Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Lit & Lectures / Film / Books Kick-start a Nelson Algren documentary
Posted by Jerome Ludwig on 06.08.11 at 05:25 PM
Let's go to the PR: "Through interviews with internationally known artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers, the film will reestablish Algren’s place in America’s urban fiction, while also revealing his impact on today’s literary and creative artists. Among Algren champions interviewed to date are photographer Art Shay, legendary Chicago journalist Rick Kogan, film directors William Friedkin and Philip Kaufman, writer Barry Gifford, Algren expert Bill Savage, Chicago writer Joe Meno, the musician Wayne Kramer, the painter Robert Guinan, and personal friends Jan Herman and Bruce Jay Freidman. Future interviewees include: the writer Russell Banks and Stuart Dybek; filmmakers Andy Davis, John Sayles, and Michael Mann; musicians Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Henry Rollins."
Not a bad roster there.
Caplan hopes to raise $25,000 by July 11 via Kickstarter.
A trailer for the film after the jump:
Comments (3)
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Is this film going to be another fantasy about outsiders? Proxy dangerous living for our over-upholstered lives? Please, no more titillation squeezed from writers who thrill because they stepped beyond us in disregard for money, drink and drug capacity or sexual adventure. Henry Miller, Bukowski, Kerouac-- enough, we've had that. Algren could be more interesting. What happened to his politics, for instance? They seem left out of the preview. Was he troubled by being Jewish? And what was behind his obsession with whores? It looks like we are going to be told it was only part of his interest in the low and humble. Why did he actually believe that all Saul Bellows' books were alike whereas each of his own was very different, when the contrary is obvious? We already know what was right about Algren, his books. A documentary ought to tell what was wrong with him. Instead we're in danger of getting just another bohemian clown, Chicago version.
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Food in fact--but French--would be a good way into understanding Algren. The view of him in God's Country is of a down to earth, common man, no-nonsense type throwing punches from the Left and cracking Gallic eggheads. The myth in France was that he had one foot in Tobacco Road and the other on Pa Joad's running board, a shoeless primitive humming Woody Guthrie. The two cliche' systems collided during his French sojourns. The Sartre circle was seriously political and paid the price. Algren had gone along with depression radicalism until he saw that making a stand would get in the way of his personal tastes. On the Left Bank he was out of his depth. The talk was over his head and he replied with a surly anti-intellectualism. Far from relaxing, let's do some sweating and get below the surface of this original Chicago writer.
