Mike Driver
oozey mess
ellievsbear
roma★
will byers stan first human second
noise dept.
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wallacepolsom
izzy's playlists!
Show & Tell
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
blake kathryn
@theartofmadeline
sheepfilms
todays bird
Sweet Seals For You, Always
#extradirty
if i look back, i am lost
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@filmprojections
This one is mine :
The ENFP personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike Explorers, they are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.
Test Yourself :)
Find Your Personality
Excerpt from the new issue: Sophia Nguyen on The Emperor’s Club:
"Like many members of its genre, The Emperor’s Club feels deeply for father-haunted boys. Their shoulders must broaden to bear the weight of familial legacy: All that blood and treasure; all those bad habits. Maybe his inability to avert Sedgewick’s path spurs Hundert to find Martin at the hotel bar and confess that he’d sabotaged the test results. Martin’s assurances of forgiveness sound strained.
It’s stupid that this petty adolescent loss should bother him so much. But The Emperor’s Club solemnly believes that he was deprived of his birthright: the chance to claim his share of Blythe family glory. “Man hands on misery to man,” the Larkin poem goes, “It deepens like a coastal shelf.” Those who can dig themselves out from under that crushing inheritance, who can provide a future free and clear for their offspring, are heroes.”
(from the essay “Heirs Apparent”, featured in the current issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room)
The September issue is NOW AVAILABLE!
Robert De Niro’s auditions for the role of Sonny in The Godfather. The part was, of course, ultimately given to James Caan—while De Niro would later go on to play the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II.
Bebe Ballroom on Rocky (1976)
"No one ever told me how beautiful Sylvester Stallone was in 1976. Sunken-in eyes, almost able to make out the skull beneath the skin. Big, permanently wounded doll eyes, surprisingly smooth skin, face like a basset hound. How Adrien’s features complemented Rocky’s perfectly—fair skin, black hair, deflated cheeks—as if her skull were the female version of a pair, Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
Like Inception’s dream within a dream within a dream, Rocky is an underdog within an underdog within an underdog. Rocky lives in a small rundown apartment, wins or loses fights for small change, and is mostly alone. When he warns a teenage girl about the consequences of hanging out with the “coconuts on the corner,” he does so with a seasoned tongue, like he’s been one of those coconuts. “They don’t remember you,” he tells her, “they remember the rest.” He’s southpaw without a trainer who’s been kicked out of his gym of ten years. In a time when calling someone a bum was an insult that carried significant weight, much of the film is people telling Rocky, directly to his face, that he’s a bum.”
—
This is an excerpt from the current August issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room magazine. To read the rest, purchase a copy of the issue for $2, or subscribe annually for $20.
Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
—
(illustration by Brianna Ashby)
Because of the lovely and overwhelming response that this post received, Brianna has decided to make prints of this illustration available via Society6.
50% of the proceeds from any prints sold will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a charity that Mr. Williams proudly supported.
Details here.
WE’LL JUMP AND WE’LL SEE
by Chad Perman
“The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.” —W.H. Auden
Joe Versus the Volcano is all kinds of things at once—a fact which no doubt contributed to the poor reception it received upon its release in 1990—but at its heart, it’s a...
This is so beautiful.
Jaws is a story about men.
You start watching Jaws and you are following a girl who is a loner and reckless and maybe a little drunk. She is not part of the group of young people around the fire—she is on her own, and she runs, and she takes her clothes off, and you can’t really see what she looks like naked but you can see what she looks like in the sea. And the music starts, and the boy running after her lies down in the sand, and you know what is about to happen.
This is not a story about that girl, or about the mother who loses her son and shows up in black to slap Chief Brody in the face, or about the wife who loves her pent-up, anxious, striving husband and is scared for him but wants him to do whatever it is he needs to do. This is a story about men. This is a story about three men who go out on the ocean trying to figure out who they are and who they have the potential to be.
This is a story about Quint and Brody and Hooper. The man who distrusts authority, the man who is authority, and the man who wants authority. The man who owns the boat and the man who is wary of the boat and the man who drives the boat. The man with no fear, the man who has always feared, and the man who does not yet understand what fear is.
There is something about all of these men that is simultaneously idealistic and true (which could perhaps be a description of much of Spielberg’s work). Quint (Robert Shaw) at first seems to be a pure male fantasy—both recklessly self-destructive and an expert in his own particular brand of reckless self-destruction. He kills sharks. He doesn’t listen to other men. He sings dirty songs about women. He is utterly in charge of his own destiny. He has scars.
But yes, he has scars, not all of them visible. He followed orders that were given to him by men in air-conditioned offices, he watched thousands of men die around him, he delivered the bomb. He survived. And when, towards the end of the film, he tries to lure the shark into shallower waters, opening up the throttle, pushing the damaged vessel far beyond its capacity, it is not reckless self-destruction at work: it’s the understanding of the nearness of death, of the sacrifice required. It’s maybe a little bit of loneliness. You see Quint at that moment come unhinged and you know he is crossing a threshold you won’t get him back from.
