Face/Off
Just saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Really liked it. It reminded me of Dash Shaw and how one of my favorite things about manga or low budget movies is the shittiness. There's no preciousness, it's all movement and experimentation. totally humble. just make a bunch of shit and people will look at it and history will sort it out.
28 comments:
i love herzog, i liked bad nicholas cage a lot. i saw it in the theatre with austin english and mollie goldstrom, while bald eagles and BK broylerz watched it on their computer at home.
we three may have spent 12 dollars each, but to cringe at an old lady having her oxygen cut off, or to laugh at a breakdancer representing someone's soul, these are the things that make the true, mondo big-screen setting very wonderful. to go to that thing with friends. drink a root-beer in the dark. so nice.
i feel like herzog has a nice balance always, of clean and shitty. to the point where those categories don't exist for him, or for the overall consciousness of his oeuvre.
i can see even a sub-par herzog, and enjoy it greatly. recently:
rescue dawn felt like mostly clean shots, and i got a kick or two out of it, for sure.
wild blue yonder, he didn't even oversee shooting of more than half the footage, and still it makes me cry. so good. ave maria sung by appalachian male choirs or whatever? henry kaiser? are you kidding me? ooftah.......!
fuck you.
awesome.
fuck/damn
'just do it' but do you have to be herzog for that philosophy to work? have read/seen a lot of 'just do it' stuff that's awful - what's the deal.
i feel like i've invested a ton of energy into aesthetics, and i want to think it's important, but at the same time feel some sort of elitism where it isn't important at all.
'history will sort it out' i've heard this a lot and i sort of agree, but i think google sorts it all out automatically now. history seems more instantly recorded and categorized than ever before.
True, but I'm just saying that Herzog can make some lame movies (which he does), but there's a throughline in everything he does, and that's what history will evaluate. I was always afraid to make comics when I was younger because I wasn't going to be making something that was "the best." As soon as I got over myself (slightly) and forced myself to just draw every day and not worry about the outcome I was able to get some things done. By just making stuff you get better eventually, and there may be sublime moments in even the dumbest stuff you do.
I started watching the Abel Ferrara movie last night (only got an hour in due to baby business), and it's good. But it's not better than Herzog's re-mix of it. The Ferrara movie takes itself more seriously, but the new version just breathes better. or diferently.
And Jesse, I was thinking the same thing about seeing it at the theater! I might not've enjoyed the ridculuous spectacle as much if I'd been watching it on the laptop at home (unless Victor Cayro was there?).
Just do it.
http://www.drinkjoose.com/new.html
Victor can make a viewing of robo-cop, akira or jingle all the way sublime with his unofficial commentary.
but he has told me himself, he has no patience for mr. herzog. i don't know if werner cares about google. nor does he need to.
I think google can be really flattening. If you see the documentary where Herzog is talking about shooting with Kinski, it's clear they didn't care about any kind of posterity whatsoever. It's amazing that they lived.
That Ferrara film with Christopher Walken is really interesting just because it's like an early 90s thug wet dream and would be better as a music video, which it is. Terrible movie though.
I think toward the end of the OG film there's some bullshit about redemption, but Keitel is really what's interesting.
I went to Floating World yesterday and looked at some comics that reminded me that there's plenty of non-transcendent shitty culture.
I'm so happy to see a post about Herzog's 'Bad Lieutenant.' I saw it about a week ago, and thought it was awesome. Sorry my analysis isn't more trenchant, or cogent, or cutting, or insightful.
I agree it felt very fun and loose - and the cinematography looked great. The score was also great.
lol. really, I laughed out loud.
"but i think google sorts it all out automatically now. history seems more instantly recorded and categorized than ever before."
whatever guy. just do something. it almost seems like for somone who talks such big talk about his own shit, you hardly make anything. 20$ post its? a comic from 3 years ago? for all the open ad pondering you do (on here and everywhere you comment) you should make something other people have seen. I think that comic from 3 years ago proved that you have things you CAN do but instead supercede it with these lazy, wispy, half finished things you think you SHOULD do.
