- Title: USA: TWO DOCUMENTARIES "THE CRUISE" AND "LEVITCH" DESCRIBE NEW YORK LIFE
- Date: 16th November 1998
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS -- ACCESS ALL) SPEED LEVITCH SAYING (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) "Tour guiding I recognised immediately as one of the great opportunities for self-expression, certainly, certainly. I understood it immediately as living theatre and from a thespian's point of view it was a dream come true because it was an incarcerated audien
- Embargoed: 1st December 1998 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA2FPRCTJ1PTJH24813NEGLCZWJ
- Story Text: Two recent documentaries showcasing New York City's more idiosyncratic inhabitants provide ample proof of the Big Apple's vibrant demimonde.
Bennett Miller's, "The Cruise" is a documentary which chronicles the humourously irreverent and painfully honest reflections of Timothy "Speed" Levitch.He's an eccentric New York City tour bus guide with an archive of information about his hometown which is equal parts fascinating, mundane and distorted.
"The Cruise" is a love affair - between "Speed" and the city.
Beginning with his life atop double-decker buses, Speed's tours exhibit a peculiar intimacy with the city's historical and artistic lineage as well as its architectural wonders.
His tours include references to George Gershwin, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill, Dylan Thomas and Willa Cather as part of the landscape of the city.
Each tour he leads is another chance for him to broadcast his love for the city from the top of an ever-changing double-decker bus, and a chance to initiate unsuspecting and sometimes unwilling tourists into the chaos the city represents.
"The Cruise" shows Levitch to be both wistful for a city that once was and exhibitionistic, in his pleas for its return.To do that he uses the streets of Greenwich Village, the extravagance and hyperbole of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings and the city's varied bridges as starting off points and stages for his thespian talents.
All the while, the 28-year-old drops ever-changing definitions of "the cruise," concluding for one interview that it is: "the understanding that when we're appreciating the beauty of the outside world we are simultaneously making love to ourselves."
"The Cruise" was shot in New York solely by Miller on digital video.The director and his muse first met while both were teenagers, attending private school in the city.
Miller's next encounter with Levitch occurred while he was attending NYU film school and his brother suggested Levitch as a worthy subject for a student film.The project expanded, as Miller found himself with 100 hours of tape on Levitch, ultimately editing it down to 76 minutes.
Although Nicholas Barker's "Unmade Beds" appears on first viewing to be a documentary about the lives of four solitary lonely hearts it is ultimately something more: he directs people in his own version of their lives, resulting in a "real life" feature film.
Beginning in late 1995, Barker hired research staff who combed New York for potential characters.Their search led them deep into the New York singles scene.
For background, the BBC trained Barker and his assistants attended singles events, played the personals, and ran ads in the back pages of free weeklies.Disguised as singles on the prowl, they combed bars and cafes in Manhattan's diverse neighbourhoods.
Barker began recruiting subjects and locations in the spring of 1996, using video camcorders as research tools.He interviewed more than 400 people over the phone and on video in order to come up with his "cast."
After selecting the four main characters, three of whom are Italian-Americans born in New York and one who was born in Kansas, Barker directed them under feature film conditions during the summer, autumn and winter.During this period he wrote and rewrote his script in response to the unfolding events in their lives.
The resulting "Unmade Beds" is a series of four portraits of New York lonely hearts who describe their search for love, or at least companionship, in the personal ads.The two men and two women's doomed tales of romantic obsession and many loves lost unfold as the viewer learns about each character.
There is Brenda, the unintentionally comic yet foulmouthed ex-lap dancer who just wants a man for his money; Michael, a Brooklynite who is determinedly bitter about being single, 40-years-old and only 5'4; Aimee, a young, twelve stone woman who is convinced that the cutoff age for getting married is 30; and Mikey, a 54-year-old whose swinging bachelor routine belongs in a time capsule.
While the London-based Barker stresses his studies in social anthropology as providing the theoretical framework for his work, his more obvious influence may be the New Journalism of the 60's and 70's: "I take the viewer into the dreams of these characters, forcing them to laugh at them and with them and make judgements about them," he says.
Calling himself a "benevolent dictator" has earned him the enmity of the critics in London, whom he claims describe him as the "most sadistic director in British television," his usual vocational outpost.
Yet few of the rocks thrown at him land because "ironically, the way that I work, I agree everything [sic] with the principle characters before I film it," Barker says. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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