Production News

I'm thrilled to be near completion on a new short film. The title is A WELL-PROVED HELPMATE. It is about a folk preacher named Pontain Mitchell, who has an amazing ability for spontaneous religious language. But only when he disappears behind a curtain. He even has a different name behind the curtain, "Jabez." In the movie he discusses his divided self. There are now images available at the website, TropicPictures.com.

I am also in pre-production for a short film to begin principle photography in September. The title is THE MOCK DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD. It concerns a toy maker named Tommy Roach, who, like Pontain Mitchell, is cosmically inclined. But there are pronounced differences. Pontain uses poetic language as a way to invest landscape and animals with spiritual authority. Tommy, on the other hand, is fascinated by monsters.

The toys Tommy makes are strange and horrendous-looking. He is drawn in by mutation and decay. His heart flings wide open for his toys. It is his view that a spirit of hospitality toward derangement is the way that affords one the ability to look at the world with a sense of grace.

But things needn't be so serious. Both films feature comedy and delightful images. And neither pushes for a religious point of view, not even the one about the folk preacher. I was thinking about poetic language and artistic invention. Difficult to go very far in an investigation of these two modes without "otherworldly" comparisons. 

That "Other" Thing

David Abram, in the preface of his book The Spell of the Sensuous, says, "The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness." I do not mean to misuse Abram's brilliant book, but I often turn his phrase to fit an aesthetic purpose. I believe art—the best art—nourishes our bodies with otherness. Something strange lives in beauty, makes it shimmer. Something frightening, too, which is why beauty is exhilarating.

Typically we think of beauty as making a grand entrance. A radiant face and toned body moving along a red carpet. Sudden fanfare of sunlight breaking through the clouds. A flourish of music on the radio, dissolving the drone of traffic. 

But beauty may also wish to be vague and invite close scrutiny. I remember, something like twenty years ago, seeing a handmade sign in a small town restaurant:

"Be still and no that I am God."
Home cooking cmbo platter $4.29

I'm sure you notice right off the incorrect substitution of "no" for "know." And that the reduced word "combo" has been reduced further, such that it's almost unknowable. And perhaps the Bible verse matched with a commercial message makes you a bit suspicious about the motivations of the painter and/or restaurant proprietor.

But what you can't see (because I wasn't carrying a camera with me everywhere in those days) is the spontaneous flourish the painter put on each letterform. The spins and dives on each character, and lack of space in the sign field that forced these experiments to be crammed together, made for a difficult read but a remarkable sight. Rather than creating a commercial message, the painter, intentionally or not, made a strange and fascinating piece of art that matches affordable home cooking with a feast in the beyond.

I think I've stated my appreciation for folk art in each of these posts. Strange letterforms and heartfelt but almost inscrutable messages fling my heart wide open. My short movie "When the World Was Green"  celebrates murals in Los Angeles for their otherness. The narratives in that movie are based on meditations inspired by looking at those murals. (You can see images from WtWWG on the web site www.TropicPictures.com.)

A new short movie "Other Wounds" is packed with rural images from East Texas. Lonesome farm house ruins, old church steeples, creations up on monster tires by shade tree mechanics, all these fit into three different little narratives. Like folk art pieces, the narratives almost make sense. But the message in them all, I hope, is one that gives a bit of nourishment of otherness.

"Other Wounds" is presently in post production. I hope to have images on the web site very soon.

The "Awe" Feeling

I'm on a little roll right now with film projects that feature public art pieces as though they think and wonder, and sometimes act. Two short films are now in stages of post production. I admit, large audiences are probably not in the cards for these films. But it thrills me to invent scenarios for pieces of public art, outstanding in their own right, whether murals in Los Angeles or garden sculptures in Dallas, and cast them in myths or fantasies for adventurous groups that like to see experimental films. 

My errand with the camera is all about celebrating the "awe" feeling. It's a feeling that rewards an examined life.

