In the true spirit of the web this is just unedited stream of consciousness in case you want to keep up with the progress of the movie.

drawing 1947 by Mae Babitz

7/17/07
Latest Entry

Boosting With Bijou. The city Art and Rudy drive thru, in the old Plymouth with the dog, Bijou (see below, way below, to see what scene I'm talking about), will be L.A. on paper. A three-d paper city made of my aunt Mae's incredible old L.A. drawings AND the snapshots she took in the late 40s and early 50s of the city -- with people, pedestrians, drunks, and cars and buildings and signs and ruins, lotsa ruins, Mae loved those ruins -- what they had been and what they were at the moment. I don't know how I'll make the 3d paper city, but I'll figure it out, and now its all I want to do, but I've gotta deal with the website and publicity for the albums and new releases -- which are beautiful and inspiring, but I can hear the paper city rustling.

 

April 10, 2006 (first entry)

 

I began in February to redo the entire intro. I'm now using Art's entry into Terminal Island Federal Pen. to introduce him as a child, man, musician, criminal. I'm using much more of his funny/tragic narrative, now, his description of himself and of prison life. I lucked out finding an old television Interview of Art (I won't say where or when it was done: can of worms, and no-one will recognize the footage) so Art is is actually onscreen for a moment narrating, instead of only voiceover. I've also gotten permission from Don McGlynn to use all of his footage from "Notes From a Jazz Survivor" and have some beautiful stuff of Art performing at Pasquales: I've synched up different music and commentary but it works perfectly as a conclusion to the intro.

I'm also getting into "Poser," which is 3d character animation, for some stuff I needed to show. It's really possible to use it in a poetic way, and it's kinda like live action with quotes around it, and some of it is quite beautiful. And again, and again and again: It's funny. Because if it isn't funny it isn't art.

 

Lest you think I'm back at square one, just because I'm returning to the intro. No no no. I've really got everything else for part Two -- which is the first complete movie of three -- put together and humming nicely. I only need one more scene after this -- well, two:

1. The one I call "the cartoon" which is all about Art and Rudy out boosting in East L.A. with Bijou (the poodle). Those of you who've read Straight Life know how great that scene is. I started the movie thinking of that scene, and now I'm finally getting into it.

2. Diane getting busted and informing on Art -- which sends him to San Quentin. Which is what opens Part Three. This is pretty simple to do with Lisa living downstairs and all and with these great old police cars I shot already at the History Cop Place on York. I had a great lunch with three retired cops who told me all kinds of stories and one of whom worked the old L.A. County Jail and who may have met Art once upon a time.

Okay. That's it for today. I had major acupuncture and chiropractic done on my shoulder today. And then I walked around Chinatown for four hours. I'm going to take a hot bath and go to bed.  

 

May 15, 2006

 

I haven't worked on the movie for about two weeks.  When I left off I was redoing for the millionth time the 3D "stage set" of "Art's neighborhood in San Pedro."  Each time I've redone it, it's been better, more beautiful and more expressionistic.  But each time, as I've finished the latest redo, I've seen something to fix, and, inevitably, it means the layout has to be reconfigured.  One of the ongoing problems has been a lack of sharpness on close-ups of nested layers that are viewed with different zoom values.  I'm going to go to the discussion boards and put my questions and ask for help.

 

Meanwhile, at my little monthly creativity group, I read yet another 3 pages of my memoir and they were just pretty ordinary pages, but the whole group stopped and ignored the timer to talk to me about how I've got to keep writing.  I was stunned, because I've been attending the group for over ten years, and the only time this has happened, the ignoring of the clock, has been when people have been suicidal, and that hasn't been as often as you might think.  And everybody was telling me (in all kinds flattering phrases) how great the memoir is. 

 

The memoir IS finished.  And it's two thirds of the way through editing, but I've been neglecting that.  Neglecting it more, lately, as the group has changed to meeting once monthly, so I only have to come up with 8 to 12 minutes of reading only once a month.  And maybe this is a subtle way of everybody telling me they're sick of the movie.  But I know, if I only had, say, a year to live, I'd get busy finishing the memoir and put the movie aside. ( Well, first, I'd polish up and put together the pieces that I have...)  And you'll notice I'm not saying anything about publication -- although the group did, insistently, talk about that.  Because, the way I've always thought about the memoir, is that it it would be published posthumously, and that every one would be amazed, and they'd say, "My God, she was a genius." 

