The very long relationship of the illustrator Jordi Labanda with La Vanguardia began 30 years ago, in May 1994, with a small drawing that represented Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt, both writing on their respective computers and looking at each other out of the corner of their eye. Although it was in black and white and the outline was more schematic, the Labandesque style could already be perceived in those figures. The cartoon was commissioned to illustrate a double review by Robert Saladrigas of the new books that Park Slope’s most famous couple had on the market at the time: Blindfolded, the novel with which Hustvedt debuted, which Circe published here – with a translator. illustrious: Claudio López Lamadrid – and Auster’s non-fiction title The Red Notebook, also translated and prefaced by another illustrious, Justo Navarro. In the text, Saladrigas traces the crossed influences in the marriage of authors and places them in the wake of other duos such as Sartre and De Beauvoir, Moravia and Morante, Aragon and Triolet.
ROGER CORMAN AND THE 50 FOOT WOMAN
When filmmaker Roger Corman died last week, his absence was especially felt in Sitges, at the festival that had him as one of its priests and guides. Corman passed through Sitges in 1998, to collect the Màquina del Temps, and, again, in 2010, when he obtained the Maria d’Or with his wife, Julie. That year he met one of his protégés, Joe Dante – Corman liked to brag about having given his first opportunities to Spielberg, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Sayles and many other filmmakers – and dedicated time to everyone who approached him with a script or an idea. He was pleased to discover in several posters and advertisements, from the now defunct Canal Satélite Digital, an illustration that referenced the one he himself made in 1958 for the poster of the film Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, by his friend Nathan Juran. Asked about it, he told the festival newspaper: “It is the symbol of what happens in cinema where an original idea is usually re-edited over and over again, adding a particular detail. I am satisfied that a sign that worked well then continues to do so now. I love that at the time the censorship let that idea pass, a splendid sexy one, in which a woman has her legs spread on a highway and the cars are heading towards her sex.”
TO TEAR DOWN OR NOT TO TEAR DOWN MARILYN’S HOUSE
In 1962, Marilyn Monroe bought a house in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles for $75,000 and was barely able to enjoy it: six months later, she died there of an apparent overdose. A detail about the house has been repeated ad nauseam in the black chronicle. On the porch, there was a tile that said Cursum perficio. That is, “the journey ends here.” The house has been passed from hand to hand since then, with 14 different owners who have undertaken at least 12 renovations (with permission), so it bears little resemblance to the construction from the early sixties. Its last owners, reality television producer Roy Bank (he even has a comic book villain’s name!) and a real estate corporation heiress named Brinah Milstein, had obtained permission from the Los Angeles City Council to demolish it, until several groups working for The preservation of assets of cultural interest managed to stop the collapse last January. Now the Milstein Banks have sued the city of Los Angeles, arguing that there is nothing left in the house that contains evidence that the actress was there. “Not a piece of furniture, not a chip in the paint, not a carpet, nothing,” they write in their petition. The judge has an almost philosophical case in his hands: if Marilyn Monroe’s house is no longer what it was, but it is in the same place, is it still the house?
THE ANTI-COMMERCIAL FESTIVAL
The Gutter, the most disastrous and stimulating festival held in Barcelona, ??dedicated to fanzine and self-publishing, and its diabolical twin, the Anti-Gutter, have been surviving since 2012 despite the fact that (or precisely because), as they say On their proudly tacky and sexy website, “nobody does anything” and they conceive the organization as something between equals. The event, which has been unfolding, begins with the so-called Anti-Gutter (market, concerts and workshops) that is held today at the CCCB until ten at night. For a total of zero euros for entry (another oddity of the festival is that they do not charge artists to exhibit and sell their work), you can go browsing and take, for example, a portrait made by the artist Nadie, a digital portrait of a pet, by Alba Prado, a print or a t-shirt by Celia Ruiz or a fanzine by Leire Hirmitunai. Furthermore, in the CCCB archive you can see an exhibition of silkscreens by the Italians Strane Dizioni.
