The following article is written by Michael Lee Nirenberg, author of the forthcoming oral history Cinematic Immunity.
In light of recent labor actions by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA that have shut down commercial film and television for the foreseeable future, it’s a prime opportunity to share an excerpt from my forthcoming oral-history book, Cinematic Immunity. The 1990 Producer Lockout is a lesser-known chapter in the tense history of Hollywood’s labor relations. Personally, I only know about it from having worked with people who survived it. During the 2007 writer’s strike I was a rookie movie-tv scenic artist in United Scenic Artists Local 829. I got my union card earlier that year and was getting a crash course in organized labor.
During the 1990 negotiations with IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) the studios were pushing what was called the Hollywood Basic contract onto New York unions. They used this contract on the West Coast,...
In light of recent labor actions by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA that have shut down commercial film and television for the foreseeable future, it’s a prime opportunity to share an excerpt from my forthcoming oral-history book, Cinematic Immunity. The 1990 Producer Lockout is a lesser-known chapter in the tense history of Hollywood’s labor relations. Personally, I only know about it from having worked with people who survived it. During the 2007 writer’s strike I was a rookie movie-tv scenic artist in United Scenic Artists Local 829. I got my union card earlier that year and was getting a crash course in organized labor.
During the 1990 negotiations with IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) the studios were pushing what was called the Hollywood Basic contract onto New York unions. They used this contract on the West Coast,...
- 8/1/2023
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Millree Hughes, born in North Wales in 1960, has been making art on the computer since 1998. In the 2000s, he showed with Michael Steinberg Fine Arts. Hughes is currently working with Museum Editions (www.museum-editions.com) in New York City and Polyglot Gallery in Dallas, Texas.
Bradley Rubenstein: Let's start by talking a little bit about Lummox (2010) before we get into the new work. I thought it was hilarious, and at the same time there was a serious aspect regarding cultural mediation that a lot of your work touches on. It also came out before James Franco’s Cindy Sherman show at Pace (New Film Stills, 2014), and all the Marina Abramović performances with Jay-z and whatnot, so it really caught something about our cultural moment.
Millree Hughes: Thank you. I like that you put our documentary in the context of Abramović and Franco -- making the artist a persona...
Bradley Rubenstein: Let's start by talking a little bit about Lummox (2010) before we get into the new work. I thought it was hilarious, and at the same time there was a serious aspect regarding cultural mediation that a lot of your work touches on. It also came out before James Franco’s Cindy Sherman show at Pace (New Film Stills, 2014), and all the Marina Abramović performances with Jay-z and whatnot, so it really caught something about our cultural moment.
Millree Hughes: Thank you. I like that you put our documentary in the context of Abramović and Franco -- making the artist a persona...
- 9/12/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story
Written by Flynn Hundhausen and Michael Lee Nirenberg
Directed by Michael Lee Nirenberg
USA, 2014
Hustler, the notoriously gritty, shameless skin magazine, could easily double as the name of publisher Larry Flynt’s autobiography. For all the editorial prowess and First Amendment arguments he engineered and fought, he is still just a businessman.
Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story makes a point of demonstrating that the magazine’s success lived or died with Flynt’s public profile and outrageous behavior. Be it getting arrested, shot, changing his religious views, or running for President, sales always went up. And personal convictions aside, you can’t help but feel it’s all a long con by a very talented huckster from Kentucky.
Director Michael Lee Nirenberg follows the history of the smut rag in a largely linear fashion, with unprecedented access. Nirenberg’s father William was actually...
Written by Flynn Hundhausen and Michael Lee Nirenberg
Directed by Michael Lee Nirenberg
USA, 2014
Hustler, the notoriously gritty, shameless skin magazine, could easily double as the name of publisher Larry Flynt’s autobiography. For all the editorial prowess and First Amendment arguments he engineered and fought, he is still just a businessman.
Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story makes a point of demonstrating that the magazine’s success lived or died with Flynt’s public profile and outrageous behavior. Be it getting arrested, shot, changing his religious views, or running for President, sales always went up. And personal convictions aside, you can’t help but feel it’s all a long con by a very talented huckster from Kentucky.
Director Michael Lee Nirenberg follows the history of the smut rag in a largely linear fashion, with unprecedented access. Nirenberg’s father William was actually...
- 7/22/2014
- by Kenny Hedges
- SoundOnSight
Whitney Biennial 2014 Whitney Museum of American Art Through May 25, 2014
"I think of the media as a cannibalistic river… that absorbs everything." Gretchen Bender
"The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead." Patricia Cronin
"I am a deeply superficial person." Andy Warhol
Fade In
Int. Dining Room/Brant House
Table, Bjarne Melgaard “nude African American female” fiberglass figure chairs, “giant stuffed Pink Panther dolls,” enormous ceramic phalluses.
