Godammit, I’m Mad!

After a silly press conference in Cannes to promote his new film, Director Lars Von Trier has been officially banned from the film festival for his absurdist remarks about Hitler.

Reading his “10 most controversial statements” I think it should be clear to most grown ups that Von Trier was in a goofy mood and mildly attempting to be provocative.  There was no hint of genuine bigotry or antisemitism. He was just fucking around. He talked about making a hardcore porn film with Kirsten Durst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, blaming them for goading him into it.

I thought he was funny, not a funny as Bill Hicks but still funny. Unfortunately, now there is no room for humor about Hitler and that’s just sad. I loved hearing comedian Louis CK referring to Mrs. Palin as “Hitlering up the place.”

Listen, I’m no friend of Hitler, but neither is Lars Von Trier. It’s a shame that a genuinely original artist is being penalized for being offbeat and sarcsatic, while idiots in Cannes to promote the same old derivative crap are free to do so. I’d like to see his new film, as long as no one is castrated on-screen, like in Antichrist.

Read an enlightening interview with Von Trier here.  Read my other posts about him here and here.

Few things are more delightful than a well-executed prank.  A good prank is a noble creative endeavor – that’s what I tell myself about the ones I’ve engaged in.

The Nat Tate prank was devised by British novelist William Boyd with the help of David Bowie and a few other collaborators, including Gore Vidal. Boyd wanted to create a fictional artist whose underrated work he would introduce to the art world, via a book on the subject.

Bowie held a launch party for the book on April 1, 1998, and read extracts from the book to the collected celebrities and art enthusiasts. One of the collaborators went around asking people if they were familiar with Tate’s work.  Poor Tate had burned 99% of his work before his tragic early death in 1960.

In the end, someone revealed the hoax. But William Boyd says that Nat Tate lives on: every so often, one of his paintings comes up for auction.

The more I learn about this prank the more I fucking love it! It reminds me of my Phyllis Willis-Barbour prank with my friend Mark, and it makes me wish we had taken it further. We planned to have our fake poet appear at readings, wearing  a mask to hide her face (deformed in a terrible fire.)

**UPDATE: Just found the link to PWB’s bio, one of the greatest things ever written. Ever.

But our best prank, the one that brought us the most joy, was the Ed and Paige Project.

Ed was a guy we had good reason to detest. Among his loathsome activities was an unending search for hot chicks in the personal ads at nerve.com, even though he was married to a woman who supported him. Since we knew his taste in women, we created one as bait. We set up her profile, and waited. It took a week, and we had almost given up when Ed contacted Paige, calling her a “long tall drink of water” and complementing her physique.

Here is Paige, who I found at hotornot.com

But wait: Paige isn’t just hot and skanky looking, she is a commodities broker and a graduate of the Wharton School of Business! Her favorite book is Ulysses.

The resulting email love affair between Ed and Paige was a soap opera that all our friends enjoyed, but not with the delirious religious ecstasy that Mark and I experienced. The email they exchanged was beyond belief. It was like Christmas morning all the time.

I am too tired and lazy to elaborate on the Ed and Paige Project, but I know that Nat Tate would have risen from the dead just to be a part of it.

Way back in time, when life was still silly and fun, I created a character on MySpace called Brad Boner. For some reason, he was obsessed with U2. I just remembered him tonight, and I had a good laugh at him/me.

I was inspired to created Brad when my BFF created “Olga”, after I confided to her that I’d opened a box of cosmetics that was mistakenly delivered to my house but addressed to someone named Olga. Olga was just there to tease me but she went on to make 43 friends.

Nowadays, I hardly ever see the BFF and the pleasure of screwing around on MySpace has been usurped by the deadly dullness of Facebook, where the etiquette is as strict as haiku and the blocking software is as ruthless as anything devised by the CIA.

I miss Brad and Olga and my relative innocence!

I admire Lars Von Trier more for his pranks than his artistry, although I thought Dogville was pretty brilliant.  Breaking the Waves, Dancing in the Dark, nope, not for me. Too much angst, too little catharsis.

Now, his new film Antichrist has riled up viewers at Cannes, and has divided critics into two camps (roughly, “What a genius!” and “What repulsive trash!”)

Here’s the storyline: A married couple goes into the woods to help the wife recover from the death of their child. Things get out of hand, ending in shocking violence and sexual mutilation.

How much would you pay to not have to see this movie? I don’t have much in my bank account but I’d be willing to empty it, if that’s what it took.  Lars, I love you, don’t ever change, just don’t come near me with anything sharp.

Here’s the trailer if you’re up to it.