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Lucky Dragon Editions

All Rights Reserved.
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Brad Troemel Comments on the World at Will *
Tao Lin and Ariana Reines Correspondence *
Status Updates by Amber Steakhouse *
Eugene Kotlyarenko Interview *
Book Review *
Zachary German on Justin Taylors The Gospel of Anarchy
Alec Niedenthal on Marie Calloways what purpose did i serve in your
life
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Dog Wearing Dog Costume
Sculpture, 2009
The Jogging
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THE INTELLECTUAL SITUATION:
BRAD TROEMEL COMMENTS
ON THE WORLD AT WILL
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Brad Troemel
Adam Humphreys
These days its nearly impossible to tell the dif-
ference between us and them, between the under-
ground radicals and The Man. I cant tell if you
are serious or not. To some degree this was
probably always the case everyone is a walking
contradiction. There is no lifestyle capable of con-
sistently living up to a political ideal that is at
odds with capitalism unless you can go entirely
off the grid. I disagree that even people off the
grid are truly living outside of the market or
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capitalism I would encourage you to view all
human relationships as a form of exchange and
trade as bleak as that may sound and busi-
ness and the market are natural outgrowths of
these things a naturally existing state of af-
fairs Crusty freegans are better at conning
their non-crusty friends to give them free drinks
than they are at absorbing the excess production
of corporate America, so that option is out the
window. Its not that everyone is too lazy to do
good or that people dont recognize there are
pressing issues. The real problem is that there
are simply too many machines to be able to rage
against all of them at the same time. There are so
many real problems they all come from us
the human condition is struggle for resources,
etc. Eventually you need to eat some McDonalds
before you go back to Zuccoti Park, acquire some
shoes made by child labor to march for Walmart
workers rights, or pay rent to a group of
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religiously-bolstered misogynists so you can con-
tinue running your underprivileged childrens
daycare center. Lol Some can avoid the evils of
global capitalism more than others through their
own patient volition and some can afford to pay
for a more conscientious lifestyle but no one can
entirely absolve themselves of the sins of contrib-
uting to the misery of those less fortunate
through their buying power. Even the crunchiest
drum circle participant may not fully know the
origins of his dreadlocks wooden beads. Are
they old growth? Possibly. This is not an endorse-
ment of nihilism, but simply a way of stating that
we each exist on a spectrum of our own complic-
ity with the state of unfortunate affairs ranging
from politics to the environment to the economy
and beyond. Its good to be good, its better to be
better, but its impossible to be perfect. We each
endorse to some small extent the thing we de-
spise. I feel like you are making personal pro-
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gress here, and I think this is something people
can probably relate to (some of them) but eve-
rything in this first paragraph, the rhetorical
stuff, is stuff that is held evident I think by most
mature people
The difference between the ruling establish-
ment and subversive outsiders has been espe-
cially indistinguishable in art history since
WWII. A large chunk of galleries and museums
share some variation of the goal to locate, pla-
cate, and integrate the most contemporarily
transgressive work into popular discourse. Aes-
thetic radicalism is often different from political
radicalism. From the west side of Manhattan
these white cubes beckon Give me your tired,
your images of poor Cubans susceptible to being
tattooed for an exploitative cost, your huddled
masses of paintings yearning to shock Baby
Boomers with their formal use of elephant
dung. I think this kind of work speaks to a very
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real rage at the machine or whatever but ul-
timately what is really successful and beautiful
seems to communicate and pacify that feeling at
the same time or at least communicate that
feeling from a position of knowingness and ac-
ceptance the artists catharsis And like the
saying goes: if you build a project space, they
will cum all over the place! On their canvases,
on their installations, in their pants while watch-
ing each other perform sexually alluring acts un-
der the guise of performance. This is funny but
I cant tell if youre being serious you seem sort
of crazy. Its hard to pull apart one milky,
protein-drenched face from another let alone try
to distinguish between the fashionably perme-
able political ideologies that separate one party
of art producers from another party of art own-
ers, publishers, and buyers. You seem really an-
gry and trying to laugh at the same time. When
the most saleably transgressive works of art are
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permanently sought after by a market eager to
prove its own pluralist acceptance of voices an-
tagonizing the status quo it created, the title of
being an outsider more accurately describes
those who simply arent saleable than those who
are in fact transgressive. I dont like your equa-
tion of transgression with merit or some-
thing like that. So exists cube after cube of art
granted permission to stick it to the man by the
man himself not unlike rack after rack of Sex Pis-
tols t-shirts available in Hot Topic locations the
world over. And this art is boring, and normal,
and doesnt make us really feel anything
Nowhere is the dissolution of the us vs.
them dichotomy more clear than among young
creative-types on the internet who have whole-
heartedly embraced their inevitable endorse-
ment of corporately fueled lifestyles in a way
that would make the 90s cyber punks and 80s
hardcore zine-reading punks and 70s punk
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punks and 60s hippie-proto-punks and 50s
beatnik-bohemian-punks want to throw up.
These people probably underwent similar trans-
formations in their own lives and thinking or
killed themselves or took too many drugs I
think youre romanticizing them (but Im still
not sure if this whole essay is serious or is some
kind of self conscious performance) Vajazzled
head to toe in Axe body spray and Under Ar-
mour tracksuits while posting images of neon
Nike logos to Facebook from their iPhones, this
is a group who use their blogs as prosthetic
limbs for the adornment of yet even more brand
name products. This is like a sermon Im
imagining a black preacher in the south talking
about how evil homosexuals are. Thank god
Tumblr doesnt have posting limits so the bodies
of these ironically Greek statues can be fully chis-
eled, one slime-drenched athletic company logo
at a time. Whats important here is that this
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hyper-corporate posturing not just the idea of a
single person but a trend among the group as a
whole. Or a self conscious display of the reality /
constraints in which we find ourselves also:
you are talking about like 1200 internet artists
most people dont think or dress like this most
TC readers dont know anything about internet
artists. Also are these just trends? Trends are
harmless The internet is decent at making indi-
viduals famous but its much better at creating
the syntax of production I dont know what this
means: the memetic formats that can be ver-
sioned ad infinitum, the open-ended disposi-
tions that inform what is funny, the indistinct no-
tions of fashionability that fuel the virility of a
type of images popular on Tumblr. These are
knowable formulas for communication that are
used en masse because they speak to some dispo-
sition of the time, ranging from the notion of oc-
cupying a given public space all the way to us-
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ing #YOLO. I think the only way this piece is go-
ing to work is if you get dressed in clergy uni-
form and deliver it in an open mic stand-up club.
The disposition that influences so many to
cover their online presences in the image of The
Man drop this, the man from your whole think-
ing and conception it is cliche dated term and
doesnt mean anything.. is not unlike the mo-
ment in history when art institutions became
supportive of artists whose work was critical of
those very institutions. Again TC readers proba-
bly not very involved in history of art institu-
tions they go to a museum, they look at some-
thing they like it or dont like it they are
probably with friends or on a date or something
and that is probably more important to them
than the art... let alone the institution.. By re-
couping institutionally critical art, museums and
galleries were able to sidestep the more radical
aims some artists had as well as provide a more
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controlled framework for a dialogue about visibil-
ity, power, and money that wouldve inevitably
happened without their endorsement. The key
word here is inevitability. One relationship we
now firmly understand as being inevitable is the
way in which subcultures are routinely appropri-
ated by mass culture. Yes anytime there is
money to be made someone will find a way of
making it there are more people concerned
with making the money than there are people
concerned with making art anytime anything
becomes a thing there is a chance to make
money Murphys Law dictates that if a subcul-
ture exists to the extent that it is named and rec-
ognizable it can and will be used by whatever
source that stands to gain even the slightest bit
of capital by appropriating it. By creating visual
associations with athletic sportswear or other
corporate entities tumblr kids are anticipating
their inevitable cooption by companies that have
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seemingly nothing to do with the fashion, art,
and music worlds they exist in. If or when Nike
decides to cash in on the coolness of these fash-
ionistas the company can only do so by cannibal-
izing a queered or vulgarized vision of itself. Be
like Fiji water, they say.
Lurking in the background of this fashion-
stance-as-cannibal-bait is another relationship
now common between people and companies:
the unpaid internship, a form of consensual ex-
ploitation that takes many shapes and flavors
ranging from practically everything included on
the New York Foundation of the Arts job list-
ings page to the football photo album Dove
Men+Care encourages you to upload to their
website so you can become part of the social net-
work that is the Dove Men+Care website sweep-
stake community. The previously mentioned
idea of self-identifying with a clothing brand
through your tumblr is a form of reverse endorse-
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ment not unlike the unpaid internships reversed
labor process where you go out of your way to do
work for a company and in return for your ef-
forts they give themselves money. While this rela-
tionship primarily remains a one-way street for
companies taking advantage of student debt and
a poor economy there is some wiggle room
emerging for using the unpaid internship as a
form of subversion the intern is, after all, a rep-
resentative of a company despite not being paid
to do so. You are wandering here wtf intern-
ships
Perhaps the most prolific unpaid intern of all
is Youtubes Shoenice22, a Gulf War veteran
who has amassed 50,000,000 views for his abil-
ity to consume seemingly inedible products in as-
tonishingly short spans of time. YES but I
wouldnt call him an intern, or do you now
equate all unpaid producers of content with in-
terns? Shoenice is like a mentally ill attention
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seeking spectacle TC might like an article
called Greatest hits of Shoenice where you de-
scribe his videos and what makes each one
great Shoenices on camera demeanor is a dam-
aged form of machismo, a Joker-esque delivery
of self-invented catchphrases and bold promises
to feed the starving children in Africa. Nearly all
of his videos feature a brand name product of
some kind being held up to the camera for a cou-
ple minutes of banter before being consumed
with an aggression and disregard for health that
is capable of eliciting the gag reflex even from
the safe viewing distance of a laptop. Though
charmingly witty Shoenice is ultimately a tragic
and self-sacrificial figure: a court jester perform-
ing for the appeasement of his own idealized con-
ception of fame, a person who is willing to com-
mit not only his time in the present moment but
his future body and health to the pursuit of atten-
tion. He is fully dedicated to living the life of a so-
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cial media avatar and over the counter products
are the self-imposed weapons of his martyrdom.
I like this part above and would be interested in
exploring more of shoenice Despite all of the
free promotion he provides for the companies
who manufacture the products he chokes down
one gets the sense that this is not the type of un-
paid labor companies would like to encourage.