Hypnotic atmosphere.
Adam Driver, Idris Elba, Ellen Barkin, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, James Franco, Billy Cyborg, Narrator, [Seven Background/Evening Dresses] stoned on their milk-plus, their feet resting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture.
Narrator (V.O.):
“Righty right right,” I say. “So what will it be tonight then?”
Camera Pans Slowly Across Darkened Room [Set Dressing: Vintage Gretchen Bender lighted wall sculptures that flash “Korova,” “Moloko Plus,” and “Moloko Vellocet.”]
Move in slowly to Narrator slumped in chair and:
Narrator (V.O):
Well, there we were: my brothers, that is, me and Billy Cyborg,...
"I think of the media as a cannibalistic river… that absorbs everything." Gretchen Bender
"The image is dead. The icon is dead. The painting is dead." Patricia Cronin
"I am a deeply superficial person." Andy Warhol
Fade In
Int. Dining Room/Brant House
Table, Bjarne Melgaard “nude African American female” fiberglass figure chairs, “giant stuffed Pink Panther dolls,” enormous ceramic phalluses.
Hypnotic atmosphere.
Adam Driver, Idris Elba, Ellen Barkin, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, James Franco, Billy Cyborg, Narrator, [Seven Background/Evening Dresses] stoned on their milk-plus, their feet resting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture.
Narrator (V.O.):
“Righty right right,” I say. “So what will it be tonight then?”
Camera Pans Slowly Across Darkened Room [Set Dressing: Vintage Gretchen Bender lighted wall sculptures that flash “Korova,” “Moloko Plus,” and “Moloko Vellocet.”]
Move in slowly to Narrator slumped in chair and:
Narrator (V.O):
Well, there we were: my brothers, that is, me and Billy Cyborg,...
- 3/14/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Michel Majerus Matthew Marks Gallery, NY "I create, you copy nature." Pablo Picasso, in conversation with Balthus "In the [19]90s painting didn’t repel criticism; it absorbed it… fake painting created fake criticism." Dr. Hope Ardizzone, The Death of the Death Motif in Post-Millennial Painting "Even the paintings looked dead…" Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale The audience has a taste for shit. The critics have a taste for shit. James Franco, Actors Anonymous "Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt" Joseph Beuys, Action, 26 November 1965 at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf
(image above, depressive neurosis 2000 Acrylic on cotton 102 1/4 x 177 inches; 260 x 450 cm)
James Franco's body was found yesterday in the toilet of a club called Cisboi, so we are at one of the Gagosian galleries tonight sitting shiv and waiting for Marina Abramović and Willem Dafoe to read excerpts from Franco's many books [James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys, A California Childhood, Actors Anonymous, Palo Alto: Stories] -- the "we" being Michael Lee Nirenberg,...
(image above, depressive neurosis 2000 Acrylic on cotton 102 1/4 x 177 inches; 260 x 450 cm)
James Franco's body was found yesterday in the toilet of a club called Cisboi, so we are at one of the Gagosian galleries tonight sitting shiv and waiting for Marina Abramović and Willem Dafoe to read excerpts from Franco's many books [James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys, A California Childhood, Actors Anonymous, Palo Alto: Stories] -- the "we" being Michael Lee Nirenberg,...
- 2/21/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Rebel Dabble Babble Hauser & Wirth Gallery Through July 26, 2013 Paul McCarthy Ws Park Avenue Armory Through August 4, 2013
James Franco is finishing a joke. "Natalie Wood…get it? What kind of wood doesn't float?" Everyone is very hung over this morning, but fortunately Franco sent his Maybach Landaulet and driver to whisk us to Chlamydia, the new Bobby Flay café in Chelsea, where we are drinking revivifying Bellinis and an assortment of other smart cocktails with Vito Schnabel, Slavoj Žižek, Natalie Portman (or possibly Keira Knightley, or Keira Knightley's body double), Sasha Grey, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, Lena Dunham, Chloë Sevigny, and a Thai/Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual Franco introduces as "Pinball."
We are all sweating slightly and staring at Billy Cyborg passed out in a bowl of muesli. Inexplicably, the table is cluttered with untouched Chinese take-out containers and bottles of Evian, and there...
James Franco is finishing a joke. "Natalie Wood…get it? What kind of wood doesn't float?" Everyone is very hung over this morning, but fortunately Franco sent his Maybach Landaulet and driver to whisk us to Chlamydia, the new Bobby Flay café in Chelsea, where we are drinking revivifying Bellinis and an assortment of other smart cocktails with Vito Schnabel, Slavoj Žižek, Natalie Portman (or possibly Keira Knightley, or Keira Knightley's body double), Sasha Grey, Heath Ledger, Michael Lee Nirenberg, Lena Dunham, Chloë Sevigny, and a Thai/Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual Franco introduces as "Pinball."
