A saner man would simply throw his issue of Parade into the dustbin, pretending that the dreaded Sunday supplement simply wasn’t a part of the newspaper and taking a complacent munch from his lightly jellied English muffin. But not Tod Goldberg. His ongoing commitment to not only reading, but reporting upon the horrors of Parade has caused him to become desperately obsessed in an Ahabesque sense. And the results have, from my comfortable Brooklyn nook, been hilarious to watch. Goldberg’s become so desperate that he’s now penned an open letter to editor Lee Kravitz. Can a Parade Brownie Watch or a Kravitz-issued restraining order be next?
Month / July 2007
RIP Tom Snyder
I have also learned from a reader that Tom Snyder died on Sunday — a day after I wrote at length about him. This too is a major loss and, even though I know I had nothing to do with it, I’m trying to shake off the horrible conviction that I might have killed the man in writing about him. Horrible.
[UPDATE: It appears that Manhattan Ed suffers the same problem I do. The minute he talks about an older artist, the artist dies. If there are other Eds out there who are unintentionally killing artists, please make yourself known. We need to do something about this regrettable problem.]
RIP Ingmar Bergman
My first Bergman experience involved seeing a 16mm print of Persona as a teenager and becoming thoroughly lost in its dreamlike world, my heart fully pulverized by the great pain and sorrow, my mind recoiling at the fragmentary images that I didn’t quite understand, and the other Sacramento kids around me simply not understanding that they were in the presence of a master.
I wondered then if Bergman was cinema’s great manic depressive and sought out his other films. The rolling tank in The Silence, the daring colors and blood of Cries and Whispers, the constant concern with death. I was surprised by the great humanism of Wild Strawberries and Max von Sydow’s knight in The Seventh Seal defiantly standing against the grim reaper. I began playing chess with friends on the beach, trying to look as cool as von Sydow.
Bergman was as literary a filmmaker as you could get — the likes of which we won’t see again for some time. It is as if Ibsen or Strindberg has died. And his absence leaves a staggering void that not even twenty filmmakers could fill.
New Segundo Torrent Pack Available
The sixth Torrent pack of The Bat Segundo Show, containing Shows #101-120 and featuring interviews with Martin Amis, Ron Jeremy, Lionel Shriver, Berkeley Breathed, and many more fabulous people is now available at The Pirate Bay for your downloading pleasure.
New George Romero Zombie Movie in the Can
The IMDB reports that Diary of the Dead, written and directed by George A. Romero, has been completed and has European distributors lined up. The film was shot last year and has a budget of around $10 million — a tad less than the $15 million Romero had for Land of the Dead. Here’s an audio interview with Romero about the new zombie film, which reveals the following: Diary goes back to the first night when the zombies rose. Some college kids are filming a horror movie, only to run into rising zombies.
Apparently, the film is told from the perspective of multiple cameras that are found by others, which might just serve as an intriguing creative limitation for the horror master. We’ll see.
Interestingly, Romero is not using any music for this film. So will this be the zombie movie’s answer to The China Syndrome? Or does Romero have something vaguely postmodernist up his sleeve?