 

So I've been working on it more, and pressing myself to do more work by posting the current work on the web.  (So maybe someone (beside my friends in the group) will say that about me being a genius while I'm alive).

 

And I haven't worked on either the memoir or the movie for a week, because I took some time off to have a "procedure."  A deep chemical peel.  Which I survived, thank God, because I realized, going under, that I didn't have a single hard copy of the memoir.  Just a bunch of handwritten notebooks and obscurely labeled  files on my hard drive. 

And my reasons for risking my life to have my wrinkles erased...  Well, I'll just quote Don Marquis:

 

beauty gets the best of it

                       in this world.

 

 

June 14, 2006

 

Working like mad again on the movie. Also working on a liner note for the first cd for my record company (Widow's Taste: motto & logo-- Art with a gun and the caption, "pay my woman or else"). AND I've been scanning documents and photos for same. But so happy to be back at work in After Effects and Final Cut.

This lengthy introductory piece, including Terminal Island, and bio background -- including jazz history, and Art's childhood is mostly done as animation -- extremely beautiful and expressionistic. Only live performance is Jordy (my grandson) as Art as a child. The background music is a never-before-released "Lost Life," and it is devastating. This is the most ambitious piece -- and the longest -- I've done and I love it. .

 I still have to decide what parts of the documentary (about making the movie) I want to use. There is a great deal shot, and my feeling right now is -- don't use too much. But I can't really work that stuff out in my head. I have to manipulate the material, and then things fall apart, fall together, fall into place, get re-done, restructured, started over, and so on. Which is why everything takes forever. But when you get old, you accept your own style even while cursing it. It sure worked out well with this latest bit, and I had to re-do that from the ground up at least three times. And since I've been learning by doing, I've learned a lot this time. Mainly that when you're working in 3D you'd better put the anchor points in the center of each piece. Next time, that's what I'll do.  P.S.  this last bit appears to have taken 5 months.  But I took a month off, so….

 

 

01/11/07

 

Well, well.  So I've started a record company and been completely enmeshed in choosing and writing and mastering and printing and publicizing and on and on.

 

 In many ways I've lost touch with and been bogged down with the movie.

 

Hugh asked me, "When are they going to spring you?"  Meaning that I've been groveling in that big prison scene with memories of Art's childhood and so on and on and on. I look at this blog and realize it's been an entire year, now.  That scene (with the added intro) has become a movie in itself, and I keep fixing it.  Fixing the wonky parts, the draggy parts, the confusing parts.  And I keep saying I'm done and I'm not done.

 

But I acknowledge it looks better and better.  And my judgments have been getting stricter and stricter.  About my own and everybody else's work.  I'm not entirely thrilled by this development, this increasing tendency to sharply judge. 

 

I tivo-ed a documentary about fashion the other day, sat down to watch it and turned it off in disgust -- even tho I LOVE fashion.

 The opening shot was of someone's face in a ribbon-like strip across the screen, and they were talking and moving their head, and sometimes you saw the mouth, the eyes, and it didn't matter what they were saying (which wasn't all that great), you were just profoundly pissed and you wanted to see the face and it seemed to go on forever, and there was no reason at all for this black screen and this thin ribbon of meaningless image.  And then another scene looking in a door at people talking in a conference room, and once again, the thin ribbon, only this one vertical. 

 

Well, it was really clear that the filmmaker was a beginner and pretty young and will probably improve, but I don't have the patience for that crap, anymore.  I'm running out of patience, maybe because I'm running out of time and so aware of that. 

 

I've gone into the record business for such mixed reasons, but one is certainly to keep Art in the public view and ears.  I don't even know whether it will earn me money (I haven't broken even), although Victor records in Japan is advancing me some money for licenses.  So I guess I've answered my question.  I did it to make a living, too, and it's working.  But publicizing and networking and so on -- not my cup of tea and so time consuming.

 

I'm really itching to get to the Boosting with Bijou cartoon bit.

5/06/07. The Record Company is going great, second release out this month. Meanwhile, still working on the damned San Pedro bit. It is better better better than ever. And I finally caved. I showed it to some new people, and the consensus is, gotta have subtitles. Tapes of Art's voice, after literally years of work on 'em, still too hard in places to understand. So, once I get the subtitles finished, I will be done and will have a short film to show --- this with the intro. It is very beautiful.