From: Marilyn Brakhage (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Oct 21 2005 - 00:42:10 PDT
On Thursday, October 20, 2005, at 05:44 PM, Mark Toscano wrote:
> and B.) Stan tended to often accept even
> terrible prints from the lab, either because of a
> certain fatalism, a certain passivity, a certain sense
> of wanting the lab to 'collaborate' in the look of his
> films, or all three.
>
Mark,
I think Stan is sometimes misunderstood with regard to his acceptance
-- or not -- of certain prints, and that he was not nearly so
lackadaisical as is sometimes supposed. There's a great piece of
Stan's writing to read in this respect that I think you would find
interesting. I am going to copy and send it to you. It's a 1965
letter "To Andrew Meyers" printed in Brakhage Scrapbook. It is too
long to quote fully here, but a few bits:
"I remember very well the day I first received a one-lite print . . .
of . . . Interim . . . I was horrified at the loss of subtle detail in
grays, the harshness of line, the over-exposure, the under-exposure,
etcetera. . . . They patiently explained to me . . . light changes
have to be made in the printing. . . . When I made my first color
print, of In Between, thru San Francisco's Palmer Films, I went thru
print torments all over again, even WITH an answer print; for the
slightest variation in light values of course changes ALL color values
and balances: and I went thru fresh tortures with each color print . .
. even tho' I am obviously more pleased by Western Cine's work,
particularly with reference to latitude of color quality, I HAVE left
DOG STAR MAN: PART 1 at Palmer Labs because their particular
processing, etc. produces a print which is (HOW shall I describe
something so subtle?--), well, "colder," "slicker," of a "polished
density" which seems appropriate to THAT particular part of DSM, with
all its reference to even the Hollywood drama, and the print quality
serves to set it, thusly, apart from the overall tone of ALL other
parts of that film. . . . I have concerned myself to an unusual
extent, since my first betrayed sensitivity in print making, with the
particularities of the subject; and, at the same time, I have HAD to
come to accept the particularities of prints and the resultant
generalities of the medium -- (I must confess that at the present, I am
having a rage against "greenish" proclivity of the new Eastman print
stock, a MOST picayune rage for one of my experience in the medium and
yet, it is that very experience which has increased my sensitivity to
the slightest variance and has, momentarily I hope, narrowed the
tolerance my experience has also provided for me -- "momentarily I
hope" because there is a tremendous danger for the artist, and for
anyone, in such a critic-type use of sensitivity . . . we need only,
here, take warning from Charles Ives' trembling fits over the dropped
fork at the table or from Edgard Varese's necessity, for a number of
years, to remove himself to the relative silence of Death Valley . . .
and for the film-maker, in such a newly bastard medium of constantly
shifting values, it would be madness at the second step . . . NO--I
must, rather, put up with the green moth wings and, MORE, come to see
how perfectly MOTHLIGHT sustains its original form in these new color
balances, and, more YET, how beautifully it grows anew in this new
Eastman spring of itself.)
". . . I have a most specific little "song" calling me into a techne of
its own, informed in its coming into being with/and/of Eastman green
and no-wise concerned, now, with other/later-Eastman
in-clin-tone-ations and/or with costs and my, no doubt, future cussing
thereabouts -- "Song 11" . . . and so the songs ARE, yes, of a
"going-onness" beyond my previous imaginings which clutched, but didn't
brake, at "10." " SB
So, I would say that Stan cared very much about the details of
printing, but also did not wish to be driven mad by it. Sometimes he
would take a more critical, and at other times a more fatalistic,
stance. Primarily, he needed to be able to keep on going on, and not
let it defeat him. . . . However, I'm sure he'd be extremely
appreciative of the pains that are being taken in the preservation
process. (As long as you don't go mad, of course.)
Best,
Marilyn
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