Livin’ in New York City Post 13: A Tale of Two Filmmakers and How Norman Rockwell Can Go F@%k Himself
Central Park’s foliage was at its peak in November with the beautiful fall colors combined with that warm sun still clinging to summer.
As Christmas approaches, I can say that New York in the fall didn’t disappoint. When the weather finally decided to cooperate this month, it was nothing but bright fall colors, hot cider and a combination of flannels, sweaters and hoodies. The best part of New York City’s autumn has to be the atmosphere of it all. There’s such an element of relaxation that I am falling in love with.
However, something is missing from this city. I think I need more Mid-Westerners in this town. We’re a bit short. As great as New York is, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more people from corn field country. Where are the people who end a fun night by saying “well,” slapping both of their legs and standing up as if an eject button was hidden in their kneecaps? I know for a fact that some of you guys would love to move to New York. If so, take that opportunity. If I can survive here, then everyone can.
I feel that, because of the relaxing nature of fall, I’ve become a bit more content with staying home and having nice nights in. Screw all of that! I need to see more of this city and do exciting things. One of the most exciting things I’ve been a part of to date happened earlier this month when I went to a couple of film screenings at DOC NYC. One of the world’s largest documentary film festivals, I was able to attend the premiere of two films by one of my favorite filmmakers of all time: Werner Herzog.
What makes Herzog one of my favorites is just how uncompromising he is with his vision. He will do whatever it takes to get his films made and, based on the results of his 60 year career, it’s paid off with masterpieces like “Fitzcarraldo,” “Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” “Grizzly Man,” “Rescue Dawn,” “My Best Fiend” and “Little Dieter Learns to Fly.” On top of making many narrative and documentary films, Herzog has also written several engaging books and done some theater work, notably several acclaimed opera productions. Plus he was in “The Mandalorian,” so that’s cool.
When I heard that his latest documentaries, “Theatre of Thought” and “The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Kraft,” were being screened, I knew I had to go. The icing on the cake was that Werner Herzog himself was going to be at the screening of “Theatre of Thought” to take questions and give some thoughts on his film. When I saw Herzog and heard his thick German accent as he discussed his film, I was so giddy. Seeing one of your heroes speak to you is a pleasure that is difficult to match.
Following the film’s screening, I realized something as people were departing. Werner Herzog was staying and meeting people. I had the chance to stand face-to-face with one of my favorite filmmakers and you bet your ass that I took it. When I met him, he was so cordial and I told him how much I loved his views on cinema and how they inspired me as a filmmaker. After we took a picture together, I shook his hand and he wished me luck on my journey as a filmmaker. It’s meeting people like Werner Herzog that have cemented my belief that “you should never meet your heroes” is an expression of bullshit.
When I got out of the theater, I could hardly contain my excitement having met a man that Roger Ebert praised as one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers. So I walked throughout Chelsea and Greenwich Village for the next two hours, embracing the city and experiencing the night life.
Meeting Werner Herzog is one of the greatest moments of my entire life. Being able to meet one of my favorite filmmakers was an absolute honor.
As most of you know, I see a lot of new films, averaging two per week. So, when I say a film is good, I’d like to think it means something. I have seen the greatest film of 2022 and, with one month left in the year, I think that opinion isn’t changing. “The Fabelmans” was a fantastic film that I’ve already seen twice in theaters and I plan to see more showings in the near future.
The fact that the film hasn’t been making a lot of money is something that I find unbelievably sad since it’s another masterpiece from Steven Spielberg, the highest grossing director of all time. When you find a story that truly touches you in a way that very few stories have, it’s something truly special and that’s just what Spielberg has done. If you haven’t seen the film, you need to watch it. If you’ve ever loved a Spielberg film, you owe it to him to see his childhood played out in a movie.
