90 Movies in 90 Days: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
Release Date: October 28, 1968
Director: William Greaves
Production Company: Take One Productions
Summary/Review:

This bold experimental film takes place with film crews shooting on location in New York City’s Central Park.  Director Bill Greaves has a film crew filming screen tests of actors performing a scene of a married couple’s relationship dissolving, a la Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A second film crew films the first film crew at work for a documentary on filmmaking.  A third film crew films the first two as well as incidental activity within the park.  Greaves portrays a caricature of himself who seems to be disorganized and obsessed with sexuality.

When he’s not around the crew talk about his lack of direction and the poor quality of the script, some plotting a revolt.  All these stories are nested in one another and times split screen effects are used to show simultaneous shots from the three crews (not unlike The Thomas Crown Affair from the same year or the Woodstock documentary from 1970).  The artifice here is that everyone is emphasizing reality, while it feels that absolutely nothing in this film is real but heavily scripted.

It’s a unique movie with some clever ideas, although I personally found it a bit of a chore to watch (although that’s more of a me problem).

Rating: ***

Photopost: Baked Big Apple Crisp

My daughter and I visited with my mother in New York this weekend and it was blazing hot. Nevertheless, we spent a lot of time outdoors at Bryant Park, Summer Streets, an Upper West Side street fair, and inevitably at playgrounds in Central Park.  Here are some of my more arty photos from the weekend.

Interesting building overlooking Bryant Park.

Ducks on The Pond in Central Park.

Kay straphanging on the subway.

“Look Up,” a sculpture by Tom Friedman on Park Av

Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building from an angle not usually accessible to pedestrians

Jewelry for sale on Amsterdam Av.

Interesting building overlooking Central Park.

The Bethesda Fountain

Boaters on the Lake (people who must enjoy sweating more than I do!)

Photopost: Harlem Meer

It was supposed to rain on Memorial Day, so we were heading to a museum.  Walking through Central Park, we noticed the sun was shining, and we just decided to stay.  It helped that this northeastern part of the park surrounds the beautiful Harlem Meer and has two excellent playgrounds and the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center.  The kids had fun on the playgrounds and borrowing discovery kits with two sets of binoculars.  There were lots of fish in the Meer, my friend says they’re deadly.  We also learned about the area’s geological history and how it was fortified for the War of 1812.

The Harlem Meer

War of 1812 soldier

View from the Dana center

Studying a school of fish

Explorer at work