David Stanley

don't be ashamed. you didn't do anything.

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don't be ashamed. you didn't do anything.

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don't be ashamed. you didn't do anything.

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shmoovid shmanley

don't be ashamed. you didn't do anything.

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Edited by - bob on 6/22/2008 6:13:44 PM

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TRANSLATION: I Love what you said, Mike. It means the world. I'd love to do some gonzo actually.
As long as they let me direct, hanging upside down from a ferris wheel.
As is my want. Said want is stipulated in the contract that my atttorney, Mr. Big Bacon Croissant (son of Big Baloney Sandwich who disappeared under strange circumstances while Para-Sailing in Guatemala some ten summer's hence . . .
Oh, man. I didn't sleep enough last night.
We gotta hang out sometime. Get a cup of coffee.
You can contact me via carrier pigeon, as is the style of the times (obviously), and I shall then return a note that will be catapulted / ferried to your person and/or representatives.
Then the beans of the coffee will be picked and ground by the strange toxic daughters of Nelson and Veronica Shubert, and we will watch and laugh merrily.
But it'll be in the watchin' that they'll know we mean business.

Happy to do Gonzo, if anybody wants to hook . . .
(the narrator then proceeds to thrust back both thumbs towards himself in a jackass maneuver common in the behavior of actor and hot dog enthusiast Nicky Katt, quickly followed by him braying out the following in ALL CAPS. Oh yeah . . . Shmavid's politically incorrect, he leaves his Lock on, my friend from Northern Climes . . .)
THIS GUY!
up with a job, that'd be awesome.
'Till I receive your pigeon,
David
PS - Sincerely about the stuff from the heart. Hope this finds you well.

