‘A pioneer in the American Independent Film world, Gordon is best known for her bold explorations of themes related to sexuality. Her early short films, most notably Empty Suitcases, won numerous awards and Festival acclaim worldwide, including showings at the Berlin International Film Festival, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Biennial. Variety (1984) marked her debut as a feature film director, particularly in light of the film’s invitational showing at The Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight.
‘It’s been four decades since filmmaker Bette Gordon moved to New York from the Midwest and took up residence in a loft on Greenwich Street, Tribeca. It was the early ’80s, and Gordon’s new stomping ground was a relative no man’s land—the perfect canvas for penniless artists with big ideas and the space to realize them. “It was a ghost town,” Gordon recalls. “There were no stores, maybe one restaurant and a couple of very cool bars where cool people hung out.” The Lower Manhattan Ocean Club was one such place. On any given night, you could find now award-winning director and painter Julian Schnabel in the kitchen cooking up whatever seafood delights were on offer for the likes of Patti Smith, David Byrne, Rene Ricard, Basquiat—basically anybody breaking new ground in the downtown art scene. “There was also Magoos, where artists would trade work for tab,” Gordon adds, “and the Mudd Club where we went rather than Studio 54, which was over by that time.” Gordon herself worked at a place called the Collective for Living Cinema, an outpost for avant-garde film, which at the time operated out of a high-ceilinged loft on White Street in Tribeca.
‘As Gordon recalls, it was a time of creative camaraderie where those wanting to make some noise, whether through art, music, film, or whatever it was that got them plugged in and inspired, found other like-minded artists rallied to the cause. “It was easy to meet people. It wasn’t driven by market, it was driven by people’s creative inspiration to make film and art for each other,” she explains.
‘While Gordon began her filmmaking career as a structuralist, she soon became involved with issues that joined film and feminism. In the midst of the scorched earth theories that all but prohibited images of women on the screen lest they provide voyeuristic satisfaction for “the male gaze,” she insisted on training her camera on women, often unclothed. An Algorithm, an optically printed film edited from several truncated shots of a woman diving off a board but never breaking the surface of the water, contains the germ of much of her later work. Gordon realized that the problem of the objectification of women in film has less to do with the display of the body than with who has control of the narrative—of the desire that motors it and of how that desire is resolved, or left as an opening into the unknown. She also understood, psychologically and pragmatically, that for a woman to become a filmmaker or to simply enjoy movies, she had to take pleasure in her own voyeurism.
‘Nevertheless, the pressures of the feminist discourse were such that Gordon would have to make several confused efforts at being a “good girl” filmmaker before she could cut loose in her barely disguised autobiography, Variety, the saga of how a nice young woman from the Midwest comes to New York, goes to work as a ticket taker in a porn theater (it’s the end of the 1970s recession), and discovers that she wants to take charge of and act on her fantasies however she pleases. Variety isn’t a perfect movie, but it is one of the most powerful descriptions of the female psyche committed to film by a director who knows how ravishing films can be.
‘“For better or worse, I tend to be drawn to things that are maybe not easy to make, but you can’t really forget them,” she says. “I think all of my films are kind of haunting in some way, and if you can’t get them out of your head it means that I couldn’t get them out of my head either.”‘ — collaged
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Stills
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Further
Bette Gordon Films
Bette Gordon @ IMDb
Bette Gordon @ The Film-makers Cooperative
UP LATE WITH FILMMAKER BETTE GORDON
Bette Gordon by Evangeline Morphos
THROWBACK MOVIE REVIEW: VARIETY (1983)
Bette Gordon Films from Anthology Film Archives
Bette Gordon on Vimeo
Bette Gordon on dealing with the realities of filmmaking
August 2010, Interview with Bette Gordon
Bette Gordon @ letterboxd
Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’ 35 Years On
Antti Alanen: Film Diary: Variety (Bette Gordon 1983)
Bette Gordon @ instagram
Bette Gordon @ MUBI
Bette Gordon’s re-control of the cinematic narrative
Anybody’s Woman — Bette Gordon
Amy Taubin on Bette Gordon
Bette Gordon Talks Recognizing the Evil Within Ourselves
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Extras
A Message from Filmmaker Bette Gordon
AFS Presents: No Cover – Films By Bette Gordon
Entrevista – Bette Gordon
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Interview
If the diverse coterie of artists involved in your first feature, Variety, is anything to go by, the creative community was very interconnected at the time. To what do you attribute the collaborative spirit in New York back then?