As far as my job goes, I’m still loving it. Not only is the LIC Corner Café a lot of fun, you meet some interesting people with weird stories. One day, this guy (let’s call him Matthew) came into the café and, right away, you could tell that Matthew had an interesting tale under his belt. He was decked out in tattoos with a thick Brooklyn accent. After ordering a cold brew, the owner of the café and I started to chat with the guy about travel. While our customer was definitely a part of the working class, he works so hard and his business thrives so much that he can go on annual trips with his wife.
During his travels, Matthew has been to Hawaii, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the city of angels, Matthew hung around a radio station somewhere in the early 2000s where his buddy was working as a disc jockey. While he was there, listening to the records and being a fly-on-the-wall, his DJ pal asked if he wanted to meet the famed progressive rock group Yes. “Fuck yeah, I wanna meet ‘em,” he said. The band was there to plug their LA show later that week as well as do an interview and jam session so, while they were tuning up, Matthew and his buddy met the group.
When the instruments have been tuned and the band’s feeling pretty good about the whole thing, someone takes out a joint and starts passing it around which is how Matthew found himself smoking grass with one of the best groups to come out of the 1970s. During the rambling philosophy session that can accompany the use of weed, the guys in Yes started to all think “we like this Matthew guy. He’s all right.” So not only did Matthew get to meet Yes, not only did he get to smoke pot with them, but he also got to watch their live acoustic set where they played some of their greatest hits.
You’d think that would be the highlight of the conversation. However, when Mexico was brought up, that’s when the conversation turned interesting. Matthew talked about the beauty of places like Zihuatanejo and Mexico City and then he talked about how he chartered a cheap fishing boat. So he and his wife are fishing with a couple of guys decked out in tattoos and they’re all having a good time drinking and eating. Eventually, Matthew began to realize something. The friendly guys he was fishing with were with MS-13. Like most organized crime, their relationship with civilians is quite simple. Don’t fuck with them or their livelihoods.
As Matthew’s wife began to wonder when they were going to go back to shore, Matthew jokingly told her “I don’t think we’ll see land again.” So, despite fishing with guys who were part of an infamous criminal organization, they still had a damn good time listening to music, eating empanadas, drinking beer and catching a lot of fish. Matthew even let the MS-13 guys have most of his catch since he and his wife only needed a few fish, to which the gang members were endlessly grateful. That’s got to be the weirdest story I’ve heard in a long time because we all know what MS-13 does and how nefarious they are but Matthew still had a good time on that chartered boat. It’s like when you find out Frank Sinatra had all of those mob ties and was friends with some morally questionable characters. Some things are so morally ambiguous that questioning them is its own odyssey.
When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was doing a book tour to promote his latest book, “Cinema Speculation,” I knew that I had to see him live and hear his thoughts on cinema straight from him.
Remember how I said that meeting your heroes is actually quite awesome? Well, I did it again this past month. Granted, I didn’t actually get to meet him face-to-face but I did get to see him at a speaking engagement. I speak of one of my favorite filmmakers of all time: Quentin Tarantino. A man who’s combined nearly every cinematic style into his own work. A guy who made John Travolta a movie star again (of course, we all know that he’s always been awesome). A guy who’s filmed some of the craziest stuff ever shown in mainstream American cinema: car crashes, fist fights, explosions, kung fu, sword fights, an obsession with feet, an unbelievable amount of swearing and gore. This is a guy who had the balls to completely rewrite history by killing Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds,” having a black bounty hunter massacre slavers in the Antebellum South in “Django Unchained” and showed the Manson killers get brutally murdered in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Quentin Tarantino is so awesome.
Unfortunately, Tarantino’s career as a filmmaker is coming to an end. For the past decade or so, he’s made it clear that, after making ten films, he’s going to retire. In his world-view, he wants to leave the audience wanting more and doesn’t want to fade away. Which is fair. If you examine film history, many great filmmakers ended their careers with work that didn’t exactly capture them at the height of their artistic genius. Absolute legends like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Charlie Chaplin all have final films that don’t exactly live up to their previous work. Even if you love “Family Plot,” it’s a far cry from films like “North by Northwest,” “Vertigo” and “Psycho.” Not to say that every filmmaker fizzles out. Stanley Kubrick’s final two films, “Full Metal Jacket” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” are praised just as much as his earlier work and certainly have a chokehold on popular culture. But Tarantino knows that scenarios like that are an exception.
