DOPE ART HERE: Real Friends Put You On

Remember when finding good 📺 🎥 🎵 wasn’t a second job? 

We do.

We're your plug for Dope Art Here, served fresh monthly 😘.

PS - NO SPOILERS HERE. We got you 😏

Welcome to the Dope Art Here experience: a quick mind quencher & snack for your artistic tastes.

WE CURATE ART AS DOPE AS YOU.

This (very recently past) month's spotlights!

• COMEDY PLATINUM: Dara says, "Clue taught me that profound relationships could be rooted in great comedy."
• UNLIKELY INSPIRATION: Adrienne says, "Run Lola Run is the reason I started making independent films."
• A LIFE WELL LIVED: Andrew says, "Ikiru (To Live) shaped so much of how I try to find purpose and be of service."
• FAMILY LEGACY: Justin says, "My household was not so much of a 'read this book' household, was more of a 'read this Playbill and let's go see this play as a family' household."

“It’s been a long time (long time) 

We shouldn’t have left you (left you)

Without a dope beat to step to (step to)”

Timbaland, “Try Again” (2000)

Heyo! It’s Andrew. 

Happy December! Wishing you and your loved ones a happy holiday season. We are grateful for you - for being a part of this community and sharing this space with us. 

This is November’s newsletter (made with love)…arriving a little late in your inbox.

We haven’t seen you in since August! And that’s on us. It won’t happen again…we won’t leave you without some dope art.

We’ve been out here living! I got married in October and the entire team came out to witness my wife and I. And we had a time!! I am grateful to have such amazing friends. It is one of the unique pleasures of growing older...people who have know you since when.

(Speaking of growing older...this is also my moment to remind you that Romeo Must Die came out in 2000…which was a quarter of a century ago. The movie has aged poorly, but the music is eternal.)

For November’s issue, we decided to take it back…to who we were, before we became who we are. Yeah….we’re talking origin story. 

“Share a piece of art that is a part of your origin story”

As soon as I pitched it to the team, I knew I was in trouble. It sounded good but I had no idea what it meant.

Internal monologue: "How do I interpret this prompt? Is it something that made me want to make art? Is it something that changed the way that I look at the world? Is it…I mean there's so many ways to answer the question. Why didn’t I pick something simpler?"

Okay…let’s start with Dara and see if she had an easier time with it…circle back to me!

FILM: CLUE (1985)

Dara says:

“This one was hard. I actively struggled against picking a projection of how I want to be seen versus who I am.

Part of me wants to show you: “Don’t worry about me, girl. I know fancy arty stuff.”

At 10 years old I saw AFI’s list of top 100 horror movies, and that changed what my mom and I rented from blockbuster forever. So long Pippi Longstocking, Alfred Hitchcock is coming over.

In college, I dived further into dadaism and surrealism and fell in love with things like Un Chien Andalou. I was horrified and elated to learn that art is not just for pleasure and pleasing. That something visceral and disgusting could be art, and so, maybe I too, could be art: precious and singular, universal and significant.

And … having said all that… if you really want to know who I am, watch the 1985 murder mystery comedy movie Clue. It’s a lightning in a bottle tour de force of comedic performances from some of the best comedic actors that have lived. Comedy doesn’t get taken seriously, but watching it as a child is when I realized comedy was very serious to me.

Clue taught me that profound relationships could be rooted in great comedy. That movie quotes could help you spot a secret friend. I have never dated anyone who doesn’t “get” the movie. It’s bawdy ladies and gay and funny and people at the top of their game and that, all of it, is extremely my shit.”

WATCH: CLUE (APPLE)

Yeah….all of this tracks. Very on brand for Dara. I’m due for a rewatch of Clue…it’s been too long. I’m excited for a comedy (I need some laughs stat) and I’m excited to better understand my friend through watching this film she loves. 

Films can rewire us…confirming what we already knew but didn’t have words for, or they can turn us in an entirely new direction. Adrienne’s experience was the latter…

FILM: RUN LOLA RUN (1998)

Adrienne says:

"I think by accident I discovered the Sundance Channel, as a 13-year-old in Missouri. I stumbled onto Run Lola Run. That movie changed what I thought was possible. What a story could be.

Franka Potente played a woman trying to save her boyfriend from a mob boss. But she got to__ _____ ____, _______ ___ ___ _____. [editor's note - spoilers redacted] My little perfectionist self always wanted to play with time and ___ __-_____ so badly. So seeing it happen in such a satisfying way? I loved it.

