The American Dreamer

Sad to hear that Dennis Hopper has passed away. I've seen a bunch of Dennis Hopper films but the one that will stay with me will always be Easy Rider. I saw it when I was 19 years old on VHS. There was something about that film which really clicked with me. I'm sure alot of the American counter culture flew over my head, but the sense of adventure struck deep. It inspired my early love of travel and in particular hitch-hiking. I went on many hitch-hiking journeys with a dubbed VHS copy of Easy Rider in my bag as good luck charm.

While at university I found a book of photographs by Dennis Hopper . In the front of the book he wrote an introduction telling a story of when he was a kid he drank petrol, stared at the sun and went blind for a couple of weeks. He went on to discuss how this had altered the way he would 'see the world' for ever. That story has always stayed with me too. Crazy.

In looking through a bunch of a YouTube clips I found some snippets from a film called The American Dreamer. I have never seen this film, but it looks to be a pretty cool 'behind the scenes' of Hoppers follow up to Easy Rider a film called 'The Last Movie'. I'm going to try and track down a copy because it looks pretty promising. (Bit's of this clip look like a whole heap like another film I love. But thats a whole other post...)

What was your favourite Dennis Hopper film? He directed, produced, starred and featured in over 200 of them!

YOUNG AND FULL OF THE DEVIL

Words from a wise guy

if it doesn't come bursting out of youin spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

by Charles Bukowski

via Ted Hope via Poets.org

Brutalful

These photos caught my eye on a blog and I followed the link through to LIFE magazine's website. The cinematic beauty of the images take on an altogether different vibe when you realise they are 'never-before-seen' photos of Adolf Hitler's home and office. I'm so taken with colour palette, colour grade and the quality of light in the photographs, but the reality behind the images is so disturbing. From the LIFE website... A rare look inside Hitler's apartment, what he saw each day, and how he lived. Between 1936 and 1945, Hugo Jaeger served as one of Adolf Hitler's personal photographers and was granted unprecedented access to the Fuhrer's private moments. Here are rare and never-before-published color images from Jaeger's astonishing collection.

Above : This 1938 photograph from Adolf Hitler's Chancellery office in Berlin, published in LIFE magazine in 1970, has an eerie domesticity about it. The telephone, the note pad, the flowers, the glimpse of a fringed lampshade in the mirror -- all of these items suggest a rather dull, comfortable, middle-class sensibility. Viewed now, however, the presence of Adolf Hitler's hat -- as if casually tossed there by a man arriving for work at his well-appointed office -- lends the otherwise placid scene a hint of brutality.

SITTING IN THE DARK (SOundmaker pt 4)

Last week I finally finished the 'Soundmaker' short film. It's had a much longer post production period than originally planned, but I'm really happy with the finished film. Overall it's a been a great experience. I'll post (or link) to the film when I can... soon. Offline, Music, Grade, Online, Sound...

Jim Henson died 20 years ago today...

Although I never  met him, and I'm just one of the hundreds of thousands of people who's lives he touch in the most profound of ways. I for one, still miss him.

How DO YOU DESToRY ANGELS? SET THEM ON FIRE!

Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has a new musical project called How To Destroy Angels. This is the first music video from the band (that's Trent's wife on vocals) Shot by my friend Greig Fraiser. Beautiful work.

Wow

Sometimes you see an image that makes you stop and stare... for hours...

Via photograpaher Jennilee Marigomen

THE IMPORTANCE OF WINNING AWARDS

Much more of this insanity truth here...

Chemicals and Light

I have been wanting to get some of the portraits of Tom and Hugo shot for Last Ride blown up and framed. As they were shot on medium format (Grieg brought his old toy Holga along) I was really keen to get them enlarged optically and printed old school stylee on fibre based black and white paper. I found a printer called Asko at CPL here in Melbourne. Asko is an artist in his own right. Carrying on the tradition of darkroom exposures, hand burning and dodging, and hand chemical development. What was once an essential photographic service (Asko told me in 1988 the company he worked for developed over half a million dollars worth of black and white prints!) is now quite a specialist area, as everything image based is in the realm of the computer. It was very cool to visit him in his dark room and see how the prints were coming along. The potent smell of the chemicals taking me back to my uni days spent in the dark up to my neck in developer.

