Among the cast in attendance was Mike Krug, who also happens to be the brother of Ilene Krug-Mojsilov, the Walker’s Artlab coordinator. He wrote in with this account of an uncanny coincidence he experienced during the audition for extras:

“Authenticity — that’s what the StarTrib suggested the Coen Brothers were seeking for their new movie, A Serious Man. So on a midsummer Sunday afternoon I hurried to a warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis with my three brunette children near the end of the mass ‘open audition.’ We were seeking roles as late 1960’s, atmosphere-authenticating, Twin Cities Jews.

‘Great, you’re an entire brunette family!,’ one of the extras casting staff greeted my brood. The white walls of the warehouse interior were hung with a gallery of actors and actresses, some clearly casted, some in the consideration stage. After completing biographical paperwork, the staffer suggested we look at the wall of 1960’s period photographs across from the wardrobe area, where hung thousands of suits, tight shirts, skinny pants, bullet bras, and women’s jumpers and dresses, circa 1968.

I looked at the first 1960’s photograph and my heart quickened. I recognized members of my Temple of Aaron Synagogue from the ’60s. To my amazement, there, in a group photo of six Temple of Aaron Board Members, was my recently deceased father Murry, with his Brylcreemed, pompadour hairstyle, generous smile and black suit. ‘Oh my goodness,’ I said, not trying to hide my pride, ‘that’s my father.’

And there was my Rabbi, Bernard Raskas, standing proudly next to the Temple of Aaron Confirmation Class of 1968 — among whom was the Walker Art Center’s Art Lab Coordinator Ilene Krug. “You won’t believe it, but that’s my sister!” I said to no one in particular.

The Coen brothers and their staff had clearly done their due diligence, contacting synagogues, obtaining photographs from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Jewish Community, replicating St. Louis Park homes, and locating haute couture.

Each of the four of us was ultimately selected as extras for A Serious Man. For me, unknown to Ethan and Joel Coen, this film is an ode to my father. While standing in the synagogue scene, reciting Kaddish repeatedly during the many takes from a variety of camera angles, it was only natural to feel the loss that the scene aimed to capture.

Whether any of my family ends up in the movie or on the cutting room floor will not be known to me until full movie release this October. Regardless, for me, A Serious Man, captures a personal era.”

A Serious Man opens at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis on October 2. Hey Mike — write in and tell us if you made the cut!

The Quay Brothers

Stephen and Timothy Quay (Regis Dialogue honorees in 1996) are known for the incredibly inventive, other-worldly, films that meld objects and people from real life with the stuff of nightmares and fantasy. Over their careers, they developed an unmistakable aesthetic that somehow manages to inspire, confound, and often disturb their viewers. Parsons in New York is going to be offering a rare glimpse into the reality behind the Quay’s fantasies. In an exhibition opening on July 16, Parsons will display eleven of the Quay’s miniature sets along with flim clips. I certainly wish I could catch it.

Street of Crocodiles (Photo: Dave Filipi - Wexner Art Center)

Who Are You, Polly Magoo?

As Rob Nelson mentioned earlier this week, the Walker has held a sizeable portion of William Klein’s films in our Ruben and Bentson Film and Video Study Collection. Some of the prints often go out on loan to other organizations, but there are several cans of film that have remained fairly untouched on the shelves for quite some time. We have a can of film in our archives here that we have long understood to include clips and camera tests from some of William Klein’s feature films. Heading into the Regis Retrospective, we decided to take a closer look at the content of this particular can. What we discovered was not the clips and tests we expected, but actual theatrical trailers for several of Klein’s features, and they are in excellent condition with perfect color. Film trailers can often be interesting in their own right, but in the case of someone like William Klein, they can take on a life of their own. Klein involves himself in every aspect of his films. From the actual photography all the way through the graphic design of the promotional materials, his hand is intrinsically there. These trailers amplify that phenomenon incredibly and become films of their own in some fascinating ways. If you were able to catch Tulpan last weekend, you likely caught the trailer for Who Are you, Polly Magoo? We’ll show that one again before the screening of Mr. Freedom this Friday. The trailers for Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther and Muhammad Ali the Greatest will be played before the screenings of Who Are You and Messiah this weekend. These trailers are such a treat, and they will knock your socks off. As rare as William Klein screenings are, these trailers are even moreso. Don’t miss them.

William Klein

“In and Out of Fashion” is the ideal name for a William Klein retrospective, not only because the filmmaking photographer has kept an eye on haute couture throughout a career of six decades and counting. Often underappreciated (if not by the Walker, which mounted the first-ever Klein film program in 1989, and has played host to its reels ever since), the confrontational shooter is now ready for his close-up. We might think Klein’s U.S. audience would’ve taken more strongly to his satiric critique of The American Way at some point during the past eight years, but, blessed as we are with eight Klein features (all in 35mm), a shorts program, and the man himself (on June 26), we’ll simply agree the party is better late than later.

