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December 05, 2006
Great Zeitgeist's Ghost!: documentary's completion issues
In NY Times, Paul Vandecarr samples the deep fount of unfinished docs that might as well not exist, dwelling upon "unrealized visions [that] linger like ghosts in the minds of their originators, whose lives are often consumed by a strenuous cycle of fund-raising, filming, dreaming, more fund-raising, editing, cajoling, 
resting and returning to one’s muse." Melodramatic verbal venture of the day: “Once you’re bitten by the idea of a story, you can’t shake it, and you get all carried away, and you start to perspire, and you can’t sleep,” said Richard Saiz, director of programming at the Independent Television Service, a major financ[i]er of documentary film. “It just takes you over.” ... Albert Maysles, the filmmaker who with his brother David has made such acclaimed documentaries as Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter, has had one such unfinanced work in mind for some 50 years. The project, which he plans to call “In Transit,” would chronicle a series of long-distance train trips in different countries, in which passengers — soldiers, orphans, lovers, former prisoners and others — would be tracked as they travel toward whatever experience awaits them at their destination. “It could be the great adventure of my life,” Mr. Maysles, 80, said by telephone from New York. “And [I hope] the viewer would find it an adventure as well.”
Posted by Ray Pride at December 5, 2006 11:29 PM
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