Albert Maysles and Cinéma vérité

Albert Maysles is known for his association with “direct cinema,” or the American version of the French “cinema verité.” This refers to a style of documentary filmmaking in which the director chooses to focus on capturing reality and portraying it in an accurate manner. Maysles’ work can be broken down into three components, which is precisely what we are going to do, while also relating his films to direct cinema and the cinema of attractions.

Part 1: The Concert Film and How Violence is captured.

I have three clips to share, which will inform Maysles’ use of Direct Cinema. Two of which are from films he directed, and the last is from a film which he participated in as a cinematographer. All three fall under the category of the Concert film which acts as an attraction in itself like Nathaniel Hornblower’s Awesome I Fuckin’ Shot That! and Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense. Gimme Shelter, What’s Happening: The Beatles in the USA, and Jimi Plays Monterey are the three films which I would like to focus on, specifically on three scenes which Maysles captured as a fly on the wall in the unfolding of natural and spontaneous events.

Gimme Shelter
At the Altamont Free Concert while the Stones were playing, violence ensued, causing the death of Meredith Hunter. The film sequence clearly shows the silhouette of a handgun in Hunter’s hand as Passaro (a Hell’s Angel) enters from the right, grabs and raises the gun hand, turning Hunter around and stabbing him at least twice in the back before pushing Hunter off camera.

Gunning argues that filmmakers use cinema less as a way to tell stories than as a way of presenting views to an audience. I believe this is in play during the clip. Additionally, the shock and spectacle of the actual violence serves as an attraction.

The next clip is from Maysles’ film: What’s Happening: The Beatles in the USA

It shows the young Beatles interacting together. At 2 minutes 30 seconds Maysles captures the ecstatic women fans which portray what could be a violent and scary segment, what with all the screaming and chaos. Then at 5 minutes 30 seconds he shows Ringo in a violent like, yet innocent state. Maysles captured these many stories through the documentary and then used them as an opportunity to present attractions.

Finally, in Jimi Plays Monterey, where Maysles served as a cinematographer, I thought it would be interesting to include another example of violence captured during a concert film. The Guitar sacrifice, as people often refer to it, begins about 6 and a half minutes into the clip after they have performed Wild Thing, and shows Jimi lighting his guitar on fire and smashing it relentlessly across the stage. Could this be a commentary on how we often destroy the things we love? Regardless, violence is truly captured through the lenses of all the cinematographers who worked on the film. And the women’s reactions are beautifully and hilariously shown as well, in a sort of commentary toward Jimi’s actions.

Additionally, Dave Saunders’ writings on Direct Cinema will be assisting me in my final paper.

-Natalie Peyton

Part 2:

One signature element of Maysles’ work is his incorporation of prominent public figures into his films and capturing segments of their lives on camera. In this sense, the stars themselves and their individual realities serve as the primary attractions in the film. This is consistent with the aim of direct cinema, as well as with Musser’s definition of the cinema of attractions, in which spectacular elements play the role of enhancing the narrative. The following two clips are from Meet Marlon Brando (1965) and Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (1985), in which Marlon Brando and Vladimir Horowitz, respectively, are the stars of the film. They not only serve as a means of attracting the audience, but they also act to emphasize the narrative because the story revolves around them and events in their lives.

-Priya Sikerwar

Part 3:

To further the concept of “direct cinema”, the Maysles designed new camera and sound equipment that was less intrusive than existing technologies. He developed a revolutionary 30 pound camera and worked with repositioning the viewfinder to obtain more flexible shots. The result was a subtle observation, allowing the subjects to speak for themselves. Below are two clips exhibiting the naturalistic environment the Maysles were able to create:

Grey Gardens (1975)

Salesman (1969)

There aim was for authenticity, a portrayal of the “truth” and immediacy of character studies. The immediacy allowed an egalitarian connection to the viewer which then humanizes the strange people being observed. They hoped to “‘create an intimacy between the subject filmed and the audience'” so that they could be more representational as the entire population (Vogels).

