NEWSLETTER



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ISSUE 1

Trent Harris

Trent Harris makes films that sit in the recesses of many people’s minds. Most people allow them to sit there undisturbed, Trent manages to expose them to wild effect.

The Beaver Trilogy – Three separate vignettes that were filmed at different times, in 1979, 1981, and 1985. The first, entitled The Beaver Kid, is a short documentary about the exploits of "Groovin' Gary.” Harris randomly met Gary in the parking lot of his local TV station while testing out a new video camera. Gary immediately launched into a number of celebrity impressions, including John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone. The second part of the movie stars an up-and-coming Sean Penn dramatically reinterpreting “Groovin’ Gary.” The third and final segment stars Crispin Glover in a bigger budget version called “The Orkly Kid” where Glover plays Gary’s alter ego “Olivia Newton-Don.”

Harris, besides being a award-winning filmmaker, is a journalist, author, and artist. The back and forth between PRISM index and Harris seemed like us conjoining would be next to impossible. Over the course of four months we received messages numerous messages, such as:

“I have a big screening coming up on Nov 1, also trying to make some money doing TV docs so I am pressed for time...but I am always pressed for time. Tell me what you need. Trent”

“Sorry for the delay. I will not be able to do anything until after Nov.1...have a premiere coming up and of course everything is falling apart. Don’t let me forget.”

“Well the premiere was a disaster! Financially that is...I lost a butt load. That’s what I get for spending 12 thousand on a party. But I love the movie...I am leaving for a leper colony on Molokai in the morning (no I am not making this up). Sorry for all the delays...my life is chaotic.”

Finally, we received four paintings in the mail and a one-page journal entry. It was art Trent had made for his good friend Bruce Conner, seminal experimental artist from the Bay area. Conner, like Harris, had been unable to reach wide audiences due to his peculiarities. Neither artist stuck with one medium for long, always trying to avoid classification and stagnation. Harris’s most famous film is “The Beaver Trilogy,” an exercise in repetition, where one short document is remade twice with different budgets and actors to bizarre effect. Conner was most well known for creating new ideas through the experimental collage of found footage in his films such as, “A Movie” (1958) and “Crossroads” (1977). A critic once asked Conner to list artists who had influenced him, “I typed out about 250 names,” Conner stated. “Limited space prevents us from printing the remaining 50,003 names on ‘Mr. Conner’s’ list of influences.” Conner was revolted by the idea of pricing his art or defacing it with his signature. However, both of these men, despite their proclivity toward anti-social behavior, were never afraid of being brutally honest with themselves and the public.

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