We are all sweating slightly and staring at Billy Cyborg passed out in a bowl of muesli. Inexplicably, the table is cluttered with untouched Chinese take-out containers and bottles of Evian, and there...
- 7/9/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Richard Phillips Gagosian Gallery Through October 20, 2012
I am running late, so I park the Ducati on the sidewalk and toss the keys to an eager production assistant. It is incredibly hot and crowded as I push my way through a crowd of background actors to the location, which has been carefully designed to look like a gallery. Wardrobe has given me an antique Ramones t-shirt (which actually has some of Debbie Harry's vintage blood on the sleeve) and a period Hugo Boss Nazi SS uniform jacket with five firing-squad bullet holes through the left lapel (vintage blood carefully removed). Also, store-torn Alexander McQueen jeans (a gift from an Olsen twin, I think) and flip-flops, which are decorated with pictures of colorful monkeys.
I stop to talk to Rachel Weisz, who seems to remember me from her chemistry reading for the part of a "kindly doctor" in Stasi Sluts II but suddenly excuses herself,...
I am running late, so I park the Ducati on the sidewalk and toss the keys to an eager production assistant. It is incredibly hot and crowded as I push my way through a crowd of background actors to the location, which has been carefully designed to look like a gallery. Wardrobe has given me an antique Ramones t-shirt (which actually has some of Debbie Harry's vintage blood on the sleeve) and a period Hugo Boss Nazi SS uniform jacket with five firing-squad bullet holes through the left lapel (vintage blood carefully removed). Also, store-torn Alexander McQueen jeans (a gift from an Olsen twin, I think) and flip-flops, which are decorated with pictures of colorful monkeys.
I stop to talk to Rachel Weisz, who seems to remember me from her chemistry reading for the part of a "kindly doctor" in Stasi Sluts II but suddenly excuses herself,...
- 9/22/2012
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Michael Lee Nirenberg is an artist and filmmaker living in New York. His current documentary is Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story.
Bradley Rubenstein: Your most recent action, Redacted, involves overpainting your past works black, repeating this performance from canvas to canvas. Has the result of this performance series turned it into something like a trademark, a signature style based in old Suprematist methodology, a non-dialectical negation that might once have been witty but ultimately only guarantees its own recognition? A gimmick? Has it replaced your work as a filmmaker and documentarian?
Michael Lee Nirenberg: Originally the project began with the immodestly modest premise that, while my earlier paintings might not be worth preserving, the idea of my past history as an artist was. Therefore, by removing the imagery, as such, from the work, I was maintaining its conceptual integrity. In many ways I believe that this conceptual...
Bradley Rubenstein: Your most recent action, Redacted, involves overpainting your past works black, repeating this performance from canvas to canvas. Has the result of this performance series turned it into something like a trademark, a signature style based in old Suprematist methodology, a non-dialectical negation that might once have been witty but ultimately only guarantees its own recognition? A gimmick? Has it replaced your work as a filmmaker and documentarian?
Michael Lee Nirenberg: Originally the project began with the immodestly modest premise that, while my earlier paintings might not be worth preserving, the idea of my past history as an artist was. Therefore, by removing the imagery, as such, from the work, I was maintaining its conceptual integrity. In many ways I believe that this conceptual...
- 7/18/2012
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Signs & Symbols Whitney Museum of American Art Through October 28, 2012 Saturday I woke up early, went for a run in Central Park, had breakfast at The Carlyle, and at 10 went over to the Whitney Museum to meet the artist and director Michael Lee Nirenberg (I just finished an interview with him on his new performance documentary Redacted), the actor James Franco, who Nirenberg was meeting to discuss doing the voice-over narrative for another doc, and Nirenberg's assistant Lana (who also works in the film industry, mostly punching up scripts for comedies) to catch the new exhibit Signs & Symbols, featuring the work of Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Tobey, Will Barnet, Forrest Bess, and others.
Drawn from the permanent collection, the works in the show represent a strain of graphic expressionism that was largely overshadowed in the Fifties by more painterly works, such as Jackson Pollock's spattered canvases and Mark Rothko's stained, atmospheric takes on Veronica's Veil.
Drawn from the permanent collection, the works in the show represent a strain of graphic expressionism that was largely overshadowed in the Fifties by more painterly works, such as Jackson Pollock's spattered canvases and Mark Rothko's stained, atmospheric takes on Veronica's Veil.
- 7/5/2012
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.