So I recently went back to Dubai for a job. OK it was strange but then how it could be anything but. Folks it ain't supposed to be there. It's a modern end game construct built by Pakistani slaves, funded by trafficking in ever increasingly rare SUV and jumbo jet juice and ignored and exploited by a growing list of multinational corporations and celebs. Tiger Woods and Gordon Ramsey are there and Rod Stewart owns the Scottish replica of an earth shaped man made archipelago called not surprisingly called The World. There is the world's largest indoor ski area and the world's tallest building. If you could build your dream world from scratch would it resemble Dubai? Hmmmm... not in a million years...
After the shoot I spent a day taking pictures of buildings and Pakistani and Indian workers and as soon as I get them scanned... yep I be shooting film... I will let you know. Mas tarde.
Luis is from Angola. He has a sense of humor and a very calm presence. I like calm presences a lot these days. So my diet is:
Breakfast
12 almonds
6 dried apricots
Soy Yogurt
A fresh juice of carrots, apples and celery
Fresh Fruit
Lunch
Well it varies but basically its a mixed salad followed by a plato combinado of a protein like eggs, fish, meat or tofu and some sort of vegetable and a non gluten starch like rice or potatoes. Highlights include:
Boiled vegetables with a poached egg
Rice noodles with poached fish
Quinoa (a grain from South America) with a tofu burger
Dinner
Repeat breakfast
I cannot have salt, wheat or dairy products. I am supposed to take a nice walk twice a day and make a tea of this strange weed called Maria Luisa after each meal.
So after the first month I told Luis that he might be a good dietitian but he is a lousy menu designer. I asked him if I could take his basic components and use them to make up my own menu. He agreed so I pretty much divvy up the week between fish, meat and eggs and make sure to have salad, a starch and vegetables at each lunch. Dinner and breakfast are pretty much lost causes so I just toe the line.
The problem is that I live with people and I have always loved to cook and eat. Breakfasts are fine but dinners are a disaster. I eat my fruit and watch Zoe and Benedicte eat real food. And since I am kind of the man in the kitchen the dinners have been getting progressively simpler. Zoe gets a few slices of ham, a couple of tomato slices and rice or potatoes. Benedicte might have salad or just hit the taco chips if she is just up to opening a bag and stuffing her face.
The positive aspects are that my obsession with food is now waining. I am beginning to see it as more of a sustenance delivery system and less of a religious experience. Perspective is good but there was much I loved about being obsessed with chow. I really need to find a balance. The other good thing is that I have found quinoa... OK I 'm reaching for positives but it really is an interesting alternative to mono culture crops like wheat. Hey and it tastes good.
Ultimately as I mentioned in my previous entry after 3 months it's not obvious to me that the diet is having any effect. Yes I would like to attribute a bad day to that gram of pie crust that I snuck into my mouth but it's just not clear that this is the case. We'll see.
I wish I could be enthusiastic about more things. I wish I could report back that by eating bland and tasteless chow that is often the color of dirt is a cure for what ails me. But the truth is after 3 months or so I am not in anyway convinced that this is a solution for anything other than making me eat and cook bland and tasteless chow by myself and adding a chunk of cash to my dietitian's wallet.
So the program is to try to cure RA through a change in diet and homeopathy. Listen I really want to get rid of this stuff. Yes the medication I am taking is helping tremendously but if I didn't have state funded health care I would be popping for a monthly bill of 1200 bucks. Not a pleasant thought and besides there are days like today when I know that what I am taking is just treating the symptoms. No I am not wailing in agony but I can tell you exactly which "articulation" is affected, And disturbingly the list is growing. So it makes perfect sense to me to get this stuff out of me.
OK friends recommended a homeopathist. Her name is Otrud. Obviously she is German. And she is very scary. Otrud says I have been suppressing my bodies desire to kick my ass. Otrud says that I will go through "hell" as my body gives me a whuppin' for taking the evil elixirs from the conniving, blood sucking "western" doctors. Six months of howling agony and then and only then Otrud will bring me back to life of mobility and Karma and brown rice and soy products.
I will also be required to abandon all of the medication that has in actuality has, depending on the day, given me back maybe 90 percent of what I had before I ate the dreaded camel.
So I did my due diligence. I spoke with the "cured" patients of Otrud and to be honest the results are impressive. I had lunch with a very pretty scientist who ironically is researching the just how RA affects the human body. For 10 years she had suffered from our shared malady... it was everywhere, including the joints between her jaw and her skull... there were days she could hardly bring herself to talk... anyway after Otrud's cure she now has no symptoms what so ever.
I spoke about the possibility of homeopathy with my evil western doctors who are seemingly some the nicest people I have ever met and they did not throw me out of the office and laugh at me. They understood my concern and said to try this new path. But they also said to not stop taking my evil western potions as Otrud has demanded.
I also spent sometime researching RA and homeopathy and read that according to the International Association of Homeopathists no lawful homeopathist would ever suggest not taking "western" medicine cold turkey when it comes to a serious illnesses.
So I have come to the conclusion that Otrud is not for me. I am still willing to explore homeopathy and have found a another doctor who is not so... hardcore. He is suggesting that homeopathy can cure RA but he prefers to work with my evil western doctors, gradually lowering the dosages and hopefully, in time suspending them.
Regarding the diet and the dietitian. Instinctually I do feel that this wheat, lactose and salt free diet is having a positive effect but I need to validate his opinions. I am going to go see a "western" food allergy specialist and see if I actually do have a sensitivity to these things. Look I love bread and cheese and if I don't have to give them up why should I. Onward.
I am embarking on a new adventure. I am going to try to get rid of my rheumatoid arthritis through homeopathy and diet. Yeah it's under control and I pretty much can do anything I did before I ate the dreaded camel spaghetti but still everybody including my rheumatologist tells me that one of the things I am taking is insanely nasty and toxic. I really can't tell that it is but I guess I'd prefer not to wake up dead one morning. A little joke. Hah.
So I am exploring the possibilities and it may turn out to be a good yarn. So far the list of characters is looking promising. There is Ostrud the incredibly direct "star" homeopath who counts such luminaries as Peter Greenaway as a patient, Luis the white Angolan dietician, my friend Georgia who got me headed in this direction and Rita the former RA sufferer who is now apparently completely cured. Stay tuned.
OK this just in. What do you with a freind who has one of the most unique voices in all of literaturedom? Well climb up on BLOG MOUNTAIN and holler, "Darrell Williams is a Genius!" Read on for one perfectly crafted paragraph. 1 PARAGRAPH I TELL YOU!
