Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:58 — 53.2MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Talking with Bill Ramsey on William Ramsey Investigates, on Seen & Not Seen, movie violence, identity creation, dysfunctional family life, Jonathan Lethem, Talking Heads, Where Eagles Dare, Clint Eastwood, violence against women, Straw Dogs, male violence & mother-enmeshed men, Taxi Driver & Travis Bickle, Pauline Kael & the Paulettes, Roman Polanski and sexual deviation, Charles Manson & mind control, Chaos, Jeffrey Epstein, Blue Velvet, David Lynch, Kubrick & A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, a Hollywood pilgrimage, selling one’s soul to success, the Hollywood rainbow, suspending disbelief, the #MeToo movement, intelligence community, movie mobsters, and how to extricate oneself from culture-generated false identification, moving towards wholeness.
Songs: “Seen & Not Seen” by Talking Heads; “Clint Eastwood” by Gorrillaz (special remix with Whitley Strieber); “Jaycub” by Sparklehorse.
Jasun,
1) Would it be accurate to say you were in part raised by (screens) technology rather than other other humans?
2) Given how influential film is for you, I’m not clear why you’re not doing fiction?
I have never phrased it that way and I haven’t felt a need to; it seems so much more true now, and almost universally so; I think you are underscoring the medium aspect as well as the message, which is very reasonable and think I am working my way towards that aspect as I write more & more about technology & culture.
I have written fiction but not yet found a publisher.
Killed time/brain cells yesterday watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; a film made by a boy raised by screens, who never grew up but is now growing old.
Bullet points for a potential future conversation:
—QT, the incel who, when he got half-way there, and then changed his mind, repented via alternate history revenge fantasies, in which wrongs are righted, and the violence almost appears justified.
—The cultural cul-de-sac of nostalgia with it’s endless what ifs…
—Manson family as first generation TV babies, and the failed catharsis of cultural violence
I want to make an alternate history movie in which young Quentin’s TV and VCR are stolen and he learns to garden.
Great points… I haven’t seen OUTIH but it’s easy to guess the twist ending based on the comments made and QT’s previous stunt in Inglourious Bastards, playing into the Mandela Effect meme as well as acting as a cultural precog who sends out his own avatar-thought-police to exterminate the criminals before they can commit the dastardly deed.
The juxtapositioning of movie-TV culture with the “physical culture” of Nature is timely, in more ways than one. I suspect young Quentin’s grapes would die on the vine and he would break into his neighbor’s house to steal the TV… How about an alt history in which Hitler became a successful artist?
I really like both alternative history ideas being positive (QT being a Gardener and Hitler being an actual artist).
The sublimation of those two would be interesting to see at least with what world events might have been in the second one.
Also, I’m extremely curious as to what your fiction writing is like.I some how imagine it being like a combination of Charlie Kaufman,Don Delillo and Hunter S Thompson.Although I’m not as literature knowledgeable as I would like to be(music and visual arts being my strong points) so hopefully that does not come across as a insult.Gib’s writing also reminded me of Delillo in a certain way fyi.
Maybe we could coax a few paragraphs out of you for kicks…
I love it! This summer, Quentin Tarantino is . . . Adolf’s Gardener.
I think QT might play the gardener role á la Peter Sellers in “Being There”.
Hitler: I’m having trouble with my watercolor depicting a hypothetical invasion of Poland.
QT: I like peaches and grapes.
Question off the topic: Given the complex relationship you had with your brother and your view on his worldview, would you still recommend reading Dandy In The Underworld?
That would depend why you want to read it.
Entertainment. I like reading fiction: Haruki Murakami, Paul Bowles, Proust, Graham Greene, Stefan Zweig, Jean Genet etc. Autobiographies are often more fiction than fact. So, is it a good read?
Of course I can hardly claim impartiality but IMHO it’s not well written & is rather tedious. If you enjoy my brother’s television performances, OTOH, you might enjoy the book
Thanks for the honesty. I just purchased Paper Tiger also, so I thought it might be interesting to read one after the other. I’ve watched a lot of his YouTube videos and most just seem sad and seedy. No offense.
None taken
BTW, I have a good Haruki Murakami/Whitley Strieber Connection that I’ll detail when I get out of work.
Wasn’t it ascribed to D. H. Lawrence that success is the “bitch goddess”?
-=-
Baudrillard points out that Disney Land is there to perform as a place you go to make you forget that the culture you are in is a simulation itself. Art: Tech: embedded simulation and simulacra. Same for music and film. And money. Another word for love is belief. The belief in the unreal is the primate and maybe actual cause of all evil. Live / life backwards.