on working with some old timers...

Walt Curtis is a writer. The peckerneck poet of Portland. He wrote Mala Noche in the late seventies which Gus turned into a feature film, his breakout film. I met Walt for the first time yesterday. He insisted we'd met before-

"Oh yes Geronimo, yes yes, we met before, where was that we met, down at the convention? Oh no, satyricon, oh no, it was your brother that I met yes, must've been your brother. No matter. So Geronimo you've had a calm life? No addictions? Never been in jail? Oh, okay so you've been in jail well I can remember, yes, you're 23, 24? Yes I can remember. Cigarettes and beer at the bar yes I can remember. They don't like me guessin their ages but I tell people anyways, even if I can tell they don't like it. Whoa! This is a funky hotel. I couldn't live here, no, if they kept me here I'd go vomitting across the carpet, ha, oh no, I'm kidding I'm kidding..."

He is sixty eight years old but his soul is younger than mine. If it weren't for his crazy halo of white hair fraying outwards like solar flares from his liver spotted planet of a head he'd be just like the eccentric cats I meet around Portland, young and intelligent and completely insane but in touch with something the average schmoe isn't. I lead him to the hotel room where we're shooting this thing. The ones who lived through the seventies in Portland all cry out (how long has is been!) and hug eachother as I'm entering. John Cambell. Brian Lindstrum. These guys are sort of it as far as the film scene in Portland goes. There are niches sure, but Gus blazed a trail and these guys were his backup; they've built careers off connectivity and mutual support and cross promotion. They talk about Mala Noche and Satyircon and "the lawn," and it's clear that the Portland they're talking about doesn't exist anymore, the election of Reagan was the end of an epoch, we triple exers missed out, no more flipping a downtown hotel room for two bucks a night, no more parties on the lawn, NorthWest has transformed into something else completely.

Walt begins to laugh at his own jokes but quickly stops himself, looking around the room apolegetically. He is quite drunk. His interview goes strangly. Brian keeps looking down to the monitor because Walk keeps dipping his head, eyes closed as he speaks, sometimes building into a crescendo of words and emphatically exploding forward wagging his wrinkled fingers at the camera, making himself an altogether terrible interviewee. I heard someone saying that he was too strongly influenced by Buckowski in his style. And someone else said he hasn't changed a lick in forty years. That he's an alcoholic. That he's the most vicious queer in four states. That he's in the throws of dementia. I admire him. I pity him. But I know it makes no difference. The guy's a fucking poet.