Mark Dailey

From 'Everywhere' to nowhere in a flash. This one hurts, Martineau said something along the same lines yesterday, and no amount of celebration and remembering that takes place moving forward will be enough. This is the kind of loss that leaves a permanent hole in the city. Thirty years ago this was the close of the 70's and Mark and a bunch like him grabbed their piece of terra firma and dug in. The Toronto Sun start-up was in 1971 with Worthington et cohorts and Moses Znaimer's television format followed in 1972 with the same kind of gutsy bravado. The Toronto Telegram died and the Worthington team scrambled to put out a determined 'other' voice for the city the next morning. Shoe string budget bolstered by belief and confidence within themselves and their mission. It was breakthrough and I recall the same feelings toward what CITY TV were trying to do with more emphasis on music and culture as in POP. The period between Dailey's arrival and the start ups seems to me to suggest that the sudden emergence of fresh outlets for communication fed directly into what was happening in the halls of Ryerson, Humber and Seneca. Community school graduates in broadcasting or journalism even then maybe 'broadcast journalism' willing to serve their time as interns working their way into a paying gig. The product was raw and unfinished which to some degree was precisely the point. Toronto back then was a mirror, itself full of scars and nasty cuts and bruises of a growing metropolis not yet sure of who or what it would be. That elements of this identity question remain is another subject for another day. The Sun and CITY brand would fall but a few of those troopers hung on to carve and polish their skills and reputations in this 'if it has to be anywhere it might as well be here' role. Dailey stood tall and in my opinion was the only voice I trusted in this city and it's media. He did not make the news, he told it and left the sensationalism to the other hacks. Mark  is one of those figures, who for me, echo the ethos of a Hunter S. Thompson; self-made from the roots of giving a shit and some brains. That this moment of reflection brings to me to thoughts of Crombie and Sewell should make me weep as the day is ushered in by Ford, my friend calls him 'Tommy Boy', as Mayor. The end indeed.


Swordfishtrombones

Cleo de 5 a 7

TIFF's last installment from the French New Wave on the Essential 100. It has been described as the most original and complex film from that period so I was expecting good but not blown away. Took the doors right off. Nothing could have prepared me for Corinne Marchand. In 1962 she was 25 and was nothing less than Belmondo and Seberg in 'Breathless'. My notes "beauty in close up" and Varda a director I had never heard of, a shame on my soul. Varda is extraordinary, her trained eye as a photographer the gateway to her command of art. The French New Wave is something I can finally get my mind around beyond the moving experience and now explains why venue ranks so high in my own writing. Paris, specifically The Left Bank, is the true character and the alternating light and dark is startling in it's literalism as well as it's value as a symbol.

Without the wig Marchand reminded me of Kim Novak and the transformation is an important turning point. Music, painting and sculpture are the art forms in the background and in the subtext and while exposure to French language on a fairly regular and consistent basis yields it's own type of familiarity just short of literal understanding, the English subtitles while useful at points were also a distraction and nuisance. The movement and landscape were the images you would hope all film could be where the sound of a voice in any language was all you needed to know and to truly understand the story and appreciate the grandeur of the spectacle on the screen. For 89 minutes all that mattered was that I was here and forgiven for having taken so long to find 1962 through French eyes.

That the French had pulled out of Vietnam in 1957 and were on to the issue of Algeria and the student unrest in the streets pulled at me to remind once again that we as in North America are never first. We make more noise but even with history to guide us we often lack originality. Thank you TIFF.

Hathaway not Mailer

Ann got lost in this rather quickly and to some extent that still bothers me. You can't rewrite history and there is nothing I can do to bring her back. The story line as it unfolded was forgiving only in so far as this was Karen. I am not convinced that a Hathaway blood line would have allowed us to continue past Europe. It was only in the absence of authority that we stood a chance as a couple. The only judgment that mattered was that imposed on ourselves by our selves. That I think is the key to any successful run especially one that appears as outrageous and absurd from the start. However time and again this has proven my strength; out there and I mean really out there I can flourish but it must be sustained by more than raw courage and adrenaline. It requires passion and money and my problem is that the money always runs out first. The downtime that seems to accompany each of these episodes is something I considered inevitable, a period to heal and readjust not to mount new guises for funding. In truth there was no healing and no strategizing I was indulging myself in a controlled self destruction that ultimately my sub conscious would reject. If I was to fail it would not be by own hand. Self determination of the species type stuff is my guess but it is just that a guess. I don't know and that I have chosen not to know says more to me than I care for. I was born to go forward and not just as we all are according to Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'. To go forward as in advance and be something with particular emphasis on 'SOME THING'. Why just the other day I was telling the doctor "when I was important and famous" and after listening for a few minutes not because it mattered he was interested and then on his own concluded investment banker. I wasn't in investment banking anymore than Stone was into oil. For Stone it was commercial real estate but there is nothing sexy in that and goes over much better with a bunch of dots after it denoting a lingering image and the promise that is some unexpressed hope that in itself reaches beyond moral right and wrong. There is something in this conquering ideal a romantic notion perhaps that maybe was more easily said then than now but there are still traces of it around us. The ones that are held up for applause seem all related to the technology advance but since we are no longer builders in the traditional sense it has to be considered as equal measure in the standard of the day. The difficulty if there is one would be in my estimation that the present victories are far more shallow, hollow a better word, in that these are not monuments to admire for longer than a fleeting instant. 'My god man I can communicate' a testament to Alexander Graham Bell not Apple or Microsoft. In this digital age what will be our Gutenberg Press? It is in this seam, a crack if you will, that the romantic dream can exist. It is one in which people are the story where lives are incomplete and messy. The complications and hurdles permit confusion and in the chaos solutions that ring a bell of universal truth. In the end though still incomplete it is the transcendental experience that offers the greatest return on investment. It is here where Karen holds the most value and it is precisely what I must skirt while carefully underlining the path that led in twists and turns from Dee and Magick, days on the beach, too much sun now too much rain back to Europe and now standing firmly in the present, recreating the past. The headline in my head was "Quinn Dead at 46". So the period is fixed.