It’s a heist movie that showcased the butterfly effect—how a tiny change could reshape the entire course of events that follow. The action moved fast, and it was in German, but there's so little dialogue that I could still easily follow the story. I couldn’t look away.

Before that, I'd only seen polished Hollywood movies and wobbly home videos. I had not seen something that was gritty, but still visually stunning; with a philosophical angle, but still a fun ride.

Run Lola Run made me start thinking differently about what I could do and what I could make and what a complete movie could look like. It’s the reason I started making independent films. 

I feel like I watched it on the big-screen TV when no one else was home. Or it was late and everyone else was in bed. Like no one was watching it with me. And I was like, do y’all know? Does anybody know about this?

And if you didn’t, you get another chance to go watch. Run Lola Run was re-released on its 25th anniversary last year.”

WATCH: RUN LOLA RUN (ROKU | APPLE)

I had to redact part of Adrienne's spotlight because of our "NO SPOILERS HERE" policy...we heard the feedback re: spoilers and we're listening. "We here for you."

(If you want to see the unredacted version...shoot us an email!)

Okay…I’m ready to go…Dara and Adrienne’s spotlights helped me hone in on what I want to share…

FILM: IKIRU (1952)

I've been thinking a lot about one of the art forms that I love the most, which is film, and reflecting on where my love of film comes from: my parents and particularly my dad. When I was growing up, he really helped me build a deep and broad love of film. And I was thinking through all the filmic experiences that we've had together, he and I…and the film experience that was the most meaningful was this one…

We were living in Boston at the time. And this probably would have been like in 2003, I think I was 16. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and they had a screening there. And they were screening this Japanese movie, Ikiru (To Live) directed by Akira Kurosawa. It’s about a middle-aged man who is forcefully confronted with his mortality and the choices he has made with his time on earth.

Watching this film…it really just helped drive home for me something that I had been struggling with in my own life…What is the point of my life? And why am I alive? And why did I survive cancer? And what am I now supposed to do with this…this second chance? How can I be normal with what I now know?

Ikiru shaped so much of how I move through the world and seek to live my answer to those questions in my day to day life. How I try to find purpose and be of service. 

So, Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa. That screening that I saw at the museum in Boston with my dad when I was 16. Definitely a critical part of my artistic origin story, and truly, my life origin story.

WATCH: IKIRU (HBO MAX | APPLE)

I'm just going to let Justin speak, cause I love his words...

PLAYWRIGHTS: AUGUST WILSON, SUZAN-LORI PARKS, LYNN NOTTAGE, STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS AMONGST OTHERS

“Art that shaped my origin story was really the prominent Black playwrights who were being produced in in New York in the 80s 90s 2000s, because I feel like that my household was not so much of a 'read this book' household, was more of a 'read this Playbill and let's go see this play as a family' household. And that was what shaped my idea of Blackness, that was what shaped my parents' idea of their own struggle and how to raise me.

My youngest memories of this kind of art were August Wilson and Zora Neale Hurston and Suzan-Lori Parks and Lynn Nottage. I was in my teens when I got into it because I was not into the theater growing up. I thought it was nerdy. I thought it was all musicals. I didn't know that there was plays where people like talk and live life. I thought it was all like...I don't know...Cats.

So I really wasn't into it. But then then one day my dad…I forgot, I think it was Stephen Adly Guirgis but around the time I got into Guirgis and that like gritty New York writing.

There was like August Wilson's Fences and Seven Guitars and all that stuff was off Broadway. My dad was friends with all the Black actors. So I would get to go see the show, discuss the show, go backstage and go see all the off Broadway stuff. There is this actor in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot that I loved. 

That was the art that really shaped my household and me. That's definitely where my artistic center lies in that medium.”

READ: FENCES (BUY | RENT FROM YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY)

BONUS! A VINTAGE RECOMMENDATION FROM DARA!

We are not new to this, we are, in fact, true to this.

Check out this vintage spotlight from Dara from 2013...back when we used to be on Facebook like that...

WATCH: O'GRADY (Internet Archive)

As always, thank you for reading and spending this time with us. We do not take it for granted and it is always a joy and a pleasure to curate art for you.

We appreciate you.

Remember, we want to hear from you! Our inbox awaits! We want to feature your art spotlights in our upcoming issues!

Send me your favorite art you experienced this year. It can be anything - a painting, an album, a photograph, play, art exhibition, fashion show...the possibilities are endless. Just something that made you feel this year.

Email me your picks at yo@dopearthere.com

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In parting, I wish you love, peace, and soul!

/ Andrew