David Holzman's Diary

Video Watchdog, reviewed by Kim Newman

Newly unemployed and categorised A-1 by his draft board, David Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson, later the screenwriter of Paris, Texas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) - a young man who looks like an excommunicated Monkee - makes an audio-visual diary. He props up a cine-camera in his New York City apartment and records stream-of-consciousness thoughts via a lavalier mike onto reel-to-reel tape, promising to fulfil Jean-Luc Godard's promise that cinema should contain "truth, twenty-four times a second."

David's impulse to chronicle his life outs a strain on his relationships. Pepe (Lorenzo Mans), an articulate if smug friend, stands in front of a Cuban mural and extensively criticizes David's work-in-progress by claiming scenes from his life could have come from a badly-written and acted film. Penny (Penny Wohl, later The Exorcist's Eileen Dietz), David's girlfriend, a model who poses for pictures all day, is exasperated to be an after-hours subject for his camera - and so creeped out to wake up and find he has been filming her naked that she leaves him. David becomes vaguely interested in a woman across the road (Louise Levine), whom he bubs 'Sandra' because she reminds him of Visconti's heroine (!), and a pretty girl on the subway (Fern McBride). He also turns his camera on random strangers and the city (playing with a new fish0eye lens), a gender-ambiguous glamour girl who swans past in a sports car and his own television set. In a bravura sequence, the film stop-frames in minutes through an entire evening's viewing, providing a surprisingly poignant summary of 1967 programming: flickering past are Vincent Price as Egghead on Batman, the second Star Trek pilot, Joan Crawford in Harriet Craig and now-vintage adverts and new shows. As David cracks up, he is more and more compelled to film himself, though he cries 'Why isn't this helping?' - a statement as resonant as 'All this filming, it's not healthy' (Peeping Tom). Finally, David loses all his equipment when his apartment is burgled, and has to close the film with a do-it-yourself vinyl recording and photo-booth snapshots.

Second Run DVD make a point of billing David Holzman's Diary as 'a film by Jim McBride' in equal point-size on the sleeve. When first seen in 1967, it was widely taken for non-fiction, despite the prominent billing of actors in the end-credits. It remains a key work in the ongoing debate about whether 'truth' can ever be captured in an audi-visual medium. Then, only underground films by Andy Warhol or Shirley Clarke approached the form McBride (and Holzman) set out to establish, though elements were appearing in the near-mainstream within months in the likes of Medium Cool, or even Night of the Living Dead. Forty years on, David Holzman looks exactly like the 'video diaries' commonplace on contemporary TV (or as DVD extras). Furthermore, along with Peter Watkins' films, it stands as a precedent for the mock-documentary format of This is Spinal Tap, The Blair Witch Project or The Last Horror Film. McBride's protagonist has to be someone like the director, with access not only to the recording equipment but (it is implied) a sophisticated editing set-up. Now, available technology has enabled a nation of David Holzmans, who post diaries on YouTube or contribute to features like Capturing the Friedmans or Tarnation. One of the achievements of McBride's debut feature is that it perfectly parodies a style of cinema that hadn't yet been born. Truth weaves in and out of the fiction - the extravagant creature in the sports car, who might be a Warhol Factory refugee or just out for a good time, genuinely happened to be passing and interacts teasingly with the offscreen David; while the attempt at a 'story' about David losing his girlfriend collapses (along with the relationship) as he becomes more interested in the process of recording his life than the business of living it.

Imaginatively shot by Michael Wadley (later Michael Wadleigh, director of Woodstock and Wolfen), who necessarily has to be hands-off in the sequences where we see David's camera in a mirror, this also gets in early on the Blair Witch trick of letting technical lapses into the finished film as a guarantor of authenticity. Second Run's full frame transfer of the B&W film faithfully reproduces the rough look - complete with lengths of leader, overexposed shots, film damage, scratches (we see David manhandle film stock, so what do you expect?) and the occasional hard-to-make-out mumble. Carson - who reprised his role in Griffin Dunne's mock-doc Famous and has a significant appearance in the David Holzman-influenced CQ - gives a remarkably convincing, unforced performance as the self-involved narrator. He is responsible for making the film bearable in that (like Carl Boehm in Peeping Tom) David is never completely unsympathetic, no matter how obsessive or troubled he becomes. The package is valuably augmented by My Girlfriend's Wedding (62m 25s), a non-fake diary entry-cum-portrait initially made (in 1969) as a support for David Holzman, a video interview with the genial director (18m 9s) and an insightful booklet by Jonathan Rosenbaum (who admits to inside knowledge of McBride's circle).

My Girlfriend's Wedding, also shot by Wadley (in grainy colour), points a camera at Clarissa Ainley, whose name is blurred on the soundtrack and goes unmentioned in the credits. McBride's English girlfriend has come to America to be part of 'the Revolution'' and marries a Yippie in order to secure a green card. It's also not mentioned, but McBride is still married to Fern McBride - the subway girl from David Holzman. Most of the film consists of Ainley talking about herself, her family ("I really hate him", she says of her father), her beliefs and her situation. Like David Holzman, she ought to be a monster but the viewer can't help but warm up to her - even her daffy, vague notions of Revolution are somehow heroic rather than thoroughly ridiculous. She comes off better than her smug, diffident 'husband', who argues that no one should work for anyone else so she doesn't need to turn up for the waitress job she landed the day before. McBride made a 'sequel', Pictures from Life's Other Side, which sadly isn't included - besides that, one would have liked some present day comment from Ainley, if only to find out what happened to her and how she feels about the person she was then. In the equivalent to the TV blur from David Holzman, My Girlfriend's Wedding closes with an evocative montage of near-subliminal images taken during a cross-country trip from New York to San Francisco by McBride and Ainley which began four days after the wedding (we assume she quit the waitress gig). These are films of their times, in more ways than one; it's a nice irony that, for all the fun McBride has with Godard's dictum (McBride and Carson would collaborate on the remake of Breathless), these films give more sense of what it was really like in 1967 and 1969 than many a more elaborate or ambitious piece. Second Run should be commended for giving this important double-bill such a respectful, illuminating showcase.

This review appears in the wonderful magazine VIDEO WATCHDOG, Issue No 132, $7.95

Contents
Disc Info

David Holzman's Diary Boxshot

USA 1967
Main Feature: 73 minutes
Special Features:
  My Girlfriend's Wedding - 61
  minutes
  Interview - 22 minutes
Certificate: 15
Black & White 1.33:1
Sound: Original Mono, Restored
Language: English
PAL R0 RRP: £12.99
Release Date: 30th January 2006

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