Gangsta gangsta?
By Christian Bruno
There’s something ego-stroking in the opportunity to be immortalized on film, heck, even in a video installation. Especially for us writers who survey the work from a critical distance. Getting in there, even getting dirty, has a nice visceral appeal. I first became acquainted with Williamsburg-based video and installation artist Laura Parnes after seeing her 2001 two-channel piece “Hollywood Inferno (Episode One)” on a double bill at the Pacific Film Archive. I found it an unforgettably queasy bonbon, a color-soaked take on entertainment industry psychosis. Loved it! Her most recent video, “Blood and Guts in High School,” was a top ten pick in the Village Voice’s 2005 film critics poll. It was described as “a Kubrickesque look at recent American history as bad acid trip.”
I got to know Laura through the art world, and when she asked me for recommendations for extras for a shoot during a residency at Villa Montalvo in the South Bay, I couldn’t help but hoard the offer for myself. She e-mailed me back that she’d make me a star. How could I refuse?
My experience was a good deal more prosaic than that bad acid trip, but then again, most things are before they reach the editing bay. Sheesh, the faux hemoglobin is just corn syrup. When I arrived, I witnessed a sprightly “Dawn of the Dead” moment when a few guys walked down the country road wearing ripped and bloodied button-down white shirts. I recognized one as Josh Greene, an artist friend and current chef in residence; another was graphic designer Josh Singer. Apparently they, along with other male artists in residence, had been playing dead in the well-tended lawn in front of the stately villa.
“They seemed to enjoy dressing up in there blood soaked business outfits and waving to tourists while the crew yelled ‘Nothing to see here. Just keep moving along people’,” Parnes told me.
She was a bit cagey about revealing the plot line — a strategic directorial style to keep us from method acting? — but I did get her to admit that it plays off of film noir and mafia movies, with a white-collar twist. More of the tale will be shot in New York before it’s assembled into a multi-channel installation.
Thinking of Tsai Ming-Liang’s “The River,” Glen Helfand plans his after-shoot bath. (Photo by Christian Bruno)
Parnes had asked me to bring a suit. I hadn’t worn it in a while (a fact made clear by the unforgiving waistband) but I sucked in my gut and channeled my inner thug, and, along with violist in residence Scott Slapin, did multiple takes in a setting that seemed a low rent “Last Year and Marienbad” garden. We repeatedly chased after a guy in a golf cart, though groups of children playing on the lawn in the distance had a way of messing up the shots. SF-based filmmaker Christian Bruno was behind the camera.
As it was rather humid that afternoon, I volunteered to be the body double as corpse floating in the pond, in pants that I presume were procured at a thrift store. It was a somewhat refreshing task, though as I laid there in the algae-clouded water while I was captured from various angles, I felt curious crawling sensations going up my legs. I couldn’t help but think of the plot-setting scene in Tsai Ming Liang’s “The River,” in which dirty water sparks a mysterious illness. I headed off for a shower in one of the complex’s residency cottages ASAP.
Filmmaker Christian Bruno (right), with filmmaker/artist Laura Parnes, chased golf carts and avoided children on a long day’s shoot in the South Bay. (Photo by Glen Helfand)
I had one more scene, as a killer. I had to jump into a moving golf cart where Eric Heist, Parnes’ artist husband, playing dead with blood dribbling down his chin, was slowly going in circles. Stunts! I was intoxicated by the camera, and wanted more. There was a spooky night scene to be staged in the dark villa, but I had a few missed deadlines and had to head home. All I could think about on the long drive back was the close-up I had to forfeit.
07.05.2006