I can understand why Tarantino wants to get out. He wants his filmography to be an impenetrable piece of armor, with every film being essential. So far, with just one film to go, Tarantino’s work certainly has been nothing short of fantastic:
Reservoir Dogs (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume 2 (2003 and 2004)
Death Proof (2007)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Django Unchained (2012)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
However, I am in no hurry to see Tarantino’s final film and neither is he. Especially since he’s been working on some other interesting projects. He owns a movie theater (The New Beverly Cinema) in Los Angeles that only shows movies on film, he runs a podcast with his “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary called “The Video Archives Podcast,” he’s planning on shooting an eight episode miniseries next year and he’s splitting time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles as a father of two. The guy’s doing a lot of shit.
But enough of me blowing smoke up Tarantino’s ass (there’s more than enough movie buffs that can do that). You’re all wondering the same thing. “How’d he get to see Tarantino live?” Well, along with all of his other projects, Tarantino has been making a name for himself as a writer. Last summer, he published a novelization of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” that I read in one day and now he’s written his first non-fiction book: “Cinema Speculation.” While I probably will review the book sometime soon, I can say that it’s a fascinating dive into film that has a bit of everything. Essentially, Tarantino is writing about the movies he saw as a child in the 1970s that really affected him. It’s part film history, part criticism and part memoir since Tarantino is telling us how these movies were not only made, but how they left their mark.
When I heard that Tarantino was giving a book tour to support “Cinema Speculation,” I knew that I had to see him. The ticket was $75 but you also got a free copy of the book which retails at $35. So, when you think about it, I’m really only spending $40 to see Tarantino promote a book that I was going to buy anyway. Financially, it made a lot of sense.
So, I eagerly awaited to see the man behind some of my favorite movies at The Town Hall. I was in the balcony in the furthest row back but I still had a pretty good view. When Tarantino came out onto the stage, the crowd went nuts and we all couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say. Joined by filmmaker, scholar and friend Elvis Mitchell, they proceeded to talk about all sorts of crazy things that may or may not be in the book.
Among the topics were why Tarantino cast the iconic Pam Grier in “Jackie Brown,” how he became attached to film criticism, what would “Taxi Driver” have looked like if Brian De Palma had directed it instead of Martin Scorsese and how much Tarantino loves Pauline Kael. He spoke of the legendary critic like how someone would talk about an old teacher that made a real difference in their life. Despite disagreeing with her opinions many times, Tarantino always respected her because of how well she wrote them. To be honest, I share the exact same thoughts on Roger Ebert. He was so talented as a writer that I love his work even when I think his thoughts are wrong, especially in regards to horror films, video games and “Die Hard” (He gave it two out of four stars).
Tarantino also revealed that, if he were to do anything with Marvel Studios, it would be an adaptation of Luke Cage. However, he played it off as something that he wouldn’t do now. Why the hell not? Luke Cage is already a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with his now-canceled Netflix show. That means this character isn’t being utilized right now and it’s ripe for the taking. After all, another MCU Netflix series, “Daredevil,” is getting revived by Marvel. So why shouldn’t the unbreakable Luke Cage? Just go up to Kevin Fiege’s desk, tell him you want to do Luke Cage and that you want full creative control. Then proceed to make a tv show that is so insanely Tarantino and have it be as violent, in-your-face and flashy as you want. Hell, you can even throw Iron Fist in there and make it a Heroes For Hire series. I’m sure Mike Colter and Finn Jones would love to be a part of it. Plus, since it’s a series, it wouldn’t count as your final film.
