I'm The Bird, You're The Ornithologist
Fly, pelican, fly.
The birdwatching ref is from Orson Welles, to Mike Nichols.
Just two regular guys!
I first heard it on the new TCM podcast, after Ben Mankiewicz asked the director of Traffic and Magic Mike if he thought there was such a thing as a Steven Soderbergh Picture.
Perfect answer. “F a rap critic, he talk about it while I live it,” via Charles Foster Kane. With feathers now in the air, Soderbergh goes on to consider Michael Curtiz:
“He somehow doesn't get mentioned among the great directors, in part because there wasn't a signature style… he did not have, or didn't seem to cultivate a persona that exalted him beyond just being a very good director. I think that's plenty. He just liked to work, and made all kinds of films, as did [Howard] Hawks. And those were the kinds of careers that I wanted.”
In any professional pursuit, there’s you, and there’s “your identity.”
I’ve found that actual interesting people want to endlessly explore everything. Which is often at odds with the kind of choices that lend themselves to a marketable name brand.
“It's a weird, inverted process,” says Soderbergh, “to consider how other people consider you.”
Bars!
Nancy Meyers’ episode of the TCM pod starts with a bit about how she’s not talking about any more goddamn kitchens. “A pair of white pants and a white turtleneck… I didn’t come up with that, I don’t know why I got stuck with it.”
Ultimately, she allows that the stylistic choices that have come to define “her aesthetic” come from a place of love. A tribute to the filmmakers she admires who give you a complete package, always in service of story. Put some respect on Nancy’s name as a world builder, not an interior decorator.
Sofia Coppola discourse also tends to concern itself with cashmere over composition. (I wonder why.) Her New Yorker profile was a biographical deep dive — and a solid one at that! — but I would rather just listen to her nerd out on process.
Discussion of craft and technique is Nick catnip. When new episodes of Team Deakins, The Directors Cut and Script Apart drop, I inhale them. I’ve been loving Zach Woods’ recent Q&A run for his stop-motion show, each one filled with thoughtful and articulate insight on making things.
I’m also fine with creators rejecting analysis entirely, whether from a Soderberghian desire to not be perceived (and therefore pigeonholed) or because fuck you, that’s why.
To this day, Ghostface owns the all-time best quote about art.
Lil Wayne once told me, over takeout wings at Miami’s Hit Factory: “I don’t have a vision, cause that means you have a goal, which means you have a limit. That question is stupid. Why do he do it? Because he is him. How do he do it? Because he is him. I’m not a psychic, I don’t see myself doing anything. I don’t expect, I live. I live!”
I think about all of this while reading and listening to Ari Aster interviews for Beau Is Afraid, one of the oddest, biggest cinematic swings of this — or any — decade. (Has Wayne seen it? If MTV still ran The Big Picture, “Stuntin Like My Daddy” would be perfect as Chris Connelly throws to commercial. While we’re in parentheses, here’s a March 1990 episode featuring House Party and Chet Hanx’ dad.)
Difficult if not impossible to properly dive into the three-hour bugout that is Beau without spoilers, and I would hate to ruin any of the film’s many “is he for real?” pleasures. In any case, it is not the Hereditary and Midsommar follow up you would expect “from the twisted mind” of “a new master of horror.”
“It was very liberating to just have this invented world that allowed me to go wherever my intuition led me,” Aster says. “I really, really want to avoid saying much because I really feel that if you can get on its wavelength, then it’s ... it’s a movie that I felt my way through. I have a feeling that’s the only way to watch it as well.”
Ah, yes. The watching.
Beau is a massive endurance test for even the most dialed-in viewers. Any positive or negative review is almost besides the point, Ayo's take notwithstanding. “WTF?!?” is the operating system, from the film’s nightmare dream logic to its obsessive production detail.
(The sequence in Beau’s downtown apartment complex convinced me that Aster is the only person capable of adapting Miller & Darrow’s brain-melting Hard Boiled, though I would have loved to watch David Fincher and Nic Cage try.)
Aster continues, this time in Vanity Fair: “The fact that this film exists as it does with so few compromises is really a beautiful, exciting thing that I’m so grateful for. There were points in the making of the film, in the editing of the film, where there was a line in the ground — I cross this line, I’m making a decision to preserve the integrity of what this film is at the risk of losing a chunk of the audience.”
All of these postmortems are marked by their creator’s total lack of interest in explaining what it all means. He’s less concerned with exploring the “why” than just marveling at the fact that Beau exists in the first place.
“The film is an experiment in so many ways… a very specific provocation. I’m deliberately blowing up the whole film. People talked about it as a letdown when clearly — yeah, that’s the joke! Interpret this, right?”
Following the whims of an unruly, fertile mind and refusing to TLDR it for gen pop purposes? I myself am more interested in delighting an audience than frustrating them (if it was unclear before, I DJ in nightclubs for money) but I respect Aster’s punk rock, self-immolating approach to expectations.
Whatever you do is still going to be “you,” because you make it.
That’s it. There’s just the work.
If you can eloquently break down the steps — or prefer not to! — none of it exists without the work.
Praised, misinterpreted, ignored.
Auteur and journeyman alike.
Whether you’re hoping to charm an audience, or give them an IRL panic attack…
You gotta keep showing up.
Loved Hov’s Grammy speech, BTW. He’s so good at this. We could all benefit from regular doses!
I go back and forth on the group text about what it would be like if Jay released music at the same frequency as 2020s Nas.
No idea if his hit/miss ratio would be any different, but I guarantee present-day Jay’s podcast would be fire flames. “And my interviews are hotter… holla!”
(If you haven’t checked Nas’ own pod with Miss Info, I highly recommend it. He’s open and curious in conversation, and you can hear that energy throughout the best of his recent records. Your own mileage may vary with Nasir’s latest — especially if you’re responsible for at least 4M of the plays on “Fast Life” — but you must admit Esco sounds free, and that’s awesome.)