UbuWeb & Henry Miller

If your taste in the artistic (or life) leans toward the avant-garde, then you will love AbuWeb. The site is full of gems. Everything from John Gage interviews, a intensely mad Paul McCarthy video, John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" (if anyone has Geoff Dyer's essays on Berger, "Ways of Telling," can you tell me!) to a wonderful 3-part doco on Guy Debord and Situationism: "Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972." It is a goldmine, but it does make one wonder if an avant-garde is even possible anymore. Forgive me my nostalgia.

The doco called "Dinner With Henry Miller" is a blast. This is simple enough. Just Henry having dinner with friends; the camera locked off and running for about 30 minutes while Henry and companions enjoy (apparently mediocre) food and (and somewhat better) wine. Henry is there with his current and last girlfriend, Brenda Venus (don't jump to any conclusions; she's as sharp as they come), and they talk about all manner of things with Henry interjecting to gently tease the off-camera cook about the low quality of the food. Henry finally settles on a riff about Blaise Cendrars the one-armed - he lost an arm on the Somme while in the French Foreign Legion - novelist and poet and friend of Henry's during his time in 1930s Paris. Apart from the rollicking conversation and the pure joy of listening to one of history's greatest raconteurs weave a yarn, what struck me was this is Henry Miller two months before he died! Obviously, he was eating, drinking, smoking, screwing, having a good time, and telling outrageous stories right till the end. But then again, he only lived to be 88 - should have stuck to vegetable juices and early nights.

Cendrars by Modigliani

Recommended:

http://www.ubu.com/
http://www.ubu.com/film/miller_dinner.html