In Rome he began writing for Cinema, a hotbed of political and social criticism. Since the (neorealist) direction of the journal was contrary to Antonioni's interests in alternative technical practices and filmmaking styles he stopped contributing after only a few months. (3) He spent a similar amount of time at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, making one, now lost, short film. A stint helping write Un Pilota ritorna (Roberto Rossellini, 1942) led to the signing of a contract with the production company Scalera. While drafted into the army, Antonioni still contrived to work under assignment on I Due Foscari (Enrico Fulchigoni, 1942) and Les Visiteurs du soir (Marcel Carné, 1942).

Antonioni's first documentary concerned the inhabitants of the Po valley region near Ferrara. Shot in 1943, Gente del Po was not released until after the war in 1947. In the interim, the bulk of the footage was lost through degradation, accident, and, possibly, deliberate tampering. Still, he displayed an early resilience and determination to complete the film, a trait that would resurface on numerous occasions in the future.

In the next few years, Antonioni continued to write criticism and screenplays, translated French literature, and made several more documentaries. N.U. - Nettezza urbana (1948) and L'Amorosa menzogna (1949), in particular, were well received: both won awards from the Italian Guild of Film Journalists and the latter competed at Cannes. On the strength of his documentaries, Antonioni secured financing from Vallani Film to make his first fictional feature in Milan.

The narrational structure of a search with competing urges of desire and death surfaces in Cronaca di un amore (1950). Antonioni will consistently return to this structure in his later works. The film's protagonists are doomed past lovers who find their romance renewing and repeating itself with the same tragic ends. Their wish for the destruction of an intervening third-party twice comes true but on each occasion something unidentifiable is also lost between them. All that remains is an individual, separated existence. (An immediate, violent, desire-quenching version of the wish-device occurs, imaginarily, at the end of Zabriskie Point [1970].) Cronaca is suggestive of film noir, (4) but Antonioni sidesteps traditional plot conventions to focus on the interior feelings of the lovers. He utilises a mobile camera, composes roomy frames, and follows the performers in deep-focus long takes. Key dialogue is highlighted by centrality, symbolism, frontality, unexpected movement, and cutting: a range of methods that define Antonioni's precise emphasis of narrative by particulars of style. This approach occupies Antonioni's formalism until more comprehensive analytical cutting techniques and less character-dependent camera movements arise first in Le Amiche (1955) and then more definitively in his first widescreen film, L'Avventura (1960).

Perhaps Antonioni's main concessions to the dominance of Italian neorealism are his configurations of class. As in Cronaca, the relatively poor female protagonist of La Signora senza camelie (1953) is thrust into a wealthy environment. From shop assistant to star B-grade actress, she is beset by the demands and advice of men. Her ultimate failure is an inability to control her own life. Antonioni has said that he considered the film to be a mistake because he concentrated on the 'wrong' character. (5) Who the preferable character might have been remains a mystery. The film's style is similar to Cronaca, with an odd, perhaps absurd, reflexive effect: the melodramatic filmmakers within the story, similar to Antonioni, seem to be utilising mobile camera, long take strategies!

I Vinti (1953), a trio of separate stories set in Paris, Rome, and London, was shot before Camelie but released at least seven months later. (6) Troubles that began in pre-production between Antonioni and the film's producers presumably continued until the film's premiere. (7) Additionally, the film was censored abroad which may have led to long delays. The reason for all the fuss was Antonioni's insistence on portraying three murders and investigations without providing any moral, social or other evidence to identify the killers' motivating reasons. Reconstructing the space evacuated by motive, Antonioni positions characters with respect to their environments, foregrounds landscape and experiments with independent camera movement. This destabilising of character and narrative by formal abstraction continues to be emphasised as Antonioni's style develops. His next work is a complex example. Tentato suicidio is staged amid artifice but presents a range of stories about attempted suicide that purport to truth. Cesare Zavattini, producer of L'Amore in città, intended its segments to record the daily life of "ordinary" people. Antonioni takes Zavattini's quotidian premise and, rather than concede to it, investigates its validity. Four of the stories are reconstructed and their non-fictional guises come under threat from the fictional probing of the cinematic stylistic system. Even in the presence of non-actors who tell their own stories, Antonioni is incredulous of a basic "real" dimension.
Another attempted suicide begins Le Amiche, linking two stories that are in medias res. (8) Both concern the immediate traumas of two women: Clelia (Eleanora Rossi Drago) is returning to a displaced past, while Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer) is unable to foresee a romantically successful future. Their lives are influenced - hindered more than assisted - by an ensemble of social friends. The interaction between all players is handled at a deliberate slow pace, with space carefully constructed to suggest what has previously happened and to convey internal group dynamics. The second story is perhaps the most interesting, unravelling in parts that effect change on the first. Clelia's stable linear progression through the story is counter-pointed by the emotional imbalance of Rosetta's highs and lows. How Antonioni dramatises the differences in the two stories is largely reinforced by a flux of inclusions and exclusions in his staging. The scene on the beach is an often cited example. (9) Only Rosetta is isolated for the length of a single shot. There are teasing set-ups which briefly single out someone else, but a track or pan finds others. A single insert shot in the scene depicts a drawing of Rosetta by Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), the object of her affections. Clelia, on the other hand, is always framed side-by-side with another. At the pivotal moment of the scene, a cut suddenly reveals the two of them standing together. Antonioni's arrangement of his cast functions to incorporate and separate ideas and conflicts as required at specific moments. Close observation of placement in the mise en scène is worthwhile because it helps explain the unknown properties of the story: its past, how its characters think and feel, even speculation as to what might happen next. (10)

The complexities of Antonioni's multi-actor staging style are not as apparent in Il Grido (1957), a bleak portrayal of one factory worker's journey away from home, through various liaisons, and back again. There is a return to the use of a mobile camera paired with analytical cutting (including some reverse shots) to serve the interests of dialogue. The constant state of Aldo's (Steve Cochran) agitation is emphasised by this more rapid technique of editing. Even the longer shots (at least three are just over a minute long) concern arguments between Aldo and women. What sets Il Grido apart from Antonioni's previous films is his stylistic response to a different milieu. Dank, gaslit interiors are tight spaces forced by the staging into a moderate depth. The result is an effect of oppression from which Aldo always tries to escape. But when he surges outside, the land is such a contrast that it too is threatening. Antonioni generally maintains a high horizon line, emphasising the flatness and desolation of the background. The high camera angle also accentuates the smallness of Aldo's daughter, Rosina (Mirna Girardi), whom Aldo is unwilling, or unable, to properly father. When he sends Rosina home on a bus, the element of pathos generates a strange and rare Antonioni moment. It is an interesting opposition to the awkward attention seeking of Valerio (Valerio Bartoleschi) in Il Deserto rosso (1964).

