Fuck Hollywood

Moonlight Project

blue — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:00:12 +0000

Bikko Never Buys Junk

blue — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:25:00 +0000

It's celebrity time, or my version of it at least, as I put the opening touches onto the new photo movie coming from the Photography Channel. The working title is "Anxious Moments," and the movie details my existential worries despite the beauties and opportunities of my life. Time ticks to pieces, and I drip as a useless counterweight from the hands of my expiring clock. No comedy, unfortunately, just an onrushing end. Drives me crazy, so I will say so. This gallery is a series of shots of Danny Bikko (Brendan Sheelagh Bikko, to be concise) used in a segment of the movie that is now almost completely edited. More links to come when there is video to watch.

Self-Destruction is its very own language.

blue — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:48:03 +0000

Back from Mexico in two pieces.

The me I am and the me I will become, already opposed.

A TV show called "My Own Private America" produced by Sandie Black and me and Ingo Juliusson is ready to edit. Veronica, where are you? And my pictures of the aurora borealis are the lead feature in Dave Snider's TV pilot "Time Frame" produced by the Photography Channel. And Will Rokos and I slowly come to agreement on a script and strategy to make a movie for Cannes which might, unbelievably, be about vampires.

But now is now, and coming back wounded and scarred from Mexico after tripping there with Maya Nelson is the primary story I have to speak. Almost as if it's the only language I know. The words and poetry are hung up in negotiations, held hostage to ambition and greed and youth. I would shoot myself except there is too much to do. And I am smiling widely as I write this, eating sushi on 9th Avenue, with the Sun brilliant outside. For more Maya, visit her website preview at Wolf's Daughter, here.

A Wolf Walks into America

blue — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:46:21 +0000

Just back from Malibu and a great visit with old pals in a gorgeous movie location hacienda above the Pacific, and in tow is a panther without a leash, Maya Nelson, arctic model. We drove the 101 over the hills to the ocean, she at at the wheel, and me feeding her intensely complicated lines that I want her to do in English and Icelandic. She's feverish, coming down with something, and I think I should give her a break and let her rest, but this sort grueling ordeal is part of becoming an actor or a performer: You simply do not have the choice of when to accept a break when it knocks on your door. And this is definitely Maya's break, on a small Seanie Blue scale, since the images and scenes have evolved enormously since we met three months ago, and her confidence has a nuclear bloom to it. She is not scared of the lines or ideas and the work involved, and punishes herself for the slightest mistake or mispronounciation. Fine with me, since I no longer bother to give her much instruction when we shoot pictures, since she has become so adept at anticipating what movements I need. We have shot 7200 pictures in one week, not enough video, and discussed the performance impulse until we were ready to kill one another. We leave Hollywood tomorrow for New York, and have critical questions on our horizons. What are we actually making? The birth of a model or actor? A movie? A book? And why?

Heartbreak or disappointment, a dream dies anyway

blue — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:46:48 +0000

There is no applause as we kill a possibility on the phone, me among buildings, and she in the Arctic. I wanted to travel the world capturing the chrysallis of a girl transforming herself into a woman, from sensual thrill into a sexual weapon built to kill. But to kill who? Me, of course, as I watched her change, from the streets of Katmandu to the alleyways of Hollywood. Because how could I convey the joy of watching this animal change without falling in thrall myself? I hoped she would break my heart, shatter me to pieces, when the last day of this effort arrived, and she walked away from me and my cameras without a glance backward, into a future I predicted she would have, and instead . . . I am disappointed. Angry at her casual and lazy indifference to my grand schemes. Why did I bother? She never could put her head into this game of mine, because she's not interested in being anything but a girl, even if she liked the idea of the travel and the pictures and acting and glamour. It would be better, this sense of gloom I am under now, if there was pain I could admit instead of my annoyance. I'm just pissed off, my time wasted, and the movies and art I hoped would result seem like nothing more than silly shadows thrown by a young girl over the blueprints of a silly old fool, less the architect of beauty and drama than he thinks. And this is the worst pain of all, to know I have fooled myself, making silk out of leather, even if this is a common drama for men who would be artists. Early fools day.

Intense & Intelligent, a Raindancer Comes to Play

blue — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:35:21 +0000

She is listening intently to what I have to say about how we will shoot and how she will move. She doesn't blink, and she sits on the edge of the chair, trying to remember everything because there is to much to do and too little time, but she knows me well enough not to hope for anything different. Her cellphone rings, and she holds up a finger, hang on, Sean. Sure, says me. She reaches for the phone and does not check to see who is calling before she turns it off. She is looking at me again, eyebrow arched. This is why everyone loves to work with her. Hollywood is full of shooters and producers who complain about their models and actors staying in touch or conducting business on the set. I shake her hand. She asks what for, and I tell her it's to balance all the times I was urged to kick models or actors in the butt when they checked their phones to see who called. The interruptions kill momentum, but the actors hardly care. It's all about them. The Raindancer laughs. No, Blue, it's always about you, that's why I'm here. It is so easy to work, suddenly, and we smile like puppies through the first 300 shots.

Photography Channel Features Blue's Aurora Borealis photos

blue — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:13:00 +0000

Dave Snider from the Photography Channel calls and wants to put togther a piece on my aurora borealis photography. I laugh out loud, thinking this is a joke. PC has vids of Steve McCurry and David Alan Harvey and that ilk discussing their work, and I'm going to be hung with them? This is a serious proposition, I soon realise, since there are only three dozen vids up on PC at any one time, and mine might be the featured video for a month. Head reeling, I track down the pictures David needs. Here's a short preview.

