#in terms of career trajectory… I just wish that I could get promoted as frequently as straight guys in the office made passes at me

[cornedbeefhashtags]

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[sulietsexual]

Hey! I read that you find Friends relatable now that you're older. How is the show relatable to you? Is it specific to your generation or to people your age? Because I don't think any of the friends' lives are relatable. In particular, the fact that they're always in relationships, or hooking with random people they meet wherever, is extremely weird to me. And let's not speak of how most of them have great jobs and no college degree or higher schooling... Anyway, I'd love to read your thoughts!

Okay, so I just want address a couple of your points before I get into how/why I find the series relatable. So, first of all this part:

“In particular, the fact that they’re always in relationships, or hooking with random people they meet wherever, is extremely weird to me.”

First of all, I don’t think that the characters on Friends date or hook up or have relationships any more than characters on any other television series out there. So many shows have their characters dating lots, sustaining long-term relationship etc. Also, I think that while, yes, all the characters did have relationships and hook ups, it wasn’t as constant or as prevalent as your statement implies. Let’s look at the characters individually.

Joey - probably the most sexually active of the group but this is also a big part of his character (similarly to, say, Barney Stinson). Joey does frequently hook up with women because he’s not interested in a long-term relationship, he just enjoys the brief, no-strings-attached intimacy of one-night stands but I don’t find his promiscuity to be unbelievable, especially since it’s an organic part of his characterisation. I also don’t recall him ever hooking up with a random person? 

Chandler - Chandler spends most of Seasons 1 and 2 either single or with Janice. If I recall correctly, he only briefly dates a couple of women other than Janice in those seasons. He spends half of Season 3 with Janice and the other half single. In Season 4 he briefly dates Kathy and then at the end of the season he hooks up with Monica and, as we know, the rest is history and he spends the rest of the series in a committed relationship. Again, I don’t really see this as unrealistic? Chandler has two serious relationships and a third which never really gets off the ground and he casually dates a few women, and this is within the time span of about four or five years. That seems pretty normal to me, especially within the landscape of 90s television, which often portrayed young adults dating around.

Ross - Ross actually dates quite a lot, we see him with many casual love interests, however, as with Joey, I feel like this suits his character. Ross is actually a serial monogamist, he’s hopelessly in love with love and so I find it really in-character that he would date lots in order to find his ideal partner. Again, this is very keeping with 90s culture of dating around. And, of course, Ross has three long-term/serious relationships (Carol, Rachel and Emily) and this is over a ten year time-span, which again, doesn’t seem like a huge amount of romantic developments.

Rachel - Rachel probably dates the least of the characters. She leaves Barry, who is implied to be her only long-term relationship, at the beginning of Season 1 and then has her “fling” with Paolo, which was more about her exploring an exciting and sexual relationship which she hadn’t experienced before. She then spends Seasons 2 and 3 pining after and then involved with Ross, only briefly dating Mark post-Ross. In Season 4 she has her crush on Joshua, which doesn’t go anywhere. Her only other “serious” relationship is with Tagg in Season 7 and other than that, she doesn’t really date that often.

Monica - single for most of Season 1 with only a couple of casual dating relationships, Monica spends most of Season 2 with Richard and then the majority of Season 3 single, until her short relationship with Pete. She’s single for all of Season 4 until she hooks up with Chandler, and then she’s in a committed relationship with him until the end of the series.

Phoebe - Phoebe dates a lot but again, I don’t necessarily find that unrealistic? Like Joey, she doesn’t seem to want or need a long-term partner (until she meets Mike) and she’s happy to just casually date around. At the risk of sounding repetitive, this once again (to me) ties in nicely with 90s dating culture and I think it suits her character. However, I do find her relationship with Mike rushed and it did very much feel like she was shoe-horned into the relationship by writers who seemed afraid of having a female character end the show single. That being said, I do find her and Mike sweet.

So yeah, I’m not sure if it’s a personal thing or a generational thing but I never felt that the romantic relationships and dating habits of the characters felt unrealistic. If anything, I think each of the character’s dating habits and relationship organically tie into their characterisation.

Now, the next part I want to address: 

“And let’s not speak of how most of them have great jobs and no college degree or higher schooling…”

This isn’t completely accurate.

Ross and Chandler both attended college (this is how they met, they were college roommates) and Ross has a PhD, so he definitely completed higher education. While it’s not wholly realistic that Ross would have a PhD and a high-paying job at the Museum of Natural Science at the age of twenty-seven (his age in the first season) it not entirely inconceivable, especially in the early 90s when a college degree actually did guarantee one a job and the job market was much better than it is these days.

