HILLARY WESTON

New York City-based Film and Culture
writer. Assistant Editor of BlackBook Magazine. Editorial Director of the BlackBook Tumblr. Diner-dwelling David Lynch enthusiast.

The concept of the show was simple: each episode, Lurie would take one of his pals to a certain locale around the world and fish. Just real men doing real things. Those pals also just happened to be Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Dillon. From Maine, Jamacia, and Thailand, Lurie would travel with his guest of honor and set out to brave the elements, search new territory, and, of course, catch some fish. The result was a fantastic exploration of finding the comedy in the mundane—the pleasure of watching two men sit on a boat in the heat or freezing to death on a frozen lake heightened to the surreal, with a narrated voiceover that could double you over. Tom Waits gets cranky, Jim Jarmusch is bored, Willem Dafoe dies, Dennis Hopper is…well, Dennis Hopper, and naturally a bit of disaster ensues.

Gone Fishing: An Interview With the Legendary John Lurie

(via bbook)

Life is inherently dramatic, if not melodrama, and with your films, you’re not afraid to show that drama. But it’s a very fine line when someone is trying to portray that strong emotion realistically without going over the top. You seem to be able to navigate this real sense of drama while still being very cinematic.Yeah, when I was growing up my mom watched Days of Our Lives all the time and I did too. I watched soap operas and they can really be riveting. I think watching Days of Our Lives made it’s way into Pines just because I soaked up so much of that. But I also love movies and I love films that don’t pander to you. I can’t stand over-sentimentalization. I’m interested in honesty—I can’t say “truth.” I remember Cassavetes has a great line in The Killing of Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara says, “My truth is your false hood, and your false hood is my truth and vice versa.” There is no real truth you can get to but you can go for honesty and emotional honesty. Exploring the Drama and Danger of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ With Director Derek Cianfrance

Life is inherently dramatic, if not melodrama, and with your films, you’re not afraid to show that drama. But it’s a very fine line when someone is trying to portray that strong emotion realistically without going over the top. You seem to be able to navigate this real sense of drama while still being very cinematic.
Yeah, when I was growing up my mom watched Days of Our Lives all the time and I did too. I watched soap operas and they can really be riveting. I think watching Days of Our Lives made it’s way into Pines just because I soaked up so much of that. But I also love movies and I love films that don’t pander to you. I can’t stand over-sentimentalization. I’m interested in honesty—I can’t say “truth.” I remember Cassavetes has a great line in The Killing of Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara says, “My truth is your false hood, and your false hood is my truth and vice versa.” There is no real truth you can get to but you can go for honesty and emotional honesty.

Exploring the Drama and Danger of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ With Director Derek Cianfrance

This kind of mutual psychosis between people is one of my favorite themes to explore, and although it may be a natural thing that occurs when people fall in love, it takes time. But for Kris and Jeff, this was an instantaneous connection between them beyond their control. The way they speak to each other at first, he’s very terse and straight and it’s never very romantic, it just happens as if they’ve been this way forever and they’re dealing with it. There’s no slow fall into it.There are a couple things going on. From a plot perspective, you’re looking at two people who are thrown together because their pigs are somewhere in the world being thrown together, and so this tether is making them behave in ways that don’t quite make sense at the front of their minds. So it’s almost like they’re having their faces pushed into it, and this is the way it’s supposed to go. But it doesn’t seem to be working. That’s the way I thought about it, like in a romantic comedy this is Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock or whoever, this is the part where they would be flirting and somebody would drop a book and pick it up and it goes well, and in this, this was like the event where it’s never going to go well. There’s nothing organic about this, the strings are being pulled somewhere else. So playing with that is both fun and part of the exploration. But also, I don’t know what could be more romantic than people who have been broken to their lowest point, the romantic promise that exists when you’re just destroyed. And this love is all there is to cling to.Yeah, that’s intoxicating. Like The Hustler, one of my favorite movies. It took me a while to realize that I don’t really care about the pool playing, I care about these two alcoholic broken people that are very holed up. Sinking Into the World of ‘Upstream Color’ With Director Shane Carruth

