Author: John

Hitchcock on film

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top left: The Foreign Correspondent; right: Lifeboat.
bottom left: To Catch a Thief; right: North by Northwest.

Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much this evening I realised I’d missed the director’s customary cameo appearance, and furthermore didn’t remember which scene it was supposed to be in. One of my film books lists all the cameo spots but better than that are websites such as this one that show you the actual shots.

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The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

For the record his appearance in The Man Who… is in the crowd at a Marrakech market with his back to the camera, so he’s easier to miss than in other films from this period.

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Last Year in Marienbad (1962).

And while we’re on the subject, mention should be made of Hitchcock’s appearance in Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad, a film he had nothing to do with. A brief shot shows a cardboard cut-out of the director in a hotel corridor and the way the figure is positioned always makes me think he’s floating above the floor. The timing of the appearance is apt—11 minutes in—since Hitchcock always put his cameos near the beginning of the film so as not to distract the audience later on.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store
• Borges in Performance

New things for November II

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It’s always nice when something you’ve worked on turns up in the post and there’s been a double helping of that this week with the arrival of the Chaoticum CD and the catalogue for the Maison D’Ailleurs exhibition. Since both of these are either partly or wholly connected to HP Lovecraft, their simultaneous arrival is fitting.

The CD is a digipak on textured art paper and another quality production from Horus CyclicDaemon. The exhibition catalogue manifested as a small hardback book which was a pleasant surprise, with the skull maze design blocked in silver on the cover. Each artist is allotted a single page and the book also includes some original fiction based on Lovecraft’s story notes by a number of well-known writers. My picture is rather shrunken the way it’s positioned across the centre of a page (would have been better running vertically) but then it was my decision to make it so wide in the first place.

The Chaoticum CD is limited to 500 copies and can be ordered here. The catalogue is available from Maison D’Ailleurs or the Payot Libraire bookstore for CHF 37.00 + p&p (or 38, depending on which page you look at).

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Also arriving this week is my illustration of ex-Sun City Girls guitarist Sir Richard Bishop for an Arthur Magazine interview by Erik Davis. Arthur #27 will be hitting the stands in the US and Canada shortly but for now you can download it in PDF form here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lovecraftian horror at Maison d’Ailleurs
• New things for October

William Burroughs gives thanks again

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I posted the text of William Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer last year as there wasn’t a copy of Gus Van Sant’s film version available anywhere. YouTube has now filled that gap.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• William Burroughs gives thanks
• The Final Academy
• William Burroughs book covers
• Towers Open Fire