ORNETTE Press Kit.8.7.2012 - Shirley Clarke

cool jazz genre was not even possible without key players’ heroin use. In the heroin-­‐
induced cool of the film, isolation pours through every pore of the image stream and the
jazz score.
The Cool World was the first commercial film set in Harlem (Dizzy Gillespie cameos) and
was a prototype for such filmmakers as Spike Lee. That same year she won an Oscar for her
documentary on U.S.A. Poet Laureate Robert Frost, a very different cultural type!
Portrait of Jason (1967), is possibly the greatest ‘talking head’ film of all time, though in
actuality, it does not fit into any category, but explores in an ad nauseam digression, the
possibilities of verité. The camera remains steadfastly stationary as the subject, an ageing
alcoholic gay hustler-­‐slash-­‐would-­‐be nightclub performer, gradually loses inhibitions in the
course of the interview, and creates his ultimate performance. It is a contemplative
narrative: Jason describes and enacts his outrageous life; the director/camera is the still
meditator on that life. The viewer becomes, over the course of the film, acutely aware of the
fact that, although Jason moves more and more the camera does not, in a marathon of
motionlessness. This contrasts with all her other works. It is edited from a single 12-­‐hour
session, and she releases the subject to develop his own rhythms, physical intellectual and
emotional, like a Dadaist ‘found’ choreography. Jason (Aaron Payne) is simultaneously the
most fascinating and banal person you could ever meet.
Betty Boop and the Avant Garde
Clarke was acutely aware of the role of the avant garde in popular culture, as a sort of
siphon for The New.
She had 2 personal symbols which make an appearance in each of her films: Betty Boop, the
character created by legendary animator Max Fleischer, and Felix the Cat, cartoons both
created in the 1930’s. Betty Boop was the sex symbol of early animation, a flapper from the
Jazz Age, with surreal, sexual and complex psychological elements, and I always felt that
Clarke identified herself with that character, even dressed like her, however I doubted that
she could have kept up with a rendition of The Lindy by Betty Boop. Felix the Cat was an
irreverent animation, like Shirley’s nonconformist character. Known for his huge grin, Felix
nevertheless smoked, frowned, and played jazz. Both cartoons had elements of vaudeville,
both came out of the jazz age.
She also passionately loved Busby Berkeley, the film choreographer of massive
kaleidoscopic numbers, circa 1940’s. She would mention him admiringly during video work
in Ornette. The sex sequence towards the end of Ornette, with its unfolding flowers and
winking women, is strongly reminiscent of Berkeley’s hallucinogenic musical number, “I
Only Have Eyes for You,” in the film Dames. Dames prompted Warner Brothers to coin the
term cinematerpsichorean, which is also a good term for Shirley’s work.
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