Category Archives: Literature
Southern Story Standoff
I’m standing in my favorite coffeehouse in the world (Open Eye, Carrboro NC), innocently waiting for my drink. Minding my own business.
In walks a friend, someone I hadn’t seen in weeks, possibly months.
There’s something different about him. Oh, that would be the sterile pad covering the lower part of his throat.
Almost as if it were covering… a tracheotomy scar?
“What’s up?” I say. And did I mention my buddy was a little wild-eyed?
“Not much,” my friend rasps.
Dammit. He HAS had a tracheotomy.
“How things by you?” he asks.
Oh my God. He’s not only held back his story, he’s just checked me (think chess).
I have to respond. And ss a storyteller myself, i know I have two options, neither of them great:
1. I can blow him off as politely as possible, and try to get the condensed version of whatever has happened either from other friends, or from the man himself when I have more time or he has less time.
2. I can open myself up for the narrative, right there. And this is tricky, because there’s a code of conduct involved. Once I open myself up, I have to let him tell the story in full, as he sees fit.
It could be five minutes, or it could be an hour and five minutes. It could be as straightforward as Hemingway or as ornate as Faulkner. It could be as clean as… well, no Southern writer I know of, but it could be clean. Or it could be as profanity-filled as a Navy riot, possibly describing things I didn’t know were physically possible or even part of the human imagination.
You just never know with these things. You also never know if it’ll be worth the effort, or if it’ll be something you immediately want to scrub out of your mind.
But that’s the chance you take.
Once you start, you can’t stop the story. It’s worse than hitting someone’s Mom. They can hit back. But once you cut a story short, you’ve essentially killed it, and wounded the storyteller.
And there will be payback.
So… what to do?
“It’s just been a lot of hurry up and wait. You know,” I reply.
The coward’s way.
“Boy do I,” his rasp now even more pronounced.
Is he doing that on purpose? Can he modulate with that scar? How long do they stay open? I could ask, but…
“I gotta run,” I say, coffee now firmly in hand. “But call me, let’s catch up.”
He gives me the look. The look that says, ‘Next time, I own you.’
“Yeah, my brother, we’ll catch up,” he wheezes.
I turn and shuffle out the door, in shame.
I’ve let a good storyteller down, and I’ve left a possible great story hanging out there. But next time. Next time.
Maybe even with a drink or two. I wonder. What happens if you slam a beer with a reasonably fresh tracheotomy scar?
So many questions…
And because it might save a life, here’s this clip:
Sundance 2011: Day 7
Quick hits, because local wireless is overwhelmed by Sundance attendees:
“HERE” is gorgeously shot, but an inexplicable two full hours. The male and female leads are compelling, and good actors.
The story is incredibly thin, and so little happens you wonder if a 90-minute version would have saved this.
“Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest” is directed by Michael Rapaport. Yes, that actor.
And it’s good! The first half is raucous and fun. The second half drags with some extended personal drama, but as a whole, this is well worth checking out.
To an unsentimental new year!
This isn’t what you think — I’m not trying to be deliberately provocative just for the sake of it.
And in fact, I celebrated Christmas with a big collection of family (I have a HUGE family, so it’s possible to fill a house and have plenty left over, unaccounted for, probably wandering around in the snow lost and abandoned. Not that I would ever do that.)
I also had a great, reasonably low-key New Year’s Eve with my “other” family and a group of interesting, engaging friends. So I can lay down the sentimentality.
During Christmas, though, I broke up the spaces between family events by re-reading Dubliners by James Joyce.
– Scoff if you want, claim that a dead white Irish male writer isn’t relevant to modern multicultural society, note that a collection of short stories first published almost 100 years ago might not stand up that well.
All I know is this:
Dubliners kicked me in the head. With no fanfare, it was an unsentimental wake-up that was a perfect antidote, to me, for what had been a heavily commercialized holiday.
I first read this in college. That event was pretty much lost on me, since it was an assignment rather than an exploration. I picked it up again in my early 30s, but I had to put it down because I was still dealing with my father’s recent death and some of the stories hit too close to home.
More recently, a co-worker lent me a copy of “The Dead”, the novella that closes Dubliners (and which John Huston made into a film, along with his son, Tony, and daughter, Angelica). That same co-worker, Patrick, believes the final paragraph of “The Dead” is one of the most astounding pieces of English literature, period. Personally, I believe it’s great, but give the edge to the closing of The Great Gatsby.
So for about a year, I’ve been primed to take on Dubliners as an adult. I just wasn’t expecting its bleak AND beautiful nature.
My point? I’ve unexpectedly found inspiration from a great artist, reaching out from a different world and a different century. I’m going to use that inspiration this new year to better attempt looking at things as they are, not as I want (or hope) them to be.
And then moving on from there.
Wesley Wolfe: “Only Ray of Sunshine”
Mar 31
Posted by jameshyatt
First the clip, then the story (but for this one, I recommend clicking on the “Vimeo” link in the bottom right, so you can see this video in its full glory. There are a lot of moving parts…):
The song is “Only Ray of Sunshine”, from Wesley Wolfe’s Storage album (Odessa Records, 2010).