The prints are quite large, I'm getting some 24inch x 24inch and a couple 34inch by 34inch. I'll post some framed shots when they are complete.

HOUSE TEASE in 5D

The first 2 minutes of the finale episode of U.S TV show House , that I discussed below and was shot entirely on the 5D2 can be seen here. (Thanks Dave!) It looks pretty amazing. The times are definitely a changing.

iPAD

HEAVY METAL PICNIC!

While digging around for some history on the post below... I have just found another film Heavy Metal Picnic which was shot in 1985 a year prior to Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and was only just uploaded to Vimeo five days ago! 'Picnic' was produced by Jeff Krulic (who then made 'Parking Lot' in 86). Heavy Metal Picnic takes you way deeper. What is essentially a bunch of kids fooling around with a camera, has become an incredible social document. This film makes Heavy Metal Parking Lot look water downed. This roughly assembled edit provides us with an astounding amount of authenticity. truth and access into a very specific time and place. A time and place I myself am totally fascinated with. My feature film Cherry Bomb is drawing heavily from this world, although it's set about 6 years before these guys were listening to metal and getting wasted on some hillside in Maryland, USA.

It looks as though the filmmakers partied filmed as much as they could until the camera batteries went dead.

Heavy Metal Picnicer "Are you guys really from CBS?"

Filmmaker "Nah, we just stole all this shit!"

Heavy Metal Parking Lot (films that changed my life pt 1)

Last week I did guest lecture at the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television. One of the things I had wanted to do for a while was just show a bunch of short films that have really effected me over the years. I think I took in about 20 -30 shorts, but I only had time to played around five, once we chatted about each of them. I wanted the students to think about why it is they want to make movies. If it's "to tell a story" or "to create worlds and characters" why not consider writing a short story or a novel? Is your 'film idea' a better idea for a painting? A song? A photograph? A stand-up routine? A newspaper article? What makes a film want and need to be a film and how do you best use the elements of cinema for your 'film idea' so it can only be a film, and nothing else, because all those other options will perhaps be easier for you and definitely less expensive and require way less people to make it happen.

One film idea I'm sure glad isn't any other art form is Heavy Metal Parking Lot. I showed this as an example of how films don't need to be huge in scale, overly planned and /or require the hearts and minds of a mulitple cast and crew. Sometimes all you need is to be at the right place at the right time and with the right attitude.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot is more than just a cultural time capsule, it's a couple of filmmakers doing what all great documentary filmmakers do. They are simply holding a mirror up and reflecting who 'we' are, in the most raw and pure of ways.

There is a great interview with Jeff Krulick who made Heavy Metal Parking Lot here, and another here with guest Dave Grohl. And also check out this excellent site Triple Canopy that not only has a pretty cool interface but also features alot of Jeffs other work, including Harry Potter Parking Lot!

Welcome to Hoaxville

No, you are in the right place. You haven't clicked on the wrong the site. GlendynIvin.com is now Hoaxville.com. Why the change...? Well I originally grabbed www.GlendynIvin.com as a URL for the obvious reasons, mostly cos, like, it's my name and it seemed the right thing to do at the time. But for some reason the idea of publishing blog content under my name never really felt right. HOAXVILLE feels to me more like a destination, a place  you can 'visit'. Under this new banner my plan is to post more often on a slightly wider range of things. HOAXVILLE will still be my process diary and a place to dump the things that have caught my eye or inspired me. But HOAXVILLE feels a little broader, a place than can grow and slowly manifest into something bigger. Lets see how it goes.

In migrating all the content from the old site to here alot of the formating has gone. I've gone through and fixed the last page or so of posts, but the nature of blogs feel like they should exist in the here and now. So from now on I'm loving the freedom Wordpress has given me over Blogger. Bigger pictures, better layouts and total control, well as much control as my crummy html skills provide me with.

So please update your bookmarks and enjoy!