[Image courtesy Sony Pictures.]

Charlie Kaufman is now well-known as the writer of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but he may soon be better known as the writer-director of Synecdoche, New York (say it out loud: sih-NECK-duh-kee). At least that’s the opinion of Curbed SF blogger Jimmy Stamp, who interviewed Kaufman a short while back for his architecture blog, LifeWithoutBuildings.net. Describing the film as “sublime” and “a piece of work so beautiful, yet so incredibly terrifying that it becomes even more beautiful,” he goes on to liken it to “the ocean seen from the edge of a cliff.” It’s about Caden Cotard (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a 40-year-old local theater director in Schenectady, New York (say it out loud: skuh-NECK-tuh-dee) whose marriage and health are rapidly deteriorating. He fears that he will die before accomplishing anything important in his life. But then! He receives a MacArthur Grant, and uses the money to create a massive theater piece — an all-consuming Great Work that will rival life itself in its vastness, complexity, and heartbreaking truth.

Not surprisingly, the interview takes its most interesting turn when they begin discussing the architectural aspects of Kaufman’s work:

Stamp: In your movies, but especially in this one I think, there are these broader architectural and spatial ideas but then you also have these smaller set pieces—the burning house in Synecdoche, the 7 1/2 floor in Malkovich, the Montauk house in Eternal Sunshine. Are these just designed to convey a sense of place, or a mood, or do you always intend them to have deeper, metaphorical meaning?

Kaufman: Yeah. It’s all of that. I find myself really interested in spaces, actually. I tend to think about environment early on in writing. I’m doing it now, actually. I find myself going back to houses or buildings as environments environments for my stories — you know, odd buildings or very specific types of spaces. I don’t know why… a Jungian scholar was in here talking about houses being representations of the self. I think that’s what it was, anyway… you know, I tend to write intuitively and I don’t really know why I do certain things, but they resonate or they feel funny or they feel sad. Um, you know, I have my ideas about why Hazel lives in that house but I don’t really explain that because I want people to be able to bring their own metaphor to the experience. That’s kind of the biggest goal I have — to put something out there and let people individually interact with it. So I try not to say “this is what it means” or “this is not what it means” or “this is what it means to me.”

And check this out from later on:

Stamp: In [Paul Auster's] book, The Music of Chance, this eccentric millionaire hobbyist builds a model of what he calls ‘The City of the World.’ It’s a condensed depiction of his entire life that includes all the important places and pivotal events that made him the man he is— including the construction of the model. So in the model, he’s building himself building the model…

Kaufman: Wow. That sounds great, but I haven’t read that. It does remind me of an idea I had though. I wanted to build a casino in Las Vegas called Las Vegas, Las Vegas. Like the idea of Paris, Las Vegas (the real life casino) is that you don’t have to actually go there — their campaign is something like ‘all the best of Paris without the French people.’ So then (with Las Vegas, Las Vegas,) there’s the idea that you don’t actually have to go to Paris, Las Vegas either because there’s a replica of all of Vegas—including Paris, Las Vegas—within this other casino. So you get even more safe by not having to go out into the strip at all. I thought that would be a pretty successful resort.

Say, aren’t they already planning to do something like that in Dubai?

Anyway. Full interview here; provoked by the trailer for the film, Stamp also wrote this interesting article back in September, on the notion of infinitely-repeating cities.

Synecdoche, New York opens November 7th at the Embarcadero, the Shattuck, and the Piedmont.

[Image by the Asian Art Museum.]

The Asian Art Museum hosts their Matcha event series on the first Thursday of every month, from 5 to 9 in the evening, and it’s that day again. The theme for tonight’s event is Tea and Spice, and I probably can’t describe it any better than they do:

Still dusty from its annual trek to Burning Man, Tealchemy’s Tea Temple will be erected inside the Asian Art Museum for MATCHA. Everyone can sip earthy tea inside this mammoth atmospheric, communal space, which celebrates the centuries-old nomadic trade and travel of the Silk Routes. Elsewhere in the museum, taste teas from India, Persia, and Tibet (courtesy Samovar) or those along China’s Tea and Horse Roads (courtesy Teance).

Discover how these different blends are brewed and grind your own spicy chai (Indian tea), mortar and pestle style. Learn about tea and its cultural influences, see art of the spice routes on a guided tour, and view Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty before it closes (Sept. 21)

So it looks like I can look forward to a nice cup of tea after work today.

The museum is on Larkin next door to Main Library. Admission is $5 after 5 PM, and as they imply up there, for that awesome price you get the run of the museum. The Ming Dynasty exhibit is pretty cool.

Sunbathers in Dolores Park in May. Flickr photo by Operators are standing by

It’ll be a hot one today, ladies and gentlemen, and hotter tomorrow, due to that late-summer east-wind thing. In the worst case, wildfires will destroy several thousand acres in the East Bay. In the best case, the only burning will be in Dolores Park — sunburning, that is.

If you’d rather get sunburned standing up than lying down, there’s bicycle racing in town today as the Giro di San Francisco (which is Italian for “Tour de San Francisco”) goes until 4:00 pm. The race’s epicenter is Levi’s Plaza.

I just drove back to town after a week in the suburbs of Portland. Driving down from 505 to I-80 to the Bay Bridge between 7:00 and 7:30 on a Saturday night, I expected the usual congestion in Berkeley and backup at the bridge toll plaza. Nothing! The drive was smooth as butter, with exactly 1 car in line in front of me at the tolls.

Could be because of Burning Man, or all the local Democrats that went to Denver for the Democratic Convention are taking a long weekend, or maybe that whole staycashun thing is catching on. But the Bay Bridge sure was easy tonight.

