Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

18 March 2003

Stone Reader

2002, U.S.

director: Mark Moskowitz

The first third of Stone Reader accomplishes something very rare in movies: it makes you want to go home and read a book. And not a particular book, but any book. Documentarian Mark Moskowitz's love of books is contagious. Stone Reader documents his search for the author of a long forgotten book, the only book its author wrote. Moskowitz poses lots of questions and possible answers to why an author would write one great book and then vanish. It's not uncommon, he finds.

The movie loses its way when Moskowitz tries hard to emulate other movies without quite pulling it off. It's a detective story, and the way Moskowitz jumps here and there, driving from interview to interview, mirrors his approach to books, but we need to feel the momentum that he says he feels as he gets closer to the elusive author. At one point he seems finally to have the man's address, but instead of going there directly, he stops off to talk to some other folks. Although that may have been the order in which the actual investigation took place, his fuzzy motivations and loose narrative squander the genuine curiosity built up early on. The way his investigation was actually conducted and the way Moskowitz wants to present it increasingly butt heads. Strangely, his interview style often relies on surprising the interviewee with information about the book or his quest, but the effect is undercut when the interviewee obviously feigns surprise ("What's that you have there?"). He uses ambush techniques where they are hardly warranted, marching into a university library with cameras rolling when the library is more than happy to let him see the archives. The attempt at suspense via inappropriate techniques is most unfortunate when he seems more interested in scoring a coup — getting the book back into print — than he is in learning much about the author. After all, Errol Morris got Randall Adams off of death row with The Thin Blue Line. (He also made a great movie.) Not only does Moskowitz press the man's former agent fruitlessly, but he also appears to lose interest in talking to the author and wants instead to rummage around in his basement looking for contracts that can help him with the coup. But I'm probably being too hard on a mostly well-intentioned ode to a good read.

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