Imagination and Gin
Posted by ben on 16 Sep 2008 at 08:10 pm | Tagged as: books, essays, silliness, video/film
In an essay from , Luis Buñuel, while arguing that gin stimulates the imagination, explains how he came to use two actresses to play a single role in his final film:
If I had to list all the benefits of alcohol, it would be endless. In 1977, in Madrid, when I was in despair after a tempestuous argument with an actress who’d brought the shooting of to a halt, the producer, Serge Silberman, decided to abandon the film altogether. The considerable financial loss was depressing us both until one evening, when we were drowning our sorrows in a bar, I suddenly had the idea (after two dry martinis) of using two actresses in the same role, a tactic that had never been tried before. Although I made the suggestion as a joke, Silberman loved it, and the film was saved. Once again, the combination of bar and gin proved ubeatable.
Nice. Did you know that Absinthe is now legal in the U.S.?
Whooo!
yeh but the concentration of wormwood is regulated to a dismal dose; but again any dose is dismal. Fucking Hypocrisy!
…just wining and dreaming tank’n games.
Good to see you posting again, Ben.
If I had to give up booze or every OTHER drug… Gosh. I don’t know.
“All the doctors who wanted to forbid me to smoke and to drink are dead.” –Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer who lived to be ninety-one, letting go of the bottle — “my most faithful companion”– for only one short period. The resulting 4th Symphony is kind of strange; like a novel of unfinished sentences.
But his stuff is a little dark, in general.
I adhere to Buñuel’s recipe for a martini:
“The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients-glasses, gin, and shaker-in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.”
Very practical, no-nonsense advise from a father of surrealism….