Shoenices violent consumption stands as a hy-
perbolic vision of what we each do to our own
bodies (albeit much more slowly) as we spend
our lives munching Doritos and sipping Absolut
mixed drinks. I dont eat or drink these things
I drink coffee and eat non organic cereal We
empathize with Shoenice because we understand
the grotesque nature of the products he con-
sumes as an extension of our own gluttony. Idk
I dont feel glutonous and I dont empathize
with him much; if anything I empathize with
him wanting to be seen and heard more than any-
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thing, and am alternatively horrified by what he
is willing to do. In becoming the alpha consumer
Shoenice brings shame to the act of consump-
tion and the products consumed, vulgarizing the
names of those products in a spectacular, if unin-
tentional, act of present day subversion. This is
academic, you are reading too much into it. If
the underground and the man were formerly set
up in trenches pitted against each other both
now exist on the same menu the question now
is who can eat the other alive first. Hmmmmffff
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TAO LIN AND ARIANA REINES
A FUNNY LITTLE THING
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After Shitty Youth...
posted to hatecrime.tumblr.com Nov 9, 2012
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Shoenice

STATUS UPDATES
BY AMBER STEAKHOUSE
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what kind of people are into nude beaches
this morning i got my teeth x-rayed and
bought a 30 pack of beer
wait should i buy a computer off craigslist
and trade it for these shoes that are too small for
me
i wish i could sit on every bench in the world
i don't own any memoirs of addiction on tape
just said 'i think she looks good' re present
day didion. meg said 'yeah but what about this?'
and pointed to crazy part of present day didion's
face
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It's hard to know how much stuff you really
own bc there's also your parents house
i told my mom that i wanted to curb stomp
her and she didn't hear me right or know what i
meant but i still feel bad even though she didn't
get hurt by it is that reasonable
i hate it when people seem to change their
opinion of you based on how you treat them
now that frank ocean came out of the closet is
it like how we used to be like 'i wonder if there
will ever be a black president' and then there was
one how that thing about will there ever be a
openly gay popular rapper? any answer is help-
ful thanks it is for a thing for my poly psi class
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is if i don't get to have a mercedes no one gets
to have a mercedes really what they are going to
change oklahoma's state motto to
sometimes in places that are named after for-
eign languages it says kill in the title like the
schyulkill river in pennsylvania does that mean
that kill means something different in the for-
eign langauge than it does here
what's the best place to start in reading john
updike and also is it true that his mother is a nov-
elist as well
do any of you know why hemingway men-
tioned that the character was jewish in the sun
also rises
why do men enjoy the way women's breasts
look and is it possible for them to be too large
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does anyone know why it was so hard for
obama to appoint supreme court justice sonja so-
tamayor (sp)
i saw at a museum there was a bug in a lolli-
pop is that healthy to eat
did cowboys really use rope that they made
into lassos to ensnare cows?
what's the world's tallest tree and has it been
climbed or climbed up before
what's a combustible engine
are pandas really cute
does false praise promote stasis
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can any girl learn how to squirt and what are
the benefits of squirting (besides obviously a
turn-on for the guy)
are people whose last names are the names of
a nationality more often than not actually of that
nationality? i need to know for a school project
i'm straight ur gay
is commercialism bad
is the exorcist film based on true events
is dj kay slay or dj red alert better
is broad channel something to do with a
bridge or is it when you turn on the tv and it is a
channel about women like lifetime or oxygen
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did they not make convertables for a while in
the 1980's
if i had enough money in my chcecking ac-
count could i acctually buy an island nation like
guinea or equitorieal guinea
what part of the earth has the fewest variation
in temperature
is organized religion helpful or hurtful to a so-
ciety
is it good to be docile
what's the smallest room you have ever been
in
are even very small breasts attractive to some
men
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is it better to be smart or kind
is ice cream and / or milk healthy for you
do you know if Acorn did any good things be-
fore andrew brightbart put an end to their opera-
tions
is christ church part of the christian church
is llewellyn a real name
what's the most expensive scarf
how big does it have to be before it is a lake
is cum 98 degreez
i am going gay
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if i don't get a sandwich soon i'm gonna fuck-
ing snap
The movie my life has most closely resembled
is hotel Rwanda
vince carter was on the raptors for 6 years or
whatever, the nets for 5 years or whatever, and
then 3 teams for 1 year each. Okay
i like skanks
i'm a cat
regina spektor sucks
someone on the phone said it was snowing in
nyc
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last night at work a bus-boy told me that
bynum is out for the season
he said 'you hear about bynum'
i said 'no'
he said 'out for the season'
i made a sound that was inappropriate for the
situation i think, but the bus-boy didn't seem to
mind
all i want for christmas is a weirdly magnetic
thing you can stick on beer cans to make them
look like arizona cans. can you guys google if this
technology has been invented yet and if it hasn't
been can you guys invent it?
an 'elephant's gerald' would be insane
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stuff that is by no means birth control seems
like it's what birth control is, to me
one time my cousin knew what the different
circuits of the court appeals were all like
i have no idea what a 'hostile takeover' is
a bad drink would be 'butter scotch:' two
parts scotch, one part melted butter. such a bad
drink..
has anyone said they were in a orange juice
colored ferrari but also that their orange juice
was made by ferrari, for some reason?
do you guys get what 'hack-a-howard' is..
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i really want someone to tell me like, 'that's
not how gentrification works.' that or 'that's how
gentrification works.'
'if you're climbin up a ladder and you hear
something splatter: cocaine' would be a weird
way for that children's song to go
is there anyone w/ a thug life tattoo who can
name a The Sea and Cake song other than their
cover of 'sound and vision?'
what i don't know about how check cashing
places work could fill a book, and that book is
called The Old Man and The Sea
sometimes you can yell 'i have a knife' even
though you really only have one at your apart-
ment, not with you at the time, and that helps
you. ***not often though***
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in high school this kid Bill his screen name
was Werd Thats Wack. that was a bad screen
name am i right
wes craven is a crazy name
i hate england
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Lake George Triathlon
Photos by Jonathan Owen Black
Model: Laura Selfridge
The Deranged Mind behind MoCAtvs
hit web series Feast of Burden.
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EUGENE KOTLYARENKO
In front of Eugene's apartment near Echo Park in LA,
sitting in a white Rav 4, he texts me a POV shot of his
pants around his ankles saying he is 'finishing up with
some business.' I am to take him out for dinner. He has
texted me previously to make sure I have enough cash
to pay for the food, as the restaurant we are going to
does not accept cards. He walks out of his apartment
wearing acid washed jeans and a long green trench
coat. He is four years younger than me but balding
slightly.
-Interview by Adam Humphreys
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E: Its not the first time Ive ever been inter-
viewed and regretted it.
A: Whens the first time youve been interviewed
and regretted it?
E: Uh since the first time I was interviewed
A: When was that?
E: Like three years ago.
A: For your first film?
E: Yeah yeah yeah, for Zeroes and Ones. But,
also, like you know you go to any interview, like I
just remember I was uh interviewing to get into
uh Harvard University, a prestigious college in
the United States.
A: And then you went to Columbia?
E: Yeah, I did, and I remember that one was
really like good. A really good interview, but I
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immediately regretted it - I thought it went very
long. Even though the guy humored me, I felt
like it had gone very long, and I felt like I had ges-
ticulated a lot. I actually stood up and panto-
mimed an entire scene from a movie cause I was
trying to explain to him the power of movies.
And I was like You dont understand, if you
dont see it from the right angle, then youre not
gonna feel the power and hes like I cant just
tell you I gotta show you and then so like umm I
was talking to him about this movie Z, you ever
seen that? Z? Its a Costa-Gavras movie- its
about like uh the political its about the coup in
Greece.
A:Ive heard of that
E:Its a really good movie. And theres a scene
where the guys being chased by a car, you know,
and its done in this tracking shot, but then there
is also the shot they cut to thats kinda like with
the telephoto lens, and it makes it look like the
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car behind him is really close cause it flattens it,
and I was just trying to explain to him how like
he can show that wide shot, but then if you show
him in the car behind him it like [slaps hand] cre-
ates that tension much more.
A: So you were lecturing him on montage?
E: Uh yeah, but also camera choices you know
like
A: Lenses?
E: Lenses and shit, and yeah maybe I got too spe-
cific. I dont know. I that was a confusing time.
I really didnt want to go to college. I wanted to
go move to L.A. when I was 18.
A: To be an actor?
E: No, no, to be a filmmaker. I never wanted to
be an actor. Any acting I do is really out of neces-
sity you know? I never my main problem...
[Adam and Eugene are interrupted by some-
one else]
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A: Yeah, I dont know if... I dont know how long
this is gonna run for because I might have lim-
ited space on my hard drive
E: I dont care. I mean, were just talking right?
A:Yes, exactly. No no no, yeah, this is good.
Umm what else am I curious about you? Umm
...so then you went to Columbia? And then
E: Yeah
A: you studied literature at Columbia?
E: I studied everything, I studied umm, like
yeah, English, Russian, French literature and phi-
losophy and a bunch of classes in art history. I
just took film courses, like film studies courses,
and then Im like umm, after my sophomore
year I had this job where I was approving or de-
nying student loans for people all across the
country. And it was an insane job, because I
would get an application from like Tammy Lin,
who was applying for a thirty-thousand dollar
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loan to go to like, Alabama Institute of Makeup
and Hair, or whatever for that year. And I was
like There is no fucking way Tammy Lin will be
able to pay this money back, but like we have
sort of convinced every young person in the coun-
try that not only is college necessary, but they
are entitled to it, and these loan companies are
gonna facilitate that so shes, you know, doing
it.
A: But now you are avowedly anti-college?
E: Well no, what I am saying is that umm, after
that experience, I decided that college was I
was in debt a shit-ton. By that point, going into
the third year I had seventy-five thousand dol-
lars in debt, and then I was like I need to leave
here immediately, and luckily I actually went in
a weird way; I love the confines of learning and
that environment, so I was taking six or seven
courses every semester, just cause I liked it and
was like Why am I here if not to do that?, and
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umm, I almost had enough credits to graduate
but I didnt have a thesis, you know? So I went to
a few department heads and asked them if I
could just write a thesis for them and graduate,
cause I didnt have the requirements to graduate
in any department because I had been taking all
these classes everywhere, and the head of the
film department umm met me. And she was
very nice, and I had taken a class with her be-
fore, and she was very like, flexible about it. And
umm, then she let me, and so it was cool. And I
enjoyed writing that thesis.
