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Bananafish wrote:I think Cassavetes on Cassavetes trumps them all. His filmmaking was personal in every sense of the word and anyone that stood in the way of his personal expression he called a "gangster".

He didn't care one lick for his audience, for critics or for studios. He only cared about telling the truth he saw in himself and the people around him.

I don't understand why Carney gets such a bad rap around here. Obviously he comes off very strong (sometimes too strong), but in light of the incredible work he's done...

I agree that it's good to take a balanced assessment of his work, but I think the main thing that leads many to write him off is that they disagree with his basic assumptions about what filmmaking should be and therefore tire (as I sometimes do when reading him) of his dismissals of filmmakers who clearly contributed a great deal.

And as long as I'm off-topic, I think he looks good in that photo. The bow tie has been tainted in many people's eyes by people who wear them clownishly, but some, a brave few, still wear them well.

Edit: I didn't think this warranted another post but, yes, I agree the self-promotion on his site could be subtler.

My favorite part of Carney's website is that there appear to only be about 7 or 8 pictures of him and they pop up in rotation on nearly every page, the best being the one of him eating off a paper plate in some student's backyard

Yeah, that always bothered me a lot. Also, how he links to a page of pictures of himself: "High-resolution JPG images of Prof. Carney are available here." as though they are in high demand or something.

I (probably) like the dude more than most here, though.

Quick, someone film LightBulb doing his homework for two hours so we can get Ray Carney to write the liner notes

Gregory wrote:I think the main thing that leads many to write him off is that they disagree with his basic assumptions about what filmmaking should be and therefore tire (as I sometimes do when reading him) of his dismissals of filmmakers who clearly contributed a great deal.

It's not his opinions that bother me. It's the hubris, insolence, and condescension with which he presents them. Carney has half a dozen pet filmmakers (and if you don't know who they are, the flashing lights on his site will direct you where to buy his books about them). All other filmmakers (especially those who make up the recognized canon -- punks like Ford and Hitchcock) are "shallow" and "tricksters." I would love to read well-reasoned arguments about why he thinks almost all of the giants of world cinema are hacks, but even if he does present such arguments in his writing, I would never know. I can't get past his insinuations that I am a vapid idiot for even bothering to give such filmmakers the time of day.

There's a sad, revealing moment near the end of Cassavetes Directs, Michael Ventura's excellent recounting of the making of Love Streams, where Ventura visits Cassavetes for the last time:

Michael Ventura wrote:"He said everybody knows he's dying. Everybody wants 'last words.' And there's some academic guy who wrote a book about him and who's been bugging him. He couldn't remember his name. He just rolled his eyes, 'That other guy, that professor, that guy.'"

And to think that's all he's got going for him!
I'm sure I've said this before but I actually do take Carney's side in the whole row against Rowlands and Criterion, but what he sees as cinema's function or its greatest achievements is so inanely restrictive regarding the possibilities of the medium that at best he's perversely fascinating in the same manner as ignorant Netflix and Amazon reviewers.

Jeff wrote:

Gregory wrote:I think the main thing that leads many to write him off is that they disagree with his basic assumptions about what filmmaking should be and therefore tire (as I sometimes do when reading him) of his dismissals of filmmakers who clearly contributed a great deal.

It's not his opinions that bother me. It's the hubris, insolence, and condescension with which he presents them. Carney has half a dozen pet filmmakers (and if you don't know who they are, the flashing lights on his site will direct you where to buy his books about them). All other filmmakers (especially those who make up the recognized canon -- punks like Ford and Hitchcock) are "shallow" and "tricksters." I would love to read well-reasoned arguments about why he thinks almost all of the giants of world cinema are hacks, but even if he does present such arguments in his writing, I would never know. I can't get past his insinuations that I am a vapid idiot for even bothering to give such filmmakers the time of day.

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. Maybe I should have written "...his polarizing and opinionated dismissals of filmmakers..." Personally, though I don't care if Carney thinks my tastes are shallow and frivolous because I know they're not. I do find it unfortunate that it's so hard to find critics who strike a balance between writing with great conviction and allowing the writing to become dogmatic.

I've been attempting to read Nabokov's Pale Fire...does Charles Kinbote remind anyone else of Ray Carney, or is it just me?

Ray Carney invoked in the Onion =D>

ogygia avenue wrote:I've been attempting to read Nabokov's Pale Fire...does Charles Kinbote remind anyone else of Ray Carney, or is it just me?

Ha, I'm in the middle of that one myself. I didn't think of the similarity but they both are a couple annoying cunts.

Curious about your take on the message that he's slipped during a bout of wrestling with the students. Did you get there yet? First third of the commentary.

Ray Carney's university supposedly pulled funding for his website (According to Carney it's because he's such a threat to academia, lolz), so he's stopped updating his always entertaining/embarrassing mailbag feature. But something doesn't sound quite right about his paranoid "everyone's out to get me" comments-- Why is the site still up if they pulled funding? How was he able to go back and make a "last post" two or three different times? -- So who knows why they "took" it away from him, if they took it away from him

domino harvey wrote:Ray Carney's university supposedly pulled funding for his website (According to Carney it's because he's such a threat to academia, lolz), so he's stopped updating his always entertaining/embarrassing mailbag feature. But something doesn't sound quite right about his paranoid "everyone's out to get me" comments-- Why is the site still up if they pulled funding? How was he able to go back and make a "last post" two or three different times? -- So who knows why they "took" it away from him, if they took it away from him

His website can't cost more than $9.99/month to maintain. I'm sure he's covering the costs with his lunch money.

Well, it's an official university address, so, really it shouldn't even cost the university that much. I think he might be seeing ghosts.

Well, if they have to pay someone to update the site for him (I'll assume he doesn't know how to do it) that could be where the costs are. Of course I figured he'd find some student who'd gladly do it for nothing.

For some reason, I hadn't even thought he'd be too, um, thick to update his own site. Though I'm sure it doesn't use a CMS.

I bet this is some crackdown effort made by Gena Rowlands.

Admittedly it's unkind, but I'm sort of hoping that all of Carney's worst paranoiac fears will be confirmed, and that BU will announce the establishment of the Gena Rowlands Professorship in Independent Film, or something.

kaujot wrote:Well, it's an official university address, so, really it shouldn't even cost the university that much. I think he might be seeing ghosts.

Someone in his Uni has probably concluded potential legal liability could arise from his statements on the site, thus it has been disowned - could be as a result of a lawyers letter or more simply (and I'd say more likely) just a crackdown on what is published online under the Uni's aegis...

Wasn't there a user who swung in here one time outraged at our laughing at Carney and we all thought it was Carney himself?

Mr. Carney releases a new Cassavetes tome this fall:

It's floating around that the above has somehow been blocked from publication by Gena Rowlands. I've contacted Carney to try and get more details.

GringoTex wrote:Wasn't there a user who swung in here one time outraged at our laughing at Carney and we all thought it was Carney himself?

Is this what you're referring to? Or someone else? :-k

Foam wrote:It's floating around that the above has somehow been blocked from publication by Gena Rowlands. I've contacted Carney to try and get more details.

According to Carney, Rowlands threatened to sue the University of California press and even though there was no basis for the suit they didn't want to pay the money to defend against it. I wish the woman would please just go away.