(The hand scratching at the chalkboard. The rows and rows of polished aquatic jaws and nowhere comfortable to sit.)
—Elizabeth Cantwell on Jaws, “It’s Only An Island If You Look At It From The Water” (Bright Wall/Dark Room Magazine, August 2014)
The Godfather (1972)
Illustration by Sophia Foster-Dimino, from Bright Wall/Dark Room magazine.
With thousands of home video titles in its library, Scarecrow Video is hoping to have it’s archive preserved and is looking for funding on Kickstarter.
"Scarecrow Video is a treasure that we just can’t lose. I travel the world, and it’s the most comprehensive video store I’ve ever seen."
— Thelma Schoonmaker, film preservationist & film editor, Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street and everything in between
IN DEFENSE OF DEAD POETS SOCIETY
by Christopher Cantwell
Last night at 11:30, I turned on the TV and Dead Poets Society was just starting. I ended up watching it all the way through, until 2 a.m.
I hadn’t seen this movie since my freshman year of high school—watched it in English class, of course—and I barely remembered it. I vaguely remembered that one of the kids killed themselves at the end, but I couldn’t remember if it was Robert Sean Leonard or Ethan Hawke.
I also thought there was a scene at the end where the parent of one of the kids who didn’t kill themselves had a tearful moment of realization with his son and said something like “I never want anything like that to happen to you,” which then lead to an elevated level of mutual understanding between child and father. Apparently, I completely invented this scene, and in retrospect I’m glad it wasn’t in the movie. More on that later.
As I started watching, I had a fleeting feeling that this film was suspect in many intellectual circles, and that many of its memorable parts were seen as cliché or trite.
Let’s go deeper. I’m going to mention that I’ve always had a subconscious dread or haunted feeling about the actor Robert Sean Leonard. Even though I didn’t remember specifically who had killed himself in this movie, I had a gut feeling that it was RSL, though it was something I never addressed in my head. In retrospect I now believe that whenever Dead Poets Society popped up in my thoughts, I would immediately go to RSL killing himself. Then I would try to “correct” myself, thinking “No, it wasn’t him, actually, it was one of the other guys.”
Still, every time Robert Sean Leonard appears in anything, I think of him killing himself in this movie. I’m a big fan of House, and RSL is charming and funny in that show. But every time an episode starts and he walks onscreen, I think “Robert Sean Leonard killed himself in Dead Poets Society.” Apparently, the idea of Robert Sean Leonard killing himself terrifies me. So much so that I built a construct in my head denying it had happened.
I went to an all-boys private high school. Not a boarding school, but a uniformed prep school steeped in tradition. My first reaction is to say “that has nothing to do with my intrigue over this film,” but it HAS TO, right? I mean it’s impossible for it not to. Also, my wife is a poet. I’m sure that has something to do with my interest.
But ultimately it was about the suicide. “Who kills himself?” is what I kept morbidly asking. There was relief to be found in thinking it was going to be Ethan Hawke. Why? Because I wanted to disprove my subconscious knowledge that it was Robert Sean Leonard. I honestly don’t know why. I’ll take a stab, but I feel like it will make more sense to you than it does to me. To me, it still feels like I’m grasping at straws.
There was an upperclassman at my high school and he was heavily involved in the theater (like the character of Neil Perry). This boy killed himself when I was a freshman, probably right around the time I first saw this movie. I knew him fairly well, because I was also heavily involved in theater. Now, it’s clear to me 14 years later that this boy who died was gay. Not out, but certainly gay. And it’s clear to me that Robert Sean Leonard’s character Neil is certainly gay. Since the movie was made in 1989, Neil merely wants to act. He’s cast as Puck and his father is disdainful. It’s left at that. But it seems carefully chosen—Neil’s father stands in the back of the theater during the play and watches his son dance around and afterward takes him home and tells him he’s going to military school. If this were just a story about Neil wanting to be an actor, he would’ve been cast as Hamlet and his father would’ve seen him and there would’ve been one of those scenes where afterward he’s blown away by his son’s skill (“I was wrong”) and then a happier ending. But it must be on purpose that the performance Mr. Perry sees his son give is one where the only thing to take away from it is “Wow, my son is GAY.”
I also want to point out that I feel Neil is comprised of a lot of the vulnerable things about me—optimistic and idealistic; high-strung; always aware of a father looming large in his life (though my dad is very different from Mr. Perry). When this character takes his own life, it chills me to the core.
