tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post4227893188620953407..comments2024-02-27T10:53:43.331-05:00Comments on Big Media Vandalism: Sweet Lime and "Sour Grapes": Armond White Conversation, Part IIISteven Boonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10533736956366847765noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-62332185930788561752011-03-29T12:25:39.625-04:002011-03-29T12:25:39.625-04:00^Whoa, headline news: Hou Hsiao-Hsien disses Armon...^Whoa, headline news: Hou Hsiao-Hsien disses Armond White!Steven Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10533736956366847765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-18449525467703997352011-03-29T01:42:54.385-04:002011-03-29T01:42:54.385-04:00This guy is a FUCKING retard, I've read all of...This guy is a FUCKING retard, I've read all of tennessee williams, and O neil which he says is a pre req to criticize Noah, and I loved Squid and the Whale, and Green Berg, I would not give a shit if this man died. I plan on banning him from my film screenings to.HHHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07751058473737134396noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-36879130128505902592009-04-28T00:49:00.000-04:002009-04-28T00:49:00.000-04:00Fuck Armond White, some talentless black fag is up...Fuck Armond White, some talentless black fag is upset that all he could ever be was a film critic that nobody cares about. He lacks significanceBennyAndershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06592565872127727385noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-18202239757101382272008-08-16T15:01:00.000-04:002008-08-16T15:01:00.000-04:00Folks,For those interested, there's a blog that co...Folks,<BR/><BR/>For those interested, there's a blog that covers the Armond White book, "The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook The World".<BR/><BR/>For those who don't know, the book is a collection of Armond White essays that cover the years 1984-1994.<BR/><BR/>here's the link:<BR/><BR/>http://www.armondwhitebook.wordpress.com<BR/><BR/>-WJWow Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15088102384979577803noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-8223674091727851362007-12-20T20:17:00.000-05:002007-12-20T20:17:00.000-05:00"And because his family is all well-connected peop...<I>"And because his family is all well-connected people in New York publishing, critics praise him, because, in the end, they're praising themselves, justifying their own bad behavior."</I><BR/><BR/>This whole section of the interview really pissed me off. Perhaps Armond should just come clean about his hatred for Baumbach, which is entirely rooted in his rocky past with Baumbach's mother. <BR/><BR/>Next time you see him, be sure to ask him about their radio appearance together years ago.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-55799649999437833632007-12-20T08:07:00.000-05:002007-12-20T08:07:00.000-05:00Ah, I just posted on part II of the interview befo...Ah, I just posted on part II of the interview before reading this. It's gotten me even madder.<BR/><BR/>I'm very glad that you called him out on his proclamation of Baumbach as an asshole, and I'm infuriated by White's response. Does he honestly, truly believe that he is fully capable of judging Baumbach as a human being based on his movies? For a purported "humanist," that's mind-blowing. It's just insane. I respect White in some ways, but I really think he's a raging asshole, and I wish he'd stop talking about humanism, because he sure sounds like a misanthrope to me. He loves himself, though; that's about the extent of his humanity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-50487423231330889292007-12-19T15:46:00.000-05:002007-12-19T15:46:00.000-05:00Armond liked The Science of Sleep and Shortbus, w...Armond liked The Science of Sleep and Shortbus, which were both technically dreadful-looking movies.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-38358439305082070872007-12-19T11:35:00.000-05:002007-12-19T11:35:00.000-05:00One thing that strikes me about White is this sear...One thing that strikes me about White is this search for humanity in the films that he sees and reviews. How can he legitimately seek humanity in a film if he can't get over the technical shortcomings? <BR/><BR/>You didn't get into it with him but I'm curious what his take on Cassavetes is. He made "films." He also went blind trying to fix sprockets on a broken 16mm camera at 3 o'clock in the morning just to get his hand-made films made. The acting gigs paid for that. JC (that's funny) went on record saying that he was not a technical director, he had no interest in it. He was more interested in emotion. Some of those films looked and sounded awful. <I>Faces</I>, which I truly love for its pure energy and verisimilitude is ugly as hell technically speaking but it's not why I keep going back to it.<BR/><BR/>Do you need a bankroll to capture humanity on film? Don't misunderstand me, I think the irony here is we have all this equipment to go out and do it but the reality is studios couldn't give a shit. Those kind of filmmakers will never really be taken seriously by the industry. They will always be on the fringes and that's fine unless you are interested in growing as a filmmaker with technology, audience and skills. Paul Schrader said that Cassavetes "<A HREF="http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/nd06/schraderresponds.htm" REL="nofollow">never made that next step</A>." That could be true for many reasons but I think evolving as a filmmaker is important, AW has a point here. You can't evolve and you certainly can't do it alone. So you can break into the system and try and make it work for you or not. If it's important enough you will fight for it even if it takes twice as long.<BR/><BR/>Again, great work. It's important to shake people up every now and again.Williamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09464531948766525587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-67373598063289314742007-12-19T02:38:00.000-05:002007-12-19T02:38:00.000-05:00Nice insights, Ry. Yeah, Baumbach definitely seems...Nice insights, Ry. Yeah, Baumbach definitely seems to identify with Kidman's character over Leigh's. And he had no idea what to do with Jack Black's character, aside from make a fool out of him. He even disrupts the movie's relatively subtle tone to show Jack Black crying like a baby into a phone after he f-ked up the wedding.<BR/>As I said, I enjoyed the movie as a horror flick. It shifted tensions and points of view like a good pressure-cooker Knife-in-the-water thriller-- and smirkingly acknowledged as much in the tense/silly confrontations between Margot's family and the white trash neighbors. Reminded me of Larry Fessenden's <I>Wendigo</I>.