kenneth anger

I recorded a commentary track for “Drive”

Hey, HTMLGiant. I recorded a commentary track for Drive; you can download it here. It’s an mp3, 42 MB, 104 minutes long.

Of course I made it so brilliant that you can just listen to it on its own. But if you watch it with Drive (recommended!), it’s all synced up, so cue it to start when the Universal logo starts.

Related posts:

Next, I’ll record commentary for Inception.

And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

And The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And Southland Tales.

Update: I forgot to include a link to Scorpio Rising. Here’s a clip:

And here’s the full film.

Film / 27 Comments
March 28th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Kenneth Anger on Writing

“Nobody in America, in the modern generation, has read their mythology or legends.”

“In fireworks are released all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream. The inflammable desires, dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness, are ignited at night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence. These imaginary displays provide a temporary relief.”

“But films are very constructed—they’re like architecture. They’re pieced together, glued together. To me, it’s a craft. It’s like making a tapestry. And I prefer to think of it—you know, um, the sweat is supposed to be invisible.”

“I’ve made several films that haven’t been shown.”

Craft Notes / 10 Comments
June 16th, 2011 / 2:02 pm

Craft Notes & HTMLGIANT Features

On Influence: Anger Lynch Cage Rauschenberg

The first Kenneth Anger film I saw I think was Kustom Kar Kommandos. It was the first piece on a VHS compilation of his movies that my Satanic friend R. had. R. was a cousin of a kid I’d gone to elementary and middle school with, J., who one day I remember showing me a Polaroid of his other cousin having sex with a dog. We were on the smaller bus that went from the elementary school to my house, which was about a mile and a half. J. thought it was funny. I also first saw the word fuck written on that bus I think, though I didn’t say it out loud or know what it meant for another year.

Kustom Kar Kommandos was filmed in 1965 and was supposed to be the first of an eight part film about erotic teenagers and machines. Showing of this first section failed to help Anger get the money he needed to make the rest, so he gave up. Me and R. and another also Satanic kid, L., (I was not Satanic) watched the film that first time in the “play room” of my parents’ house, sitting all of us together on a futon. The play room was my first bedroom in the house but since my parents had built on, it now just kept all the old toys and games and other crap we never really used. By this point the room was basically storage. Today it still has several boxes full of junk I never unboxed after my loft got hit by the first tornado to land on downtown Atlanta, right on me.

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57 Comments
August 9th, 2010 / 2:55 pm

Kenneth Anger Ad for Missoni


[Thanks K.]

What’s Missoni? I have no idea, even after watching this. Which is the best. Why don’t more big $$ machines give more $$ to arts, even if you have to put their name on it.

Dear Missoni, BP, Brad Pitt, whoever: if you pay me $$ to live for a while, I’ll write a book that has your entity’s object or glyphmark or whateverword in it. That’s not a sales pitch. I’m for $$ sponsorship, when it does not demand control, as this clearly did not. Props to places with taste. I like Missoni now, whatever it is.

Film / 35 Comments
July 29th, 2010 / 4:18 pm

2 for googoo

Brian Butler’s Night of Pan, starring Vincent Gallo and Kenneth Anger for onedreamrush

Ryan Trecartin’s A Family Finds Entertainment (in 5 parts)

Random / 14 Comments
February 28th, 2010 / 5:11 pm

Story by Story: Brian Evenson’s Fugue State (14) ‘Helpful’

evenson

Fourteenth in the order of stories in Brian Evenson’s Fugue State (out now from Coffee House Press) is ‘Helpful,’ which originally appeared in Bombay Gin.

At this point in the collection, we have looped through loops of cold expanse and careful molding, each rendered in Evenson’s clean, calm and deadly sentences, most as blank as any stroke of light in a Kenneth Anger film, any globe of far off light.

Here, having crossed over the threshold of those gone rooms, and entered the center of the void via Evenson’s masterful arrangement of the stories so far, the frame of the lenses, like in Anger’s opus Invocation of My Demon Brother, begins to split.

Anger_Invocation

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Uncategorized / 2 Comments
July 30th, 2009 / 12:41 pm