Entry 12:

Dear Phillip,

Dry rot? Must be that global warming again. It's even getting into the tires.

Spent the day in out of the rain surrounded by heaps of books, never an unpleasant condition. Of course movies are never altogether removed; I leaf through a 1905 novel and start to see it as D. W. Griffith might have filmed it (the way he turned Frank Norris' The Pit into the incredibly compressed A Corner in Wheat). Such exercises in visualization seem appropriate for such a gloomy and torrential evening, with the city more or less vanishing in the rain. Well, the working day is almost over; time to wax poetic. ...

In the Mood for Love definitely is an elegant experience for the eyes, however diffuse its final convolutions. If nothing else Wong Kar-wai finds new ways of seeing the most basic things, like people going in and out of apartments or walking down alleys, and that really should be enough. It is a bit like the effect of a song. (And I'm glad he didn't choose the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreaming" like in his other movie, a song I detest so much that the constant repetitions of it spoiled the picture for me.)

Speaking of inappropriate music, what on earth was Tom Waits doing on the soundtrack of Pollock? Artie Shaw, perhaps, or Benny Goodman might have caught the flavor more aptly.

Memento? That's the one about the guy with such bad short-term memory that he can't remember the plot of the movie he's in? I have that experience often enough as a member of the audience. But I'm game, of course. Anything for a new wrinkle to make that neonoir thing a little more neo.

I like the way the rain blots out the noise of the city. It's a good time to listen to music, as if you were out in the country somewhere with no neighbors to complain if you turn it up loud.

Best,
Geoffrey