Lance Mannion and the Sundance Kid talk shop

I hate my dreams.

I'm jealous of people who have visually poetic and phantasmagoric dreams, dreams of Freudian import, dreams full of Jungian symbolism and Dali-esque imagery, dreams of past lives and future loves and present adventures.

My dreams are boring.  I have what I call "peeling potatoes" dreams, because I have, and I'm not kidding, often dreamed I'm peeling potatoes, and in these dreams that's what I do.  I peel potatoes.  One at a time.  One after another.  On and on.  I dream the act of peeling each and every potato.  These are very realistic dreams.  I can feel and smell each potato.  I can feel the peeler in my hand and the tension in my wrist as I peel each potato.  And while I'm at it I dream my thoughts, the kind of thoughts anyone with a hundred potatoes to peel would have.  "Boy, this is boring," I dream myself thinking.  "That's ten down," I dream myself thinking, "Ninety more to go," and "God, I hate potatoes.  Whose idea was it to have potatoes for dinner anyway."

I don't always dream about peeling potatoes, naturally, but all my dreams are that mundane, that detailed, and that dull.

Last night I dreamed I met Robert Redford and we became friends.

But did we meet at Sundance?  No.  Did we meet on the set of one of his movies?  No.  Did we meet on Cape Cod where in real life both he and I vacation in the same town and could actually meet sometime, although so far he's managed to avoid me?  Nope.

We met at his "office" where he wanted to talk to me about something important.

His office was in a nondescript building on the campus of a community college.  The something he wanted to talk to me about was his new hobby.  He didn't want to pass along any good gossip from Sundance.  Didn't want to talk about what it was like to work with Jane Fonda or Meryl Streep.  Didn't want to let me in on any secrets about his "friendship" with Natalie Wood.  He had no good stories to tell about the jokes he and his pal Paul Newman played on each other, like the time after Redford had his driver's license suspended---he had a bad habit of speeding when he was younger---and Newman had his Porsche towed away in the night, crushed, and returned in a block the size of a coffee table.  Nope.

He wanted to talk all about how much fun it was for him to build and restore Renaissance era Nativity scenes.

He had one in his office.  It took up the whole of the top of a desk in the corner.  It was very intricate and realistic and beautifully crafted and it included a three dimensional backdrop of the town of Bethlehem, which looked liked a walled Medieval city in an early Renaissance painting.  Redford explained to me how he got the texture of the walls just right.

That was it.  That was my dream.  I dreamed I was sitting in a dingy office like the kind that crushes the soul out of your average adjunct professor at a third-rate junior college listening to a deranged hobbyist who happened to look like a movie star go on and on and on about how to coat cardboard with plaster.

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

There may be a prescription in your future.

[Claire]

Hahahaha, that's hilarious. I hope you sleep soundly tonight.

[bgn]

Are you sure it wasn't Nicolae "Antichrist" Carpathia? He's said to look a lot like Redford...

[Rana]

*laughs*

[Ken Muldrew]

Didn't he use potato skins to get the right texture? That's what I do. Remind me to tell you about the process sometime...

[Linkmeister]

If he did use potato skins, he got the side benefit of getting the raw material for home fries when he was done with his art.

[burritoboy]

Northern Renaissance or Italian Renaissance?

Unfortunately, I could not locate a good image of Tilman Riemenschneider's Nativity (a panel in his masterwork - the High Altar of the Hergottkirche in Creglingen, Baden-Wurtemburg, c. 1505-1510).

But here is another fine piece (c. 1523) by the less well known Viet Stoss in the Bamberg Cathedral (though Stoss was quite literally a superstar artist in his time, placing works in numerous cathedrals and princely palaces throughout Germany, Poland and Sweden):

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/stoss/bamberg1.jpg
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/stoss/bamberg2.jpg

Uh, yeah, I'm kind of obsessed with the sculpture of 1450-1530 from Southern Germany, as I'm sure everyone can tell. Not as much a fan of the more mainstream Flemish school of the time.

Restoring a major work like the one in your dream is not something that should be untaken by an amateur. There are very, very few such works left - only a handful of large works have appeared on the art market in the past decade.

[burritoboy]

Northern Renaissance or Italian Renaissance?

Unfortunately, I could not locate a good image of Tilman Riemenschneider's Nativity (a panel in his masterwork - the High Altar of the Hergottkirche in Creglingen, Baden-Wurtemburg, c. 1505-1510).

But here is another fine piece (c. 1523) by the less well known Viet Stoss in the Bamberg Cathedral (though Stoss was quite literally a superstar artist in his time, placing works in numerous cathedrals and princely palaces throughout Germany, Poland and Sweden):

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/stoss/bamberg1.jpg
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/stoss/bamberg2.jpg

Uh, yeah, I'm kind of obsessed with the sculpture of 1450-1530 from Southern Germany, as I'm sure everyone can tell. Not as much a fan of the more mainstream Flemish school of the time.

Restoring a major work like the one in your dream is not something that should be untaken by an amateur. There are very, very few such works left - only a handful of large works have appeared on the art market in the past decade.

[burritoboy]

sorry for the double posting! - late Gothic / early Renaissaince sculpture is indeed one of my primary hobbies!

untaken = undertaken

also, I don't believe I'm familiar with any large multi-figural work of the time that used plaster. This type of thing would be either in limewood (in Southern Germany), rosewood/oak in Flanders, possibly stone or in Italy, could be a terracotta relief.

[Lance]

bb: also, I don't believe I'm familiar with any large multi-figural work of the time that used plaster. This type of thing would be either in limewood (in Southern Germany), rosewood/oak in Flanders, possibly stone or in Italy, could be a terracotta relief.

Holy Christ, I thought I was awake. Apparently not. I'm still dreaming.

[Jennifer]

You are asleep, Lance, and you're carving the Magi out of potatoes... potatoes you just peeled.

[Sigmoid Froyd]

Translated: "If you don't pluck out the eyes, you could be poisoned, Bud. Get well-plastered, go barefoot in the park instead, Spud."

[Idyllopus]

I would have commented on this yesterday, and almost did (I started to) but I was so profoundly impressed that I couldn't think of anything to say. And I still can't.

Last week I fell asleep during my second viewing Altman's commentary on the making of "Three Women" and dreamt I was walking around the set of the film while it was being made. When I woke up it took several hours for the atmosphere to fully depart.

[Theriomorph]

That's damn funny.

Here's a present for you - a very funny site your post brought to mind.

The Dull Men's Club, A place -- in cyberspace -- where Dull Men can share thoughts and experiences, free from pressures to be in and trendy, free instead to enjoy the simple, ordinary things of everyday life

http://www.dullmen.com/home.html