MAILING LIST SIGNUP
I’m about to find out what happens next in this life.
I leave New York City with a clarity deeper than I’ve felt before. To a majority of actual NYC citizens, it’s all the same. But I’m returning to my all-same.
I feel a sense of definitiveness that I at-peace may never experience again if this world doesn’t allow it.
But screw the cynics, cause I’ll gladly feel at a level that’s frowned upon as clichéd, and we’re all corny when it counts most. I have made the most and I gotta make the most out of all this with every breathing battle breath I’ve left. I type like I’m terminally-ill but maybe that might just be my time holding on as an outsider artist, or how Montreal weather just makes a dude feel.
It was freezing rain despair on the cab ride from home. It seemed sorta drier by the time I reached the airport. It was a brighter overcast while waiting to board. By the time the plane lifted above the clouds, the sun was out. And I keep thinking of that Man of Steel line about joining each other in the sun.
Said it again and saying it all over—Spectacle NYC is the first and last place I’d ever have needed Open Doom Crescendo playing at.
Spectacle Theater is the ultimate punk rock band gig venue but for movies.
Spectacle Theater is the underground/alternative/micro/lo-fi/no-fi/outsider-art cinema-equivalent of the academy of motion picture arts and sciences. Except minus the idol’s the weeknd as a member AKA except plus its dignity. Forget the n/a anology—Spectacle is the pinnacle of where my hopes and dreams travel to.
I’m the first to humble myself in surprise at ODC making the cut for the theater’s BEST OF 2023 encore program. I wasn’t there for the first two of three screenings in July, but my understanding was the movie was more-less ignored when not being trashed on letterboxd by the 4 people who did subject themselves to it. With the third-and-final screening which I attended for the Q&A, the microcinema theatre was still about half-seated—while I couldn’t have asked to connect with beautifuler people.
It’s admittedly felt like even my peers in this part of the art/film world were rewarded with the disproportionate attention I could never get, whether it’s cause they or/and their work were sexier or hipper or palatabler or cloutier or accessibler (I know grammar, suck it it’s my 3:52am mood) (hostility not directed at you if you’re with it). I just want my degenerate trash-core maximalism to last, even if it means no sold-out screenings where everyone loves the instant gratification but fleeting trendiness or pretentious popularity of the filmmaker more than the actual film, and rather yes to 4-to-44% capacity screenings where a sizeable amount of the audience are similarly as wholesomely dirty-funky-gritty as my film or/and I.
So imagine my humility when Open Doom Crescendo not only makes the Best of Spectacle 2023’s list, but is pretty damn high up (for me) (it is though).
I would be reverse-arrogant if I didn’t admit it felt vindicating.
None of the clout-audience or edgy flavor-of-the-week-month will get people still affected by your brooding art, let alone gain the trust of their anonymous votes.
Giving the most grandiosely inaccessible thing that doesn’t give a shed about detractors liking it—even daring them to be turned off or not feel anything in response—yet against all contradiction tries to be the most humanity-appealing existentially-connecting sprawling supernatural sci-fi battle saga—looks like That’ll get people wanting to revisit what you give.
That first screening on December 11, 2022, four days after burying Dad, should really have been the last, since for some reason no one wanted an aggro Asian nobody’s 3-hour DIY odyssey.
But a year later I’ve met and seen the kindness and attention span of strangers that would represent the newfound hope I hold close with me every day since.
If beautiful strangers-become-friends could connect to said 3-hour motion picture that looks like it was printed on a floppy disk and mixed like the most emo alternative metal concert, yet still asks for the same leap of faith of the audience if David Lynch did a Power Rangers special, don’t let any mofo or fafo tell you that dreams don’t come true.
I’m so grateful. I love you who reads this.
MAILING LIST SIGNUP
OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO 