faces en masse I never felt bad about that because I thought that it was pain that was taking them out of the theater and I thought that it wasn’t the fact that the film was bad. It was that they couldn’t take it without changing their own lifestyles, which made both those films very successful to me. I thought at the time that Husbands was anti the lifestyle of almost everyone in America. We presented a lifestyle that went against their lifestyle. People walked out because they didn’t want to accept the fact that there could be anything wrong with the way they lived their lives.
It doesn’t matter whether audiences like it; it matters whether they feel something. I feel I’ve succeeded if I make them feel something — anything. The hope is that you don’t make it so easy for an audience that when they go to your movie they have nothing to think about except, ‘That was wonderful. Good. Next! What else are you going to entertain my great appetite with?’ I want to make you mad. Yeah, that’s going to take longer. And yeah, when we have it we’ll let you know, I mean. And we’ll put it there.
I liked this movie and it’s not a bad one to remember Anne Heche with. Recall her character, a therapist, saying, “I think I’m fucking my patients up worse.” (Paraphrased from memory.)
Longtime friends and filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary will launch their first podcast next month on which they’ll revisit some of their favorite old B-movies and discover new ones.
Set to premiere July 19, “The Video Archives Podcast” will feature the duo rewatching and discussing movies pulled from the actual collection of VHS tapes that they used to recommend to customers when they worked at the original location of the iconic Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, Calif., almost 40 years ago. It’s being produced with SiriusXM podcast subsidiary Stitcher.
You can check it out here: stitcher
Notes from an early episode:
After Show 01 – Video Vault: Women In Cages
Welcome to the Video Archives After Show, where Gala Avary brings you exclusive content, answers to your burning questions, and even more film discussion from Quentin and Roger. This week, we’re cracking open the Video Vault for a never-before-heard discussion of 1971’s Women In Cages. Originally recorded for the Video Archives pilot, Quentin and Roger discuss this Filipino exploitation classic, covering everything from an early Pam Grier knockout performance to an absolutely ginormous rat.
SHOUTING AT THE SCREEN Hosted by Wyatt Cenac and Donwill. Come early for a DJ set by Donwill in Trees Lounge from 8-9pm.
Back in the days before live-tweeting, the only way to express your thoughts while watching a movie was to yell them out loud to the delight of your friends, and the disgust of some old people a few rows in front of you. Comedian Wyatt Cenac (HBO’s Problem Areas, Bob’s Burgers) and musician Donwill (Tanya Morgan, Adulting with Michelle Buteau & Jordan Carlos) invite you to join them as they recreate the kind of ridiculous, loud mouthed magic that is generally found in movie theaters owned by a guy named Magic.
Each show, Donwill, Wyatt and a guest will present a classic film from the wonderful world of 70’s era Blaxploitation and Black cult cinema. The hosts will be mic’ed up providing commentary, lovingly poking fun at some of these films’ more absurd and problematic moments while also celebrating an important bygone era of Black independent cinema, whether that’s sharing obscure trivia or creating drinking games to highlight a film’s surprisingly large number of wide brimmed hats.
When the petition to get James Hong a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame began, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Recognizing the groundbreaking body of work from the 93-year-old actor, who has more than 650 credits to his name, actor-producer Daniel Dae Kim started a crowdfunding campaign in 2020 to raise the $55,000 necessary for the star. The goal was met within four days.
The only person who didn’t respond right away was Hong himself. “In actuality, I didn’t hear a thing,” Hong says with a laugh. “Somehow the internet wasn’t quite working or I didn’t get the email. The next thing I hear, they had the money already.”
Hong, who will receive his star in a ceremony on May 10, is still somewhat overwhelmed by the honor. “I want to thank all the fans and friends who donated their money. It boggles my mind to think that there’s enough people out there who would do that,” he says. “And I don’t know who they are, so I’ll just have to thank them through your article.”
Dr. Perry Lyman: Really? Justin, I’m sorry if I contributed to any feelings of shame you may have about your thumb. I’ve been reading up on it. Medically, psychologically, there’s nothing really wrong with thumb sucking.
Justin Cobb: I don’t think I can agree with that.
Dr. Perry Lyman: No, really. Look. Justin… there was nothing wrong with you.
Justin Cobb: It felt like everything was wrong with me.
Dr. Perry Lyman: That’s ’cause we all wanna be problemless. To fix ourselves. We look for some magic solution to make us all better, but none of us really know what we’re doing. And why is that so bad? That’s all we humans can do. Guess. Try. Hope. But, Justin, just pray you don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ve got the answer. Because that’s bullshit. The trick is living without an answer. I think.
[both chuckle and laugh]
Dr. Perry Lyman: [Dr. Perry chuckles and lights another cigarette] I think.
