From: James Kreul (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Feb 21 2004 - 10:42:43 PST
Mr. Peralta,
Thanks for your posts regarding the other side of the current Jack Smith
debate. The NPR piece that ran on the story made me try to connect some
dots between the story and the posts on Frameworks from both
sides. Perhaps you could help connect some of those dots (I'm sure I'm not
the only one thinking at least some of these questions.)
First, could you give us a general synopsis/description of the "You Don't
Know Jack" documentary? Is it a general survey of the life/career of Jack
Smith, or does the documentary actually focus on the legal battle between
the family and the Plaster Foundation? The only quote from the Mary Jordan
in the NPR piece (there should have been more) concerned her argument that
Jack Smith was quite close to his family, based upon letters and
correspondence she had access to and had read (the commentator suggested
that the Plaster Foundation's response to this was that these letters were
from the 60s and 70s, not from the end of his life). Obviously, the
historical argument that Smith was close to his family is different than
the historical argument generally well known...perhaps the source of the
title, You Don't Know Jack ? Despite the apparent difficulty getting
access to the Smith material, clearly the Jordan has had access to what I
assume were letters in the family's possession (or were the letters she
mentioned held by the Plaster Foundation)? I'm not familiar with Mary
Jordan outside of this discussion, so I'm curious about her general
historical argument in the film.
Second, could you give us a rough timeline of how the project
developed? Specifically, I'd like to know how much of Smith's work you and
Jordan had seen before starting the project. I can imagine many aspects of
Smith's career inspiring people to want to make a documentary, so I'm
curious which aspect of his career inspired you Jordan to begin the
documentary. The discussions about access to Flaming Creatures has
confused some of us on this list (it has confused me, at least), because to
many of us it is probably the most accessible of his available films
(through both Canyon Cinema and the Film-Maker's Cooperative), and probably
the first film of Smith's that we've seen. Both the Canyon and Coop folks
have responded to you about the availability of the films because for
others on this list it is pretty much common knowledge how to see Jack
Smith films (that doesn't mean that everyone knows it, of course). So it
confuses some of us when you say that you didn't want to see the film under
the conditions set by the Donnell Library. Does this mean that you had
seen the film but you didn't want to view that copy under those conditions,
or does this mean at that point you had never seen the film? Like I said,
perhaps there are other aspects of his career that have inspired the
documentary, so if the more readily available material like Flaming
Creatures was not a starting point for you, what was? (This is not meant
to imply that you didn't know his work, I'm genuinely curious what parts of
his work did you know/have access to that has inspired the documentary.)
I have absolutely nothing at stake in all of this, I'm just curious and I'd
like to connect some dots. A Dorothy Parker quote has been going through
my head lately (and I might get it a little wrong here): Curiosity is the
cure for boredom...there is no cure for curiosity.
James Kreul
UW-Madison
email suppressed
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