In any case, it isn’t hard to see why most any Klein biographer will observe that the born New Yorker’s remove from the mainstream — growing up Jewish in an Irish neighborhood, moving to France after serving in the U.S. Army during WWII — fueled his dual interest in American outsiders (subjects of appreciative documentaries) and insiders (objects of scorn in his satiric fictions). Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (May 16 at 7:30 p.m.) — the best known (and best) of Klein’s narrative films — has Klein biting the well-manicured hand that had fed him fashion shoots; the first scene, unapologetically crude, finds a bevy of female models wrapped in (and cut by) aluminum siding. Pointedly one-dimensional as well, the title character of Mr. Freedom (May 15 at 7:30 p.m.) — a costumed superhero for the fascist cause, dark as the Dark Knight — is introduced busting an African American family at dinnertime (and much worse). Strike a pose; be The Man.

If these, along with The Model Couple (May 29 at 7:30 p.m.), constitute what a Criterion Collection box set calls Klein’s “delirious fictions,” his trilogy of documentaries about variously oppositional African Americans — Eldridge Cleaver, Little Richard, and Muhammad Ali — forms the core of his equally intoxicating nonfiction. Far and away the greatest of these is, well, The Greatest (June 6 at 7:30 p.m.), a two-part portrait that devotes an hour each to Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali — the same man, of course, yet separated here by ten years, a load of punches, and countless pages of history. (Subtitle it Out of and In Fashion?) Divided into segments shot during 1964 and 1974, the film captures the boxer’s radicalization around the time of his two early Sixties bouts with heavyweight champ Sonny Liston — a shift that led to Clay’s adoption of the Black Muslim moniker Muhammad Ali.

The Greatest certainly looms large here (”I predict that tonight someone’ll die at ringside from shock!” he exclaims before the rematch with Liston), yet Klein doesn’t just stick to the men in the ring. Delving into the business of fighting (the artist was acutely interested in American advertising wherever he found it), Klein trains his camera on the fans, the odds-makers, the moneymakers, the commentators (including Malcolm X, in one astonishing scene), and the ’60s-era white managers who hold a repugnantly proprietary view of the fighter. (Small wonder the film invokes slavery within its first five minutes, as well as inserting Godardian cutaways to billboards as a reminder that all this brutal humanity is bought and sold.)

By 1974, part of what has changed is that Don King has gained the juice to act as promoter, and that Ali’s fight against George Foreman in Zaire is as much about Black Pride as about boxing. (The racial power of the event can’t be denied: Just two years later, Sly Stallone was moved to deliver the retaliatory Rocky.) Likewise, Klein views the sporting per se as somewhat incidental to the context around it, rendering the bouts in a brilliantly abstract flurry of still photographs whose subliminal force anticipates Raging Bull. Such sequences are undeniably potent, and Ali may indeed have been The Greatest in his field, but it’s outside the ring that Klein and his subject each manage to float and sting.

In Michael Koresky’s liner notes for the Criterion box, the filmmaker is quoted on the subject of Mr. Freedom’s radical irony. “A lot of French critics said [Freedom] wasn’t realistic… But now, if you want to win an argument about a film, you can always say it’s a comic strip.” Helluva point, and it applies equally to what I’d call Klein’s other greatest film, Messiah (May 17 at 2:00 p.m.), which brings a fanciful panel style to the librettos of Handel’s oratorio, if not Christianity in sum. Hmmm…what would Jesus write? Let’s start by saying that anyone intolerant of the nonnarrative Koyaanisqatsi method of wedding classical or “classical” music to contemporary images — or of the notion that an atheist Jew such as Klein would dare to fiddle with a text as divine as Handel’s — will need more than a Christian capacity for forgiveness just to make it past reel two.

When Messiah was released almost a decade ago, Klein disciples were heard to preach to the unconverted, urging them to consider the film’s global-village street scenes in relation to all that’s holy. When Klein puts a shot of worshipful Las Vegas gamblers over the lyric “Behold your God,” we’re meant to note that casinos are modern temples whose congregations are in desperate need of redemption. (Not exactly a novel sermon, this.) Elsewhere, Klein goes looking for God in billboard ads and conjures somewhat subtler juxtapositions, as when “The government shall be upon his shoulder” is sung by an African-American inmate choir; the crime-busting drills of Dallas cops are matched to “He taketh away the sins of the world”; a montage of war-atrocity images accompanies “Let us break their bonds”; and high school kids smoking cigs during recess suggest that we, like sheep, have “gone astray.” (Is the similarity between “astray” and “ashtray” intentional?)

