MODERNISM, MADNESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Among the boxes I received from my family upon my father’s passing there is one that contains several bulging folders of correspondence, both personal and professional, with the French artist Jean Dubuffet. The fact that these folders were in my father’s personal files, rather than in the archives of Weidlinger Associates, is significant. Dubuffet was […]
When I was a boy my father shaped human figures out of sand on the beach in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Sometimes I asked him to cover me with sand and shape it around my body, so that I could be a part of the Sand People family. There was something magical about this and […]
Today I meet actors in the new Restless Hungarian production office in Budapest. To make it official, Máté spells out the words RESTLESS HUNGARIAN with round magnetic buttons on our bulletin board. Sitting around a huge table, at least four people are on their phones talking in a language I do not understand. Among […]
Have you ever had a dream, something you ardently wished for, and experienced the realization of that dream in a way that far exceeded your expectations? That is what happened to me today, on the first day of shooting The Restless Hungarian recreations. Károlyi, the driver, picked me up at 7:30 AM Budapest time. I […]
This letter was written in three parts, separated by several days. It’s about scouting a dubious location…and then filming there. It is also about the man who is the voice of Paul Weidlinger in the film. Lupa beach is the tackiest place in Hungary. According to the PR, “Here you can get a true seaside […]
Yesterday was our sixth day of shooting. Today we are off. Tomorrow begins the final three-day push. I am tired but pleased. I would like to sleep, but I would also like to write about what has transpired since Lupa Beach while the details are fresh in my mind. Each day on the White Light […]
Throughout my work on this project the past has had an uncanny way of becoming suddenly and unexpectedly manifest in the present. This happened recently when I was recording character voice-overs for the film. I needed someone with a Hungarian accent, who was also a fluent English speaker, to read the parts of two people […]
Translation has been essential to the writing of the Restless Hungarian book, and also for filmed interviews conducted in Hungarian and Spanish; but the process of translation is far from precise. Computers can do it but this misses tone and nuance even with languages that are structurally similar. When you tell a machine to translate […]
We will arrive at the universal not by abandoning our particularity but by turning it into a way of reaching others, by virtue of that mysterious affinity which makes situations mutually understandable. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty A wonderful thing happened recently. On October 4th and on October 11th thirteen filmmakers, writers, curators and editors met on […]