Walter Ate a Peanut and Passed On
Greta knew that Walter couldn't eat peanuts. He was deathly allergic to them. His parents had discovered this one day when he popped a peanut into his ever-exploring mouth at the age of two. He was rushed to the hospital and from that day forward was never again given a peanut or anything containing peanuts. As he grew older, he often wondered what they tasted like and what he was missing. In 1955, he met and married Greta Moussleman, the love of his life, with whom he sired and helped raise five children without peanuts, for fear that one of them might have Walter's deadly allergy. One by one, the children would secretly discover that they did not share their father's burden, and would go on to lead full and happy peanut-eating lives. So it was a shock to hear of their father's sudden death, and even more disturbing that it had been caused by ingestion of not one, but upwards of the equivalent of 35 peanuts. Equivalent is the word used, because the peanuts had been dry roasted and finely ground into a powder that had been sprinkled onto Walter's morning oatmeal. Greta insisted it wasn't she who had ground and sprinkled the peanuts, and her children could find no reason tosuspect that their father's mate of some 56 years would have cause for murder. Shortly thereafter, Greta passed away like so many forlorn mates of deceased loved ones and the mystery of Walter's death continued to haunt the children until Eric, the oldest son, discovered a secret cash of peanuts in his father's workshop cabinet, along with a sealed envelop that read: upon my death. Eric was shocked to read the words of the letter within, and decided that none of his siblings should ever know their father's final thoughts about life, about the miserable years he spent in a loveless marriage, his hatred of his wife, and how the irresistible urge to try the forbidden legume was more appealing than continuing to put up with Greta. Eric shortly thereafter became depressed and went on medication. None of his bothers nor his sister could understand why.
Ok I got the "film" back from the "lab." And I had them scan them into digital land too... Well they were supposed to do big honk'n files but they did little crap files and heck I paid for big honk'n file so I guess I will go back and run the risk of them losing the "transparencies" one more time. This was one of those pro joints with 3000 euro bodies just begging you to fork it over... I might as well have went to foto-casita. Dang!
Anyway all said there are some winners in the "roll." Here's one. What a lovely guy. Obviously he hasn't been spending his golden years dealing with Telefonica. I'll flickr 'em when I get the real deal scans in or I pop for a "pro" scanner and do it myself. I think "pro" scanners are going for like 11.95 now. If I wait until tuesday they will probably be giving them away with a bag of spaghetti.
I Finally go off my culo and started taking pictures of the people who live in my neighborhood. I have been talking about this for probably as long as I have lived here. And as always things are different once you dive in.
My new art buddy Alissa and I hit the streets in search of those denizens of Sants that have always caught my eye. Alissa, is from Portland, Oregon, lives on the other side of the block from me and is here doing a documentary about Angolan children who are victims of land mines. Is it strange that another Portland filmmaker who shares the friendship of a certain accordionist happens to live a half a block away from me in this very off the radar neighborhood of Barcelona? Yep. Very.
Anyway I talked Alissa into going along for two reasons:
1. After wandering around the Saharawi camps alone with a camera and in general practicing "art" by myself I thought it would be more fun to do something like this with somebody else. It was.
2. Ultimately I am a coward and a single guy going up to strangers with a camera and asking to take their picture usually doesn't work and is... for the single guy, kinda scary. Like the Mormon missionaries, the little old lady Jehovah´s Witnesses and cops, 2 is better. Enough with the brave thing.
The parameters were these. Stop anybody I thought looked "interesting" and shoot out one 36 exposure roll. Yep... film!
Even with the two for us our refusal rate was about 90%. But what we did get is pretty amazing.
I have to be honest that for this project the people I had in mind were the snarly old ladies that have completely destroyed my usually positive opinions of old people and ruined my hope for aging gracefully. We did indeed start out asking these golden agers but as one would expect they were not interested and many of which expressed the same generosity of spirit that they demonstrate at the vegetable stand at my mercado... But the people who did agree had a quality that was open and in it's own way beautiful. OK I am drawn to how do we say this... interesting looking people. This is not about shooting babes in bikinis this is about shooting people with strange noses, big ears and odd tuffs of facial hair... and that's just the ladies. But there was something behind these strange and remarkable faces and oh so not perfect bodies. There was the man whose son had downs syndrome, the guy white haired guy with the dew lap, gucci shades and his shirt open to his navel, the beautiful very, very old man with a cane who seemed to be thankful for every painful step he was taking. The capper was 87 year old Maria Sanchez and her daughter Francesca. At first Francesca was suspicious and for some reason kept running back into the carniceria that we were in front of. But soon she returned and told the story of her son who has leukemia and there search for a bone marrow doner. It turns out Francesca is a professora at the University of Barcelona and they have found someone with a bone marrow match someplace in the United States but they can't locate his exact position. She was holding back the tears.
The thing about Spain is that everything thing is just below the surface. It's sometimes a hard surface but it's brittle so you can just tap it and you are in to another world. I guess the task of taking somebody's picture is all that is needed to break through. I'll put the pictures up on flickr as soon as get them processed and scanned.
You I'm starting to lose it. But I'm coming to the some conclusions. Here`s a few simple ones.
In Europe the assholes are not as obvious as in the US.
US. Bush. UK. Blair. Blair... here's an example... had a nice quiet photo opportunity lunch with Gaddafi... ok it was a while ago but hey it happened. I remember the press conference. I think thay talked about the beautiful beaches.
The Aids injecting Bulgarian Nurses. Ok they are going to die. The they are going to live but be in some Libyan dungeon for the rest of thier lives. Then they are gong to die. Then they are free. These people were in said dungeon for 8 years while their fate was decided and Tony was having lunch with Muammar. Try the Fatoush. I love Fatoush. Well firstly I am happy about this but secondly why? Link. Because the EU and the French paid 438 million euros to get them out of there. The figure comes from 1 million Euros per infected kid. Cecilia Sarkozy probably brought the check. Pass go, pay 438 million and you are out of jail... after 8 years in the hole and a little torture to boot. But this Gaddafi guy is OK now in Sarkozy's and George's and Tony' book... well Tony's book is not so important now... Gordon's book? How does Mr. Brown feel. Ah heck what's a little thing like Lockerbie. "Hell Momut why not come on down to Guantanamo and ask some of your people some questions."
And Nick is having such a good time hanging with George. Link. Baked beans. Burgers. Ketchup.
You know in Europe they have this way of looking the other way. Look at Blair. Man, that guy could talk! Impressive! But it's all about the power dance. Sarkozy, well at least he speaks his mind... scarey as that might be... until he gets elected and he makes nice with the socialists, hires a whack of them and the cutlery and china remains firmly in place on the French lunch table. And it's not like the socialist had any trouble working for the Vlad Sarkozy. They friggin' curtsied. And then a guilt wracked Segolene comes clean and admits that much of she was promising was complete merde. Why? Well my guess is that she wants a job too. Scoundrels on the left. Scoundrels on the right. At least with GW we know he's an asshole... all the time, 24/7. And then there is Dubai, which continues to haunt me... mas tarde. Jeez, I better get back to talking about Zoe, Ham and my old commercials.