Tassajara Zen Center, which closed to visitors for several weeks and was saved from burning by the efforts of fire crews and a few “fire-fighting monks,” has reopened for visitors. The buildings and facilities of the center [map], which was first opened in the late 1960s by San Francisco Zen Center monks who adapted a crumbling summer resort into the largest Zen monastery in the U.S., were mostly untouched by the fire, which burned over and past the monastery on July 10. An archive of news stories is here.

But being closed for several weeks during the summer tourist season means much lost revenue for the non-profit center, which hosts visitors throughout the summer and uses the money to run its Zen study programs for the rest of the year. A plea for donations has recovered only 50% of lost revenue. You can donate by clicking the button at the bottom of their firefighting story.

Previously:
‘Glasses’ is a ‘Zen comedy’ at SFIFF
Hartford Street Zen Center remembers John King
Visiting the San Francisco Zen Center
Zen masters, freedom, and blogging

A couple weeks ago on the MediaBistro site Agency Spy, a blog about the advertising industry, there was a post about a mysterious (to me) booklet published by “an international trends-led publishing, events and consultancy business” called Piers Fawkes. The booklet, PSFK Snapshot, purported to be a sort of guidebook to San Francisco’s most cutting-edge culture, the places to find the real trend-setters, or “influencers,” which I think is the more current term.

Curious, I ordered the book (seen at left). It’s a square booklet about 4 inches on a side, and about 56 pages long. It lists a few cafes, restaurants, art galleries, community events and so on. The list is pretty standard hipster fare: Blue Bottle Coffee, Red Poppy Art House, The Crucible, Maker Faire, Burning Man. In other words, nothing you wouldn’t learn living in San Francisco for one week, or by reading this blog, SFist, and BoingBoing for a month or so.

I got through the whole book in about 90 seconds, and when I was done I understood even less what the book was for. Suppose it is absolutely essential to know that the most snobbish coffee fanatics go to Blue Bottle. If I’m in the advertising industry, what is that knowledge going to get me?

In fact, I was much more interested in the booklet as a product of the Blurb publishing website, where you can upload photos and text and have them print a pretty little book. If I were a photographer, or preparing a booklet for my mother’s 70th birthday or something, it looks like a great service.

more thoughts after the jump

Walking up the four flights of stairs to the interfacing area of Britex, that sewing oasis on Maiden Lane, I remembered shopping here with my Mom when I was about 13. All happy memories, but also a lot of stress, as I knew we were dropping a bundle on woolen fibers, and I wasn’t sure I’d proven myself with my sewing skills, as they were.

Overheard at Britex yesterday:
- “So any other tips on going to Burning Man?” Between two salespeople
- “You could always make your dress out of safety pins.” Saleswoman to a guy, referring to an episode of Project Runway.

I got some great advice on lining a skirt, and when she checked out my meager Simplicity pattern, she didn’t sniff and say, “We don’t sell those.” (they’re super basic), instead she nicely said, “Did you bring that from home?” And then gave me tons of tips on how to do the lining without a pattern.

The mass exodus for SXSW is well under way, and those of us who are left in SF get a little bit of breathing space.

For those who are traditionally here in SF during SXSW, riddle me this: is the parking really better in The City during events like Burning Man and SXSW?

Which neighborhoods are most affected by this mythical blessing by the parking gods?

SFPD is hiring & shuffling: Capt. Ehrlich heads to Tac Squad, Fong brings in new female “Community” Capt. Bennet , plus scroll for details for potential applicants and those that just want to know more about what the hell is it they actually do:

In a continual game that is SFPD’s version of musical chairs meets Stratego, respected local Capt. John Ehrlich, a 27 year vet, moves into the Special Operations’ “Tac Squad” and Northern Station’s former Community Policing Lieutenant, Theresa “Teri” Barrett becomes the Park station’s new captain. An ironic shift perhaps since Chief Heather Fong has been reluctant to give so-called “community policing” much headway. Ehrlich also seemed content like most others in the dept. to hopefully let the “community policing” issue fade away before officers ever were forced to move around outside their bulletproof squad cars like any of us ordinary citizens must do.

This personnel shuffle seems yet another shift in the department that on one hand is derided as being insular, ineffective, and wishy washy and then on the other hand is accused of being insular, insensitive & overly aggressive.

I mean how could one not put their faith in an organization that issues glowing reports on it’s own recruits like
“San Frasncisco Policec Academy to Gradtue 13 Lateral Officers” as seen in a press release link posted proudly on the SFPD website since September 21, 2007.

It’s never helped that the majority of SFPD officers don’t live in town, and for a long time many seemed to take gleeful pride in bullying those that do. Lately the embarrassing and stubborn refusal of the SFPD to get around to enacting basic community policing reforms has really strained community relations.

It’s simply ridiculous what we spend here per capita on policing, and the ultimately shoddy results we get for that $500 dollars a year per person. According to a recent editorial in the Chronicle SF spends $120 more per citizen than Chicago, and $180 more per citizen than Los Angeles does on police services. Yet from 1999 to 2005, unlike in those towns, arrests were down 35 percent, and homicides went up, up, up and not away. Especially troubling is the unsolved homicide rate, with less than 25% solved these days, a dramatic reduction since the 50% solved rate of the latter 1990’s under other leadership.

More ranting after the jump…

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A cat saved its owner from a burning house this morning in San Mateo.

The cat woke the guy up once, and he sleepily let the cat out and went back to bed, not even noticing his house was on fire. The cat continued yowling from outside and when the man got up again to yell at the cat, he finally noticed the house was on fire and called 911.

The cat was not harmed. (Photo is not from this incident.)