Antonioni's next four films frame the period of his most intense and, it is generally accepted, productive work. Some consider L'Avventura, La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962) a trilogy (or, with Il Deserto rosso, a tetralogy) of sorts, largely because of a consistency of style, social setting, theme, plot and character (especially the roles played by the ubiquitous Monica Vitti). (11) The usefulness of such a categorisation is questionable. (12) However, at least in the first three, Antonioni demonstrates a formal stability between films that, considering his earlier fluctuations in method, is surprising. Part of what makes L'Avventura so impressive is that Antonioni developed a cohesion of narrative and stylistic devices that had only haphazardly surfaced in his earlier films. It might not be too ridiculous to suggest that analogous to some of his characters, Antonioni was searching for something, a method of communication, which he finally "found" with L'Avventura. That he wouldn't let go until he had explored the approach a couple of films further, is retrospectively understandable.

It is with these films that Antonioni became a famous, critically esteemed, and even popular filmmaker. Concurrent with a boom period in the Italian industry and a re-vitalisation of European cinema in general, Antonioni was suddenly reflective of a massive change in film culture that he had really been progressing towards for the last decade.

The critical discussion of these films is so extensive that I will forego summarising them here. But it is worth mentioning that a fundamental element of "the trilogy" is Antonioni's increasing interest in the abstraction of space: for instance, the shot of the church in the deserted village in L'Avventura; the opening shot of La Notte that tracks down the Pirelli building; and the final seven minute montage of L'Eclisse. These kinds of independent, wandering, investigative techniques are dominant traits in Il Deserto rosso, Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point and The Passenger (1975). However, there is expansive conjecture regarding their purposes and effects.

For his first colour film, Il Deserto rosso, Antonioni further abstracted reality. Effects trick the eye: the flattening of space by telephoto lenses; the strange scale, placement, and colour of objects; out of focus foregrounds and backgrounds. He implements a faster, sometimes disorienting, cutting style and emphasises the aural qualities of industry. To use André Bazin's phrase perversely, the dramatic evolution of Antonioni's revised style is a dialectical step, but not in the direction of realism. (13)

Il Deserto rosso marked a turning point. Antonioni's shifting directions of interest compelled him to explore international markets, include male protagonists, and vigorously question the nature of photographic reality. In this transitive period, he made another short film, Il Provino (1965), a preface segment for Dino De Laurentiis' I Tre volti, starring Saroya, a past queen of Iran.

No small account can possibly sum up the ambiguous openness evident in Antonioni's next film. Aside from being his biggest commercial success, Blow-Up is a highly valued critical commodity that has drawn the interest of an astounding range of commentators. The reasons for such a deluge are somewhat unclear. Other films are, for instance, self-reflexive, conducive to subject theories, or consciously explore how reality and meaning are constructed. Nevertheless, Blow-Up continues to attract various emergent criticism. Rather than add to such a mass of interpretation, and again for reasons of space, I will instead vouch for the usefulness of Peter Brunette's "post-structuralist," feminist account. (14)

Compared to the troubled Zabriskie Point, the story surrounding the risky production and exhibition of Blow-Up is a relatively happy one. When Antonioni went to make a film in America, he decided to make a film about America. He said, "I see ten thousand people making love across the desert." (15) And the problems began.

Quite unlike the complex ambiguity of Blow-Up, the story of Zabriskie Point has a considerable vagueness located in its simplicity. It clearly constructs a negative image of authority and materialism, but its converse handling of revolutionary students is not especially exciting or engaging. That leaves the most compelling centres of the film as its two fantasy sequences. These in their most reduced forms amount to love (more accurately, mass sex in the desert) and death (expressed via the violent explosion of a houseful of commodities). (16) They're outright hallucinatory spectacles, practically Hollywood marketing devices, which makes the massive losses the film took at the box office even stranger. (17)

he Passenger is another open text, full of self-reflexive concerns such as perception, reality, identity and truth. Past narrative techniques are further explored: doubling, journeying, constructing an unseen death. While Blow-Up investigates the possible, but redundant, existence of an object, this is a search that turns inward and ultimately finds nothing.

Antonioni's style in these three films is far removed from that of the '50s' films. The earlier invocation of interior moods and feelings has been discarded in favour of a construction of exterior things in their own various contexts. His characters are now positioned as part of a complex network of objects and inter-subjective relationships. The camera no longer functions to serve the action; it becomes a tool for Antonioni to inscribe meaning. He asks questions that are best resolved by stepping outside the fiction and considering the film's structure of organisation and cognition. By incorporating the film viewing experience into the story, his formal choices are layered with a political subjectivity: he explains how ideology is working within the film.

The height of such artistry explains the relative disappointment, to most, of the rest of Antonioni's films. Il Mistero di Oberwald (1980) is an abrupt swing away from epistemological preoccupation. Made on video for television, it provided Antonioni relief from high budget production burdens. Excited by the potential of new filmmaking technologies, he experiments with post-production colour manipulation to produce unusual effects. In other respects the film is less daring, perhaps a signal of Antonioni's desire to move in a different direction but not quite knowing where.

With Identificazione di una donna (1982), he returns to older concerns. A specific filmmaking problem (the processing of choices available to a director) is merged with devices of searching, uncertainty and sudden abandonment. It is tantalising to put Antonioni in the shoes of the director in the text, opening up a reading that suggests a confusion about what kinds of films he ought to make. But it seems just as sensible to consider Identificazione as a re-focusing on the hesitant, anxious individual, now framed by apparent self-reflexivity. Its formal system is a balance of autonomy and traditional continuity: a complex arrangement, both distancing and engaging. The problem may reside in the mix. At this late stage in his career, Antonioni and the film's producers may have felt it necessary to appeal to a large, international market. He expected to continue making pictures, but the lack of success here probably assisted in the halting of his progress. In the historical context of a worldwide resurgence in mainstream cinema, the inability to construct a narrational or stylistic pigeon-hole for Identificazione was troublesome.