A: So you graduated in two years or something?
E: Three years.
A:Three years?
E:Correct.
A: On facebook chat you said you think you are
one of the two-hundred smartest people in the
world.
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E: Uh huh.
A: Do you earnestly believe that?
[Adam and Eugene speak to the waitress]
E: No, no. [coughs] Oh, god. Thats, you
know, the sort of hyperbolic thing a deranged
person says on the internet, you know?
A: Are you deranged?
E: Yeah, definitely. Especially on the computer,
holy shit. Im so deranged. Unbelievably de-
ranged. On the computer anything goes, baby.
But, I mean I do think that, on a level of like
thinking for yourself and intellect and stuff, like
ninety-five percent of people in any environment
are like, just like cowards and like, you know,
dumb.
A:I dont believe people have the faculty to think
I just think its an IQ thing. I think people
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dont think independently.
[The waitress returns with soup]
E: People are really scared, you know, and
ninety-five percent of any environment, I mean
in any environment, eighty-five percent of peo-
ple are going to be really not worth it, you know
what I mean? But, thats not to say that they
arent like, that people inherently arent like of
value, or interesting, or whatever. They obvi-
ously are. But, theyre not gonna like, you
know...
A:stick their neck out.
E: Innovate! Or, or be loud, and free, unless its
sanctioned, by like umm culture like Halloween
or something like that. You know, thats why I
hate Halloween, because thats a day that sanc-
tions everybody to think
A: Halloween is ugly.
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E: dress up and be yourselves and be weird.
And that to me is such a joke and a farce and
like, a certain way to like umm, you know, subli-
mate like, problems.
A: I can see what you mean.
E: Try these black eggs guys, wow. Go black
eggs.
A: Are you a big food person?
E: No.
A: Is Feast of Burden inspired by eating black
eggs and being weird?
E: No, its definitely inspired by, you know, the
foodist part of all of our lives. Theres definitely
this weird fetish for food culture that exists now.
The show doesnt directly deal with that, but I
definitely wanted to touch on food as like ... this
thing that people do, you know? Foods.
A: Yeah. Have you ever watched eating videos on
the internet? Where people will upload a video
of them eating something into the camera?
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E: Ive done that.
A: There are a lot of smart people I know who do
this... and Im just like What is happening
here. Like, theres something to that.
E: Ive only done it because of this girl I know
that did this Facebook event called B.Y.O.F.-
bring your own food, the artist is always hungry.
And so everyone posted videos of themselves eat-
ing, and it was funny. So, I just did it for that.
But its definitely like, you know, interesting
the way anybody does anything differently, or
whatever. But no, I just thought that
A: Do you think that maybe its just the internet
for the first gave us like maybe there was no
representation, or not as much representation of
food...
E: Exactly.
A: And the internet gave us this possibility and
now were gonna show it food.
E: Totally. I remember seeing this one of my fa-
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vorite movies, it was umm, Jonas Mekas diaries.
Diaries, sketches, journals.
A: When hes old?
E: No, its, its actually from like the fifties to the
seventies. In his prime. And, in it, he takes a
sixty millimeter camera and just flips it on the ta-
ble and just films himself eating breakfast. And
it was so powerful to see that. And then later, I
had luckily I ended up somehow working with
Agnes Varda, you know, this like French film-
maker. And we were eating breakfast, and I was
like We should film ourselves eating breakfast
and shes like No thats stupid and Im like No
its cool. Like, this is real, its realer than us go-
ing to places and doing weird shit. You know,
cause she had ideas in mind. Shes a great
thinker, and she like thinks of all sorts of cool
shit, but, the footage of us eating actually ended
up in the movie, you know? So it was like, I think
that is something that is underrepresented, be-
65
cause when people do it in movies, real movies,
its very formal usually, its like Thief His Wife
And Her Lover, or
A: 35 Shots of Rum?
E: Yeah, I remember that movie.
A: The main character does all these rum shots
at the end, and its kind of... sensual
E: Boozy?
A: Yeah.
E: Well yeah, you know, you make your formal
decisions that mirror the like, psychological
whatever, state of the characters. Thats not
that
A: How did you work with Agnes Varda?
E: Umm because when I first moved out here, I
was asking everyone for jobs, cause I didnt
know anybody. I moved out here and didnt
know anybody really. Like, all my friends from
here, that I visit [inaudible] but I actually lived
in New York, so I would be visiting when they
66
were visiting. And I got out here, and I was like
Wait, my friends are in New York. So I would
just go to random parties and bars and places
and
A:Thats smart.
E: And umm. Well, its actually pathetic in a way,
but you gotta do what you gotta do to surivive,
you know? And, and somebody came back to me
and they were Oh my god, Eugene I got you a
job! and I was like Great! and they were like
It doesnt pay any money and I was like Fuck
you, I dont wanna do it but they were like Its
working with like Agnes Varda and then I was
like Okay. Ill like, do that for free you know,
cause I really like her movies.
A: Shes famous.
E: No, I really like her movies. Shes not just fa-
mous, shes a living legend.
A: Shes strong.
E: Shes someone who had done interesting
67
things, like, in her own voice, and like is real.
Its real, its real shit, you know, thats a real film-
maker. Thats not like, working for like, I dont
know, Ratner.
A: Making a commercial.
E: So we worked together, and umm, you know
I was just a P.A. right, so I was digging ditches
and sand. It was for this movie called Beaches of
Agnes where she like
A: I havent watched it, but I know its critically
reviewed very well. Its a personal documentary
film.
E: Umm yes. It is a good movie. I dont think its
her best movie, but its definitely
A: What do you like best? Vagabond?
E: Uh, Cleo From 5 to 7 and then umm The
Gleaners and I
A: Cleo From 5 to 7 is about the wife who uh
E: Its about the singer woman who like, just
goes its basically just a day in her life, and she
68
walks around and things happen in real-time
and its cool. And then I really like also Le Bon-
heur.
A: Yeah I saw that one too - I have the new Crite-
rion ones.
E: Oh cool. They came out with her stuff? Shes
great, she has so many different things, you
know. Shes very all over the place. I mean she
definitely has a form, a style, but its pretty
fluid. Anyway, so Im P.A.ing on her shoot, Im
digging ditches, Im moving heavy statues, like,
whatever. Then after a few days, theres a wrap
party, and, you know, were at the bar and shes
just sitting there by herself drinkin, and every-
body else is talking to eachother, and Im like
Im here to like, hang out with Agnes Varda, I
dont wanna like So I went up to her and we
just started drinkin together and talking about
the movies and movies we liked and, just you
know, just hangin out and gettin drunk to-
69
gether sort of thing. And then, at that time, Id
just moved here like I said, so I had my DVDs in
my car of shorts that I had made. So I was like
Hey, you know, I make movies too, like, do you
want to see it? You know, maybe if I wasnt so
drunk, I wouldnt have said that, but she was like
Sure, sure. So I ran out to my car and I got it,
and the next day she called me and she was like
[imitates Vardas accent] Eugene, maybe we can
go shoot together? and I was like Yeah! What?
Yeah! Sure. So then, you know
A: She was looking for somebody to light her fire
too, right?
E: Well, you know, because if you had seen
Gleaners and I, it was very much just her road-
tripping around
A: By herself?
E: and you could tell it was very much just her
and the camera and like, you know. And this
movie, Beaches, theres a lot of setups. Its per-
70
sonal, but theres a lot of like, almost like concep-
tual art in it. And so I think she wanted to add
just a little bit more of that one diary style.
A: She wanted to collaborate.
E: So yeah, she just wanted my help, you know.
Because I was just this person who was excited
and enthusiastic, and had some modicum of
like
A: Beyond just a professional person.
E: Yeah. She didnt want a big crew. She just
wanted someone else to film with her. So then
we just drove around for three days, and it was
incredible, I mean shes so energetic, so many
ideas, so willing to do anything, so willing to like,
talk to random people, fuck around, and it was
great. And a lot of the stuff that we shot ended
up in the movie, and that was really awesome for
me, it was really empowering. Im sure we lost
touch with her a little bit, but
A: Shes old, right?
71
E: Yeah, but shes still doing stuff. Still doing lots
of stuff.
[Adam and Eugene discuss the food]
E: And, anyway. But its funny about acting,
like how that all turned out is that at some point
we were hanging out and she was like Eugene
umm, how do you make money? and I was like
I dont know, like, I dont and then she was like
Oh, I can get you a job and I was like Cool
and she was like Yeah, just with my friend Zal-
man. And then I was like Zalman?
A: Salman Rushdie?
E: No, no, no, its Zalman. Okay, whatever. And
then she wrote me an email and I saw his name
written out, and it was like Zalman, like Z-A-L-
M-A-N, and I was like Zalman, what is that?
A: Yeah, yeah.
E: And then he I got an email from him and it
72
said Zalman King. And I dont know, were all
the same age and were guys, does that even ring
a bell for you guys? Zalman King?
A: No.
E: Remember when like you were kids, on
Showtime there was this Skinemax type show
called Zalman Kings Red Shoe Diaries?
A: Yes! David Duchovny made his breakthrough
there.
E: Exactly. So this was that this is Zalman. And
I was like Fuck, its gonna be like porn. Im
gonna be working in porn.
A: Soft porn.
E: Yeah. And her and Agnes and Zalman were
friends from film festival circuits in the sixties,
cause he was in a bunch of B-movies, and he pro-
duced a bunch of stuff through the seventies.
Umm, and I got there, and I thought it was
gonna be porn, and he said You know, Id really
love you to edit this documentary on Roy Orbi-
73
son and I was like Great! I would love to do
that. So, thats what I did, and then he said
[****inaudible****] And he was like This is
great Eugene. Now uh, I got this other stuff for
you to edit and I was like What is it? and it
was porn, obviously. So I did that for a few
months and it wasnt the worst porn, it was actu-
ally very cool porn, it was like
A: Tasteful.
E: No, what it was, is it was just the sort of porn
where like, it was interviews with women about
their sex lives.
A: Ooh, thats pretty good.
E: You know, and some of the women were actu-
ally real women, and not just porn women. So,
you know it was like What is your sexual fan-
tasy?, like What was the first time for you like,
like Where is the weirdest place?, and then
like, and there would come the porn part where
they actually acted out their fantasy on scene.
74
But it was really cool and I learned a lot of things
about women which I am not going to disclose in
an interview. And umm, I dont know. But I, obvi-
ously [inaudible] I didnt move to L.A. to make
porn. And umm, blah blah blah blah blah.