So was I down a the bakery this morning waiting on line for my sometimes regular Sunday "Media Luna" which is basically an very good apple turnover. OK its not really Spanish or Catalan it's French and comes from a quasi-French bakery chain called "Paul." So I guess I'm cheating but for many things like this and croissants Paul is pretty much "the" place for this kind of baking. But to give credit where credit is do the bakery across the street has the best bread in Barcelona... I should know because I'v probably tried 100 bakeries so far.
So it's a Sunday in August, everybody is away on vacaciones including Benedicte and Zoe who are in the US of A. Living in this very working class barrio I sometimes lose track of the quiet side of Spain and Catalunya. Sants is soooo noisy. Scooters, buses, cars... and everybody trying to be heard by screaming over the top of it all. And lets face it Spaniards are not exactly known for being soft spoken. But Paul and the Calle were for once quiet. I asked the lady in front of me if she was the last in line and she said she was... this very Catalan solution to the lining up problem could be it's most valuable contribution to the world. It's brilliant, you enter a shop, bakery, hardware store and you ask, "Who's last?" The last person responds and you can go about what doing other things or just wait comfortably knowing that all you have to watch that persons progress. Of course when someone new enters and asks the big question you of course are the one who needs to say, "Yo!" And so it continues.
But I found my self waiting comfortably and perusing the newly added ice cream and it's incredibly expensive contents. 125 CL cups for 5 euros... please, this is neighborhood that prefers its ice cream in the shape of Spiderman or Mickey Mouse. The door opening was announced by a very soft bell and not a buzzer from the Gong Show and a pretty young woman entered. She seemed to know the slightly portly fellow who was next in line after me. They greeted each other and began a lovely quiet conversation. She was speaking with this soft and resonant voice that had the lovely sibilant of well spoken Castilian. Beautiful.
Living in Sants I have lost track of what I fell in love with in Spain. It's not the hubbub all though that is part of it. It's not the screaming neighbors or the garbage being picked up outside my bedroom at 4 in the morning. It's voices and people like that girl in Paul.
I'm finding young alternative-y Spanish folks to be what I find most attractive about this country. The are smart, open and committed to change. Older folks can be really hard and closed minded, particularly in working class. Keep up the fight chicos and chicas.
We spent a couple of weeks in Brittany with Benedicte's family. It's a yearly thing, every year Benedicte's parents rent a house and invite the entire clan. Depending on how far the net is cast this can be up to 11,000 people... or at least it seems that way sometimes.
I just try to help out as much as possible and what seems to help the most is if I stay the hell out of the way. It's a machine. A french machine but still... a machine. So I try to grab Zoe and do things. Go fishing. Go hiking. Go to the cafe and draw. But this year I had the wise idea to bring... wet suits. OK lots of slack from Benedicte... "When I was a kid we didn't have wet suits!" Well neither did I and let me tell you I was friggin' cold. I always seemed to be cold. Rubber boots and cotton socks during a snow storm. Wet mittens that made better sponges than insulators. Brrrrr.... So I got Zoe this cute pink shorty. Mask, fins, suit... all pink and all for like 40 bucks.
Zoe was one of those water babies. You know like on the Nirvana album cover. It always made sense to me, we spend the 1st 9 months underwater... why not just toss them in the pool on their second day out of the womb. Well it wasn't exactly day 2 but she was in the pool at 6 weeks taking lessons but sadly in her case it didn't work. Although she has always loved the water she has also been very afraid of it. Later on through her school they offered more swimming classes... after weeks of trying to get her jump in they put her in the shallow end and told to stick with the 3 year olds. Luckily she didn't mind.
But I am proud to announce that this summer through the Robin Willis reluctant swimmer program she is now a fish. She would spend hours paddling around looking at fishies and crabs and well, a lot of rocks. The slight buoyancy of the wet suit seem to help her and the mask and snorkel replaced the fear of down there with fascination.
So obviously I too was out there with her. While floating amidst the flotsam and jetsam I revisited the idea that our species biggest mistake was crawling out of the sea. I feel completely free when I am underwater. It seems as natural as breathing. I do not desire anything. No cars, big screens... no career ambitions... Time does not exist. Neither does gravity. Neither do problems. I am one with the waves. I have always thought that I was really an otter who oddly wound up as a television commercial director. I think Zoe is one too.
The Beirut story is long and complicated. Yes there were bombs going off... in the suburbs. Yes I was pretty much required to go back to my hotel every night and stay there and watch the Discovery channel and eat Fatoush. Yes the lovely folks at the production company did have an office pool regarding which neighborhood would be bombed next. Yes Moneer the Egyptian creative director who is based in Dubai with the agency refused to shoot in Beirut. At one point the shoot was cancelled, then was to be moved to Kuala Lampur (?!) then Moneer was instructed to not be such a wussy by his boss, strap himself into his flack jacket and get his hiney over to Lebanon. Yes I saw Dubai and was completely freaked out. Beirut is on the radar but Dubai... what hath Allah wrought?
The big questions is why? Why did I do it? Why is there Dubai? Why are people seemingly so intent on screwing up things?
Answers:
1. Well it just happened. I got these really strange boards via email and the next thing you know I was booked. And I needed the job. And I think I have this strange desire to see odd places in the world and in general I like people and am fascinated by other cultures. It is probably related to eating camel and living with the Saharawi.
2. You got me. But I think it has something to do with pure unfettered evil. Greed. Exploitation. Insanity. All the big corporations are there. There is the world's biggest indoor ski area. The biggest market in the world for private submarines. It is usually 50 degrees. The sun is eternally behind this wall of white that is in fact the sea boiling away. Inside buildings, cars... it's proudly 15 degrees. The brown skinned people who are building Dubai are for the most part slaves. They hold their passports. They do not have the benefit of air conditioned Mercedes SUVs. Its like working on Mercury. Why? Tax free zones? No workers rights? Big bucks? Swank restaurants? Starbucks? Ample cheap big screens?
3. In general I don't see this in kids... well most kids... It seems to be a something we think is required of as adults. Table alignment and fork placement. Believing in a concrete definition of God. Killing people because they think that eating with your left hand is the sign of the devil or that the holy ghost did or did not impregnate the mother of God's son... which is a conceptual problem because I count 3 separate deities and what is supposed to set the world's largest religion apart from tree fornicating pagans is that it's monotheistic.
