“Figure on a Porch,” By Richard Diebenkorn (1959)

Last Sunday, there was a long piece in the Times about Paddy Chayefsky’s process writing the screenplay for “Network”:

Thirty-five years later, “Network” remains an incendiary if influential film, and its screenplay is still admired as much for its predictive accuracy as for its vehemence: a relentless sense of purpose that is even more palpable in the files Chayefsky left behind upon his death in 1981.

These papers were acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2001 but not examined much after their cataloging in the library’s Billy Rose Theater Division was completed in 2006. The rarely seen documents on “Network” speak loudly for their absent author, documenting the angst and animus that consumed him on this highly personal project.

Working in an era of paper, pencils and typewriters, Chayefsky seemingly committed to print every observation and self-criticism that he thought of. His “Network” archives provide a road map of the paths taken and not taken in its narrative, but they also reveal a visceral rawness that is scarce in today’s age of digital files and screenwriting by committee. They tell the story of an author’s struggles to determine what he wanted to say about a medium that would do anything for an audience’s attention.

Worth checking out.

[Pictures by Michael Rougier and Terry O’Neill]

Rat-a-tat-tat:

Thai Heaven in Queens.

Took the trek last Friday night and it was as good as ever.

When I was sixteen the Regency Theater on the Upper West Side ran a Buster Keaton-Charlie Chaplin-Woody Allen revival for a few months. That was my introduction to Buster and it was love at first sight. I adore Chaplin too but Buster speaks to me in a more direct, personal way.

There’s a wonderful article on Buster by Jana Prikryl in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. If you are not familiar with Buster, this here is a fine introduction:

More than fifty years have passed since critics rediscovered Buster Keaton and pronounced him the most “modern” silent film clown, a title he hasn’t shaken since. In his own day he was certainly famous but never commanded the wealth or popularity of Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, and he suffered most when talkies arrived. It may be that later stars like Cary Grant and Paul Newman and Harrison Ford have made us more susceptible to Keaton’s model of offhand stoicism than his own audiences were. Seeking for his ghost is a fruitless business, though; for one thing, film comedy today has swung back toward the sappy, blatant slapstick that Keaton disdained. There’s some “irony” in what Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler do, but it’s irony that clamors to win the identification of the supposedly browbeaten everyman in every audience. Keaton took your average everyman and showed how majestically alone he was.

And here’s James Agee from his classic essay, “Comedy’s Greatest Era”:

Very early in his movie career friends asked him why he never smiled on the screen. He didn’t he realzie he didn’t. He had got the dead-pan habit in variety; on the screen he had merely been so hard at work it had never occured to him there was anything to smile about. Now he tried it just once and never again. He was by his whole style and nature so much the most “silent” of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler’s effortless, uninterested face.

Starting tonight, the Film Forum is hosting The Best of Buster Keaton. They will be showing a Buster movie, along with a couple of two-reelers, every Monday for the rest of the summer. Tonight gives Buster’s first feature  for MGM–and arguably, his last good movie: “The Cameraman.” It’s worth seeing on the big screen for  many reasons (the pool scene), not the least of which is this gorgeous sequence filmed at the original Yankee Stadium.

“De La Soul is Dead,” one of my favorite records, is twenty years old.

Check out this extensive piece on the De La’s second album.

Freakin’ Lick ’em.

[picture by Jeff P Faller]

“The Breakfast Room,” By Pierre Bonnard (1930-31)

More gray in NYC.

[Photo Credit: Joseph Holmes]

Kick the Bobo:

D-Day…

Hullo, Sailor.

[Photo Credit: Rene Burri]

All praise due to the goddess of Smitten Kitchen for giving us Southwestern pulled brisket.

Miles and Trane.

I just started a Tumblr site for the Banter. Is 50 posts in 24 hours excessive? Dudes, I’m hooked.

Bookmark the bitch and check it out on the reg for artwork and cool stuff to look at.

[Painting by me, gouache on paper, 1997]

Smitten Kitchen does strawberry rhubarb crumble.

I’m so down.

Hullo, Sugar.

Word to Hecto Noesi…

Well, this is just too cool to pass up.

Diary of a Ladybird via This Isn’t Happiness.

Since Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen is all that and then some why don’t we stick around.

Check this one out–pickled sugar snap peas…