Wes is a really nice guy — soft-spoken, polite, and hard working.
Why, exactly, would his video have a lot of bad cops doing a lot of bad things as one poor couple sat there bound (and the female, hooded)?
Because we talked him into it. Half-kidding — it started from a germ of an idea about this sweet little love song and how to shake up the visuals. Showing a couple in the park holding hands wasn’t going to cut it. The project needed the Creato Destructo Imagery edge.
“It started out as a concept about a guy tied up in a trunk being dropped off mysteriously in front of a woman already tied up — basically the action at the core of the produced video,” said director Jerry Stifelman. “Then we had a creative session with Wes, who came up with the idea of making everyone cops, based on the lyric, ‘We are all criminals disguised as cops.’ Then we all came up with having all the cops being as uncoplike as possible… I love working with an artist to bring the video even closer to the essence of the song.”
As producer, it was a great moment when we really connected with the talent on the concept. Truly, this was an idea that hasn’t been done many times over in a music video.
But also as producer, I began tugging at what hair I have left — there were so many questions:
- Where are we going to find all these people?
- How are we going to find (and pay for) the cop uniforms and accessories (badges, caps, etc.) for all these people?
- WHERE can we pull this off?
- We’re in a small town. This really has to be done in public to visually “sell” the concept. What will our REAL cops think?
The good news is Wesley is well liked, so we were able to draft a lot of his friends, fans and family. And the good folks at Odessa Records also joined in. Then, we worked our own lists of good-humored friends, and supporters of Creato Destructo, and got enough bodies to approach a visual critical mass the video scenarion needed.
In terms of the uniforms, accessories, and other things that were needed — hire us and we’ll tell you all about it. (But one thing that worked in our favor was Halloween.)
We also benefitted from the great talent at Playmakers Repertory Company and the affiliated UNC Department of Dramatic Art. Not only were we able to “seed” trained actors into the bad-cop group — we also found standout talent Kelsey Didion, who earned my undying loyalty to her acting skills by sitting there, for hours, bound and hooded on a cold and windy day. (Kelsey, I hope someday to see you win an Oscar…)
And for location, well… we’ll have to protect the names of innocent property owners.
But enough from me. What does Wesley Wolfe think about the video?
“Jerry, James and Tracy are the kind of people I love to work with. People that have the need to create, and find any way possible to do so,” Wolfe said. ”They let no obstacle — especially the all-mighty one, budget, stop them. Through ingenuity and resourcefulness they have found away to put on bigtime productions with little budget…
“I feel fortunate to be a part of their collection of work. I have only heard great thing from people that have seen it. My closest friends we’re blown away by the video. The production value speaks for itself.”
So far, so good. How did he feel about the process of taking his song (a highly personal thing), and handing it over to others, to translate it into a video that wasn’t necessarily… his?
“Another thing I admire is how open and flexible Jerry was to ideas and changes in post production. He truly treated this project as a collaboration. I have no doubts that my ideas and thoughts were taken into consideration, and not just tossed to the side. Something rare in any art project, especially when all I had to do was just show up for the shoot,” Wolfe said.
Aren’t those some production values? Damn right! Even though I personally was still anxious on shoot day — because we had so many extras to manage — it was an amazing experience to watch as each person put on a uniform shirt, pinned on a badge, and donned headgear. They became bad cops right in front of our eyes, and it went from concept to stunning reality in just a few minutes.
The experience is well described by our own Tracey Oliveto:
“This shoot was really fun because once everyone was dressed and given their marks, it was like a big outdoor party. I couldn’t stop smiling at the image of 30 or more people dressed in uniforms, doing their thing in the sunshine and it definitely makes you stop and think about the roles we all play in life,” stated Oliveto, Creato Destructo’s associate creative director. “It was quite a spectacle and drew curious attention from passersby. Of course, James gave our Carrboro (police department), a heads up – after all, it could have looked like some kind of conspiracy.”
Tto be honest, we had a few uneasy weeks as the local police tried to figure out if we were making fun of them, or cops in general, or if it was some kind of weird art project. This being Carrboro/Chapel Hill, it appears they settled on “weird art project” and decided not to pursue the matter any further…
All that said, the last words belong to Wolfe:
“I was nervous at first about being on camera. I really don’t like posing for pictures or seeing video of myself. They talked me into it, I trusted them fully, and I don’t regret it one bit… All in all, a great experience.”
We’ll be happy to do it again, Wes!
Wesley Wolfe (left) photographs the anarchic chaos.
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Tags: actors, Advertising & Marketing, art, Carrboro, Commentary, Creato-Destructo, development, Directing, drama, editing, Film, James Hyatt, Jerry Stifelman, Media, movies, Multimedia, Music, odessa records, online, Playmakers Repertory Company, police, producer, producing, rolling stone, social media, Society, Tech, tracey oliveto, UNC, video, wesley wolfe, youtube