Being waste deep in advertising I have come to see that most of these big international mega-corporations do not care squat about anything other than the quarterly returns. It's not like everybody who works for them are blood thirsty capitalist with horns and tails. Its just people with families and responsibilities who need a job and have been conned into thinking that this is the right path. Heck I have derived my income for longer than I care to admit on these various entities. (See the answer to question one for a clearer description.)
We have got to carve out a different path for our kids. My 7 year old daughter's school has offered her Chinese lessons. She is taking them because she wants to learn another language but the school is not offering them so she can hang out with Chinese folks and better understand dim sum, the school is offering them because "its' the future". Well it's a future that I don't want to go to. Sweat shops cranking out more and more crap for Wall Mart. Phony pharmaceuticals that kill people. Zilch environmental concerns. Human rights? What's that compared to a DVD player for 20 bucks? Why are we turning a blind eye to this stuff. Why is the world not looking at Dubai and cringing?
It's taken a while for the Beirut job to sink in. While I was there I never had one moment that I felt unsafe. I had grave doubts about doing a spot for a powdered soft drink for the Saudi's because the agency and client think it would be just the thing to compliment the pre and post daylight gorging that goes on during Ramadan there. But I felt like I was on adventure. I felt lucky to be seeing a place like Beirut up close and personal. I loved the crew and still miss them. The Lebanese are absolutely amazing and lovely people. But now a couple of month's later I really don't know what the hell I was doing. It was dangerous. There were really bombs. The army was on seemingly every street corner. I got frisked on the hood of car by a young soldier with a machine gun.
What's odd though is that I'd go back to Beirut in a heartbeat. There is something about the place and the people. It's a dark and perhaps dangerous intoxication. Here are links to my flickr accounts and some pictures I shot on my cel phone or DV camera. Beirut Dubai
Well Lebanon is in no way in the desert. It´s lush and truly beautiful which only makes the "situation" there even more ironic.
Since I have returned the "situation" has only gotten worse. I picked up the paper yesterday to see front page photos of UN "peacekeepers" all of them from my adopted country frantically dragging a wounded or dead comrade away from out of focus flaming rubble. Yeah "the situation" is mostly "in the south" but considering that the country is, accordng to the CIA fact book, 4/5th the size of Connecticut, that's sort of like saying that it´s over there just past Ikea or Walmart. And considering that a few bombs went off "in the suburbs" of Beirut while I was there I guess the notion of down there "in the south" had moved a pretty close to home.
Folks. A strange turn of events. I thought I was going to Lebanon, Oregon, not Lebanon... Lebanon. So I am in Beirut. Staying at a hotel, listening to somebody saw concrete in the next building which sounds exactly like somebody sawing concrete in the next building back home in Barcelona. The big news is that first day here featured according to CNN, "The Worst day of urban warfare in the last 30 years." remember... Beirut... the 70s... Civil War? Ouch.
Why am I in Beirut? Well I met a girl... no seriously... I met a boy. A boy named Gary. Gary reps me for places other than Germany and Spain and Belgium. Belgium... No that's not right, Belgium is available again. Gary is a great guy. Gary is a Scot. Which usually, in my book, automatically means great guy.
So I get on of Gary's calls. let me be clear about this, in a business seemingly teaming with scoundrels, nare-do-wells, charlatans and posers Gary is a true gentleman. OK he's not one of those prissy kind of gentlemen with lacquered nails and an extended pinky finger he's a Scottish gentleman. Which means that he waxes poetic, tells great stories, turns a phrase with exquisite delicacy is straight as a ruler and I suspect, drinks.
So he says he has some boards. Great! I say as slunk around trying to be a proper father, husband, adult white male and not freak out as the old financial gas tank hovers just slightly above reserve. May I send you an animatic? Sure I say. An animatic is this thing that agencies use to work out exactly how they will steal an idea they got from a Argentinean spot from 1982. But seriously an animatic is sort of an crudely animated series of drawings that the agency uses to convince the "Client" the guys who make the stuff and want to sell the stuff that their idea is sound and has a high enough percentage of frames in it that include the label of the stuff (roughly 97.672). Gary has always had huge problems with the Internet. I have no idea why but things like the provider's server suddenly goes down for 3 weeks because somebody plugged in the salad spinner and the hairdryer at the same time or some balkan trojan horse viral CPU suckering worm has run rampant through deepest reaches of their backplane, bootstrap, USB, ISO 12-0067(a) and caused a CRT, CPR, EEG heap panic. All I know is that it takes awhile to get things and that Gary has on occasion sent me screen shots proving that he indeed did send me a note telling me that the Latvian spot for a combination douche and hair removing product has gone to a Chilean Porn director solely because he said he would fly economy and promised not raid the mini-bar.
So days pass, Gary's ISP gets another hamster for the server and I get this really weird little movie. It has guys wearing funny clothes and speaking this strange language. I don't know what the hell it is. So it turns out it's a spot from an production company from Lebanon and their client and agency in Dubai and there stuff to sell... "Tang." To be continued...
So here are parts 2 and 3 of a Oregon Lottery Campaign. Again I now marvel at the writing. Well I marveled then but "then" I didn't much to compare it to. Pretty much everything was of a similar caliber of shall we call it "genius."
Come on, a grease monkey taking his lottery winnings and building a time machine to visit Lewis and Clark... and Chuck? A "Hotdog on a Stick" girl writes a poem about her trip to France in a Dodge? These days most things are so beat up by the process that the good ideas have been hunted down and strung by their petards long before they get to me. Whatever spark is left is yanked out by it's roots either at the preproduction meeting, on the shoot, in the edit or the dreaded post post nether-world where the wife of the brother in law of the secretary of the brand manager from the Andorran district office gets to say that they don't like the left eyebrow of the extra who 50 feet behind the talent and is on scene for 3 frames... and thanks to the lack of balls, hutzpah, guts, fear of not getting paid, call it what you will, the agency and the production company will honor their opinion, the shot will be yanked and/or 6 thousand dollars worth of flame work will be done to "fix" the offending eye brow. I learned long ago to do my cut just shut up. It's process of erosion. Good stuff gets killed. Bad stuff gets through. Why does this happen? Is it just human nature? Oh well... there was a time when good was good and bad was bad and stupid was stupid. I offer a big thank you to those that let me be part of those times.
Sometimes I think I just don't take the commercial biz seriously enough. I've been requested to write a bio for the new web page for the nice company that reps me in España. I written quite a few of these things. They always end with something warm and tingly but the best of these I think was the one I wrote for GAP in Munich. Gap reps me exclusively for the area just outside thier office, between the post office and the drinking fountain. Beyond that I'm up for grabs.
