PROFILES:
Rod Bradley - writer/co-producer/ director MEETING VAN GOGH
Brief Biography:
Rod Bradley has been/is still/by all odds will remain a
filmmaker, novelist, poet, picture-maker and renaissance guy
manqué. He has published two generously praised novels (TV MAN, GUN
PLAY ) and numerous poems. He was a principle writer of the Emmy
award winning Smithsonian World documentary series on PBS. His
photographs have been exhibited with Ansel Adams and William
Eggleston. He has worked as a cinemaphotographer, editor, writer,
producer, director on sundry independent projects -- those of others
and his own. He has lived throughout the United States, came of age
in the Middle East in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.
By way of self-introduction, a few vapors from the horse's mouth:
I persist in believing honesty is not a form of
foolishness despite blazing evidence to the contrary.
I see hard work (even some toil and labor) on something of
significance as having kinship with play, love, and Mother Nature:
especially snowfall and wine.
I feel time is always short -- and forever eternal.
I like individual human beings with absurd democracy -- sometimes
despite themselves.
While I can understand the evils of greed and the corruption of
power, I have never grasped how some people take pleasure in
another's humiliation.
I am opinionated but tolerant, except when it comes to human
cruelty in larger and lesser forms -- and the arrogance of the
powerful taking advantage of the powerless.
I am delighted by people coming together while preserving their
individual flavors, a free-form cross-pollinating garden.
I distrust mobs and gangs as well as the less obvious clubs of
privilege -- all of which seem to obscure individual humanity and
fail to leave much kindness in their wake.
I regard life as a privilege, creating art (or the attempt) as an
even greater privilege and believe such privilege carries the
responsibility not to abuse -- and the edict to elevate.
I have not sought obscurity, but have achieved it almost
effortlessly.
By nature I am a romantic realist -- i.e., innocence triumphs
over cynicism after fierce non-violent battle.
Religion: an informal Zen-ish Buddhist, and cracked humanitarian
whose love finally bulldozes his skepticism.
Personal motto: Neither master nor slave... ie respect and be
respected.
If I were to articulate a credo of art/life, it might be a path
strewn with the following:
Understatement is often god-like.
Overstatement is often politician-like.
Art should be simultaneously grand and humble.
The truth is rarely a bestseller, except by accident.
Honesty is the quiet nurturing Friend who stands faithfully in
the shadows as Gimmickry dances in the limelight telling people what
they want to hear.
The human animal has a great capacity for love, but alas, this
gift is often crushed by even greater talents for self-interest and
denial.
You can be smart without being wise -- and wise without being
recognized as smart..
Creation requires both chaos and balance.
Sleep is good.
And so on...
I have been known to be insufficiently succinct. But I you
reminding the babbling brook it's time to enter the underground
spring.
Kindly forgive a PS: to give some idea of my taste in movies, I
note here a mere seven favorites (least I go on and on to put up a
hundred more of merit):
Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa)
Night On Earth (Jim Jarmusch)
Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
Decalogue (Krystof Kieskowski)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
