Highlighting the auteur’s earliest days as a filmmaker, this strange, instructional short video presages Gus Van Sant’s later partnerings with William S. Burroughs. Short of the Week gets the drop on The Discipline of DE…

For this short, Van Sant choose a wonderful short story by William S. Burroughs (who would later appear in Drugstore Cowboy) and set it to images on 16mm black and white.

The film outlines the discipline of D.E. (do easy), a zen-like philosophy that proposes all human activity be done in the simplest, most easy way possible. It begins with an elderly Colonel’s discovery of D.E. and continues on to demonstrate how we can vastly improve our lives by following D.E.’s simple principle.

There is a delightful ironic tone to this piece, which never fails to remind me to pay attention to my everyday life. It’s difficult not to envy the silverware going perfectly into its respective drawers, or the clean, simple sound of the plates stacking neatly onto each other. It’s not easy to put this principle into practice, but you’ll never forget it the next time you break a glass or hit your knee on a chair—”Go back and repeat sequence.”

Thanks for the lessons Gus and Bill. Here’s The Discipline of DE…

Stay Awake!

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