About halfway through the conversation, while everyone was laughing and having a good time,a guy started yelling in the crowd (probably because of alcohol) and Quentin said “What the hell is going on?” Then, as they were taking him out, a woman in the crowd yelled at Tarantino “How dare you attack someone who might have a mental illness! I believe in the Second Amendment and the rights it grants me!” This was when Tarantino started to become even cooler, because he kind of brushed it off like Andrew Dice Clay in “The Day The Laughter Died.” As the disruptors were both being taken out, the entire crowd just turned on them and then Elivs Mitchell said “Now this is a 42nd Street audience. Let’s put on ‘Super Fly.’” If The Town Hall actually did put on the film and the rest of the night was just us and Tarantino watching the blaxploitation classic, I would have been more than fine with that.
But before I continue, I do want to fixate on what that obnoxious woman said about the Second Amendment. That statement got a mixture of laughs from the crowd because of how insanely moronic it was. There’s so much wrong with that scenario that I think I need to tackle it on a point-by-point basis.
The first guy was probably just drunk.
Even if he did have a mental illness, he should have been escorted outside and, from my understanding by interviewing fellow attendees after the event, he was done so respectfully. As for the second person, part of me hopes security tased her but perhaps that’s too harsh.
Regardless of the first guy’s mental state, he doesn't have the right to disrupt a live event that we all paid to see, especially one centered on one of America’s best filmmakers.
I’m pretty sure that you meant to say the first amendment but it still doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole at a private event.
The fact that you confused the first and second amendment just proves how much of a dumbass you are. This isn’t the Seventeenth Amendment where no one knows what it does (established the direct election of two senators per state to Congress and altered how to fill vacancies in senate seats in case you were interested). The First and Second Amendments are commonly known. Do us all a favor and don’t reproduce. Society can’t take any more stupid people.
Back to the book tour. The rest of the night was marvelous as Tarantino continued with great stories and then, after an intermission, read the first chapter of his book Cinema Speculation. While a lot of the book consists of analyzing films, the first chapter is all about Tarantino as a child. Called “Little Q Watching Big Movies,” the chapter shows how his mother and step-father introduced him to movies and how they took him to see a lot of grown-up films when he was a little kid. Films like “The Godfather,” “MASH,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Dirty Harry,” “The Wild Bunch,” “Patton” and “The French Connection” all were exposed to to the young, developing mind of Quentin Tarantino. That sounds like an awesome way to raise a kid. I can’t wait for the day where I get to show my nine-year-old “The Godfather.” Regardless of what you think of his upbringing, you can’t deny that it’s produced one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
I sincerely mean this when I ask all of you parents, has showing your children mindless films that a seven-year-old wouldn’t like really made a difference in their life? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great films made for families and children but are you really showing those films? Or are you just showing them something that will shut them up for a few hours. I’m just saying that we live in a world with a lot of morons and maybe they wouldn’t be that way if you stopped showing them “The Emoji Movie” and maybe put on something with more intelligence. Something that kids might not fully understand but still want to watch. Yes, that does include something that might be black-and-white.
As I listened to Tarantino reading the first chapter, I didn’t want it to end. Part of me hoped he would just read the whole book, take a ten minute break and then read it again. Of course, that didn’t happen but it was still a memorable evening.
On the way home, I met someone who needed help getting to another station because he wasn’t sure of the directions. After I was able to help him, we introduced ourselves and Lewis and I had a nice chat about how New York is amazing but it will beat you down. Lewis told me that when he first came to the city, at the age of 13, to visit his cousins, his cousins took him down to 42nd Street. Lewis thought that he was going to get a slice of pizza but, it turns out, he was going to a fight instead. One of his cousins got insulted and so Lewis had to beat the guy up for the family honor. As blows rained upon him, Lewis kept thinking “what about pizza?” Fortunately, after taking his beating like a man, Lewis was treated to a slice or two. Sometimes families just get you into the craziest situations and you have no control over it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the greatest looking Thanksgiving turkey of the year.
