ME AND MY BROTHER
christopher walken als filmproduzent
USA 1965-1968. D: Robert Frank. S:
Robert Frank, Tom Shepard, Allen Ginsberg. 91 min.
This documentary about poet
Peter Orlovsky's schizophrenic brother, Julius, is a film within a film and
is generally regarded as photographer/documentarian Frank's masterwork.
Brother Julius spent years in a mental hospital and upon release was put
into his brother's care. Frank captures the brothers' day-to-day lives, as
well as a road trip with
Allen Ginsberg. At
times the film breaks into another film about actors working on a film about
them; cinematic devices -- including black-and-white, color cutting, and
unsychronized sound -- lend an element of visual "schizophrenia" to the
work. One of the players is a young Christopher Walken. The emerging
document is a testament to the camera's voyeuristic tendencies and a
commentary on the mentally ill in society as well as an investigation into
the life of the filmmaker himself. ~ Denise Sullivan, All Movie Guide
The director is portrayed by Christopher Walken, speaking with the
dubbed/synchronisierten voice of Robert Frank shouting directions to an
actor auditioning to play a catatonic-schizophrenic. (Interesting fact: Me
and My Brother was Walken’s first film role).
A heady intermingling of documentary and
fiction, photographer Robert Frank's first feature (finished in 1969, then
re-edited by Frank in 1997) focuses on poet Peter Orlovsky's schizophrenic
brother Julius, portrayed at first in person via footage of the siblings in
New York and touring the country with Allen Ginsberg, then entwined with
re-enacted scenarios of actors playing the brothers and their acquaintances.
Taking it a few notches more meta, the director
also includes scenes of himself casting the actor who will play Julius, only
Frank is portrayed by a smooth-faced, young Christopher Walken.
Peppered with smudgy urban boho romps and psycho-philosophical musings, the
film fits squarely between Frank's Pull My Daisy and the painfully truthful
revelations of his later video diaries. For despite its hypercubic narrative
and high-modernist reflexivity, Me and My Brother offers a tangibly
emotional experience as it struggles poignantly with the limits of
understanding another person's mind.
"Everything in this film is true, all that’s not true is purely my
imagination." This epigraph for photographer Robert Frank’s documentary
about catatonic and schizophrenic Julius Orlovsky is an absolute declaration
of intent. In the late sixties, Julius went with his brother, Peter
Orlovsky, and Peter’s partner, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, on tour through the
USA to read their poetry. Frank accompanied them on the tour, shooting
documentary footage that served merely as the first stage for this complex
work. The director builds his vision of Julius’ mind by intercutting images
of the real Julius with fictional passages about the making of a film about
Julius Orlovsky. The strength of the film lies not just in the fragmentation
of fiction and reality, or in the blurring of the line between them; Frank
manages the fiction passages so that they become a reflection on cinema and
representation itself. The several sequences in front of a movie screen show
the relationship Frank establishes between Julius’ imaginary world and
cinema. In one striking composition, a director (played by Christopher
Walken) stands in front of the actor playing Julius, who in turn stands in
front of the screen on which the image of the real Julius is projected: a
clear illustration of the process of art creation, a straight line from the
author to his work. Violeta Kovacsics
Robert Frank —
1924 in Zürich geboren und nach einer Fotografieausbildung bereits 1947 in
die USA ausgewandert — umgibt schon zu Lebzeiten die Aura einer Legende.
Seit der Publikation seines berühmten Fotobuches The Americans (1958) gilt
er als einer der bedeutendsten Fotokünstler. Um seine Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten
zu erweitern und seinem Image als Starfotograf zu entkommen, begann er mit
dem Filmemachen.
Me and My Brother (1968) wurde
als Portrait von Julius Orlovsky, dem an Katatonie erkrankten Bruder des
Beat-Poeten Peter Orlovsky begonnen und entwickelte sich zu einem Film über
das Filmemachen und seinem komplexesten Werk, im speziellen über das
Ineinandergreifen von Inszenierung und Darstellung der Wirklichkeit. Der
Anspruch mittels seiner Kunst, etwas über das eigene Leben freizulegen,
bedingt für Robert Frank eine formale
Radikalität: Autobiografisches mischt sich mit Fiktionalem und
Dokumentarischem. Er erneuert seine autobiografischen Methoden immer wieder
und befragt zunehmend mit den Filmen auch seine Fotos als Zeugnisse der
Vergangenheit. Nicht nur seine bekannteren Videos Home Improvements (1985),
Moving Pictures (1994) und The Present (1996) sind fragmentarische filmische
Tagebücher, in denen
Robert Frank die
Intimität der Videokamera für seine Suche nach Bildern, die sein Inneres
spiegeln, vorzieht.www.film.at
BAREFOOT IN ATHENS
Christopher Walken als Lamprocles
Alternativ: George Schaefer's
Showcase Theatre: Barefoot in Athens (USA) (series title)
Plot: The last few days in the life of Socrates, including his trial.
