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?

29 March 2004

Music Video Directors

Speaking of music videos, a new DVD collection of videos called Director's Series — The Works of Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry has been selling like hotcakes for several months. Urban Outfitter stacks them near the cash register. People talk about them in California coffee shops. Amazon reports that it's in their top 20 DVD sales at universities around the world. Fascinating.

I've yet to be convinced that people who make great music videos can also make great movies, but at the rate these guys get funding for feature films, the major studios are hoping you disagree. I liked Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure the talents that were cultivated for Fatboy Slim are what make those movies appealing. (And anyway some people argue that it's the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who's the real auteur of those movies.)

Sure Mark Romanek's Johnny Cash video is moving and profound by MTV standards, but by another metric its maudlin and borderline-crass (as is the whole project, in my opinion. I like the first American Recordings album, but I feel a little funny about the later projects in which Rick Rubin and video directors like Romanek treat Cash like a puppet, handing him Nine Inch Nails songs and harnessing his legacy for a cult of cool.) Romanek's feature debut, One Hour Photo, despite being 92 minutes longer than a music video, was even more shallow and even more prone to irrelevant visual filler. Don't worry, he'll get to make another movie. It'll star Tom Hanks.

It's interesting that Urban Outfitters, et. al., find such prestige in the word "director," prominently placed in the title of the collected "works." This may have its roots in 1960s cinephilia and the nouvelle vague, when directors used film as an art of self-expression, but I'm not sure any of these guys qualifies as an auteur, even of their music videos. The phenomenon is closer to the selling of a director that predates even the French New Wave. Hitchcock, as one of the most prominent examples, carefully built his image and used it to fuel ticket sales. His movies are also proof, by the way, that salesmanship and artistic ability are not mutually exclusive, which is why I'm not quite ready to write these video guys off. I'm just not ready to kiss their feet.

That is, I'm not ready to buy their DVDs. I might rent them, though.

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