'just do something'
this is the entire point of the original post, except the post frames this in a positive way and you frame this in a negative way.
you are trapped in this meta game of criticism just as much as i am. when you criticize my role as critic you are criticizing yourself as well. don't try to escape this, just roll with it. everyone is a consumer/producer/critic and these roles are not as distinct as you seem to imagine.
"you are trapped in this meta game of criticism just as much as i am. when you criticize my role as critic you are criticizing yourself as well. don't try to escape this, just roll with it. everyone is a consumer/producer/critic and these roles are not as distinct as you seem to imagine."
no! I'm not! I'm telling you to go make something instead of putzing around on over intellectual comics blogs and pondering over things you yourself dont even seem to think you are equipped to tackle. Any comic artist past or present who you might not like, who you think are the most boring guy ever, at least if you think they are boring they got their shit out there. New(er)(slightly more mainstream) guys like Theo Ellsworth, Dash Shaw, Lili Carre, or any artist you deem unlikeable but is out there, they're not Gary Panter or Fort Thunder or whatever artist you obviously idolize, their work might be derivative or seem too "normal" or not "formally rigorous" to you, but at least they're in MOME. They have books out. People WANT to publish them. They make enough stuff of high enough quality, and are pushing themselves and working every day to actually have their work talked about.
YOU can sit here and talk about semiotics and go down other roads intellectual masturbation, but at the end of the day, whatever excuses you have for it, any artist who gets published a fair amount, ANY artist of that caliber, from C.F. to Alex Ross, is too busy actually making things to bother with this type of inane monkey chatter. This originally was meant to go in "Paneling Shmaneling" but your quote here caught me off guard. So you can respond with another ridiculous comment about how things are "totally meta" and how Im ignoring my "role as a producer/consumer/critic", but in the end it is just irrational fluff surrounding the task of anyone involved in a craft. You can get involved with those concerns when you are good enough (not technically, even, if you think thats what I mean) to to approach them.
i haven't drawn for a week
i haven't drawn spiritually for 9 months
i haven't experienced beauty for >10 months
comics is the only thing i do but i don't have to draw to make comics
okay. so. you're either just being ironic (possible) or you have missed what I'm saying and in the process somehow come off as someone absolutely clueless and naive. You can cling to your devotion to fuzzy logic and wispy art school demeanor (all good and fun in it's time and place) however long you want. In the end, after all of it, you need to put your money where your mouth is and focus on your craft (not craft as technique but as an idea) and explore it rather than making half finished CF knockoffs and revelling in how "out there" and "meta" it is. whatever "experiencing beauty" and "drawing spirituality" means to you, it certainly sounds like an excuse to do nothing and lounge about like a lazy pseudo intellectual lecturing to his friends out at lunch.
In the words of Nagarjuna: "[we] are not not not not not not not being not-ironic."
"People WANT to publish them."
Blaise was published by the same publisher, Fantagraphics, as the people you list.
"In the end, after all of it, you need to..."
He 'needs' to do this? Why? Blaise's work was in a anthology that was recently reviewed in the NEW YORK TIMES! He's also in an "underground" anthology that people LOVE, Diamond Comics. His work is serialized on Secret Acres website...Theo Ellsworth (another one of your examples) publisher.
For someone who's basically still young that's pretty darn good I'd say.
Except none of that really matters...the frequency of how much you publish and what influential people like you has nothing to do with good art.
here, here!
Okay, to be fair, it's good being featured once in an Abstract Comics anthology and have a few pages of scribbles in it (not knocking it), but in comparison to the other guys I mentioned being in some small indie zine and a random one off expensive anthology is quite a ways away. For somone so young, that IS good. But what the hell-- do you think you could ever catch even the most mediocre cartoonist saying something as asinine as "well, I haven't drawn for a week. I havent drawn spiritually in 9 months."
get over yourself! when you're that young, and you spend that much (or that little, even) time making mediocre, lazy work, walking around on the internet pondering ad hominem over semiotics and doing nothing but talking, you know what you're the equivalent of? a Comics Journal Messageboard poster.