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QUESTION NUMBER TWO
My favorite mainstream movies in order.
(I love this question so much I think I just peed myself a little bit. Seriously. It's okay. I'm fine. Don't fret.)
A Clockwork Orange
It was the only movie my otherwise permissive Mother wouldn't let me see. When I saw it, I felt like I was getting away with something. My Dad saw it in a porno theater in Florida in the early 70's. Maybe that part of the story made it feel like getting away with porno. Could that have lead to anything?
Oh, and Stanley Kubrick is a genius and it's shot with natural light and Malcolm McDowell made me wanna be a bad guy who was smart.
Which I am.
Blue Velvet
I fell in love with my "first true love" back in high school, seeing this in a theater in 1986. The movie was so perverse and so beautiful at the same time. So filled with nostalgia for a time that would never happen again, even though it was set in it's own day. My girlfriend and I walked out of the theater in love and speaking a different language because of the film. The last image of a bird holding a bug in it's beak lingers with me still as do my feelings for my first true love because you never forget those do you?
Blade Runner
I bought this on CED Videodisc - an old media format that played movies like vinyl records rather than cd's - and I watched it repeatedly for days on end when I was 13 going on 14.
It was the first movie I ever watched stoned, too. The first time I ever was stoned.
And because it is so beautiful and so original and so sad and I cry fucking time, whether I want to or not, when Rutger Hauer does his "tears in rain" speech. Oh my God.
Mr. Scott, they don't call you "the guvnor" for nothing.
Days of Heaven
I saw Terrence Malick walking his dog down in Austin once, back when I lived there, and it was an image as if from one of his films. He was standing by the river's edge, dappled in the warm and high Texas sunlight as it came through a willow tree. His dog was lapping at the river and he was holding the leash; a silhouette upon shimmering water.
I love all of his movies, but Days of Heaven clings to me the sweetest. I was turned on to it in film school, back when I was devouring film like they were pudding. Days of Heaven - with it's sweeping cinematography (mostly shot by a man who was blind), haunting naturalist score and poetically detached narration - was a meal of endless delights which I savor still.
The Shining
It is the scariest movie ever made. Stephen King said that he thought Kubrick wanted to "physically hurt the audience with a film" and I think that's exactly what he did with his adaptation of King's wonderful book.
The look of the film is as iconic as anything, but it was the story and characters that drew me in when I first saw it. I was 12. My family was at my Grandparent's house for dinner. It was snowing out. Minnesota and Cold.
Away from the grown-ups, I stole into my Grandpa's TV room and watched the film on a Sony Trinitron, topped with a bunny ear antenna, back when things like that existed.
"Welcome back to the ABC Saturday Night Movie. Tonight we present Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining.'"
"Viewer Discretion is Advised."
I don't remember anything after that.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2
The first one, because it looks like it really is happening and it pretty much was.
The sequel, because it's so fucking funny and so crazy and in high school we watched it for about 2 years straight.
In the Mood for Love
Because I fell in love with Alejandra and I knew it watching Wong Kar Wai's most gorgeous film to date (imho.)
I knew it because I recognized the spell he was casting. This melancholy spell. This beautiful meditation on what it means to love someone you can never be with.
Which is exactly what happened.
No Country for Old Men
Because it is a true modern classic. It will stand the test of time. I will bet on it.
Better than betting on a coin toss.
Adaptation
Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman cemented their genius with it. It's so amazing. So beautiful. So funny and fractured and bold and self-aware without ever once being cloying or sickening. I love the heart of it. I love how awkward Nicolas Cage is (who's brilliant) and how he nails playing the twins, especially in the death scene. A work of art.
The Mist
I don't count "The Shining" as a true Stephen King adaptation since King hates the movie, so I feel comfortable saying that "The Mist" is my favorite King adaptation to film ever-ever-ever.
I also love "1408" and would put it on par with this.
The ending is the meanest fucking thing in the world.
I love the balls. Frank Darabont is a man I tip my teacup to.
Oh, and poor, poor Norm. One of the most disturbing deaths ever-ever-ever-ever.
Stupid kid.
The Third Man
Forget the Zither music. Forget about the dutch angles and the bombed-out Vienna architecture. Forget Welles for a minute (but not a second more) and even forget about Carol Reed. Instead, think about Joseph Cotten.
Yes, swim in the Cotten-y goodness. Revel in it. It's yours to keep.
That movie works as well as it does because of him. It is a movie about a man who kills his best friend and has no idea that that is what he's going to do and Cotten NAILS it.
Okay. Minute's up. Remember Orson and think about cuckoo clocks and you'll eventual untangle the world's greatest piece of improvised dialogue ever.
And it's gorgeous and I love the Zither music and the setting and the wacked out way it was shot and everything Carol Reed did, too.
There isn't a single moment of the movie that isn't entertaining and it ends like hell.
Pierrot Le Fou
Because it's about hell - in the form of random violence, mod Paris parties and it ends like heaven.
Oh, and it lets Sam Fuller explain cinema.
"EMOTION."
American Beauty
Because I love it when Wes Bentley says "Sometimes I feel like my heart is gonna burst." And I love it when Kevin Spacey describes his Grandmother's hands being "like paper." And I love the last line.
If you haven't seen the movie, I won't give it away. But . . .
Don't worry.
You will.
INLAND EMPIRE
I don't know how one of David Lynch's best movies also happens to be his toughest to narratively navigate but it's true.
I saw this at the Cinerama Dome at the AFI fest. Ally and I sat third row center.
It blew my mind.
"It's alright, Honey. You just dyin' is all."
The shot of the man in the clown mask is the scariest shot I've ever seen. And on that giant screen, it literally stopped my heart. I had hallucinations for the next five minutes in the theater from the shock.
David Lynch is a beautiful man.
Slacker
And so's Richard Linklater, or "Rick" as everyone in Austin calls him. Even the marquees.
It inspired everyone in my world to want to make movies back in the early 1990's and a lot of us did. I made a feature with a less-than Slacker's 23,000 budget and Linklater's film was certainly an inspiration; for tenacity if not story.
For "Slacker" doesn't really have a story. It's a La Ronde; a story that passes like a baton from one character to the next.
That kinda shit's exciting as fuck when you're a 22 year old film freak with a stack of 16mm short ends and a borrowed camera and nagra.
I can watch it pretty much anytime and it feels like being with friends.
Do the Right Thing
I got into a car accident when I was 19, in the Summer of '89, with my girlfriend on our way to go see this at the Maplewood Mall.
She and I had blood on our faces when we bought our tickets and went into the theater.
I didn't notice. The movie changed the way I wanted to make films. Spike Lee made me believe, not only in what he was so expertly saying, but in HOW he said it. His style - this vibrant, art-pop mishmash of all the filmmakers that he likes from Martin Scorcese and Jonathan Demme to Sydney Lumet and Oliver Stone and many, many others - makes the film feel less like a time capsule of it's era than as a time capsule of Spike Lee's passion and love of film.
That's the thing that no one ever talks about when they talk about Spike Lee. That he LOVES film just as much as Scorcese, which - in his best films like this and Malcolm X - pays off when applied to urgent and important material.
For as entertaining as Do the Right Thing is, it's ten times as powerful. It's about the truth of racism. Racism sizzles through the film on its way towards a powder keg ending.
Everything in the film is sweating and steaming and ready to boil and when it goes over it's hard to watch.
So you forget how much fun you were having and you realize that now you're watching the movie that Lee needs you to see and not just the one he wants you to.
When it came out, people were afraid it would start riots.
Gummo
I saw this at the Laemmle 5 on Sunset when it opened. There were 6 other people in the theater besides me. Most of them walked out. Someone left their cell phone and it was a big cell phone.
It grabbed a feeling about the Midwest/South that only people who've lived there know. The feeling you get from being in a house with cockroaches behind the paintings and bacon taped to the wall.
I love Harmony Korine and I love that he kicked drugs and is still around. I want to see him grow old for how much I loved him when he was young.
And I love it when the brothers fight and the girl knows she's gonna die and the slow motion shot of chloe sevigny with black electrical tape on her nipples and the way that Linda Manz dances to Madonna.
And the bacon on the wall. And the bacon on the wall.

All for now. I have to pee . . .
TO BE CONTINUED!
Love,
David

the script I wrote for PT's "Awakening" and the short script I wrote for his anthology movie and the script for "secret party" and "debbie does iowa" and "debbie does new orleans" and "Marisa."

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