A: Zeroes and Ones?
E: Yeah. I moved there to, yeah to make Zeroes
and Ones.
A: I remember reading press about that.
E: Yeah, what press did you read about it
though?
A: I forget, but it was something about you work-
ing for two years on the post-production to like...
in order to like achieve
E: Yeah. Very long time.
A: I, I felt that wasnt true when I read that. I felt
that you were trying to play that off
E: Even longer! Well heres the thing.
A: I felt like I would never do that, or something,
75
like I would never have the patience for it. But I
would tell people I did that if I thought it would
make them more interested in my film.
E: It ruined my life. It made my whole life miser-
able in a way. I basically havent enjoyed living
here until this last year, because I have been
mired in in Zeroes and Ones stuff forever. It ba-
sically ruined my life. But, but the ironic thing
about it is that I made a short movie in college
called Zeroes and Ones also. It wasnt plot-wise
really different, but similar concept which is
Okay, were gonna make this screen, this mov-
ing image looks like a computer operating sys-
tem, the home movie, so its like, one scene is
like yeah its basically like uh, a browser, and
youre like, you know, in a web page, or like a
video game, or like uh Google search, or a game
of solitaire, or whatever. So the thing is, is like,
Im working on porn, but like, fuck man, like Ze-
roes and Ones is such an obvious idea, like, some-
76
ones gonna do it. I need to do it first.
A: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
E: So I pumped out the script as fast as I could,
and I went to go raise money. I got my, my pro-
ducer was on the system. I just like stole him ba-
sically and we just went to go work together. We
both quit our jobs and we went to go raise
money and we went and saw these people, and
got the minimum amount of money together and
went Yeah yeah yeah yeah, we gotta do this fast
and get this out there, you know? And post pro-
duction was just an afterthought in our minds.
Well just get some art school grads to like, ani-
mate, like design programs and just animate shit
really easy
A: Thats beautiful though.
E: And, and so then we shot it really fast, and we
were ready to go, basically August 2008, ready
to go. And I had a rough cut by umm December
2008 and I was like Cool, we just need people
77
to animate it and well be like sending this to
South by Southwest or something. And that just
kinda turned into its own long nightmare. Cause
its hard. Graphic designing stuff from scratch is
hard.
A: Did you do it all yourself?
E: No, no. We were lucky enough to find
A: You didnt feel like at some point that like
Im going to have to do this all myself. Thats
the only way this is gonna get done?
E: Well, I definitely did end up doing a lot of the
stuff, cause I had to teach myself After Effects
and Photoshop, and it was annoying and stuff.
But [inaudible 18:00] cause I did a lot of the
animation, original rough animation in Final
Cut. You know, and I would be writing text

[Adam and Eugene are interrupted and discuss
the food]
78
Stills from 0s and 1s
(2010) >
79
A: And what did you think when you made
that? What did you think was gonna happen af-
ter you made it?
E: Oh you know, I thought it was like gonna
change the world. People were gonna see this
movie and theyre gonna be like Holy shit,
theres never been a movie like this.
A: Which is true.
E: Yeah, well, heres how I feel. Honestly, my big-
gest disappointment was that festival program-
mers and like, you know, just the film nerd
world didnt embrace it.
A: But it got some people
E: That all starts with the festival programmers.
It got rejected from 40 festivals. The only festival
it went to was a Maryland film festival.
A: So you spent like, ten grand sending it
around?
E: No
A: Or like four?
80
E: Aww, no. Like, Michael handled most of that,
but I think we spent definitely less than a thou-
sand dollars, I would say. I dont know. Maybe
we didnt, maybe we spent more. But yeah, peo-
ple just didnt get the movie. It was very like
did you watch it Adam?
A: I havent watched it yet.
E: It has a very nihilistic, negative energy.
A: I remember, I remember reading the press
about it and thinking like Im immediately in
your corner, just from the press.
E: The press that came out was good, I thought.
A: It was.
E: Like the [inaudible 19:52] review really nailed
it, I remember I read that, and the [inaudible] re-
view was mixed-positive, more or less. But umm
oh yeah, it was really negative and nihilistic
and it really undercut narrative expectations of
indie film, which is something I was very specifi-
cally doing, and I dont think people got that.
81
People didnt get it. But it was like I dont
know, just like it made me angry, cause I was
like If you know movies, you know like [inaudi-
ble 20:24] , you know like certain strategies were
are used to like, undercut what exciting and nar-
ratives Hollywood story is. And like, the movie
did those things in its own way, you know?
A: But what people actually want at film festivals
is
E: Boring shit?
A: Sundance comedy and South by Southwest
Twee.
E: They just want something they can digest, you
know? And, and this, this is the opposite. This
what will overwhelm you and make you uncom-
fortable.
A: Its something you have to deal with. But then
Frownland, you remember Frownland? It is simi-
larly negative and undercutting and was em-
braced I think by festival people.
82
E: You see, the difference between and I love
Frownland, Frownland for me was a major refer-
ence point for Zeroes and Ones and I even
A: Really?
E: Yeah. Cause I thought it was a great movie
and I love the energy of it, and I love that it was
so hateful and stuff. And I told Mike Michael
actually contacted the producer of that movie.
Michaels the guy who produced Zeroes and
Ones. And umm I dont know umm. What was
I going to say? You know, Frownland had some
champions, you know? And the other thing I
think that fucked me up, fucked the movie up is
that I dont live in New York, I live in L.A. And
theres no cool film world out here. Barely any,
especially when you are
A: Dude, theres no cool film world in New York.
E: There is, you know, theres the silent movie
theater and there is other repertory movie thea-
ters that I go to that, you know the silent movie
83
theater, like people who think they are cool go
there, but they wouldnt be caught dead in some
lame repertory theater where you actually have
to care about movies to go there. But anyways,
my point is that
A: Thats here? Thats in New York or here?
E: Here. Silent movie theater.
A: Silent?
E: Its called the Cinefamily. Its like uh, they pro-
gram a bunch of like uh they do good program-
ming, its a repertory of weird things and new re-
leases. Theyre showing Holy Motors this week,
which actually I saw and thought was terrible.
A: I have it on my computer.
E: Your computer is showing it. Umm I was
going to say theres no cool independent film-
makers, and theres no critical establishment
here doing interesting things and theres no
A: But do you feel like there is that in New York?
84
I feel like theres very little interesting things be-
ing done in independent film anywhere.
E: Theres definitely that in New York, theres at
least a community of people who are making
movies that are not normal and trying to be
weird in their way. I wouldnt call them the most
successful movies, but at least theyre trying, you
know?
A: Yeah I guess there is a community, but you
know the reRun Theater, they premiered your
movie there, You know that closed, right?
E: I know, different guy. Different people man.
A: Theres like the Spectator Spectacle theater
in Williamsburg or something.
E: Whats that? People go to that right?
A: Ive never been. I would be the guy who proba-
bly should go.
E: Yeah, well look. Heres how I feel: the grass is
always greener, right? Maybe if I was living in
New York I wouldnt be friends with any of those
85
people because Im always very skeptical about
the community, I always really hate the idea of a
scene. I always hate groupthink and stuff like
that so I might not even be friends with those
people. But, just the idea that there is an infra-
structure and certain foundational community
lets a critical establishment or programming es-
tablishment sort of group you into that commu-
nity and says that like Okay, theres a bigger pic-
ture here. Were not just gambling on a person,
were gambling on an energy okay? And people
might just feel much more comfortable gambling
on things when theres like some more behind
it, you know, rather than just one person.
A: One guy going crazy and
E: One guy just going crazy and just saying some-
thing doesnt make sense in the context of other
things, which is [inaudible 23:50]
A: ]
E: Maybe, maybe. You know, I dont know. You
86
see it and you tell me, because its not
A: I will. But Im sympathetic because I think
that you have like this spirit or something that
Im sympathetic with, and I think it stands be-
yond just filmmaking.
E: Kindred spirits eating Thai food.
A: Its that spirit of rebellion and self determina-
tion. To be willing to do what youve done, sort
of, seems to require a lot of courage... youve
probably faced a lot of doubt, and umm theres
a lot of people who would try to work their way
up the social ladder of the indie community or
whatever and make their thing...
E: I just wouldnt even be able to do that. I appre-
ciate the comment, but I literally would not be
able, I would not have.

A: So talk about Feast of Burden. How did you
get the opportunity to do that?
E: Uh because umm, umm this girl who runs an
87
art gallery, Mika. She saw Zeroes and Ones,
cause it played here in L.A. on like a one-off
screening. And then she saw this other movie I
made for this thing called Just Chillin which was
called
A: Skydiver.
E: Skydiver, right. You saw that, right? Yeah,
and umm, she really liked that, even more than
Zeroes and Ones actually.
A: I really liked that.
E: And she was like This person can connect,
so she came up to me and shes like Okay, like I
really want to do whatever your next project is
and I was like Great.
A: Cause shes got a new curatorial job at
MoCA?
E: No no no, she is uh, runs this umm umm gal-
lery in L.A. called Night Gallery, unrelated to
Just Chillin. Its called Night Gallery, with this
88
other curator called Davida. And Mika just
wanted to make a movie, she wanted to do some-
thing like this with a movie. Cause she like, she
didnt like Hollywood, for some weird reason.
Shes interested in like movies, or something.
In a weird way, not in the way of a cinephile, but
in the way of like Hollywood. But its weird, be-
cause shes very smart and shes very savvy and
shes very business oriented, but it wasnt very
good judgment... like the artists that they pick
for their gallery are good up and coming artists.
A: So she understands glamor and she under-
stands intellectual
E: Yeah, she understands whats going to work,
you know. She really respects ambition, and vi-
sion, and like, not necessarily like shes like,
you know these movies you made arent exe-
cuted on this like high level [inaudible 26:15]
But I said Im willing... how much money do
you have?, you know, that was my question. She
89
told me an amount of money and Im like Thats
not a lot of money, you cant make a movie for
that and shes like What can we do? and Im
like I dunno, nothing and shes like Why dont
we make a web series. We were gonna do some
things that were was much closer to Skydiver,
where maybe I would take an undercover hidden
camera to a psychiatrists office or something
and play in character and fuck with the psych.
We were doing that, and then I was going to all
these dinner parties, and I was like Why dont
we do a dinner party thing? and she was like
Cool, that sounds good and
[Adam interrupts for technical reasons]

E: Anyways, she got behind it, yeah. I was like
Cool, lets do it.
