I tore through Abel Ferrara’s memoir in a few days. It’s one of the best artist books I’ve ever read. I’ve been watching or rewatching his movies one after another building up to writing something about him. The book definitely casts the movies in a new light. Like home videos from one guy’s life.

Just before that I was similarly consumed with Denis Johnson. The thing I wrote about him came out last week. The ratio or relationship between their books and movies are sort of inverted, of course, since Johnson was a writer not a filmmaker. Still, there’ve been enough movies made or proposed to make that medium a conduit for new readers for his books.

From what I know, Ferrara only ever wanted to make movies and Johnson just wanted to write, yet these other media play their part. In a smaller way, live readings are like that to writers. I did a reading last week and wondered not for the first time what, if any, effect the event had on the work.

In a very practical sense, since the thing I read was a work in progress and I had an imposed time limit, an hour before the reading I sat at the bar with a bottle of wine and my Parker Jotter, crossing out paragraph after paragraph, switching page sequences, ripping papers in half and crumpling discarded segments.

The next morning, I used the doctored sheets as reference for the digital file of the ongoing thing. A movie isn’t a book and a book isn’t a reading but sometimes each will play its part.

RIP Bela Tarr. One of my favorite filmmakers. Here’s an old review I wrote of a frustrating little book about him.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a page of some of my books and favorites by others purchasable directly from the Death Star (AKA Ingram).

Go see Jarmusch’s new one if you’ve ever had a father, mother, or siblings.