Thirteen years later, after a debilitating stroke left him unable to speak, Antonioni was able to make Al di là delle nuvole (1995), with Wim Wenders providing insurance should the production come into difficulty. For most critics, the return was welcomed even though few admired the film. This time, it may be impossible to reject the alter-ego hypothesis: a lot of the wandering Director's (John Malkovich) dialogue is culled from Antonioni's interviews and writings. However, the Director's presence within the film is largely observational. Even his affair, in the second of four segments, occurs because of a voyeuristic curiosity. His presence bares witness to a nexus of love stories, a collection of events he has been told, or possibly invented. They are lost stories, in the sense of being momentary, transitory, and disconnected in space and time. In an authorial context they are stories Antonioni has told elsewhere, not directly on film. They existed outside of cinema, beyond the clouds of the imaginary. Without the benefit of the cinematic apparatus, without the human capacity, continually stressed in the cinema of Antonioni, to observe and perceive, most of us would never hear or read them.

© James Brown, May 2002 

Da ich einige Zeit beruflich unterwegs war, konnte ich den Tod von Richard Wright, Keyboarder von Pink Floyd, jetzt erst verarbeiten. Mit 65 Jahren verstarb er vor kurzem an Krebs. Schlimme Sache. Jetzt ist es auf jeden Fall klar: Es wird keine Reunion der ehemaligen Supergruppe geben. Das Konzert zu Live 8 der Moderne wird der letzte gemeinsame Auftritt der Band gewesen sein. Die Streithälse Waters und Gilmour gehen ihre getrennten Wege. Dave Manson wird weiter Autorennen fahren und Syd Barett ist sowieso schon bei Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD). Ich habe mir soeben nochmals den Live-Aid-Auftritt bei YouTube heruntergeladen, das letzte Zeugnis der gemeinsamen Band. Meine erste Floyd-Platte war wohl „Dark Side“, damals noch auf LP. Diese hat mir ein Schulfreund dringend ans Herz gelegt, der vor Jahren an Drogen verstarb (danke Roland). Seitdem ich „Time“ oder „Money“ gehört habe, war ich ein Floyd-Fan. Dazu kam, dass der Toningenieur dieser Scheibe Alan Parsons war und als erklärter Anhänger von Alan Parsons Project achtete ich besonders darauf. Zu Alan Parsons Project aber zu einer anderen Zeit mehr. Ich kaufte Zug um Zug das gesamte Oeuvre  der britischen Band. In dem Zentralorgan der deutschen Jugend, Bravo, las ich von der Show „The Wall“, aber meine Eltern erlaubten es mir nicht, als damals Jugendlicher in die Dortmunder Westfalenhalle zu pilgern und mir die Show anzusehen. Noch heute warte ich auf einen Videomitschnitt der Show. Die CDs zur Tour wurden Jahre später veröffentlicht unter dem Titel „Is there anybody out there?“. Rick Wirght war damals nur noch bezahlter Gastmusiker bei Floyd, weil er mit dem Ego Roger Waters nicht klar kam. Ich schaute mir die Filme zu Pink Floyd an, klar „The Wall“ von Alan Parker, „In Pompeji “ und ich habe sogar noch Originalplakate von „Zabriskie Point“ und „ Crystal Voyager “, dem Surferfilm. Noch heute läuft mir ein Schauern über den Rücken, wenn ich „Wish you where here“ oder „Animals“ höre. Im Moment höre ich gerade die Stereo-Abmischung von „Piper at the Gates ...“ Wenn ich im Selbstmitleid versinken möchte, ist natürlich „Final Cut“ die richtige Medizin. Das war meine letzte offizielle Floyd-Scheibe, immer noch mit Rick Wright als Gastmusiker. Die Reunion ohne Waters habe ich nur noch am Rande verfolgt, obwohl ich zugeben muss, dass „Pulse“ eine prima Show hat. Ich habe die fliegenden Betten von „Momentary Laps“ auf der Tour im Olympia-Stadion in München gesehen, aber es waren nicht mehr die selben Pink Floyd meiner Jugend. Erschreckend war der Auftritt der alten Männer bei Live 8, die Musik war cool, die Typen einfach alt. Hier konnte man sich früher hinter der Lightshow verstecken. Na ja, der Auftritt ist Geschichte und Pink Floyd für mich auch. Danke Richard für deine Musik, deine Inspiration und dein Schaffen. 

More sad news

I don't mean to be morbid and wasn't ready to write another entry just yet but just to say Rick Wright keyboard player of Pink Floyd has died of cancer aged 65 although it's probably just been on the evening news I just  found out on line by accident again and felt  that as a big Pink Floyd fan I had to mention it.

He was a self-taught musician , one of the founding members of Pink Floyd. I tend to let the music speak for itself so excuse me if I just let you hear and see this man in action:

from Pink Floyd live at Pompeii

Echoes Part 1

Saucerful of Secrets

Against The Odds

Against the Odds
(R. Wright/J. Wright) 3:59

Each time we return to this crazy place
We break the promise made face to face.
Easy to make, easy to break
Somethings here we don't understand.

I don't know why we go on so
I don't want to fight no more tonight.
Every time's the same, both of us to blame
I don't want to talk no more tonight

We've come through before, now we ask for more
Seems to me we can't escape at all.
Words have no meaning, but oh, such a feeling
Can there be a way out of here?

I don't know why we go on so
I don't want to fight no more tonight.
Every time's the same, both of us to blame
I don't want to talk no more tonight

it sounds like this:

Here is one of his pieces from the score of Zabriskie Point

Again I send love and respect to his spirit, his family, his close friends, the musicians he worked with and other members of Pink Floyd, now excuse me while I shed a tear or two.

Love and Peace

Born2rant

(next time I hope not to have to announce another death).

If you're going to San Francisco...on October 11 at the Artist's Television Access, I'll be presenting a cine-lecture on "Protest-ploitation" for Craig Baldwin's famous Other Cinema film series. This is a project dear to my movie heart and it's going to be like, really radical, man. Basically, I'll be presenting clips and contexts for this odd group of unheralded films from the year 1970 made at the height of the student protest movement. With the killings at Kent State being the inevitable result of such generational tension, MGM, Columbia and Joe Levine tried to find that elusive college audience that made Antonioni's BLOW UP (1966) and THE GRADUATE (1967) such novel hits with the collegic American rebels. So in 1970, the major studios rolled out the Mao red carpet for the protest crowd that protested by staying away in droves. But the films are all testaments to their radical era and all have something to offer the discerning mind.

After that cinematic groundwork, we'll be screening an uber-rare 16 mm print of my personal favorite of the genre, THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR, starring Eli Wallach, Hal Holbrook, Cloris Leachman in a histrionic look at the generation gap in suburbia that plays like an Afterschool Special directed by John Cassavettes. A must-see.

