“Everyone” is an artist..”

of course the notbar collective could not be stopped so easily. it continued forth even after that "last night" i last wrote of. but then finally there was a court hearing this week and it appears that the disneyland of dark dreams is not invincible to the law and the council and it will really well and truly have to close.

the idea for a notbar documentary came to me after the second or third time i had gone to the bar. And then it re-emerged every time i returned. But then I thought, I already am making a documentary, and i do kind of have this full time job, and i have this tendancy to start many things and finish few, so i did my best to put the idea out of my head.

I became great friends with the notproprieter of the notbar and thus he became part of my network, and thus i found myself one saturday afternoon in the notbar, running an amalgamation of extension leads to the nearest record store in order to plug in the lights.

At the end of the interview i had an extra tape, and so did another interview on the notbar. And as we spoke about it I thought about this undescribable something about the place and its fearless leader and the troops he banded by him to run it. And with all this was the thought again and again that this was a place that was impermanent. it would be gone in january, it had to be documented, it deserved that.

and so i found myself saying i would be back for two nights in the week to film again. at night time. last night was interesting. particularly the part where i went to the bagel shop with the boys from the bar and a dear friend and regular, and got pickpocketed. the thing is, before this film, i was always so neurotic about my camera, i never took it out really. it was always in really restrained controlled set ups. but my obsession with the notbar freed me. i found myself leaning across the laps and, straining arms, hiding in corners, walking over unstable floors and planks of wood.

i’m not totally happy with this light i’ve hired though, its the flash effect. i think tonight i will acquire some red celophane to bubble over it. will give it a nice seedy feeling that makes sense i feel.

this blog now has a mistress/partner in crime. find it here…

As an eighties kid I grew up on a diet of brat pack films about teenagers, and then suddenly I was a teenager and I was watching films about gen x’rs in their twenties, and then I was in my twenties and popular film was focusing on teenagers again. It always left me thinking

“Why did my generation get missed out???”

Watching Juno last night, I was back to watching a  film about a teenager, but the difference this time was, that the story seemed to be coming from someone very close to my age. Very close. In fact, I just googled the screenwriter and it appears we are both twenty nine.

I can’t quite explain why that fact is important to me, but there was something about watching a film with a central character, who was so much like me, and friends of mine in high school. A sharp smart girl with attitude, half hearted interest in studying, a certain level of nonchalance about sex,  and indie chick style and room clutter that felt “right” . If this wasn’t enough to win me over, even the music references felt aimed at me, every sonic youth, nirvana and hole album I had had on cassette resurrected.

This was a film I was primed to like. I’m not keen on being marketed to or pitched to, but over ninety minutes Juno continued to speak directly to me, in my language, to the point where I just gave up on any attempt at sarcastic feeling about it (there was enough in the film to make up for that) and relegated myself to the fact that this would be a film I would be gushing about to any friend who would listen, for weeks and weeks until its release.

One of the greatest joys of the film is the dialogue. Diablo Coady’s characters speak with razor sharp wit and dark humour, just on the right side of being stylised. You can feel yourself wanting to quote back one-liners as soon as you hear them. This is definitely a film in the arena of Heathers, with cult flick status imminent.

But Juno is more than a collection of the “right” pop culture references, an indie credible cast, cool quotable banter, and unconventional take on the teen pregnancy issue. As pervasive as sarcasm is throughout the dialogue and visual set ups, there is a lot of heart, and some clever send ups of the dynamics of class, sex, gender and “maturity”. Juno is a girl whose only mistake is to have unprotected sex. On discovering she is pregnant (after a hilarious scene where she takes three consecutive pregnancy tests in the corner shop, using the staff toilet)  she deals with the situation with humour, charm, and a maturity that at times appears to be lacking from many of the adult characters around her.

As the credits rolled at the end of the film, I remember one of my friends saying

“You know even if I didn’t really like it, I would have really liked it”

I can’t sum it up any better than that.

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