Presenting the latest set of entries of my reading journey (est. April 2020) along with a brief review prepared for each book at the time of completion (see Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here):
50. Orientalism by Edward W. Said
The late, eminent scholar Edward W. Said's Orientalism is the 50th book I've read cover-to-cover since the onset on the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when I first began my Book Report series of readings and reflective write-ups. Suffice to say, initiating this reading journey of mine is one of the best decisions I've ever made and followed through on. Consisting primarily of non-fiction reads, it is union with great minds, great ideas and even greater enablement. Were it not for this habit, my 1st book 20 Years a Filmmaker and plans for subsequent books would be little more than vain, wishful thinking.
With regard to Said's book, I was prompted to read a seminal work on the fraught relationship between what we call "the West" and "the Orient" (hesitantly referred to as such as Said's ideas of these two entities is far from essentialist) in light of the increasing strife between Israel and the greater Middle East over the past year. Throughout my high school and university education, I was a staunch critic of Israel's policies toward occupied Palestine while, at the same time, a disciple of the largely Jewish cultural institution that is the North American film industry. Indeed, the most profound cognitive dissonance!
The field and history of Orientalism, thoroughly outlined and rigorously substantiated by Said here, is a vast, intellectual enterprise spanning hundreds of years; its result the manufacture of scholarship, literature, policy and attitude toward the Middle East which is far from innocent and disinterested. Said asserts that it is through entrenched European/European-American colonialist and imperialist aegis, rather than the voices or experiences of the subjects themselves, that we arrive at a conception of these othered Semitic peoples. All told, Said's most significant contribution is a simple question: Is our knowledge and understanding of a foreign culture benignly acquired or generated in the interest of power and domination?
49. Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Commercial filmmaking, as it is practiced in Hollywood and most everywhere else, is an absurd, Byzantine affair. It takes an army of specialists (i.e., writers, producers, directors, assistants, supervisors, operators, designers, actors, stylists, electricians, grips, editors, graders, recordists, etc.) to fashion a piece of entertainment usually forgotten about weeks after a blusterous release to the public and which rarely amounts to any profit for the white, corporate slavers footing the bill. Yet, the cycle continues ad infinitum.
However, sometimes an individual with remarkable talent and a distinctive perspective enters the picture and makes the whole, dismal stupidity-go-round feel worthwhile. In a career that spanned five decades, Sidney Lumet was one of those rare cats. What's more? He actually took the time and trouble to compile his insights about the process of making movies where most in his position would simply take their paycheck and eschew any sense of obligation to posterity. As a purveyor of often politically themed Hollywood films primarily intended for a mature citizenry before the infantilization of the audience by the modern blockbuster, Lumet's earnesty, enthusiasm, criticism and wisdom is evident from page one as he addresses nearly every facet of making motion pictures.
In the final chapter of the book which centers on his relationship with the studio system, Lumet offers a two-fold lament. One, over the requirement of relinquishing control of a film to the moneymen once it's basically completed. And two, about increasing corporate domination of the industry. Written in the mid-'90s, Lumet's concerns presaged an environment that would only grow more rife with greed, short-sightedness and waste. Yet, he ends his elucidating memoir on an optimistic note with an image of young, aspiring filmmakers who might care more about the work than fame and fortune.
Thank you to my close friend Rubén Rosario for recommending this excellent read!
48. Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
Perhaps my earliest memory is of painting an imposing, warm-hued cyclopic creature with spindly tendrils on a tall sheet of newsprint paper stretched over an easel one afternoon in pre-kindergarten. Before I knew much of anything, I knew I enjoyed making pictures. And as I matured, so advanced my dexterity with a drawing utensil and rapacity of imagination. I produced many hundreds of drawings and filled several sketchbooks before the prospect of wielding a video camera bore greater persuasion. Yet, despite that leap to another discipline in my adolescence, my love of visual art remained intact. It is thus owed that upon my years-long reading tear I should eventually wind up at the door of arguably the greatest artist of all-time: Leonardo da Vinci.
