Alejandro Adams‘ Canary screens in Brooklyn at Rooftop Films tonight. Since I interviewed him on this blog way back in February, right before his film premiered at Cinequest, Adams has become something of an uningorable mascot (and sometimes, thorn in the side) of online film culture — or, at least, the microcosm of film culture represented on Twitter. There he is, picking fights about the Dardennes brothers! There he is, challenging this reporter on her choice of avatar! There he is, always, at the center of the conflict, however virtual and/or minor that conflict may be. And now, Canary, a film that virtually no one has seen outside of three specialty festivals and the cineaste Twittersphere, gets a rave in the Village Voice, bumped up in the print edition right next to an assessment of Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania pegged to the umpteenth revival of Jonas Mekas’ signature diary film. The placement in the paper says it all: from zero to avant-garde canon in under six months. But don’t blame Twitter — Adams’ online antics have a tendency to plant expectations that the films themselves subvert. You want to dismiss him as an attention whore, but the films frustrate that impulse. As one filmmaker wrote to me after watching Canary long after knowing of its maker via his Twitter agitations, “Goddammit.”

Seeing the Canary review next to the Mekas write-up on a physical page yesterday reminded me of something Adams had written in the long email exchange we had that led up to that February interview, which hadn’t made it into the published post. I went back into those emails and pulled out that quote, and a few other memorable outtakes, for your persual. The text below the jump may make more sense after a reading (or re-reading) of the initital published interview, but keep in mind that when Adams refers to “you,” he’s generally referring to me. If you’re in New York, you can (and should) buy tickets to tonight’s screening here.

I implore you to mention on the record that you watched Canary during your flight to L.A.–it doesn’t have to be the main point of a question but I’d like a chance to address it.  Your viewing experience embodies my deepest wish for the life of my films.  I want my films to be viewed by solitary individuals in perpetuity.  These are the one-topping personal pan pizzas of cinema.  There is no way this film or any other film I could make will “matter” on a 40-foot screen with an audience of 500 (although they do look pretty good, speaking purely technically).

As I stood in line for a screening at Cinequest Film Festival last year, I heard some people talking about [my first film] Around the Bay: “I expected to get something out of it.  I’m a single dad, estranged daughter, younger son–but I wasn’t up there on screen.”  If you think you’re going to relate to either of these films because of the plot description, you’re the person most likely to despise it.

One of the only written interpretations [ed. note: as of mid-February] of Canary suggests that it’s about silence as meaningful action in a world where human communication has no value.  I should admit I lived in my van and had trouble making social contact during that period, so if you want the film to play as strict autobiography, there it is.

There is no strategy for promoting this film.  It can’t be promoted.  I made a poster because it pleases me aesthetically and because I paid for the rights to the absurd stock art.  But, come on, that poster image has nothing to do with the film.  It doesn’t have cast or crew info on it or screening times.  It’s just “the porn star and Melissa Gilbert,” as one friend put it, with a Canary Industries logo.  People might connect that logo to the title in the program or they might not.

There is a campaign of identification-signal-jamming in my films.  In Canary, not only is there a minefield of challenges to traditional identification, but even–film theory here we come!–reversals of the gaze and laborious efforts to insert the viewer’s gaze into the film, to account for the viewer in the diegetic space–somewhat similar, I guess, to Barthes’ stated interest in fictionalizing the reader.  In that way, the film might have been about “you,” but you seem to have been watching Carla as a conventional film object.  That doesn’t mean I failed, it just means the film isn’t about you, and you got something else out of it.  I won’t detract from your getting or having gotten whatever you get or got.

The Silicon Valley alt-weekly paper ran a “preview” of Canary.  The piece appeared on, let’s say, page 56.  The image at the top of the piece depicted Carla looking coldly at “you.”  On pages 57, 58 and 59 were reviews of Hollywood films, their press stills holding the same position as the one on page 56.  Would it surprise you to learn that each of those subsequent photos depicted a conventionally beautiful woman (in one case, a minor) in an arrested state of distress or trepidation, egregiously sexualized and framed for “your” delectation?  Well, as soon as Carla was added to the beginning of that series, my delectation was routed through her, and I’m not sure it was delectation anymore.  It goes without saying that those other women were completely unaware of “you” as a viewer, so Carla was able to implicate me in something that those other women couldn’t implicate me in.  Canary came to life for me at that moment–the criss-crossing dynamics of “you” to Carla to the other characters in the film and back to “you” again.  It became vital, autonomous, carrying forth its meanings into the world.

And you can probably tell I’d love to lecture a film class about this.  “Forget the film!  I’m not going to show you the film!  Look at this newspaper!”  Yep, the Lenny Bruce of independent film.