Dear
Vincent,
Since
you’re in your Van Gogh period, can I have your ear? I realize that the
competition with Barbara for the forementioned appendage is fierce, but I
thought I’d mention it. It would be quite stunning on the wall. Can I be your
Gaugin?
How can you
argue theoretically on economics of film? With Pratley yet! He’s still into
screening 1948 David Lean movies. A nice enough guy and all that, but still…
Whenever I get into a long-short argument I always use a comparison of Zero Du Conduit and If… both are fine films, If…
is obviously a serious copy, almost shot for shot and character for character
of a not so seriously done film. But both would be hurt if they were either
expanded or cut. You can also take bets that although If… received vast publicity, good notices, etc. Zero will outlast it in the eyes of film
enthusiasts and eventually the general public. Time puts a good perspective on
lots of things. There’s more beauty, warmth, fun and talent in Buster Keaton’s
least accepted silent short than all of Chaplin’s strained and sentimental
movies put together. Anyone who expects more than the most minimal appreciation
of their work is living in a fantasy land, and anyone who works only for that
little bit of appreciation if stupid and wasting their time and any talent they
might have.
Take me for
example (generally speaking I’m a fair old example for a number of things
ranging from poor eyesight to Western moral decay). It is well known that I am
not a business head, however I am a prime art appreciator, and the desire to
get money for filmmakers whose work I admire spurs me to great heights of
invoice typing. Now when you read your Sunday times you will not see an
advertisement for an invoice I typed in the Sotheby column wedged between
Napoleon (a little known requisition for enamel privies, signed by the French
imperator which led to thousands of battle casualties) and George Washington (A
fragment of the finished whiskey tax, highly legible, with cameo portrait).
What’s more, our collected correspondence will not be mentioned by Jonas Mekas in the foreseeable future and
Andrew Sarris will not dedicate his next book to Andre Bazin and Jim Murphy
(the two people who most influenced my perception and heightened my enjoyment
of the art of the cinema). But does this deter me, you ask. NO! I reply.
Because every four months I sign dozens of payment cheques, and although some
people like yourself do not make the money they deserve both personally and
artistically, the fact that my signature is on enough cheques to make two or
three House Movies or a fourth reel
of La Region Centrale helps. And
although I may not be as good in my job as I could be, I don’t trust anyone
else to do it because of the effort I put into it.
And now for
a little analysis of what you do. Audiences, as you know by now, see a movie
and not the person who made it. Fine for Eisenstein and other polemicists.
However, the value of films like yours or any other independent filmmaker is in
the collection of images and thoughts as it relates to the person. The films
obviously must hold up to a viewer who hasn’t lived with someone for six or
seven years, but the impact on someone who knows you is commensurately greater.
If you ask my humble opinion, Tall Dark
Stranger is the work of a kid with a feeling for film, but no
sophistication in human relationships. In a sense, all your films are
autobiographical, some by omission and some by choice. When you made Rose; I, A Dog and Next to Me,
I bet you were fairly isolated and fucked up lonely. The people in those movies
are manipulated as objects a la our conversation at Grossman’s. Of course what
you did wasn’t intentional (except I, A
Dog) but filmic. You sacrificed people for technique, no great loss in and
of itself, because your technique at that point was so much better than your
feel for people. Why else do you think you made those movies anyway? That’s why
on the level I’m talking about Rose
is so much better than Stranger, even
though it preceded it.
The
technique used in Rooftops is an
obvious progression, but that’s the first movie that you show a feeling for
life. The same setting is used to place two simple shots which make the movie,
the birds and the children; I’ve seen movies so similar to Rooftops that I feel the old déjà vu (ever see Bridges and Lights or other Bob Crawford films?) Isolated as two
little pieces of film, those shots don’t mean shit, but compared to the way you
treat people in your other movies, they mean quite a lot. You weren’t being ha,
ha critical or oh boy cynical, but just showing what was going on there. Make
sense?
House Movie is light years ahead of the others
because you give your objects and images, things you were always capable of
showing us, but just showing us, an emotional context. There’s more than the
old ‘two people together in a shot means they’re in love’ bit. There’s shared
experience in space and teapots and kittens and all kinds of things, and that
shows. It shows on the level I first experienced when I saw it at the Poor
Alex, namely ‘that’s nice because I went through the same thing’ and it shows
in the progression of your style of filmmaking, and your treatment of
relationships. September 15 is really
your first film about dada! people. Do you see it that way? Also, do you see that
if you make a movie like Arrival and
Departure of a Train it won’t be because you’re only capable of filming
things like that?
That’s the
context that I put your movies into. The elemental things like your cutting
style, the types of music you use and a fairly distinct framing eye are the
things you’ve had for years, and something that anyone can see and admire in
one screening. But the value of your work is as a body and a person progressing
beyond technique. If people can’t see that then fuck them, not the work.
Getting
beyond heavy art criticism and into the world of reality, are you going to have
some time this year to go to high schools around Ontario to teach
workshops/screen your films for fabulous sums of money like $50-$150 a day? We
got some money ($7500) from POCA to do a high school thing which will include
you and Lorne and numerous other people from ARTLAND. So if you really want to
commute.
There’s
also a John Grierson Memorial Film Seminar thing in the offing, similar to
Robert Flaherty et. Which is supposed to happen in late August and which I am
supposed to be helping to organize. Don’t hold your breathe.
In other
great developments, my beard is coming in slowly but surely, Tom is getting
married and David is trying to get a feature film together for a nice Vancouver
dude named Peter Bryant. If it happens, he’ll produce it and I’ll got out for a
few weeks when they shoot to help David.
When you
come to Ontario you can at last count on money from POCA to make your films. At
least that’s encouraging.
Don’t
because of the wording of this letter, consider it a verbal care package. It
means more than that to me. It means I can type all afternoon while still
looking like I’m working.
So there.
Jim (your
pal)
Jim Murphy
Canadian
Filmmakers Distribution Centre
Room 204,
341 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1W8