Category Archives: Faves

Here are some of the most popular entries from Greg I. Hamilton’s blog, “Beer Versus Bread.”

Faves, Flickering Images

When Words Mean Nothing but DO Something

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I watched Inception last night (loved it as expected; knew it was going to be my kind of movie ever since I heard about it in October of ’09 from its director of ski photography) and hit the pillow thinking about why it had worked as a film. It’s significant that I went to sleep to ponder a movie about planting waking-life ideas in people’s dreams.

Yeah, the movie sucked me in. I gladly suspended my disbelief, rode along with the filmmakers’ playful illusions and deceits, and kept chewing on them after it was done. Suspension of disbelief is one pinnacle of moviemaking and Inception achieved it for me through visual storytelling rather than clever wordsmithing. To convey how dream travel worked, there was no narration, not much dialogue, and only enough pseudo-science and vague technique to serve as what Hitchcock called a McGuffin: a plot device that is really only in there to drive the characters nuts. Which is of course what audiences love.

An on-location toast to the filming wrap for Inception. Why has it taken me this long to see this movie?

Film so often works when it’s not about words but about the spaces between them. So why am I sixteen years deep working in film, thirty-some years a fan of moving pictures? Why of all media does it intrigue me— the writer— so much? Because it’s not about what words mean. It’s about what they do.

I woke this morning realizing that this may be my connection to the athletes in our film, The Movement. Why am I directing a film about disabled skiers? What’s my connection to five people who don’t walk through the world exactly the way I do? I think it’s because they chose to ski, when society and even their own minds told them that was ridiculous. I suppose I, too, take “that’s ridiculous” as an invitation. I’m a writer who understands that words ultimately mean nothing. And here I am still writing.

Words mean nothing? I’ll throw another writer’s meaningless words at the topic:

“I knew I should be a writer because it was something at which I would never be good enough.” — Some author, in an intro to his or her book. I think. Paraphrased here from memory. I haven’t been able to locate it again. See? Meaningless

It’s really only satisfying when the things we create see the light of day (or the glow of your monitor) and actually make something happen.

Think about all the hard work that goes into putting important things into just the right words— only to have that contract reneged upon, that screenplay mothballed, that novel pushed out of print. It’s not about what those words (or even those great huge conglomerations of words) mean, it’s about what they do while they are still alive.

Kind of like us humans, right?

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photos © Chris Patterson, used here with permission. Read more about Chris’ contribution to Inception in American Cinematographer, July 2010

Authentic Experience, Faves

The Badass Buddha of Big Mountain Skiing

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The yellow sign says “CLIFFS.” I watch Kristen ski down past it. She slows only momentarily and then vanishes over the edge.

To the right I spot a traverse: suitably challenging but well within my comfort zone. A voice of caution echoes in my head: “Kristen’s a badass. Who the hell do I think I am to follow her down a cliff?”

I am Buddha.

And so I go for it.

We’re at Ski to Live 2, a clinic from undisputed big mountain ski beast, Kristen Ulmer. The style of the session is Ulmer’s own creation. It has a lot of heart and a lot of fire— like a biker tattoo. As I learned a couple years ago, her cerebral explorations gain momentum from the guided skiing exercises … and vice versa.

Rewind one year to 2010. I was supposed to be at this very clinic: a triumphant return to Alta, a mountain that had never let me down. To be fair, I did make it here. But in a boot. On crutches. With a torn Achilles and soleus muscle. From just one day before. Boo hoo.

That was my first serious injury. [My dislocated thumb back in high school was laughable: I thought it funny that the ski patroller had to put his knee in my armpit and use both hands and all his strength to re-set it; a couple weekends later I cut a slit in a work-glove so I could wear my splint for the state championships; and I sucked just as much in that race as I would have without the dislocated thumb— so, not exactly a setback.]

My Achilles last year was a serious injury. I went the better part of four months without walking on two legs. If it hadn’t been for this movie I’ve been working on (about folks who haven’t let disability stop them from skiing), I probably would have been more discouraged. But here I am, a year later, following Kristen Ulmer past a yellow cliff-warning sign on the Devil’s Castle face. Before my injury it was this sort of inbounds hike-to terrain that won me over to Alta. Right now it’s giving me a funny feeling in the belly.

Atop this cliff— which is not exactly a cliff, but steeper than most runs I’ve ever skied— I’m playing with a concept Ulmer and her guides have just shared with us. Imagine two variations on fear. One is a crippling, totally unworkable panic that makes grown adults curl up into the fetal position. The other is a sort of energizing fear. It is the butterflies in your gut before you walk out on stage. It’s that headrush that makes your knees go weak (but not collapse) just before your moment of truth. It’s— well, it’s this feeling like I’m gonna puke right here and start a little vomit avalanche down this chute.