If you're a Bay Area denizen, come on down Saturday, October 11 and join the revolution!

I wish I should say that Mannix's lost year represents a major discovery, but that's not quite the case.  Mannix was created by the team of William Link and Richard Levinson, eventually the men behind the juggernauts of Columbo and Murder She Wrote, but in 1967 just a pair of talented freelancers with credits on the likes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Burke's Law.  With Mannix, Link and Levinson attempted a revision of the private eye genre that anticipated the postmodern pulp reformations of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye or Jeremy Kagan's The Big Fix. 

Their hero, Joe Mannix, was not the familiar hard-boiled loner archetype, operating out of a dingy office, with a wise-cracking secretary out front and a battered fedora and trenchcoat on the rack in the corner.  Instead he was a cog in a wheel, one of a fleet of impeccably dressed operatives in the employ of Intertect, a corporate detective agency crammed with high-tech equipment.  (Computers the size of a minivan that shuffled around stacks of punchcards, in other words.) 

Intertect was inspired by Link and Levinson's experiences at Universal, the first of the Hollywood studios to track its employees by computer.  The Universal of the sixties was run by former talent agents inherited from its parent company MCA, who dressed in black suits and had offices in the fearsome obsidian monolith known as "The Black Tower," a modern glass executive building that loomed over the front gates.  Lou Wickersham, the head of Intertect, was an insider joke on Lew Wasserman, the legendarily ruthless head of Universal.  (The name Wickersham was derived from "Wasserman" and Lankershim Boulevard, the North Hollywood address of Universal's main entrance.  Joseph Campanella, who played Wickersham, once told me that his slight resemblance to Wasserman was a factor in his casting.)  Joe Mannix, the series' nonconformist hero, was the only Intertect operative with the inclination to buck Wickersham's unfeeling, bottom-line approach to sleuthing.

You can see how Link and Levinson intended Mannix as a platform for venturing into some Big Ideas.  Their scenario was a genre allegory that opened the door for sideways exploration of topics like mechanization, capitalism, the dehumanizing aspects of modernity, and so on. 

But Link and Levinson were out of Mannix even before a pilot was written, and the reins were taken by Mission: Impossible honcho Bruce Geller (who executive produced) and producer Wilton Schiller.  Schiller had produced the last three seasons of Ben Casey and the final year of The Fugitive.  He was competent but uninspired, as were most of the cadre of freelance writers who had followed Schiller from one or both of the earlier shows onto Mannix: John Meredyth Lucas, Chester Krumholz, Barry Oringer, Howard Browne, Sam Ross, Walter Brough.  In their hands, the conflict between Mannix and Lou Wickersham remained a constant element of the series, but it lacked any depth or metaphorical meaning.  The two characters simply bickered like unhappy spouses, and the clash between them never varied much in content or intensity.  It is fascinating to speculate as to how Link and Levinson might have developed their idea.  Might Mannix have become a prototype for the serialized drama of the eighties, with a character conflict at its center that grew more complex and gripping as time went on?

For the second season of Mannix, Intertect disappeared without explanation and Joe Mannix worked alone out of a stylish home-office.  Now he embodied the cliche Link and Levinson sought to undermine: a hard-boiled loner type with a wise-cracking secretary.  The initial revisionist concept had devolved into a totally classical text. 

Surprisingly, this wasn't an altogether bad thing.  Mannix's new producers, veteran screenwriters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, brought in better writers and directors.  They crafted the familiar elements of the format into an appealing blend of old-fashioned mysteries and jazzy film-noir vibes.  Mike Connors, the series' star, had a relaxed personality that fit the new Mannix better than the old one.  Connors was like that gregarious but no-nonsense uncle you knew you could count on to scare off the schoolyard bullies.

*

I first watched Mannix in 1995-1996, when the TV Land channel was rerunning it nearly every day.  I was in film school at the time, at the University of Southern California.  College was a frustrating experience, four years of searching for the intellectual stimulation I'd been promised the whole time I was growing up and finding it only on the margins of the experience - in the film archives, from exploring the city of Los Angeles,  or in long conversations with a few kindred spirits, but rarely in classes or amid the general campus population.  Often when there was a lull in the grind of studying or writing dull undergraduate papers, I'd unwind by consuming five or six Mannix segments in a row.  It was just the kind of smooth, undemanding escapism I needed.  It's kind of a shame, but those marathons of Mannix (sometimes interspersed with Thriller, airing on the Sci-Fi Channel, or Route 66, on loan from a T.A. researching a doctoral thesis on road movies) number among my fondest college memories.

When I received my copy of the Mannix DVDs, I immediately took a look at a particular episode, "Turn Every Stone" - and not because, just by coincidence, it's the only one credited to writer Jeri Emmett.  If Mannix is forever associated with USC in my memory, "Turn Every Stone" is the episode that reflects that memory back at me.

The climax of "Turn Every Stone" is a shootout between Mannix and the villains (Hampton Fancher and Nita Talbot) in the central courtyard of a tall, distinctive red-brick building.  That building is the Rufus B. Von KleinSmid Center, which stands on the east side of Trousdale Parkway, the main drag of the USC Campus.  (USC benefactors tended to have funny names; don't get me started on the Topping Center, or Fagg Park.) 

Here's a shot of Mike Connors and Fancher entering a classroom hallway:

And a better look at the tall, narrow interior columns, which convey the impression that the building all exterior and no interior:

An innovative use for the the basement level's sunken courtyard:

The Von KleinSmid Center (or VKC, as the students call it) is one of the main classroom buildings at USC, and I probably attended a half-dozen classes in it during my four years there.  It's one of the most commonly used locations on a campus that's famous, at least among those who've done time there, as a ubiquitous backdrop in movies and TV shows.  When I was a USC freshman, I attended a screening of Copycat (1995), wherein my fellow students went wild upon catching a glimpse of VKC's tall globe-topped spire; a few days later, I stumbled across Morgan Freeman shooting a scene for Kiss the Girls (1997) in a car being towed down Trousdale Parkway.  But the campus's onscreen history goes back beyond tacky nineties serial killer flicks.  The Von KleinSmid Center was completed in 1965, and its then-modern architecture made it a magnet for movie companies in the sixties and seventies. 