Lolitavik

blue — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:42:12 +0000

My plans change for a third time in two weeks, and I take advantage of a strange confluence of activities to remain in Reykjavik. There is too much going on to relate, but the movies or the possibility of a movie crops up again, in many ways. The country is about to plunge into a very anxious period, of several years, perhaps, and I can just sense that creativity is a terrible gamble at the moment. Art that is not practical, in general, attracts a sturdy Scandinavian scorn, in my biased opinion, and I am hopelessly invested in the artistic impulse. So I wander around the city and visit my friends with an open desire to express what I see as a piece of art. No problem. Except I wander into a piece of art in the form of a young model named Maya Nelson Wolfsdottir, who was born on a farm and has "the architecture of dreams in her face, and the athletics of escape in her limbs," as I have just written her. I start to channel all sorts of expressions through her, with photographs and then video, but let me just relate one small sequence that has left me in the role of both James Mason and Peter Sellers in Kubrick's luminous 'Lolita': There is an accountant in one small office on an abandoned floor in my building, and he listens to Beethoven or to his menopausal wife sobbing on his cellphone, nurses his badly swollen prostrate, and comes to his door whenever he hears us galloping through the hall. He is alone, but unable to admit to being lonely. And Maya Nelson is trying to translate some lines of mine into Icelandic when she runs into a problem with:

" . . . pheromones are leaking from my eyebrows . . ."

In a flash she is out the door with the script and knocking on the accountant's office, where she asks him for the proper words for 'leaking' or 'sweating,' and of course reads him the entire line. She sees him looking at her magenta bra in open-mouthed astonishment, thinks for a moment, and then devastates him by saying, "I don't need help translating pheromones or eyebrow, just want to know what you think about the word 'sweating' versus 'leaking,' since Blue wrote 'leaking' but I think 'sweating' is better." He has not recovered since this encounter, and nor have I, and the architect and I stand in the hallway together linked by this private humor of sexual semantics. He is shaken by the bra and her long neck, I am sure, but for me the shock is more sentimental than sensual, since I am realising that she has outgrown 'Lolita' -- she is more woman than girl, I must admit -- while I have not.

There is a movie here. Could be made in a week. And this is just one of many possibilities. But I have better things to do and so does she, we remind each other, like parrots. Is the idea good enough to transport beyond her presence? This is the test for me.

Waking Up in Oaxaca

blue — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:20:00 +0000

I am in the Zocalo, sitting at a table at one of the cafes lining the square. I am unbelievably pissed off about being in Oaxaca. I hadn't wanted to come, but a friend badgered me into the trip to take pictures during Oaxaca's famous celebrations of El Dia de los Muertos. The trip will cost me two thousand bucks, and I am doubting that I will be able to sink as I wish to into local society; I am simply part of a touristy maelstrom taking the images and memories out of Mexico without caring a whit about the context and complexes of the country's troubles and distinctions. Everyone wants a picture of the costumes and masks on Halloween night, or of the candles flickering in the cemeteries as families gather overnight to welcome back the spirits of the dead, and I am gritting my tteth at the prospects of eight days in the wrong place, surrounded by tourists and accosted by locals who wish to sell me junk for whatever cash I can spare. Worse, the novel I've been working on every day for two months comes to a shuddering stop: the only thing I can add is a flourish I write on the airplane flying down. I cannot believe I am here. Agreeing to come and unable to tell a friend "No" when I needed to will cost me dearly, I am thinking, as I sit at my table in the zocalo.

And then the waiter is there, wondering what I would like. It's not his fault. So I smile and order a juice and fruit. And I ask him his name. He asks if I am in town for the celebration, and I groan. No, man, I say, I've come to mexico for the only reason I would ever come to Mexico, for the magic. The waiter smiles and says: "If you've come for magic, you've come at the right time." He leaves to fetch my order. I am suffused with hope, suddenly, that something magical is bound to happen. I am in Mexico. Magic cannot be very far away.

spaceship gone, alien baby gets to party

blue — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:11:00 +0000

My mother dies with grace and haste, surprising everyone who thought they knew her. We'd quarreled, as families do, and she became the second parent of mine who I rejected on the way to becoming the zombie I am. I got to my parents' bedsides just before they died, but hardly in any way to say "Sorry I am such an asshole, but I have better things to do," for which I am terribly sorry to admit neither would have felt much pride. They weren't wired to understand that art is a hook you keep swallowing and keep hunting, regardless of the menu the world insists on putting in front of you. I have always known what I wanted, and my parents never had a clue about what they wanted except to say it wasn't what they had; like lobsters they kept looking for the next comfy cranny; like a shark I cannot stop swimming, eating even my family and friends if it means I can keep my dreams alive. There will be a way of marking me as this kind of animal in the future, just as the scientists have announced they've found the Beta male gene, the DNA that makes men willing to sit in one place and grow a brood as their exit strategy. I am a mutant, I am afraid to say, unwilling to accept responsibility or care for property, and hopelessly addicted to the next idea that flirts with my imagination. I want to obey every impulse to create, every instinct to cheat death by saying, "Look at what I made," so I can keep making my own little world, so I can keep living the life I choose.

Thanks for the condolences and concerns about my sudden marooning in the present. I suppose my mother was like a spaceship crashed by the lake or on top of the hill, and represented some sort of escape or rewinding of my history, but to tell the truth I've never itched to go back, and if obliteration and heartbreak lie ahead as well as adventure and creativity, well, that's the price I'm willing to pay, even if it means I have to steal from the people who love me most.

Again, thanks for the condolences, but I don't speak that language: Tell me what you're up to, what you're doing, where you're going, and what it means to you if you don't get there. These are the stories I need to hear.