Although I was fairly well-informed about the life and work of this quintessential Renaissance man, I relished reading about an artist suffering neither oppressive psychological torment nor debilitating poverty of means. Indeed, da Vinci maintained a mostly spotless reputation and enjoyed ample patronage throughout his long and eventful life. Moreover, the illumination of da Vinci's scientific interests was a particular highlight of my reading. Breaking from religious dogma, his extensively illustrated observations about the natural world were peerless, his experientially-based pursuit of knowledge predated the Scientific Revolution by several decades and some of his theories about the causes of certain natural phenomena would be found correct centuries later! Impressive, no doubt. But da Vinci regularly found himself pivoting in personal allegiance and creative direction based on political developments; ever reminding us that talent is too often the weary bedfellow of time and circumstance.
The life and work of Leonardo da Vinci is endlessly fascinating because the man served his curiosity and ambition with an alike attitude. He worked until the end of his life at age 67. So, whether our convictions bind us to art, science or both, we all stand to gain from an understanding of someone so greatly accomplished and innovative in both realms. After all, our boundless capacity to understand the world and creatively express ourselves herein is every person's birthright. Let us seize it!
47. Filmmakers and Financing: Business Plans for Independents by Louise Levison
An informed, credible companion over the past month as I've begun navigating the world of independent film financing and readying to advance my career accordingly.
46. Kuleshov on Film: Writings of Lev Kuleshov by Lev Kuleshov
What distinguishes film from other artistic mediums? According to Soviet theorist and filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, the editing together of images takes the cake. Throughout most of his career, Kuleshov insisted that film material (i.e., shots) were subordinate to montage or an intelligent organization of said material. And for as long as I've been making films, I've been avowedly sympathetic to this view. In fact, the earliest promotional image I produced for my first short film is little more than a mosaic of its key imagery (see below). Montage in essence!
Circa the 1920s, Kuleshov was one of the first filmmakers to write theoretically about his relatively nascent artform. Surprisingly, many of his foundational ideas were derived from a study of American films which he regarded as particularly effective on account of their considerably ramped up use of montage. Of course, Kuleshov's claim to fame is his experiment of editing together the same close-up of an actor's neutral expression and various images (a bowl of soup, a child's coffin and an attractive woman) which produced in an unsuspecting audience a perception of the most subtle acting on the actor's part (hunger, sadness and arousal, respectively); known as the Kuleshov effect and proving a basic tenet of his theory. As both teacher and author, Kuleshov had a resounding influence on the work and theories of two other eminent figures in the Soviet film world, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, as well as many filmmakers beyond that sphere.
In sum, I found Kuleshov's richness of expression, uncommon intellectual investment and optimistic outlook about film and its possibilities a wellspring of validation and delight. Even though I was already fairly well-acquainted with many of his ideas, I relished the words straight from the source. Indeed, a rare spirit pervaded pre-Stalinist Soviet Russia and today's filmmakers of any persuasion owe a serious debt to the work of the filmmakers and film thinkers of this fertile creative and experimental period.
45. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Raised in a chiefly secular household, my father regularly and quite adamantly encouraged my siblings and me to adopt a rational, scientific way of thinking and navigating the world as often as we could. For this reason, notions of the supernatural never factored into my congealing understanding of life and its origins. In fact, as early as age 13 I could be found amateurishly defending Charles Darwin's conclusions against classmates far more in awe of our rather primitive species.
Author and scholar Richard Dawkins has been in my periphery for some time. Intrigued by the putative seminality of his book (one among many), I relished the soundness of Dawkins' presented logic, a genetic rule system which governs all biological expression on this planet and likely to govern life on other planets as well. Despite my later-developing passion for art, myth and storytelling, even I am humble enough to agree with Dawkins, following from Darwin, that all living organisms are essentially survival machines built over countless generations by blind replicators (i.e., genes). Nothing more, nothing less.
While these aforementioned blind replicators are purely interested in propagating their DNA molecules (i.e., selfish), does that mean all living things are accordingly self-interested to the hilt? Quite so. Dawkins effectively argues that the appearance of altruism in the animal kingdom is exactly that - appearance and appearance only. Are humans exempt from this damning calculus? Dawkins resists saying a great deal about our species but suggests that we are not fated by such singular logic by virtue of a uniquely human characteristic - culture. At the end of a chapter focusing on generational conflict, Dawkins advises, "If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature."
44. Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones
For the vast majority of our species' existence, we've lived in social groups with reliable means of ensuring that our best values were passed onto successive generations. Sadly, however, we have lost that primal adherence to a "common good." In turn, the social pathologies of ignorance, greed and selfishness have metastasized - threatening, above all, the very sustainment of organized human society for generations to come on this vulnerable little planet of ours.
