3pipeproblem: (he brags of his misery/he likes to live)
[personal profile] 3pipeproblem
Ah, the long-promised post about my job. I'm sure you are all breathless with anticipation. Well, if we're going to be technical, this isn't a job so much as a "research internship" and if we're going to be even more technical, it's "going through a dead guy's film collection and looking the movies up on imdb."

You see, this film scholar who...attended my school? Taught at my school? No, I think he taught at a neighboring school...but anyway, he had a ginormous film collection his family donated to the school upon his death. My job is to look through about 5000 VHS tapes (labeled, thank god) containing movies he'd pirated over the course of his life. He's very much enamored of Alexander Kluge, Peter Greenaway and Stan Brakhage, who has now made the list of "people for whom I would journey back in time so that I might kill them in their infancy." 373 films. He needs to be stopped.

But I spend most of my day staring at screens, doing crosswords, reading a little bit, and laughing at morons on imdb's boards. Basically, we have to 1) read the label on the film; 2) verify that it is labeled correctly; 3) look the film up on imdb; 4) enter info into an excel spreadsheet. It's not terribly exciting, but sometimes we (I work with another student) find something good. Or, you know, just sit there and watch Billy Madison (yes, he had that in his collection) for a half hour.

Highlights of late:
-An unlabeled tape that turned out to be Totally Naked. I know how it begins and ends, but I won't spoil anybody.
-A tape labeled as Our Lips Are Sealed (which my sisters own) that turned out to be Renaldo and Clara without any sort of credits. We were only able to identify it because I correctly identified the concert footage as the Rolling Thunder Revue. But look at those credits! Bob Dylan is a crazy man. He has Ronnie Hawkins playing himself (and by "himself" I mean Dylan--Dylan plays Renaldo), Joan Baez and his wife in the movie, for all intents and purposes reenacting their actual love triangle, Allen Ginsberg and some character called The Masked Tortillo. Sadly, it is not commercially available and it would be unwise to discuss any plans I may have to obtain a copy in a forum such as this one.

So that's my job. I've got about 3 weeks to go, but any crazed movie allusions doubtless have to do with it.

Date: 2006-07-24 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moomookrymoo.livejournal.com
Does he own "Their Second Chance?"

Date: 2006-07-24 11:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
Hahahaha, no. I've yet to run across anything taped off Lifetime, but he does like taping Italian television shows.

Date: 2006-07-24 11:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moomookrymoo.livejournal.com
So the school accepted this pirated shit?

Date: 2006-07-24 11:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
Well, we're just cataloguing it, so I'm not sure what the school's going to do with it once we're done.

If they throw it out after we finish all this work, though...
(deleted comment)

Date: 2006-07-24 11:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
He also had a tape of himself giving a lecture. Hahahaha, and there was one home video.

Date: 2006-07-24 11:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moomookrymoo.livejournal.com
Wow... 20 bucks the school just throws them out after you're done with them

Date: 2006-07-24 11:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
Hey, I'm getting approximately $10/hour for this (and a paid lunch break), so...

Date: 2006-07-24 11:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moomookrymoo.livejournal.com
That's almost as much as I make at Pottery Barn! (Minus paid lunch break)

Date: 2006-07-25 12:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
And I have no customers to deal with! And a water cooler!

Date: 2006-07-25 12:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moomookrymoo.livejournal.com
Well we have a water cooler, although it has mold on it.

Date: 2006-07-24 11:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
Um. He has a ton of tapes of Yoko Ono performances.

Please ignore my login there.

Date: 2006-07-25 12:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_redcorvette/
You fuckin' suck. That sounds so cool!

Date: 2006-07-25 02:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
It's really not as exciting as it sounds. At all. And the keyboard must be at least 6 years old, because all the keys stick.

...on the other hand, I wish I had a way to cap this movie. Bob Dylan is currently riding a horse.

Date: 2006-07-25 05:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_redcorvette/
Hahahaha, but it sounds like a whole lot of fun to actually get paid for. I'd probably nerd out and do it for free even if it wasn't a paying job.

Date: 2006-07-25 02:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] treelines.livejournal.com
Hahahaha, Bob Dylan! I mean, wow, what a classic. It'd be such a tragedy if it went missing. I wonder who'd get to appreciate it.

373 films. That reminds me of some poets, you know? And the ghost writers of children's books. Once you hit the triple digits, the Boxcar Children just need to go home.

Date: 2006-07-26 12:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 3pipeproblem.livejournal.com
Riding. A. Horse. And there was just a montage to a garbled version of "If You See Her, Say Hello." He's basically angsting about Joan Baez and putting it on film.

Brakhage mainly makes short films (and by short I mean short--some aren't longer than a minute) but regardless, the man needs to be stopped. They're experimental stuff, for the most part. He has a movie where he stuck moth wings and leaves on tape and made a print of it.

Craphage

Date: 2006-07-27 10:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dj-jonny-flash.livejournal.com
As a film student who has endured the entirity of Dog Star Man and been subject to a professor's gushing about the wonder of Mothlight, I will happily assit you in whatever illegal/dangerous activites are necessary to acquire any materials(ie. plutonium, a DeLorian) necessary for your time travel.

If my own existiance happens to be wiped out by such tampering with history, it would be a noble sacrafice for the human race.

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