Exhausted. Today went to five press screenings, three at the Chelsea Clearview on West 23rd Street, two at the Loew's at West 34th Street. The five: "Razzle Dazzle", a new Ken Jacobs piece; "Music Inn", Ben Barenholtz's doc about a jazz fest/symposia/school in Lenox, Massachusetts that lasted from 1951 to 1960; "Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe"... though it was mostly about Wagstaff; "You Kill Me", John Dahl's comic thriller about a hit man (played by Ben Kingsley) who goes to AA; and "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song". The last was very straightforward, but it had fascinating bits and pieces, and there were moments when i was very moved.

Not as startling, but an interesting social day. Coming out of "Music Inn", i ran into Hisami Kuroiwa; she was talking to David Koh. This reminds me of a story....

In 1975, i was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, attending a performance by Laura Dean and Dancers; during intermission, i ran into David Gordon. So i said hello, and he was with Arlene Croce. So my immediate response was, oh, i'm so glad to meet you, i'm the new you! And she shot me a look and said (very icily) what do you mean? And i said, well, when you got out of college, one of your first jobs when you moved to New York was as Managing Editor of Film Culture Magazine. (She was the first.) Well, i graduated and guess what my job is now? I'm the new Managing Editor of Film Culture Magazine! I thought she would say something like, how are Jonas and Adolphas Mekas? Instead, she looked at me like i had offended her, and she turned away.

Well, in the mid-1990s, David Koh was the new me, i.e., he was working for Jonas Mekas at Anthology Film Archives. So: in 1955, it's Arlene Croce; in 1975, it's me; in 1995, it's David Koh. Of course, in "A Walk Into the Sea", there's Callie Angell, the first librarian at Anthology Film Archives in 1970. I wonder if a lot of us Film Culture/Filmmakers Coop/Anthology Film Archives ex-workers shouldn;t have a reunion....