A: And you just began basically with this context
in mind, like Im gonna have something at the
90
MoCAs youtube page?
E: No, no, no, no, no, that had nothing to do
with it. We had no idea. We were talking about
Okay how do people see this, I guess well have
to set up a website and well just like release it
through our website and I was like Okay, or
maybe we could contact My Damn Channel or
something, because I had seen that David Wain
had his web series on it. You ever see Wainy
Days?
A: No.
E: I thought that it was really good, Wainy Days.
And so we didnt really know, we had like no
idea in terms of release. We were just like Lets
do it. She wanted to do it, she had the money, I
had, I had been working on this script for nine
months for these producer guys who, it wasnt go-
ing well, it was going really bad, they were giving
me notes and like
A: Such an L.A scenario.
91
E: I know. And they didnt pay me anything at
all. It was just a bummer. It sapped my soul in a
weird way. So I was really excited for a change of
pace.
[Eugene stops to discuss the soup]
E: I have to be sensitive, man, you know. So
theres people when we were doing Zeroes and
Ones you know, everyone was working for free
for two years. We basically had twenty artists,
probably like six artists who were with me the
whole time, whenever they had free time, you
have to be sensitive
A: Did you go home and tear your hair out and
cry and stuff?
E: That is what made me go bald. Yeah. I defi-
nitely tore a lot of my hair out during the post-
production.
A: I wasnt making reference to that.
92
E: No, no, no... literally, I did tear my hair out. I
remember, because it was a very frustrating expe-
rience, but, but, what I was saying is you need to
be really frustrating because people are working
for free and they believe in the movie and they
believe in you, but they also want to get some-
thing out of it. Not just a credit, but they want to
have some sense of validation, like their work is
creating
A: Value in the world.
E: Well yeah, but they are also making a serious
creative contribution to the vision, you know?
And its a very tricky line to walk, and you have
to respect people, and you have to make them be-
lieve that its true, even though ultimately you do
want to fulfill your vision, and hopefully your vi-
sion aligns with what they believe is their own
creative work, and sometimes it doesnt, and
sometimes it does. But you have to be sensitive
to all that and like, and give back rubs. Cause
93
people are working for free and you have to give
lots of back rubs and get people food.
A: You know, its a managerial marvel of you to
do that.
E: Its hard.
A: Im serious. That is real managerial talent.
Thats business talent.
E: [inaudible 30:00] okay, its all for making a
movie right? If you just think about it, thats the
thing that motivates you. It wont get done if I
dont make people believe theyre doing it for
themselves or something like that.

[Eugene stops to offer Adam food]
A: Did you always want to be a filmmaker?
E: Yeah, for a long time. At first when I was
really young, when I was really young, I wanted
to be a lawyer. I thought law was so cool when I
was seven through ten. I was like Its so cool. I
94
did this biography on like Thomas Jefferson and
Thomas Paine and all these, you know like John
Marshall, and I was like Laws so cool, and I can
see myself doing case or whatever. I dont
know. I mean the other thing that all you guys
are guys, you know like when you were a kid,
didnt you ever think to yourself like Hey, I
would be a really good sniper.
A: No.
E: Never? Did you ever think that? Id be a
really good sniper.
A: I thought that I would be good at orating in a
courtroom though. [inaudible 31:00] the Prac-
tice. Did you ever see that show?
E: No. Ally McBeal, maybe.
A: The Practice. I remember watching The Prac-
tice and thinking Man, I would love to get up
there and try a case like that
E: You guys never thought Hey, Id be a good
sniper? You never thought I really like being
95
by myself, and I have a lot of patience, and like, I
have probably really good aim. And then also Id
love to just fulfill a mission. Lets just sit there
quietly for four hours and then just take some-
one out. Never?
A: Do you play video games? I think you can do
that in video games now.
E: Hmm Yeah I dont play video games now,
but I have in the past. Yeah, you can definitely be
a sniper in video games. Or even, you know,
GoldenEye, James Bond.
A: When you played GoldenEye, did you lurk in
the background?
E: No, I went full force, straight ahead. You
know. Thats just a game dude. Were talking
about real imagine sniping.
A: Yeah I know, but I mean maybe like the game
the games existence testifies to more people
wanting to do that.
E: Definitely. Its a very popular game because it
96
taps into the deep-seated
A: boyhood desire to be a sniper, which is,
which is a guys
E: Or even being a truck driver. You guys ever
think Oh man, Id be a really good truck driver.
Id love to do that?
A: Yeah, I think a couple times.
E: Yeah.
A: I dont think I ever wanted to really do it
thoughwhen you think about it.
E: Yeah, you start thinking about the speed pills,
sleeping in your car
A: The truck stops.
E: Uh huh, the truck stops. Yeah.
A: Its not perfect.
E: What were we talking about [inaudible 32:35]
Yeah, so then I wrote the script really fast. And I
really liked it because it was probably, I think, in
terms of entertainment, the best script Ive writ-
ten.
97
A: Its so nonsensical. Its so
E: Its just like bam. Theres a lot of punch
lines all over and every scene kind of has just
this [imitates punching sounds] and then moves
on. I definitely did a lot of that in editing, but a
lot of its in the script too. And umm, Im excited
to write more things like that. Hopefully after
this I can go home tonight and write something
really fast, cause Im excited. I just had a slightly
traumatizing experience before all this, and I feel
like trauma offsets good writing.

A: Are you worried that its harder and harder to
make work like the kind of work you want to
make?
E: What do you mean?
A: Challenging or whatever. I mean, maybe this
is just a bummer question. What do you want
to do next?
E: I want to write a movie.
98
A: Okay. Do you want to make a whole big movie
again?
E. Mmhmm. Yeah.
A: Rounding everybody up and...
E: Rounding everybody up, paying them all
money, umm, doing it hopefully with a big stu-
dio or producer or someone whos that back-
end, where theyve already sold it before weve
made it.
[Adam orders another beer]
E: Umm. But I mean its really easy to do
this People usually look on this and romanti-
cize all their times and say like Well, they like
really appreciated like challenging work, or like,
all the movies back then were like so weird and
different and cool. But its always been the same,
there have always been a thousand movies or
something made every years. Nine hundred of
99
them suck. One hundred of them are interesting
slash good slash really weird. Those are the ones
that get remembered, and so you look back in
time and think, Oh, yeah wow. Movies used to
be so good and now they suck.
A: I dont think that. I just think more so, inde-
pendent filmmakers are in crisis.
E: Definitely.
A: Theres the death of the art house. Larry Clark
released a film on his website.
E: Theres definitely that distribution crisis
A: I feel like he probably got a hundred down-
loads and earned ~800$ from that. For a film he
probably made for 80 grand. I feel like hes like
Im very interested in how many people down-
loaded his
E: Four thousand?
A: I dont think he got four thousand. Id be very,
very surprised if he got four thousand. I think a
lot of people who watch movies or consume cul-
100
ture feel an aversion to the internet... they need
other people to give them their cultural vegeta-
bles. They need to be fed art and culture. They
need to be told what is good, what is good for
them. And they distrust the internet.
E: Well theres at least four thousand people who
like Larry Clarks work. Its all about creating a
swell of like, desire, you know? If someone
thinks thats the only way were going to see this
thing that I want to see, then they might do it. I
mean, I dont know, everybody just [inaudible
35:25 stands?] with movies.
A: But theres another thing that makes me inter-
ested in you as a filmmaker, because you have
post-internet kind of sensibilities. Your first film
is about living with devices, but it was definitely
made for a movie theater.
E: Yeah.
A: But your second thing, Skydiver, is
E: For a computer.
101
A: For a computer, and with a computer.
E: Yeah.
A: And your third thing is a web series.
E: Yeah.
A: Do you feel like a social media artist?
E: No. I definitely feel like a filmmaker. I do feel
like it is silly and delusional for any film maker
working nowadays, whether it be Mr. Im in my
basement shooting videotape or Paul Thomas
Anderson, to ignore computers, technology, cell
phones, and things that are around us all the
time. That is insane, and I think a lot of filmmak-
ers do ignore it. Tarantino, Spielberg, Paul Tho-
mas Anderson, Wes Anderson, look at all their
movies. Theres no acknowledgement of the ac-
tual world around us. Like, Martin Scorsese has
done it in like in The Departed
A: Text messages.
E: Brian de Palmas new movie Passion has
really good stuff, like Skype and cell phones and
102
103
digital cameras. But a lot of filmmakers are ig-
noring it, and, and so to acknowledge it, and I
know it plays even a bigger role in my life than in
the lives of people who are that age. But to not in-
tegrate that into your storyline, and into your
work, and into your presentation of the work is
insane. All that being said, you know, I love film
and film is the most important thing in the world
to me, and thats how I want to tell a story. I
want to tell a story in the way that film can tell it.
Not the way that a website can tell a story, you
know? Im not a conceptual artist, even though
concepts are important to my work, you know?
So I dont know, does that answer your ques-
tion?
A: ....
E: I mean, its different sitting in your bed, lay-
ing in your bed
A: Do you think that if Larry Clark releases his
film on the internet, he becomes a social media
104
artist?
E: Um.
A: Do you think theres any validity to the term
social media artist?
E: Social media , well, I dont know what a social
media artist is. I think anybody who uses Face-
book or something actively is a social media art-
ist, right? Thats the silly aspect of social network-
ing right? It actually privileges creativity in a
way that dilutes the pool of creativity. And also
deludes people into thinking that their voices
matter, even though they havent cultivated their
voice, or dont even try, you know? Im not part
of the school of like anything is art, a dog shits
in a pail and thats art. I dont subscribe to that.
So I dont know, the question you are asking is
weird because in a certain way, yeah everyones a
social media artist if you actually use social me-
dia, and then in another way, only people who
are completely umm subverting the framework
105
of uh like the operating, you know, the operating
systems or the websites that anyone whos
working within the formal framework of the
things that are used to communicate in social me-
dia is a social media artist, cause their whole job
is to make you question the functionality of
those things. Thats not what Im doing, because
Im not really using the tools of a website, or of
Facebook or something to create things that
make a viewer or an experiencer question that.
There definitely are great umm internet artists,
people who deal explicitly through the code of
the internet, and with the sites of the internet.
Have I touch on those things in my movie? Defi-
nitely, but I think Ive touched on them in a way
where Im not trying to make people question
their relationship to the internet, Im trying to
make them question their relationship of the
internet to their daily lives. Do you know what I
mean?