I imagine everyone here is reviled at the thought of being included in that circle, but this place is just the lame art school equivalent of that. I know I'm playing on the other teams field, but gimme a damn break. It's not about being published, it's about respect for the craft. It's about getting into comics so much that every day you sit down and do what it takes to get better at them. It's about sitting down and ignoring the hyperintellectual critical theory bullshit and focusing entirely on making quality work. It doesnt take a genius to make the stuff he has on his blog, there's a beautiful quality to it's looseness and openness. But if you're going to make work that sparse and loose and formless, what takes so
when it comes down to it, blaise doesn't HAVE to do anything. he can approach his work however he wants. But I literally facepalm when I read a 24 year old amateur on a comics blog talking about some of the stuff that goes on here.
"walking around on the internet pondering ad hominem over semiotics and doing nothing but talking"
I bet if you added up all the sentences bliase has typed on this site and then added YOURS, you guys would be neck and neck!
blaise works one way, other cartoonists work other ways. i like artists who keep their head down and just make art (i love all the cartoonists you mentioned a ton) but I'm so glad there are OTHER appoaches...othr methods of working. why not embrace both?
i think what you really mena is "i want blaise to make art thats for me."
no, i think he means "blaise needs to put up or shut up"
He HAS "put up." What the fuck have YOU done?
Oh my god, are you...are you CHRIS WARE?
blaise: "well, I haven't drawn for a week. I havent drawn spiritually in 9 months."
anonymous: "get over yourself! when you're that young, and you spend that much (or that little, even) time making mediocre, lazy work..."
i'm not young anymore, but i go through long periods of time where all i do is think about drawing rather than doing it.
this process can involve: looking, reading, analyzing other arts, spacing out and staring at the ceiling for hours, going for long hikes with my dog, taking photographs, reading blogs, punching myself in the face, watching movies, cooking an elaborate dinner, etc... but in the end, it's all wrapped up in making my comics and art.
i've never been a sketchbook artist obsessively drawing all day long, but i obsessively think about art every minute of the day and that is part of my process...
anonymous: "It's about getting into comics so much that every day you sit down and do what it takes to get better at them. It's about sitting down and ignoring the hyperintellectual critical theory bullshit and focusing entirely on making quality work."
lighten up dude- everyone has a different approach. sometimes "thinking" is "doing."
"going for long hikes with my dog, taking photographs, reading blogs, punching myself in the face, watching movies, cooking an elaborate dinner, etc..."
Werner Herzog has been a vocal and active proponent of taking long, pointless walks, breaking into people's houses and doing their unfinished crossword puzzles. Tourism is sin.
Um, I remember him also, in that movie "Werner Herzog eats his shoe" saying something about how a real man should cook a proper meal at least once a week. A man should be really, truly ashamed, if he does not do this. He said nothing about comics in that particular movie.
I'm sure Werner has punched himself in the face before, deliberately. I don't know if Blaise has. I know Chris Ware does it as a daily routine. I love the work all three of the above do, but I have not yet begun throwing blows at my own cheeks. Perhaps I should.
hum, hum-hum.
blaise don't need to do shit
remember never to cut your dreedlockz
mark twain did'nt write shit till he was old as dust
time management in art is a weird trip to lay on yourself let alone others
nick cage is much more fun in BLPOC than he's been in a long time
nice cast too
theres some interesting things that grow from seminal retention so why not for artistic retention
& do me a favor if your gonna be a jerk at least crack some funny jokes otherwise i get tired of the whining tone
i'm gonna go fuck off now
nic cage is one of my favorite actors.
Knowing is one of his best movies.
i think i need to watch it again today.
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