Which way to the Sprawl?

We’ve been enjoying this endearing flick for some time, but are just now getting around to posting about it.

Cyberpunk is a 60 minute documentary from 1990 that serves as a charming bookend to the William Gibson documentary No Maps for These Territories. While Gibson is featured prominently in this doc, it also expands out to illuminate an entire slice of the late 80′s/early 90′s culture that used to be featured in the late, great Mondo 2000 magazine.

Cyberpunk Review offers these insights:

Cyberpunk is a documentary that looks back at the 80s cyberpunk movement, and more specifically, how this has led to a trend in the “real” world where people were starting to refer to themselves as “cyberpunk.” The documentary sees “cyberpunks” as being synonymous with hackers. A number of writers, artists, musicians and scientists are interviewed to provide context to this movement. The guiding meme, as told by Gibson, is that information “wants” to be free. 60s counter-culture drug philosopher, Timothy Leary, provides a prediction that cyberpunks will “decentralize knowledge,” which will serve to remove power from those “in power” and bring it back to the masses. Many different potential technologies are discussed, including “smart drugs,” sentient machines, advanced prosthetics – all of which serve to give context to the idea of post-humanity and its imminent arrival on the world stage.

As an added bonus, here is a contemporary interview with Mr. Gibson in which he discusses the current state of Cyberspace!

Joe Nolan <3

Babble on...

Pioneering esoteric film maker Kenneth Anger gets interviewed by pioneering esoteric film maker Gaspar Noe in this match-made-in-heaven (hell?) tete-a-tete:

Kenneth Anger, the octogenarian American underground filmmaker, has largely been heralded as one of the founders of experimental film, with his role in inspiring directors such as Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. He pioneered queer, cult and psychedelic film without ever imagining himself in a gere, and this year he crossed over into fashion and created a piece (with longtime collaborator Brian Butler) for the Italian fashion house Missoni.

Gaspar Noé, director of the recent film Enter the Void and creator of the controversial film Irreversible, has long been a vocal supporter of Kenneth Anger, telling Interview that Anger was the only person he wanted to see Enter the Void. Noé recently caught up with Anger by phone, while the former was in Paris and the latter in Boston. They discussed the essence of cinema, his experience with alien spacecrafts, and why you should not direct movies under the influence of LSD.—Kristina Benns

NOÉ: Do you remember we met a few years ago? You were in Paris doing a retrospective at the Cinémathèque…

ANGER: I remember, vaguely, but I do so many interviews, they seem to all blend together.

NOÉ: I think the reason why they asked me if I wanted to have a conversation with you is because in other interviews I have talked about you, about how when I think about the best psychedelic movies ever, one of the first things that comes to my mind is Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.

Do you think you’d be a director today, if you hadn’t been in Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)?

ANGER: Well, It’s a long story. I began making movies at home, with a 16-millimeter camera that belonged to the family. Before that, I worked a little, I did a little part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Director Max Reinhardt was a friend of my grandmother’s, and that’s how that happened.

NOÉ: That movie reminds me of your movie Rabbit’s Moon (1950).

ANGER: I loved the artificial set of the forest at Warner Brothers, this huge set that they made in two connecting soundstages. So that influenced me. But also, I’m influenced by director Georges Méliès, and the simplicity of his magical painted steps, and so forth.

NOÉ: What are your favorite movies directed by other people?

ANGER: Well in the classic French tradition, I love Robert Bresson and I met Georges Franju, and I love his films. And Ann Levy, and of course, Jean Cocteau. And I like some of the films of Marcel Carné very much. I love Arlette Langmann.

NOÉ: Do you often cry when you see movies?

ANGER: I don’t. I’m not a tear-shedder. But I feel it emotionally.

NOÉ: I have a heavy question… What is the essence of cinema for you? Is it reproducing the language of dreams, or creating a shamanistic trance?

ANGER: I think it’s basically quite different from dreams. If only cinema was that easy. Because dreams, all you have to do is fall asleep, and you can have fantastic vision. I know Baudelaire and people like that enhance their dreams with opium or something. But films are very constructed—they’re like architecture. They’re pieced together, glued together. To me, it’s a craft. It’s like making a tapestry. And I prefer to think of it—you know, um, the sweat is supposed to be invisible. But a lot of sweat can go into making a film. But of course, if you enjoy doing it, you enjoy doing it. I will go on cutting for three days without sleeping. You can have everything from a realistic story with recognizable people, or…

I actually love the Italian neo-realist films, and in some ways they seem very dreamlike. You know, the early Rossellini and so forth… But you can have a very expensive dream, which is quite beautifully done, which is like Cameron’s Avatar, which you probably saw. Did you see it?

NOÉ: Yes.

ANGER: Well, that can be considered like a dream, a very expensive dream. I prefer simpler things.