106
A: Yes, but I dont see I see the internet as shift-
ing things, and I think this is crucial for filmmak-
ers. And I think for the most part indie filmmak-
ers, the ones who are slightly older than you and
I, they dont get it. I see the internet as, as being
one gigantic pool of identity projections, the col-
lection of millions and millions of identity projec-
tions. I have come to view everything as identity
projection. When I watch a film I am watching
the filmmakers projection of him or herself.
What I find myself interested in is not here I am
please look at my film... but more... here is a
person doing compelling things with their life.
E: It all seems way too strategic for me.
A: But it shouldnt be strategic. Im talking about
new points of departure...
E: Wellthe fact is to do that you have to be
wealthy, or not strategic, which I think a lot of
people are, who have a brand identity. You have
to be completely neurotic, or have Aspergers or
107
whatever, you know? You have to be kind of in-
sensitive to social cues and other people, and
kind of just push your own ego all the time... and
I think its really difficult for I mean of course a
lot of filmmakers are egomaniacs. But to be to
kind of just push a really consistent image that
doesnt ever sway or doesnt ever emotionally re-
act to life is I dont know, it just seems like
...you have to be crazy. Or something. A real art-
ist I think is an observer a lot of the time. Some
of the best, you know, theyre just observers.
They are able to interpret and are sensitive to
the voices around them, and they sort of, they
take that, they reinterpret and aestheticize what
they observe umm for whatever purposes,
whether its to make a painting or whether to pre-
sent an entertaining story, you know? Storytell-
ers are the biggest egomaniacs somehow, unless
theyre truly interesting, and a lot of people
arent interesting. Im not interesting, I wouldnt
108
pretend to be interesting.
A: That would fall on somebody else to deter-
mine.
E: Im not trying to attack you or anything.
A: I dont consider myself a social media artist. I
just think that theres this new space opening up,
which is eating a lot of eyeballs, and eating basi-
cally the entirety of whatever we would declare
as independent film.

E: Larry Clarks gonna be played at a film festi-
val, right? Played on a big screen at a film festi-
val. His film won the Rome film festival. And
then he announced that he was releasing the
film through his website. And he has a built-in
audience. He has people who know him, hes
made movies like Kids, always, you know, about
skaters and kids, thats his work. He makes
movies about kids. You know Heres another
Larry Clark movie about kids and, you know, I
109
like him. Im not his biggest fan or anything, so
Im not going to buy his movie, but
A: I dont think he will be able to afford to make
more films with this model. Festivals or no festi-
vals. Are you still, are you still hoping for a home
run film?
E: Yeah. Well, Im not hoping for it cause like I
think Im like a different type of filmmaker than
Larry Clark, so I dont think Im in his situation.
I think Larry Clark has his obsessions, and is not
going to concede his obsessions for anything.
Larry Clarks not gonna write a fucking straight
thriller. I would love to write a really good
straight thriller that was about the things I care
about that was weird and fucking crazy and over
the top, and was like, Id love write Basic In-
stinct, Id love to make Raising Cain. Those are
the movies I like, and I want to make a movie
like that. So, I dont think Im in the same place
as him. Im obviously younger and have less
110
clout, and I dont have a fucking agent, and
havent done something super on a huge scale.
Man who thought this was gonna turn into a
whole big interview? I didnt. You had this
planned
A: No, I didnt have this planned out.
E: Dont make me regret this.
A: For the record, I want to say that like the likeli-
hood of this
E: ever seeing the light of day
A: is low.
E: Well then maybe I should shut the fuck up.
A: No, its good though. I can post it on my
Tumblr. Or on Facebook or something. Do you
want to end the interview?
E: No, no, no, no, no. I dont care.
A: Im just asking you questions Im actually in-
terested in. Cause I interact with you as a person
on the internet.
E: Yeah.
111
A: And as a filmmaker, through the internet.
E: Well tell me, umm your impression now
that weve met. What was your impression of me
on the internet, and whats your impression of
me now? Do they not concord?
A: Okay, the first time I learned about you was
when uh, I had just been trolling somebody and
ended up on the Just Chillin gallery.
E: Who were you trolling?
A: Probably the blog Art Fag City did something
that linked to it. And so I ended up there
E: Why do you call that trolling and not just re-
search? Trolling has a certain real negative con-
notation to it, right?
A: I would like to reclaim that.
E: Yeah?
A: Yeah. Ive done two nonfiction films, and both
of them are from internet research... that you
know, frequently feels like youre looking into
things that are like, not fully public and not fully
112
private...
E: Okay, so why dont you call it stalking, be-
cause really, troll I feel trolling, the whole
thing with trolling is that you are actively
negging, right? You are actively putting out nega-
tive energy thats hateful in this space where eve-
rybody
A: I thought it was just I thought it was just
alright, I continue to think of it as just like, like
youre interested in other people
E: ...In a way that was borderline creepy twenty
years ago
A: Exactly! Borderline creepy twenty years ago.
Exactly. So then I learned about that and I
watched the thing, and I didnt watch the whole
thing, but I was just like This is like I dont
know if hes serious, I dont know if this is real,
and I thought Okay, this is interesting, this is
new, I am not certain what I am supposed to be
feeling. You know, like, this is really good. And I
113
felt like... watching it, I felt like I was overseeing
something that was sort of private feeling. I felt
like a voyeur I guess. It was exciting.
E: But you didnt finish it?
A: I didnt finish it, no. It didnt seem like I had
to. It didnt seem like a thing I had to watch in a
linear way like that. And I was like This is
maybe pointing towards umm, what we would
consider cinema, or whatever the cinema will
what will happen to the cinema in uh, in this
next generation. And so I was excited a little bit
about it, and yeah, then I watched Feast of Bur-
den. And then I had Facebook friends that were
Facebook friends with you. Brad Troemel.
E: I dont know the guy, Ive never met him.
A: Hes crazy too.
E: Never met the guy.
A: Hes good. I like him.
E: He seems smart
A: Hes smart.
114
E: from the internet.
A: Hes smart for sure.
E: Im a fan of that.
A: And then I knew you were on there, and I re-
membered you from the other thing. I remember
watching the first couple episodes of Skydiver,
and in one there was a cute Asian girl. In the be-
ginning of the episode, youre like gesticulating
to her on video chat and then in VO at the end
of the episode you said she gave you an awesome
blowjob. And I was like, Is this real or not real.
It was provocative and felt real. And then I
watched another episode, nearer to the end, and
it was longer. And I think it was with Kate Lynn
Sheil, who I recognized from promo for a Joe
Swanberg movie. And I thought that was really
good, really really good. It was emotional. I dont
think I bought you yet, until I watched that. But
that made me feel something.
E: See, cause Im perfectly okay with you not fin-
115
ishing it, because I viewed I viewed Skydiver as
having lots of narrative problems. But that is a
failure of the show, that you didnt finish it. You
know? I never make a work and intend it not
to... you know
A: People could download your film and scrub
it
E: Whenever, yeah. Totally. Same thing with,
with
A: Netflix. And thats what people do.
E: People scrub through actual feature films, you
think?
A: Yeah.
E: I just cant get behind that.
A: I think maybe you have more of a purist atti-
tude.
E: I just love movies. Yeah, I know a lot about
movies, cause Ive seen a lot of movies, but like,
you know, if I didnt like a movie, I will never
scrub through it. I just turn it off, say This is
116
shit. Whats the point of scrubbing through fur-
ther if its boring in the middle?
A: Maybe you get to a part you like?
E: How could I like it if the middle sucks?
A: So you have a complete like the movie is not
data, its something like sacred for you?
E: Well its yeah, Im just a narrative film-
maker. I like narrative films, and I like films that
tell a story, and so if something seems really su-
perfluous in the story, I either trust that its
there for some reason, or if a films boring, then
Ill just tell myself Okay, the middle sucked, the
rest was good, or Ill just be like Actually, this
whole thing sucked. The middle just put me over
the edge, and Im going to sleep so I can jack-off.
A:Okay. Do you like Ryan Trecartin videos - it
seems like that was a little bit of a I see them in
your thing, Feast of Burden.
E: I dont think its an influence. I have this the-
ory though. I have a theory about Feast of Bur-
117
den that basically like people who know a little
bit about culture will be like Oh my god, this is
like so Wes Anderson or something. Cause that
was the first YouTube that came out when you
posted the trailer was like Is this the new Wes
Anderson movie...
A: So your theory is that Im bringing up Ryan
Trecatin to demonstrate how much stuff I know
about culture?
E: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
A: Come on
E: Yes, because cause chill, because the next
step is like, people who semi-know about culture
will be like Woah, this is a total David Lynch
rip-off, or whatever. And then people who have
some semblance of art world knowledge will be
like Oh my god, this is like so Ryan Trecartin, or
whatever. You know, and then people who dont
know anything will be like Woah, this is fucking
gay. Im not watching this. And then people
118
who maybe know a lot about movies will be like
Oh my god, this is like, such like a Kuchar Broth-
ers rip-off or something. This is like early John
Waters or something. You know, people always
want to find some reference point to fall back on
in in a way
A: Listen, I have not seen that high level of pac-
ing and non-sequitur in the narrative of any-
thing other than your film, your web series, aside
from in Ryans videos. They are similarly over-
whelming.
E: You said that before, but I still dont under-
stand what you mean by non-sequitur.
A: Does not follow. It does not seem to me,
upon one viewing, that one thing leads to an-
other in a manner I find immediately
E: I think
A: You cut from the guy shaking his boobs and
doing that thing to another scene, and come
back to it and hes doing that, and back to this,
119
and back, and its just its just different, it has
this different pacing.
E: Well okay, lets just tackle Ryan first. I think
Ryan actually is a really interesting artist.
A: ...
E: I dont consider him a filmmaker, I dont
think hes concerned with the things that film is
concerned with. I think his main concern, and
hes brilliant, is language. You know, he really de-
constructs language, and destroys it, and invents
it. Out of nowhere. And hes amazing at that. I
think his movies are insane, in the best possi-
ble way, and I also find them extremely difficult
to get through
A: Thats what Im saying.
E: Ryan, for instance, because I dont consider
his work film, I might consider actually scrub-
bing through that.
A: Thats what I was gonna get to.