For Fellini enthusiasts, the surreal sight of Bodybuilders for Christ snapping aluminum pans like toothpicks leaves little doubt that Klein once worked as an assistant to the director of Satyricon. And aficionados of the oratorio might relish the symmetrical relationship between this postmodern movie and Handel’s own multinational pastiche of old and new, or between the Paris-based, expatriate American Klein and Messiah’s 18th-century librettist Charles Jennens, described in one CD’s liner notes as a “pompous, conceited, and fabulously wealthy man of leisure.”

Dogmatic by definition, Klein’s Messiah is not unlike a Kevin Smith satire for the museum crowd — and not without value nearing Father’s Day, either, as it commands some of the more unreflective among us to ponder the holiday in a manner that doesn’t necessarily include a trip to the megamall. Still, for Klein’s first visit to the Twin Cities in two decades, one can’t help but wonder: Might the 81-year-old be coaxed to the Mall of America? With camera in tow?

Bruce McClure in the Cinema

Thursday, January 15 at 7:30pm in the Walker Cinema (and it’s FREE!) we are kicking off our third annual Expanding the Frame series with a performance/screening by New York artist Bruce McClure. Bruce’s work blurs the lines of film presentation, live music, and performance and isn’t bound by any of the structures that could be potentially imposed by any of the individual elements.

the effect pedal chain

Every one of his performances is unique, but for his Walker show, he plans on trying a few things he hasn’t before. It will involve both of our 35mm projectors, three of Bruce’s modified 16mm projectors, and a chain of about 15 effect pedals to process the sound – all working simultaneously to create an aural and visual experience like no other.

Bruce has been working in the Cinema getting everything set up for the performance tomorrow. Even in the early stages of the set-up and preparation, I’ve been completely floored. What he creates is an enveloping, visceral experience that transcends any cinema presentation I have seen. The visuals and sound interact in way that seem to, for lack of a better word, trick your brain into sensing rhythms and patterns that perhaps aren’t actually present in either. The experience itself is intensely physical, almost violent in a way, yet ethereal and trance-inducing.

It has the potential to be the best film/performance/noise show for me, period. If you are anywhere in and around Minneapolis, don’t miss this. I can’t stress that enough. If nothing else, it will be something the likes of which you never have seen and possibly won’t see again.

all engines firing

My own tradition, and millions of others I’m sure, is to watch A Christmas Story every year. It’s nearly impossible to miss, if you turn on the television. I know, it’s not a very original tradition, but the fact of the matter is that no other movie depicts and discusses the mortal fear of breaking one’s glasses as well as this. As I grew up with a little brother who liked to pick fights, it happened many times over. (I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 7, around the same time my brother decided we should be constant opponents.) I suppose there are a lot of things in that movie that I respond to. I just can’t help it. It doesn’t feel like the holidays if I don’t catch it just once.

Michèle Steinwald, Performing Arts Program Manager
The Sound of Music – I watched this movie on tv with my mom every year until I was probably in my mid-twenties. We always seemed to happen across it even after I moved out at 18 for college. I don’t know if it still plays on tv every year anymore, and even though I haven’t seen the whole movie in years, it still feels like a yearly part of my routine. It is probably somehow embedded in my dna.

Jenny, Film/Video, Program Manager
Here’s my now-defunct tradition:
Back when the Oak Street Cinema was still the old repertory-based Oak Street, every year at the holidays they used to show Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, the 1940 Jimmy Stewart / Margaret Sullivan film about two people in Hungary who unknowingly fall in love through their pen pal letters. It was very regrettably remade into YOU’VE GOT MAIL -and I don’t need to tell you that Tom Hanks is no Jimmy Stewart. At any rate, ever since, when the holidays roll around, I toy with the idea of renting the DVD. No way could it compare, though, to the warm feeling of being in a packed house of an aging single screen theater, watching this smart and sweet classic. A true joy–one of the most pleasurable movie experiences of my life.

Courtney Gerber, Assistant Director of Education, Tour Programs in the Education and Community Programs Office
My tradition – Nearly every year since the movie was released on DVD, my family and I have enjoyed a slapstick Christmas Eve with Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, and others in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The oblivious but well-meaning Clark Griswold gets me every time. After the belly laughs I often turn to Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient around the holidays. This film for me captures Michael Ondaatje’s story, which explores the unwieldiness of human experience. We’re witness to tenderness, anger, passion, joy, deprivation. Juliette Binoche is heavenly. I’m enraptured by each actor’s interpretation of Ondaatje’s characters. Ah, I think I may have to watch it tonight!