Here goes:
"He was born long, long ago in place called Portland, Oregon. His father was a lumber jack and his mother, a school marm. His grandpa whittled him his first camera when he was just a bug. Unfortunately at 13 he developed a desire to sing show tunes and cook. After the 50th rendition of Oklahoma and a failed attempt at a souffle he was shipped off to the Rumsfeld Academy for Wayward Skinny Boys of Potentially Confused Gender. He was made a man of. He had a dual major: Body hair and ladies dream. He drove a 1972 burgundy Plymouth Roadrunner. Bored out V8. Hemi. Kragers. Jail followed. Sentenced to 11 years for assault with a deadly battery. In jail his ability to sing show tunes made him very popular. He organized a prison playhouse and directed and played all the roles in Chekov's Three Sisters. He escaped while touring grade school cafeterias across the southern states of America. After stealing a reel from a drunken has-been director in Sarasota, Florida he self financed a spec spot for Waymeyer's Nipple Cream using 37 disposable cameras and an inflatable crocodile. Back to jail. Out on special souffle dispensation he moved to Spain after misunderstanding the term, “Tapas Bars.” He will be survived by his daughter Zoe and wife Benedicte. He desires to own a dog and a IPOD."
There was a period before "Bud's Dance" where I seemed to land on the radar enough that I at least got a couple of boards. Up until my full embrace of the comedic "Cloudy Bright" sun over your shoulder esthetic as presented by Kodak on every box of film that they every made I was obsessed by light. Which I suppose I should have been since I was a lighting guy for a decade before my decision to be a director... a decision that understandably nobody concurred with.
But folks at the Coats Agency gave me a chance and I did a few spots for them that all featured what I used to refer to as, "dark, teutonic photography." Basically the idea was to make things as vague and indistinct as possible. I think the inspiration for this look was the work of Matt Mahurin, particularly his video for Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street." In this video there is one shot in particular that continues to haunt me. A hand enters the frame and pulls out a drawer. The hand is extremely over exposed... so over exposed that the grains seems to scattering like sandy particles. Like every thing else in that video it's an amazing shot.
I guess the early photographic work of Edward Stiechen also was an inspiration. I found his dark indistinct shapes to be very, very compelling. My mind could wander in the obscure tonalities and try to distinguish shapes and images. I guess it's sort like when we as children try to see images in the clouds.
I guess in this spot I was trying to realize a pretty misty concept... I was simply trying evoke the magic and wonder of the inception of life. Nothing like biting off more than you could chew.
Having a child of my own I have come to the conclusion that young kids do seem to be close to something that we as adults have lost touch with. Up to around the age of 4 or so Zoe always had lots of imaginary friends. At one point I think there were around 12 in the car with us. The 2 favorites were Rahoo and Raha. Rahoo was always good and Raha could behave pretty badly. Sometimes we would set a place at the table for one or the other or both of them. After awhile I really started to think that maybe they were real. As strange as this sounds it also crossed my mind that maybe all these imaginary friends were entities that Zoe had known when she was on... gulp... the other side. I know it's all a little gooey but looking at this film again and I realize that I was trying to visualize how I felt about the moment that life begins and how it actually might be more of a crossing point.
From a technical point of view all the shots are in camera. We did crazy things like hang the camera on a jib arm the shoot into a mirror that had water running down it then into another mirror looking at various babies who where lying on a big mattress topped turntable which we could rotate. Often we were not looking down but across and shooting into reflections of water which cast on simple foam core panels. We also had a rotatable glass disc mounted in front of the camera. On this disk I had random densities of... vaseline!... which I could rotate in and out of the frame. Since we were always using long lenses the actual goo could never be seen but the images sure could get vague and dreamy.
Again Ray DiCarlo was there. He designed the baby mover, the mirror tricks and the water tanks for projecting ethereal water patterns. I think there we maybe three or four of us on the crew and that it took us around 6 hours to shoot. We also had at least 5 stunt babies all of whom got drunk and made a mess of the waiting room.
The other thing is I can't remember that we had any sort of a pre-production meeting or that I drew any boards what so ever. Ah... those were the days.
Oh the music is by Arvo Part as performed by the Kronos Quartet. Great stuff... so great that it only is on my cut as it was too expensive to acquire for the actual broadcast version. Arvo, Kronos... forgive me I stole your music for my version. Oh and one more thing, we tried to get Blythe Danner to do the voice over. She wouldn't do it.
Here's the final 2 spots from the Cel One campaign. Again, I'm amazed at the writing. Carl you should be writing books. Heck maybe you are? But then again maybe your talents are best represented in this medium. 30 second chunks of perfection...
The thing is I think ideas work in succession and that creativity is really viral. The client wants to sell something. The agency wants the client. The agency wants to do good work. They hire talented people to come up with the creative stuff. The talented people come up with ideas. The director reads the script. he thinks of ducks and little smokies and grilled cheese sandwiches served in his Grandmas fish plates which were given as a Starkist Tuna promotion 5O years ago. 1. Without the product there would be no reason for this work. 2. Without the writer there would be no idea. And 3., without the director there would be no sushi on the set... just kidding. It's a big stew. And when the ingredients are good and combined with care the stew is really tastey. And is again more than the sum of its parts.
The thing about spots is that when they are good they work on many levels. The client gets to sell something. The agency gets to be successful and grow and offer a space for creative types to work. The creative types get something to be creative to do and exercise their poetic craftsman muscles and directors and actors and the crew get to add there skills to the mix and work on stuff that they are proud of. An everybody can pay there bills and hold there head high and have things to talk about.
Mona Mensing, wardrobe stylist, would like her work to be mentioned. I am happy to comply. Here's the deal. Often as a director people want you to have an opinion about everything. Which cup, what color and sometimes which socks. Listen, I don't know everything. I don't know which collar is currently fashonable. I don't know that you don't wear 2 different plaids. I don't know that it's not OK to wear a brown belt with black shoes. And again I really want the end result to be more than the sum of it's parts. OK the little man inside might hop out at any point and say that putting a towel on the shoulder of the talent is really dopey but I want the people that work with me to have a point of view. Maybe I'm just lazy. Mona always did an amazing job on wardrobe. She had a point of view. She always got it and I guess got me. She made it easy and her finger prints are all over the spots. Thanks deary I still have Moultrie's cardigan and I right now I'm wearing the bathrobe you made for "Oregon Lottery Christmas". Is this admitting that I steal things from shoots? Yeah. doesn't everyone?
