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Friday Lots of Fun LInk: Someday There Will Be A Movie Version of the Dictionary
If your love of stage Irish performances is strong, your interest in forgotten relics of the psychedelic age is acute, your curiosity about the secret history of women artists is piqued, and your tolerance for very lame puns is high, be aware that for more than 40 years, in almost total obscurity, a feature length movie of Finnegans Wake has existed. And all I can say is: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, you no longer have the Best Attempted Feature Adaptation of Plotless Literary Collage Oscar category all to yourself.
I'm humbled and amazed that until today I had never heard of this movie. Even more stunning: The film was directed by a woman (experimental filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute) and written by another woman (playwright Mary Manning, adapting her stage version of Passages From Finnegans Wake); a 35mm negative of it exists at Yale; it received some honor at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival; and it offers freak appeal in the form of far-out imagery and production value that is at least as good as what you'll find in The Trip, the video for "Proud Mary" or any given episode of The Monkees. It is a testament to James Joyce's incredible negative charisma that a work with so many areas of interest remains virtually unknown. The nature of the movie sort of defies any judgment of success or failure, and in this case you can truly say it is surprising that it was done at all. [As is usually the case with non-YouTube embeds, I can't get this one to work, so you can see the film here.]
Vermont-based Cecile Starr, 88, has distributed Passages From Finnegans Wake since the 1970s. She says the film played in New York, Boston and a few other cities, but never got much attention even from art house exhibitors. (Starr herself only agreed to handle the movie when Bute also gave her distribution of her short animated films, a sample of which you can see here.) "[Mary Ellen Bute] made it on her own with her own money and some money she was able to raise," Starr says. "She had a low budget. In independent films in those days it was things like Woodstock and Don't Look Back, the Bob Dylan film. For an independent film this just had a very different pace and a different idea. We just assumed it was a very offbeat film that wouldn't have an audience. Why she chose to do it nobody knows."
Obscurity has also brought benefits: Starr says she has never been approached by Stephen Joyce, the writer's famously litigious grandson, who has made a career of stamping out adaptations like Bute's. If you want to rent a 16mm print for your next party, you can contact Starr here. (And don't invite me to your next party.)
EJM|8.14.09 @ 8:30PM|#
It can't be as fun as the Michael Russnow episodes of "Split Second". (One was posted about a year ago, but I just noticed that the others were posted recently.)
|8.14.09 @ 8:31PM|#
Tim, the clip doesn't seem to be working.
It is a testament to James Joyce's incredible negative
charisma
Yes. So very yes.
Why she chose to do it nobody knows.
Why did John Travolta choose--nay, was driven--to do
Battlefield Earth?
Remember: nobody knows, so let's find out.
hmm|8.14.09 @ 8:36PM|#
I'm like a rabid monkey banking on the laptop pad, hurry quick
fix the video. You don't expect me to read all those wordy things
before I get a video!!!
Fuck...
Frustration...
Make it work....
Grrrr.....
MattXIV|8.14.09 @ 8:37PM|#
Off topic infuriating story for the weekend - What's the use of having control of a major automaker and the EPA if you can't use it to make up ridiculous fuel economy numbers.
hmm|8.14.09 @ 8:40PM|#
Okay read it all. Great drinking song, won't comment on the
film.
Do they serve beer at art house movie theaters?
hmm|8.14.09 @ 8:43PM|#
MattXIV | August 14, 2009, 8:37pm | #
Off topic infuriating story for the weekend - What's the use of having control of a major automaker and the EPA if you can't use it to make up ridiculous fuel economy numbers.
I love that guy. His blog is awesome. A lot of what he discusses
requires another 10 hours of reading for me to understand, but
still awesome.
|8.14.09 @ 8:44PM|#
Do they serve beer at art house movie theaters?
It's not really an art house theater, but The Big Picture is only
2 blocks from me and serves booze--they'll even bring it to your
seat for you.
There's also a theater in New Haven that serves alcohol and also
lets you bring in your own if you want. I saw The Dark
Knight there while sipping a rum and Coke.
BakedPenguin|8.14.09 @ 8:46PM|#
But is it as weird as Jodorowsky or Parajanov? It's hard to
top them them for sheer oddity. However, Jarmusch tops them all for
unwatchability.
hmm - the Enzian here in Orlando serves beer, food, etc.
|8.14.09 @ 8:55PM|#
Linky to the full film works (the one in the article).
Tim, you must realize that posting this on a Friday evening is only
asking SugarFree to supply more than we ever wanted to know about
Joyce's sexual proclivities. Way to ruin everyone's weekend,
buddy.
|8.14.09 @ 8:59PM|#
BP, let's not forget Jeff Lieberman. Blue Sunshine is one fucked up film. And they featured Squirm on MST3K.
Syd Henderson|8.14.09 @ 9:06PM|#
Now if someone would just film this play of "The Golden Bough,"
Tim's life would be complete:
http://oddbooks.co.uk/oddbooks/bitting.html
John|8.14.09 @ 10:02PM|#
The first time I looked at Wake I thought it was a practical joke version made just to fool with me. I had heard of it, and thought it was a normal, english-language novel. I've since studied it and I think it may be the most ridiculous 17-year-long experiment in modern art ever.
24AheadDotCom|8.14.09 @ 10:51PM|#
You know what's great about the link? You can't fast forward. So
- just as long as you don't "accidentally" close the window - you
have to watch the whole thing. And, that's just great.