Speaking of which, my parents and brother came up to Brooklyn to celebrate Thanksgiving with me. The few days we had together were fantastic as we experienced a lot of the city while still making a grand feast for ourselves and my friends, Micheal and Mikayla. The morning of Thanksgiving, we left the AirBnB in East Flatbush at 4:30 a.m. to take an Uber. The reason we got up so early was because we decided to go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Despite it being dark and cold, we made it to 72nd Street by Central Park West around 5:30 and managed to stay decently warm until the parade started at 9 a.m. It was a pretty fun experience and we did get to see a lot of fun floats including The Pillsbury Dough Boy (who looked like he was five seconds away from hitting the pavement after deciding that his life of selling biscuits had meant nothing), Snoopy (who’s famous for having the most air-to-air combat kills of any dog in the history of the U.S. Military and the cast of “Sesame Street” (what, you thought I was going to make fun of them? Some lines you don’t cross in comedy).
Being a part of this parade was so magical and it’s one of those things that I never thought I would ever see in person. However, we did sit by some obnoxious people including a woman who acted as if everything she heard was the funniest thing in the universe. I swear, if I was watching an ensemble act of George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor while drunk and stoned, I wouldn’t be laughing that much. I think I found the best way to describe her. Remember when Kristen Wiig used to parody Kathy Lee Gifford on “Saturday Night Live?” It was just like that.
In spite of a few annoyances, we had a great Thanksgiving Day with a variety of dishes including an amazing turkey that my dad made. I’ve seen this guy make incredible cabinets, chests, chairs and remodel portions of our horse but this might be one of the best things he’s ever made. It was the best looking turkey you’ll ever see. Norman Rockwell, go fuck yourself.
The next day, while everyone else was shopping, we did some exploring around Manhattan. We got to see some amazing sights and even took the subway which I was interested in seeing since my dad is both claustrophobic and not a people person. However, we all did fine and there were some great sights on the tour. We saw all of the great storefronts of 5th Avenue, the Museum of Natural History, Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street, Greenwich Village and Lombardi’s Pizza in NoLita. Since we only had one day, it’s not like we had all the time in the world to see as many things as possible. Next time my family comes here, sometime in the summer, they’ll be here for a week and we’ll be able to see even more of what the city has to offer.
The Drama Book Shop had more plays and books about the arts than I could possibly read. But I can try.
Following the holiday, but before December, I knew that I needed to see a few things that could be memorable. One of them was the Drama Book Shop in Midtown. This famed store, which was saved from closure during the COVID-19 pandemic by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has so much to offer any fan of film, television and theater. Not only was the store gorgeous and teeming with fans of the arts, but there were so many plays, screenplays, memoirs and books that it was overwhelming. As someone who writes and wants to make memorable stories, seeing all of these published works gave me the inspiring chills, a mini-panic attack and then the chills again.
To end the month, I really wanted to see something special so I decided to go to the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting ceremony. That was a big mistake. It was so packed with tourists that I left after 15 minutes. I did get to see the massive tree, which was then unlit, and I’ll probably go see the tree in the next week but I was in no mood to hang out with obnoxious tourists for the next three hours. Instead, I decided to go to Phebe’s, a popular bar for NYU students and graduated in the East Village. While I was there, I watched the Indiana Hoosiers basketball game where they beat the North Carolina Tar Heels and I made sure to cheer on the Hoosiers. Why? Because there were a lot of Indiana alumni at the bar and I didn’t want to piss them off. There is nothing that results in a more brutal and pointless fight than a sports game.
So, now that the new year is less than a month away, it’s been interesting to see this city transform from a foreign land into my home. However, just when you think you know New York, you’re put back to square one.
While I still haven’t seen the Rockefeller Center tree lit up, its size cannot be overstated. I can’t wait to see what it looks like at night with all of the bright colors.
