Film
A Failed Entertainment
Guess I gotta start making plans again to go back to NY:
The Gallery at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Presents:
A FAILED ENTERTAINMENT
Selections from the filmography of James O. Incandenza
Exhibition Dates: Jan 29 – Feb 19th
Opening Reception: Friday, Jan 29th, 6-8 pm
Film Screening to take place during opening reception.Included as a footnote in Wallace’s novel is the Complete filmography of James O. Incandenza, a detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works. The LeRoy Neiman Gallery has commissioned artists and filmmakers to re-create seminal works from Incandenza’s filmography.
Contributors:
* Trisha Baga
* Sam Ekwurtzel
* Michael Gaillard
* Gene Gort
* Van Hanos
* Brendan Harman
* Tim Hyde
* The K.I.D.S.
* Kevjn Kelley
* Zerek Kempf
* Tim Lawless
* Tracy Molis
* Davida Nemeroff
* Rory Parks
* JJ Peet
* Robert Rhee
* William Santen
* Jessica Segall
* Grzegorz Surman
* Christine WangMore TBA
Tags: a failed entertainment, david foster wallace, james o. incandenza
NO SHIT, I’ve been hoping someone would do this. If they managed to pull off The Medusa vs. the Odalisque successfully… damn.
NO SHIT, I’ve been hoping someone would do this. If they managed to pull off The Medusa vs. the Odalisque successfully… damn.
i don’t know how i feel about this. i like descriptions of movies that don’t exist because it allows things that cannot actually happen in movies. i mean it is certainly enticing, but i am doubting that these will live up to any imagined preconceptions :(
i don’t know how i feel about this. i like descriptions of movies that don’t exist because it allows things that cannot actually happen in movies. i mean it is certainly enticing, but i am doubting that these will live up to any imagined preconceptions :(
hey mike,
Gad Hollander’s The Palaver (Format Series) is an excellent book in that genre of “descriptions of movies that don’t exist”…
“The Palaver was created as a story-board for an imaginary film. Here, its authors – artist, Andrew Bick and writer and film-maker, Gad Hollander – have adapted the work to create an accompanying soundtrack and the book and audio CD…Bick and Hollander’s audio CD complements the book version in the same way that a soundtrack complements a reel of film…”
link to book http://www.bookworks.org.uk/asp/multiview.asp?page=11
hey mike,
Gad Hollander’s The Palaver (Format Series) is an excellent book in that genre of “descriptions of movies that don’t exist”…
“The Palaver was created as a story-board for an imaginary film. Here, its authors – artist, Andrew Bick and writer and film-maker, Gad Hollander – have adapted the work to create an accompanying soundtrack and the book and audio CD…Bick and Hollander’s audio CD complements the book version in the same way that a soundtrack complements a reel of film…”
link to book http://www.bookworks.org.uk/asp/multiview.asp?page=11
Holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
oh nice, hadn’t heard of this. i actually have a slight obsession with apocryphal films that can never be made and have read plenty and use the technique myself more than i’d like to admit. will look into it.
oh nice, hadn’t heard of this. i actually have a slight obsession with apocryphal films that can never be made and have read plenty and use the technique myself more than i’d like to admit. will look into it.
Necrophilia.
Necrophilia.
What cannot “actually” happen–in a movie, or in any medium, or in general?
wow
just thought ‘how much do flights to new york cost?’ and ‘should i move to pittsburgh?’
wow
just thought ‘how much do flights to new york cost?’ and ‘should i move to pittsburgh?’
I always wanted to film the one where the circus people perform sodomy to make the other people’s eyeballs explode. I dunno about the others though as actual films.
I always wanted to film the one where the circus people perform sodomy to make the other people’s eyeballs explode. I dunno about the others though as actual films.
Although this takes place two blocks form me so I’ll check it out!
Although this takes place two blocks form me so I’ll check it out!
[…] (hat tip to htmlgiant) […]
controlling the audience’s mind, killing someone (an audience) with images, structuralist techniques that deny the actual material capabilities of the film, etc
mostly things that consists of relationships between the diegetic world of the film and the physical world
controlling the audience’s mind, killing someone (an audience) with images, structuralist techniques that deny the actual material capabilities of the film, etc
mostly things that consists of relationships between the diegetic world of the film and the physical world
the actual murder of a human being for profit (legally), the (actual) abuse or violation of a child (legally), the teleportation of a human being without special effects, shots featuring a body in bondage/constricted (tired up, etc) and penetration in the same frame (legally)
the actual murder of a human being for profit (legally), the (actual) abuse or violation of a child (legally), the teleportation of a human being without special effects, shots featuring a body in bondage/constricted (tired up, etc) and penetration in the same frame (legally)
wooooaaaaaah
wooooaaaaaah
Hey, Mike. I see where you’re coming from but think all of these things are possible within art; it’s just a question of figuring out how. As to why someone would want to portray some of the hypothetical examples above, obviously it’s questionable, but I think that was precisely the set of issues that DFW is confronting in that footnote (so many of the films he describes are unreleased due to legal snafus, or said to be unfilmable for conceptual reasons and the like).
