So I finally saw it.

By ‘it,’ I of course mean Mondo Cane, one of the most influential documentaries ever produced. The legacy of Mondo Cane, which surveys the unique world we live in with bitter, cynical disenchantment, is the compilation documentary - everything from Faces of Death to America’s Funniest Home Videos stems from this singular moment.

So why is it so boring?

Let’s knock off the almost obnoxious enumeration of its strengths before anything else: beautifully shot, great music (Riz Ortolani score, the Oscar-nominated song “More,” one of the defining standards of the 1960s), fascinating moments that are almost profound in that blissful sort of pop-psych secular-desire-for-faith way (the grand finale - a vignette on the cargo cults of New Guinea - is far and away the film’s greatest moment). The film’s most profoundly biting moment is its funniest - commenting on the appropriation of ‘native’ dances by the Hawaiian tourism industry, the unnamed narrator describes the indescribably aborted attempts of a group of tourists to hula “the only real native dance being performed.”

But more often than not, Mondo Cane bored me - is it because the mode of discourse it uses is so commonplace that the relatively tame subject matter (eating bugs! drunk people!) is no longer exciting? But what of the Hawaii segment - inarguably compelling? And the section on the mating rituals of the Trobriand Islanders, which by all means should be interesting but simply isn’t?

Mondo Cane is a film about the relics of the world - the rituals and physical forms that defy the popular narrative of 20th century secularism - so why does it feel like a relic itself?

More thoughts on the jobfront: my contact at BAMCinematek didn’t call me today. I’m really starting to think that the answer is that he’s simply too nonconfrontational to tell me I didn’t get the job. On Thursday I’ll call him and ask again. Meh.

I plugged in my sunlamp last night. After a good thirty minutes reading (Jackie Susann’s trashterpiece Valley of the Dolls, if you must know) I worked on my scene-by-scene outline for Mariko Clemens, A War Wife. It’s coming along well, but obviously very slowly. I really want to get as many of my possible ideas down on paper before I start writing the script itself, so I currently have a Microsoft Word file with about 15 pages worth of notes that read like “how to establish svetlana’s financial well-being?” and “mirrors? cribbing too much from sirk?” and “possible designs for robotic mechakaiju - eagle? humanoid? ” Notice the question marks. I’m trying to minimize those.

Oh, and one more thing - I happened to read about the true cause of the death of Adrienne Shelley before heading to work this morning. Totally wrecked my morning in the same way finding out about Katrin Cartlidge’s death did a few years ago. For those of you who haven’t seen any films with Shelley (given the state of distribution today, it wouldn’t be surprising) - she was a great actress and an important figure of the American independent film movement of the 1990s - if you haven’t seen Hal Hartley’s Trust, which she’s great in - do so now.

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