Bette Gordon: There was nothing like the early ’80s… It was a very interesting time in the evolution of culture and the world of business and the support that you could get—people doing things for no money. There were these enclaves of do-it-yourself bands—you didn’t even have to play an instrument professionally. There was this kind of rediscovering what it meant to look at art—art as non-object, art as concept, minimal art. People were redefining the parameters, so it was a very exciting time. And in the film world, somebody would have a film that they shot on Super 8, so they’d lug a projector to Tier 3, which was [a no wave art nightclub] on West Broadway. You’d have little posters that you’d make by hand, and at 9 o’clock the poster would go up. I had a big loft and a projector and I’d invite people over to see whatever anyone wanted to show. It was very small, and only because of word of mouth and little posters that you’d Xerox and walk around town and put up—they’d get torn down and you’d put them up again—that you knew what was happening, the old-fashioned way.
What was it that fueled your passion for filmmaking? Are you driven by the same motivations today?
BG: I was always drawn to stories with characters who pushed boundaries, limits, maybe even morality. I was interested in doing anything but being safe. Safe for me was the world I grew up in, and all I wanted was to break those boundaries because I knew that there was a more complex world than the one I was given as a model. [This becomes apparent] when you see John Luc Godard for the first time or when you see Cassavetes or when your world is opened up by work or writing or literature that doesn’t fit in this simplistic box of the assigned role that you are given.
We want to keep making the films we want to make and the stories that we want to tell, and make people think about things that they would not normally think about. Film is a language of the future and I think we need to be conscious of what we’re saying and how we’re saying it.
You continue to live and make films in New York. What is it about the city that appeals to you, creatively speaking?
BG: Around every corner, there is an amazing location. You can explore and find new ways of seeing this place we live in, you just never tire of it. We shot my last film, The Drowning, in City Island—it was fascinating. Staten Island I always find amazing. Yonkers is a whole new film community, and even outside of New York City in Jersey City…I feel inspired by New York, I also like a 24-hour environment where people don’t go to sleep. I have a very weird body clock—it’s probably from my club days because nothing ever started in the ’80s until 11pm and it went at least until 4, and then there was after-hours. So even today, I find that I do my best work around 11. For me, bedtime is never before 2am.
How is it making an independent film now, when independent film has become part of the establishment?
BG: The world has become so savvy. When I first began, there was a Wild West mentality. You just grabbed people from your circle, and if you were an artist, your circle was pretty interesting. Musicians and writers would participate in a freeform way without contracts. We didn’t even know what agents and managers were. Variety’s budget was about $100,000. Working together was organic to the way in which we lived. Now, making an independent film is about getting actors to sign on.
You seem connected to the art world, visually. And you have a sensitivity to what sound is.
BG: My background was as a visual artist, which gave me references that I wish more of my students had. Those who don’t have a visual arts background struggle to translate action and dialogue from the page to the screen. I was lucky not only to travel in circles of very talented people, but ones that were not legislated by a school.
What’s next, what ideas are brewing?
BG: I’ve always wanted to do an adaptation of Paper Moon, a father-daughter story, since I’ve done a mother-son. What I really hate is when reviewers say, “She hasn’t made a film in ten years!” I guess there are people who are able to make a film in a shorter amount of time, but by the time you have an idea and allow it to sit around in your mind and then write it and raise the money, it’s ten years later. But really, it’s the psychological realm that is fascinating to me. The digging deep. I think it comes from the idea of smashing the mirror we talked about earlier. I’m interested in stories where what is is not what is. I’ve thought about making a lighter story.
