New Review of Hunter S. Thompson Documentary

Greencine.com just posted my film review of Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, a 2006 documentary on Hunter S. Thompson that is about to be released on DVD. Here's the full text of my review:

According to none other than acclaimed author Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff) in Tom Thurman's documentary Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film, the gonzo journalist was one of the greatest comic writers of our time. It turns out that much of Hollywood made pilgrimages to visit Thompson at his home of many years in Woody Creek, Colorado, and many are interviewed in this engaging film, including John Cusack, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Gary Busey, Ed Bradley, Bill Murray and Johnny Depp (who lived in his basement for a while and described himself as a partner in crime with Thompson after they initially bonded over their mutual hometown of Louisville, Kentucky). "If you let Thompson into your psyche, he has this way of slipping in and out from time to time and continuing to inhabit you for the rest of your life." This was the cautionary advice Murray gave Depp over the phone just before Depp played a character based on Thompson (Raoul Duke) in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Murray knew all too well, having already portrayed Thompson himself in the underrated 1980 cult movie Where the Buffalo Roam (which co-starred Peter Boyle and Bruno Kirby). Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in February of 2005, and his ashes have since been shot out of a large cannon shaped like a two-thumbed fist (paid for by Depp and envisioned by Thompson) on the property of his Owl Farm in Woody Creek. This film (originally produced for the Starz channel) has been made as a sort of love note back to Thompson, with plenty of rarely seen, candid footage of the wily man himself, often in his kitchen telling stories or elsewhere in private settings, although his actual words are sometimes garbled and nearly indiscernible. There is likewise a rather incomprehensible narration by none other than raspy, ravaged-sounding Nick Nolte.

Of course in the land of the weird that Thompson loved to occupy, it all works just fine, even after you factor in the opening scenes with actor Gary Busey directing the director on how to shoot the interview with him at his beach house, or the ending of the film with actor Harry Dean Stanton singing truly the most God awful rendition of the Irish song "Danny Boy" I've ever heard. The whole spectacle, frankly, is just plain astonishing—there are clearly forces at work here that we won't understand for quite some time (sorry, just channeling Thompson again). In short, this is an important film for all serious fans of the late great Thompson, and anyone else who wants to get a sense of who this lunatic (used affectionately), this master of weird, the colonel of calamity, really was. There has been no one else like Hunter S. Thompson--he influenced so many creative types from all mediums, and he deserves to be admired as much now as he was when he was in his often inebriated, imperturbable skin.

Footnote: The 2006 film F*ck by Steve Anderson was dedicated to Hunter S. Thompson. He was interviewed for the film and committed suicide shortly thereafter.

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Grace Paley: In Memorium

Grace Paley, whose short stories and poems are really wonderful, died yesterday at the age of 84. I have read a lot of her work and once saw her read and answer questions in person at a small auditorium in Oakland on the campus of Mills College. She was full of life and very funny, intelligent, humble and inspiring. I've always loved her story "Wants" which is quoted from below.

Here's an excerpt from today's New York Times article by Margalit Fox:

A self-described “somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,” Ms. Paley was a lifelong advocate of liberal social causes. During Vietnam, she was jailed several times for antiwar protests; in later years, she lobbied for women’s rights, against nuclear proliferation and, most recently, against the war in Iraq. For decades, she was a familiar presence on lower Sixth Avenue, near her Greenwich Village home, smiling broadly, gum cracking, leaflets in hand.

Ms. Paley, who taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence and the City College of New York, was also a past vice president of the PEN American Center.

Some critics have called Ms. Paley’s work uneven, but what they really seemed to mean is that it was too even: similar people in similar situations in similar places. But the stories that worked — and many did — were so blindingly satisfying that the lesser ones scarcely mattered. In her best work, Ms. Paley collapsed entire worlds into a few perfect paragraphs, as in the opening of “Wants,” from “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute”:

“I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

“Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

“He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

“I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.

“The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

“My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.

“That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began.”

Her other books include a collection of essays, “Just As I Thought” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), and three volumes of poetry, “Leaning Forward” (Granite Press, 1985); “New and Collected Poems” (Tilbury Press, 1991); and “Long Walks and Intimate Talks” (Feminist Press, 1991). A film, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” based on three stories in the collection and adapted by John Sayles and Susan Rice, was released in 1983.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1978, Ms. Paley put her finger on the grass-roots sensibility that informed her work.

“I’m not writing a history of famous people,” she explained. “I am interested in a history of everyday life.”

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Not-Self Portraits (Shadows)

I'm doing a series of photos of my own shadow that I call Not-Self Portraits kind of based on the Buddhist concept of not-self. I like this image, which I shot in my neighborhood in Oakland, partly because it has the great shadow of the parking meter. They are in the process of replacing these "old-school" parking meters with big tall rectangular-shaped ones whose shadows will only look like mini-skyscrapers. So everything truly is impermanent, even the parking meters. (Bonus: Click on the title of this blog and it will take you to some photos of Lee Friedlander, whose work really inspired my shots.)

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Kerouac Awareness Month?! (OK by me)

I have to give Jack Kerouac a huge bow of gratitude for helping spark my initial interest in Buddhism back when I was in junior high school and first reading his books, especially On the Road and Dharma Bums. Dwight Garner in the New York Times is calling it Jack Kerouac Awareness Month, so I thought I'd play along and include this photo from the alley in his name next to City Lights Books and with links to the historic NYT book review that first helped spread the word about On the Road back in 1957 which is here, and a new article in the latest Newsweek which is here. Enjoy!

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L'Avventura review on Greencine.com

I just wrote a film review of Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura that is now available to read on Greencine.com here. Monica Vitti, who stars in the film, is pictured above. I'll also include an excerpt of my review below:

In L'Avventura, Antonioni pokes many holes through the usual myth of romantic love and yet still manages to keep the torch of our ever hopeful human hearts lit at the same time. Really what he captures here is a mood of both relaxed frolic and faint unease, not to mention a certain unrecognized alienation amidst the privileged classes. Vitti carries every scene she is in; her face is serenely beautiful without being contemptuous or too overtly austere.

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Things Change

I was on another silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock last week for 10 days with Joseph Goldstein and other teachers. Near the end of the retreat the moon suddenly appeared almost full and I took one photo of it (above). The day after the retreat ended, famed European film directors Ingmar Bergman (89) of Sweden and Michelangelo Antonioni (94) of Italy both died. Antonioni is one of my all-time favorite artists in any medium--the cinematography alone in most of his films is pure genius. Bergman was also brilliant beyond compare. May we all live as long as they both did. And may the moon continue to rise...

And here's a famous poem by Zen master Dogen:

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops.
Shaken from a crane's bill.