Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 76
May 5, 2019
Writer’s Desk: See and Tell, Don’t Define
Legendary roots record producer T. Bone Burnett (O Brother, Where Art Thou? among many many others) was on Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast Broken Record recently. During a sprawling conversation about music, recording, and the genesis of art, Burnett mused on the following: All really that artists do is, we’re going down a road and we …
May 3, 2019
Screening Room: ‘Non-Fiction’
In Non-Fiction, the newest movie from Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria), a clutch of Parisian intellectuals have affairs, drink wine, and talk about the state of publishing and reading in the modern era. One of them is Juliette Binoche, who always makes things better. My review is at PopMatters: “Fewer readers, more books.” “I reject this …
April 28, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Be More Than a Writer
There are people who have known all their lives that they wanted to be a writer. That’s a lot of us, to some degree. Then they tend to face that chasm between the want and the real. Is it a book deal? Getting an agent? Self-publishing and hoping a publishing house notices it? Being one …
April 27, 2019
Nota Bene: Twitter, Neo-Nazis, and the GOP
In March of this year, Twitter had an all-hands meeting at which an employee asked why the company can’t do as good a job of keeping white supremacist material off the site as they have done with ISIS propaganda? According to Motherboard, another employee provided a simple explanation: With every sort of content filter, there …
April 25, 2019
Screening Room: ‘In the Intense Now’
In Joao Moreira Salles’ beautifully wrought documentary, In the Intense Now, an impressionistic flow of amateur footage captures the joy and despair of the revolutionary movements of the 1960s. It’s an incredible trip. My review is at PopMatters: The movie’s first half (“Back to the Factory”) starts with the street battles that ripped through Paris in May …
April 21, 2019
Writer’s Desk: If You Cannot Sleep…
Sometime in the 1960s, Leonard Cohen inscribed one of his early poems (or at least the title) on the wall of a cafe in Montreal. “Marita, Please Find Me, I Am Almost 30” is a beautiful, heartsick piece that threads the love of creation through a desolate sadness. In other words, it expresses precisely the …
April 14, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Quality First, Money Second
Gay Talese is a great reporter. There are not many of those. He was also a great storyteller—which is not an art that even all great reporters can ever master. So in the middle of a delightful Men’s Journal interview (sample quote: on how he handles aging? “I go out every goddamn night of the …
April 9, 2019
Screening Room: ‘Woman at War’
In the new Icelandic movie Woman at War, a Reykjavik choir director wages a secret one-person eco-sabotage campaign against the forces of polluting industrialization, taking down one power line at a time with her trusty bow. Woman at War is playing now. My review is at PopMatters: This is a movie where the line between real and unreal …
April 8, 2019
Nota Bene: ‘Ethics’ as Fear Tactic
A so-called “Ethics in Journalism” bill introduced in the Georgia state legislature proposes the creation of a board that would establish a “canon” of journalism ethics and sanction any journalists who broke them. According to the Columbia Journalism Review: The bill would also grant interview subjects the right to request any photographs, audio, and video …
April 7, 2019
Writer’s Desk: Go Deep and Go True, But Make it Good
Back in 2001, J. T. LeRoy was the literary world’s mysterious enfant terrible (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things). That was not long before the transgressive little gutterpunk Bukowski facade was exposed in the most fascinating literary hoax since, well, just about ever. Before that happened, though, Vanity Fair had Tom Waits interview the person then calling …
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