This kind of mutual psychosis between people is one of my favorite themes to explore, and although it may be a natural thing that occurs when people fall in love, it takes time. But for Kris and Jeff, this was an instantaneous connection between them beyond their control. The way they speak to each other at first, he’s very terse and straight and it’s never very romantic, it just happens as if they’ve been this way forever and they’re dealing with it. There’s no slow fall into it.
There are a couple things going on. From a plot perspective, you’re looking at two people who are thrown together because their pigs are somewhere in the world being thrown together, and so this tether is making them behave in ways that don’t quite make sense at the front of their minds. So it’s almost like they’re having their faces pushed into it, and this is the way it’s supposed to go. But it doesn’t seem to be working. That’s the way I thought about it, like in a romantic comedy this is Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock or whoever, this is the part where they would be flirting and somebody would drop a book and pick it up and it goes well, and in this, this was like the event where it’s never going to go well. There’s nothing organic about this, the strings are being pulled somewhere else. So playing with that is both fun and part of the exploration. But also, I don’t know what could be more romantic than people who have been broken to their lowest point, the romantic promise that exists when you’re just destroyed.

And this love is all there is to cling to.
Yeah, that’s intoxicating. Like The Hustler, one of my favorite movies. It took me a while to realize that I don’t really care about the pool playing, I care about these two alcoholic broken people that are very holed up.

Sinking Into the World of ‘Upstream Color’ With Director Shane Carruth

I love narrative and how it exists and why it exists and how it’s meant to be used. You can come up with a paragraph full of some truth, something that’s universal, some exploration, and it can be really informative but it’s likely to not be that interesting. But you ca spin a story, you can tell a narrative and you can infuse it with this stuff and if you’ve done your job right, you haven’t just captured somebody’s attention long enough to take them on this exploration, you’ve also maybe figured out something about the exploration through the act of the story because that’s what we key into. So I love narrative and I think that film is the height of narrative and I don’t know what 100 years from now looks like, but from right now, to be able to communicate non-verbally but still explore, I don’t know what would be better than that. So I guess that’s what I love about it. It’s like you’re feeding right into the main line of how we experience things.

Sinking Into the World of ‘Upstream Color’ With Director Shane Carruth

(via bbook)

There’s that line in the film that says, “What are we longing for? Where does all this yearning come from?” I feel like that’s a central theme in so much of your work and this was a way to physicalize this deep longing.That was something that maybe tied us together, Pina and me. When I saw her pieces for the first time I realized we had a subject in common, as well. Many of my films were trying to deal with the same issues in different ways but certainly not in the same way she was able to do it without words and without story. There was never a story; in some of her pieces there is a red line going through, but it’s not a plot; in movies you always have a story to carry you, and I realized that maybe stories are in the way sometimes of getting to the core of things. The way Pina gets to the core of what love and loss means in her piece, Cafe Muller, I just don’t know a single film that has been able to come remotely close to that. In forty minutes Pina showed me more about men and women than the history of cinema without a single word. Wim Wenders On His Dear Friend Pina Bausch & the Movie He Made in Her Honor

There’s that line in the film that says, “What are we longing for? Where does all this yearning come from?” I feel like that’s a central theme in so much of your work and this was a way to physicalize this deep longing.
That was something that maybe tied us together, Pina and me. When I saw her pieces for the first time I realized we had a subject in common, as well. Many of my films were trying to deal with the same issues in different ways but certainly not in the same way she was able to do it without words and without story. There was never a story; in some of her pieces there is a red line going through, but it’s not a plot; in movies you always have a story to carry you, and I realized that maybe stories are in the way sometimes of getting to the core of things. The way Pina gets to the core of what love and loss means in her piece, Cafe Muller, I just don’t know a single film that has been able to come remotely close to that. In forty minutes Pina showed me more about men and women than the history of cinema without a single word.