I don't claim every waking hour an examined hour in my life - - not that by a long shot. But being hospitable to art, allowing it to work within me, press and pull ideas, dialogue, even, with stuff of my own invention  - - this sort of interaction is fulfilling to me.  

Generally speaking, an examined life is developed through one's critical, creative, and imaginative interaction with one's environment. In art, we recognize a union between materials and ideas. Somehow, a material object is invested with symbolic significance. Art critic Dan Siedell points out premodern cultures called this union "magic," whereas today we call it the "aesthetic."  

The term "awe" has lost much of its authority. But I know the feeling is still there, somewhere in that mysterious union that enables the self to move beyond and outside itself toward an object, whether a piece of art, an heirloom, a religious symbol, or the location of a significant event.

The art that works best in me is folk art. Art made of humble materials and visionary schemes. It keeps that magic from primitive times. It is just that stuff that inspires me as I assemble these movies.
And I hope you will find out more about my projects by visiting  www.TropicPictures.com

Messages From Other Tribes

It's human habit to invest objects with significance. One thing that makes sapiens sapient is that we contemplate and relate to physical objects on a different level than the objects themselves.  For example, you may take in the appearance of a forest or an exotic animal, carry that image with you across borders, come visit me in my place and describe for me the objects you have seen. You may take liberties with your descriptions, transform an object into a symbolic substance. Or even make the entire setting abstract. You could say to me something like this:

            Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
            in the forest of the night,

And once I get past the initial shock brought on by the very strangeness of those lines, I can begin to appreciate the musicality in what you've just said. And the mystery of it.

The voice of William Blake (he, of course, is responsible for the lines above) always strikes me as a voice from another tribe. The intensity with which he transforms objects into symbolic substances invests his language with a beautiful and scary sense of authority. Goodness, but this tribe puts importance on robust imagination!

Imaginative films that also strike me as messages from other tribes include:  "2001," "Fata Morgana," "Days of Heaven."  And there are countless experimental projects that get my full attention. I make no claim to the chief feathers of tribal leaders like Kubrick, Herzog, Malik, but I do want to find an "otherness" of voice that will make my movies, like theirs, seem at once bizarre and familiar.  

The Murals of Los Angeles

I am a native Texan who lived for a time in Los Angeles, California. The murals in that city are wonderful and mysterious. Any sort of building may show a mural. For a newcomer, it can often surprise you. Hotels, theaters, retail shops, churches, government buildings—regular hosts for folk art pieces or visionary scenes. When viewed with some sensitivity, city murals reflect back to the viewer older layers of the brain—layers that navigated the quotidian world while anticipating the shining world just the other side. If one is hospitable to this way of thinking, one finds dreamy passages opening up amidst enormous urban sprawl.

My time in L.A. corresponded with "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," an event that included more than sixty institutions across Southern California. The show celebrated a rich and varied field of creators and performers. Navigating it, one learned about the very different circumstances of the artists. Ed Ruscha, Mike Kelley, Betye Saar, Paul McCarthy, Robert Irwin, and Vija Celmins all worked in obscurity, somewhere in L.A., before gaining a proper viewing.  

The story that fascinated me most is that of ASCO, a chicano art group that started with mail art between its members, then staged extraordinary human murals and parades in East Los Angeles. It was the ASCO exhibit, especially, that inspired me to create something from images and materials the city provided.     

I said to my friend Mr. Cale I wanted to make a short movie that channeled  the D.I.Y. spirit I had witnessed at Pacific Standard Time. The goal was to create something that was at once primitive and ambitious. I'm grateful to Mr. Cale for coming on board. What we accomplished is a unique short movie called "When the World Was Green." Here is a sort of tag line we use to describe it:

            "When the World Was Green" features trees, troubled souls, and murals of the
            city in tense and comical reflections about creation myths and selfhood.

In summer 2012 I returned to Texas, where I will continue my errand to create short experimental movies with mythic emphasis. I hope you will enjoy these posts about the process, and please visit the web site at www.tropicpictures.com.