I think he shares with Tarantino an enormous wellspring of inspiration, but while Tarantino’s is his mind’s own Video Hut of Alexandria, Soderbergh’s is more of a living cinema sketchbook or laboratory. I simply no longer want to see those experiments. Full Frontal was the last straw, and its unfortunate fascination with the slippage between the lives led and lives played by Hollywood types, not all that clever a riff on Pirandello to begin with, ruined Ocean’s 12 when it was imported into that movie.

(Schizopolis underwhelmed me because I’d seen its famous “Generic greeting” scene done before — but I could never remember where. The blog While Seated jogged my memory: I’d gone to see Chicago’s Neo-Futurists perform Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind in 1991 in Chicago.)

But when he’s on, he’s on. Ocean’s 11 is, for me, the purest cinematic pleasure, drum-tight in the action and just loose enough to be sexy or funny without dropping the plot. Out of Sight is a slow and sexy crime story that maximizes the given resources of Elmore Leonard and George Clooney and even draws a shapely performance out of Jennifer Lopez. The Limey is probably the best evidence for my hypothesis about Soderbergh’s experiments informing his genre treatments: ruthlessly edited down, it’s a no-frills, sharp-angled story that relies much more upon the play between Terrence Stamp’s quiet anger and Luis Gúzman’s chatter than Lem Dobbs’ much-abused script.

Like no other director, Soderbergh has made the use of stars part of his art. That’s what makes the characterization of The Informant!‘s Mark Whitacre and his giddy, high-wire performance by Matt Damon so surprising and so much fun. Soderbergh’s great at exploiting star power — viz. Clooney — and to the extent that that’s been coaxed out of Damon previously, it’s been either his headstrong youthfulness in Ocean’s 11 or the reticent hawk of the Bourne movies. (Parker and Stone drew what is perhaps the canonical take.)

There’s seemingly no reticence at all in Mark Whitacre, the title character who moves from a “white hat” at the beginning of the movie, exposing himself to great risk in order to bring ADM to hell for its price-fixing scheme, to something altogether more complicated by the movie’s end.  Not only does he run off at the mouth to anyone within earshot, often with compromising information, his internal live-encyclopedia monologue comes up as a voice-over:

Whitacre’s ever-interjecting consciousness adds a note of frenzy–of monkey mind–to an already-frenetic performance. Marvin Hamlisch’s loopy and anachronistic score reinforces the mania of Whitacre’s personality. The movie is serious enough about the ADM scheme and the various powers that conspire to refocus the investigation on the whistleblower instead of the crime. But Whitacre’s characterization, ranging from chipper and corn-fed to not sane, shapes the work and gives it its real artistic stretch.

The most impressive feat of The Informant! is that it takes us up this close to its protagonist but manages to hold back critical information about his actions and intentions. We get inside his mind without getting inside his plan. (Significantly, his first voice-over, presented originally to the audience but revealed to be a speech to his young son, clues us in that his mental monologue is very much a performance.) Done poorly, this could come off as unfair or selective on the part of the director. Instead, it’s exciting, allowing us intimacy with Whitacre from the beginning yet still leaving plenty of room for suspense and revelation. The storytelling gives us an unreliable narrator verging on a kind of first-person free indirect style.

The polar bear anecdote isn’t the only Whitacre ramble about deception and perception in the animal kingdom. Whitacre tells us how the colors of poisonous butterflies are adopted by their benign cousins to scare away birds. And he tells us (talking to his son, in the first monologue) that our breakfast orange juice and maple syrup conceal good old corn. Every act of looking is looking at a lie.

Link to screenplay by Scott Z. Burns.

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I’ve returned to the dunes nearly every summer that I’ve lived in Los Angeles. It’s a long haul, but it’s awesome to introduce new visitors to the dunes. And the experience holds up in its own right.

The Eureka Valley Sand Dunes are good for a visit any time of day or year, with the caveat that in the winter, the rain may wash out the roads. This is my method…

Go as close as you can to the full moon, preferably in June, July, August or September. Before you go, check out the times of the moon’s rise and set.

From Los Angeles, it takes about four hours to get up to Big Pine. I’ve often gone with big groups; we’ve met at Owens Valley restaurants such as Imperial Palace in Bishop, the Still Life Cafe in Independence, or Rossi’s in Big Pine. A long dinner is nice for a group where people are meeting one another for the first time, and these restaurants all have a lot of local color, but now that I’m older I’m going to abandon the dinner stop in favor of getting out to the dunes earlier.

So — after some kind of snackage, get yourself to the Keough Hot Springs. Heading north of 395, turn left 7 miles north of Big Pine. There’s a road to your right just after the turn; ignore it, and take the second right (map). Park about 50 feet in, and find a pool. Clothing is optional. There’s a facility further up the road, but it’s probably closed by the time you get there. And I’m told the free, open pools are better.

