Wh00ps

Stan Brakhage seems like a really weird guy. Granted his positive "you can do anything if you put your mind to it" attitude is nice and it made the PDF a lot easier to read but I couldn't help thinking that he's the kind of guy that calls people "pilgrim." When I read the voice in my head was of the Family Guy character that lead the CPR class and the PTA meeting. You know, the effeminate one that always talks about his cat and the snacks that are in the back of the room. Moving on. Seeing as how he wrote this in 1966 I'm a bit confused as to why he had to explain how to load a projector; especially in paragraph form. It would have been a ton easier if he used diagrams and pictures rather than run on sentences. My guess is that he's trying to be sure that people understand film as thoroughly as possible so that their art can flourish to the endless boundaries that are achievable. Every time he told me to drop the book if I was excited I have to admit: I was tempted. That wasn't the assignment, though, so I continued on. The part in the "Dear Gregory" letter where he spoke about his relationship with Kenneth Anger was really interesting. It must have been amazing to be part of that time period where there was so much innovation and experimentation going on. I've watched "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" recently but sadly it wasn't in the triptych format; crazy film either way.
His comment on page 9 that states "If I make a collage film which can't be printed or projected at all, then it is, after all, more of a necklace or wall decoration than a film." Of course if you make a film that cant be shown then it's worthless. Why did he feel the need to write that down?
The part where he talks about how to make a film a daylight film was a new concept to me. I had never taken into consideration the effect a blue sky has on sunlight thus making one have to filter light to achieve the same effect. The way he follows all of his profound statements up with "if you feel the same then bless you" seems sort of condescending to me.
It kind of feels wrong to be reading a "how-to" on something as creativity based as direct film manipulation. I understand that he is just giving suggestions on what one could do if they were to pursue this method, but I feel if the person was into it enough to read this long-ass article they probably have some sort of idea of how they were going to go about it. The thing where he talks about how the glue crystalizes when you heat it up with an iron; how the hell did he figure that out? This guy must be constantly take things and sticking, gluing, rubbing, squirting, and oozing them onto film just to see how it looks. I have to admit, it sounds like fun.