USC's most famous turn in the spotlight came during the same year that "Turn Every Stone" was filmed, in Mike Nichol's The Graduate (1967).  Northern Californians and fans of the movie will be crushed to learn that, during the scene in which Dustin Hoffman pursues Katharine Ross back to Berkeley, "UC-Berkeley" is actually . . . USC.  Our first glimpse of Hoffman on campus during the scene scored to Simon & Garfunkel's  "Scarborough Fair" comes as he's walking down the low steps that surround VKC:

Hoffman then walks up a tree-shrouded, diagonal path through Alumni Park to the neighboring building, the thirties-era Doheny Library, the basement of which contains my favorite USC hangout, the Cinema-Television Library:

Later Hoffman and Katharine Ross walk down the same outdoor corridor that we see in Mannix:

The scene where Hoffman stands outside for the duration of Ross's class was filmed inside VKC (you can tell from the narrow vertical windows), quite possibly in one of the same first-floor rooms where I had classes.  A subsequent shot was photographed through the same VKC window:

All of these buildings still look about the same today as they did forty years ago.

Parts of the USC campus also turn up for a split-second in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), and in Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) - a great tracking shot that traces the route I'd take onto campus through the Jefferson Boulevard entrance, which was just across the street from my first L.A. apartment.  But since I'm a TV historian, and this a TV blog, the television appearances of the USC campus are what I've tracked with the most enthusiasm. 

In the original pilot for Harry O, a made-for-television movie called Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On (1973), the Von Kleinsmid Center is the backdrop for a conversation between David Janssen and S. John Launer (a fine character actor whom I interviewed during my USC years):

Outtakes from that sequence made it into the series' opening titles. . .

. . . giving USC a weekly cameo in Harry O , under Janssen's star billing card no less, throughout its two-year run:

Continuing its chameleonesque career of imitating other colleges, USC did a sustained impersonation of Brown University on one of my favorite shows of the past decade, The O.C., as Seth (Adam Brody) visited the Rhode Island school and his inamorata Summer (Rachel Bilson) eventually went there.  But it was another bit of USC TV-fakery that really blew my mind.

I have to indulge in a detour now and explain a bit about why college in general, and USC in particular, were so disappointing to me.  Part of it is that for years of my parents and teachers had promised that college - far more than the public education which preceded it - would be the ideal atmosphere for my adolescent nerdiness.  Their assurances did little to prepare me for the realities of the shallow, alcohol- and party-feuled student life, or the cynicism and toxic academic politics among the faculty. 

But part of it was TV's fault, because I'd put in a lot of time watching The Paper Chase when I was a pre-teen.  The Paper Chase, one of the great, underrated dramas of the eighties, was a smart, nostalgic portrait of life among law students based on John Jay Osborn's autobiographical novel.  For a twelve year-old, the distinction between undergraduate life and an idealized Ivory League law school was subtle, and so The Paper Chase - and, really, nothing but The Paper Chase - shaped my conception of what higher education would be.  I had set myself up for a major shock.

Flash forward to my junior year at USC, when I'm conducting a phone interview with Ralph Senensky, a talented episodic television director of the sixties and seventies.  The Paper Chase was Senensky's last major credit, and as we're chatting about it, Ralph drops a bombshell on me: The Paper Chase's unnamed-East Coast-university-that's-clearly-meant-to-be-Harvard was actually USC.  Every outdoor frame of it!

Later that year, on a holiday trip back to Raleigh, I dug out the last surviving tape of the Paper Chase recordings I'd made years before, and replayed the show's final episode on my father's dying Beta machine.  Sure enough, the office of Professor Kingsfield (the much-feared master teacher played to perfection by John Houseman) was located in the Bovard Administration Building, which is directly across Trousdale Parkway from the Doheny Library.  The Taper Hall of Humanities doubled as a classroom building.  I couldn't be sure exactly where the exterior of the basement office of the Law Review (which I thought was so cool as a teenager, and which the show's protagonist, James Stephens' Hart, held in some esteem too) was, but it's a redress of a side entrance to either Bovard or the neighboring Physical Education Building.

Coming near the nadir of my disillusionment with film school (I'd just completed my one grueling film production class), this seemed a particularly cruel blow.  I had gone back to revisit my cherished ideal of what college should have been and found those industrious, earnest grad students of my TV-fueled fantasy walking the same sunny SoCal campus that encircled my own dreary reality.

That moment was probably my first brush with a quality of living in Los Angeles that I later came to love.  I always get blank looks when I try to explain this to non-Angelenos (especially the ones who've been there and back and complain that there are no tourist attractions to visit), but one of the wonderful things about L.A. is the constant and somehow comforting awareness that you're living out your life in the world's biggest movie set.  The places you pass through in your daily travels are the same backdrops you see in countless movies and TV shows, and as you move through them the collective fiction of your moviegoing experience forms a sort of overlay upon your "real" life.  If you're a film buff like me, your awareness of this duality is constant.  Los Angeles is a meta-city.  Elaine and Benjamin's Berkeley is Hart and Ford's Harvard is my USC, and who am I to privilege one of these meanings over another?  Some people come for the climate, some for the laid-back attitude (which is no myth, trust me) . . . but this is why I love L.A.

Thanks to David Gebhard and Robert Winter's An Architectural Guide to Los Angeles for the crash course in campus architecture.

Ma voiture pourtant assoiffée ignore bravement la station service attrape gogo et file étonnamment silencieuse en plein cœur de l’enfer, Death Valley. Il fait maintenant 50° à l’ombre et ce vent du désert qui vous enflamme dans son manteau brûlant. En haut d’une montée m’attend un banc solitaire où le fantôme d’Antonioni contemple la gueule béante de l’enfer. Un paysage fantastique d’une beauté abrasive. Nous sommes à Zabriskie Point. Un point de non retour, un point de grand vertige. Ce film et moi, nous nous sommes tant aimés, et me voici dans son décor. Feed-back sur années 70, révolte d’une jeunesse assoiffée de justice et affamée de vie, de rêve et d’utopies. Emeutes raciales, sans doute dans le quartier de Watts. Un étudiant noir est tué. Notre héros assiste au meurtre. Recherché, il fuit dans le désert et, à ce point de non retour, Zabriskie Point, rencontre une jeune femme enflammée avec laquelle il rêve le monde. Quel plus beau décor, plus juste et plus parlant pour un tel film que Zabriskie Point dont il porte le nom ? Ici rien ne semble impossible, la terre elle-même semble se rêver dans ce non-lieu, cette utopie géologique. Je m’assieds à côté du fantôme d’Antonioni et je refais son rêve.