E: But I dont think Ryan is concerned with the
120
sort of experience of linear and narrative storytel-
ling I dont think hes concerned with storytel-
ling. I think hes concerned with performance,
and breaking down language, whether it be vis-
ual literacy or actually like talking in dialougue
language. He is brilliant at deconstructing and
subverting that. And cool, Im glad his work ex-
ists, and I think its, in the realm of what its do-
ing, excellent. But I dont consider him a film-
maker, and I dont think well Ill consider him
an experiemental filmmaker, you know, in a way
thats very different from the project that narra-
tive filmmakers undertake. Now thats not to say
that I dont think Ryan can make a narrative
film. Probably. He can make a good one, maybe,
if thats what he wanted to do.
A: This is back to scrubbing, and I guess the
internet context or something. I think the inter-
net to me I dont think theres a difference be-
tween watching well, in terms of like you
121
could say that This is a filmmakers film, and
this is a video artists video art, but no - theyre
both YouTubes.
E: And also a kid crying in the back of a car or
something is YouTube?
A: Yes.
E: And also like, I dont know, someone taking a
dump is YouTube?
A: Yeah.
E: And also you can find pretty much any movie
if you look for that movie title plus the word
Full on YouTube, so I was watching Repulsion
the other day, full and thats YouTube too I
guess? I mean certainly, theres a democratizing,
a sort of like everything is just moving images,
right?
A: Right.
E: Everything is just images and sound, moving
together through the same player, and its all
very democratized. And then its just up to the re-
122
ceiver, the viewer to decide how they want to
handle that, you know? But, I mean, again, you
dont call the guy who has a baby crying in the
back a filmmaker, or maybe you do. I dont
know. Im just, Im just were talking about
movies so, I dont know, a lot of people have said
Ryan is a filmmaker...
A: Im just wondering how you situate yourself.
E: Ive just had that thought before, you know?
Umm, its all about context and its all about like
I hate, for instance, I hate context, I fucking
hate it.
A: ....
E: I hate reading reviews, I hate being told
whats going to happen in a movie and watching
the trailer, unless its really cool and kind of
teaser-y. I dont like knowing what to expect
when I go into something, I just want it to be
clear and have umm, a certain way to break it
down, right? And so, when a piece of art is really
123
good, the hermeneutics within that piece of art,
that is the language to interpret it is there, its
built into it. You know what I mean? And like, I
think the hermeneutics of Ryans movies are
very clearly like Im not interested in narrative
here, Im interested in deconstructing language,
visual and aural, and the hermeneutics of a
Hitchcock movie are really clear, Im interested
in like fucking with your perception of who to
trust and whats happening and Im telling a
really funny story. Like the hermeneutics of a
fucking, I dont know, Picasso painting are all
there, all you need is a painting to interpret it.
You dont need to know all the stuff they teach
you in school, you know? Thats what makes a
good artist, you know?
A: Or does a good artist just, just sort of control
that?
E: They control it and, I mean, you put the lan-
guage in the book. Faulkner teaches you how to
124
read Faulkner. You either get what hes doing, or
Dostoeyevsky, you either get what theyre doing
because its all there, or you dont get it and you
just come up with whatever way of I dont
know. I think the best artwork allows people to
access it on its own terms. Like Christopher No-
lan, not that hes my favorite filmmaker, but hes
a really good example of that. His movies have
these concepts in them, and they allow you to ac-
cess the concepts in a way thats really clear to
you as a viewer, you know? And the themes are
built around these concepts and, you know the
reason his films are very successful are because
he chooses these subjects that are cool and excit-
ing and fun and crazy and dark, or whatever, and
its all built into it, you know? As opposed to just
watching some fucking lame person who doesnt
know how to create the language for access make
like an action movie, or something like that. And
Christopher Nolan is actually a really great exam-
125
ple of someone, thats what I said before, of
someone who has a crazy story structure, and
that like, if you look at movies like The Prestige,
or the previous Batman movie, Batman what-
ever, the Dark Knight, and Inception too, they
have these parallel storylines going at the same
time, and they cut between them, not at the
points that make sense formally, the points that
make sense emotionally and juxtapositionally,
and that actually to me is powerful, and I think
Feast of Burden is doing something similar to
that in its cuts, even though to you they seemed
non-sequitur.
A: [inaudible 56:00]
E: Yeah. Or Russ Meyer, you ever seen a Russ
Meyer movie?
A: No.
E: Russ Meyers most famous movie is Beyond
the Valley of the Dolls, but hes an exploitation,
a sexploitation filmmaker. Hes really obsessed
126
with breasts and stuff. And he was an editor, and
he was a photographer and stuff, and he has the
funniest fucking cuts. The funniest stuff. It
would be like
A: I love funny cuts
E: Hes the funniest cutter. You should see his
movies. Cause there would be like, you know
like a woman drinking from a jug of water, okay,
and then it would cut to some guy like spitting
out oil or something, cause he had been like just
sucking gasoline from the back of a car.
A: Siphoning.
E: Yeah, and therell be a sort of dialectic be-
tween the cuts thats always funny, its always a
joke.
A: So you get to engage with it on a meta level?
E: Well yeah. Yeah.
A: I remember one scene from Feast of Burden
firstly, non-sequitur because you have a girl
whos entering the, the feast, and shes late or
127
something like that. And shes trying to get
there, and shes stopped by a transvestite who is
shaking beads at her?
E: Yeah, yeah.
A: An old man. And then he pulls open his coat,
and he has breasts, and he stands there shaking
his beads at this girl, and shes crying Ahhhhh,
and so theres like, theres like a good three min-
utes of the episode is just like her going
Ahhhhh, and then you go to another scene,
and you come back, and shes still going
Ahhhhh. So youve extended this one
E: Its extended over the course of three epi-
sodes, I believe.
A: Its so nuts.
E: Yeah, but, I think theres a part you were talk-
ing about theres one part where Im like talk-
ing to my friend Spider, and my character,
Jimmy, is talking to Spider, and hes like The
key is inside that house, and hes like So
128
what? and then it cuts to her being like this
and then it cuts back to them, you know.

[Adam and Eugene talk to the waitress]

A: Anyways, maybe we should end our interview
now.
E: Yeah. Sure. Great dinner guys. Sorry, I, fuck, I
fucking rambled
A: No, no, this is good. This is good to hear.
Cause you gave me a lot of good content.
E: Yeah, content.
A: Ill have to get the [inaudible 58:12]
E: Yeah, just get your interns to transcribe it,
right?
A: Yeah.
129
130
BOOK REVIEWS
Zachary German on Justin Taylor
Alec Neidenthal on Marie Calloway
131
reviewed by Zachary German
Its harder with your own voice, with my own
my own voice here. I did something for Lucy
where I wrote in first person but it was easier
with that. Is all writing first person? Anyway, be-
cause Im so invested with it, how I need to at
least not demonstrate that Im um. I cant uh. I
dont want to seem like Im saying things that I
dont know about, is my biggest fear. Book re-
viewing seems you know, lofty. Here: This is a
132
The Gospel of Anarchy
by Justin Taylor
novel. It is The Gospel of Anarchy and it came
out in 2011 I think from um Harper Perennial.
The Wikipedia entry for Justin TaylorI know
all the five people that will read this thingpro-
nounce the word thing as the word think,
when you read this out loudalready know
thisis about um a character from the Showtime
or whatever it is series called Queer as Folk.
Justin had another book, a um story collection
from 2010 called Everything Here Is The Best
Thing Ever, same publisher, and I think also for
that publisher he edited a book where they show
pictures of peoples tattoos that have to do with
literature. And for a smaller press (does X-Ing
Books sound right) he has a book of poems, and
he edited something for McSweeneys about Don-
ald Barthelme, and also he edited something
called The Apocalypse Reader for, I believe,
Running Press.
133
This novel The Gospel of Anarchy takes
place in Florida in 1999. It follows a college stu-
dent who falls into ayou know, he falls right
into them?a group of people that are like punk
people. They take food from the garbage pail be-
hind fast food restaurants, and so on like that.
They uh like anarchy or, you know, um. Um. The
main thing I wanted to say isno I will say this
too. Oh did the font get smaller? Hold on. Oh
now thats too big, hold on. I think thats still big-
ger than it was originally but thats, no wait. Oh
no now its too small. Hold on. There we go I
guess. So also he mentions check cashing
stores a few times. Ive you know, as a writ-
eras a personIve tended away from narrat-
ing what one would call that thing, that uh check
cashing place, that thing. (Though I think Id say
check cashing place.) Well, Taylor calls it
check cashing store. No I mean I think hes bet-
ter for it.
134
But the Old Grand-Dad whiskey. I am so
hungover right now. I um. I am sick. Sick sick
sick. These people in the book are able to put
things right into their bodies, the um scrounged,
you know, food, from the uh pita place, what
have you. And um this uh Old Grand-Dad whis-
key. I think that Old Grand-Dad is expensive
compared to some whiskies. Thinking about it
makes me sick. I have been up since seven thirty
and now its quarter after twelve, vomiting
throughout: I am sick. I dont want to write
about this. Ill um, take you back in time a little
bit. Im just going to edit this part I already
wrote so I dont have to think as much.
He does uhJustin doesheoh my god
the size thing, the font size thing again. Well I re-
member Travis was walking when I called him. I
lived in Brooklyn then and I would buy things
like beer or um Stolichnaya vodka which I would
mix with grapefruit juice. Imagine lets say if
135
tuna fish meant something you know a lot differ-
ent than tuna. Like were it a different kind of
fish. A um freshwater fish. Thats basically what
you get with grapefruit. Yeah Im everyone whos
ever gone onon to? Yahoo Answers. I guess I
didnt drink very much except for beer then and
um Stolichnaya vodka with grapefruit juice. This
is 2009. Well Travis was walking when I called
him, back from the liquor store with something
called Old Grand-Dad. And I said something
really more about the name than what the name
might you know, represent - as in what the prod-
uct might be. (I thought that, yesterday, I guess,
when I wrote that. Now I dont see why it would
make so much sense for me to say something
about the name. So I dont know what I said but
I know what he said he had with him, from the
liquor store. Um.) And he told me that it was
only for on reserve or - thats not correct, thats
not what he said. Um. Wheres my phone. Were
136
going to walk to the bank now. Travis said it was
only for you know, like extra, because um he had
Makers Mark at his apartment. Or house, he
had a house then. (That was yesterday I wrote
that stuff then I edited it a little tiny bit. We
walked to the bank and then different places. I
left french fries in Petes car. A funny story is
what happened yesterday when Travis saw Pete
in front of his house and Travis walked over to
the driver side door and I walked over to the uh,
passenger side, and Pete didnt see Travis and
um I got into Petes car, and Pete and I we dont
know each other. Pete was upset! You know, he
was really displaying how upset he was. But I
had a cheesesteak with me even, and fri-
eswhich I got by the way because Travis always
wants fries, but then he didnt want them, so
he should have known. Then Travis said some-
thing and Pete was okay. They went to a movie
but I just walked home from the theater. I
137
stopped at Wonder Years bar and watched some
of the Sixers game I watched the rest at home.)
