Review of Sonic Outlaws

The best place to begin with the films of San Francisco based artist Craig Baldwin is in the middle. After making a number of short collage-based films including the mind-bogglingly fascinating quasi-sci-fi mini-epic Tribulation 99, it seems he felt the need for a manifesto, of sorts.

His documentary Sonic Outlaws is that manifesto, his attempt to explain his art. And it is a brilliant and fascinating explanation, manifesting the same aesthetic philosophy as his prior work. It is as mind-bogglingly rich as any of his films before, and after.

Two lines of dialog in Sonic Outlaws combine to neatly capture this method:

“You can put a bunch of stuff on the air or in a record that are not really necessarily related to each other at all. Put them in connection with one another and, if there’s any way at all to do it, people will put it together in their minds and make it have a meaning.”

“… capturing the corporately controlled subjects of the one-way media barrage, re-organizing them to be a comment upon themselves, and spinning them back into the barrage for cultural consideration.”

I’ve been fascinated since college by the human mind’s ability to make sense out of anything, even nonsense. I used to hang out with my roommate, kicking back on the couch, drinking beer, and watching television. We would always turn the sound off though and play random LPs from our massive joint collection. The nightly news played especially well when accompanied by early Genesis or King Crimson. We would continually be amused by how, no matter what music we played, it seemed to have been composed with that day’s television programming in mind. Kind of made the entire Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon synchronicity seem all the nuttier.

In the years since, I’ve dabbled with Gysin and Burroughs’ “cut-up” technique of writing, to again be amazed by how the mind can turn truly random combinations into meaningful poetry, such as in this excerpt where I cut together random fragments from my review of Marley and Me and a news article about President Obama’s new puppy:

“The President did with happy, puppy times. Ultimately, as a lifelong President, he would go to a shelter of a breed overflowing, because so many people give pets, a cute puppy or kitten dancing in their heads, to a pet store or puppy mill, either. It’s a gray conscious response to these tough economic forgiving.”

This also leaves me wondering why schools are so hell-bent against kids copying things and yet they don’t offer classes on the creative potential of re-using pre-existing materials. But I seriously digress…

Sonic Outlaws uses a lawsuit against the experimental music group Negativland as a point of departure. After stumbling upon a pirate copy of Casey Kasem swearing and carrying on during a broadcast recording session (he was fumbling his words while trying to introduce the song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by U2 and getting frustrated), the group got an idea, creatively juxtapose bits and pieces of the tape with fragments of U2 songs. And thus began their sad, downward spiral of copyright infringement battles.

A major element of Baldwin’s work consists of extended montages of found footage drawn from his seemingly inexhaustible basement library of newsreels, trailers, industrials, old television shows, B-movies, and so on. And Sonic Outlaws is ripe with such extended virtuoso sequences.

After a scene where a member of Negativland listens in on a cell phone conversation (a lover’s spat between two gay men), an ethical and legal discussion of such radio-jamming is juxtaposed with images of people listening to radios and shots of radio personalities in their broadcast booths. This then leads quite fluidly into images of people on telephones, a very funny shot of a man throwing a hammer at a radio, and so on…

Later, a hilarious Mondo 2000 radio show interview between Negativland members and the unsuspecting The Edge from U2 inspires a similar montage. The legal questions discussed conjure up images from old courtroom dramas such as Perry Mason and the David versus Goliath implications provoke an intercutting of shots of giants and monsters from old sci-fi movies and executives towering over a model building in a board room. The Edge calls it “the most surreal interview I’ve ever had in my life.” Baldwin’s treatment turns the surreal into the inspired.

And that’s just the beginning. The film is like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gains speed and energy as it accumulates more and more illustrations of its thesis.

There is a section on billboard pirates, rebel artists who hijack commercial billboards to their own ends:

“…forget about the rest. Invest in Greed. Vote for me,” adorns a billboard beside a picture of Ronald Reagan holding a cocktail.

An Army recruitment billboard is altered to read, “We’ll pay you $288 a month to kill. Today’s Army wants to join you.”

And Sonic Outlaws continues to gain momentum by considering copyright infringement issues in relation to artists like Andy Warhol (Campbell Soup cans), the Mellotron (used to musically manipulate taped recording of symphony orchestras), and Daffy Duck’s rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Legal battles over Too Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbinson’s “Pretty Woman” (“Big hairy woman, you need to shave that stuff…”), a Mad Magazine issue with Irving Berlin song lyric parodies, and some mad fool who thought he could get away with cartoons showing Mickey and Minnie Mouse having sex are all drawn into the vortex as well.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, we get glimpses into the history of Dadaist art, Marshall McCluhan, William S. Burroughs, a kid making a cut-and-paste animated film, children copying and stretching Sunday comics using Silly Putty, and a group called Barbie’s Liberation Organization which surgically altered talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, swapping their voices, and placing them back on store shelves.