Wim Wenders On His Dear Friend Pina Bausch & the Movie He Made in Her Honor

(via languageofmovement)

But that kind of love is an addiction. One clings to the desired one’s words, every gesture holding the weight of one’s happiness. You can process that perhaps this isn’t love at all; perhaps it is simply the desire to possess another soul. You can rationalize it to yourself, but to be in love or to be consumed by the need for another means existing without the luxury of rational thought. Love does take courage and strength, however, and if one is only willing to possess, that is a form of cowardice. If one is unable to open and free herself into the arms of another without expecting reciprocation of obsessive emotion, than person will remain alone. And here, Petra is hindered by her unconscious adherence to patriarchal confines and societal norms, never allowing herself to truly connect with the woman she loves. Yes, this person, who so shamelessly flaunts her heartbreak and flounces around like an open would, is much more guarded than she wants to believe. It is as if her theatrics are her mask, when usually we make ourselves stoic in order to conceal from the world the inner melodrama that plagues us. Cinematic Panic: The Melodramatics of Love in R.W. Fassbinder’s ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’

But that kind of love is an addiction. One clings to the desired one’s words, every gesture holding the weight of one’s happiness. You can process that perhaps this isn’t love at all; perhaps it is simply the desire to possess another soul. You can rationalize it to yourself, but to be in love or to be consumed by the need for another means existing without the luxury of rational thought. Love does take courage and strength, however, and if one is only willing to possess, that is a form of cowardice. If one is unable to open and free herself into the arms of another without expecting reciprocation of obsessive emotion, than person will remain alone. And here, Petra is hindered by her unconscious adherence to patriarchal confines and societal norms, never allowing herself to truly connect with the woman she loves. Yes, this person, who so shamelessly flaunts her heartbreak and flounces around like an open would, is much more guarded than she wants to believe. It is as if her theatrics are her mask, when usually we make ourselves stoic in order to conceal from the world the inner melodrama that plagues us.

Cinematic Panic: The Melodramatics of Love in R.W. Fassbinder’s ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’

(via bbook)

As deliciously evil and thrilling as it is visually-rich and haunting, Park Chan-wook’s fantastical gothic thriller Stoker plays out like an erotic waltz with sinister intentions. As his first English-language film, the acclaimed Korean director has crafted a quiet kind of suspense that shows the graceful unraveling of an isolated American family.  Speaking With Director Park Chan-wook About His Stunning ‘Stoker’

As deliciously evil and thrilling as it is visually-rich and haunting, Park Chan-wook’s fantastical gothic thriller Stoker plays out like an erotic waltz with sinister intentions. As his first English-language film, the acclaimed Korean director has crafted a quiet kind of suspense that shows the graceful unraveling of an isolated American family. 

Speaking With Director Park Chan-wook About His Stunning ‘Stoker’

(via bbook)

The style of the film feels like it’s told in these bits like splices from internet clips. Did you want to reflect something about this generation of kids being raised in a time where personal connection is kind of lost and your actions are so disconnected and distant from who you are and without feeling? I never try to do anything or speak to anything specifically; I never try to prove a point. But at the same time, it’s definitely of that world. It’s the idea of that world, that sort of post-everything. And the filmmaking, I wanted to the filmmaking style to be very much of that. There was no real conscious referencing of other films just more the idea, now things just live inside of me and of people and images and sound coming from all directions and falling from the sky. So I wanted the film to never stop moving, I wanted it to be floating and falling and breaking apart and coming together and then smacking the shit out of you and then disappearing. And at the same time, there’s a world that’s created that I hope people—the way things look and feel—I want people, it’s nice if people can identify with that and say, I’ve been to those places and have experienced those things. You’ve spoken before about being drawn to this sort of gangster mysticism.In the film, these things in some weird way collide. There’s a collision of those two things—they’re gangster mystics. But then there’s something behind it too, there’s something just behind it in the air, a violence and color and a swagger to it. The American Way, Gangster Mystics, & Violent Pop: Talking with Harmony Korine on ‘Spring Breakers’  

The style of the film feels like it’s told in these bits like splices from internet clips. Did you want to reflect something about this generation of kids being raised in a time where personal connection is kind of lost and your actions are so disconnected and distant from who you are and without feeling?

I never try to do anything or speak to anything specifically; I never try to prove a point. But at the same time, it’s definitely of that world. It’s the idea of that world, that sort of post-everything. And the filmmaking, I wanted to the filmmaking style to be very much of that. There was no real conscious referencing of other films just more the idea, now things just live inside of me and of people and images and sound coming from all directions and falling from the sky. So I wanted the film to never stop moving, I wanted it to be floating and falling and breaking apart and coming together and then smacking the shit out of you and then disappearing. And at the same time, there’s a world that’s created that I hope people—the way things look and feel—I want people, it’s nice if people can identify with that and say, I’ve been to those places and have experienced those things.