Chandler completes college and then works in the same job for several years before receiving a promotion, which does come with an adequate pay rise, but again, he had to slog it out in a cubicle for at least four or five years before receiving said promotion, which he did so at about age twenty-seven, which seems pretty realistic, especially for the 90s. He then works at this job for the next several years, making solid money, before quitting to pursue a job which he’s passionate about. He completes an internship at an ad company and is then offered a more senior position due to his age and experience. I think this is all pretty realistic.

Rachel at least started college (she mentions in a Thanksgiving flashback that she’s taking psychology because the parking’s closer to the building) and she ends up having to work as a waitress for several years because of her lack of job experience, not exactly a great or high-paying job. Her lucking into the job at Bloomingdale’s is a little unrealistic, but she does start at a lower-level position (an assistant) before being moved to personal shopping, which she mentions is a step down for her. She interviews for and obtains the Ralph Lauren position based off her previous experience at Bloomingdale’s and is promoted after being there for a couple of years, again, a fairly realistic trajectory for her. I think Rachel’s work situation is perhaps the least realistic, given that a lot of it rests on luck, but I don’t think it’s completely unbelievable.

We have to assume that Monica went to culinary school, given that she’s a professional chef. It’s not unrealistic or unbelievable that she would be working as a Sous Chef at the age of twenty-six, especially in the 90s. She then loses her job and is forced to work at the demeaning and low-paying diner for over a year, before finally being given the chance to run her own kitchen, where she stays for several years, before being head hunted into a better-paying job when she’s in her early 30s, a realistic move for her, given her experience.

Joey and Phoebe are the only two who are explicitly stated to not have completed college (and in Phoebe’s case high school) but neither initially have particularly demanding or high-paying jobs. Phoebe works as a masseuse, for which she would have needed to complete a certificate or diploma in massage therapy, which she easily could have done in her early twenties. She appears to make enough to live on and doesn’t seem to want a different or higher-paying job and it is mentioned that she doesn’t make as much money as some of the others. And Joey spends so much time on the show unemployed or working odd-jobs in-between auditions, only really starting to get good/steady work towards the end of the series, so I think his career is pretty realistic and an accurate portrayal of how sometimes breaking into an acting career is about right place, right time.

Wow, that got long. Let’s get back to your actual question, of how/why I find Friends relatable.

It’s more little things that I found relatable as I got older. Things such as wanting to work a job I was passionate about (Chandler’s dilemma in Season 1 and again in Season 9), not having a plan for my life (Rachel in Season 1), going against my parents wishes for my career (Joey), having overly-critical parents (Monica) etc. Even smaller things, such as using sarcasm to cover childhood trauma (Chandler) or Monica’s OCD or Rachel always crying. These things made the characters real and relatable to me, even if the world they live in isn’t always completely realistic (their apartments, for example. Even in the 90s Monica wouldn’t have been able to afford that apartment, even with rent control!)

[doomonfilm]

Ranking : P.T. Anderson (1970 - present)

This isn’t going to be my new thing or anything, but I had such a nice, insightful time doing an ordered rundown of my favorite Stanley Kubrik flicks that I figured a follow-up edition was due sooner than later.  Since I started with my favorite director of all time, it was only fair that my follow-up be my favorite modern director, P.T. Anderson.  

P.T. (Paul Thomas) Anderson has written and directed all of his films released via major motion picture distribution, and therefore his entire catalog will be taken into consideration. 

8.   Inherent Vice (2014) The thing that sucks about having to list the films of a director the caliber of P.T. Anderson is that something has to be ranked last by default.  The placement of this film is by no means a reflection on it’s greatness or how I feel about the film, it just simply falls victim to a process of elimination : Anderson got a more captivating performance out of Joaquin Phoenix in a previous film, and the whimsy found throughout does not match the tonal weight of other Anderson fare.  Possibly the roughest last place choice I’ve ever had to make.

7.   Phantom Thread (2017) Another victim of the process of elimination game, this time due to the fact that it is the most recent offering, and therefore has not had the pleasure of allowing time to provide deeper reflection.  I’d argue it’s one of the more beautiful films of his, but The Master and Punch-Drunk Love are equally beautiful, if not more so, by comparison.  It does have one of the most haunting scenes in the Anderson canon during the mother vision within the poisoning sequence, but there are moments in Boogie Nights or Magnolia that are equally as compelling.  And while this performance, as subtle and subdued as it is, was the one that finally helped me understand how immersive Daniel Day Lewis’s process of characterization is, it made me respect his portrayal of Daniel Plainview that much more in retrospect.