And yet, much to the film’s credit, it is never a case of too much of a good thing. Baldwin’s editing is so nimble and fluid (out of hundreds if not thousands of found images, how does he manage all of them being so beautiful, so interesting?) that he pulls it off. His stream of logic style is worthy of comparison with the work of Chris Marker – I’m thinking Sans Soleil and The Last Bolshevik in particular.

Sonic Outlaws ends on a beautifully ironic note, the hypocrisy of U2 pulling satellite television images (“totally copyrighted stuff”) out of the air and projecting them behind the stage on their Zoo TV tour, using them for money, the very thing they sued Negativland for that inspired all of this madness.

I guess if you’re big enough you can get away with anything. All others beware.

For more information about Craig Baldwin and Sonic Outlaws, visit his website at www.othercinema.com.

What did he say?

“Repeatedly, the recently enacted stimulus plans – the efforts to strengthen the banking system and attempts to rescue the flagging American auto industry – have all borne fruit, demonstrated in part by an increase in consumer spending on a wide array of goods (declined in March). Does not mean that hard times are over,” Mr. Obama said, warning that 2009 will be a difficult year.

“And that century, that is the future I see. That is the future I know we can have. But the near future will bring more,” he told an audience at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

There were “tentative signs” that the decline instead built skilled, productive workers, by sound investments that will spread opportunity at home. “And times are still tough,” he said. “By no means are we out of the woods just yet."

But from where we stand, for the imagery, the president envisioned a future where sustained economic growth creates good jobs and raising a vision of an America’s future that is far different than our troubled economic past.

Realizing that vision will be “liberal.” For instance, he defended his administration’s decision not to take over failing banks.

“Government’s ethic,” the president said. “It will also require work on deep, complicated issues like health care and energy.”

He did, however, use the occasion to reaffirm his determination to do something about the rising cost of outsiders against the presence, at a Catholic university, of a president who supports abortion rights.

“Driven by a larger vision of America’s future,” Mr. Obama said in remarks at Georgetown University.

There have been similar protests at Notre Dame, where the president is to speak at commencement exercises on the once high-rolling members of the financial world, but for politicians who he said had deferred, whose foundations are built not on sand but on rock, proud, sturdy and unwavering in the face of the greatest prosperity.

Speaking just after a disappointing report on March retail sales made it clear that if we come together and begin the hard work of rebuilding, if we persist and persevere against President Obama on Tuesday, that the battered economy was showing signs of recovery, but, he warned, “Dreams of our founders will live on in our time. Americans, more pain lies ahead.”

And he urged them to help build a foundation for a new 21st century, disappointments and setbacks that will surely lie ahead. “Then I have no doubt that this house will stand and the recovery is not yet at hand.”

The president delivered a speech that was part pep talk and part rebuke, not only for storm. “We will not finish it in one year or even many,” he said, “but, if we use this moment to delay new decisions for too long, I want every American to know that each action we take and each policy we pursue is alluding to a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.”

Bo & Me

“In baby talk, he’s so cuuuuuute. Little, happy, made me laugh, sometimes hard.”

More than a few missed the news because of other priorities, longingly. Everyone in the audience, when you bring family, has a new memory, the new First Dog, telling the entire life of a dog and not just on Saturday.

With a mysterious new web site owner, it made me think. Animal shelters spotted it and linked to it, causing the rest of the gifts – tied with a bow – with thoughts settled. We know that Bo is a 6-month-old. Forget that a life lasts a lifetime. And, as if a Kennedy, the dog should be thrilled. He’ll have times with news stories of pets left to starve in North Lawn, the South Lawn, a swimming pool – both movie and book – locates it heart. It’s like Barney used to have.

Obama’s daughters seem like a good idea now. But what happens, too? Not everyone’s elated though – because what happens when the kids grow up and have one? He’s not an animal shelter. And the President? What happens when they leave for college?

“Who made this promise to Dr. Jana Kohl, the author of ‘Across the Country’?”

Actually, another reason three-legged rescue dog and puppy mill survivors understand the value of spaying and neutering – that then-Senator Obama agreed to appear in its funniest sequences – but that’s a whole other, became the cover for “American Dog” magazine.

“’Marley & Me’ on DVD will be standard issue with those who really care about animal welfare. While watching the movie, I found myself humanized every year, every dog purchased by dogs (and cats and horses and hamsters and …),” as they say. “That’s why Vice President Joe, a dog, named Princess. Those years were filled under to get his dog.”

“Animal rights activists never end.”

Most of my memories from that time are getting a second dog from a shelter. So far, this is with me for such a short time and, the older I get, there’s a technicality. One of those “definitions,” years was everything. We also get a strong House; it isn’t Bo’s first home.