Another time I was at a um fundraiser or
something for Art in General. I think I saw Sic
Alps and Magik Markers with Adam there later,
at this venue I mean. A fire house downtown.
The bathroom was hard to get to but worth it, I
would say. You could look at these plaques about
um like independent film-making while you
waited. There were pretty girls there that
wouldnt have liked me, at the thing with Adam.
College girls. At the Art In General thing every-
one was all talk talk talk talk talk. Because that
organization is I dont know, it seemed not so
good from the little I was exposed to it.
I think it was the night (Wednesday March
19, 2011, that night with Adam) where before
that we went to Chinese food and I ate some
kind of feet which did not have a lot to like about
them. Oh and they had the Old Grand-Dad. Im
138
writing this part later, but I am too with so many
parts (so many) so Im kind of being not so much
in using of the parenthesis. Oh Joanna Angels
Alt Nation torrent is done, thank you. I kept
thinking about when we could have gone to that
Chinese restaurant. (Its not often that I go out
to a Chinese restaurant!) I remembered different
times I had seen Salem because it seems like
thats the band I saw most, especially around
that time, and I kept thinking it was um you
know, in conjunction with one of their little
shows that Adam and I would have perused said
finer fineries. Yet it did not come as any kind
ofnot as any kind ofum, epiphany. When I re-
membered.
Justin Taylor in this book has the punks
with no income drink Old Grand-Dad in his
novel um The Gospel of Anarchy. Maybe its
good because the narrator thinks its so bad be-
cause the narrator um wait maybe it character-
139
izes him wellyou know, well-characterizes?
him? because he is so unused to things like
whiskey or supposedly cheap whiskey? Um I
dont know what Old Grand-Dad tastes like but I
know it costs more than Heaven Hill and Evan
Williams and I think also Jim Beam. Im going to
check on a couple websites where they say how
much alcohol costs.
I couldnt tell on the Fine Wines & Good
Spirits website which has to do with the state of
Pennsylvania. It is a bad website. I have a cata-
log around here somewhere. (Around here
somewhere, oh man.) BQE Wine & Liquor also
made me mad because it only had one hundred
proof Old Grand Dad, which complicates things.
Also the book takes place in Florida but I dont
think that would affect anything.
140
reviewed by Alec Niedenthal
Clearly written in haste after Marie Calloway was
plunged into internet literary micro-fame
following the explosive "Adrien Brody," her
debut reads like the sort of diary one keeps in
order to forget events rather than remember
them. Separating herself the from the aseptic
work of her young peers, what purpose did I
serve in your life does not accidentally have this
aspect. Her novels mise-en-scene is, rather, an
141
what purpose did i serve in
your life
by Marie Calloway
intended effect that, with the conviction of
someone who lost herself under the premises of
sex bought, sold and taken, makes this novel
compelling precisely because it should be, by all
rights, just a diary. Yet, like Marguerite
Durass memoir The War and Alain Robbe-
Grillets Ghost in the Mirror (for these French
new novelists, I would argue, are Calloways
great forbears), it stands forth as something
more. How? This is a question I intend to pose
rather than answer, just as this book presents
the problem of twenty-first century womanhood
in a new way instead of solving it. Maries odd,
provocative--a word that every critic and his or
her dog will use to describe this book--twist on
feminist writing may turn you on and make you
miserable at once.
what purpose also has the deep, knowing
intelligence of an erotic novel that just dares you
142
to be aroused by its depictions of those
miserable men who humiliate--sexually,
verbally, intellectually, but never expressively--
its narrator, whom it, furthermore, challenges
you to identify with the author, the
pseudonymous Marie. In a very peculiar way it
treats of the themes and ideologies of early
modernism, which was the stage upon which
sexuality, considered on its own rather than as a
subset of marriage, first emerged in fiction. And
by means of such themes, it does the opposite of
what it says. Our narrator is not the one placed
on stage and shamed, as she claims repeatedly to
be (It was a strange feeling, having spent the
past two weeks looking forward to nothing but
meeting him, but as the minutes drew closer I
was overcome with nervous dread. He wouldn't
find me attractive, I wouldn't have anything to
say, we would sit in a bar in painful silence until
he found an excuse to leave and I would feel
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humiliated and ruminate for months): its
rather the men who populate this novel who are
truly ruined--who are, in their very desire to
humiliate our narrator, only shaming
themselves. So goes the symphonic ability of the
novel to reverse the irreversible, as Emmanuel
Levinas once wrote, its machinic drive to rewrite
what has happened. But Calloway changes the
past merely by presenting it, without the the
visitations of bad fortune or vengeful fate--nor,
the tool of lesser artists, with the melodrama of
soft and pretty language--upon her male
antagonists and cock-brandishing doms.

Her novel renders the narrator's coming-of-age
through the intertwining of sex and writing,
blossoming artistry and the sadness of sex with
bullying men. But by giving this tale a different
form--by passing it through the voice of a young
white woman while it is happening--she is able
144
to disclose certain other of its contents, insights
into the predicament of sexual difference, which
eluded the modernists who approached the same
topics retrospectively and in the third person.
Her book has an immediacy that is not
"novelistic" but worthy of performance art: she
performs, in fact, a sort of satire of the whole
form of novels, their bread and circus, that tight-
rope walk between pretending and repression.
By giving us "characters" only so that we may
hate them--by asking why the more outwardly
ordinary and proud a man appears, the more
revolting he is in the recesses of his bedroom--
she parodies the very premise of novel-reading.
Why, she asks, would you ever want insight into
these people? This is just what you demand, dear
reader, when you imagine a frothy novel about a
young woman, a peripatetic and self-hating
bourgeois who hungers for risk and discomfort:
the truest form of desire is the abuse of what one
145
wants. And so Calloway gives us, sadists that we
are, what we have always longed for: her, the
human being cut up until its nothing but a
series of sexual encounters and a voice as small
as someones dying whistle, a placeholder where
feelings--and with them, the desire to identify
with something beyond a stray piece of
garbage--may have been found, if they had not
short-circuited for what looks like ever. But this
relentless pressing on of the heroine, this
narrowness of her drive, is to the authors credit.

Calloway's book indeed straddles the narrative
concerns of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. She uses, in combination, both
flippant first-personhood and a melancholic look
at her inner life to depict and try to understand
the worst white men in the world. This is her
espionage among them. The result might be
called a fiction of witnessing. Her first-person
146
voice never quite settles on a tone or register,
and Calloway italicizes some of her prose to
evoke a somewhat deeper mental sediment, like
so: "Petsheep," a pompous photographer whom
Calloway's eponymous narrator seeks out, "lifted
my camisole over my head and unhooked my
bra. I held my breasts in my hands. He went to
his bed. I was standing there unbuttoning my
skirt. Then I had to pull down my leggings and
underwear, and I knew he could see my pad. I
said, Ewww. Im not so self-hating enough
that I think my own menstrual blood is that
gross, its just embarrassing to show it to
somebody. You have to act like its gross as a
kind of apology." If her narrator is, as a matter of
course, compliant and unapologetic, then the
author uses italics to court a real sense of rage at
the men by whom she's, willingly or not,
dominated. (This persistence of domination
makes extra interesting those friendships,
147
apparently Platonic, between Maries narrator
and men.) Later in the same section, "The Irish
Photographer," Calloway hints at the very aporia
of her book, which invests her whole project and
acts as its motor force: "It was like I was his dog.
He was humiliating me but I felt safe and warm
and completely turned on. Nothing could be
more enjoyable than this. To be dominated and
degraded was what I wanted. Sex is just a way to
get those things." She uses sex as a means for
other ends. In "Adrien Brody," Calloway's
narrator reveals that she cannot feel oral sex,
which I assume means that she cannot be
clitorally stimulated. So the question remains:
why sex? To what end does she put this--in her
novel--typically vicious act? Pleasure, as she
says, is no quarry: pleasure is everywhere, so it
means nothing. She wants the sense of being or
having been used. As Bill Callahan writes in
what's perhaps his greatest song, "To Be of Use,"
148
"Most of my fantasies / are of making someone
else come." But with Callahan, these fantasies
are sexual in nature. For her work, the endgame
of sex is not sexual but servile. what purpose
aims for a sort of devastation of the body, an
investigation into what remains when the flesh is
made unsafe and offered as a sacrifice to white
men: what substance does not die when the body
is discarded. These are the laws of her novel, and
Im encouraged by the fact that the book--
excepting the collages, which I dont think
work at all--does, young as she is, move by its
own rules and deploy its own logic. As I said
above, what purpose doesn't work as a piece of
finely crafted piece of literary art, just like so
many of the writings from the inhabitants of
Muumuu House. But it works quite well as a
performance that forces us to believe it is a novel
and so, like the spy Calloway's narrator is among
the rotten men of the world, infiltrates the space
149
of literature in order to change what is possible
and desirable within it, its coordinates and
provisions. It acts as if it is a novel; this is its
great performance and terrifying effect.

Calloway's debut can be filed among those
fictions that partake of a certain perdurant Idea:
the Idea of destruction. When a writer shows the
world as it is, Marie suggestswhen she lifts the
veil from what is "normal" by exposing what
violence and awful impulsions it requires of men
and women, but mostly menthen, all things
equal, that world cannot possibly stay the same.
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Brad Troemel is an American Artist based in New York.
He currently teaches a class called Subverting Digital Strate-
gies at PRATT.
Tao Lin is an American Poet and Novelist whose 3rd
novel, Taipei will be published by Vintage in June 2013.
Ariana Reines is a Poet, Playwright and translator
from Salem, Mass.
Amber Steakhouse is a semi-anonymous online ava-
tar. An expanded version of Status Updates, excerpted
here, will be published by Lucky Dragon Editions in early
2013.
Zachary German is a lil ass hole.
Alec Niedenthal is a literary enthusiast and financial
blogger living in Alabama.
Adam Humphreys is a filmmaker, entrepreneur, and
Hall of Fame tree planter. His most recent film, Shitty
Youth, can be viewed on vimeo.
CONTRIBUTORS
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All content copyright Lucky Dragon Editions.
January, 2013.
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