6.   Hard Eight (1996) Another gut-wrenching choice on a list full of them.  This film is the epitome of films that I wish I could write and direct... compelling characters, deep connections among characters, stakes the average viewer can relate to, calculated and diverse tonal shifts... the film is technically proficient in ways that many first time films are not, and you can tell this story is one that Anderson lived with before committing to screen.  If you’ve not seen this Anderson debut, make sure to do so as soon as possible.

5.  There Will Be Blood (2007) While many consider this to be his best film, I consider it to be more of a transition piece from deeply personal films to deeply symbolic films.  His choice to move to Jonny Greenwood for scores from this film forward was definitely a stroke of genius, and this may certainly be his most epic film in terms of pure spectacle, but I personally believe that he made films just as grand prior to this one, and ones that cut much deeper emotionally.  Still one hell of a ride when it comes right down to it, however.

4.   Punch-Drunk Love (2002) When asked what my favorite P.T. Anderson film is, this will be the answer the majority of the time.  The sheer dedication to romance, the sweeping Jon Brion score, the rotoscope animations, the brilliant use of color throughout the film, the dolly shots, the casting... everything about Punch-Drunk Love is immaculate in a way that only the work of Jean-Luc Godard can usually be.  Possibly the biggest risk of his career in regards to letting Adam Sandler take the lead, but a stroke of genius in hindsight.  A film that moves me every time I revisit it, though not the only P.T. Anderson movie that continues to be moving upon repeat viewing... more on that later.

3.   Boogie Nights (1997) The breakout film, and only his second film at that.  Few films short of Goodfellas capture a moment in time and an energy many are not privy to so well.  The world is presented in a way we can easily understand and navigate it, even if we do not agree or understand or agree with the choices made by the world’s inhabitants.  The movement of time through multiple decades is handled through intelligent music cues and top-notch set design/costuming.  The familial feel of the ensemble cast, however, is not something that can be faked or manufactured... you have to be lucky enough for your cast to click, aware enough to nurture and encourage it, and adept enough to capture it all.  The first P.T. Anderson film I had the pleasure of seeing, and my first indication that this man was a cut above the rest.

2.   The Master (2012) Truly an achievement in a career full of masterful (no pun intended) work.  It’s hard not to look at the film through the scope of Scientology, and therefore make connections/analysis in that light, but looked at as a standalone idea and work, the film is quite compelling in regards to the examination of self-identity, self-worth and the ways that we seek validation from others and for ourselves.  The element of Joaquin Phoenix (who is brilliant in this film) as a photographer provides an opportunity for some deeply artistic cinematography used to contrast the documentary-like cinematography used during the reoccurring emotional deep dives that take place.  The final collaboration between Anderson and frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a fitting final collaboration at that based on the reverence his character was given.  Of the second wave P.T. Anderson selections, this is the standout work.  

1.   Magnolia (1999) What do you do when you’re given the chance to produce any project you want without worry of promotional and budgetary restraints?  If you’re P.T. Anderson, you write a three-hour long sprawling epic about Southern California, you cast everyone you’ve ever worked with or wanted to work with, and you put everything but the kitchen sink in it in terms of emotional content, narrative twists, intrigue and character moments.  Magnolia was a celebration of P.T. Anderson as a director, his influences, where he’d come from and where he was headed, and all wrapped up into a riddlebox of a film that looks as majestic as it is hard to decipher.  You may not always get this film on a logical level, but it’s hard to deny it’s emotional impact.

I often find myself in awe of P.T. Anderson’s career.  He came right out of the gate with deeply personal films, then stepped into the realm of meaningful cinema with almost imperceptible ease.  He’s not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon, and I’m one hundred percent invested in the trajectory of his film career.

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: Andrew James Paterson on Publishing Decades of Wisdom and Criticism Today

Andrew James Paterson

Andrew James Paterson Collection/Correction Co-published by Kunstverein Toronto & Mousse Publishing

  Every city should have an Andrew James Paterson. Pity we cannot clone him.

Since the late 70s, Toronto-based Paterson has produced a mountain’s worth of material in a mountain range long list of disciplines: from seminal New Wave music to Super 8 films, neo-noir novels to ground-breaking critical texts blending art writing and fiction (aka ficto-criticism), diaristic video pieces and digitally sourced art to performed lectures to concrete poems to performance poetry to theatre works. And that’s the short list.

He is arguably one of the most influential figures in Canadian art alive today, and I do not make such statements readily nor lightly. A Toronto without him is unimaginable.