NOÉ: Do you think the language of dreams is universal? Do you think people in other countries have their own culturally specific way of dreaming? People in China, Africa…

ANGER: I think people dream in their own way, dreams are extremely personal, even from person to person. They are completely individual.

NOÉ: I don’t dream in 3-D, they aren’t very bright in color and there isn’t much dialogue. I don’t know about yours…

ANGER: Sometimes I dream in black and white. And actually, I love black and white films, even though it’s been a while since I made any myself. Do you work in color or black and white?

NOÉ: My last movie is extremely colorful. What is a dream you have had that was over-the-top, or really strange?

ANGER: When I was a teenager or a boy, I used to collect tin soldiers. And I had hundreds of them—I had a navy with a ship and the Marines. And I had a dream when I was about 15 of these soldiers coming alive and it was a fight with the Muslims, which is very sort of prophetic. So it was a fight against the Arabs—I remember the crescent on the flags. And the little toys came alive in my dream. They were still toys—they weren’t people. They were battling an invasion of the desert people under a crescent flag. It was the American flag against the crescent flag, which may be prophetic for something to come.

Find the full interview here.

Kenneth Anger’s The Complete Magick Lantern Cycle – including Kustom Kar Kommandos – is now available from The Sleepless Bookstore!

Joe Nolan <3

Amouse Bouche

I went on a Hunter S. Thompson binge recently. No good reason, just got a little carried away. I read a couple of biographies and discovered a lot of great videos in the process.

Although this is not an official Sleepless Film Festival post, I wanted to share this video.

"On some days you just want to beat the living shit out of someone, and then have the cops come and clean them up"

The Crazy Never Die was produced by the Mitchell Brothers. The Mitchell’s owned the infamous O’Farrell Theatre strip club in San Fransisco. They also produced the revolutionary, mainstream-porn hit Behind the Green Door. Thompson was a sometimes-doorman at the O’Farrell while he was researching his still-unpublished book, The Night Manager.

Here is a run-down on the film from the good people at Bunch of Nerds:

In the late 80s, the Mitchell Brothers, owners of the O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, produced a 30 minute long documentary on Hunter S. Thompson’s college campus tour. Entitled “The Crazy Never Die”, the documentary covers Thompson’s visits in Oregon and Kansas, including some interesting insight into his childhood, the amount of speakers he has in his living room and much more.

Without further delay, The Crazy Never Die:

This video is hosted on our YouTube Channel – Joe Nolan’s Imagicon. Check it out and subscribe!

If you are an inveterate Gonzoid, you’ll also be pleased to discover this limited-edition publication:

A large-format photo/bio about the man himself. The printing is limited to 3000 copies. It comes in a cellophane sealed, hand numbered box. The book is inside in a box of its own. The book box is sturdy and linen bound with the Gonzo dagger boldly stamped on the front. The book is print numbered on the rear cover. Lovingly edited and designed, and lavishly printed, this extraordinary package includes a limited edition gallery-quality photograph by Thompson.

An edition of the set is listed in a Nashville boutique for bank, but I added it to The Sleepless Bookstore where you can get it for much less than that arm and that leg.

Stay Awake!

Joe Nolan <3

We were up late again last night, but were pleased to wake up early enough to enjoy a lovely day in The Old South.

After weeks of particularly brutal summer weather, Nashville is experiencing an unlikely respite with temps in the high 80′s and flagging spirits on the rise.

This weekend my pal Aaron and I checked out the new print of Breathless at the Belcourt on Friday night. The verdict? Amazing. The film has already opened and closed in a number of cities, but I believe it will continue touring for the remainder of this, its 50th Anniversary year.

Afterwards, we retired to The Street of Dreams where we drank a bottle of wine before I begged off of a longer evening with the idea that I wanted to have a productive weekend. Although I’ve had some trouble gathering traction on a few writing projects I have in the works. I did manage to create a new feature for this blog.

"Ha, ha, hmmmm...Stupid Muggles."

At the end of our upcoming posts you will find that I have returned to my classic Insomnia signature. In addition to the usual widgets I use to promote my musical projects, I’d also like to encourage you to check out a new venue we’ve opened on Amazon – The Sleepless Bookstore.

The bookstore will help us to tie our Sleepless Film Festival programming in with the brand new Sleepless Book Club which will make its debut in an upcoming post. The movies and books in the bookstore have all been hand-picked and relate directly to the content on this blog.

When you purchase my music or grab an interesting film or provocative book from the new store, you are directly supporting our efforts and becoming a part of the creating of these ongoing messages. Thank you in advance for your support.

"I can't wait to check out that bookstore."

To celebrate, here is another film we host on our YouTube Channel.

Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man is a one-hour documentary that serves as a wonderful character study of the titular man, but also of the titular bookstore. It is a funny and oddly touching film about writers, books, readers, age, eccentricity and the famous French literary destination Shakespeare and Company.

