A Modest Man

INTERVIEWER: Are you concerned about what you’d leave behind?

JERRY GARCIA: No, I’m hoping to leave a clean field – nothing, not a thing. I’m hoping they burn it all with me. I don’t feel like there’s this body of work that must exist. There’s enough stuff – who needs the clutter, you know? I’d rather have my immortality here while I’m alive. I don’t care if it lasts beyond me at all. I’d just as soon it didn’t.

Interview, Rolling Stone, 2 September 1993

Music: Rosemary
Written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Performed by the Grateful Dead
Aoxomoxoa (1969)

Photo by Jan Saudek: Children Playing in a Cemetery (1973)

For Charlie Kaufman’s Birthday

The word “genius” is passed around rather generously, isn’t it? At least in English, because its Russian counterpart, geniy, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers…Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique, dazzling gift.

Vladimir Nabokov, interview, 1969

***

–Charlie Kaufman is (say it with a sort of throaty awe) a geniy.

For proof see:

Hope Leaves the Theater (2005)

Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman

Music by Carter Burwell

Cast (listed alphabetically):

Hope Davis: Pat Nixon, The Mouse, Esther, Sailor #2, Rose, Miss Alison Finnigan, Traitor, Voice, Magistrate, Becky, Woman by Side of Road, Choir of Angels

Peter Dinklage: Reed, Oscar, Sheldrake, Boy #1, Tragic Monster, Man in Car, The Puppeteer, Sir Isaac Newton, Ben, William of Essex, Sailor #3. Wolf, Jan Wenner

Meryl Streep: Sally, Kelly, Jane, The Empress of Japan, Mrs. Finnigan, Boy #2, Joan of Arc, Daisy, Teresa D’Urseau, Radio Man, Sailor #1, The Killer, Broken Katie

SCENE BREAKDOWN
Scene One: Elevator
Scene Two: Elevator, ten minutes later
Scene Three: Joe’s Living Room
Scene Four: The “Kitchen,” later that day
Scene Five: Offices of Rolling Stone magazine, 1969
Scene Six: Engine room of an Argentinian freighter, 1943
Scene Seven: The Void, Thursday, 6:53 EST
Scene Eight: Elevator, exactly thirty years later
Scene Nine: Joe’s living room, midnight of the same day
Scene Ten: The Void, early morning
Scene Eleven: The eye of a hurricane, Easter Island, now
Scene Twelve: Elevator, one thousand years later
Scene Thirteen: A field of marigolds

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See also:

Synecdoche, New York

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Adaptation

Being John Malkovich

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Photograph of Charlie Kaufman by Brigitte Lacombe

For Carter Burwell’s Birthday

You might know Carter Burwell’s music but not his name. He wrote music for nearly all of the Coen Brothers’ movies (e.g. Fargo, True Grit), much of the Twilight series (‘Bella’s Lullaby’), and many other films.

Mr. Burwell first hit my radar in 2002, when I purchased the DVDs for Being John Malkovich and The Man Who Wasn’t There on the same day. The menu-loop music for both DVDs was jaw-droppingly beautiful. I checked the credits and found that both pieces were by the same composer. I sought out the soundtrack albums and loved them. Burwell’s soundtracks are now permanent fixtures on my iPhone music player.

He is also a smart essayist and runs an excellent website (with free music downloads and samples) called The Body.

You shall know a man by his works. What we know about Carter Burwell is that he has a lot of soul.

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Music by Carter Burwell (four favorites out of many):

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Malkovich Shrine and Embarcation, from Being John Malkovich (1999):

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I Met Doris Blind, from The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001):

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SeDuctIon, from Fur (2006):

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Opening, from Moving Gracefully Toward the Exit (2006):

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Photo of Carter Burwell (2001) by Chianan Yen

happy birthday

But feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive!

“Jöns” in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)

Painting by Henri Matisse: The Joy of Life (1905-06)

For @pjux

Dip

Photo by Thurston Hawkins: Energy and High Spirits in the East End, London (1954)