If there are some missing here, it's either my mistake, or they haven't meant too much to me, or I'll make it up in a later post, so don't judge — but let's see how many are mentioned by the Academy or other In Memoriam outlets.
Michael Snow
(1928-2023)
One of the most brilliant of filmmakers. Canadian. Made <---->, Presents, La région centrale, *Corpus Callosum, and many other masterpieces. I saw Wavelength at Cornell three times on film under the tutelage of the late and great Don Fredericksen. Characterized as an 'avant-garde' or 'experimental' filmmaker — except there's no such thing. Only cinema filmmakers. Narrative pervades all, or else remains absent sometimes in presence of sheer sensation and cerebral highlights like lightning flashes in clouds, warnings of precipitations.
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Christine Laurent
(1944-2023)
Among the finest screenwriters in history, in collaboration with Pascal Bonitzer and Jacques Rivette on the projects of the latter's films from La bande des quatre to his final work 36 vues du pic Saint Loup. Director and actress, — we mostly know her in America for her writing accomplishments, and nothing for her other undertakings, which must be corrected.
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Paul Vecchiali
(1930-2023)
Director, producer, critic-writer, actor. Largely unknown in America outside of devoutly cinephilic circles. Auteur of over fifty films, hero of gay themes/rights, fighter of the AIDS epidemic that holocausted millions from the late '70s ('visibly' from then onward; likely stretching decades before pre-en-masse) through the '80s and '90s forward. In 2010 published L'encinéclopédie, his two-volume personal history of the cinema from the 1930s plus; A-K, then L-Z: 884 pages.
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Andy Rourke
(1964-2023)
Ultimate musician master bass-guitarist. Bassist for The Smiths, the most powerful band in the world, 1982-1987, among the three most meaningful bands in the world, 1982-present. Dead of pancreatic cancer. Johnny Marr and Mike Joyce have written beautiful tributes to him, but I'd like to quote Morrissey's in whole:
"BEAM OF LIGHT — Sometimes one of the most radical things you can do is to speak clearly. When someone dies, out come the usual blandishments ... as if their death is there to be used. I'm not prepared to do this with Andy. I just hope ... wherever Andy has gone ... that he's OK. He will never die as long as his music is heard. He didn't ever know his own power, and nothing that he played had been played by someone else. His distinction was so terrific and unconventional and he proved it could be done. He was also very, very funny and very happy, and post-Smiths, he kept a steady identity — never any manufactured moves. I suppose, at the end of it all, we hope to feel that we were valued. Andy need not worry about that. —MORRISSEY"
I would recommend you listen to such immortal songs as "Barbarism Begins at Home", or "The Queen Is Dead", or "Interesting Drug", or "November Spawned a Monster." May you rest painlessly Andy Rourke: you remain perhaps my favorite bassist aside from Paul McCartney. And Colin Greenwood, Carol Kane, Paul Simonon. Maybe cheesy Alex James.
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Tina Turner
(1939-2023)
Another note from Morrissey, posted days after his eulogy of Andy Rourke:
"LIFE IS A PIGSTY. Tina Turner — you die, we die."
Tina, I don't believe you ever forgave Ike, and I don't think you ever should have. I don't think Ronnie Spector should ever have forgiven Phil. In some unforecasted comet-crash, you all came together. Phil Spector at one point, probably 1966, thought he'd reached his production-songwriting-zenith with "River Deep – Mountain High." The single wasn't an immediate hit, but it lives among his greatest (cf. "Be My Baby" / "And He Kissed Me" / "This Could Be the Night") but Tina it is yours, celestially. Your electric orgasmic performance drives me wild but I'm too bald to shake hair and shoot sweat: it must remain internal. You shall remain eternal. "You die, we die"... in some way, way beyond.
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Kenneth Anger
(1927-2023)
Dearest Kenneth, — not my place to say, as when New York women once began correspondence, "Dearest Philip..." — your films mean the world to me. Someone recently said on Twitter that Anger was one of the only people who understood cinema as ritual. Each picture of his was a spellcast. There exists this strange idea deemed "avant-garde" or "experimental" cinema — but isn't any film worth its reels the same? Or likewise, any "experimental" film also a narrative? "To win friends and influence [its] uncle"? All good films occult — cf. Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return. Much talk about Anger inventing the music video, especially with regard to Scorpio Rising — would that were the case! Dubious. A friend of mine once told me that Aleister Crowley (pronounced "cro-ly" I recently learned) should be taken seriously, and that most people 'invoke' him as a byword or crutch or perfect rumor-mongered monster; said friend has read many of his works, and one of these days I'll catch up. Anger was certainly up to speed. By the way, the image above comes from Anger's Skype-appearance on Ghost Adventures a few years back.
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Cynthia Weil
(1940-2023)
The songwriter empress co-auteur with Barry Mann and Phil Spector behind "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "Uptown,""Walking in the Rain," etc. Also the show-tune "On Broadway" — not my thing, that one. (If she lived on the West Coast, perhaps we would have had "Sonoma! Sonora! Sedona!".) One of a kind, from a bygone era; see also Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King, and so on. Sorely missed.
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Jacques Rozier
(1926-2023)
Director of Adieu Philippine, Maine Océan, Threatened in his 90s with eviction in the new wave of landlords. Will be writing more on him in this space. Keep your eyes appealed and applied.
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Françoise Gilot
(1921-2023)
Painter. Writer. The most beautiful of Picasso's muses — apologies to contextualize her within her one-time partner-lovers. Let's allow the work to speak for itself. (The very good Times obituary is here.) Images from my friend Nicolas Lasnibat.
