A Social Experiment

A fun little social experiment conducted in LA's busy Hollywood Boulevard.

A Vignette

As he inhaled, the quiet of the corn field let him hear the little searing of his joint, introducing a little dash of vermillion into his otherwise hibernating subconscious. The sound brought back nostalgia-dripped memories to his otherwise arid existence. He remembered the first time he was here, back when hair had first sprouted on his upper lip, led by the obese, experienced hand of the Russian maid. It must have not lasted more than a couple of minutes but on that lazy afternoon, as the sun bore down harshly on the maid's bare back, coloring it with its inimitable red, he had finally become what he had dreamed of – a content and peaceful but sweating warrior.

Anna Karina in B&W

The search was unsuccessful. Even something as vast as the world wide web was unable to throw me the face I was seeking for my desktop. I wasn't asking for too much, was I? - just the right sized image of Anna Karina's sad mascaraed eyes in her expressionless face encased by her short hair in B&W in the just watched Godard film 'Vivre Sa Vie'. Sometimes I wonder if I can ever write a single post about a single thing without flying off on intangible tangents (for an answer, read the last paragraph), but what if that thing is absolutely the most beautiful imperfect thing in the world. Of course there is no such thing, since beauty, much like love, is too subjective to discuss anywhere other than in personal blogs.

If you look into those delicate dark honey colored eyes, you will realize, She isn't a traditional beauty by any means. There is a certain melancholy in those eyes, or even, a harshness that can unleash terrible genocide on the world, that She hides as she rocks back her head and laughs with apparent abandon and reduces my lifespan by just a petite bit. Watch Her use Her eyes seductively while rolling them to American rock 'n roll. Or when she wears her longer hair up in other films - that cruel invention by French women, to reveal that slender, sensuous nape of her neck.

A friend of mine recently told me that one of his ex-girlfriend's once told him that life is best in slow motion and black and white. And now I am telling you, or maybe just rambling silently, but the latter isn't the point. And I remember an uncle putting in words that I had felt for a while but couldn't express, probably a terrible thing for a writer - B&W is so soothing on the eyes. He couldn't have been more right. Visualize it - no extra hue and cry over over-saturated reds and blues projected on the gentle unsuspecting white of your retinas, a binary concept for the most part - the presence of light and the lack of it. The eyes even forgive the nondescript grays from time to time as long as there is a fair amount of black and white that they regard. And the poetry, oh the silent poetry, of high contrast B&W.

Graffiti

Her slender artistic fingers clutching that last cigarette,

His unlined palms.

Her bouncing love handles as she laughs her infectious laugh,

His skinny jeaned legs.

The enviable straightness of her long blond flowing hair,

His receding hairline.

The slender nape of her neck when she wears her hair up,

His jutting Adam's apple.

Her color changing eyes depending on where you stand,

His Lennon glasses.

Her parentheses as she smiles her faint smile in recognition,

His luscious lower lip.

Her bunny rabbit-like slightly chipped happy buck teeth,

His ying yang molars.

Her uncleft chin protruding just enough to be bitten twice,

His bony collar bones.

The loose yet unobtrusive almost cutish fat on her triceps,

His apex cheek bones.

The virginal innocent curiosity of her pointy pink nipples,

His curly black chest.

The secret little hidden mole high on her inner left thigh,

The lint in his navel.

Her red toe nails synchronized like small Russian dancers,

His turtle shell elbows.

Her broad Viking shoulders that can carry all his weight,

His Frank Zappa that makes her smile.

Delicatessen – How to Tell a Story through Sound

Originally published at PFC: http://passionforcinema.com/delicatessen-how-to-tell-a-story-through-sound/

The Cutting of 'The 400 Blows'

Originially published at PFC: http://passionforcinema.com/the-cutting-of-the-400-blows

A Day in the Life of Two Farm Animals

The sky has suddenly gone dark, depriving us one of those Californian sureties - a sunset, as if a housewife in Victorian garb in an anti-Liliputian world has mistaken our sun for a poached egg and served it to her farmer husband for breakfast. Maybe he belches a little, and even farts as an afterthought, resonating the crowing of the hen as it yawns and turns off its alarm clock - one of those retro pieces whose rude unfiltered ringing always gives you a headache the first thing in the morning. Maybe there is a system, and every day of the week a different hen crows at approximately the same time, but in a different note, and during their leisure time, the seven hens make music with their respective notes, and the farmer, or his wife for that matter, can't stop them because they are protected by severe labor laws, like in Italy.

Maybe the wife envies the labor laws and wishes she had something like that to accentuate her nagging as a defense mechanism. After all, who likes to wake up and serve breakfast to an uncouth man lacking Victorian manners. I wonder what she does when all the housework is over and she's had her fourteen hour bath, say at 11 am, when her husband is off in the farm, buttering up the hens. She can't be thinking of sex, can she? I mean she doesn't really have a frame of reference, does she? A few minutes of pain under Victorian layers and navy blue overalls can't be much fun. And that's all she's ever had. Now, she has no poster of blue-eyed Paul Newman on the rickety walls of her bathroom to touch herself in the bath, does she? Maybe she thinks about how the hens do it, but then she falsely realizes that they are asexual beings.

The man gets drunk on milk after he returns home from the farm. Stop being so cynical! It's hen's milk. You can reach an intoxicated existence if you have enough of it. Plus, it works slowly, like arsenic, and builds up an involuntary craving in its users over years, much like an arcane piece of art or music that grows itself on you gradually, like a Parisian parasitic virus. Maybe he starts talking in guttural French after he is completely inebriated. He puts on an invisible tutu and puts on a little dance for his wife, singing in an Edith Piaf voice during the performance. She laughs, throwing her arms around and brushing the tears off the corners of her squinty little hen-like eyes, rocking back dangerously in her wooden chair, that she is anyway spilling out of. She knows he does back flips for the hens on the farm that she will never see, and yet, she is happy for a few minutes, to sample this cultured little departure, before they both fall asleep in their respective perches, not really ready, but still thankful, to be woken up by a different note.