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12 of Bette Gordon’s 16 films
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w/ James Benning I-94 (1974)
‘I-94 explores the male and female sexual identities through two people that never appear onscreen together. It exemplifies Bette Gordon’s willingness to tackle topics like eroticism through the female gaze. While the short is only three minutes long, the intimacy captured of the two characters speaks volumes. As one of Gordon’s experimental collaborations with avant garde filmmaker James Benning. I-94 gives viewers a rare dual perspective of the male gaze and the incisive reversal of it, with an uncompromising study into masculinity.’ — fffest
the entirety
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w/ James Benning The United States of America (1975)
‘The United States of America was filmed with a fixed camera, but one that had a fixed lens. The camera was mounted in the backseat area of a car. Its position—and thus the framing of the images it records—never changes. We see a bit of the backseat area; the backs of the front seats and backs of the heads of the filmmakers who are seated in front (mostly Benning drives, but occasionally he and Gordon exchange places); the front windshield with the rearview mirror fixed in the middle at the top; and a bit of the side windows, left and right. The movement in the film is created almost entirely by the movement of the car as it is driven by the filmmakers from the East Coast to the West, with some north-south driving in the middle of the country. The United States of America has a runtime of twenty-seven minutes, but it’s not possible to determine how long the actual trip took or if the film was edited from footage taken during one trip or several. Our attention, like the attention of the filmmakers/“actors,” is on the passing landscape as it can be seen through the windshield. The film is shot from what in Hollywood is described, cheatingly, as an over-the-shoulder POV, but here, since the camera is midway between the left shoulder of one person and the right shoulder of the other, the shot is an amalgam of two supposed POVs, i.e., a double cheat. There is no dialogue. The sound track is largely derived from the car’s radio—a mix of music and local newscasts, one of which allows us to fix the period as that of the US’s chaotic withdrawal from Saigon in the closing days of the Vietnam war. The United States of America is pure road movie, absent of character goals or desire, but attentive to the movement of history and fixity of geography.’ — Amy Taubin
the entirety
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An Algorithm (1977)
‘A visually stunning kinetic rhythm produced by looped footage (mathematical curves) in and out of phase with each other.’ — letterboxd
the entirety
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Empty Suitcases (1980)
‘… is a narrative derived from film’s own material and my concern for exploring issues of representation and identification in cinema. The film presents fragments of a woman’s life–her work (as a photographer), her friendship and relationships–in short, her economic, sexual,and artistic struggles. By deconstructing the fragments of text, speech, music and picture, the film forces focus on the workings of narrative, as well as on the narrative itself. Central to EMPTY SUITCASES is women’s inability to place and define themselfs in laguage and politics, the location of radical struggle. This displacement leads to a definition of woman as other, and reveals problems of unresolved sexual relations, difference, and violence,–B. G. Her most successful sequences–a militant ‘new wave’ fashion show in which models photograph themselves, an expressionless white woman lipsynching alog to Billie Holliday, a scene where the filmmaker relates a dream only to be drowned out by Talking Heads singing ‘PSycho Killer’–all criticize conventional modes of representation, with particular attention to what current academic jargon calls ‘the imaging of woman.” — J. Hoberman
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Anybody’s Woman (1981)
‘One day in the early 1980s I was wandering around the East Village and I came across the neon lights of the old Variety theater on 3rd Avenue at 13th Street. It was the most delicious theater I had ever encountered. I was drawn in by the glowing sign. As I walked inside I discovered that it was a porn theater and I came up with the idea for this film. I invited my friends Spalding Gray and Nancy Reilly, both members of the Wooster Group, to talk about pornography on-camera. I shot it on Super 8 and spliced it together myself. On the soundtrack, I used the music of Bush Tetras and Marianne Faithfull. ANYBODY’S WOMAN was made for a show at Artist’s Space in 1981 called Emergency. Thirteen filmmakers were given $75 and told to make a film that would be shown a month later; all the films were to address what we saw as an emergency in the arts’ community after right-wing Senator Jesse Helms had slashed funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. This short film was ultimately the precursor to my first feature film VARIETY.’ — Bette Gordon
