In June, I was pretty lazy. I think it was the combination of finishing spring teaching, finally finding a job for the fall, taking care of the baby during the days, and completing the doctorate which all led to a perfect storm of exhaustion which resulted in last month being one big daze of . . . something.
Now, I'm trying to get back on track, but I'm not really sure what to do. I don't know what to write, even though I keep telling myself I am supposed to be writing something. Suddenly, all the pressure feels back on. I really only have one project to start on--Paul Thomas Anderson--and I suppose the focused clarity of that two-fold purpose (preparing both a class and a possible book) has made it all that much more intimidating.
I'm used to working on two projects simultaneously--one serves as the primary focus, while the other serves as the occasional, productive, diversion when I get sick of the main project . . . or just stuck. When I was an MA, it was Kubrick and a much different version of Haunted Nerves. Then, it became Haunted Nerves and my contributions to Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Then, it was my contributions to that, plus my dissertation. Then it became my dissertation and Anderson. Then, it was the dissertation and Cinephilia again. Then, the dissertation and (a new version of) Haunted Nerves again. All three of those projects sort of wound down around the same time--for the moment. And right as I was turning back to Anderson (which I consciously set aside for the length of my dissertation) I've now found myself obsessed with a historical project on Hawaii--which has conveniently come to be a distraction from the Anderson project. But this latest project, however, will take quite a bit of time for various reasons, and I am consciously trying to be deliberate.
The Anderson project has priority now for a lot of reasons. For one, the idea began as a discussion in 2007 with an editor who specifically said I should turn to it after finishing my dissertation--and despite my reluctance to go back to an auteur study, it wasn't an opening to turn down. For another, news of his next film, The Master, is beginning to circulate, and it might well be out as early as the fall of 2011. It would be nice to have any potential book on the director out in time for that theatrical release, rather than be delayed until after the film appears--where the manuscript moves from "timely" to already "dated" (the latter inevitability does not bother me, as long as it is/was timely in the moment that it first appeared).
Also, there is still no major scholarly study out yet on Anderson, and the pressure--which I first felt over two years ago--to be the first is mounting (there is only, to my knowledge, this, a very expensive and apparently only 64-page book, of which I am understandably skeptical). I don't have to be the first (just the best), but I don't want to be rehashing a tired trend either, and, as Anderson's career strengthens, there inevitably will be.
And, finally, planning and teaching a class on him (one of several course ideas I originally pitched) of course gives it all added urgency. At the time, this class idea made the most sense--I wanted to work on that project this summer anyway, and designing an authorship course seemed the least taunting task for my first special topics course. In short, I am hoping to do both at the same time, such that by the end of the upcoming fall semester, I will also have a polished draft of the book done as well.
My idea for Anderson began way back in 2002--another six months and I would have written my master's thesis on him, instead of Kubrick (all the while, I knew I was saving Song of the South for my dissertation). By the time I was well into writing that latter project, I had an idea for a three-part thesis which would have focused on the personas of various stars in his films to that point (one chapter on Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, one on Tom Cruise in Magnolia, and one on either Mark Wahlberg or Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights--I honestly don't remember which now).
As I have mentioned several times, my interest in Anderson began with Punch-Drunk Love, which remains one of my all-time favorite films. I've seen every one of his films in theatres, but wasn't a huge fan (I suppose I am still not a "fan" strictly speaking). When I was a teenager, I was blown away by Hard Eight. I found Boogie Nights entertaining, but also frustrating. Magnolia was ambitious, but too self-indulgent--I couldn't count on one hand the number of films from 1999 I love more. By the end of the decade, I was not a fan of Anderson's, at least not in the way that so many of my buddies and other cinephiles my age were.
But Punch-Drunk Love was a real revelation, one that made me rethink his work, enough to want to go back and write about all of his films. There Will Be Blood only cemented that desire. I really think it might be his best film yet, even if I don't personally have the same level of affection for it as his previous film. Moreover, the fact that Anderson only seems to be getting better with time gives the overall project greater excitement. I doubt that I will ever love a film of his more than Punch, but its quite probable his "masterpiece" is still yet to come.
Nowadays, it is impossible to separate how much I "like" any of his films from my long scholarly fascination with wanting to write about them, a goal I have been prolonging for over seven years now. One does not exist without the other. I doubt I would give Boogie Nights or Magnolia any further personal thought were it not for the project at hand. But I suppose that's how authorship works. On that note, I am glad I stepped aside and worked on A Frown Upside Down for so long--I wasn't ready to write it then, and I've since discovered I am more interested in studying the histories of film and media (see: Hawaii), than I am in writing about directors.
* * *
I fear I will spend much of my career outrunning the unwanted "auteurist" label, which actually accounts for very little of the total amount of writing I've done in my life. I don't reject the theory, obviously, but I am thoroughly agnostic about it. My biggest investment in the idea revolves around my annoyance that so many film and media academics seem determined to discredit it, which just seems wrong-headed, at best, to me. The first thing one of my committee members said at my thesis defense on Kubrick in 2003 was "let me begin by saying that I don't think authorship has any credibility anymore at all, but that said . . . " (and this was, ironically, coming from a Lacanian). On every possible level (both the substance and the setting), that was just about the dumbest thing I ever heard a professor say.
Accepting authorship is just a cold, hard, historical, aesthetic and commercial reality with being a film scholar--its not the only or most important thing, but it is there. It is also what general film audiences and cinephiles most want to read and discuss, such that this smaller portion of my writing gets the largest amount of attention, while so much else, most often better, comes and goes without any notice at all . . . .
(Hey, has anyone ever read "Islands of Detroit"? Please do).
Authorship perhaps best hits on the divide between film academics and cinephiles, but also within academia. There is a whole generation of young auteurist film scholars who don't yet realize they are an endangered species, who don't yet realize that studying authorship makes them less, not more, attractive in a job market defined by rabid anti-auteurism.
To a point, I understand the other side though, too--auteur theory can unfairly marginalize others who contribute to the making of a film, auteur theory can rewrite film history through egotistical overreaches, auteur theory can contribute to too many people saying variations of the same thing over and over again (paging The Kubrick Facade, but I also think too many cinephile blogs out there--not to name names--are guilty of this as well). On many levels, older notions of authorship are not inaccurate, just in danger of being exhausted.
But its intellectually disingenuous not to see the concept of authorship as being as central to film (and increasingly to television) as anything else. Last year's Oscars weren't just a battle of financial and distributive Davids (Hurt Locker) versus Goliaths (Avatar)--they were very explicitly about competing authorial--divorced, natch!--visions (Bigelow vs. Cameron). Forget "transmedia storytelling"--everything about the modern media entertainment empire is structured about the idea of the "author," something which is backed up not just by narrative and stylistic trends across these texts, but the economic ones as well. But that doesn't mean I want to be defined by it personally, either.
Well, this blog post took quite a turn. It was originally supposed to be about where to begin (again) with Anderson--I simply don't know what to write about. I know I need to re-read everything, but getting away to a good research library is hard these days. Anyway, the question of "authorship" is where I want to begin with the book project, and where I want to begin with the class. So, maybe everything is working out fine after all.
It will all make sense in the end.
js
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