OK I just remembered. Before Bud's Dance, before the Oregon Lottery work, before the World Cup spots for Weiden and Kennedy, before the first taste of the sting of bad, expensive and lucrative big name national boards there was "Energy is Power." I'd known Darrell Williams for quite awhile. He was one of the guys at Marx, Knolls, Denight and Dodge advertising agency, which was one of the places I went once in a while when I was trying to make the transition from lighting director, AKA gaffer to director... what! I'd do a spot or show something that I shot as a cameraman or recut something and stop by. Darrell and the guys would come out. They would look. They would smile. They would ask a couple of polite questions, thank me and return to what they were doing. Ray Dodge, the guy with his name on the door, was a really sweet man. I remember having a conversation with about how he was troubled by doing a spot for a lumber industry lobby group. Integrity? When I think about the Portland Advertising community in those days I remember pretty much everybody as really decent people. At Borders, Perrin and Norrander executive creative director Tom Kelly went to the trouble to find me even though he couldn't read my phone number on the overly artsy label I used to have on my reel. There was Rob Rosenthal when he was at Cole and Weber and then Jim Carey who took over for him when he went on to start his own shop. And Darrell.
Let me say this right up front. Darrell Williams is a genius. Darrell Williams is one of the best writers I have ever read. Darrell can turn a bleach commercial into a warm, touching and needless to say funny exploration of the duality of human nature as seen through the eyes of a smart, slightly alienated 12 year old girl. Listen it's one thing to get to work on really whacked out creative at either end of the spectrum. Big money. Nike. No money. Oregon Lottery. But it's another thing altogether to consistently come up with brilliant stuff in the world of direct marketing.
On one potential project he had this idea that he and I would get cheap round the world tickets, a camera and a minidisk recorder and hit then very new ruta del Lonely Planet. In fact the minidisk recorder was the product. The story was about this cool, quirky, young vagabond and his recorder gathering aural souvenirs from the globe. Music, conversations, street sounds, Gitanos in the caves of the Sacre Monte in Granada, Inuit Throat singers, death metal bands in Helsinki, old ladies hocking fish in Indonesia.
OK, I have a minidisk. I love it. Others love it. But the concept and the product tanked. Why? Because it was designed to be an alternative to something that was basically perfect. The CD. OK it was smaller and like cassettes you could dump music on it but really who needed it. Nobody. But what this 3" x 3" x 1" wafer could do was record amazing audio. And what you recorded was available in a non-linear way... it was like a studio in your pocket. Darrell saw through the smoke of another corporate dance to sell yet another format to an unsuspecting public who had in a period of just a few years just dumped their records for cassettes and then dumped their cassettes for CDs. Darrell saw what the thing was good for. Darrell saw a huge army of pierced, dread-locked backpackers kids hitting the road to see the world beyond the suburbs. He wanted them to take these gadgets and grab sound like snap shots. Sound without images. Sound as an absolutely pure, unsullied medium. He wanted to change the world through audio and this cool little box. Millions of kids making mix tapes (disks) of little windows into the soul of man, passed around like trading cards, spreading a virus of understanding and compassion. It was brilliant. It was transcendent. Well, they, being the big they, passed. You wanna what? You're going where? I suspect they wanted a well scrubbed, cute teenage couple happily jabbering between "Call to Actions", pimping the box and the Mariah Carey catalog to that vast demographic perceived to have money to burn, no brains and nothing to say... American youth. If they had only listened to Darrell.
Darrell came up and I suspect comes up with these works of genius on an hourly basis. Being brilliant is as easy as breathing for this guy. It's in the wiring.
The road trip seems to figure into Mr. Williams world and it was one of these that he proposed to me over breakfast one Saturday morning. Why me? I have no idea but I'm glad he asked. Ostensibly he had to create a short film for the a trade meeting for the Bonneville Power Administration. He wanted to drive up the Columbia River Gorge. He wanted to take an very straight office intern who would serve as talent. We would shoot some stuff.
So we hit the road with a wind up Bolex, a cheap tripod incapable of panning and the intern. On the way up we talked about our childhoods, the business, our wives, his children, my pets, movies we wanted to make and music. As long as I have known him Mr. Williams has been this oracle of really great and often obscure music. And his taste is impeccable.
At that time I had been watching a lot of documentaries by Errol Morris. Although I found parts of his films to be mean spirited and not exactly fair to his subjects I was attracted by how he just let the camera sit there. No swank moves. No severe lens. Just a plain frame... an unadorned canvas. And the timing of his editing was just... off. Things were on the screen for too long. A guy would slowly walk across the frame, look at the camera, wait for very long time and then a pull lizard out of a garbage can. It was so designed but unpolished. I loved it.
I guess "Energy is Power" is the first time I tried to purposefully be unflashy. The guy stands there. He waits too long and gestures. He acts uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable. It's funny. The scale of things is off. 10 story power lines loom over an almost imperceptibly tiny guy. Metaphor? Probably.
I think too that in this film I started to play with a concept that I began to think of as "wet and dry." Energy is Power has a "dry" half and a "wet" half. Obviously the dry half is the stuff with the intern and wet stuff is the archival (stolen) stuff at the end with the music. Both parts are in there own way fine but when you combine them you really get something that is more than the sum of it's parts.
About the trip. I think we brought the bike so we must have had some idea in mind. We picked the inflatable punch bag up in the Dalles. The plastic pig too.
I shot the other material, the frying pan, the fan, the tea kettle, the spring in the studio of a friend the next afternoon.
We then hit the library and the video rental store gathering images to steal for the "wet" section. Darrell brought in a piece from "Big Audio Dynamite" for the soundtrack. See I told you he had great taste. We cut it one a Montage, the first non-linear editing system. Then on to sound design across the hall at Digital One. Then we had a beer and in the process of making this little gem had became friends. Here's to you Mr. Williams!
OK so after Cel One things were really started to get going. We were running the jobs out of our house. PAs and crew folks running up and down the 39 steps to the little old house on Gilham street. We had one tiny bathroom. It got a work out. Who cleaned the place? I dunno I guess we did. Yow.
Another set of three great ideas this time from Jim Carey´s band of loonies at Cole and Weber. Great simple idea. And no cuts. 1 take. No coverage nada. Gutsy! And... Cheap!
Norman Bonney one of my oldest friends came up from the Bay Area to cover my butt as assistant director. After his stint as an AD Mr. Bonney went on to be one of the countries best DPs.
The dog thing. Listen here's the deal. We were setting up and although I had an idea that I wanted a dog in the spot I didn't really have any idea of what to do with it other than be a prop. So I set the dog "Suzy" up next to the actor whose name I think was Richard and we did a rehearsal. So we figured out that it was really funnier if the King stood up from his lawn chair and then sat down again after his speech. So then I get this idea to have Suzy stand up and sit down exactly at the same time as the King. Now Suzy was just a dog, not a movie dog, just a pet. I ask Suzy's owner if she thinks Suzy could do this. She says that she's not sure but let's try. Suzy did it like clock work for over 30 takes! Why 30 takes? Well that's one of mysteries of advertising. I think we used the second take. We always use the second take.