Curieux comme ces films cultes dont les héros sont de jeunes révoltés en appellent au vertige, aux lieux où le monde se retourne sous les étoiles, aux promontoires sans avenir. Au-dessus d’Hollywood se trouve l’observatoire où fut filmée une des séquences clefs de « La Fureur de vivre ». La statue de James Dean y est en bonne place, sous les étoiles observées, et au-dessus du vertige du monde. Les 9 lettres d’Hollywood collées sur la colline en face semblent vouloir nous rappeler que la vie est un film. Je note que « La Fureur de vivre » a pour titre original en anglais « Un rebelle sans cause ». C’est bien ainsi qu’on qualifia tous ces jeunes gens qui en mai 68, voulaient rêver le monde. Et « what else ? » Qu’en reste-t-il ? Rien sinon la fureur de vivre, encore et toujours, cette dévorante envie de justice humaine, ce défi à la mort et ce désir toujours de refaire sans arrêt le film du monde. Je monte plus haut, je vais au Point de vue de Dante qui embrasse toute l’étendue de l’enfer. En bas une mer de sel, un écran gigantesque où les nuages se font leur cinéma en ombres chinoises. Je descends au fond de la fournaise. Ce qui me paraissait écran lisse, est un paysage torturé nommé « Le terrain de golf du diable » qui étend ses blocs de sel sur des centaines d’hectares à des dizaines de mètres au dessous du niveau de la mer. Sous cette plaque y coule une eau saumâtre nommée Bad Waters. Je fuis cette fournaise et remonte par l’Artist drive, une route qui dessine une fantastique palette de couleurs sur des pentes torturées avec toutes les ressources des minerais présents dans le sous sol. Quand on s’approche de trop près, on n’y voit rien. Les détails ne parlent pas. Il faut monter toujours monter au point de non retour, à ce lui du vertige. C’est de là-haut qu’on voit l’écran. Les nuages ont raison.

5:32

Although it was a few years ago, I vividly recall a number of the scenes from the feature - "Blow Up" - which affected me greatly both personally and professionally.

The film was set in the swinging sixties in London, England.

The images in the park still resonate; in particular, those of a mime playing a surreal game of tennis which casts nagging doubts in the mind about illusion and reality.

For their day,  the ideas were thought-provoking and ground-breaking.

The visionary auteur was capable of going beyond boundaries - and as a result - he exacted his own inimitable style.

For this reason, he was a director's director.

Martin Scorsese was asked to reflect on Antonioni's body of work.

In a discussion on "L'Aventura", Scorsese noted:

"His visual language was keeping us focusing on the rhythm of the world: the visual rhythms of light and dark, of architectural forms, of people positioned as figures in a landscape that always seemed terrifyingly vast. And there was that tempo, which seemed to be in sync with the rhythm of time, moving slowly, inexorably, allowing what I eventually realized were the emotional shortcomings of the characters - Sandro's frustration, Claudia's self-deprecation - quietly to overwhelm them and push them into another adventure, and then another, and another."

Further, he reflected that,

"His characters floated through life, on impulse to impulse, and everything was eventually revealed as a pretext: the search was for a pretext for being together, and being together was another kind of pretext, something that shaped their lives and gave them a kind of meaning."

Scorsese emphasized that Antonioni seemed to open up new possibilities with each new unveiling. For example, he points out that the last seven minutes of L'Eclisse were even more terrifying and eloquent than the final moments of an earlier picture considered part of a trilogy.

"Antonioni brings us face to face with time and space, nothing more, nothing less. And they stare right back at us. It was frightening. It was freeing. The possibilities of cinema are endless."

According to Scorsese - Antonioni realized something extraordinary - the pain of simply being alive.  And, its mystery.

Kevin Thomas, a Los Angeles Times critic, noted:

"He had the uncanny ability to capture the undercurrents of a particular time and place."

This observation was particularly true in respect to "Zabriskie Point".

At a recent screening it became painfully obvious that in contrast to "Blow Up" - which remains timeless, in many respects - "Zabriskie" appears dated and locked in some-kind-of Twilight Zone.

Undoubtedly, it's due to the fact the piece is set in the turbulent sixties.

In this instant case, Antonioni's vision was hindered by his methods - the pregnant pauses, the off-kilter slant on realism; ultimately,  Zabriskie Point sank in a sea of dashed hopes and good intentions.

A lot of style without substance!

For the most part, the camera shots tended to be gimmicky, too.

This is particularly true in respect to one scene where an architect leans back in a comfortable easy-back chair. Antonioni elected to shoot up from below - strategically setting the character within a frame of his choosing - against a startling vivid blue sky in the background.

As a result, the direction is not seamless, but glaring instead.

In a scene at the sand dunes later - clever camerwork, awesome lighting, and remarkable filmmaking technique - evoke a surreal quality to the desert which is breathtaking. Antonioni's manipulation of the senses manages to conjure up scintillating images - but without legs to stand on - they fall flat. However, the scenes are seductive, none-the-less.

In many respects - "Zabriskie Point" - appears to be an experiment.

A psychedelic one, at that.

In sum, Antonioni's intriguing message appeared to be all about the shifting states of mind that struggle for safer ground.

For a number of bang-on reasons, critics quickly panned the effort, unfortunately.

In my estimation, the obvious was overlooked for the most part.

Antonioni captured the mood of the era, and the instinct of a younger generation, seemingly so distant now.

Today, the celluloid moments - precious as they are in a biographical or historical sense - jump out like a sore thumb (but are relevant none-the-less).

In sum, "Zabriskie Point" is a little clunky and unnatural in form.

But, the images are intriguing to watch.

For Scorsese they are,

"Images that continue to haunt me, inspire me. To expand my sense of what it is to be alive in the world."

Ah, there's a heightened sense of that aliveness, for sure!

