before the wire

a scattered reconstruction of paradise lost

[beforethewire]

illicitohio.com gets in there

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We were caught on the island of Mustique

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Goodbye and thank you Alex Colville.

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In one day walking straight along the South Bank, I saw some squares and a circle.

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Review of 'Fruitvale Station' for Dear Cast & Crew

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Read from left to right. Written for Phil Hammelin's album 'The Usual Obessions'

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Dance shmee

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pigs were the greatest sin, not dogs

(still my favourite monologue by far)

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don't worry, the hounds at the door can be goofs

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Dance of Decay

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Wanted and Desired

In Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Director Marina Zenovich takes an unprecedented in-depth look into the notorious 1977 trial involving Roman Polanski, and reports the facts that led the world's most celebrated director at the time to ultimately flee the U.S. permanently. Roman Polanski’s life was already the stuff of movies. He lost his mother at Auschwitz and he himself escaped the Krakow Ghetto and barely survived the war. He went on to become a brilliant film director in Hollywood, and his storybook love affair with actress Sharon Tate ended with her 1969 murder at the hands of Charles Manson cultists while eight months pregnant. Polanski continued to build his career in the 1970s, until he made a fateful mistake during a 1977 photo shoot with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski and Samantha Gailey, the victim, disagreed on the details, but he eventually pled guilty to charges of unlawful sex with a minor. The ensuing trial was everything that could be expected from a celebrity scandal case. If the press were already scrutinizing Polanski in the wake of the Manson murders, then this latest event regrettably tripled their zeal. But the press wasn't Polanski's biggest problem at the time, and this is where the film really kicks in. Roman Polanski is an indictment of the legal system itself, and especially the presiding judge Laurence Rittenband. Zenovich details how the judge’s ludicrous self-obsessed style had him more concerned with his own image in the press than upholding the law. After assigning himself to the case, Judge Rittenband’s perverse desire to stay in everyone’s good stead – Hollywood glitterati and regular citizenship – meant that he warped and manipulated justice at his whim so as to navigate a safe passage for himself in a case that had become a media firestorm. Finally his abuse of office and power became apparent and he was removed from the case. Until now no one knew about the backstage maneuvering orchestrated by the presiding judge in the case, and in this documentary now-retired prosecutor Roger Gunson and defense attorney Douglas Dalton break their silence to guide us through its labyrinth.

The content of Zenovich’s documentary is especially noteworthy on two accounts. First it’s an interesting relation of an early example of the Hollywood scandal media bonanza - an original phenomenon back in the day, but something that we have now become more accustomed to since O.J. And second it chooses to focus more on the vertiginous legal proceedings themselves, rather than on how the filmmaker’s work might relate to the crime and to his personality, and equally how his work might have been affected afterwards. Perhaps that subject is best explored in another film, and by a Director that would chose to show more sensitivity to Polanski’s art.

The real success of the film is its astute presentation of two different crimes by two different criminals. Zenovich distills the story down to the opposition of Polanski and Judge Rittenband. Most audiences go into this subject already knowing about Polanski’s crime, and Zenovich trusts them to be appropriately repulsed by Polanski's actions, alerting them instead to the shameful abuse of power committed in the proceedings. Which is the greater crime: rape or abuse of justice? To navigate that question in this context and not come out in favour of either one is a feat of great cinematic intelligence. Zenovich artfully punctuates her film with scenes from Polanski’s own films. This element suggests the most interesting angle: that the director’s life had become strangely akin to the themes explored in his movies, and that Polanski’s motives may have indeed been inspired by his art. In that respect perhaps this film is not ambitious enough, and more parallels could have been drawn to show that somewhere along, the line between reality and fiction blurred, and the Kafkaesque mayhem that Polanski was spiraling into was his art catching up and engulfing him. It's a great story that Polanski might even have enjoyed directing - had it been fiction. The film definitely recognizes the artifice that underlies much of show business. The trial was surrounded by so much attention that it had taken on a life of its own, and both Polanski and Rittenband were aware of their participation in the drama. Finally, when it all got a little too ridiculous and unpredictable, Polanski took control back and stepped out. That was surely his instinct as a survivor. Roman Polanski, now 74, has lived in France since, and remains a fugitive to this day. Whatever side of the enigma you fall on, Marina Zenovich’s documentary is a thought-provoking piece of work that deserves to be seen.

Marina Zenovich, USA, 2008, 100mins

(http://thedfg.org/news/details/393/roman-polanksi-wanted-and-desired)

[beforethewire]

Man On

On August 7, 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit steps out on a wire suspended between the World Trade Center’s twin towers. At 1,350 feet above ground, he dances on the wire with no safety net for almost an hour, crossing it eight times before he is arrested for what becomes known as "the artistic crime of the century." After six years of obsessive planning, Petit became an overnight sensation. Man on Wire, by director James Marsh, garnered top jury and audience prizes at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival for its brilliant retelling of Philippe Petit’s clandestine highwire act. Marsh boils Petit’s act down to its criminal yet playful essence, and lays out the story like a heist-thriller movie. The result is a portrait of a bank robbery or criminal conspiracy for the good, the planning of which lasts eight years and six months. Man on Wire is a fascinating watch from many angles. If anything the sheer mechanics of this stunt are enough to get someone to watch the film. How does one casually run a cable between the twin towers? But the real meat of the film, and half its brilliance, revolves rather around Petit’s strategic and meticulous planning for what he and his cohorts came to call “the coup”. The other half, and the very reason it garnered prominent awards at Sundance, is in the film’s masterful telling.

The film is driven by interviews and recollections from Petit and his accomplices. Petit himself is an artist of unusual charm and a very energetic and entertaining raconteur. Had Marsh conceived his film as a single talking-head shot of Petit alone, that would have been enough. But Marsh managed to assemble the entire stunt crew to help balance Petit’s mania, and has them each candidly recount their own part in the masterplan.

Marsh skillfully weaves two timelines into the story: the procedures on the day of, and the six years leading up to, the coup. The day of the coup is illustrated through the very skillful use of staged reconstructions, and from the very beginning the film feels like the windup to a heist-thriller. And unlike many docs including freshly staged action, the line between new and archive is fairly invisible. The second narrative features old footage of Petit and his crew practicing in a field in France. The footage is playful and amusing, and helps lend the matter its comic and innocent tone - something that is felt right up to the ultimate performance. The wire walk (or dance) itself ends up being a liberating and refreshing act of non-violent criminality, that warrants its place in New York folklore. Man on Wire is literally wonderful, majestic, and best suited to a theatrical viewing. Petit and his gang all still seem enveloped in wonder that such a thing could be accomplished. Indeed Petit’s feat seems even more wondrous when you consider that the fragile Frenchman survives while the mighty towers lie in ruins. In fact, though there are no overt and deliberate associations made with 9/11, one cannot help but draw a connection with the latest perpetration that the twin towers have come to be remembered for. James Marsh is a resident of New York, and perhaps this movie comes as an unconscious reaction to the more somber mood that the towers have come to symbolize, and is his attempt to reclaim a pleasant memory of them.

Director James Marsh, USA 2008, 90 mins

(http://thedfg.org/news/details/383/man-on-wire)