Here’s what the Open Culture blog had to say about the 2005 film:

Sylvia Beach first opened a bookshop with that name in 1918, and it soon became a home for artists of the “Lost Generation” (Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, Stein, etc.) and also famously published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. The shop eventually closed during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Yet a good decade later, an eccentric American named George Whitman established another English-language bookstore on the Left Bank and eventually rechristened it Shakespeare and Company. Whitman’s shop gave sanctuary to Beat writers – Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and the rest. And it’s this incarnation of the fabled bookstore that the documentary takes as its subject. Give the documentary some time above, and be sure to watch the last five minutes – unless you already know how to cut your hair with fire. Holy smokes!

Enjoy!

Be gentle in your sleepy hands on this world.

Be a killer in heaven.

Stay Awake!

Joe Nolan

Welcome to the Persian immersion!

Please find a space on the rug and sit facing East. The wine has only just started to pour.

Cold Southern mornings are marked by a damp cataract the blurs the air and makes your bones feel wet. Then again, your bones are already pretty wet, what with all the goo.

Clearly I am going over the top in my recent fascination with Mickey Rourke, but The Wrestler was such a great movie, and he was so fantastic in it. For the most part, I don’t think we see very much good acting in films nowadays. When I am watching American movies from that great age of the 1970′s (Altman, Cassavetes, Hopper, Scorsese, DePalma, Coppola, Lucas, Schrader) or even Euro flicks from the 60′s/70′s like the movies of Roeg or Godard, the acting in these films tends to be honest and sincere action and dialog – no more, no less.

Nowadays we see to many actors ACTING! This is what makes Rourke such a wonder in this film. There is a scene where Rourke tries to re-establish his relationship with his estranged daughter. It’s probably the most emotional scene in the film, and the nature of the scene is such that there is an immediate danger of the acting becoming forced, attenuated, cliche and overly-sentimental. For one moment in the scene – Rourke’s biggest moment in the film – he spins perilously close to the edge, but he doesn’t wobble. He glides right up against it, and then he glides away. Not only is the scene moving because of its content, but also because while we are watching Randy the Ram reclaim his dignity in his daughter’s eyes, we are simultaneously watching Rourke reclaim his squandered gifts and his place as one of the best actors of his generation.

Here is a great, long interview with Rourke in the full-flush of post-Wrestler hype. This chat took place before Rourke received his Academy Award Nomination.

This is the new video for my song “The First to Know”

Love,

Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Just like the Grammy Awards, these American pop-culture celebrations can never seem to decide if they are honoring art or commending commerce.

Will these two never get along?

That said, they sometimes surprise, recognizing real talent over box-office tallies, true vision over crafty hacksterism.

Although neither Darren Aronofsky or his brilliant film The Wrestler got their just due at nomination time, the performance of Mickey Rourke has received the nod.

Here at insomnia we are long-suffering fans of the long-suffering thespian. We wanted to bum his smokes in Diner. We wanted to steal his haircut in Rumble Fish. We wanted to join his revolution in A Prayer for the Dying, and we wanted to be make out with Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart.

After famously destroying his career – and resurfacing with his original dream of boxing greatness – Rourke has made a steady comeback, capped off by his Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of Randy the Ram.

There has been a lot of ink spilled on his journey, but The Sleepless Film Festival would rather hear from the man himself.

Here are two long interviews that allow Rourke to tell his own story on his own terms:

First, The Mickey Rourke Story: One of the best actors of his generation, Mickey Rourke is nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a down-and-out pro wrestler in Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Wrestler. In this interview, Rourke talks about his troubled childhood, his early fame, his thirteen year exile from Hollywood, his passion for boxing, and his new work with Robert Rodriguez and Aronofsky.

And now, Mickey Rourke-The Angel Heart Interview: This candid interview with Rourke can be found on the DVD extras of the special edition of Rourke’s film Angel Heart. Rourke talks about his bad behavior, boxing, his dog (who makes a cameo) and the great Eric Roberts.

Now for something completely different…

This is the new video for my song “The First To Know”!

If you liked that, you’ll love this!

Love,

Joe Nolan

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Just a quick word and a promise-keeping on my last post.

Here is the brand new short film The First to Know. Directed by Chris Rubin de la Borbolla, this enigmatic video stars Jen Rieger as Anna Karina as the Mystery Girl.

Where is she going?

What is she saying?

Who is the mysterious stranger with the camera.

The soundtrack is my eponymous song from my new CD, Blue Turns Black.

Borbolla also directed the short film REvolution, that also starred Rieger as the Damsel in Distress.

REvolution has already made a splash on Nashville’s Music City Arts Channel 9. If you live in Nashville, keep your eyes open for the new one soon!

If you want to check out the other songs on Blue Turns Black, look no further…

Love,

Joe Nolan

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!