the entirety
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Variety (1983)
‘The sexually charged tale of a woman’s journey of self-discovery, Bette Gordon’s Variety is a fascinating independent film that challenges common notions about feminism and pornography. Emerging out of the underground NYC arts scene that produced the late ’80s boom in American independent cinema, Variety contains the contributions of an impresive array of talent, including cinematographer Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion), actor Luis Guzman (Boogie Nights), a script by the late cult novelist Kathy Acker, and a score by actor and musician John Lurie (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law). Renowned photographer Nan Goldin appears in a supporting role, as does Mark Boone Junior (Sons of Anarchy, Memento)
‘Christine (Sandy McLeod), a bright and unassuming young woman, takes a job selling tickets at a porno theater near Times Square. Instead of distancing herself from the dark and erotic nature of this milieu, Christine soon develops an obsession that begins to consume her life. The character’s reaction unexpectedly flips normal gender roles; director Gordon daringly twists feminist ideology by showing a woman who finds self-expression through an interest in pornography. Variety becomes even more provocative when it dramatizes the changes that occur in Christine’s relationships with both Mark (Will Patton), her boyfriend, and Louie, a dangerous-looking patron of the theater.
‘Few films deal honestly with a female’s sexual point-of-view, and particularly with the way in which she develops her own fantasy world. Controversial and highly personal, Variety does just that, and in so doing announces itself as the major film of a director who embodies the essence of independent cinema.’ — Kino Lorber
Trailer
Bette Gordon visits the BFI Southbank to talk about Variety
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w/ Chantal Akerman, Ulrike Ottinger, Valie Export, Maxi Cohen, Laurence Gavron and Helke Sander SEVEN WOMEN SEVEN SINS (1987)
‘As wide-ranging an omnibus film as there has ever been, a group of some of the most important international filmmakers of the last few decades – all of them female – take on each of the biblical vices. Bette Gordon, Chantal Akerman, VALIE EXPORT, Maxi Cohen, Laurence Gavron and more contribute a contemporary celluloid sin. The result is a thoroughly unpredictable introduction to each filmmaker’s work; encapsulating devious narratives and experimental collages, film and video.’ — Metrograph
Trailer
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Monsters (Desirable Alien) (1991)
‘Bette Gordon directed episode of the TV series Monsters. Luis Guzman plays a supporting role in a semi-comedic episode about a satyr trying to apply for U.S. citizenship – and ultimately coming at the problem from a different angle. There’s a walk-on part for Videodrome’s Debbie Harry, too, as well as a little nudity, in the form of paintings and frescoes.’ — Through the Shattered Lens
the entirety
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Luminous Motion (1998)
‘LUMINOUS MOTION is a dreamlike and erotically charged thriller from critically acclaimed director Bette Gordon (Variety). Deborah Kara Unger (The Game) stars as an unnamed hustler who seduces and robs gullible men while criss-crossing the country with her ten-year-old son Phillip (Eric Lloyd, The Santa Clause). Phillip grows accustomed to this outlaw life on the road, but his world is turned upside-down when his mother settles in the suburbs with a carpenter named Pedro (Terry Kinney). Desperate to reclaim his mom’s attentions, Phillip plots Pedro’s violent end, hoping for a return to the road. But this Oedipal dream turns into a nightmare as they are pursued by ghosts from their past, including Phillip’s menacing father (Jamey Sheridan, Spotlight), who seems to be intent on reclaiming his place at the head of this deteriorating family.’ — Kino Lorber
Trailer
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Jill Sobule Flight (jet plane charm) (1999)
the entirety
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Handsome Harry (2009)