Allison Herrera, Program Manager, Education and Community Programs
I would have to say Casablanca. I love that movie. It’s sentimental, it’s suspenseful, It’s political, and it’s got Humphrey Bogart! Everybody is always having a glimmering cocktail in that movie! I watch it at least once a year and not necessarily during the holidays. Although it is a good holiday movie! There will never be movie stars like Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, or Peter Lorre ever again. And, the film is so well written, and the subject matter is kind of covertly political in a radical way. Humphrey Bogart was basically smuggling arms for the Spanish revolutionaries in Africa! Plus, the outfits! There’s no glamour in Hollywood anymore! Everybody’s either too busy having children, quitting smoking or rotting in re-hab! Bring back the fur wraps and cocktails at noon! Except make the fur wraps fake!

Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry’s career has had some interesting twists and turns over the years, taking him on fantastically odd tangents through Rubik’s Cube themed internet videos and art installations. There’s a definite trajectory that can be traced through all of it though, and it becomes most apparent when you look at the last few years. The community aspects of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and the DIY imagineering in The Science of Sleep mated to bring Be Kind Rewind into the world. like some of the projects that preceded it, Be Kind Rewind has evolved into much more than a feature film. Last February, Gondry worked with Deitch Projects to recreate the video store from the film in their gallery space, complete with a back lot with a number of movie sets, allowing visitors to create their own remake in the vein of the those in the film. He has now taken that mentality out of the movie, beyond the gallery, and (he hopes) into your backyard. This month, he published a manifesto of sorts, called You’ll Like This Film Because You’re In It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol. It offers insight into Be Kind Rewind and the projects that came out of it, and also seeks to inspire people and communities to make their own movies, work together outside of the commercial world, and build a network of creativity. For more info, and a great interview, head over to Ain’t It Cool.

An Evening with Greil Marcus featuring a screening of I’m Not There

Saturday, November 1, 7 pm

$8 ($6 Walker and IFP members)

Cinema, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis

“[Greil Marcus'] kind of creative imagination, and the way he’s converted his own medium into something you can’t even categorize, is something I do feel inspired by, and something I hope I can do as a filmmaker.”-Todd Haynes

Renowned music writer Greil Marcus will introduce a screening of I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ film inspired by the life of Bob Dylan and the work of Marcus, including his books The Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Following the screening, Marcus and film curator Sheryl Mousley will engage in conversation about the film and the life and work of Bob Dylan.

I’m Not There Film Description:

Inspired by the life of Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes’ stunning directorial achievement brings together six actors playing characters who craft a unique response to the elusive artist in different phases of his life, career, and persona. Cate Blanchett, in an Academy-Award nominated performance, and Christian Bale (the literal Dylan), Richard Gere (Dylan and Billy the Kid), Heath Ledger (an actor haunted by the legacy of Dylan), Marcus Carl Franklin (Dylan in Woody Guthrie mode), and Ben Whishaw (Rimbaud as Dylan) are set in the political and cultural reality of the era, and filmed in the cinematic styles of the 1960s. Award-winning I’m Not There is “a profoundly, movingly personal film, passionate in its engagement with the mysteries of the recent past.” (New York Times) 2007, 35mm, 135 minutes.

Greil Marcus Bio

“Greil Marcus’ work is very likely the most imaginative criticism being done, but it’s more than that: it’s a light in dark times.”-New York Magazine

In 1968, Greil Marcus began publishing criticism in Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine’s first record review editor. Best known for being a pop music critic, Marcus has also written extensively on literature, art movies, and politics in such publications as Artforum, Interview, the New York Times, Esquire, Salon.com, and Village Voice.

Marcus’s first book redefined rock criticism. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (1975), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is widely considered one of the finest and most scholarly studies of rock music ever published.

Other books authored by Marcus include: Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20^th Century (1989); Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of A Cultural Obsession (1991); Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1997-1992 (1993); The Dustbin of History (1995); Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (1997); Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2000); The Manchurian Candidate (2002); and The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (2006).

Marcus served on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle Award (1983-1989). He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton and the New School, has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and is currently the Winton Chair Fellow at the University of Minnesota, teaching the seminar “The Old Weird America.”

Mike Leigh on the set of Happy-Go-Lucky

Our Mike Leigh Regis Retrospective kicked off last week with Bleak Moments and High Hopes. This week brings us Life is Sweet, Naked, and the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. I’ve got some links to whet your appetite:

• Our trusty intern, Evan Cook, popped into work one day having put toghether a fantastic trailer for the Mike Leigh program. You can find it in the image bar at the top of the page.
• Tickets for the Regis Dialogue have sold out, but tickets remain for the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. Take a look at the trailer.
• indieWire posted an interview with Mr. Leigh this morning. If you haven’t had the chance to give it a read yet, take a look at Rob Nelson’s interview for this blog as well.