Kenneth Anger And Artistic Struggles

In my avant-garde film class the other day we watched a trio of Kenneth Anger films. For those out there who aren’t familiar with Anger’s work, he is considered one of the leading lights of American avant-garde cinema and also, surprisingly, one of the filmmakers associated with the birth of the music video. Anger has also been cited as an important influence by a wide range of filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese.

In discussing Anger’s film career the other night, my film professor, Scott MacDonald, referenced an interview he did with Anger in which he questioned the structure of Anger’s famous film Scorpio Rising, asking Anger if the seeming dissipation of interest in the subject that occurs halfway through the film was intentional. The way in which MacDonald read the film was such that after the audience views the long scenes of preparation and ritual—the polishing and maintenance of the motorcycles and the subsequent dressing up in motorcycle attire—the rest of the film feels like somewhat of a letdown, as if the emotional force had already been expended.

Anger explained to MacDonald that life, sadly, is somewhat like that. It’s one great set-up for one great let-down. Maybe, MacDonald pondered along these lines, the “preparation for the party” is more fun than the party itself. (That insight itself might account for the confusing, bizarre nature of Anger’s “party” film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.) Artwork, MacDonald went on, was like that for Anger. Anger would start out with a fantastic idea—a 100-minute film about something or other, which would subsequently be whittled down into something a fraction of that length. The result, more often than not, would have been impressive, but would be nowhere close to Anger’s original vision.

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Anger’s work and MacDonald’s interpretation of it certainly have a bearing on my own life. As someone who struggles with the art of writing fiction, I have had more than my fair share of fantastic beginnings coupled with lackluster plots and conclusions. Stories or novels start with a bright, wonderful idea and decline from thereon. Sometimes the idea is the beginning of the story, sometimes the middle, and even sometimes it’s at the end. But the trouble is building off that energy. Anger may well stuggle with the same problems.

Everything, it turns out, is so much easier in your head. There are even days when I have this great sentence stuck in my head that I can’t seem to place. It has no specific characters or plot attached to it; it’s simply out there. The other day this sentence was roaming around my head:

“Romance is a fairy tale of false pretenses.”

Of course, there are problems with that sense—pretenses are usually, if not necessarily false, so to qualify them as being specifically “false” would seem unnecessary. And why so negative? Seriously—that sentence makes me sound like I was down in the dumps! (Not the case, I assure you.)

It’s not worth trying to parse out where the inspiration comes from, of course, but rather where I go with it once I have it. Sometimes I write it down and try to drop plot elements around it. Sometimes it’s not a story, but something more imagistic. I’ve always had this idea of a man emerging from a building into empty streets with snow falling—something unconsciously drawn, I think, from “The Dead” by James Joyce. But that image, no matter how I contorted it, would not work in my favor.

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I’m jealous of those writers and narrative artists who start with a premise and then see it all the way through, as if they were using Legos or Lincoln Logs, not the elements of their own spontaneous (and oddly logical) imagination. Take, for instance, the style of John Irving.

Irving’s approach to a novel begins with the composition of the last sentence. For that reason, there’s somewhat of a cult with Irving’s last lines:

“In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.” (from The World According to Garp)

“O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.” (from A Prayer for Owen Meany)

To begin with one sentence—with a single, bold brushstroke—and work from there…that, it seems to me, is the height of artistic prowess. Irving had not just the style, but also the guts and determination to see the story through to the end.

Currently, I’m working on a novel, which will not see another reader’s eyes for some time. Here is that image I start with—on which I am betting, so to speak, the rest of the story:

She left long before the sun.

Long before Buster, still curled up and paws twitching with dreams, started up from his dog mat and tugged on the corner of the quilted comforter on her parents’ bed. Long before her father filled the teakettle and set it to boiling, long before he looked in the garage and saw that the motorcycle was gone, long before he raced up the stairs to her room and found her bed empty, a careful note pinned to the pillow.