An oldie from the vaults, dusted off, trimmed down a tiny bit, and delivered for your entertainment... (feel free to point and gawk). Behold, the four-minute-cut of The two-minute cut of Dune:
The longer version actually played at a film festival at the Harwood Art Center sometime in the late 90's, a year or two after I moved to Albuquerque. I submitted (on a lark, with no expectations) a tape full of my work, and was floored when they chose one of my projects. What an honor, I thought. I hadn't even really been serious when I dropped it off.
Little did I know, "The Two Minute Dune" (which was what it was titled despite the nearly 7-minute runtime of that first version) was the only comedy selected for the festival. It was also the most "amateur" selection - everything else took itself very seriously. We're talking about a the above playing between "a ten-minute meditation on luxury housing in New Mexico, set to the music of Kenny G" and some other very artsy 16mm film with an actual script, skilled camerawork, and meaningful metaphor.
2-Minute Dune was the dead-center of the festival, placed, no doubt, to serve as an intermission. It was received by near-total silence. Two people somewhere in the back where laughing, but no one else got it. Some 50 other people sitting in shocked muteness. I, and the friends I brought with me, shrunk down in our seats, hoping no one would notice. That seemed perfectly normal to me at the time, but now I think it's not like any of the friends with me were even on camera. Oh well, I'm sure they wouldn't have tried to hide if I hadn't first. If I could have crawled out a trapdoor in the bottom of the auditorium, or snuck out the back without anyone noticing me, I would have.
Frankly, those shocked artistes who did not know what to make of a Sweded Dune deserved exactly what they were being forced to sit through. It's years later, and "Be Kind, Rewind" has proven me to be a pioneering visionary and most of them to be small-minded art-i-phobes.
And now, I get to share it with all of you, and even unleash it upon the world. I love the internet.
3 comments:
YouTube is far too good to you. Leave it to those freaky art students to be way ahead of their time making bad videos. Had YouTube existed in 1992 I am sure you would have had to sacrifice a lot of sleep.
Tell you what, I think I'm going to be able to spend a weekend in Seattle some time in early April. I'll bring some CDs of early '90s Minnesota Bands, and maybe we'll do an episode of Cameraman vs the Hamm's Bear or something like that.
CameraMan vs Hamm's - you're on! This will be sweet!
Let me know what weekend - I have plans from 8 to midnight on the evening of the 12th. Also, I keep intending to travel to Portland again soon (possibly on the weekend of the Flutag, whenever the heck that is). So let me know what your schedule's like.
Post a Comment