Re: Q about 32 Short Films

[kimmoor@mindspring.com (Kristen Immoor)]

>The question I have is is it THE chair?

   My opinion is no, but it IS a good reproduction. In the Hamburg film you
can see the chair set behind the piano behind Gould as he sits near to the
chambermaid. The chair is in fine repair, and the wood backing has a
different carved pattern than Gould's chair, but it faithfully reproduces
the screw-clamp leg attachments and could have fooled me if I didn't know
how badly abused the real chair was. (It bugged me too, that the "roadies"
were packing up the chair. Made me wonder who was supposed to have been
playing.)

   While we're on the subject of 32SF@GG, I would was reading over the
critique of the film written by Kevin Bazzana in GlenGould v2,#1, and I was
wondering: As Gould fans, do you think 32SF sold Glenn short? Did it really
make him out to be the stuffy, new-agey stereotype of creativity that KB
feels it made him out to be, and did the writers opt for easy sequences of
little substance (Var. 19 is used as an example) solely to be eccentric or
intriguing? Similarly, did the innacuracies get under your skin the way
they did for the reviewer, ie- the wrong Beeth. piece played in Hamburg,
the "final concert" autograph in LA, etc.
   I'll go ahead an volunteer that in the interest of bringing Gould to a
new mass media audience, I was more than willing to overlook the small
"creative adjustments" that Girard/McKellar made in the film - the movie
was a great way to get a new group of people interested in learning more
about Glenn Gould. At the time, I thought the movie was marvelous, and I
saw it twice in the theatres. In retrospect, certainly it would have been
nice to have seen a film that was more documentary or emotionally relevant
(Bazzana refers to Young's play as a good example of what a stimulating
Gould documentary might be like,) but I think sometimes concessions need to
be made to draw a wider audience; Shine is a good example of this sort of
rewrite. But did 32SF make the mistake of cheapening a script to try to
draw a wider audience, and in the process creating a film that was so vague
in story that it missed the mass market it was intended for and appealed
only to the initiate? I agree with Bazzana that the Goldberg theme has been
overused in regards to categorizing GG's life and work, but would there
have been any other way to give a portrait of the man without delving into
hours of material or creating an A&E Biography style special?



______________________________________________________________________________

John Roberts, a lifelong friend of Gould's, tells of a visit to his home by
Gould himself. The pianist arrived at night, late, at the door. John
Roberts asked who was there. Gould replied, "I'm John Roberts."  - Bruce w.
Powe