Really, the issue isn’t any different to my mind than the barrier that comes up in regard to any adaptation–i.e. the book is impossible to film. Usually this is raised in regard to fidelity to the book, and the mistake is in thinking somehow that a film has to stick to aspect x, y, or z of the book. The best adaptations are inevitably something of a departure; they exploit the resources of the medium and draw upon something about the book, be it well-delineated characters, a set of textures or moods, a moral collision course that it sets us on, but they take things in their own direction and stand on their own as works of art. So, let’s say that these short films are adaptations of a footnote, perhaps the first case of adapted footnotes in film history(?). In this sense, though, they are much LESS difficult to do justice to than many other extant literary works, simply because DFW’s films are underspecified and are already representations of films to begin with–that is, whatever hurdles the filmography throws at a filmmaker, they are already conceived in the language of film, with film in mind, with film as the sparring partner if you will.
Purely speculating, I’m guessing that DFW knew that there was a good chance that someone would try to film Infinite Jest one of these years (after all, even Ulysses got taken on, as has every novel called “unfilmable,” as will every novel called “unfilmable,” I’d wager). And that he might have even imagined someone trying to film some of these shorts, at least as an aspect of that larger hypothetical project. Obviously, no one is going to actually recreate all these films–their dimensions and ostensible accomplishments are deliberately ludicrous, both singly and in juxtaposition. What the filmmakers need to do in order to succeed is to fail interestingly, to suggest the films that are described in the ‘ography just as Wallace suggests them in words and leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Plus the conceptual feat of trying to imagine these films as the emanations of a single mind within a single career trajectory is an added pleasure, assuming that the filmmakers didn’t consult extensively along the way. In sum, it seems to me that this is very much in the spirit of the book itself.
Hey, Mike. I see where you’re coming from but think all of these things are possible within art; it’s just a question of figuring out how. As to why someone would want to portray some of the hypothetical examples above, obviously it’s questionable, but I think that was precisely the set of issues that DFW is confronting in that footnote (so many of the films he describes are unreleased due to legal snafus, or said to be unfilmable for conceptual reasons and the like).
Really, the issue isn’t any different to my mind than the barrier that comes up in regard to any adaptation–i.e. the book is impossible to film. Usually this is raised in regard to fidelity to the book, and the mistake is in thinking somehow that a film has to stick to aspect x, y, or z of the book. The best adaptations are inevitably something of a departure; they exploit the resources of the medium and draw upon something about the book, be it well-delineated characters, a set of textures or moods, a moral collision course that it sets us on, but they take things in their own direction and stand on their own as works of art. So, let’s say that these short films are adaptations of a footnote, perhaps the first case of adapted footnotes in film history(?). In this sense, though, they are much LESS difficult to do justice to than many other extant literary works, simply because DFW’s films are underspecified and are already representations of films to begin with–that is, whatever hurdles the filmography throws at a filmmaker, they are already conceived in the language of film, with film in mind, with film as the sparring partner if you will.
Purely speculating, I’m guessing that DFW knew that there was a good chance that someone would try to film Infinite Jest one of these years (after all, even Ulysses got taken on, as has every novel called “unfilmable,” as will every novel called “unfilmable,” I’d wager). And that he might have even imagined someone trying to film some of these shorts, at least as an aspect of that larger hypothetical project. Obviously, no one is going to actually recreate all these films–their dimensions and ostensible accomplishments are deliberately ludicrous, both singly and in juxtaposition. What the filmmakers need to do in order to succeed is to fail interestingly, to suggest the films that are described in the ‘ography just as Wallace suggests them in words and leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Plus the conceptual feat of trying to imagine these films as the emanations of a single mind within a single career trajectory is an added pleasure, assuming that the filmmakers didn’t consult extensively along the way. In sum, it seems to me that this is very much in the spirit of the book itself.
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[…] Those who were interested in the Wallace-inspired A Failed Entertainment exhibit I posted about at the beginning of this year should check out a new development in the series, with an open call for new exhibits for […]
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