In a larger sense, I am personally invested in all these young men for reasons like the above. Sure, a lot of the film comes off as didactic, but what isn’t at that age? I want Knox Overstreet to get that girl he wants (because I’ve been there). I want Todd Anderson to find a voice (because I’ve been there). Yeah, maybe Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) isn’t that realistic, but he seems to be made up of all the things that wake us up around that age. And Keating has some very human moments. When he finds his volume of verse in Neil’s desk and then just breaks down—losing a student that he inspired—a person would carry that for the rest of his life. Keating also graduated Weldon in ’42, which makes me think he served in the war. It would be a believable motivation that someone would come back from that atrocity with a weird obsession about our inevitable deaths, then devote his life to motivating young people to enjoy it while they can.
All of which leads me to say that this movie is good, or rather, I liked this movie. It wears itself on its sleeve. I appreciate that part of it because it’s done well, and it deals with a period in life when we usually wear ourselves on our sleeves. And I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the parts we see as cliché and quote ironically now…well, we do so because those parts are good enough to stick around and linger. In our subconscious.
I can see people’s self-defense mechanisms easily being triggered by this movie. However, I leave a lot of the criticism it generally receives to the emotionally arid.
And here’s why I’m glad Dead Poets Society doesn’t have that scene of reconciliation between Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) and his father after Neil’s death. Because instead, we get that beautiful wide shot of Todd running and falling, screaming and crying, out into the endless frozen winter tundra beyond his school.
And God, if that doesn’t feel like growing up.
—
(illustration by Brianna Ashby)
Click here to read the rest of Issue #1, in its entirety, for free. To subscribe and read all issues download the Bright Wall/Dark Room app to your iPhone or iPad, or subscribe and read online.
Remember: everything changes soon.
A brand new version of both our magazine app and our website are ready to be rolled out next week, along with the brand new August issue, which will include essays on The Godfather, Jaws, Rocky, North by Northwest, An American Tail, Joe Versus the Volcano, Fried Green Tomatoes, O Brother Where Art Thou? and more!
Tomorrow we will post our very last full essay ever on this (tumblr) site, and then it will revert to being “just” a tumblr, with film-related stills, quotes, clips, links and other ephemera, as well as news and updates on the magazine.
If you want to read any new BW/DR essays after this weekend, you’ll need to subscribe to the monthly magazine!
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by Andrew Root
“At least it’ll give us something to complain about.”
I have a coffee mug without a handle. Granted, it’s difficult to drink anything hot out of it without constantly shifting the cup from hand to hand, or sipping quickly then setting it back down. It’s a warm shade of…
A great dissection of Scott Pilgrim- worth a read :)
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Sex and the City 2: The Sun Also Sets
by Ernest Hemingway
There is sand stretching in between the dunes like a spine as far as the eye can see and a camel in the middle of it. Two camels, or three. The camels walk slowly. I do not think they have ever had to run away from anything.
I like them. The camels. I like them because they walk with something you could call a stateliness. An elegance in the face of extreme heat, of the stench of something rotting closer than is comfortable but not in the line of sight.
In the room that holds the screen where the camels walk, I pour myself another scotch. The glass has not been washed in days. The street outside is still covered with snow.
“Lawrence of my labia!” a woman on the screen says. Her eyes look like the eyes of someone who is very tired but knows they should not look tired or they might let someone down. Lawrence might be let down.
Lawrence was the name of a guy I met in Madrid, back when I was with Maria. He went by Larry. He was always telling me not to spend so much time with Maria. She was no good. But I did not want to listen. I loved Maria and her black hair and her taste for wine. She could drink a whole bottle of wine before noon and still go fishing if she felt like it. And she would catch bigger fish than anyone else, on top of it all.
Larry was right anyway. Maria spent so much energy putting on a show for me and for Larry and for anyone else around that by the time we got to the sweet spot of the night all she wanted to do with me was go to bed. Most nights I did not want to go to bed with her. I had been injured by mortar fragments in Vienna and anyway all I wanted was to have a chat sometimes with a woman who was alive, who made me feel alive inside.
I like the camels because of their grace. Their willingness to bear a weight which they should not have to bear: the weight of these women made less of flesh than of the cold, sad steel out of which one builds monuments to the cowardice of store windows and book burnings and expensive brassieres. That was one thing I liked about Maria. She did not go in for brassieres. She said she was proud of her bits just the way they were, under clothes, without any fancy dressing on top. She was right about that.
I like the fortitude of the camels. I admire their refusal to give in to the narrative being forced upon them. Their eyes look more determined than tired or anything else.
Looking out the window at the snow, which now bears a single set of hoofprints, I switch the screen to “off.” I pour myself another scotch. I toast with it to the camels.
Ernest Hemingway cannot be reached by email, cell phone, or camel ride. He does not have a blog. He contributed this review via Elizabeth Cantwell, who blogs here. Her relationship with Hemingway is, at this moment, unknown.
RADICAL HONESTY
by Alina Simone
When I was a junior in high school, barely hovering above the dread waterline of irredeemable unpopularity, I miraculously came to be best friends with one of our school’s most popular girls, a sophomore I’ll call “Sophie”. Sophie was bitchy, smart,...
