Alma: Coffee or tea?
Reynolds Woodcock: Do you have Lapsang? I’ll have a pot of Lapsang. please.
Enjoy.
Category: cinema
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The Green Room is like a letter written by hand. If you write by hand it will not be perfect, the writing may perhaps be trembly, but it will be you, your writing. The typewriter is something different. I don’t mean any comparison running down actors, because there are Olivettis with marvelous type, Remingotons which have a lot of personality, and Japy portables. Myself, I adore typewriters!
– François Truffaut
Here Truffaut contends and concedes the beauty of both handwriting and typing. A decade or so before word processors appeared on the scene.
Originally captured in an interview by Daniele Heymann and Catherine Laporte, L’Express, March 13, 1978,
Truffaut, François. Truffaut by Truffaut. United States: Abrams, 1987. pg 160
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Every weekday she went doggedly off to work, typically wearing her father’s tweed jacket over smocks and full skirts and sensible flat shoes, her hair bushy and unkempt (no hairdressers’ bills were possible), with no make-up. But also, all the time, she wanted beauty and art and fine language and ideas, listened to the Third Programme on the radio constantly (they had no gramophone), watched television avidly from 1965 onwards, went to art galleries and cinemas and the Old Vic and to pottery classes, made ceramics, drew Christmas cards, studied Spanish and Russian, read incessantly and widely, and travelled as much as she could inside and outside England. Her spirit, her will, her appetite for life, her interests, her energy were vital and powerful.
– Hermione Lee
This coming after her leaky house boat sank, and her husband nearly died. Penelope Fitzgerald kept her interests close, gave them oxygen. Despite near poverty, she kept going.
Keep going.
Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United States, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. pg 161,162
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An Italian, born in Palermo, he brought to Hollywood the secrets of the commedia into the deepest dimensions of desperate human situations (I have often wept during the tragic moments of Capra’s comedies) before he reestablished a balance and brought off the miracle that let us leave the theater with a renewed confidence of life.
– François Truffaut
Spot on Truffaut. Spot on.
Truffaut called Capra “the good doctor”.
Tonight, whether you watch It’s a Wonderful Life, or You Can’t Take it With You, you will leave your sofa (or even better, the theater) heartbroken. Heartbroken but encouraged.
It’s what Frank Capra does.
Merry Christmas Eve.
As read from François Truffaut’s essay Frank Capara, The Healer.
Truffaut, F. (1978). The Films in My Life. United Kingdom: Simon and Schuster. pg69
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In case anyone else needed it. Documenting it here. The playlist from Japanese movie Perfect Days.
Couldn’t find the album, so I built it in Apple music track by track. Assist by Perplexity.
Fun exercise. Felt like the mix-tape 90s, plus writing down the track name and artist stitched a new world to my head.
- House of the Rising Sun – The Animals
- Pale Blue Eyes – The Velvet Underground
- Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding
- Redondo Beach – Patti Smith
- Walkin’ Thru the Sleepy City – The Rolling Stones
- Perfect Day (cover) – Patrick Watson
- Aoi sakana (Blue Fish) – Sachiko Kanenobu
- Perfect Day – Lou Reed
- Sunny Afternoon – The Kinks
- Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
- Feeling Good – Nina Simone
- House of the Rising Sun (Japanese version – “Asahi‑rō”) – lyrics by Maki Asakawa,
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Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet–no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.
As read from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
The “knack” is typically a trait linked with natural ability, not diligence and attention.
In the movie “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” Ricky Baker and his foster uncle, Hec get lost in the New Zealand bush. They split up to find food. The boy, raised in the city can’t catch a thing worth eating. Hec, played by Sam Neill catches a catfish with ease.
They eat.
They sit by the fire.
Ricky Baker asks Hec: “How did you catch that fish?” Hec replies. “I don’t know, I have the knack.” (all paraphrased.)
Don’t dismiss the “knack”.
Don’t dismiss diligence and attention.
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“Sneakers are for doing stuff”
– Tom Sachs
I haven’t been this hyped for a pair of sneakers in ages. Honestly it’s the story, this seventeen minute video that turned the dial. The Mars Yard aren’t Marty McFly’s Mags or Jordan 11s. But like Jordans they have that feel of “If I only had a pair I could be a full time, famous artist, in Manhattan.
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I want to portray a devoted individual who pursued his dream head-on. Dreams possess an element of madness, and such poison must not be concealed. Yearning for something too beautiful can ruin you. Swaying toward beauty may come at a price. Jiro will be battered and defeated, his design career cut short. Nonetheless, Jiro was an individual of preeminent originality and talent. This is what we will strive to portray in this film.
– Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazki is talking about Jiro here, but he could easily be talking about himself, talking about every artist that walked the earth.
Miyazaki, Hayao. The Art of the Wind Rises. United States: VIZ Media LLC, 2014. pg8
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In 11th grade, I took AP Language and Composition. One of the strangest, most formative assignments we were given was to hand-copy essays by great writers. I transcribed Emerson’s Self-Reliance, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I wrote out JFK’s and FDR’s speeches. I copied Coleridge and De Quincey in longhand.
At the time, I was annoyed by the drudgery. There’s a difference between watching the Karate Kid, and actually having to do the menial labor so glorified in the film. My hand hurt from hours of handwriting. It felt archaic, even monastic.
But over time, something shifted. By copying the rhythms of others, I started to hear my own. I began to notice choice: in sentence length, in diction, in tone. Style was no longer invisible, it was architecture. And with that came freedom, the emergence of my own style. That class single-handedly taught me how to write.We copy to learn.
Pair with the Art of Manliness’ How to Become a Better Writer? Copy the Work of Others! piece.
Also Zohar Atkins is writing some great stuff.
Atkins, Zohar. 2025. “The Signature and the Shadow from the Turing Test to the Picasso Test.” Second Voice, May 20, 2025. https://substack.com/home/post/p-164007090.
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“Those who read, own the world.”
-Werner Herzog
Floodlights and Goalposts 