My claim is that this naturalization renders the documentary making process into a naturalistic observational psychological study. In psychology, one method of collecting data is through naturalistic observation, which is defined as a study conducted in a natural environment with little to no interference. That way, the data collected can be as accurate as possible to the behaviors of the test subject. The spectacle of creating this observational experiment renders the viewer not equal, but above the subject as a figure of authority, an experimenter, a scientist, like a spectator at a zoo, watching the animals in their habitats. The drive to analyze and understand others is inherent, as is the need to establish a power dynamic/relationship, thus is the draw of a Maysles film.

-Maria Liu

There’s always another “Friday” (Rebecca Black)

The latest music video to go viral on YouTube, Rebecca Black’s cheesy pop debut “Friday” has garnered the attention and dismay of music critics and casual listeners everywhere. First posted on Tumblr’s The Daily What on March 11, the seemingly inconsequential amateur music video began to spread like wildfire and gained roughly thirty million views in the span of little more than a week.  Although the song lacks lyrical complexity, makes heavy use of Auto-Tune, and is bizarrely simplistic and repetitive, “Friday” is a prime example of viewer interaction with a scrutinized spectacle much along the same vein as Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room.

The song was recorded after thirteen-year-old Rebecca Black’s mother purchased a recording package for amateur singers that included a choice of pre-written tracks—one of which was “Friday.” The label, Ark Music Factory, handled the production of the music video, the Auto-Tune used on Black’s voice, and added the rap verse by Patrice Wilson, who works with the label and co-wrote the lyrics for the song.

The hilariously uninspired and doggerel lyrics are only one of the ways in which “Friday” captured the attention of millions and generated countless comments, memes, and jokes in response. Such profound lines as “Partying, partying, yeah / Partying, partying, yeah / Fun, fun, fun, fun” and “Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday / Today is Friday, Friday / … / Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes afterwards,” form the backdrop to a well-produced but blandly unimaginative music video in which Rebecca Black wakes up, goes to school, dances awkwardly in a car with some friends, and features Patrice Wilson’s bizarre and (more than a little) creepy rap about a driving down the street next to a school bus.

It is easy to see the similarity between the type of attraction in “Friday” and that of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. While “Friday” is certainly a music video made for a pop song and does its best to comply rather strictly with those conventions, there are just so many subtle ways in which it fails that that set it apart from any other “bad” video. Even though “Friday” attempts to do the job of a music video, as John Mundy explains, by “being concerned with implicit narratives rather than making clear the causal connections which realist cinema demands” it instead ends up splicing together curiously banal images that, although coherent, can only be comical or puzzling in their reception. Like The Room, this peculiar brand of twisting convention becomes enticing and even charming for many viewers. While a good number of Rebecca Black’s thirty million viewers were most likely laughing at her, many others genuinely enjoy “Friday” for its quirky idiosyncrasies, and famous figures in the music industry such as Simon Cowell and Chris Brown have even complimented Black for her attitude if not her technique.

But as Guy Debord observed, “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images,” and unsurprisingly, a large amount of enjoyment from a video like “Friday” comes not from the spectacle itself, but also the ways in which viewers interact with the video. Much like midnight screenings of The Room where audience members yell lines and cat-call responses at the screen, dress up like favorite characters, and even throw spoons, viewers who consider “Friday” beloved have created myriad memes around the video which enhance their pleasure in experiencing the attraction. Memes like “fried egg” (a reference to how the word “Friday” sounds when Auto-Tuned) and the “Awkward Dancing Girl” to Black’s right in the backseat of the car have birthed countless macros and even a Deadmau5-style remix. These seemingly random details have been lifted up and glorified as the newest in-jokes of Internet culture, seeping into the collective unconscious and interacting with other memes to increase both the video’s popularity and its viewers’ amusement.

Whatever your opinion of Rebecca Black’s talent or lack thereof, the middle schooler’s amateur stylings have still become an iTunes Top 100 hit and underground phenomenon much like the many delightfully dreadful films of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fame. However, the argument can rightfully be made that it is not Rebecca Black who is reinvigorating the attraction of the “bad” music video or film—she is simply the lucky beneficiary in all this—but instead the same Internet culture that seeks out the odd, obscure, and bizarre and makes it both mainstream and beloved (see: everyone from Antoine Dodson to the Star Wars kid). In another few months, the Internet will probably have largely forgotten Rebecca Black and her indecision when it comes to choosing a seat in her friend’s car… but there will always be another “Friday” waiting to be enjoyed.

