A brief memoir regarding Jonah Mekas, 1922-2019

Posted on January 24, 2019 by
  1. photo of New York Times, Thursday, January 24, 2019; p. A24;
  2. Screen capture or cut-and-paste of copy of note sent to Eden Arielle Gordon in New York, regarding Mekas, “Pull My Daisy” and “New American Cinema”, July 24, 2019 — along with link to article in The Times, by Bruce Weber;
  3. Screen capture of texts to Steve Cohen, Eric Cohen and Brian Moore, or a text and a link.
  4. Note: Jonas Mekas born in Lithuania in 1922 was not a Jew nor was he an anti-Semite.
  5. I volunteered for Anthology Film Archives — delivering the program guide to hot spots — for about (or two bout) a month in February, 2001, while living in Brooklyn, at Jenny Scheinman’s flat, while she was on tour in Europe, a few months before the fall of the World Trade Center.
  6. John Mhiripiri donated a copy of Film Comment from 1965 or so, to an art auction at Smith Anderson in Palo Alto when Paula Kirkeby hosted Gail Price and I, running for City Council; The magazine had a cover story about a controversial, perhaps banned film about heroin users.
  7. I remember the staff would sit around a round table in the old courthouse and affix mailing labels while re-runs of “Law and Order” was half-screened (“half-watched”?) above us as we sat, the tv on a rolling cart. I can hear the characteristic scene-changing tones, of that show. (As contrasted with the discomfort I felt trying to watch my first Stan Brakhage there, then; the silence.
  8. I spoke to John but did not see him when Terry and I visited New York in September, our honeymoon. The first night I ran ahead, back down Second Avenue towards Ian Schrager’s The Public, after pasta, with another couple, to duck into the lobby of Anthology Film Archive. I spoke briefly with the box office man — and mentioned by brief history there — grabbed a program guide and dashed back to rejoin the group, two couples, huddling in an awning’s (space) comtemplating a strategy against the rain (apparently no one else thought “movie” — later on I contemplated paying $10 even for 10 minutes of the program, a screening of a student film, of which I had sussed on the net). A younger me would have gone for it, the end of the film, by an unknown or fledgling director.

About markweiss86

Mark Weiss, founder of Plastic Alto blog, is a concert promoter and artist manager in Palo Alto, as Earthwise Productions, with background as journalist, advertising copywriter, book store returns desk, college radio producer, city council and commissions candidate, high school basketball player; he also sang in local choir, and fronts an Allen Ginsberg tribute Beat Hotel Rm 32
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