GLIMPSECULTURE

Judy x3

Judy Garland made three filmed versions of singing "The Man That Got Away" for a Star is Born, all of them to the same recorded version of the song. It's the key moment in the film, when she's discovered singing in an afterhours bar by the newly-sobered-up Norman Maine (James Mason) -- and the first two versions - the bottom and middle version - made her look, apparently, too strong, too world-weary to be plausible as someone Norman Maine would call in love with on the spot and then mentor into stardom. The top version had a new dress designed by Edith Head, with a school-girl ribbon at her throat, and put her hair in a ponytail and bathed her in pink light. (My assistant at the time, Johanna Witherby, now a third year film student at UT Austin, did the technical work, taking the film version and the two alternate versions off the DVD and syncing them up for me)

Sitting in a Room

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In 'Sitting In A Room,' I put two video cameras in front of me and copied the same brief recording over and over again, then cut them in visual sync, side by side, in order to compare the difference between image deterioration in digital and analog video. I was inspired by a famous sound piece by Alvin and Mary Lucier from 1969, where the same sound recording is taped over and over again in a room until only the overtones can be heard. On a much tinier scale, I wanted in this case, to trap the distortions of re-recording analog video, particularly since this was something that I knew would soon – and very nearly has – vanish from our midst: Digital vs. analog is the joke of the piece – but what I hadn't expected was the metaphor: the analog deterioration seemingly recreates the aging process itself, while the digital recording mocks it.

How Not To Kill Yourself

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I filmed Molly on the year anniversary of her cousin’s suicide. After losing someone I loved to suicide many years ago, I realized that people who struggle with suicide often don’t understand what the aftermath does to the people they leave behind. I asked Molly to tell her experience with this, and she was willing to do it -honestly and clearly- with her mother and her cousin’s father joining in. I’m putting it up here in the hope that it will help people grasp the reality, the finality, of suicide for themselves and everyone who loves them.

WGA: Vote Yes

Working on the web committee for the WGA this fall, I made this multi-image experiment to show a cross-section (literally) of WGA members urging everyone to vote to authorize what would become our three month strike. Read more about the strike at unitedhollywood.com.

WGA: Autumn in New York

We began picketing almost daily during the WGA strike; this picket in front of Viacom in Times Square in November became the occasion for another short video.

Before

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A short meditation on a niece's visit to NYC and the World Trade Center.