More Info/Outside Source: KnowYourMeme.com

Begotten and “Cryptorchid”: Avant-Garde Attraction for Sale?

Artistic merit aside, it’s difficult to deny Marilyn Manson’s penchant for recontextualizing the avant-garde within his commercial shock rock spectacle. One need look no further than the video for “The Dope Show,” in which the performer recreates the mannequin scene from Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, to recognize this tendency. However, the influence of the avant-garde on Manson’s work is most apparent in E. Elias Merhige’s 1996 video for “Cryptorchid” (a song from Antichrist Superstar – an album which references none other than avant-garde auteur Kenneth Anger in the names of its song cycles: “Inauguration of the Worm” and “Disintegrator Rising”).

“Cryptorchid” is unique amongst mainstream music videos in that it is composed almost entirely of footage from a pre-existing experimental film: Merhige’s own Begotten (1990). A “Rorschach test for the adventurous eye” that makes “Eraserhead seem like Ernest Saves Christmas” according to Time, Begotten relates an interpretation of Genesis through abstract images of pain and suffering. In order to achieve the distinct look of the film (which features no music or dialogue), Merhige spent up to 10 hours rephotographing for each one of the film’s 78 minutes. Begotten is a true avant-garde attraction – a film sought out for the singularity of its technical and thematic vision and its power to provoke strong responses.

Immediately after watching Begotten, Manson purportedly contacted Merhige to direct a music video for “Cryptorchid.” In the video, Manson appears only superimposed on the original footage for a few seconds, replacing the original deity who disembowels himself in Merhige’s film. The spectacle here is still Merhige’s avant-garde artistry, as many of the video’s comments on YouTube can attest to. However, the director has rearranged his hermetic and highly personal curio – inspired by his own near-death experience – to accompany Manson’s song. This is not such a stretch, as Merhige’s aesthetic bears similarity to Manson’s and is congruous with the performer’s level of “creepiness” and shock value.  Begotten’s imagery also aligns with the song’s thematic preoccupations of death and rebirth. With “Cryptorchid,” Merhige delivered the kind of video that Manson fans expect. Had Merhige not agreed to direct the video, I imagine Manson himself would’ve found some way to poorly replicate the film’s imagery.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to evaluate this music video in the context of our discussion of avant-garde attractions for sale. Merhige willfully repackaged and surrendered a piece of his vision for the reinterpretation of Universal Music Group (who makes viewers watch commercials to view it through Vevo), MTV (who banned it from being shown on the network during its initial release) and thousands of teenagers (who would’ve never encountered Merhige’s work otherwise and might not have the ability to provide the cerebral interpretation he is looking for as an artist). Whether this decision was “crossing over” or “selling out” is debatable. Merhige himself clearly didn’t perceive this move as selling out, as he has stated in an interview: “My feeling is that it doesn’t matter whether something is independent, experimental or considered commercial.”

Interview with Merhige

“Begotten” Trailer

“The Dope Show”

“The House That Drips Blood on Alex”; Tommy Wiseau’s Tips for Making a Sex Tape

Askmen.com asks Tommy Wiseau for his advice on filming a sex tape (why?) here. If you’re interested, you can watch “The House That Drips Blood on Alex” in full here, but watch the trailer first.

Heavy Metal (1981)

Here’s a clip from Gerald Potterton’s animated cult classic Heavy Metal.  Although the accompanying song (Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal”) does not accompany that particular scene in the movie, it is still found elsewhere in the film and regardless is effective in adding an element of attraction to the clip.  I believe this scene is perfectly representative of Gunning’s definition of the ‘cinema of attractions,’ namely as he posits how the ‘cinema of attractions’ “directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle…”(p.384).  In this clip we see violence, bloodshed, vibrant colors, sex appeal, fantastical creatures in a mythical world, and even an explosion at the end (despite it being very apparent that it is not animation but a cheap model of a house being blown up).  All of these elements belong to the spectacle and may certainly be said to visually stimulate the spectator as well as incite his curiosity and keep his attention.  And against the backdrop of Sammy Hagar this clip is undeniably the visual embodiment of rock n’ roll, a genre that is by nature exciting and, by extension, “attractive.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2_gOpU0eWU