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October 10, 2007
John Ashbery on working with Guy Maddin
In the current Stop Smiling Magazine, poet John Ashbery poet John Ashbery talks about how movies overlap with his work, and his ongoing collaboration with Guy Maddin: "It was fun participating in the live performance of 
Brand Upon the Brain! and rather exciting being in the orchestra pit along with an orchestra, Foley artists and a soi-disant castrato, who certainly didn’t look the part and whose voice was apparently piped in from somewhere. I had watched the film several times on DVD and was wondering how to read the text in a way that would contribute to the gesamtkunstwerk envisioned by Maddin. By chance, on the afternoon of the performance, I was absentmindedly watching the film Ed Wood on TV, which I had seen before, and suddenly remembered the role played by the “psychic” Criswell in Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space — “Are you ready for the revelation of grave robbers from outer space?”. This seemed the perfect tone for Maddin’s text and I found it easy to channel Criswell’s whiny delivery. I share Maddin’s fascination with the clunky poetry of so many silent movie titles."
Posted by Ray Pride at October 10, 2007 12:37 PM
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