These introductions were performed at “Hoolboom Alive,” an event at the Gladstone Hotel Dec. 6, 2004, held in concert with “The Invisible Man” exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University. It was sponsored by AGYU and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. The intros were delivered live.
Introduction to In the Dark (8 min 2003)
I’ve been hanging around Marcel a lot lately, listening mostly as he talks the talk whenever we’re talking, whenever I’m listening he seems to have these pauses these little things he does with his hands the truth is he’s picking me up like a sponge, like a stain on the floor.
It’s a thing he does, maybe he can’t help himself, The way he soaks me up, and the trick of it is It’s not just the little hitch in my speech, not just the things I’ve already told him but the things I’m going to say, the things I’ve been meaning to say for a long time now, the things you can’t say, no not that, no mom please not here. They seem to come out of his mouth, like he was born for it.
So I’m standing around last night watching him talk the talk with my best friend and he’s doing me, you know he’s winking and nudge nudging and all that but he’s fucking doing me better than I do me, and I don’t mind telling you it’s a bit distressing because I’m the only me I know how to do while Marcel he’s a democracy. He believes in the democracy of personality.
So Marcel, he’s been working the room a little tonight, he’s been giving me a little feedback on what you might have said, in that unguarded moment, that pause when you were trying to find the words only you couldn’t, because he’d taken them from you, from the tip of your tongue to the palm of his hands, so tonight, there’s going to be no surprises, ok? You’re not going to hear anything you haven’t heard before. You’re not going to see anything, you haven’t seen before. Tonight, we are going to revel in the comfort of the old questions and the old answers. We’re going to start with a movie, and I’m not saying you’ve sat in that chair, you’ve stood in that spot, and watched this movie before, it cuts way deeper than that. What I mean is you haven’t just seen this movie, you’ve made this movie, it’s your movie, isn’t it? And the kick is, and the $64,000 rub of it is, that it doesn’t have any pictures. It’s a movie that doesn’t have anything to show. I guess you were in that kind of mood. I guess we’ve all been in that kind of mood lately. Haven’t we Marcel? Mercifully it only lasts eight minutes, but of course you know that already. I think you know very well how much can happen when you spend eight minutes of your life without a picture, in the dark.