HELL IS EXPENSIVE

Hollywood routinely confuses tragedy with importance. That is, filmmakers (and some critics) regularly and oddly think that dark, depressing, evil, suicide, etc, means a film is significant. It's simply not true. The Dark Knight, about a man who thinks he is a bat, was praised by critics as if it was written by Albert Camus. Hitchcock sent up all this Hollywood pseudo stuff years ago with his masterpiece trailer for Psycho, where he looks at the toilet in the infamous bathroom and says: terrible things happened here. However, in this jugular vein, Kate Winslet, a wonderful thespian, suicides in both her pictures this year. Or as her film husband, Leonardo DeCaprio, says in one film: She did it to herself! (or words to that effect). Will Smith apparently kills himself in a movie as well. The one positive thing about all this is it tends to inhibit a sequel. Hell is expensive to portray on film. If the filmmakers are atheists, then of course there would be no sequel, or at least not with the "suicidee."

FILMS THAT WERE NEVER MADE

Bleak Hotel by D M Thomas turns out to be a great new book about how The White Hotel was (to date) not made into a movie. I gladly gave D M permission to use my emails in the sorry, sometimes hilarious saga. Films that were never made is an interesting genre. I, Claudius was a great pity--Josef Von Sternberg started shooting with Charles Laughton. Some great scenes survive. I met Sternberg in Melbourne in 1967 and showed him my paintings and 8MM shorts--he said stick to movies. He was quite bitter about Hollywood, which I didn't understand at the time, since he had done so many great things. Probably all the films never made would be as good as the films, or better, than the movies made. They couldn't be worse.

THE GERTRUDE STEIN MYSTERY

Above is the title of my new film. It reveals that Stein lived on into the 21st Century, changing history throughout her life in incredible secret missions.

Speaking of history as current events unfold, anyone interested in the Thirties Great Depression should check out my documentary BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME made in 1975. It chronicles that decade and made quite a splash when it came out, and since has been used widely in colleges and schools. Ditto my film SWASTIKA was used at Harvard for years to teach history regarding the Nazification of Germany under Hitler.