OK regarding the background. At that time I was really interested in sort of secret deep background action. Originally we were going to have a forced perspective two story house built to go behind the fence at the back of the yard. I wanted to put people hanging out the window doing something. Accidentally dropping babies... I don't know. But since the house was maybe 1/2 scale we'd have to to put 1/2 scale people in the house. The solution... midgets. I got the idea from reading about a scene in F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise." Well the house idea turned out to be too expensive so that was it for the midgets. Until I came up with the idea of two midgets dressed as children beating the heck of each other in a wading pool again way back by the far fence wall. Since Richard was black I thought they would have to be black too. At that time Portland officially had around 17 black people living there and we had one playing the king. Basically there were no black midgets in the greater Portland area so that idea was out. The midget idea woud resurface in another Lottery spot, bu that is another story. However I had another great idea. Why not have this really big maple tree cross the frame back behind the far fence. You know, just loping along like it was out for walk or something.
So we took a construction crane and put a really big tree on this little skateboard wheel dolly Walt Dimick had handcrafted with his Dad I think. This in turn went on this track that was also hand built by Walt. Anyway we gave the dolly a shove and being designed to carry maybe 200 lbs and not 2000 lbs. the wheels of course collapsed immediately. So that was it for deep background action as well as Walt's dolly.
To see how the shot would all work art director Ray DiCarlo and I had previously set up the shot at Laurelhurst park which is where as a young child I remember once getting beat up in the wading pool... no not by an African American midget but by a girl. See there is a reason for everything.
Laurelhurst Park was OK but there were too many trees that would compete with the big leafy one that would be scooting across the frame so I then had another idea which was that we should shoot this in the world's biggest open backyard. So we shot out at Willamette Turf Farm which is where they grow hundreds and hundreds of acres of grass. Clean green as far as the eye could see.
In retrospect I wonder how everybody put up these crazy ideas. I never heard Ray ever say, "Come on... you want a giant maple tree to saunter across the frame like it's out for a Sunday walk? Are you nuts?" Well the correct answer would have been, "Well yes, actually I am."
And finally because of YOUTUBE the beginning pan over is a little hunky. My move was much smoother. And after 30 takes I would hope it would be!
So Bud's Dance got quite a bit of attention. 1. I was really happy that this happened and 2. that my first official ( i.e. paid for) spots were for this great agency Rob Rosenthal and Al Moffat had started not long before we shot. No creative slouch himself Rob hired terrific writers and creatives like Carl Loeb from whose brain these amazing ideas sprung.
The campaign featured Moultrie Patton. Moutrie was the sweetest guy in the world and his history as a retired saloon singer, raconteur and World War 2 Tank commander only added to his mystique. After these spots he went on to become Walt the Trapper on that trendsetting series "Northern Exposure".
At the time we shot these I was fixated on physicist Richard Feynman... well I guess I still am. In my mind this campaign was sort of a tribute to guys like him. Crazy, brilliant, funny and rebellious in a positive way. Carl and I must have of been on the same wave length or at least reading the same books.
My old friend Art Director Ray DiCarlo and his wife Jean came up with this wonderful and strange world of an older genius obsessed with chihuahaus, edible plankton and croquet. Ray went on to shoot a feature and then start up Bent Image Lab along with two of the world's best animators; Chel White and David Daniels.
Lance Limbocker, "the best sound designer in the known universe" worked his audio magic. It's worth listening to this with headphones to pick up all of his aural nuances. And Greg Ives did this super stripped down music track that pretty much consisted of a stand up bass and a set of bongos. How hip was that?! This must of been some sort of a golden age. All of these talented people doing astounding work in a wet, then pretty ungroovey, medium sized city in where? Oregun? What were we smoking?
Also that's "Tiny" the chihuahua in the back of the Isetta. Small enough to fit in a coffee cup he was owned by a lady who was large enough that she could barely fit through the door of the production Winnebago. Ah the stories I could tell...
Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Neighbors, Boys and Girls...
I have been going though the vast vaults of the Robin Willis Memorial Commercial archives located in Crawford, Texas just down the road from Jorge´s rancho, right next to an abandoned "Hot and Now" drive thru.
So let us begin at the beginning. Well at least the part where there is some hope of upward movement... before that it was just too sad as I desperately tried to convince the world to love me.
Speaking of desperation I had pretty much given up hope of the above happening and had gone back to school to finish my degree. 10 years or so previously I had majored in "Incomplete" at the hallowed halls of Portland State University. I was digging my new life as an older student at Marylhurst College, dominating discussions in class, calling up the professors to have my grades changed to A´s. Burning though 120 credit hours in 3 semesters though a cunning combination of professorial brow beating, testing and writing. Call me Robin College, I got a 4 point!
Anyway my friend and fellow director Todd Korgan called me up and asked if I wanted to direct a couple spots for the Portland Creative Conference. They had... wait for it, 500 bucks for both epics. Being nuts I said yes... under the conditions that I would write it, shoot it, cut it and would be left totally alone to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. Todd said he was hoping I would say that.
So I asked my next door neighbor, retired math teacher "Bud" Eugene Boughton if he would be so kind to star in these productions. He agreed and with the help of a water glass full of scotch delivered a stunning performance.
The spot was a big hit and went on to win many awards including "The Rosey"... which was and is Portland Advertising Federations big award. This might not sound like much but the fact is that Wieden and Kennedy, "the most groovy advertising agency in the world" also resided in my home town and had traditionally gobbled up everything. But this spot, which cost $250 dollars... that´s right 250 bucks, won one. Hurrah for the little man! Hurrah for being an ego maniac! Hurrah for moi!
Anyway things got strange after this. People from big, big agencies located in big, big cities would call ¨the office", my cubby hole over the bedroom looking for "Robin Willis´" reel. I would disguise voice to sound like a a high powered "executive producer" kind of guy and say off handedly that I´d see what we could do... And what we (me) could do was... panic.
In the future I shall be dusting off more of these icons of modern comedic advertising. Forgive me.
At Easter in Catalunya it is traditional for a god parent to give his god child a cake... the Mona de Pasqua. Zoe's godfather lives in Berkeley and my various god kids are strewn throughout distant countries around the world so I guess we are all off the hook but the bakeries are full of giant chocolate paeans to age old themes and characters like Barca, Bart Simpson and Barbie. Last night Zoe had me stop at a candy store to pick up some nubes (clouds) which are for the most part marshmallows. Zoe picked 6 long cylinders of fluffy sugar and... I dunno, I guess sugar.