And now, there is even more proof. Collection/Correction, an anthology of Paterson’s critical writings, concrete poems, and film scripts provides a kind of Paterson 101 to new readers and confirms what the rest of us already know – Paterson is an agile and beautifully free thinker, and has always been way ahead of his time. What the hell took this book so long to arrive?

I reached Paterson by email and asked him to “have fun with my questions”. You get what you ask for.

RM Vaughan: How did this book come about?

Andrew James Patterson: Collection/Correction developed out of a collaborative friendship with the editor slash curator Jacob Korczynski. We’ve known each other since 2005 and Jacob has curated my work in a few programs. One night he posited the idea of a book surveying my writings. If only to leave traces of my existence, I counted myself in. We agreed there would be three main components: my concrete writing or language drawings or whatever we might want to call them; four specific video scripts; and four ficto-critical pieces I had written for IMPULSE magazine much earlier in my life or career or whatever the trajectory. It was paramount that this book would mix newer and older work, that all the work could exist in the present tense as well as historical contexts. Also, we agreed that a few key colour images were crucial to the book’s intention. So thus the still images from [the video works] “Passing” and “Eating Regular”.

What was it like looking back at your own writing? 

I’d say it was different with the fiction and ficto-criticism [a practice that merges elements of fiction, theory and criticism into stories]. The concrete poetry was too recent for me to feel distance from. It was like, yes go with the ones that work the best on paper but which could also be performed as it was important for performativity to be visible. The IMPULSE writings were earlier, when in many ways I was a different person. I feel more distant from those pieces. [And] I did find myself looking back to when I began experimenting with concrete poetry. I can trace it to a performance piece I did in 1998 called Symptoms of Whatever. But I must have at least flirted prior to that. Some of these word drawings and sculptures come out of my interest in art song lyrics that play with nonsense and repetition. I also thought about when I became fascinated by typos. Some time in the 80s, when I meant to write Freud but wound up with Fraud! Do the same with Jung you get Junk, and so on. I had incorporated this little fetish into the video “Who Killed Professor Wordsworth” (1990) and a text plus photo piece I contributed to the artists’ book I’ve Got to Stop Talking to Myself (edited by John Marriott, 2000). So, although the concrete poems in Collection/Correction were mostly made over the previous few years, there was indeed a connective to earlier works.

Did you change any of the text(s) in preparation for print? If so, how did that work and/or what did it feel like?

No, all the texts are verbatim. I could seriously re-write any of those pieces but then they would be different pieces that should have different titles among other changes.

You are a pioneer in the field of ficto-criticism. How has the genre changed since you first experimented with it?

You flatter me. The first person I associate the term ‘ficto-criticism’ with is Jeanne Randolph, who I consider a pioneer and whom I admire greatly for her mixture of an almost conversational prose and her very acute observations. I’ve always liked the mixture of fiction, even with plots to keep things grounded, mixed with observations and critique. I mean, my favorite section of Chris Krauss’ I Love Dick is that section where she forgets about Dick Hebdidge and Sylvere Lotringer and presents her own fascination and admiration mixed with critical observation of the performance artist Hannah Wilkie.

I think there are many art writers who work fictional elements into their reviews. Often I wish they’d simply write fiction.

Art writing in general has changed enormously since you first became an art writer. In a world obsessed with click bait and link hits, is there still room for experimental prose about art?

Well, there certainly should be. There certainly should be space for writers/critics/observers to use ‘experimental’ (I guess meaning obtuse or not didactic or simply not literal) strategies to play with art that is in circulation or on display. But where to publish or read such writing? Well, there are personal blogs, but what about the media? I mean, what is the media? Where do you think there is room or space for art writing that is not promotional and is not simply describing the work to a potentially appreciative but passively accepting audience? What indeed is ‘the media”? Print? Well, I’m a geezer, so I still actually read a newspaper each day, as well as online posts. What percentage of works exhibited receive any coverage?  Why do some galleries or artists get covered and not others. Why is there so little art writing in the mainstream media? The cliché is that art is considered an elite or minority interest. In Toronto, I miss something like LOLA, in which the writing and critical commitment was wildly uneven to say the least; but it did provide a forum for both serious contestation and also for casual observations that could effectively trigger other maybe not so casual observations and that is known as a dialogue.

I think there is a balance between somebody writing about themselves in the process of writing about exhibitions or presentations and somebody just writing about themselves, at the expense of the exhibitions and the artists in those exhibitions. The latter tends to get my back up. I want good creative prose in art writing, but I don’t want fiction that bypasses criticism. If you want to write fiction in its own right, then of course go and do so.