He originally lived happy and fulfilling lives with the Grogan family, the other dogs. So he was given back to them. They will go on to experience much more life. And put in the end, the Kennedy’s learned of this litter, just a fond memory. After things settled, he wanted to give the girls a gift. And there were times it made me cry at the end as it did seem so, technically, he’s a second.

“Your kids. Consider preparing them for a story society didn’t tear into.”

The President did with happy, puppy times. Ultimately, as a lifelong President, he would go to a shelter of a breed overflowing, because so many people give pets, a cute puppy or kitten dancing in their heads, to a pet store or puppy mill, either. It’s a gray conscious response to these tough economic forgiving.

“This is truly a missed opportunity to plea to all future pet owners to think first.”

And gray, exceedingly cold

And gray, exceedingly cold
From the main Yukon trail and climbed the
Where a dim and little traveled trail led eastward
And he paused for breath at
The act to himself by looking

There was no
Though there was not a cloud
A clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible
Gloom that made the day dark, and that
Worry the man.

Used to the lack of sun. It had been days since
Must pass before that cheerful
The sky-line and dip
Man flung a look back along the way he had come.
Wide and hidden under

As many feet of snow. It was
In gentle, undulations where the
Had formed. North and south, as far as
Was unbroken white, save for a
And twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the

Twisted away into the north, where it disappeared
Dark hair-line was the trail--the
Hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and
Dawson, and still on to
On Bering Sea, a

Thousand more. But all this--the
Sky, the tremendous cold, and
It all--made no impression on the
Because he was long used to it.
Land, a chechaquo, and

Winter.

DAY had broken cold

DAY had broken cold
And gray, when the man turned aside
High earth-bank,
Through the fat spruce timberland.

It was a steep bank,
The top, excusing
At his watch. It was nine o'clock.
Sun nor hint of sun,
In the sky. It was
Pall over the face of things, a subtle
Was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not
He was

He had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more-days
Orb, due south, would just peep above
Immediately from view. The
The Yukon lay a mile
Three feet of ice. On top of this ice were
All pure white, rolling

Ice jams of the freeze-up
His eye could see, it
Dark hairline that curved
South, and that curved and
Behind another spruce-covered island. This

Main trail--that led south five
That led north seventy miles to
The north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael
Thousand miles and half a
Mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail. the absence of sun from the

The strangeness and weirdness of
Man. It was not
He was a newcomer! In
This was his first

Video of the Cut-Up and Fold-In Techniques

This is what I'm trying to do in the words of Burroughs himself.

Am I next?

Of the earth, let me see, that would be four, she came upon a little three-legged table. Alice had learnt several things of this sort in it, but a tiny golden key. Alice’s first was not a very good opportunity for doors of the hall, but, alas!

Either the locks – one to listen to her still, it was good at any rate – would not open, any of them. Right distance, but then I wonder what, upon a low curtain, she had not noticed, not the slightest idea. What was tried – the little, nice, grand words to say?

Presently, she fitted Alice, opened the door and the Earth. How funny it’ll seem, much larger than a rat-hole. She knelt down, their heads downwards, the antipathies the tiniest garden you ever saw. How she longed to listen this time, as it didn’t sound at all among those beds of bright flowers and, what the name of the country is, you get her head through the doorway and/or Australia.

And she tried to curtsey, as poor Alice. It would be of very little use through the air. “Do you think you could shut up like a telescope? I think I could, if she’ll think me for asking.”

No, it’ll never do. Many out-of-the-way things had happened, elsewhere, down, down, down there – very few things indeed were really impossible again. Dinah’ll miss me very much.

To the little door, she went back to the table, I hope. They’ll remember her saucer of milk or at any rate a book of rules for shutting by, and for, the people in charge. Here the Americans have taken the ship. (“Floor of the Senate?” he asked.) What does this crew of a hijacked ship have? Regained control? Financial institutions? The condition of anonymity?

Because Senator Bob Corker said, “It should send a check. The hijacked crew apparently contacted the Enterprise. The stock market plunged as they did not call the government.

“Am I next?” they whispered to each other.

Company, Maersk, has scheduled a noon Obama. “Not much fellows. He has the machine started. Yet, so it is believed now that the crew has been granted permission by us pirates, I think. This is the first time, the week’s all-net 3-pointer. Stay tuned!”

I write previous instances, the crews have just done, of thousands of workers over the past 25+ treated as prisoners, but, apparently, the heap by General Motors, many saw their lives. They know this at the White House, while the drugs, their marriages fell apart.

The Americans took the ship back, never moved over, and moved away, the end.

Option number six: the White House getting at GM. And they cursed, “You guys handle it!” We’ll get around to it, one of them thought. “One day was going to be … they don’t either…”

I’m sure treatment of Chairman Wagoner -- Whew boy! – dodged a bullet, evicted from his home, tell his kids, excessive force.

And will we apologize for…?