1967 - PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
1968 - A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS
1968 - tonite let's all make love in london
1969 - MORE
1969 - UMMAGUMMA
1970 - ATOM HEART MOTHER
1970 - zabriskie point
1971 - MEDDLE
1971 - RELICS
1972 - OBSCURED BY CLOUDS
1973 - DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
1973 - masters of rock
1975 - WISH YOU WERE HERE
1977 - ANIMALS
1979 - THE WALL
1981 - a collection of great dance songs
1983 - THE FINAL CUT
1983 - works
1987 - A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON
1988 - DELICATE SOUND OF THUNDER
1994 - THE DIVISION BELL
1995 - PULSE
1997 - 1967 single samplers
2000 - IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE,THE WALL LIVE
2001 - ECHOES THE BEST OF PINK FLOYD

و آلبوم‌های انفرادی از اعضای گروه
دیوید گیلمور:

1978 - DAVID GILMOUR
1984 - ABOUT FACE
2006 - ON AN ISLAND

نیک میسون:

1981 - Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports
1985 - Profiles

ریچارد رایت:

1978 - WET DREAMS
1996 - BROKEN CHINA

راجر واترز:

1970 - MUSIC FROM THE BODY
1984 - THE PROS AND CONS OF HITCH HIKING
1987 - RADIO K.A.O.S
1987 - WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
1990 - THE WALL - LIVE IN THE BERLIN
1992 - AMUSED TO DEATH
2000 - IN THE FLESH
2002 - flickering flame-solo years, volume 1
2004 - TO KILL THE CHILD & LEAVING BEIRUT
2005 - ÇA IRA

سید برت:

1970 - BARRETT
1970 - THE MADCAP LAUGHS
1988 - OPEL
1988 - The Peel Sessions
1992 - Octupos Best Of Syd Barrett
2001 - Wouldn't You Miss Me

و آلبوم‌هایی که به صورت هدیه در این دی‌وی‌دی هستند:

Star Profile (audio documentary)
David Featuring (مجموعه‌ای ازآثار دیوید گیلمور پیش از پیوستن به گروه و تعدادی اثر دیگر)
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (اجرای ارکسترال آثار گروه):
-Run Like Hell
-Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1 And The Happiest Days Of Our Lives And Another Brick In The Wall, part 2
-Goodbye Blue Sky
-Money
-Hey You
-Wish You Were Here
-On The Turning Away
-Shine On You Crazy Diamond
-When The Tigers Broke Free And Eclipse
Live At Pompei (به صورت ام‌پی‌تری):
-Intro
-Echoes, Part I
-Interview, Part I
-Careful With That Axe, Eugene
-A Saucerful of Secrets
-Interview, Part II
-One of These Days
-Madamoiselle Knobs
-Interview, Part III
-Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
-Echoes, Part II

و آهنگ‌های تکی:

-Hello I Love You (Single by Roger waters)
-Eric Prydz vs Floyd - Proper Education (Cover Of Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2)
-Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2 (Cover By Frantic!)
-Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1 And Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2 And Goodbye Cruel World (Cover By Korn)
-Money (Cover By Velvet Revolver, OST Of "The Italian Job")
-Comfortably Numb (Cover By Anathema)
-One Of The Few (Cover By Anathema)
-Goodbye cruel World (Cover By Anathema)

دیگر بخش‌های این دی‌وی‌دی:
کاور و آرت‌ورک تمامی آثار پینک فلوید و تعدادی از آثار انفرادی اعضا (نمونه یک و دو و سه و چهار)
کمیک استریپ تورپینک فلوید (نمونه یک و دو و سه)
تعدادی از نایاب‌ترین و کم‌یاب‌ترین عکس‌های اعضای گروه و سایر تصاویر مربوط به پینک فلوید
کامل‌ترین اشعار (حاوی تمام حرف‌هایی که در آهنگ‌ها گفته می‌شود، پیغام‌های مخفی و سخنان آغازین و پایانی اهنگ‌ها) آلبوم‌های گروه به صورت فایل متنی
تعدادی اسکرین‌سیور، تم برای دسک‌تاپ، فونت، آیکون‌ها، وال‌پیپرها و فایل‌های متنوع دیگر.

بهای هر یک از این دی‌وی‌دی‌ها 7000 تومان است. برای سفارش دادن این مجموعه به آدرس: dvdvendeur@gmail.com میل بزنید یا از ساعت 07 تا 23 با شماره 09369002953 تماس بگیرید.

"Making a picture in America brings with it one single risk: the risk of becoming the object of a discussion so wide in range that the quality of the film itself is forgotten." Though Antonioni said this about Zabriskie Point, and about making a film in the US, the principle is much broader than those topics alone. This was considered Antonioni's "flop," but of course prevailing factors may have led to that conclusion, rather than the film itself leading to it. Antonioni's first stint in America, after the mammoth success of his first English-language film (Blow-Up), was undoubtedly overhyped. Antonioni chose a quintessentially American topic to illustrate a quintessentially human condition. But by depicting the youth counterculture movement of the Sixties, Antonioni was accused of naively identifying himself with the youth rather than "The Man."

The documentary-style opening to the film is rather unlike Antonioni's previous films, which are more like canvasses for his repainting of reality in highly aesthetic visuals. Similarly, his use of color is less overt than it was in Blow-Up, which was less overt than it was in Red Desert, his first color film. But to label Zabriskie Point as a "counterculture" or "protest" film does great violence to Antonioni's work. In the same way that Antonioni portrayed mod London in Blow-Up not as London per se, but as his version of London, so Zabriskie Point depicts America and its youth movement at the time as Antonioni saw it, and as he saw it through the eyes of the youth themselves. Blow-Up was shamelessly and wonderfully shot through the eyes of David Hemmings' character the photographer. Antonioni was considered a genius for shooting a film through the lens of a photographer within the film. But in Zabriskie Point, by removing the somewhat literal camera device from within the film, it seems that many have missed the subtlety that Antonioni would have his viewers watch through the eyes of another, for a particular perspective.

In superficial terms, this may be the most "realist" of Antonioni's films, at least since L'Avventura. Whereas in the past, Antonioni mainly went with trained actors (at least for his protagonists), this film's main characters were not only completely untrained but went by their given names (first and last) within the film. Likewise, the student group within the film went by the actual name of the group they were playing. The beginning scene signals a documentary feel that will pervade much of the rest of the film. Below the surface, however, the film is fairly typical of Antonioni's previous works. To equivocate Zabriskie Point with all that he did before would do it a disservice, though. I noticed a major difference between this film and Antonioni's others from before. The depiction of love was the purest and most optimistic yet. For once, a couple was not falling in love illicitly or in a one-sided manner. L'Avventura had a man and woman becoming infatuated with one another while they were supposed to be searching for his girlfriend and her best friend. La Notte had an unhappy marriage with a tortured woman and an unfaithful man. L'Eclisse had a single woman eventually allowing herself to be seduced by a man with a wandering eye. Red Desert may have featured a relatively stable marriage, but the husband and wife were all-too-willing to participate in an orgy, and the wife allowed herself put herself within reach of another man. Blow-Up's main character was utterly dispassionate, and saw woman only as an opportunity to play or as a means to his own ends. The one marriage shown in the film had a husband objectifying his wife and a wife who couldn't think about him even in the most intimate moments. In Zabriskie Point, the two young innocents have a Romeo-and-Juliet-like affair, but of a purer sort. Their love is not unrequited, but it is impossible, considering the scenario in which the young man is caught. Though something resembling an orgy does appear in the film, it is relatively monogamistic, with a couple brief exceptions. (It was a time of free love, after all.)

