AURALYNN LENDS ME A BOOK

EXT. CARL'S JR.:

EDDIE (VO): "Good burger, eh? Now can I see the books you brought?"

EDDIE: "Holy Mackerel! You're lending me all these!?

AURALYNN: "I knew you'd like them. Look at the bottom one first, that's my favorite."

EDDIE: "Haw! Like it? I LOVE it! It's hilarious! Look at all those little guys running around on their heads!"

AURALYNN: "On their heads!??? Uh....I think you're holding the book upside down."

He turns the book around.

EDDIE: "Oh, right...okay....I'll just......"

EDDIE: "Alright, I see it now....yeah....here it is....hmmmmmmmmmm......"

EDDIE: "I don't git it."

AURALYNN: "Silly, it's not a joke book. It's a serious art book about the California Surrealists."

EDDIE: "Well in that case, maybe you should get your money back. Look at this picture....

EDDIE (VO): "....That's a Jackson Pollock if I ever saw one, but the book says it was done by somebody named Knud Merrild."

AURALYNN: "Well, yeah. Merrild invented the technique. He did that painting way back in 1942, before Pollock."

EDDIE: "I don't know, Auralynn.....anybody who would call himself 'Nude'......."

AURALYNN: "Er, that's "KNUD." It's a Danish na........"

EDDIE: "Whoa! What's this???!!!"

AURALYNN (VO): "That's The First Hypothesis by Charles Howard. It's considered a masterpiece of American Post-Surrealism. Howard thought the themes that European surrealists painted were too neurotic and sexual. He tried instead to paint a door into a higher consciousness."

EDDIE: "Hawhawhawhaw! Too sexual!? Hawhawhawhaw!!!!!

EDDIE: "Do you know what that hairy thing is on the bottom of the picture?"

AURALYNN: "Yeah, it's a symbol of mortality. Watch out! You don't want to get ketchup  on the book!"

EDDIE: "Haw! Maybe ketchup would improve some of these pictures!!!!!!"

BAM!!!!!!!!!

NEUHART'S "SOLAR DO NOTHING" MACHINE

Sorry, I won't be able to post again til late Friday night. I'm tinkering with an idea that requires more research than I can give it tonight. See you then!

BTW: The guy above is Neuhart, the designer who built the famous Eames House in the 50s.

BEATNIK GIRL

EXT. BEATNIK COFFEE HOUSE:

BEN (VO): "So you're the new waitress. Your hair is really straight. You probably spent like hours on that."

WAITRESS (VO) (doesn't respond.)

BEN (VO): "Oh...I should probably apologize.
                  I'm sorry.
                  I'm sorry.
                  Um, I don't know why I'm apologizing. OK, I'm Ben."

WAITRESS (VO): (Silence.)

INT. COFFEE HOUSE

BEN: "Oh God, am I being creepy? I hope not. Oh crap! You probably want to run away." 

WAITRESS: (Silence.)

BEN: "No, wait! Come to think of it, I don't care. I honestly don't care if it is creepy."

BEN: "And furthermore, f*** you if you honestly have a problem with honesty!"

BEN: "Let me tell you something....I'M NOT IN CONTROL OF THE TRUTH!"

BEN: "This is the world and I'm in it. And if I can't be honest about what I feel deeply inside of me then, well then...... f*** it."

BEN: "Er...can I say f*** around you? Do you care about things like...

WAITRESS (Silence.)

BEN: "What I mean is that if I can't be honest, and put everything I feel out on the proverbial table then I don't even care about anything anymore..."

WAITRESS: (Silence)

BEN: "You are so pretty."

BEN: "That sounds shallow but it's not. The only way I can convince you of anything is to say that I'm a VERY CYNICAL PERSON. I just DON'T CARE."

WAITRESS: (Silence.)

BEN: "I don't believe in love. I don't believe in 'meant to be.' "

BEN: "I honestly believe that there are like one hundred people. No. Like four hundred people are out there, who each of us could honestly marry. And we all just fall in love slash settle."

BEN: "But when I saw you. I dunno."

BEN: "I saw you buy a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and shampoo across the street, and my connection to you from that moment..."

BEN: "OK there is no way for me to convey this without sounding like someone I would like to murder slash report to the...OK this is going to sound like...urg....er......

BEN: "So....... I love you. Boom. I said it."

BEN: "Bye!"

..............................................................

Wasn't that a nice little story? I didn't write it, the honor of authorship of this little play goes to [Aaaargh! I forget the name!!!!!! I'll look for it, and fill this in later! I'll add the name of the book I got it from, too!] I just drastically cut it down and added bridges to smooth the cuts. The original dialogue was far better than my bowdlerized version. 

The play is obviously a comedy, but it has something to say, too.  We can talk about it in the comments if you're interested. 

THINKING ABOUT VALLEY GIRLS

There's (above) Moon Unit Zappa belting out her hit song from the eighties, "Valley Girl." I live in the Valley and can testify that lots of girls really did speak that way, in fact, a lot still do. I hear it every day. It may have been eradicated from the rest of the country, but embers are still burning here.



Here (above) Frank Zappa talks to David Letterman about how much he detests The Valley. Maybe "detest" is too weak a word...he was positively revolted by it. Geez, that's my home and a certifiably cool guy like Frank Zappa hated it. What does that say about me?

I notice that I say "really" all the time. That's Val Speak. And I confess that I buy half my clothes at The Gap, I wear New Balance shoes, and I get my hair cut at Supercuts. Does that mean I'm....(Aaaargh)....a Valley Guy? Years after everybody else abandoned Valley, am I still holding on? Am I........(GULP!)........unhip?