Low Spark

Walkman

Yesterday Sony announced they would no longer be manufacturing the Walkman. The what? Not news by any classification but I'm glad they felt it was culturally significant enough to honour the moment. It did give some of us pause; the 80's never seemed so far away.

Just because


SSQ 1983

Viaggio in Italia

Isabella Rossellini. Close your eyes and you would swear you were listening to her mother, Ingrid Bergman, speaking. Spellbinding and hypnotic with a  measured meter the words roll off her tongue dripping with intellect, insight and emotion. She is the most perfect art I have personally come in contact with during my life. She was here to introduce her parents film, a thought I still cannot honestly understand. How do you grow up the daughter of Ingrid Bergman the actress and Roberto Rossellini the director? His friends Fellini, Hitchcock and Selznick. She already an oscar winner and married to someone else writes him a letter wishing to work with him. Her secret hope to help lift him up from obscurity. They make a film and fall in love. The U.S. senate forbids her re-entry as a moral statement. Later she is readmitted to receive her second oscar for Anastasia. The divorce did not surprise her. Her father was difficult and she adored him. We watch her tribute film made in collaboration with Guy Maddin; My Dad is a 100 years old, in response to what would have been his century of life. Her statement to stem the clamour in the film festival circuit for celebration.

Isabella explains neo-realism, her father's movement, through the eyes of a child. Her father in post world war 2 Italy is afraid that it is becoming the Caribbean of Europe. Vulgar anglo's forgetting the history, culture and romance of his country. The camera must be at eye level and the story captures probable moments in life. It is called the 'Rossellini Framing'. What cinema should be, could be and what it is.

It was a 'wow' experience.

The Radiant Child

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an amazing talent. I cannot believe that I did not know of his work. It wasn't just an emergence, he stormed the New York scene and the world took notice in short order while holding it's breath. I am not surprised to learn that Julian Schnable is a link, my life seems to be working in arcs, one thing leading to another until eventually a view takes shape teaching a lesson.

Warhol too which reminded me of Edie Sedgwick and for longer than a minute wondered if the vampire was not at work here even at this late stage of life. Tamra Davis seems to say no but still...

Howl, my expectations were unrealistic. If  Hamm and Parker were nods toward commercial viability, a mistake. Their presence meaningless unless their expressed desire to be associated with the work and "pay me scale" or better yet, for free.

CHTR; a season opened on a Beat note and a night exploring sixties revolt and protest. The intent, the anti-culture perhaps a nod toward the psychedelic, most definitely the mood of a Movement. If there was alienation is was not to be this night. However I admit a tough pill to swallow in spite of the motives. Time was needed but what was the rush? Death does that, we do the rest.

Breathless

and it was. Lightbox is running a fall program they call Essential Film. They will be screening their pick for the top 100 films all time. So as expected there are some commercial blockbusters like The Godfather but also Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. Mostly it is the everything in between I am interested in and last night was the first for Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. I have been trying to see this film since 2006 and either couldn't find it or it was sold out and I mean here and Vancouver. I would have spent $800 for this ticket and felt I got my value out of it.

John-Paul Belmondo's breath-through at 27. Jean Seberg was 22. Google Jean Seberg, she was dead at 40 and buried in Paris. This isn't cinema this is an experience. French New Wave or La Novelle Vague makes Hollywood B an art form. The dialogue, the premise and the cinematography are spell binding. You laugh and mean it if only for a moment. If I had to compare it to something popular 'Bullit' 1968 Steve McQueen. Breathless from 1960 doesn't tell a story the way we have been trained to watch a movie. Fifty years later it is something that you want to last forever knowing that it will.

'Howl' opens a limited engagement October 7. Assuming you know the work or Allen Ginsberg or just the "beat generation' I think this will be important.


October 12 Lightbox will screen 'Voyage to Italy' (Viaggio in Italia) Rossellini and Italian neorealism with Ingrid Bergman. Isabella Rossellini will be in the house to introduce the screening.

I will break from my 'level Crossing 'dailies' blog to comment on these and some of the other selections over the next six weeks.

Bravo Lightbox.