Notes: fuzzy, unfocused, uncertain, flinching, disoriented camera of students in opening credits (similar to camera in opening credits of Red Desert). "Willing to die?" Fake "natural" scenery in city on buildings. Lots of billboards. Identifies himself as "Carl [sic] Marx" to police. Priest also booked, along with professors. Fake plastic people and animals in commercial being screened by Rod Taylor et al. "Sunny Dunes Land Development Company." Outside RT's office window is another building, American flag between. Shot of RT from below desk - tape recorder, RT, window, flag on next building. Can't get sandwich, but gets a plane. RT's office discusses "cost of blasting rock slopes." Young boys chase her. "I needed to get off the ground." Still shot of dead trees as they drive away. Barren but beautiful landscape. She says it's peaceful, he says it's dead. Antonioni as usual identifies with the woman. She says nothing is terrible when he says childhood was. Most reciprocated lovemaking in all of Antonioni? One with landscape - covered in dust. 90-degree shot switch after he aims gun at cop near outhouse - perspective changes radically. Investigative work by cops & press after plane robbery - unusual for Ant. Camera movement around plane after landing, shooting. She hears news on radio among cacti in desert. She avoids artificial pool, gets wet in natural falls. Explosion from many angles, repeatedly. Lawn furniture, Wonder Bread, newspaper, books, magazines - reminiscent of plastic commercial earlier.

A long time ago The Doors were commissioned to write a song for Zabriskie Point.  It was part of that genre of films that wasn't about singing bytches who were happy to go punch a time clock (Doris Day).   It was about drugs and bombs and phucking strangers  in Death Valley.  The movie was whatever, but the cinematography was luscious, really.   So was that Italian dude in the pic.  Anyway, I found this pic while I was doing an image search on something and for some reason it called to me.  

Actually it just made me remember The Doors.  The song they did for the movie was called L'America and I remember the guy who directed the movie hated the hell out of that song.   It's on the L.A. Woman album.  That's a kick ass, soulful album, yo!   The song blows but the rest of the album is good stuff.  Yeah, that's basically it.  I miss the Doors!  The movie's worth a glance, too, if you can find it on cable or Amazon.com or Netflix or wherever you do movies.   I only ever saw it because of The Doors connection, but it was sort of a neat little departure from reality.

Peace.  

^ Trailer for Zabriskie Point.   Not Phucking Saphe For Worque.

(the following is another example of the kind of VISUAL content we are interested in running. anything which pushes the boundaries, bring it on ...)

======================================================================

SUPER PRINCESS
(from the ZABRISKIE POINT SHOREDITCH series)

image by reinhard schleining
© 2004 - 2005, all rights reserved

A többi kép itt.

A teljesség kedvéért itt van ez a remek Landsat szatelitfelvétel is (forrás: NASA Earth Observatory). Kitűnően látszik a különbség a Death Valley két oldala között: a nyugati oldalon (amelyik kevésbé meredek, és nagyjából vető-mentes) hatalmas, elnyúlt alakú törmelékkúpok alakultak ki, míg a meredekebb keleti oldalt, ahol a nagy vetők vannak, kisebb, de tökéletes félkör alakú kúpok jellemzik, melyeknek kisebbek a víz- és törmelékgyűjtő területeik.

The sun is getting ready to set...Hot today, in the mid 90s.  A slight breeze blows from the south, a nice cooling effect to the constant sun from the west...The sun sits about an inch and a half off the peak...Lips are chapped a bit.

The name "Death Valley" conjures up images of a place of intense heat, sand, no water and pure desolation.  Some even say that if there is a hell on earth, Death Valley may just be the place.

Gold-seeking forty-niners would agree with this assessment, as many found their destiny there.

But there is more to this jewel of the Mojave Desert. 

We arrived on Friday afternoon via the road that passes by Telescope Peak.  The peak was still snow-covered above the 10,000 foot level.  Even in the hot desert, winter can bring snow capped mountains.

On Saturday morning we checked out Badwater.  At 282 feet below sea level, it is the lowest terrestial point in the Western Hemisphere.  We learned of the Badwater snails, a species that exists in the small puddles of water on the salt flat.  We walked out on the flat and took in the expanse of the valley, peaks rising to the far west and the near east of us.

Back in the car, we headed to Artist's Palette.  A winding, narrow road leads to a point on the rocky foothills that emanates soft colors of green, purple, yellow, red, blue and orange.  The colors are little more than mineral deposits.

We completed the one-way Artist's Drive and went around for a second time.  This time we unhitched the mountain bike from the rack.  I rode the narrow, blind curves and twisting hills with my first ever car shuttle following behind me.

We placed the bike back on the rack and headed for Golden Canyon. 

The brochure at the trailhead describes Golden Canyon as "a fascinating showcase of the effects of water in an arid land."

We walked the interpretive trail and learned the geologic history of the canyon.  In short, we learned that more than five million years ago a lake had existed where we were standing and that the rocks have been fractured, faulted and folded since then, providing their current appearance. 

Also, we took in the "showcase" sites named Red Cathedral--a red rock cliff of unparalled beauty--and Manly Beacon--an immense golden rock reaching high above the canyon.

At the trail's end, we decided to take the connecting trail over to Zabriskie Point, a photographer's dream.  Along the way we hiked through hills of intense yellow.  We photographed and hoped that the neopolitan ice-cream colors of a different set of hills would come out.  We stood in awe of nature when we came to a vista of more intense yellow bisected by a deep contrasting ash black, dry river bed.

We moved on to the Point and rested for a few minutes before deciding that the bus loads of tourists were too much for our liking.  We meandered down the hill to the dry river bed.  We took Gower Gulch back to the car, the highlight being a short bouldering session over what was at one time a cascading waterfall.

Tired and seeking a cool drink, we headed to the nearest gas station.  Along the way we passed by the famous sand dunes and the lesser known Devil's Cornfield, an eerie field of wind and sand created hummocks of arrowweed.

On the way home, we watched the setting sun paint the Panamint Mountains rose and purple.  We talked of our dreams.  We talked of our lives.

Soulifying.

(written 15 April 2001)