Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Obit
Obit

David Lynch is Gone

David Lynch, “maker of florid and unnerving films,” passed on the 15th at the age of 78. He was truly one of one. Peerless. “Like Frank Capra and Franz Kafka, two widely disparate 20th-century artists whose work Mr. Lynch much admired and might be said to have synthesized, his name became an adjective.”

“He’s one of those filmmakers who was influential but impossible to imitate,” said director Steven Soderbergh. “People would try but he had one kind of algorithm that worked for him and you attempted to recreate it at your peril. As non-linear and illogical as they often seemed, they were clearly highly organized in his mind.”

“While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own,” said Kyle MacLachlan, star of Twin Peaks, among other Lynch projects.

Naomi Watts had something similar to say: “The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?”

Laura Dern wrote a lovely tribute:

“Through you, I’ve learned what it means to be loved without judgment, just pure acceptance. You have forever transformed all of art, be it film or music or painting or cartoons or giving the weather report — all of it became a space for dreaming. All of it brought you equal joy and creative bliss and was led in the moment by deep instinct and creative consciousness. You made art every day because you had to. You meditated every day as a dedicated act of service. You lived in gratitude and grace. You never knew bitterness. In life, you always felt lucky.

I remember walking offstage linked arm and arm with you at the Governors Awards where you had just received your honorary Oscar. I looked at you and said, ‘Tidbit, you just won an Academy Award.’ And you said, ‘But they aren’t my ideas, I’m just lucky to catch them.'”

He was forever true to his ideas:

“I really believe it’s like the Beach Boys said: “Be true to your school.” You gotta be true to the ideas that you have, because they’re even bigger than you first think they are. And if you’re not true to them, they’ll only work part way. They’re almost like gifts, and even if you don’t understand them 100 percent, if you’re true to them, they’ll ring true at different levels and have a truth at different levels. But if you alter them too much then they won’t even ring. They’ll just sort of clank.”

The evening he passed, I watched The Art Life, Blue Velvet and the first episode of Twin Peaks, which I’ve continued to watch since. Even though I’ve been there before, I imagine I will visit the town, along with Mulholland Drive, again and again.

“Keep your eye on the donut, not the hole.”

Roger Ebert Passed 10 Years Ago Today.

Before the Internet, or at least any Internet I knew of, Siskel & Ebert was my best resource for what was coming out. By the time I hit the age where I wasn’t supposed to be seeing certain things but wanted to, those two were a gateway drug. Very few things sounded more interesting to my just-under-teenage brain than Clerks and Pulp Fiction.

I treated their year end lists like gospel. By my freshmen year of high school I walked around with and read and re-read and basically treated Book of Film the same.

For years, when I watched something, I would end up looking up his reviews to see what he thought. While I often disagreed with him, I was always interested and loved discovering films via his writing. I wonder now what he would have thought about movies that have come out since he left us. I might wonder that forever.

As Steven Hyden wrote when he passed:

“If the sum total of all the people affected by the life and career of Roger Ebert could somehow be quantified– his fellow writers were just a tiny sliver of a large and loyal readership, mind you– we might begin the process of wrapping our arms around the legacy of perhaps the most celebrated film critic who ever lived. In lieu of that, let’s just say: It’s a whole hell of a lot of people.

I recommend looking through his work, particularly his “Great Movies” archive. Love this quote of his: “”Every great film should seem new every time you see it.”

There is also his final “top ten” list and this list of underrated films he loved, including the Up documentary series, about which he wrote:

“No other art form can capture so well the look in an eye, the feeling in an expression, the thoughts that go unspoken between the words. To look at these films, as I have every seven years, is to meditate on the astonishing fact that man is the only animal that knows it lives in time.”

Michael Apted, Director and Seven Up Documentarian, Dies at 79

From his obituary in The Guardian:

“The film-maker and documentarian was known for films such as Gorillas in the Mist and Coal Miner’s Daughter, as well as his long-running series of Up documentaries. His death has been confirmed by his agency to the Hollywood Reporter. No further details are yet known. Apted’s career started in the 1960s on the small screen, and in 1964, he assisted on the the show Seven Up! as part of the current affairs show World in Action. He helped the director Paul Almond interview 14 seven-year-old children, and continued to independently revisit them every seven years over the course of their lives. The most recent, 63 Up, was released in 2019 and the director referred to it as ‘the most important thing I have ever done.'”

In a piece from The Nation, writer Susan Pederson notes that while the first few installments are flawed, reducing the subjects to stereotypes, there was a profound change in the films, heightened in my opinion by the longevity of the project:

28 Up (1984) was the tipping point. The first film of the series widely screened in the United States, it was the one Apted considered a breakthrough. Only then did he realize that he wasn’t making ‘a political film about Britain’s social classes,’ but something much more unusual: an ongoing inquiry into how individuals from a wide range of backgrounds sought out meaning and happiness amid the rapid social change of postwar Britain and all the random incidents and accidents that life threw at them.”

Each film is relatively simplistic in structure, short interviews with each subject cut with footage of what they’ve been up to recently. But with each new installment, we see entire lives unfolding. Their lives force us to examine our own. It seems impossible not to watch the Up Series and not think about where you were when you were 7 and 21 and 28, or where you think you will be, or who you want to be, in seven years, in fourteen years, in thirty-five years.

And with the passing of Apted, if you will be.

Profound words: “I want my life to have meant something.”

These words on the (likely) last in the series sum things up nicely:

“The latest installment, 63 Up, is one of the series’ best, in part because the subjects are aware they’re moving into their sunset years, and in part because they also know the 78-year-old Apted may never make another one of these films. He and the people he’s been tracking for more than half a century now interrogate each other in 63 Up, speaking with undisguised emotion about what they’ve all learned from stopping every now and then to publicly take stock of their lives and their desires.”

Story of an Artist

Listen up and I’ll tell a story,
about an artist growing old.
Some would try for fame and glory,
others aren’t so bold.

And everyone in friends and family,
sayin’ “Hey, go get a job.
Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?

“And we don’t really like what you do.
We don’t think anyone ever will.
We think you have a problem,
and this problem’s made you ill.”

The MFIC

Luke, it was great meeting you and hanging out, although we could have spent more time together. I was planning on working on my enigma persona, but you were too much fun.

MFIC, RM.

That was the first of thousands of emails from my then “new boss” (MFIC stood for “Mother Fucker in Charge,” borrowed from Mayor Young) the day after we left Coachella in 2004. There was a time when I almost considered him a best friend and a time when we didn’t talk at all. We had so many plans and ideas and it was all electrifying and none of it panned out.

I’ve been missing him dearly for about a year now and looks like I’ll be missing him for the rest of my life.

Taking this one to heart, and in the future trying to remember these two things: don’t wait to do things you wanna do, and to let go of stupid shit.

Hope to see you again, Bob.

Love,

Luke

June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018

Bourdain was a hero to me.

Today is a reminder.

To travel more.

To eat more good food.

To have more sex.

To really listen to others.

To try my best to never lose hope.

Milos Forman has passed.

He was 86.

In my formative years I often felt like an outsider and Forman’s best films – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Man on the MoonThe People vs. Larry Flynt, Hair and Amadeus– sang to my rebellious heart.