<BR/><BR/>If a filmmaker can't show much generosity and fairness, he'd better at least have some rhythm and pitch. That's enough to get me by, sometimes. (People didn't dance to Dr. Dre all those years because of the uplifting lyrics. The beat carried you through the muck.) But Baumbach's groove is not enough to make this film linger past a movie season.<BR/><BR/>In conversation, AW just seemed to be the same smart-ass kid he probably was when he started. The great failure of this article is that I never asked him for details about what it was like being a young Black film critic from Detroit in Woody Allen's New York and Reagan's America. I have some idea about that, but his specific answers probably would have been as vivid a sketch as <I>Chameleon Street</I>.<BR/><BR/>Underground Man, White's 1991 Film Comment piece praising <I>Chameleon Street</I>, is about as close as you'll get in print to looking at White looking in the mirror: "William Douglas Street appears exceptional to the same degree that American society shows itself to be restricted. his extraordinary efforts stem from a barely controlled psychological distress. In the era of yuppies and buppies, this chronic overachiver is the unmistakable product of racism. Street doesn't fight the power so much as struggle to subdue the tension he feels as an outcast, disenfranchised person."And, earlier in the piece: "Street the chameleon is a subversive with a proper, smiling, acceptably middle-class appearance. His 'criminality' stems from his unstoppable ambition. His instincts are on the loose and unpredictable, refuting social positions of class and race. And that makes him a truly dangerous man."<BR/><BR/>Also consider that White, filmmaker Wendell B. Harris and his real-life subject, the virtuoso con artist W.D. Street, are all from Michigan-- Harris from Michael Moore's hometown, Flint; White and Street from Detroit. Not to mention Detroit-born film critic Elvis Mitchell. Something about Motown. I'd like to get all these characters in a room and listen to the explosions.Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-79536651758628735542007-12-18T20:12:00.000-05:002007-12-18T20:12:00.000-05:00Damn, that got long. And I still didn't say how mu...Damn, that got long. And I still didn't say how much I appreciated that last image, you sly sonofagun. I appreciated the whole conversation. He's a smart dude, and clearly not as much a curmudgeon as people make him out to be. Just, you know, adamant and unabashed. Two admirable things. So long as you have the smarts and the know-how to back them up.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14169925.post-85238184467157391442007-12-18T20:10:00.000-05:002007-12-18T20:10:00.000-05:00I saw _Margot at the Wedding_ recently and came ou...I saw _Margot at the Wedding_ recently and came out thinking more like AW than I realized. I kind of despised the "milieu" of _Squid and the Whale_ and when that trailer for _Margot_ came on in front of _Darjeeling_, despite making me laugh a few times ("I punched them."), I thought, "again?" But I went to the movie anyways out of hope* that I was wrong about the guy being hateful and insulated (and because I knew I wouldn't want to rent the S-O-B). Sadly, I walked out thinking, "Jesus, why is this guy so hateful and insulated? How could he have co-written _The Life Aquatic_?" I didn't think it was ugly-looking, though. Just ugly feeling. Effectively ugly? Not quite. However, I think it's better than _Squid_, but only because it foregrounds how these people are choosing their words (or not, or failing to choose their words), which has become a preoccupation of mine, I admit. Which leads me to this...<BR/><BR/>The most illuminating (yet not quite damning) mirror I found in this installment of your conversation is AW asserting that most people don't know themselves enough to write anything (I assumed he wasn't just talking about film criticism, that it could be applied a little broader). I find solace away from that stance by thinking about how Wittgenstein, among others, characterizes philosophy as a kind of therapeutic enterprise. And because I find that film criticism (or any writing, or any _thing_, really) offers a kind of philosophy, it's comforting to know that I will continue to improve my writing along with my life. This is not to say I do not stand behind all that I've written up to this point; I do. Rather, I embrace my constant evolution: I will say that <A HREF="http://vinylisheavy.blogspot.com/2007/11/late-night-notes-criticism-of-criticism.html" REL="nofollow">I'm still learning what kind of criticism I want to write, and how I want to write it</A>, in the kind of life I want to live, and how I want to live it. If there's anything I've come to know it's that my interests in language are better addressed in works like _John from Cincinnati_ and Preston Sturges, even _No Country for Old Men_, than in _Margot_ because those other three offer a definite affirmation of being in the world. (This can be achieved in negative, too: see _TWBB_.) One might argue the same for Baumbach's film, I guess, but it's a tenuous thread. I'd have to see the film again to firm up my argument, and I don't think that will happen, so all I can say is this: the picture ends focused on Nicole Kidman (still a selfish wreck), and not Jennifer Jason Leigh (somebody capable of loving an oaf in spite of himself). Maybe I'm selfish but that's just not something I want to spend that much time with. Still, I did, by writing all that, and I did laugh rather frequently. I don't think it's a waste of a picture, just an ugly feeling picture. <BR/><BR/>Which is all to say that, as much as I trust he has lived a full life of reflection and independent thinking, maybe even Armond White doesn't know himself as much as he may think he does. Heck, can we ever? This past summer I wrote this: <A HREF="http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2007/07/dialogue-vs-duplicity-notes-on.html" REL="nofollow">"I am drawn to films I will not know fully, just as I will not know myself fully."</A> And I still stand by it, because as much as I think I understand _John from Cincinnati_ or Preston Sturges there will always be something else for me to uncover. Now, to finish up some thoughts on that newest Reygadas picture...<BR/><BR/>*That's another weird thing: why we keep going to movies because we hope they'll provide some kind of, uh, something... something like an epiphany? a hope that each new movie will be brilliant? There's a weird religiosity to film, right? Clearly AW is arguing for _his_ beliefs.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.com