Mr. Saul

I'm not Mr. Saul, but I play him in the movies. My most recent, and likely last, installment of my "Mr. Saul" film series screened this evening with an assortment of other films at the RPL as part of the Filmpool spring premier. We also screened "Bonnie's Indescribable Predicament" with Eric Hill playing a live score on a keyboard. We had a question and answer thing afterward, no one asked me anything.

fast paced creativity

In the course of three hours I worked on, hmm, I think about 3 or four projects. First thing this morning (or about 10-10:30am) Eric and I shot footage in the studio to create homages to four different Norman McLaren films. I then set up the microphone for a recording with Elder Betty for the End of Life project and, while it was set up anyway, recorded an all new "Mr. Saul" soundtrack. After the recording with Elder Betty, I created and copied to transparencies, the title sequence for the 35mm ray-o-gram style film I've been making. All this while almost dizzy with exhaustion since William woke me up at 5 (I went to sleep at 1:30) and was dehydrated from the physical activity of the shoot (lots of physical movement).
Here is a silent first cut of a video we shot today in reference to McLaren's 1956 "Blur Test".

253

As I write this, William is in bed, supposed to go to sleep. He says he's sad and lonely. He says he is slad.
This evening I went to the "Unscripted" session at the Dunlop Art Gallery. Some interesting points were made about art and cities, but it wasn't the madhouse that I heard the last session was. I began grabbing interesting words from the air to create a new "Mr. Saul" film, probably for the Cathedral festival. I also convinced Jeannie Mah, Elwood Jimmy, and Lorne Boeg to appear in my Modern/Warhol video/films. Margaret and I saw the Warhol exhibit today (her for the first time, me for the second) and I spent most of the time watching the 90 minutes of films I'd not had time for previously. I realized, while watching them, that I shouldn't be doing a 10 minute set of portraits in Warhol style, but obviously I should do 15! I'm calling the set "15 minutes of famous". My role call is now Tyler Banadyga, Leesa Streifler, Eric Hill, Carle Steel, William, me, the three new ones, and six more I've not shot yet. Margaret will be one of them, that leaves five.
I thought I had one of the three dvds done for New Dance Horizons today, but when I looked at it, the image disappears inexplicably after the first two minutes. I recall there was some sort of error when exporting the video, but it looked in tact. I guess I was lazy and didn't check it far enough in. Grrrr. I need this done and deleted off the hard drive so I can move on.
Saw my doctor this morning, he says there's nothing too wrong with my liver (recall test with giant needle a couple of weeks ago) but abnormalities could be from some fat on my liver and I should look into my levels of triglycerides. Hitting the books again I guess.

USA

Got a haircut today, Margaret thinks its shorter than usual but since I only get around to it very 9 months, one must be extreme.
The 50-104 Festival began, I screened three films from my "Mr. Saul's Utopia" series to a small crowd at the Museum. They repeat tomorrow at 9pm. Other films I saw tonight that impressed me included Jason Britski's even more formal than usual two new pieces, and a really wonderful silent film of the Niagara Falls by John Price "View of the Falls from the Canadian Side". It was a generally odd bunch of films, perhaps because of the high number of works from artists or at least from people coming out of visual arts and/or design background/training. 4.5 hours was a bit of a stretch, but enjoyable. The only food available was popcorn however, and as I can no longer eat that, it's lucky I snuck in a peanut butter cup.

Highway 61

William and I ate KD and pistachios in front of "The Flintstone Flyer" today during his lunch break.

I went down to the Filmpool and dropped off "Loose Screw" and also got word that "Mr. Saul's day at the Beach", "Mr. Saul's Definitive Portrait of His Family", and "Mr. Saul on How to Be a Father" are all to be screened at Festival 50, 104 in a couple of weeks. This is the first time multiple films from the Mr. Saul's Utopia series have screened at the same time, so it's a bit weird. They are super-8 films of my family at different times and places, aware of the camera, waving and posing in front of places we have gone or pretending to have fun. Accompanying the films is a voice over by a character called "Mr. Saul", a man of limited vision who is more than a bit certain that everything is does is correct. He is particularly proud of his prowess with the super-8 camera and the accompanying zoom lens. I've performed a number of these live, but the jury does not seem to have asked me to do a new work, and those are usually the only ones I perform with verbally.