You’ve spoken before about being drawn to this sort of gangster mysticism.
In the film, these things in some weird way collide. There’s a collision of those two things—they’re gangster mystics. But then there’s something behind it too, there’s something just behind it in the air, a violence and color and a swagger to it.

The American Way, Gangster Mystics, & Violent Pop: Talking with Harmony Korine on ‘Spring Breakers’

 

(via bbook)

The film portrays a character who represents anyone who has been in the depths of something dark and asked themselves, “What the fuck am I even doing here? Will any of this ever matter?” That knot that forms in your stomach begins to loosen, as we realize, this is what he wanted. In the end, as he lies there, it’s almost like the audience can breathe a sigh of relief. Trier does not try to condone or chastise Anders’s decision; he is not speaking to everyone or the nature of suicide in general, simply showing one man’s life. But somehow, through the tenderly beautiful, sweeping way in which the film is shot, we’re able to grasp onto the beauty of life, gaining something about the ways in which we live from the way in which Anders chooses to not to. Oslo, August 31st is a mindset—like a shot to the arm of melancholy—and we’re left examining our own condition and just why we all continue on.

Cinematic Panic: The Quiet Allure of Joachim Trier’s ‘Oslo, August 31st’

(via bbook)

Bobby represents a post-1969 frame of mind, when it wasn’t only the youth culture that was feeling the social and political afflictions of society. The “hippies” of the previous generations weren’t the only ones going through upheaval and anger but “could now be seen in any American.” Easy Rider served as the ultimate symbol for that previous generation of youth counter-culture, and now Nicholson was here with that same sense of ill-ease and disillusionment, but in the character of an everyday man’s own identity crisis. Bobby wanted to escape the confines of his own upper-class background by assimilating into the blue-collar working class, a place where he would be free from pretense; he feels “alone in his ordeal,” but that sense of isolation reflects the culture at large.

Cinematic Panic: The Culture of Bob Rafelson’s ‘Five Easy Pieces’

What’s interesting about Eraserhead is how inherently and distinctively Lynchian it feels without the signature traits of David Lynch that people associate with him nowadays. Those who have a Netflix account and have watched various episodes of Twin Peaks will claim their love for David Lynch with proclamations about doughnuts and coffee and cherry pie, oh my, can you smell those douglas firs?! And yes, his fascination with food—especially of the saccharine variety—has a lot to do with his ideas about indulgence and sex and are central to his work, but Eraserhead is void of all that. It’s the bare-bones Lynchian aesthetic that established him as one of the most revolutionary independent filmmakers of all time. It has been almost seven years since his last film, Inland Empire (which got back to that very stripped, essential cinematic quality that was deeply imbedded in the frightening corners of the mind), and his interests appear to lie elsewhere these days. Who knows if he’ll ever make another film. But if he doesn’t, it’s at least safe to say that you could watch his films your entire life and still become excited and have questions, always stumbling through the woods into a red room of the mind.

Cinematic Panic: Diving into the Dark Unknown with David Lynch’s Eraserhead

(via bbook)

Bad Timing, in essence, is a film about the sexual obsession and savage attraction of two opposites. It’s also a film about chance and fateful encounters. “They were down for each other,” Roeg once vaguely expressed about Alex and Milena. As two Americans living in Vienna, their meeting is almost tragic from the start, intrinsically drawn to one another like two opposing forces, setting in motion a dangerous collision of psyches. Recently separated from her Czech husband, Milena meanders through life, finding pleasure in the impulsiveness of a moment. Alex, on the other hand, lives with structure as a psychoanalyst and professor. Milena has loose control over her emotions, prone to fits of passionate rage and sexual indulgence. Her aggression, fervor, and sexuality live on the surface, but underneath lies a woman who is driven by fear and vulnerability. Alex, conversely, is a cerebral man who sees love as a hurdle to be crossed or something to keep at an arm’s length. He is composed and cold but represses a great deal of violent and sexual urges. Together, the two unearth various traits in one another—a lethal combination of flesh on flesh. Cinematic Panic: Getting Down With Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Bad Timing’