‘As in the films that precede it, the mysteries—and terrors—of desire also propel Handsome Harry, which reunites Gordon with Luminous Motion‘s Jamey Sheridan, here in the title role. A road movie ensemble piece interrupted by flashbacks, HH finds its hero reconciling with the unpalatable notion that, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, each man maims the thing he loves. Harry, a well-liked, long-divorced middle-ager, capable of only the most awkward interactions with the waitress who clearly wants him and the son who’s driven hundreds of miles to visit him in upstate New York, takes off suddenly for Philadelphia to visit Tom (Steve Buscemi), a dying Navy buddy. “We became men together,” Tom reminisces in his hospital bed—rites of passage that torment Harry, who continues to seek out friends from the service to assuage his guilt over a heinous act of betrayal and cruelty. Each visit serves as a set piece for the pathologies of white midlife manhood: entitlement, repression, rage, self-pity. Gordon films every encounter—some of which droop under too much hectoring (the script is by first-timer Nicholas T. Proferes)—with a hesitant empathy, maintaining just the right tone before Harry’s lushly romantic final reunion. In Gordon’s films, Eros’s capacity to disturb and disrupt is celebrated as its greatest quality.’ — Melissa Anderson
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The Drowning (2016)
‘The movie is a prime specimen of “the paranoid style.” You feel it in the fractured visual palette, in the piecemeal depiction of Tom’s house and the quietly unnerving wind through the curtains. Tom’s home life was already destabilized. He wants Lauren to remain in New London, but her center of gravity is shifting to New York City, where her reputation as a painter is growing. Danny, with his sixth sense, puts his fingers in that fissure. The end of the movie is absurd — but sometimes a good capper is. There’s something awesome about a cathartic action that leads not to relief but more horror. In Bette Gordon’s universe, that’s the fundamental tragedy of being a man.’ — Vulture
Trailer
Excerpt
Josh Charles And Bette Gordon Discuss “The Drowning”
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, it wasn’t bad. The sweetness without the theatrics. Still no elevator. Grr. Might need to be a tenant rebellion. Except a lot of our tenants have escaped the heat and are who knows where. Whine. Love enlarging and framing a photo of himself and telling everyone it’s a mirror, G. ** Adem Berbic, Lucidity is editing’s metier surely. I guess I ultimately prefer harsh nouse wall to power electronics, so good report. Closet Doctrine, gotcha. I am curious to hear. Uh, I’m seeing my visiting nephew today. He’s in town briefly because he’s one of some people who run this super high end catering service that serves meals to the ultra-rich and often very famous. So I’m curious to know who flew him and his cohorts all the way from LA for one day. Vegan Thai food tonight with Bruce Hainley. Start hunting possible new film producers since the script is finally finished. Art, I guess. Today is supposedly the last mega-hot day, but we’ll see. Beach, nice. Happy Bastille Day if you celebrate. ** Carsten, Haven’t heard the new Stones, but that ‘return to form’ label is almost always giddy and preemptive. I guess the hope is sweet. There’s plenty of interesting work going on in popular music. It’s just somewhat obscure and unknown to the proclaimers like interesting work usually is. The big World Cup match is tonight on Bastille Day? That’s strange. It’s going to be nuts here. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi! I don’t think I know that Polish ARG project? Sounds pretty. Luca Guadagnino’s films are like perfume commercials, as a friend of mine said. I feel 100% positive that his Burroughs film is shit. That seems like a thoughtless money and attention grab move on the part of whoever runs the Burroughs estate. I can’t imagine ever seeing it. I have to drink two cups of coffee and do the p.s. and usually take a shower and drink more coffee to clear my mind before I can start writing. I know a few people who are passionate Christians that are cool and smart people anyway. Not too many, for sure, but a few. The only news in my writing world is that we finally finished the film script. So now I have to try to get my head back into writing fiction again, and I’m so not in that mindset. ** _Black_Acrylic, He’s only anonymous because I couldn’t find an attribution. My fault entirely maybe. Okay, Friday. This time it has to happen. Upside down horseshoe if you need it. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ was the first thing I thought of when I saw Sam O’Neill died. He had a nice quality. And ‘Possession’ too, of course. Maybe you should (re)watch ‘Home Alone 2’. This heatwave at least hasn’t been as murderous as the one two weeks ago. Yet. ** julian, Lucky you. Paris had very mild summers for the most part until this year. Yeah, I think that for whatever reason there was less deliberate musical influence on ‘Frisk’. Maybe I even did that on purpose, I can’t remember exactly. ‘Whispering Moon’ … no, I don’t think I know it. Unless I know it by its German name? Sound very intriguing. I’ll go look for it. Thanks a lot. Stay temperate. ** charalampos, Glad to have helped occasion your discovery, although horatio is the true fount. Mm, no books purchased (some gifts of books), and no parks. Just events and looking around. Had a great pizza. Hey from the wrongly hot place. Although I guess you’re probably quite hot there too, but that’s natural in your case. ** horatio, Oh, sure, that album is an overlooked biggie. That’s intense, what you’re experiencing with the guy. I can feel it. I can get really obsessive too, and it took me a long time to get that organised and as privatised as possible. Because, in my experience at least, people who are the subject of that much interest and feeling don’t know what to do with it, and it’s best if you can keep that internal roiling secreted away behind your face as much as you can. Although there are people who respond to that and even need that. I don’t know. Hang in there and try to let him be as autonomous as you can, at least in your behavior or whatever. And for sure make art about this, both because what you’re feeling is the best inspiration there is, or can be, and because making the art can help you position him in your life in a ‘healthy’ way. Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud. I’m really happy this is happening for you. Sure, send me his Instagram. Great day to you. xoxo. ** politekid, Hey, O! Your book still hasn’t arrived. I’m so impatient. The French mail service is a disaster, and I’m just ‘praying’ your book’s delivery transcends that. Seeing ‘Einstein on the Beach’ in the early 80s totally changed my life or at least my art. Totally. So sorry about the tricky mental period. If you can drink coffee surely you’re in recovery. Nice about the reading/event. You and Hesse K, superstars. I was in one of Kevin’s plays, or maybe two plays, playing Paul McCartney if my memory serves. Writing such things is probably a step too far for my talent, true, but ‘acting’ so randomly and in such an under-rehearsed way was … exciting? Well, fun. I’m okay. Like I said above, we finished the new film script, so that’s big. So now it’s the shit part of figuring out how we’re going to make it. That’s probably my immediate future until Zac and I go to Stavanger, Norway in August to show ‘RT’ and hopefully hit some theme parks. What’s your impending narrative? ** Steeqhen, I love folk music which is why I don’t like James Taylor, haha. Here today is supposed to be the last heat blast at a high level for a while. It hasn’t been as horrible as it was two weeks ago, but it’s still surreal in a bad way. ** HaRpEr //, I sometimes think everything I like in film, music, art, literature, etc. is ultimately about physical space. I certainly think heavily about that when I write. I don’t know of ‘The Tracey Fragments’. Huh, interesting. I’ll find it. Thanks, pal. ** laura w, At the ice cream parlor I had one scoop of olive oil ice cream and one scoop of vanilla. My friend had fig which he highly recommended. There’s no soft serve ice cream in Paris! Or not actual, real soft serve a la Tastee Freeze, etc. It’s a big problem. The French can be too snooty about things being classy. Like Paris has one Chipotle, but they would never allow a Taco Bell here. I guess the powers that be think that soft serve ice cream is too low end. They’re so wrong. Anyway, I’m greatly missing Tastee Freeze right now. ‘Watch Me Jumpstart’! Do you know ‘Johnny Appleseed’? Talk abut lo-fi. Paris is less smoker friendly than it used to be, but it’s more user friendly than almost anywhere else, I suspect. How is/was today? ** Uday, 45 degrees?! And that’s not the worst? I am so happy I’m not you at this very moment. Do you like Walt Whitman? His poetry makes my skin crawl. He’s such a blowhard. But I guess he was good at blowhard-ery, and I guess blowhard-ery is legit. The public has spoken. ** Right. Today my suggestion is that you investigate the work of the filmmaker Bette Gordon. You game? See you tomorrow either way.
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