NYC- Brent’s first feature film, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then premiered at Manhattan’s IFC Center this weekend and runs until Thursday May 13. Catch screenings at 3:30 and 7:30 daily. Production artifacts are on view at concurrent gallery exhibits: the Andrew Edlin Gallery in Chelsea until June, and the Berkeley Art Museum, CA, until September. See the NYT review (!!!), read the production blog. Interview below:
I have a bunch of cool things in the works for the next couple of months- I’m excited about them and wanted to let you folks know:
On Jan. 11th I’ll be screening all of my films with live narrations and soundtracks at DiverseWorks in Houston. The band will be Jim Becker (Califone), Andy Coppinger and myself. It’ll be frenetic and beautiful. The show is to celebrate the opening of DiverseWorks’ animation show Flicker Fusion, which includes Hadacol Christmas.
Jan. 18th, 19th and 21st I’ll be screening all of my films with live narrations and improvised soundtracks by myself and Califone at Sundance. It’s part of their New Frontiers program. I love Califone. These shows will be unreal. The shows will be around an hour long with a little Q&A at the end- all of them at 6PM at the New Frontiers on Main MicroCinema building. It’s called “God Builds Like Frank Lloyd Wright: Califone and the animated films of Brent Green.”
“Carlin” is screening at Sundance, too! As part of their Documentary Spotlight program. There’s a film Isabella Rossilini made about the sex life of bugs screening in there, too. Sundance runs from Jan. 17th- Jan. 28th- the Documentary Spotlight runs five times in there somewhere.
On Feb. 8th, Tim Rutili (Califone) and I will be performing live soundtracks and narrations to all of my films and a couple of films Tim has cooked up recently at Montalvo Artspace in Califone- somewhere outside of San Francisco.
On Feb. 13th, The Kitchen will be hauling Jim Becker (Califone), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Valentine Trio, Lightbox Orchestra, cellist for Wilco, Califone, Freakwater, Ken Vandermark and all kinds of other folks) and Brendan Canty (Fugazi) to New York City. Cello, violin, musical saw, guitars, piano and drums- this is going to be a beautiful show.
My first solo museum show, at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland will be running through Jan. 5th, too. If you’re around Cleveland, that’s a pretty rad show- all of my film sets and hand-made wooden props. I also made a woodcut-print of Virginia Woolf for the Sculpture Center, which is available on their website somewhere, I think.
NotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:
In my van downtown.
This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.
I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.
“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.
Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.
We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.
And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.
I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.
Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”
Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.
Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)
Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.
After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.
Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.
Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”
I need these war crimes trials.
A friend of mine is a filmmaker and I’d like to crow about him a little. His name is Brent Green and I came to know him through the local filmmaker festival, The Pikes Peak Passion Film Festival.
Brent Green
Brent was from the East and settled in Colorado Springs for a while as he worked on his animated short films. He passed VHS copies through my mailbox with notes saying “please return asap this is my only copy.”
I was not impressed by the note and postponed having a look until he called me up and asked for them back. I told him I was having a public screening that night, did he want to join us? I felt my hand a little forced, but what the hell.
What the hell were my friends’ and my literal words when we saw Brent’s Susa’s Red Shoes. Amazing!
Brent featured prominently in the next two Passion Festivals and has since moved on to not surprisingly greener pastures. Grants, artists wanting to collaborate, shows in Chelsea galleries, a screening at the MOMA, a FilmMaker magazine profile, and a retrospective at UCLA. Brent’s third short Hadacol Christmas showed at Sundance this year. He told me it was incredible to watch a theater of 1000 people watch your film. I anticipated his fourth short to show at multiple festivals around the world, but Paulina Hollers has lapped the festival circuit. Its premier will be at the Getty. Yes. The Getty.
I’m relating this story, an indulgence obviously, not simply because it is invigorating and inspiring to me, but because of something I read recently in local art news. I read that our Fine Arts Center, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, has just announced that it has paid artist Dale Chihuly two millions dollars for yet more of his glass objects d’ crap. Their Chihuly show last year broke attendence records and they’d like to see more of that.
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly makes giant glass tchotchkes which are just too ludicrous to behold, on pedestals even! He’s a performance artists too, chucking large glass balls into the sea (minus the traditional suspended fishing nets), as if it’s not industrial littering, and he hangs large bound glass droppings by iron exoskeletons over canals in Venice, a sight so superbly crass and dim-sighted. Then he can say his works have shown in Venice. Like Hasselhoff, big in Germany.
Christo, another single-named impresario, drapes landscapes but doesn’t pretend that the plastic wrap is the art in itself. He doesn’t sell pieces of it to provincial Fine Art Centers for two million dollars.
Dale Chihuly is an art director showoff who hires glass blowers to do his work and then sues them if they produce pieces of blown glass on their own. What? He’s copyrighted extruded glass? He’s trademarked giant hanging paperweights? This is fine art that someone thinks he’s patented. It’s a miserable waste of attention. And our city’s chief art center is wallowing in it.
My up and coming, once local, friend is at the Getty. We’re left with Chihuly.
A few years ago, our FAC was criticized for having sold off its choice Native American pieces in what appeared to have been an underhanded insider raid on its unmatched collection. We lost many irreplaceable pieces but the upside was that the FAC got some cash in exchange.
Now we see how they’re spending it. On Carnival glass. Do you remember why it was called Carnival Glass? Because it was all sparkly but wasn’t worth much. Carnival Glass was produced during the Great Depression when folk didn’t have much to spend. It was the poor man’s crystal. At least the price was right.
The festivities at last night’s PIKES PEAK PASSION FILM FESTIVAL went great! The content was very strong in both substance and style: ambitious substance and style as substance. An impressive showing of mostly youthful filmmakers.
If you weren’t there, no doubt you’ll hear back through someone: the selections wowed everyone. Some said “night and day” even, compared to last year, although I thought last year’s crop of local filmmakers was impressive itself. The first set of shorts last night in particular didn’t give the audience a chance to catch their breath until intermission.
Most notable among the shorts were: FOX GLOVE, by UCCS students Nate Udall and James Germaine, about non-virtual-reality in a first-person-shooter; LUNCH DATE, by Manitou High School senior Brian Danin, Nouvelle Vague meets downtown Colorado Springs youth; two stylized shorts about movement by senior Clint Bargers; SUSA’S RED EARS by animator Brent Green, who’s already signed to a record label; DON’T LET ME DOWN, by photographer Matt Chmielarczyk, where his daughter’s unselfconscious doll-play reveals what she knows of relationship dynamics; and JIMMY GOES TO COLLEGE, part of an alcohol awareness PSA by returning crowd-pleaser Pete Schuermann.
It was a really nice evening, well supported, and left a thoroughly pleased audience. Perhaps in contrast to the social ackwardness last year, last night afterward everyone eagerly hustled about to meet the obviously talented and motivated filmmakers.