-Played on Broadway (Martin Beck Theater) for 2
months; part of Xantippe created by Lotte Lenya, widow of Kurt Weil, who had
acted in other (and more successful) Anderson plays before.
-Made into TV film, in George Schaefer's
'Showcase Theatre' series, broadcast 11.11.1966; Peter Ustinov won an Emmy
(1966-7) for his performance as Socrates.
-Released on video in (?) 1983. Apparently not
now commercially available, but internet searches show that it is in a large
number of US school and university video libraries, and still sometimes
recommended as background in Greek Philosophy and Western Civ. courses
Socrates
(Peter Ustinov) falls from grace, and becomes the lone voice of democracy
amongst the corruption of his fellow Athenians in this television adaptation
of
Maxwell
Anderson's play. The fall has been hard on the great philosopher. He
walks about his city ragged and sans footwear, causing his wife untold
shame. His raving about truth and democracy is more than embarrassing to the
city's crooked politicians, and they devise a plan to silence him forever.
~
Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide.
Two scam artists
pull a con on the wrong guy, and he's got a score to settle.
In
this erotic thriller, two bunco artists ply their trade in Miami Beach. They
prey upon wealthy marks; the female grifter uses all her wiles to seduce men
out of their cash. It works fine until she tries to con ex-G-man Jack
Shanks. He catches on and ends up blackmailing her into helping him get a
little revenge in Jamaica. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide. Maggie is a
seductive con-artist scamming the rich in Miami Beach. When she picks
the wrong mark, Jack Shanks, he blackmails her into working with him on
the ultimate scam in Jamaica. When the scam turns deadly, murder and
double-cross become the only way to finish their dangerous game. (novel
"Lady Stings" by Craig Smith)
click on thumbnails to enlarge
Die gewitzte
Trickbetrügerin Maggie Rohrer gibt Geschäftsreisenden statt der erhofften
Zuwendung Betäubungsmittel, um sie dann nach allen Regeln der Kunst
auszuplündern. Bei dem zwielichtigen Jack Shanks beißt sie allerdings auf
Granit. Er gewinnt sie mit 10.000 Dollar für einen waghalsigen Job: Auf
Jamaika soll sie dem Mafia-Boss Gordon Wexler wertvolle Disketten abluchsen.
Bald befinden sich die beiden liebenswerten Schwindler auf atemberaubender
Flucht vor Wexlers Schergen.
A female
con-artist who sweet-talks wealthy men targeted by her violent boyfriend,
then drugs them and makes off with their money, is being herself being
watched by another man. He wants to use her talents in a much-bigger scam:
ripping off a crime lord by getting at his programmer's computer files. But
she starts to have doubts about what he's really after when she finds a huge
stash of loot with the disks. He claims no knowledge of the money, she
distrusts him, he's using her, things start getting dangerous and even
murderous - and then her boyfriend shows up ! Who's scamming whom ?
An adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's stage play about the
plight of the Continental Army in the winter of 1776-77.
Washington Headquarters: Christopher Walken plays "The Hessian" officer
being asked to join the Americal Revolution.
It is said that the accent he tried to affect is German. The Major has a
dueling scar on his left cheek and clickes his heels in a Prussian manner.
The character was negotiating both with the Americans and with the British
for his services. ("Your Brandy is just as good as English Brandy..")
He is a Hessian mercenary without family, ties or loyality, but they offer
him country, a home and status.
This was an early made-for-TV film never released on video in the US.
Chris played another Hessian mercenary in "Sleepy Hollow" years later.
Paul Revere (* 1. Januar 1735 in Boston,
Massachusetts; † 10. Mai 1818 in Boston, Massachusetts) war ein
US-amerikanischer Freiheitskämpfer. Bei Ausbruch des Unabhängigkeitskrieges
wurde Revere Nachrichtenkurier für die Bostoner Patrioten. Zusammen mit zwei
anderen Reitern unternahm er am 18. April 1775 den berühmten Kurierritt von
Boston nach Concord, um die Einwohner von Concord vor den herannahenden
britischen Truppen zu warnen. Diese Episode wurde später von Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow in dem berühmten Gedicht Paul Revere's Ride verewigt. Paul Revere
ist einer der Nationalhelden der amerikanischen Revolution.
Me and My Brother 
-Made into TV film, in George Schaefer's
'Showcase Theatre' series, broadcast 11.11.1966; Peter Ustinov won an Emmy
(1966-7) for his performance as Socrates.
Socrates
(Peter Ustinov) falls from grace, and becomes the lone voice of democracy
amongst the corruption of his fellow Athenians in this television adaptation
of
Two scam artists
pull a con on the wrong guy, and he's got a score to settle.
