The DIY Underground Sound of Kristin Palker

Here's a recent interview of mine excerpted and abridged from the "Pop Culture Frankenstein" manuscript with composer and Perkowski soundtrack collaborator Kristin Palker as she describes her techniques and history:

NEW ENGLAND FILM - 11/1/2008 Kristin Palker Interview

Official Opening & Mission Statement; "Arkham After Midnight"

Welcome to "Pop Culture Frankenstein: Andre Perkowski Dissected." 32 years ago today a child was born in Jersey City that would one day... make a lot of intriguing art and obscure films. It is the aim of this site to examine these objects and provide some sort of context and background information, as Andre Perkowski was never a particularly easy artist to get a hold of, much less explain in a few paragraphs. In a short time he's produced "hundreds of films, thousands of pages, hundreds of paintings, hundreds of hours of audio recordings, and a trail of radioactive refuse you could see from space," as he explained in a mid-00s interview. A few days ago I asked him what he thought about this blog project and would he mind opening it with an extensive interview since he seems to be in one of his rare communicating phases this summer. He quickly agreed and I will present the first installment in this interview series shortly.

So, what has he been up to this month to confound his only biographer so far? An experimental collage "Bat-Man" series shuffling and bending the "original influences re-arranged to tell Bruce Wayne's story and his crusade against crime. A bit of fun not intended for sale or commercial exploitation... what with the huge commercial value of silent films and everything." as he explains on the website.

AP: "Hiya, Sarah. Two films have been created over weekends this past month, "Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man" - a 12 minute piece divided in two on youtube and a three part serial followup entitled "Arkham After Midnight" which is fucked beyond belief and boiling with icky atmosphere. Fun stuff I think and just a summer break and treat while waiting for 'Belly Full of Anger' footage to be transferred."





"Arkham After Midnight" made the London Times last week and the whole project seems to have gotten a lot of attention, just compare the youtube hits on his channel with the usual numbers. I guess we have Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger to thanks for this recent influx of attention, not to mention the brilliant editing skills on display here. I'm not much of a comic book fan but I thought the recontextualization of silent movie icons worked a treat, as they say.

excerpt:

"The best way to carve your own niche in the film-fan universe is not to throw money at the problem but instead display a more fertile imagination than your peers. For example, the Arkham after Midnight series, which envisions the Batman legend as it might have been presented by the creators of The Cabinet of Dr Cagliari. The first chapter of this silent gem, with its creepy, scratchy, scary underscore, tells of Batman's visit to Gotham's eerie asylum for the criminally insane in search of an illegal drugs factory. By carefully combining dozens of forgotten 1920s features and newsreels the clip creates a mood of horror and foreboding around the comic-book hero's quest for justice. More chapters are promised, building into a feature-length assembly of half-decayed footage telling the story of the Dark Knight's most deadly investigation."





Most biographers approach their subjects comfortably dead or near-dead enough not to pass for dead. This subject will most likely contribute to my death as I attempt to keep up with him.

More recent interviews and rogue puzzle pieces

Here's one mostly about the Ed Wood Trilogy project, just manually load the problematic link: http://www.searchmytrash.com/cgi-bin/articlecreditsb.pl?andreperkowski(6-08)

(re)search my trash - 6/2008 INTERVIEW WITH MIKE HABERFELNER

A pretty strange interview juxtaposition here at "The Drunken Severed Head" as Mr. Perkowski alternates with a slasher-type filmmaker:

DRUNKEN SEVERED HEAD - 8/18/2008 INTERVIEW

excerpt:
AP: "Working on the cheap limits everything, overrides taste and good judgment, and makes you rely on coffee and instinct to get you through obstacles and potential temper tantrums. The pressure and pathetic-ness often gives way to grim diamonds in your crappy movie charcoal, moments of inspiration where everything clicks and the cardboard works miracles. That's the hope, anyway. The reality can make you cry yourself to sleep now and again."


