Spent yesterday with my oldest brother, who is visiting from California, my karate black belt brother and my sister (aka the entire sibling clan). We ran around Austin in search of vegan dishes and unique places and, at the end of the day, landed at the new Violet Crown (a SoHo-esque art house theatre on 2nd street) and saw Werner Herzog's latest documentary, Cave of the Forgotten Dreams.
This film was inspired by an article that appeared in the New Yorker . Judith Thurman's New Yorker story documents the historical significance of the art and some of the conflicting views on its interpretation. It's worth reading before seeing the film (if you can manage that), so rich is the material it represents. I'd like to project this rock art on the walls of my apartment and live with them for a while.
Herzog does a fantastic job of capturing the wonder of Chauvet cave - preserving as much as possible the sense of climbing through a limestone portal and landing 32,000+ years in the past. The cave is severely limited to visitors to protect the integrity of the find, which dates to the Paleolithic Era. Although it contains the oldest known art on earth, Chauvet, like Lascaux and other rock art caves around the world, it was almost certainly used for ritual/rites-of-passage because there is no evidence of anything ever living there except cave bears and wolves.
The movie offers a kind of ecstatic truth that transcends the strictly logical mind. That sort of thing has a deep, resonating emotional appeal for me. And it appears to have a similar effect on the majority of audience members judging by its reception at film festivals and in theatres that still see the value in showing movies that aren't made for the blockbuster mindset. Here's Werner talking to students at AFI.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
(Wolfgang Von Goethe)
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The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible. For the fainthearted, it is unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant, it is ideal.
Victor Hugo
I know many of my fellows will scoff but plot is important. As a child, I don't ever remember saying "mommy mommy tell me a character study". (Bill Marsilii)
I started out as a singer, followed my bliss out to the west coast and wound up spending a couple of decades in story for film and television in Hollywood. I'm a work in progress (or some say, "a piece of work"). My non-fiction book is now available on Amazon. I'm currently in-work on a collection of original stories written in the form of treatments for film. "Tales from the Hollywood Jungle™" will be out soon!
If you visit this site often you may notice that the blog post you last read has changed. That's because I am in the habit of posting relatively rough drafts first and then editing. Eccentric maybe but it sabotages my inner critic. I reserve the right to be wrong, stupid, off-topic, incomplete, misspelled and even misinformed (although I will do my best to avoid all those human foibles).
I welcome a dialogue but comments are moderated and morons will be outed in bold print.
The true danger to a film, especially a summer film, is simplicity in that audiences are so smart and so capable that sometimes the films they're watching are kind of beneath them in a way. The audience is much more in danger of being bored than it is being intrigued or involved.
Terry Rossio
Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)
The material itself dictates how it should be written.
Spent yesterday with my oldest brother, who is visiting from California, my karate black belt brother and my sister (aka the entire sibling clan). We ran around Austin in search of vegan dishes and unique places and, at the end of the day, landed at the new Violet Crown (a SoHo-esque art house theatre on 2nd street) and saw Werner Herzog's latest documentary, Cave of the Forgotten Dreams. 
This film was inspired by an article that appeared in the New Yorker . Judith Thurman's New Yorker story documents the historical significance of the art and some of the conflicting views on its interpretation. It's worth reading before seeing the film (if you can manage that), so rich is the material it represents. I'd like to project this rock art on the walls of my apartment and live with them for a while. 
Herzog does a fantastic job of capturing the wonder of Chauvet cave - preserving as much as possible the sense of climbing through a limestone portal and landing 32,000+ years in the past. The cave is severely limited to visitors to protect the integrity of the find, which dates to the Paleolithic Era. Although it contains the oldest known art on earth, Chauvet, like Lascaux and other rock art caves around the world, it was almost certainly used for ritual/rites-of-passage because there is no evidence of anything ever living there except cave bears and wolves. 
The movie offers a kind of ecstatic truth that transcends the strictly logical mind. That sort of thing has a deep, resonating emotional appeal for me. And it appears to have a similar effect on the majority of audience members judging by its reception at film festivals and in theatres that still see the value in showing movies that aren't made for the blockbuster mindset. Here's Werner talking to students at AFI. 
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