YO!! WHAT IS UP!!!!
To those that noticed the silence here at Voices, thank you (Bree) for your love and support (Pascale) and for hanging in there while I get up and running again.
Don’t usually get too personal here but…
My wife and I…
Well, my wife…
She did the hard part (understatement) gave birth to our first daughter in April.
You can track the silence directly to the minute she was born.
Spare time is not as easy to get hold of nowadays.
Guiding this new soul into the world, teaching her how to use her body, how to communicate, watching with absolute shock and love when she smiles, laughs, notices something for the first time and her eyes go big…
They were right.
You love her like you’ve loved nothing else before.
I’m a big kid, like…seriously…so this has been a trip.
We put it off for years, but the stars aligned and my Mom and my Pop were whispering to me:
”Wes…It’s time.”
It’s been mind-blowing and life-altering and hard and beautiful
So, that’s that
Moving On…
But my God, I’ve missed this.
I’ve been particularly tuned into this movie lately.
For the last 25 years…
It’s always with me.
In my mind. It altered me when I first saw it at 11 or 12. Black and white, R rated, dangerous and brutal, confusing and yet …not.
I take photographs. Have for 12 years now.
This film is one of the reasons why.
You can see them here if you want:
https://www.wescandelaphotography.com
This film, along with many cinematographers and photographers, played a massive part in introducing me to what was possible when capturing life around you with a camera, a lense and light
What do you want to capture?
What don’t you want to capture in your image?
How to then chisel away at everything you caught in the image and during editing until your final shot appeases that part of your creative mind that is never appeased.
To find out what you like, what your style is, sometimes you have to see through the eyes of another photographer first.
Disagree, then set about doing it right.
Or, you see what they see and have created, and your inspired.
On all levels:
– Sonically
– Visually
– Storytelling
Rumble Fish is that inspiration for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_Fish
Francis Ford Coppola’s
“Rumble Fish”
Coppola, fresh off of The Outsiders stayed in Tulsa, Oklahoma Took six weeks off and started Rumble Fish.
If The Outsiders was for a younger audience, Rumble Fish was for the older kids, an Arthouse, avant-garde film cinephiles.
Stephen H. Burum Was the director of photography on this film.
The cinematographer on Outsiders also, his credits include some of my favorite films.
- The Outsiders (1983)
- Rumble Fish (1983)
- Body Double (1984)
- St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)
- The Untouchables (1987)
- Carlito’s Way (1993)
- Mission: Impossible (1996)
- Snake Eyes (1998)
That’s naming a few. He and Coppola had a field day here and it’s evident in every frame.
Experimentation. The Lighting, The Shadows. The images and overall feel of the film…
It’s photographed in such a way that it is a timeless movie.
The clouds…
The landscapes smoke in mid-day.
The atmosphere, a photographers dream shoot.
A visually poetic statement.
Hard at first glance, look deeper and you see everyone in the film is vulnerable, scared…looking to break out of what they are. In a wasteland, ruled by time (All the clocks…).
The photography inspired me deeply.
My God.
Changed how I saw the sky.
The movie is about Rusty James played by Matt Dillon.
He misses what he grew up watching, his big brother, the mythical “Motorcycle Boy”, played by a young Mickey Rourke, and the camaraderie of street gangs that are no more.
His brother vanishes one day and leaves town. Rusty James can’t get away from his brother’s reputation and he likes it that way, but he misunderstands everything The Motorcycle Boy stood for.
He spends his time with the soldiers of his gang, Christopher Penn, Nicholas Cage and Vincent Spano.
His girlfriend is once again the Beautiful Diane Lane.
Lawrence Fishburne, Coppola alumni from Apocalypse Now, Is the man with his ear to the ground.
When the film opens we find out that Biff Wilcox Is looking for Rusty James and wants to kill him.
A challenge has been set for that night under the overpass by the train in the neighborhood.
This all excites Rusty James.
And this is the scene, take it in but I implore you… Watch Rumble Fish.
The music was composed by the drummer for The Police, Stewart Copeland.
This is the second of two novels by author S.E.Hinton that Francis Ford Coppola will tackle.
Criterion just put out a new Blu-ray of the film finally after all these years.
Restored and cleaned up in Criterion fashion…
Criterion has, as always, taking this transfer as far as I could go. Inside the Blu-Raytheon detail the visual and audio transfer:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Stephen H. Burum and approved by director Francis Ford Coppola, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Alternate remastered 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
When this came out last year I had been waiting easily for over 20 years to find a copy that looked this good
I encourage all fans to purchase this version of the film which was released in 2017.
This is a beautiful Blu-ray, you can purchase at the jump below:
https://www.criterion.com/films/28993-rumble-fish/
I’ll talk to you soon, thanks for stopping by and reading.
Here’s the Video…
Rumble Fish: The Motorcycle Boy Returns