To subscribe to Afterall journal, starting with this issue, please click here.
Alternatively, if you wish to purchase this article individually, you may do so via JSTOR. Please follow the instructions on this page.My films consist of a series of idealisms reflected in
the idea of beauty. Now beauty can be a terrible thing, beauty can
be twisted and abused.
- Kenneth Anger1
Kenneth Anger invited me on a date soon after our first meeting.
And not just any date. I was to pick him up and accompany him as
his guest and chaperone to the Los Angeles Film Critics Awards for
his lifetime achievement award in experimental film, with cocktails
and dinner at the non plus ultra Casa del Mar Hotel in
Santa Monica. I was very soon sidetracked from the task at hand.
Julianne Moore, bedecked in a treasure-trove of diamonds to rival
Liz Taylor, collected a best actress award; Pedro Almodóvar had
just flown in from Spain to accept the award for best director for
Talk to Her. Daniel Day Lewis won best actor for Gangs
of New York, a tie with Jack Nicholson for his role in For
Schmidt, while Arthur Penn won a directorial career
achievement award. Anger and I had a memorable night out together;
one of the highlights of the evening was Jack Nicholson getting up
to give him a standing ovation and take his hand.
But the problem is to make the soul into a monster. A Poet
makes himself a
visionary through a long, boundless, and systematised
disorganisation of all
the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he
searches himself,
he exhausts within himself all poisons and preserves their
quintessence.
Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a
superhuman
strength, where he becomes among all men the