Here's a google cache of a really playful interview from earlier this summer from Martha's Vineyard with some extremely fluid language:

CRIMSON CELLULOID - 6/22/2008 INTERVIEW WITH DAVID NOLTE

excerpt:
""WHO?" you say! Andre Perkowski is going to be a force to be reckoned with if his cool films (THE VAMPIRE'S TOMB, DEVIL GIRLS, check out the clips on YOUTUBE) are any indication. Made on the fumes from an oily rag these Ed Wood-based films are true labours of love and I can't wait to see them in their entirity.You've just appeared out of the blue, tell us a bit about your background. Like how old you are, where you're from, all that kind of stuff.
I'm thoroughly thirty-one, and stumbled half-blind and mostly mad from the sordid suburban swamps of New Jersey... have spent the past ten years living in different corners of this increasingly unsettling country... hauling a travelling celluloid factory around that churned out something like seven features, dozens upon dozens of shorts, hours of odd radio and cd noise under a bewildering array of pseudonyms, and a score of avant trash experimental books of gibberish that nobody should attempt to read upon pain of confusion and probable cerebral hemorrhage."

This visit was mentioned in a short blurb on the New England Film site:

"And yet, even more on the Vineyard: Screenwriter, author, and email correspondent extraordinaire, Andre Perkowski, is summering on the Vineyard with a Smith and Wesson -- oops, I mean a Smith Corona. Or perhaps it’s just him and Corona (s). What I can say is that Perkowski is up to so many different film things (a doc, a feature, Ed Wood fandom) all at once and most of it funny-sounding, that one would rather you just remember his name. Perkowski. For temporary clarity, watch this. PS: Perkowski collaborates with Christopher Roy, a one-time resident of Fort Kent, ME."

Plus:

Bad Lit reviews Ed Wood's "Devil Girls"

excerpt:
"It takes a brave man to tackle the work of Edward D. Wood Jr. One of those men is named Andre Perkowski. And he may just be the bravest one of them all. Several years ago, Perkowski produced, wrote and directed — Hey! Just like Ed Wood — an adaptation of one of Wood’s pulp trash novels, Devil Girls. The project then sat on Perkowski’s shelf, but has recently been unleashed on the world."

Rogue Cinema reviews Ed Wood's "The Vampire's Tomb"

excerpt:
"It was really a pleasure to see a film like this from a film maker who not only painstakingly worked to recreate the look and feel of Ed Wood's films, but also from someone who utterly respects those films and the man who brought them to us. Ed Wood was never really appreciated in life, but I think he'd be happy with how his legacy worked itself out in the end. He's a cult figure beyond measure, and I think that somewhere in the afterlife, he's raising a vodka gimlet in toast to Andre and his fine work in continuing that legacy."

New interview re: "Arkham After Midnight"

Here's a recent 8/27/2008 interview at "GeniusboyFiremelon." Mr. Perkowski attempts to explain his methods to Timothy Callahan, author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years:

1920's Batman: Arkham After Midnight (Interview with A. Perkowski):

excerpt:
"Being a no-budget underground filmmaker mostly working with hideously expensive (for me, anyway) filmstocks due to a profound loathing of digital video, I work in spurts and like a painter. A very disorganized, very eccentric painter. Picking up one canvas, tossing another aside, trying to rescue one months later. If its my money, my debt, my pain, why not? I figure if I ever get sucked into more commercial work full-time instead of occasional dabbles and quick retreats, I'll cherish these years of futzing around with whatever I wanted to with no limitations but money, actors aging, and sanity. On second thought, please assist me in selling out right now and I'll helm a Solomon Grundy direct to video movie."

This is a pretty thorough interview that has a good section on his William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin-inspired digital dowsing process and editing methodology. I don't get the comic book references. But then, they probably don't like opera.

Modest quack scholar attempts unread blog on unknown artist

This project began as a thesis seven years ago or so. The school I won't name despite the burning need for revenge, but the thesis started getting out of control and threatening to take over a lot of shelf space. A few friends suggested I just put up the work in sections on that internet somebody invented for such a purpose, so I could link to various works and reproduce all the ephemeral debris. I'll explain more when I learn how to use this scanner... Thanks to Jean, Matt, Dr. Lau, Andre, and I suppose Andre again for letting me scrape off bits of him and place them on shelves to begin with. We'll begin later this weekend with recent interviews and videos examined. See you then, class.