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Building Blocks of a Great Story (and All Forms of Art)

  • February 27, 2012 3:03 pm

Happy Monday, compadres. Since it’s a chilly, grey, post-Oscars Monday here in LA, I’ve been in a contemplative mood about great films, and art in general. As the dust settles after Hollywood’s biggest prom event (i.e. the Oscars) and the winners are sleeping off their champagne fueled hangovers all nuzzled next to their Oscar statuettes, and the countless entertainment peons go back to work, one cannot be reticent that it’s so hard to make a good, or even great, film. And for those countless dreamers who come here, straight off the bus from Kansas, ala Axl Rose in the Welcome to the Jungle music video, to realize their dreams as storytellers and content makers, how do you cut through all the bullshit and just make good art? It’s tough. It’s all a numbers game and frankly, 1 in a million will make it. That’s why there are so many jaded waiters in LA, because they’ve slogged through it all. It can get pretty depressing.  Read more...

Words, Scripts, Acting

  • August 28, 2011 8:01 am

The beautiful thing about having been an actor for so long is that acting makes you love words.

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“Words words words!” to quote Hamlet… yes, words. Those pointless guttural utterances that drop from our mouths in a series of memorized consonants and vowels as dictated by the culture in which one has grown up; those sounds that can mean so much as they escape on our outward breath and be taken so wrong by the receiving party; those paltry makeshift canoes meant to navigate the deeper tumult of the river of our emotional core; words.  Read more...

Imitations of Life

  • August 24, 2011 12:15 am

Does art imitate life, or vice versa? Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life.” This age-old question has been asked and debated by artists throughout the centuries. It also seems to be the defining question that I explore every time I make a movie. As an artist, I’ve often explored the tenuous boundary between imagination and personal experiences, between fiction and non-fiction.

Amy Hill plays Booboo Stewart’s psychiatrist in White Frog.

Two weeks before I started shooting White Frog, my mother called me out of the blue and broke the news to me that my youngest sister Tabitha was just diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at 32. I was completely flabbergasted and I told her that I was coincidentally making a film about a teenager with Asperger’s.  Read more...

Beautiful Women + Cabbage = Awesome Art!

  • June 16, 2011 12:01 am

Ju Duoqi is a Beijing-based artist who definitely works in an original medium…cabbage.

Five years ago, Ju started creating images of beautiful women out of the vegetable. Because cabbage has a bad habit of eventually rotting, Ju takes photographs of her completed works (which she sculpts using knives and toothpicks) and reconstructs them on her computer.

Check out some of her pieces below which sell for $2900-$4300 a pop. Art that makes you both hungry and horny…what more can you ask for?

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Yoshi Sodeoka’s ’70s Mixed Media Magic Carpet Ride

  • March 24, 2011 2:03 am

Yoshi Sodeoka is a mixed media artist and musician based in New York City, who’s no stranger to the psychedelic. His work  over the last 10 years has captured the trippy and acid-soaked imagery of the Summer of Love and updated it for the 21st Century. His work that is inspired by LP album artwork, in particular, is pretty amazing.

For his latest project, Sodeoka is making a series of short videos inspired by ’70s prog-rock concept albums, in collaboration with the composer Daron Murphy. According to the artist, “Each piece will be autonomous, but when viewed together will create a larger whole.” He will release each new video piece online, like this piece called “Sibyl,” which just popped online. Again with the acid trip visuals and experimental noise, it almost makes me want to put flowers in my hair, live in a yurt and take some LSD.  Read more...

Things to be Grateful For

  • November 24, 2010 1:05 am

On Thanksgiving, many of us will be hard pressed to find things to be thankful for, what with the lackluster economy and having to suffer full body scans at the airport.

As a writer, however, I have had the privilege of researching many stories over the years which have made me realize how fortunate I am to be living in the here and now, rather than in the over there or back then.  It just takes a moment to contemplate over the things that have been banned in the past or are currently banned in other countries to know what to be thankful for.  Here are my top 10:

1) Art

Creating art that did not conform to the ideals of Social Realism was banned in the Soviet Republic during Stalin’s rule.  Besides political and religious art, the ban included abstract art, expressionism and anything depicting nude bodies.  Avant garde artists who did not adapt to the policies were often either murdered or sent to the gulag.  Even after Stalin died in 1953, nonconformist art was illegal until the mid ‘70s. 

I am grateful that although I am not an artist and cannot distinguish between an authentic Pollock and a kid’s spaghetti painting, I can at least admire both without fear.

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The Incredible Art of Li Wei

  • September 29, 2010 12:30 am

You may have heard of Li Wei, but for those of you who haven’t, Li is a pretty incredible artist.  He uses a mixture of acrobatics, illusions, harnesses and scaffolding to create his photos which seemingly defy gravity and the laws of physics.  Although his photographs are often touted as “not photoshopped,” technically, you would have to use some sort of software to get rid of the harness wires.  Still, his photos are nothing short of amazing.

I love how dynamic the photos are and the sense of humor and whimsy that’s inherent in them.  If you thought it was hard to tell a story in the 3 minutes allotted time for the Interpretations competition, just imagine how hard it would be to tell a story in one frame.  And yet, Li Wei’s photos are able to do just that.

Li reportedly dropped out of art school and dabbled in oil painting before finding his calling in “action art”.

Freedegree over 25th story  Read more...

Basquiat: The Radiant Child

  • September 1, 2010 1:19 pm

In my recent binge on documentaries, I just checked out “Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” and it’s another one worth seeing.  Here are the top reasons why-

1. The Julian Schnabel film ‘Basquiat’ is great but as a dramatization, doesn’t give you the chance to see Basquiat in the flesh.  And while Geoffrey Wright was brilliant in capturing Basquiat’s ambition and introverted personality, there’s nothing like seeing real footage where you see Basquiat’s vulnerability.  The documentary’s director, Tamra Davis was a confidante of Jean Michel and fortunately her archives of recorded conversations between them allows us a window into the real Basquiat.  It’s a gift to see him reflect so candidly on his work, his friendship with Warhol, the pain of dealing with sudden fame, being misunderstood and cut down by the ivory tower of art critics and museum curators.  Read more...

Drawing and doodling in class actually expands your learning

  • November 23, 2009 2:52 pm

Well, that is debatable, but if you have designer extraordinaire Milton Glaser in your corner, you might come up with a compelling enough argument to fend off detention. Glaser is considered the Godfather of graphic design, creating such seminal iconography like the I Love NY logo, the DC bullet logo used by DC Comics in the 1970s and 80s, and is also the founder of New York Magazine. 

Check out this great short film that chronicles a conversation with Glaser, while he’s sketching a cartoon of William Shakespeare. Drawing helps him think and perceive: “for me, drawing has always been a primary way of encountering reality.” A documentary about Glaser called Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight was released in theaters this year and should be out on DVD soon. It’s awesome and highly recommended.   Read more...

A Band Apart

  • October 1, 2009 12:58 pm

bruce lee

I took this photo at a little art gallery/shopping complex space in the Insadong district in Seoul, South Korea. I wanted to buy it so badly, but there was no price and apparently, the artist was not willing to sell it either. It was so jarring, at first, to see Bruce Lee, dressed all A BETTER TOMORROW, front and center, ready to command Cyclops (also in a suit) and that other Asian dude. It’s definitely a power team of kickassery.

It kind of reminds me of those DC/Marvel team ups that were pretty cool — Batman and Wolverine teaming up that sort of thing. Damn, looking at this photo again, I wish I could bargain with the artist because I would so buy this painting. I gotta ask some friends in Seoul to infiltrate this gallery and see if they can hunt the artist down!