Remembering Elmore Leonard, with Video

See a 2001 episode of "The Writer" featuring the late crime fiction genius Elmore Leonard (1925-2013), based on his visit to the New York State Writers Institute in September 2001, two days before the catastrophe of 9/11.

"The Writer" series was a coproduction of the NYS Writers Institute and PBS television station WMHT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOPDVQNmOMs

Former Institute videographer Hugo Perez, director of "The Writer," introduces.

More on Leonard's visit to Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/leonardelmore.html

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Sayles on Creating Music Videos for Bruce Springsteen

The "Golden Age of Music Video" website has a detailed interview with John Sayles (who visits today) about creating classic music videos for Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.

In the case of the “Born in the U.S.A.” video, the only real mandate we had was “This should be gritty,” and we do gritty. So we shot it in 16 millimeter, it was mostly documentary footage. Ernest Dickerson, who was Spike Lee’s cinematographer, actually had shot [Sayles’ film] Brother from Another Planet. We shot most of it in Jersey — we were living in Hoboken at the time — and we shot some of the Vietnamese neighborhood in L.A. For the concert footage, we shot four nights at whatever that venue is down by USC. They obviously wanted to use the record track for the video, but Bruce didn’t want to have to lip-synch to it for a performance in front of an audience. We just figured if he wears the same clothes night after night for at least that song and we shoot in from many different angles, maybe we’ll be able to rough synch it, and, you know, match the drummer, try to keep the same beat as the record. Bruce was not a guy who was having a rhythm machine drumming for him – every night it was something different, and that’s great! Every night, you get into the groove, and the song has a slightly different character than the night before. But the great thing was that we got to go to four Bruce Springsteen concerts! (laugh).... More.

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You Tubing the Revolution

Masha Gessen, Russian journalist who visits on March 8th, writes about a Russian filmmaker, Pavel Bardin (pictured here), who is creating a compilation of filmed statements by ordinary Russians for publication on YouTube. Article.

MOSCOW — Every night last week, writers, artists, actors, ad men, office managers and assorted others climbed the stairs to the fifth floor of a converted factory building in Moscow to make a statement. Pavel Bardin, a well-known young film director, had set up a camera in a conference room there. Everyone who came in — some by invitation, some having found out about the filming from friends or Facebook — wrote his or her name and vocation on a length of masking tape, and named his or her reason for planning to attend what would be a giant protest on Saturday, the 24th.

Each person followed a simple formula: make an I-statement consisting of just the subject and verb, then expand in a sentence or two. “I love.” “I know.” “I fear.” “I want.” “I can.”

As in, “I love my children…” “I know how to talk to people…” “I fear violence…” “I want to be proud of my country…” “I can imagine a different future…” More.

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