I Don’t Go to Church, I Go to the Movies.

I have a problem. I like going out to see movies. This is the first step of my recovery: my acknowledgment that I am powerless over cinema…

I believe it started with Aladdin. That’s the first memory I have – well, my first memory is almost drowning in the Pacific, somewhere along the Northern California coast – so, I ought to clarify. That is my first memory of going to the cinema. It was Armistice Day, 1992. It had been a dry November, but it was still cold. I was five and had recently discovered watching my breath condense into vapor. I recall watching this phenomenon many times while I waited for my father to unlock the car.  I was sure this breath-fog was the most amazing thing that I would witness that day.

We get in the old Vista Colt, cruise north on Blackstone Avenue, probably hit every red on the way there (those lights have always been poorly timed). We turn in to the lot of the long since torn down Broadway Six Cinema. My father parks the car in the first spot he sees and we begin what seems like a half-mile walk to the theater entrance. This hasn’t changed. My dad will still park further than necessary from any destination (and when someone pointed this out as a habit of mine was my initiation into the timeless “I’m becoming my father” drama that man has observed since that one Australopithecus used an underhand grip on a primitive knife it was using to eviscerate a prehistoric leopard and mused, “My dad used to hold it this way…”). I didn’t mind the walk. He was the one carrying my sister, so it was no burden on me. And this gave me more time to exaggeratedly exhale and ponder.

Cut to: Int. Theatre. Later. On the screen, Aladdin is warning Abu not to touch anything. Then Abu swipes a ruby. Then shit gets real. (I was looking for this scene and found this. C’mon dude. Stop cluttering the internet.) By this point, my then one-year-old sister had begun to cry hysterically and my father had to take her to the lobby. I was alone in a new place, seeing something I had never scene. It was like a waking dream, these images on the screen. I got up and ran to claim a seat in the front row and proceeded to have my mind blown for the next eighty-five minutes.

The next theatrical experiences of merit are Jurassic Park in 1993, which I convinced five different adults to take me to (JP ties with Fellowship of the Ring, Jaws, and Alien for movies seen the most times in theaters. No. Wait. If we’re counting revival nights then Jurassic Park gets two more tallies), and Stargate in 1994. The initial time I saw Jurassic Park, I drew my feet up onto my chair when the velociraptor jumped at Lex’s dangling legs. My memory of Stargate is making myself vomit by overindulging in candy and soda pop. I had to see the rest of that film the following day.

These were all fantastical films. In three years, a habit had developed that has lasted me to this present day. I have kicked it a few times when I was too broke or too busy, but I always come back. I like to sit in the dark with strangers and watch larger-than-life images flicker on a screen. I prefer my projectors to be film rather than digital, and for my seating to me flat rather than stadium, but sometimes the need for the score outweighs my tastes. This goes for the movies as well. Sometimes I find myself seeing something I have no interest in. I find myself squirming in the seat, my brain talking over the film:

“This isn’t right, man. Calm down. No. This doesn’t feel right. We’re only three minutes in. Why is everyone wearing suits and talking about pop culture? If I wanted to see Reservoir Dogs I would have fucking rented Reservoir Dogs. We own Reservoir Dogs. It’s in a box in your mom’s garage, bro. Probably melted into a puddle by now. What’re you talking about? Fresno summers. Be quiet. I’m trying to – You fool! You fool! They got you with a decent trailer. Go get your money back now. Before it’s too late. It’s my day off. I wanted to see a movie today. Then sneak into the next theater, man. This is all cutter, no pure. You’re gonna leave worse than you came. We’re being hunted. In the bushes. Straight ahead. I’ve got her. Go! Run! Now!”

I’m going to cut this short. I need to plug JanJag and review a list of equipment for rent. Let it be known: I like my theaters. I like them dingy. I like their content eclectic. I like their patrons old. Or at least dedicated to watching whatever film is showing. These dirty venues feed something in me that I haven’t been able to kick for the streaming home experience that so many of my contemporaries are fine with.  I like to stare at a large image and feel committed to experiencing it. It feels sacred to me. And a good screenplay does more for me than a sermon.

JanJag. Check it out. We’re at fifteen percent. We need your contributions and visits and shares ( igg.me/at/janjagfilm ) to keep this dream afloat. Cassani is a sweetheart. A dreamer. He likes to tell stories. This one is good. Let’s make this story into a thing. Then we can put it out there. And it might be playing on a big screen. And I can go see it. And, for its running time, be a guileless little five-year-old again.

Jazz Drums and Vibraphone

“Now there’s two, kinds of people, in the world, I can’t stand,” he croaks from his gut. “That’s a lying woman, and a, monkey man.”

I wish this were a line from  January Jaguar, but alas. This is taken from an old ragtime single performed by Blind Boy Fuller. Perhaps we can work it in somewhere…

I’m not going to sit here and say that old records sound better than what technology can put out now. Without argument, the fidelity in a modern studio far surpasses the old gramopohone techniques. However, in the old recordings, you capture more than just the music. You capture the process.

You can hear the wailing voice funneling down the horn and working on the diaphragm. You can hear the stylus cutting into the wax. You can hear the size of the room and where everyone has been shuffled to by the time this record was cut. “Come now. We need to get the rhythm section in closer. Closer now. Yes. We still can’t hear the bassist. Yes. Well, that’s alright. He’s really just here for the band… You, young man. You with the trumpet and the lungs of god. Go stand in the corner. Go on. It’s either play softer or play in the corner. I prefer the corner option.”*  And the result isn’t perfect, but the life is in there. The whole recording has a light, aural strobe caused by whatever fluctuations were inherent in the sensitivity of the recording instruments. And that strobe and pop and hiss are probably the main delights of listening to these old records.

It’s the same with film. Celluloid. Thirty-five. Sixteen. Eight. Those old movies that you find clips of on YouTube now (if you’re lucky, you’ve caught some high-res scans of them at some exhibition) which flicker on the screen because the guy turning the crank never quite got the rhythm perfect thus giving the cells varying lengths of exposure. You’re not only seeing the stream billowing from the horses’ nostrils, you’re also seeing (somewhere in the mind’s eye) the tendonitis forming within the wrist of this poor camera operator, who is long since gone. Having the opportunity to see Vertigo at the Castro Theatre, projected in 75mm, was one of the most humbling experiences of my life…

For anyone who has had the pleasure to shoot film, it can feel so cold sometimes to work in a digital format. I started shooting on MiniDV. Some old JVC camera that I traded my skateboard for. And that camera took me all sorts of places and the freedom of having a little monitor on the side and a tiny microphone near the front allowed me to have a certain confidence in what I was capturing and to focus on other things – usually lighting, composition, the performance of the actors. But I will never forget the strange bond I felt with that film when I had to load a Bolex in a lightproof bag for the first time.

The campaign is moving forward. We’re on day five and we’re at about eleven percent of our ask. I am grateful to our contributors. If we had the budget or schedule, we’d love to be shooting this on Super 16. Alas. We will move forward and happily shoot in 4K. Please visit the page and share the link igg.me/at/janjagfilm.

Until tomorrow,

-WB

*This tangent reminds me of the day I had to pleasure of sitting in on a recording for the final track on an early James Rabbit album, but I’ll develop that another time.