Today deary arose from a dream about chocolate cakes as today she will add her nubes to a collective work of bakery art created with her classmates. Tomorrow after school we all dig in.
I was surprised by my general state of mind when I got sick. I was quiet, spiritual, positive, appreciative, introspective and had a strange sense of humor. As I've gotten better to the point of being just about back to normal I'm finding that my sense of blind grateful euphoric optimism has done left. OK I've learned many things from this time but I lost my rose colored glasses. Maybe it's all part of the truth seeking process. OK the big positive things like my daughter continue to astound me and fill me with joy and wonder. And I am still often amazed at the magic of the smallest things, like a walk, a good conversation and, well, ironing. But the things in my life that are obviously just wrong... relationships, places, situations, things that don't work, bad designs, rude people... I feel that right now I can really do without anything but good things in my life. I wonder if this a common reaction. I wonder if euphoria often is part of being seriously ill. I wonder if recovery is often accompanied by intolerance of nonsense and hooey. Hmmmmm...
This just in. OK months on the couch. Hobbling around like Tim Conway's little old man. A cane. Mi dio! Well folks it's more or less over. I skied this weekend!!! OK day one was more of an exploration of the bunny slopes with frequent breaks for chili dogs but day 2 saw the return of old swivel hips! Booma, a couple of screamin' snow grabbing super G carve-o-matic descents told me that all was good down there. OK the knee ain't what it used to be but by and large I seem to be able to compensate for it. I just have to watch twisty falls because there just ain't a lot left cushion wise. I'm going to get one of those robo-braces for Mr. Lefty. Carbon fiber... stainless steel studs. Oh boy another guy toy to obsess over! Gracias dio, gracias Doctores Heuget y Alegre. As long as I'm taking the rat DNA I'll be doing fine. Going up again on Sunday!
OK... An announcement. After 7 years... My love affair with España is finito. Basically it was the process of buying and fixing and moving that finally drove the dagger in.
I would like to wax rhapsodic about little old ladies bringing us cookies but I'm afraid all I have is neighbors who scream about my daughter singing on the terrace at 4 PM on a Sunday, the presidente of the communidad and his bleach blond rubia mujer who have a business selling mustache waxing machines who find a way to skim whatever he can whenever he can... Sergi the evil real estate agent/executive of the communidad who lied about just about everything, Anna the distant upstairs vecino who spies through her curtains and whispers in the stairwell about things like singing 7 year olds... gotta make cookies... this rant will continue. Believe you me.
OK revelation time. I'm a sucker for just about anything with passion and Buenos Aires has it in spades. What is passion? Life. Love. Laughter. Sadness. Insanity. Sweat. Fear. Joy. Smells. Tastes. Success. Greed. Jealousy. Failure. Birth and rebirth. Passion is everything that is good about our species it's also what can really fuck us up too. The blind love I feel for my kid is passion. So is invading Iraq. This duality is so present in Buenos Aires. What a history... Except for a golden age of about 20 years these poor folks have just gone from one nightmare to another... and much of it was caused by themselves. Isn't that just so human. Military coups. Dictators. Economic crashes as that appear like clock work. Corruption. Murder. Fear. And a profound sense of homesickness.
Not wanting to be simplistic but the Tango and the history of tango really expresses all that is Argentina. And maybe all that is in being human.
So I flew from Madrid to Hamburg then Hamburg to Paris the to Buenos Aires. I lose track of the hours on long hauls like this. It becomes so abstract. I did watch 2 great movies... if only I could remember them... OK, sorry Steven Frears Queen and Clint Eastwood's, "Flags of our Fathers". "Queen" was terrific and I've had this Helen Mirren thing for a very long time. It's nice age with someone you love. Even if they don't know you exist. I'll say this about the flight... Air France's food was terrific, which is not always the case. And I really loved the dignified but attentive service. I felt so adult. It beats begging for another micro-bag of peanuts to go with your 4 buck mini can of coke.
Airports are all basically the same. They suck. OK there are a few exceptions, Barcelona being one of them and Portland, Oregon, my home town, being another. Why are train stations so romantic and evocative and airports so ugly and inhumane? Truthfully Barcelona Sants Station isn't exactly Grand Central and for most part has taken the best attributes of a Greyhound bus terminal, like sticky floors and dirty toilets, and just made them bigger and grimier. However Estacion de Francia (BCN's other station) is a modernista jewel, and hardly ever used. Go Figure. Having said all that Buenos Aires Airport is just another poorly constructed giant box with planes.
I leave for Buenos Aires today. I shall direct a commercial for an old German brand of all things potatoes. Mashed, fried, baked... snacks, balls, discs, shredded, powdered...
I've been doing Pfanni spots for the last 5 years or so. How? I dunno. Why? It's fun. The folks I work with are great. The ideas are cute. I get to go to interesting places and tell people in a very charming way, what to do. The money. I like potatoes.
This time we find our self jetting to Buenos Aires, home of the tango and "great meat." Well I can actually tango... or at least I used to be able to. And I like all kinds of meat. Except camel.
So to bone up on this amazing city and country I watched a BBC DVD on Astor Piazzola the self professed creator of, "EL Nuevo Tango." Listen I love his stuff with all my heart but...
Mostly it's a concert film and a good one but the it's the extras that get a little scary. OK Piazzola come off as great guy in the interviews. His Noo Yarhk accent is a little disconcerting... who would have thought that Mr. Argentina/Italia would sound like he comes from deepest Brooklyn (he and his family moved there for 11 years when he was 4). But it's the interviews with his family that are disturbing. First there is his son David, who looks a little rough around the edges and does not look like he gotta a lotta love when he needed it. Then there is his grandson who looks a lot like Dad and talks about how Astor would see him once or twice a year. Then his daughter appears and talks about her sainted mother and how she supported Astor whilst he was developing his nuevo tango and pressed his shirts to boot. But then she starts talking about this book she wrote about her Dad and how his only editorial request was that Amelita was not discussed. His daughter goes on to describe Amelita as one of his, you know, women. We then get an interview with Amelita who waxes rhapsodically about her time with Astor and God and their understandable eventual breakup.
Then there is another interview with another pretty heavily surgically modified older lady who was the wife of one of his musical pals and how she got invited to Astor's seaside retreat and his husband didn't. Hmmmmm.
The bottom line is Astor kind of came off as a not exactly saintly.
I hate it when your heros are just humans. Sometimes jerky humans. Perhaps more research is required. Yep. More is. The taxi is here, off to Tango Land!