[The part of the video where Frank talks about the Valley is at 5:10 to 6:30.]

INT. RESTAURANT:

GUY: "There's Uncle Eddie worrying about whether he's hip again. What's with him? I mean, seriously." 

GIRL: "Yeah, it's like bizarre. If he's so worried about it, why doesn't he buy some tight jeans and a lumberjack shirt?

GUY: "A lumberjack shirt!? Man, that's sooooooo mainstream. I was thinking more like  a hoodie and a beanie like I have." 

GIRL: "Yeah, and a beret and some Ray Bans and a cool tee shirt and a scarf. We should take him to Urban Outfitters."

GUY: "Uh....I don't think they let old dudes in there. They might have a heart attack on the floor or something. Literally swallowing their own literal tongue and puking all over. I mean, seriously."

GIRL: "EWWW!"

Well, that's it...no,wait! See what you think of this hipster video, courtesy of Jo Jo Baptista:  

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lVmmYMwFj1I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

THE ART OF SEDUCTION

Boy, French President Chirac knew how to kiss a hand! That's him above, kissing the hand of Laura Bush.

What style! American hand kissing is formal and done at a distance. Not so Chirac's. He comes in close, clasps the woman's hand with both hands as if it was a priceless treasure, and leans down to it. He looks at it for an instant as if to savor it, then closes his eyes and delivers a passionate kiss directly to the skin; that's the skin, not the air above it, which is customary.

Here he is (above) kissing the hand of German Chancellor, Angella Merkel. She looks happy. Man, one hand kiss from this guy and a woman must feel like she's had a whole nasty weekend with him, replete with ocean breezes and Pina Coladas brought on a tray from the hotel bar. Where did Chirac learn how to do that? 

Maybe it's in the air in France, at least that's what Elizabeth Scioling says in her new book (above). She says France is a whole country founded on love stories. Even the word "seduction" is much more in common use in France than in America. You see it in newspaper headlines like "Afghanistan: The French in Seduction Mode." The word has been stretched to mean: to attract or influence, to win over, even if just in fun. The techniques employed include: sensuality, subtlety, mystery and play.

So far so good...it all sounds great...but the rules of French seduction can work against Americans. Smiling, for example. We like to smile and will often smile at everybody we meet, and this grates on some Frenchmen. For the French the smile is reserved for the person we wish to seduce or influence. To lavish it on everybody in the street is to cheapen it. I don't agree, but it's an interesting thought. 

I love the way the French speak in old films like the ones by Renoir and Truffaut. Where an American might say," You can meet a girl anywhere, you can't predict where or when," a Frenchman in the films might say something like, "You can find the woman in your life in a restaurant, in a cafe. It starts with an innocent, stupid sentence. 'Can you pass me the salt? Can you pass me the carafe of water? And then...a look!' "

  Do you see the difference? The Frenchman excitedly illustrates his thought with examples. His speech indicates that he relishes the imaginary moment when the game of seduction begins. 

"Every man has two countries, his own and France," says the old saying, and I concur. 

SERGIO LEONE'S STORY SECRET

That's Sergio Leone above. It's one of my favorite pictures of him. You could argue that it's demeaning because it portrays him as an out of shape little man who doesn't need to be taken seriously, but I see it differently.

I actually like the way he looks here. It gets across the point that film is a mysterious, alien medium that can only be accessed by creative people who have a knack for it, and who approach it humbly and in a spirit of fun. I also like it because the eyes reveal intelligence and passion and...worry. Creative people worry a lot.

Anyway, there's a new book on Sergio Leone: Christopher Frayling's "Once Upon a Time in Italy." It's not a great book, but it's hard to write great books about intuitive filmmakers. Maybe that's why there's no book devoted solely to Clampett, who was the most intuitive cartoon director ever.

Frayling tells his story with a series of interviews. Here's (below) an excerpt where Leone reveals how he created his stories:

Wow! He says that fairy tale stories work best in realistic settings. Interesting...very interesting, at least for live action.


The interview with Morricone is fascinating. He says that some of the themes in "For a Few Do
llars More" were written for previous clients who made non-western films. Leone discovered them in Morricone's reject pile. Can you believe that!!!???? Of course they were rewritten for Sergio.

The excerpt above is from "Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."

WHAT'S NEW IN PHOTOSHOP CS6 BETA

Wow! CS6 can do amazing things with Camera Raw and the Content Aware feature. They've incorporated Premier-type video editing into the program which is great, but you better have a fairly recent computer to run it. That's a guess, I haven't checked the specs.



Above, the very same features explained by a different filmmaker. Sometimes it helps to see more than one example.



Here's (above) a demonstration of the new oil paint feature in CS6. The presentation is too chatty, and it takes a couple of minutes to get started, but the example is amazing. The presenter takes a simple photo of some tree branches and in only a couple of minutes transforms them into an oil-like graphic that you'd expect to see on a book cover...and it's all done with a few sliders.

BTW: skip the ad in the beginning.



Above: speculation about the release date of the new MacBook Pro laptop. On another subject, if you can afford $3-4,000 for a top of the line animation desktop, the latest Mac Xeon should be out this year. Some speculate that Mac will discontinue it. If true, too bad...it would come in handy for the new Toon Boom programs which are reputed to be power hogs.

From what I hear, Toon Boom programs aren't written very well. Photoshop has a lot more functions but still manages to take up less space.