Bad Timing, in essence, is a film about the sexual obsession and savage attraction of two opposites. It’s also a film about chance and fateful encounters. “They were down for each other,” Roeg once vaguely expressed about Alex and Milena. As two Americans living in Vienna, their meeting is almost tragic from the start, intrinsically drawn to one another like two opposing forces, setting in motion a dangerous collision of psyches. Recently separated from her Czech husband, Milena meanders through life, finding pleasure in the impulsiveness of a moment. Alex, on the other hand, lives with structure as a psychoanalyst and professor. Milena has loose control over her emotions, prone to fits of passionate rage and sexual indulgence. Her aggression, fervor, and sexuality live on the surface, but underneath lies a woman who is driven by fear and vulnerability. Alex, conversely, is a cerebral man who sees love as a hurdle to be crossed or something to keep at an arm’s length. He is composed and cold but represses a great deal of violent and sexual urges. Together, the two unearth various traits in one another—a lethal combination of flesh on flesh.

Cinematic Panic: Getting Down With Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Bad Timing’

What the film does best is speak to the sentiment that we’re drawn to that which we cannot have, that which will never be fully attainable despite all our efforts. This impossible desire provides us with a sense of purpose and a drive towards something. The love is not just a feeling that lives inside our bones but something we hold sacred, even in the pain it causes. And when it fades or when the absence of feeling outweighs that prior sorrow, you’ll long for the days when you felt something as profound as a love this strenuous. Alex and Daniel are both besotted with Bob, regardless of their better judgement and desire for stability. It’s not a film about unrequited love in the sense that their feelings are never reciprocated; on the contrary, Daniel and Alex are both shown a great deal of warmth from Bob, but never in the way that they need or want and never quite enough. At one point in the film Bob says, “I know you’re not getting enough from me. But you’re getting all there is.” Loving someone so completely who does not have the facility to love in those same parameters is devastating on the heart. But this kind of longing is made even worse by the fact that the object of their desire does not thwart their advances, rather he continues to provide a glimmer of hope, never fully allowing Alex or Daniel to be able to let go. Cinematic Panic: Examining Love in John Schlesinger’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’

What the film does best is speak to the sentiment that we’re drawn to that which we cannot have, that which will never be fully attainable despite all our efforts. This impossible desire provides us with a sense of purpose and a drive towards something. The love is not just a feeling that lives inside our bones but something we hold sacred, even in the pain it causes. And when it fades or when the absence of feeling outweighs that prior sorrow, you’ll long for the days when you felt something as profound as a love this strenuous. Alex and Daniel are both besotted with Bob, regardless of their better judgement and desire for stability. It’s not a film about unrequited love in the sense that their feelings are never reciprocated; on the contrary, Daniel and Alex are both shown a great deal of warmth from Bob, but never in the way that they need or want and never quite enough. At one point in the film Bob says, “I know you’re not getting enough from me. But you’re getting all there is.” Loving someone so completely who does not have the facility to love in those same parameters is devastating on the heart. But this kind of longing is made even worse by the fact that the object of their desire does not thwart their advances, rather he continues to provide a glimmer of hope, never fully allowing Alex or Daniel to be able to let go.

Cinematic Panic: Examining Love in John Schlesinger’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’

(via bbook)

What makes Paris, Texas and all of Wim’s work so special is that it is filled with so much yearning and so much restlessness; people aching so badly to find what it is they’re looking for. They’re all so hungry for love and connection and something to make them feel alive. Some of them find it in others and then some of them realize even if they did—would it even make them feel better? Or are they destined to eternally feel that hole inside? Travis leaves Jane and Hunter in the end because he knows putting together the pieces of the past won’t put him back together. He’s ripped apart we’ll never know why. None of us do. Wenders’ also expressed that, “hotels room have a real magic because you feel yourself, who you are in a different way and in an anonymous hotel room than you would ever be able to at home.” His films all live in transient places like motels where everyone’s face changes from moment to moment—and in a way that’s more comforting than feeling sorrow in the comfort of stability. 

Cinematic Panic: Longing Endlessly with Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas

(via bbook)