I don’t mean that in an unpleasant way. You know like when Rod Tidwell hurls on the field before his big game? Or when Rabbit gets the chunky hiccups backstage before taking on a rival rapper? That sounds kind of nice right now. Robert Redford once described skiing as a mix of danger and poetry. Standing atop this chute, experiencing this sense of workable fear, I would describe it as the intersection of danger and power. I know this fear: there is no need to overcome it— because it can be harnessed.

As I glide over the slight cornice into the chute, a river of slough ushers my turns downward. There’s something calming about my uphill knee being around chest-high after each turn while a sea of snow races past me. I like this form of fear. It’s dawning on me that I could live the rest of my life this way. I start thinking about career choices that have loomed like ominous “CLIFFS” signs. Before I know it I’m at the bottom of the chute, feeling like some sort of badass Buddha. I don’t know the Zen term for badass Buddha, but Ulmer did share this one with us: a mouthful that translated as “great stupid-ass Buddha.” It’s fun to ski like him as well.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photos by yours truly and (((o.kvlt)))

Faves, Tower of Song

Boogie-Shoe Anthropology

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Once upon a time we students of humanity, a.k.a. anthros, imagined we could pin down others from an entirely objective viewpoint. We thought this was hard science and there were strict laws about presenting the specific beauties of a people. Laws and beauty: not exactly bedfellows, right? This approach was doomed.

The backlash was an awfully nice, but not exactly helpful “I’m OK, you’re OK” philosophy. One angle was politely called relativism. In 1991 Robert Pirsig trashed such overreactions:

What many were trying to do, evidently, was get out of all these metaphysical quarrels by condemning all theory, by agreeing not even to talk about such theoretical reductionist things as what savages do in general. They restricted themselves to what their particular savage happened to do on Wednesday. That was scientifically safe all right— and scientifically useless. … If you can’t generalize from the data there’s nothing else you can do with it either. … A science without generalization is no science at all. Imagine someone telling Einstein, “you can’t say ‘E=mc2.’  It’s too general, too reductionist. We just want the facts of physics, not all this high-flown theory.” Cuckoo. … Data without generalization is just gossip. (Lila, p. 62)

Nowadays we seek a middle path, where our biases as observers are present and acknowledged, but hopefully not overly imposed on the subject we’re studying. Thus real people take center stage without ignoring the fact that the cameras are rolling. Ethnography (a fancy term for the attempt to capture some of a culture’s essence in language) is a stage, a dramatization.

In that sense, cultural anthropology starts to feel a lot like storytelling, and the film Throw Down Your Heart is a marvelous example of its potential. This is the story of one of the world’s greatest banjo players visiting the homeland of his chosen instrument. The experience Sascha Paladino’s film creates is like a music video to Night at the Museum: displays step out from behind glass to jam with the audience. This is the new ethnography, off the pages and into your boogie shoes.

The beauty, anthropologically, of what Béla Fleck achieved in his tour of Africa is that he provided a foil for the local cultures to shine. He’s no trained scientist. He is a quiet man who connects with people in the language most familiar to him. The diva Oumou Sangare says: “Béla is somebody who might have a hard time expressing himself with his mouth, but who can express himself perfectly with his fingers.” Mali’s biggest pop star, she says this with passionate, emphatic gestures. Then they jam together, the music swells, and damn if thousands of copies of the local Mali yellow pages don’t all flutter at the thought of Béla’s fingers doing the walking.

He’s an amazing performer— as are the locals he encounters— and somehow the film is really just about that. How refreshing that a project like this doesn’t have to be a study or some sort of mission with a message, but simply an experience. Ironically it succeeds as both a study and message because people doing what they love have a way of creating wisdom and inspiration naturally.

I fell in love with Béla Fleck’s music through his live performances. He’s a master of collaborating with other musicians who, like Béla, deliver a highly memorable stage presence. When I see performances like this, I realize that every generation should embrace the greatest performers of their time. There’s nothing wrong with revering the timeless greats, but there is much to be gained from participation in the now of music.

Headbanger's delight
Maiden in Denver: another item checked off my bucket-list.

Luckily there is an awful lot of music being created live at any given moment on this planet, from Uganda’s bouncing 12-foot wooden marimba (featured in the film) to Iron Maiden last Monday amid a sea of my fellow headbanging fans.

My simple recommendation for this film? Throw down your heart, put on your boogie shoes, and see it.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photos: Béla pickin’ in Africa © Argot Pictures 2006, all rights reserved. The other one’s by me: it’s Iron Maiden performing 6/14/10 at the Denver venue with a name that’s as fun as flossing, Comfort Dental Amphitheatre.