Richard Brody

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“They Quickly Recognized Him As Kind Of A Savant”

March 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Videos | Permalink

The recently deceased cinema savant Ric Menello existed on the fringes of the film world–of society, actually–yet some chance meetings gave him an unlikely Hollywood career. From Richard Brody’s appropriately all-over-the-place New Yorker blog post, a segment about the director James Gray remembering his first interaction with the man who would become his most eccentric collaborator:

“I got a phone call—this is about 1996, I think, late ’96, somewhere around there—from Rick Rubin, who, along with Russell Simmons, started Def Jam Records. And Rick said [deepening his voice in impersonation], ‘I have somebody on the phone I want you to talk to.’ You know, he had made a three-way call.

I said, ‘Hello?’

[Adopts a nasal voice] ‘Hello?’ ‘Who’s this?’

[Shrill voice] ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is James Gray.’

‘Did you direct Little Odessa?‘

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, that wasn’t too good.’

‘Who is this?’

‘This is Ric Menello.’

[In the deep voice of Rick Rubin] ‘This is my friend Ric Menello. He knows much more about movies than you do.’

And all of a sudden I started talking to the guy. And, of course, I immediately liked him because he disparaged my work. And I realized that Rick Rubin was absolutely correct: he knew everything. He was working at the desk of the dorm—Weinstein dorm at N.Y.U.—when Rubin met him. And he would hold court talking about movies, and they quickly recognized him as kind of a savant, and they befriended him.”

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Menello directed the “Going Back to Cali” video in 1989:

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“There’s An Entire Time That No Longer Exists, That Has Been Suppressed”

December 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

What has been gained in access to information and communication during the Digital Age more than makes up for anything lost. But there have been losses. Process helps determine outcome, and the speed of digital removes significant time from effort. And precision means there are fewer errors and accidents, those things that birth genius. If method is faster, is the result naturally speeded up as well? From Richard Brody’s 2000 New Yorker profile of Jean-Luc Godard:

“I began by asking him about his most recently released feature film, For Ever Mozart, from 1996, a bitter fantasy about art and mourning. In it, three young French people with lofty ideas but idle hands take off for Sarajevo to put on a play and are killed in Bosnia by paramilitary thugs. One of the victims is the daughter of an old French director who has been stalled in his work; in his grief, he finds the will to create.

Typically, Godard was not satisfied with the film. ‘It wasn’t very good,’ he said. ‘The actors aren’t good enough, and things remained too theoretical.’ Godard’s complaint about his movie led to a complaint about young actors today: that even unknowns, inundated with media hype, comport themselves like stars and are ‘less available’ to direction: ‘They think they know what to do, by the fact that they’ve been chosen. They have no doubt. Doubt no longer exists today. With digital, doubt no longer exists.’

This abrupt switch from the sociological to the technological is typical of Godard’s conversation: his sentences, like his films, are always soaring into abstractions, or breaking off, pivoting on an instant of silence to change direction. ‘With digital, there is no past,’ he continued. ‘I’m reluctant to edit on these new so-called ‘virtual’ machines, these digital things, because, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no past. In other words, if you want to see the previous shot, O.K., you do this’—he tapped the table like a button—’and you see it at once. It doesn’t take any time to get there, the time to unspool in reverse, the time to go backward. You’re there right away. So there’s an entire time that no longer exists, that has been suppressed. And that’s why films are much more mediocre, because time no longer exists.'”

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“[Peter Falk] Was Working In Connecticut As An Efficiency Expert When, In His Mid-Twenties, He Decided To Take A Chance On An Acting Career”

June 26, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Dick Cavett conducted a 1970 interview with a very drunk John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk, the latter of whom just passed away. Best known as Colombo, but much more diverse than that, Falk played a special role in the work of Cassavetes and Wim Wenders.

The first graph of Richard Brody’s smart Falk post at the New Yorker blog: “It’s surprising to learn, from reading biographical sketches of Peter Falk on the occasion of his death, at the age of eighty-three, that he got a master’s degree in public administration and was working in Connecticut as an efficiency expert when, in his mid-twenties, he decided to take a chance on an acting career. It’s equally odd to note that he had two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor in consecutive years—1960 and 1961—for his roles in Murder, Inc. and A Pocketful of Miracles. They hardly helped. He was working mainly on television, doing some movies but not getting plum roles, when, in 1967, he met John Cassavetes at a Lakers game and then had lunch with him at the Paramount commissary. As Marshall Fine writes in his biography of Cassavetes, Accidental Genius, ‘Falk had a script by Elaine May, Mikey and Nicky, that he thought Cassavetes would be perfect for.’ At the same time, Cassavetes pitched Husbands to Falk. Each actor thought the other had agreed to the projects, and each had misunderstood.'”

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