Keep in mind the moon-set time as you relax/digest at the hot springs. The next part of the drive will take you more or less 90 minutes, depending on the quality of the roads.

Head back south on 395 to Hwy 168 and turn left. You’ll see a sign for Deep Springs Valley. After about 2 miles, you’ll see a sign for Death Valley Road — make a slight right turn off of 168.

The next 37 miles you’ll spend on Death Valley Road will not pass quickly. Hairpin turns abound. At Deep Springs, I learned two important rules of desert driving: don’t cut corners you can’t see around, and never swerve to avoid small animals. Rabbits and mice will cross the road suicidally in front of your vehicle. You might kill a few. That’s part of the deal.

After 30 miles on this road, the pavement ends, and you’re on a graded gravel road. If there’s been rain, you could get deep ridges, big rocks, or washouts. Take them carefully.

After 7 miles of dirt road, the pavement returns. About 150 feet later is the right turn onto Eureka Road. Then you’ve got 10 more miles of dirt, and finally, you’ll arrive at a simple campsite. Park…

…and strip! I like to leave a pair of flip-flops on until I’ve climbed the dunes past the scrub. If it’s cold, I might keep my clothes on for the first 100 yards or so. Then leave your shoes or clothes in a pile that you’ll be able to find later. If you’re worried about the moon setting, leave a flashlight sticking out of the sand.

The dunes rise 600 feet off the valley floor, almost the largest in North America. (Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes rise 750 feet.)  The next part is going to kick your ass. Find the ridge and walk up, up, up the dunes. It may be tempting to start sliding around as soon as you hear the hum (more on that later). But it’s worth getting some elevation.

The dunes tend to form a kind of L-shape — it changes all the time — so you’ll walk up and over to the right. Once you’ve found a nice steep slope, space out your group. Take a moment to listen to the voice of the desert, and then plunge down, everyone at once.

Your object is not speed but volume of sand moved. So swim down the dunes, wave your arms, make yourself a human sand blender. As you all tumble together, the sand you move will move against the sand beneath it. And you’ll hear the hum. It’s not like anything else.

You’ll also understand, if you were hesitant at first, why you’re best off naked. The sand is very soft (and the moonlight is forgiving). Clothes won’t keep it out, and will only trap it to irritate you. And it’s a very comfortable, supportive medium. For the sake of modesty or athletic support, dress as you need. But naked is the way to go.

After your run, clamber up — all fours works best — and do it again. And again, and again. It’s hard to slide all the way down and walk back around the base, because the scrub is murder on your feet. It’s worth it to keep climbing back to the ridge you walked up on and follow that back down.

There are two ways to camp for the night. The softest bed is back on the dunes; haul your blankets or bags back up there. If you want to sleep less comfortably but longer, camp in the shade of your vehicle. Standing in the campsite, facing the dunes, the sun rises on your left.

Returning to Big Pine in the morning, the Country Kitchen is always satisfying.

Dunescape 6 by Antelope Balloo on Flickr

My first year up from Los Angeles, I blew out a tire on a Nissan Sentra and went to pains to take a more rugged vehicle. This year we went in HJ’s Corolla and we were fine (though a Jeep did blow a tire). Check your tread; high clearance is preferable but not necessary (and a high car offers more shade in the morning).

Also, you’ll want to have plenty of water. I also like to pick up an energy drink and some Gatorade at the Mobil station in Big Pine before heading in.
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The promotional blog post suggested a typical modern-classical performance:

…not exactly stodgy, but irrefutably professional. (Not Ed Parker-professional. Just new-classical professional.)

This was rock-club, casual-dress, BYO-music stand. The trombonist and the trumpet shuffled and swayed together. The reed players displayed a kind of typical sweet and generous band-camp dorkiness. It looked like this:

From Wikipedia:

In C consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped. As detailed in some editions of the score, it is customary for one musician (“traditionally… a beautiful girl,” Riley notes in the score^[2]) to play the note C (in octaves) in repeated eighth notes. This functions as a metronome and is referred to as “The Pulse”.

The freedom of each musician to advance as they wished, while respecting the injunction to keep mostly together, created an exquisite tension between predictability and randomness. The vague wash forward between movements felt like a game of Guess the Leader. But much harder to guess.

I’ve been helping promote the upcoming Beethoven Bragg concert. Describing it to a classical music writer, I felt completely out of my depth. “I don’t know if it will be of interest for exactly the same reason people go to classical concerts… Could you call it ‘folk classical’?” Maybe there’s nothing exceptional about this category, about an orchestral piece that synthesizes social context and sound to create an element of freedom. I have sat through very few orchestral pieces. But I really liked this one.

Thanks to Professor Pessah for the Juanita’s clip.

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