And as for Richard Price’s script being the real item of note in Life Lessons – have you no eyes for what Scorsese is doing with the camera, for crying out loud? At his best (though admittedly for me Life Lessons for me is his last major work), Scorsese’s cinematic chops wipe the floor with Price’s finest prose.

i think the root of this perception is a constant misunderstanding of art generated by a lack of education and will towards learning. time based media has changed a great deal through the years and the consuming public has molded itself to it many times. art remains a segregated playground for the upper classes but even them sometimes fail greatly in understanding how to experience it. although class division is a factor, i do think there is much more to it. needless to say there is a deep, ingrained resentment in american culture towards intellectualism or just plain thought. nobody wants to watch that. it is not shiny and it doesn’t come undone in front of our eyes.

it is probably worthy of mention that a lot of times what ppl have trouble with is eccentricity. and i do think that just as we need the very business like and “mens sana in corpore sano” type of artists, the eccentric ( and i don’t mean mentally chalenged or drug addled) types have to be allowed plenty of room as well. in our corporate oriented culture, opposition is much needed.

bark at the moon!

for laughs: curator behaving badly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6V0eww_X4g&feature=related
and a poetically hilarious look at the fail of the art life: http://videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=00018101

su amigo,

quico antonio lostaunau

None of which is to say I disagree with you! I totally agree! To complexify via various kinds of portrayals a public understanding of the nature of art, art-making, artists, and what they produce and who benefits from it, regardless of their personality quirks (maybe they vote…..REPUBLICAN! and decry abortion!) is of necessity.

my question about the success or not of the paintings was—not really knowing CC’s paintings or remembering the film well—whether or not you thought the objects (not the artist’s personality or personal life) suited the character in the film. But perhaps this is the same question as the one you answered.

all of this provocative.

Yes, Scorsese’s film was from the trilogy “New York Stories” (1989) with F.F. Coppola and Woody Allen. I haven’t seen the other two. I also neglected to mention that the screenplay for “Life Lessons” was written by Richard Price, one of the great writers of dialog. His book Clockers inspired the HBO series The Wire, probably the best show in the history of television. Anyway… it’s ultimately the writing that makes Life Lessons worth watching, in part because the narratives are plausible in a way that is uncomfortable to watch. But I like that the production designer pulled aspects from the studios and lives of living artists. It’s not something I’ve read much about, how fictional films construct meaning in relation to real circumstances, people, places etc… much like art does… a complex web of references.

In re your question ‘How successful?’ … the point I meant to imply at the end was that I think the casting of Chuck Connelly was incredibly, perhaps supernaturally successful. The film is just a short slice in the life of a by-all-accounts successful artist, but it’s obvious that his relationships are deeply troubled and that his way of life, while romantic is also vampiric and, from what I can tell, an emotional train wreck.

The point Temporary Services makes is an interesting one (and very funny) and I like how it points away from the young aspiring artist encounters with those presentations of affect and instead turns to the non-artmaking public conception of. How does the set of stereotypes affect the way someone understands ‘the product’ as the result of such psychology, and what is the artist to do about it (that part is extremely funny: understand the psychology of your ‘market’ and learn to speak around, under, or subvert or top that) What does someone ‘get a purchase on’ when reading, looking, when there’s that white noise gloss on who’s making the thing in the background of the encounter.

i was also interested in the ‘casting the paintings like casting a person’ bit in the interview, that seems right to me, at least to have been considered. How successful was that do you think? I remember thinking that in that little set of films (isn’t that a suite of, by several filmmakers?) the scorcese/nick nolte one was the only one watchable, but it was ages ago I would have seen it & can’t recall the others.