Jim Henson both lived and worked in ample accordance with that "common good." For all the anarchic, vaudevillian and whimsical sensibility he imbued his most popular creations with, there was always an underlying interest in respecting and conveying the values that made his excellence, success and many long-lasting collaborations possible. Perpetually calm and optimistic while endlessly prolific and visionary, Henson with his life-long ethos of benevolence and creativity would ultimately garner himself an irreproachable reputation and legacy of which I know we're all aware of.
With Henson's tragic, wholly unexpected passing at age 53, he left a great deal of work unfinished. So, I will end this routine book review of mine a bit prematurely so we can either continue or get started on our own respective share of it.
43. The 'Star Wars' Heresies: Interpreting the Themes, Symbols and Philosophies of Episodes I, II and III by Paul F. McDonald
A thoroughly delightful exegesis of the themes, motifs and life lessons found within the Star Wars prequel trilogy films. Purchased six years ago and put aside for far too long, I finally decided to fully plum its depths in light of the first film's release 25 years ago. The book is artfully organized by relevant ideas and archetypes (e.g., The Symbiosis, The Slave, The Love, The Fall, The Villain, etc.) with perspectives from both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions woven throughout the rigorous analysis.
The memories of my first exposure to the Star Wars prequels in my adolescence are remarkably vivid and, to the filmmaker I'd later become, quite seminal. As a rambunctious kid with an insatiable imagination and a restless knack for art, the sheer scope and ambition of the prequels represented an unmatched zenith of cinematic design; to say nothing of their incredible music and pivotal role in the digital filmmaking revolution.
But what of the films' storytelling, philosophical or morally instructive value? Far from the easy digestibility of the original trilogy's dualities of good vs. evil, human vs. machine and freedom vs. oppression, the narrative of the prequels traffic in equally timeless yet far more ambiguous and paradoxical notions of institutional decay, political dictatorship and personal suffering. For those who've embraced these more nuanced entries of the most popular film franchise in history, this book gleefully elucidates what their filmmaker has described as "a much more intricately made clock than most people would imagine." I'm glad I grew up with the prequels.
42. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
In my routine steal aways to the library during high school, I came upon intriguing reference to a media theorist named Marshall McLuhan and his signature phrase "The medium is the message." At the time, the mainstream U.S. press was beating the war drums as our country's intervention in the cradle of civilization intensified. It was not uncommon to read criticism of the media among marginal, online independent news outlets. But McLuhan's unique probing of the nature of media technology itself cast a stronger spell on me. As such, Understanding Media was one of the first books I ever purchased online (from a then-nascent Amazon.com). Its revelatory ideas would become an obsession of mine well into my college years.
McLuhan's famed adage "The medium is the message" asserts a critical differentiation between the distinctive properties of a medium (i.e., print, radio, television, etc.) and its message or literal content. In his writings, McLuhan was principally concerned with the social and psychological effects of a given technology and how often such an understanding of its characteristic qualities are lacking or delayed in a rebuff of their adoption. He was also fond of suffusing his theories with some fascinating dichotomies (e.g., literate vs. nonliterate societies, hot vs. cool media, specialist vs. integral man, etc.). Prolific in output and famed in his time (the countercultural 1960s), McLuhan offers a novel, technologically deterministic view of history that speaks to a familiar unease about the way in which media technology affects our lives, societies and politics. Always relevant.
41. On Writing by Stephen King
With refreshing candor, conviviality and wit, Stephen King shares a trove of insight about his formative experiences as a writer, a wealth of sagacious advice for aspiring writers and a dramatic recounting of the road accident that nearly killed him in the summer of 1999. Simply put, the book is an open window into the mind (King equates writing/reading with a kind of telepathy) of North America's foremost literary king (no pun intended).
In the book, King shares, "Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well." I found King's underscoring of the intrinsically derived joy he finds in practicing his craft a profound but often overlooked facet of the creative life. I'm sure it resonates with any earnest, committed artist in whatever medium.
I would recommend this book to any creative person but obviously to novice writers intent on developing their skills. King believes that with the right tools and the usual mainstays of hard work, discipline and practice, a beginning or competent writer can be good and perhaps even great. So, he's here to help and you could certainly do worse than take heed of someone who's had 65 novels and over 200 short stories published throughout their career.
Special thanks to former high school teacher-friend of mine Louise Farnsworth for gifting me this beautiful, hardcover edition!
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