michelangelo antonioni

[evisu 2000]

RIP

[denimdestroyedmylife]

get the fuck outta here

they are dropping like flies!

i love the story in HOW BLUEGRASS DESTROYED MY LIFE in which JOHN FAHEY relates the story of when he punched out Antonioni. here's an excerpt from a Fahey article that describes their relationship:

Fahey had just begun to take his Quaaludes when the Italian director, Michaelangelo Antonioni, flew him over to Rome to record music for the soundtrack of Zabriskie Point. Antonioni's conceptual sequel to Blow-Up is an Italian leftist's goofball cinematic view of late '60s American counterculture. It features a long sequence with nude couples making love in the desert, for which Antonioni wanted Fahey to do the music. When Fahey arrived in Rome, Antonioni showed him the segment in a screening room. "Antonioni says, 'What I want you to do is to compose some music that will go along with the porno scene.' I kept saying, 'Yes, sir.' Then he starts this, 'Now, John. This is young love. Young love.' I mean, that's young love? All these bodies? 'Young love. But John, it's in the desert, where's there's death. But it's young love.' He kept going, 'Young Love/Death' faster and faster. I was sure I was talking to a madman. I'm still sure I was.

"So I experimented. I had instrumentalists come in and told them just to play whatever they felt like. They had to pretend to understand what I was talking about, especially if Antonioni came in the room. That was fun. They were very cooperative. I came up with some sections of music that sounded more like death than young love. It was actually pretty ominous. I played it for Michaelangelo and he thought it was great. So he took me out to dinner at this really fancy restaurant and started telling me how horrible the United States was. We were drinking a lot of wine and I don't remember which one of us started cussing. It started real fast and ended in a fistfight. You have no idea how much that guy hates the United States. What a jerk. I did like 20-25 minutes, but they only used about two minutes. Somebody's driving along in the car and the announcer says, 'And now some John Fahey.' And that's it -- young love and death."

[Bona Drag]

seriously, this is getting weird

someone call godard and make sure he's okay

again, i've only seen the biggies - 'l'avventura', 'blowup', 'the passenger', and part of 'l'eclisse'

and again, all are on my 'watch again soon' list, which is already out of control

any recos on the lesser works?

this would be the part where i say something like his films always captured the quiet crisis of etc etc, but i don't really have anything intelligent to offer