The Wall Street Journal sits down with longtime East Villager Richard Hell, who will introduce a screening of Robert Bresson’s “The Devil, Probably” at BAMcinématek next Thursday. The film was released in 1977, when Hell’s band the Voidoids also put out their album “Blank Generation,” and the writer-rocker sees some parallels between the two: “The complete hopelessness? The contempt for the revolutionaries and the hippies? That was exactly how I felt. ‘Please Kill Me’? That’s what that whole movie is about. Looking for some kind of compensation in obsessive sex? All my work is filled with that—hopelessness, despair and burying yourself with sex.”
BLANK GENERATION
East Village Tweets
By BRENDAN BERNHARD
jdxWould-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.
Welcome To The East Village: This is Your Demented Realtor Speaking
Here is your sofa. Studio prices are available on the
Web, or via consultation with your Personal Real Estate
Provider. Please — sit down
& be comfortable. That is garbage on the street, & you
might want to avoid that rat. Sadly, rentals are a bit high
right… Look, don’t frown,
we’ve got planeloads of Japanese heading this way very
keen to escape the recent ‘troubles,’ if you see what I
mean, you underfunded clown,
& we do need to impress upon them that this is NY, NY,
with lots of people just like them, that it’s dynamic,
diverse, & a helluva town.
(It’d be one thing if you were a minority, but you’re not
a minority, you’re not even drunk, so get off that sofa or
the cops come round)
Read more…
