[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzOtZg_Zrow&hl=en&fs=1&]
On Sunday, I saw 13 Andy Warhol screen tests performed with live music created specially for the tests by Dean & Britta. This was outside, at night, at the Ford Ampi-theater, eating a picnic, drinking champagne from plastic cups.
Music, food, mind-altering substance, friends, and the wind all infused meaning into Warhol’s careful attempts at cinematic emptiness (the subject of my last post!) For Fateless, I thought the sentimental music played against the author’s interest in depleting drama from the lived horrors of the holocaust. For Warhol, I can’t imagine he didn’t want context: all the feelings alive in a room of living people infusing the boring with extra stuff.You weren’t supposed to watch Empire straight!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7idi_5IaMrk&hl=en&fs=1&]
The surface of documentary (as well as life) is vapid. The meaning of documentary comes from the extras.