Understanding v. Translation

Soon, I want to come up with a list of what I like and don’t like about New York so that I end up motivated to be on the ‘like’ side of things. One thing I do like is seeing great art and getting access to my artistic heroes.

Wong Kar-Wai spoke at the apple store last night. He was promoting his new movie, My Blueberry Nights. Wong said the movie was based on a short film that he did. He also mentioned that he had filmed a restaurant scene where Maggie Chueng serves Tony some pie in In the Mood for Love that didn’t make the cut.

I liked him which was a relief. I expected abstraction. But he had a good balance between whimsy/abstraction and precise well-thought-out viewpoints. WKW would be good company on a road trip.

When discussing location in My Blueberry Nights, WKW spoke of needing a physical countertop to show the tangible and metaphorical distance breached between Jude and Norah when they had that kiss.

When a question from the audience got too abstract and truth-seeking (something about his definition of love), he spoke honestly and said that he couldn’t try to explain. He commented with Matisse’s quote about “he who wants to dedicate himself to painting should start by cutting out his tongue. My views are in my movies.”

I liked how he was a fan of Tennessee Williams. And I enjoyed how he chose his cinematographer for this movie. They went on a road trip and took pictures together and looked over each other’s shots at the end of the day.

I liked what he said about diners and coffee shops -- His familiarity with them. He spoke of getting the pulse of a city or locale in America with his crew at bars at night where strangers are expected to converse with each other to diners in the morning where the locals’ day starts.

He mentioned knowing all the great cafes for writers in Hong Kong. According to him, they are quiet; not too busy; and the waiters and waitresses are incredibly nice. When he used to be a scriptwriter, he’s spend hours there and that’s how he knows the ebb and flow of places like cafes and diners.

I liked his comments on making movies during the golden age of cinema. Someone tried to theorize or pontificate on a template system he used to make his earlier films but WKW dismissed that. During the golden age, all you needed was to say genre and who you had attached to the film in order to get investors. So Chunking Express was a cop movie even though it had nothing really to do with cops. There just happened to be a cop in it.

The man wore sunglasses. Oh, and he had interesting things to say about “letting go” and how that was the point of My Blueberry Nights. I saw a janky copy of it recently. I’ll give it more of a chance soon.

Also, digging Alan Watt lately.



And this is awesome. It's not healthy when I think someone is so dope that even the act of drinking a pepsi and taking a pic is interesting to me.