Tallest guy in town may be a tad short
There were more nickname suggestions for the new Salesforce Tower, but most evoked body parts I thought perhaps not suitable for mention in this family newspaper. Then came a late arrival with such profound implications that its addition was irresistible:
Michael Stanford suggests that since the 1,100-foot tall Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles is 30 feet higher than the 1,070-foot Salesforce Tower, ours should be called Shorty.
Feel free to insert your own observation here about size not counting.
Film writer Glenn Lovell says that Harry Dean Stanton, who died on Sept. 15, is so good in the movie “Lucky” that he ought to be considered for a posthumous Oscar for best actor. Past recipients of that honor are Peter Finch and Heath Ledger.
Meanwhile, upon learning of Stanton’s death, filmmaker Phil Kaufman and former Cafe Tosca proprietor Jeannette Etheredge, friends and admirers of the actor, sitting in the back room at Tosca under a poster of “Paris, Texas,” toasted Stanton. They agreed that sharing such tributes was becoming too familiar a ritual.
And meanwhile, too, VanityFair.com includes Gary Susman’s account of the actor’s friends gathering in August “for a sort of living wake.” Among those present: Rebecca De Mornay, Ed Begley Jr. and an assortment of friends less well-known. Actress De Mornay said she’d dated Stanton in 1982, when both were appearing in Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart.”
“He hit on me, and I was 33 years younger than him. He had a great pickup line: ‘Do you believe in magic?’ ” On the set of the movie, said De Mornay, they “were just platonic. When the movie was over, I fell in love with him. ... He lets you completely in when he loves you.”
The VF reminded me of glimpsing Stanton at a Vanity Fair Oscar party about 10 years ago. Looking grizzled, especially surrounded by Hollywood glitterati gussied up in their Sunday best, Stanton sat on a banquette, befogged by cigarette smoke and surrounded by beautiful young women.
P.S. The Roxie’s “Too Tiny Tribute to Harry Dean Stanton” starts Saturday, Sept. 30, with a showing of “Repo Man.”
Mill Valley Film Festival artist in residence this year is John Sanborn, who will preside over a master class/ lecture/demonstration/retrospective on Oct. 12 at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley. Materials for this event say the body of work by Sanborn, who’s worked as a media artist for 40 years — the same length of time that the festival has been held — “encompasses the early days of video art to the digital bleeding edge of today.” He was recently named a Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French government.
In an email about this event, he said his earlier works were done “with primitive technology — video machines the size of refrigerators. It was cutting edge back then, but now your phone is 10,000 times more powerful, and everyone can be a video artist . ... I have outlasted at least a dozen different video systems,” he wrote. “I only intend to retire once I can connect directly to people’s brains.” The old equipment “fades into the haze of time,” he said, and as it does, “new technology appears. But I am still breaking the tools as soon as I get them.”
Among the links Sanborn attached to his note was “Ear to the Ground,” a short video in which David Van Tieghem uses the streets of New York as a percussion instrument. It was made in 1982, and the “primitive technology” featured in the video is actually obsolete: The percussionist makes major use of phone booths.
Artist/writer Paul Madonna’s new graphic novel, “Close Enough for the Angels,” is set in several places, one of which — Guerrero Street — is familiar turf to San Franciscans. The graphics, exquisite drawings mostly in sepia tones, mostly depict Thailand, and are tucked into the text in clusters. It sounds confusing, but it’s actually not at all. The whole process by which they are threaded through the tale becomes clear at the end.
It’s not at all a children’s book, but I read it with childlike pleasure, absorbing the words and lapping up the visuals. Madonna will be in conversation with Andy Weiner at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30.