I haven’t actually been reading that much ‘art writing’ recently as I feel somewhat distant from ‘the art world’. I mean, I don’t exhibit that frequently. I’m best known as a video artist (that may be changing with this book) but I’m not exactly omnipresent on the festival circuit and my videos, well, are they really videos? They consist of graphic images or images constructed within the editing systems themselves. They could be labelled ‘materialist’.  I feel I live in a very small corner and I don’t feel that’s particularly such a bad situation.

Do you regret and/or disagree with any of the positions you took 30 years ago?

Well, who doesn’t? If someone hasn’t altered their work within that time-frame, they’ve either blissed out, are so rich that they can afford to cease thinking, or they are an idiot savant. With Collection/ Correction there are works not in the book that I think are better than some of the works in the book. But if one is committed to making a book that coheres as a book, and in the process trusts an editor who has more than earned that trust, then those decisions are made and thus those omissions happen.

I do look at the IMPLUSE writings and realize that I was a very different person then. I was repressed and fascinated by particular repressions. I was suspicious of all that proclaimed itself to be liberated and free or open. I thought that superficially free space was actually highly regulated. I thought there were grids where there didn’t appear to be grids. I liked paranoia. I thought it made for good art. I went though my punk phase in the late seventies. I liked restricted options.  

Your writing has always advocated a relentless questioning, and, in my reading, a discomfort with perceived/received truths. Is there still space in our pointing-and-shouting culture for the ambiguous, the uncertain?

Has it? I mean, all of my writing? I’ve written puff pieces and maybe even calling cards. But yes, I hope that a difference between the bulk of my writing and conventional narratives or promotional art writing is that closure is refused, that contradictory perspectives are not only permitted but encouraged. In fact, they are mandatory. I think there has to be space for the ambiguous, the uncertain and more, I think there has to be space where one can entertain a first person perspective and not have it assumed to be autobiographical. With shorter and shorter attention spans, of course that becomes compromised, to say the least. I can be supportive of anybody who will entertain a seemingly absurd premise and then follow through on it, who can make their case or ‘prove it’. I like meta-writing. But I will support blatant propaganda. Either I agree or disagree of course, and I don’t spend much time with it because “I get it”. Like identity politics: I generally prefer them to be outside of art and not even calling themselves art, but I will support their right to exist and I dislike it when somebody identifies themselves racially, ethnically, sexually as part of their work or their argument and then gets accused of relying on ‘identity politics’. Who decided that form and content were oppositional? Clement Greenberg? Who decided that radical content should rely on conservative form to be populist and accessible? Silly social-realists. I think radical content demands radical form, but that of course is merely my opinion.

In 2015, Canadian Art magazine declared the art review obsolete. Thoughts? 

Well, I so infrequently pay attention to Canadian Art, I’m afraid. Is this of a piece with David Balzer’s Curationism? Is this statement in tandem with a post-critical world that bears an astonishing resemblance to a pre- or non-critical world? In which the only criterion is whether or not the artist has talent? In which reviews are expected to be promotional puff pieces?

There are reviews and then there are reviews. There are those for people art-walking who would like to read recommendations and to be warned about exhibitions which are time-wasters. Of course, I have gone to many exhibitions or movies simply because critics whom I can’t stand have panned them. Sometimes this has paid off and sometimes the fools have actually been correct.

And then there are reviews or overviews that are intended to be dialogical… to the artists, to the galleries, and to what for better or worse is the ‘art community’. If that discourse ever gets lost….perish the thought and the consequences. Of course there are people who don’t have time to read anything with too many four syllable words. But individuals of many stripes who appreciate intellectual discourse are not in any hurry to become obsolete. Thus I consider this Canadian Art quote to be either posturing or old-fashioned stupid.

When you meet young art writers, what do you say to them about writing? Where on earth to begin?

Do we mean writing about art or writing that is art? For art critics or observers, hmmm. Make sure you have at least one other source of income. Find a voice that mixes subjectivity with an ability to outline visual details. Get to know the friendlier editors and also artists. Try to get some old fashioned print publishing happening as well as your own blog or online publications. Mix with different audiences.

I’ve always loathed the separation in Toronto and in other centers of the visual arts and literary ‘communities’. If your writing is performative, perform, unless you have stage fright. Maintain a profile in the visual arts world. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Go to book launches. Don’t wait until your ninth life! Learn to work with editors and collaborators. Be a solitary mad artist up until the point when you need to be working with others, and then banish the solitary mad artist cliché. Treat writing like an addiction or a bodily function.

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