I recommend this instead.
Uatu, The Watcher|8.14.09 @ 10:55PM|#
I've since studied it and I think it may be the most
ridiculous 17-year-long experiment in modern art ever.
I assure you in the centuries to come, The Cult of The Art Novel
will come under universal and severe ridicule from members of all
the categories of sentient life.
Watch for one of your own who will not be able to resist the allure
of this topic for what it means to his self worth to make my case
for me.
|8.14.09 @ 11:01PM|#
Finnegans Wake is to other Joyce novels what the Star Wars Holiday Special is to the other Star Wars films.
24AheadDotCom|8.14.09 @ 11:18PM|#
1. Janeway was the best.
2. Weigel was one of the sources
for April's DHS report, right alongside the SPLC and the
ADL.
3. While the number of things that are better than the link or any
movie are vast, let me choose four: link, link, link, link.
BakedPenguin|8.14.09 @ 11:54PM|#
True, Episiarch, but Lieberman's films have plots, of a sort.
(Although you could argue Jodorowsky's El Topo kind of
does, too.)
Speaking of fucked up films, I finally caught Men Behind the
Sun. Jesus wept.
PIRS, does that include Episode I? Because if it does,
that's not really much of a step up from the Holiday Special.
|8.15.09 @ 12:27AM|#
Finnegans Wake fits the classic definition of Irish literature: it reads better when you're drunk...
PantsFan|8.15.09 @ 12:43AM|#
open thread?
feministing takes on Mad Men:
http://www.feministing.com/archives/017181.html#comments
the best comment
I hate Don Draper too badly to like the show. I get so tired of
moody, asshole, narcissistic men as protagonists in "edgy" dramas
these days.
Kevin Carson|8.15.09 @ 2:54AM|#
Worse yet, in another five years there's be "Dictionary Movie: The Musical" playing along with all the Andrew Lloyd Webber shit at your local middlebrow Arts Center.
Art-P.O.G.|8.15.09 @ 6:54AM|#
My own Joyce story? I tried to make it through Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man but at some point, I lost the will
to finish. I recognize that the author was gifted, but...
I do like weird films, though. Big Man Japan, The
Exterminating Angel, The Happiness of the Katakuris,
Donnie Darko...those films are pretty off-beat. I was
looking at the Wikipedia page for a pretty off-beat Japanese
director named Juzo Itami, when I came across this account:
In 1992, Itami was attacked, beaten, and slashed by five members of the Goto-gumi, a Tokyo yakuza gang, who were angry at his portrayal of yakuza as bullies and thugs in his film Minbo no Onna.
...what can you say to that, really? Did those gangsters have
any sense of self-awareness?
Why did John Travolta choose--nay, was driven--to do Battlefield Earth?
To date, the only movie bad enough to make me intolerant of a
religion.
BakedPenguin|8.15.09 @ 10:08AM|#
Art - it's hard to go wrong with Bunuel. Viridiana is
great, and Los Olividados is probably the best of his
"Mexican" period.
Since you're not afraid of weirdness, B&W or subtitles (unless
you speak Spanish and Japanese), let me recommend Hiroshi
Teshigahara movies to you if you haven't seen them already. The
film adaptations he did of Abe's novels are all very good:
Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another. I'm
currently hunting down his later films and documentaries.
<strike>strike through</strike|8.15.09 @ 10:19AM|#
SPOILER ALERT!
sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad
father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere
size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me
seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them
rising!
BakedPenguin|8.15.09 @ 1:13PM|#
Good to know someone else is into cinematic weirdness around
here, Art. Epi is also, but really only the "extreme" kind. dhex
likes his movies like his music - with lots of explosions and
violence. SIV is a font of knowledge on zombie movies, but I think
his expertise ends there. Jesse Walker has a good knowledge of
avant garde cinema, but I've pissed him off along with all the
other Reason writers.
I'll write an Urkobold post the next week about some other art
films & strange cinema. Make sure and come by.
|8.15.09 @ 2:55PM|#
Epi is also, but really only the "extreme" kind.
I like the Mountain Dew of movies! Now I want to watch Liquid
Sky.
|8.15.09 @ 4:43PM|#
Now I want to watch Liquid Sky.
I saw this back during the original release (well, art house in
Mpls, so it was already 1983 or so) and I was way, way too
high.
I drove and my friend handed me a one-hitter at a stop light.
Thinking it was maintenance-level dope I took a big draw. Same
thing a few minutes later. Rinse and repeat. Turns out it was
killer sens.
During the movie with the scene of a close-up heroin injection into
someone's neck I thought I was going to puke.
Episiarch, thanks for the yummy memory, dude.
|8.15.09 @ 6:15PM|#
I like the Mountain Dew of movies! Now I want to watch
Liquid Sky.
The main actress in that was in a Miami Vice episode. An
interesting contrast.
Neu Mejican|8.15.09 @ 6:21PM|#
Episiarch, thanks for the yummy memory, dude.
My memories of the film are better: the video was on the TV while I
fucked my long-distance, bi-sexual girlfriend who I hadn't seen if
a few weeks. I seem to remember lots of drugs and orgasms.
There were some in the movie too, iirc.
Syd Henderson|8.16.09 @ 6:19PM|#
"Am I the only one here who liked the movie?"
Are you the only one here who's seen it?
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