Posoidan’s Weblog

A lost manuscript about Hollywood in the sixties reveals Bob Dylan’s take on the Mecca of cinema
Barry Feinstein, the rock ‘n’ roll photographer, was digging through his archives last year when he came across a long-forgotten bundle of pictures of Hollywood in the early 1960s. Tucked next to the photographs was a set of prose poems, written around the same time by an old friend: Bob Dylan.

“It was the lost manuscript,” Feinstein recalled, “Everybody forgot about it but me.” The poems were so lost that Dylan, when told of the discovery, had forgotten that he had written them. But after more than 40 years, the text and photographs will be published in November as Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript. It includes more than 75 of Feinstein’s photographs and 23 of Dylan’s prose poems.
The book was created in the 1960s when Feinstein was a 20-something “flunky” at a movie studio in Hollywood, eager to be part of the industry and having landed a job working for Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures. He roamed around movie sets, snapping pictures backstage and in dressing rooms, and during off hours he drove around with his camera in tow.

The pictures are sometimes dreary and sometimes tongue-in-cheek, shots of movie props and roadside stands, topless starlets and headless mannequins. After assembling the photographs, Feinstein thought of Dylan, whom he had met before on the East Coast. “I asked him as a joke, ‘Wanna come out and maybe write something about these photographs?’” Feinstein said. “So he came out and wrote some text.” Dylan, then in his 20s, examined the photographs and wrote his own prose poems to accompany them. The poems are by turns sparse, playful, witty and sarcastic. As the 11 Outlined Epitaphs begin: “I end up then/ in the early evenin’/ blindly punchin’ at the blind/ breathin’ heavy/ stutterin’/ an’ blowin’ up/ where t’ go?/ what is it that’s exactly wrong?”

After the photos and text were pulled together into a rough manuscript, Dylan and Feinstein took it to a publisher, Macmillan, where executives were afraid that the pictures would bring a lawsuit from the studio. So Feinstein kept it for more than four decades in his vast collection of photographs, books and other papers. He went on to develop a close collaboration with Dylan. He shot the cover photo for The Times They Are A-Changin’, and dozens of photos of Dylan throughout the years.
Christopher Ricks, a professor of the humanities at Boston University and the author of Dylan’s Visions of Sin, noted the contrast between the Hollywood book, in its black-and-white starkness, and Dylan’s most recent book, the collection of cheerful, brightly coloured paintings. “From the beginning, he’s been a mixed medium artist,” Ricks said.

Pop superstar Madonna is doing all she can to promote good friend Britney Spears who is trying to stage a comeback.

According to reports, Madonna gave fans a glimpse of the transformed Spears in a recent concert in Nice as part of her Sticky and Sweet tour. Madonna was seen strumming the guitar as an image of Spears loomed large in the background.

There are also reports that Spears will join Madonna in some of the concerts.

Tom cruise says Ben stiller is his inspiration.  Tom, who has a executive in Ben’s new comedy Tropic Thunder, loved working with the comic star and has praised his achievements in Hollywood.  He said, “One can’t fully appreciate what Ben has accomplished in acting, writing, directing, producing, and starring in a film like Tropic Thunder without recognising that any singel one of these functions alone is a full-time job.”

Tom, who worked with Ben on 2000 mockumentary Mission: Impossible, has also revealed he didn’t hesitate at the chance to team up with him again after Ben described the movie as his “dream project”.  The 46-years-old Top Gun star added to Men’s Vogue magazine, “To make a long story short, I read it, I loved it, and we started working on it.”  Meanwhile, Ben has praised Tom’s comic timing in Tropic Thunder.

Barrack Obama has found a great Hollywood pal in none other than George clooney, who is offering the presidential candidate expert advice on body language, presentation, and policy.  Sources have revealed that the superstar and the Democratic presumptive candidate have struck a close relationship, and are constantly in touch.  The duo is also said to be sharing views  on policy, with clooney asking obama to take a more “balanced” approach towards US-Israel relations.  However, one Democratic insider said that the unlikely friendship could prove to be “very risky” for Obama’s election chances.

“George is pro-palestinian.  And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally form Iraq if he wins,” the Telegraph quoted an insider as saying. “His hope of becoming America’s first black president depends heavily on winning over conservative voters and it would be perceived as a tool of a Hollywood Leftie, which is how they regard George”, the insider added.

Amy Winehouse’s husband wants her to leave London. Blake Fielder-Civil, who was sentenced to 27 months in jail last week for griveous bodily harm (GBH) and perverting the course of justice, believes the only way he and the trobled singer can quit drugs for good is to move away from the temptations that currently surround them. Amy’s father Mitch told Britian’s Sunday Times newspaper, “Blake totally gets it. He said to me, ‘We can’t carry on living in Camden. We need to move out to the country.’ If they do, they could have the most fantastic life together, with the full blessings of my family. Whatever happens, we won’t be where we are now in two years.” Mitch, who has previously disappeared proved of Blake’s influence on his daughter, says he doesn’t blame him for his daughter’s drug use.

Former England football great Gary Lineker’s girlfriend, Danielle Bux, has been signed by underwear Chain La Senza to model its “One Price Fits All” bra campaign. The 28-years-old model, according to The Sun , is being in the sexy scanties.” Former air stewardess turned lingerie model Bux and Lineker have been together for a year, have moved in together for a year, have moved in together and are currently hunting for a bigger house. Miss Bux, who has a daughter Ella, 6, from a previous relationship told Hello! magazine: “it’s too early to say whether we will have kids or get married. We’re just really happy together at the moment. We’re best friends. I don’t want to rush anything but you never know.”

Distressed madonna wants to fly to the moon in a bid t get away from her brother’s tell-all book memoir about her life, it has emerged. The “Material Girl” is desperate to hop onboard Richard Branson’s ‘SpaceShipTwo’ — the vehicle, which he says will turn space tourism into really by 2013. The singer can’t wait to pay 100,000 pounds for Branson’s epic trip, for it would put plenty of space between her and Christopher Ciccone’s revealtions. According to insiders, the singer told pal Gwyneth Paltrow that she’s shocked her family are not talking her side over the book.

“Madonna has been crying and is in real state over this. The feeling of betrayal is too much to bear,” News of the World quoted a source, as saying. “She can’t wait for Branson’s epic trip so she can get away from this mess,” the source added.

I was amazed the way Namitha performed her stunt sequence when she jumped from a 200-foot-tall building without a body double along with me,” said Sarath Kumar. A chase scene was recently shot on lead pair Sarath and Namitha for the flick 1977- The History Rewritten in Malaysia. “Despite the Hollywood stunt choreographer William Ong saying that he would use a dupe for the actress, Namitha chose to do it herself and to everyone’s surprise she got the shot right in the first take itself”, said the ad-filmmaker turned director Dinesh Kumar. Recently, a song Arabic kadal kummiyirukkum Neram was canned on Sarath Kumar and Namitha at AVM Studios with the sets reflecting the five elements of Mother Nature — Water, wind, sky, earth and fire, erected at a cost of Rs 40 lakhs.

After Ghajini, Suriya and Nayanthara will be coming together once again for an untitled flick, to be directed by K.S.Ravikumar. According to the industry sources, the movie will be produced by Udhayanidhi Stalin and will have music by none other than A.R.Rahman.

Shooting for the film is expected to begin once Suriya completes his movie Ayan with K.V.Anand and KSR finishes his film Jaggubhai with Sarath Kumar. The then flabby Nayanthara played only a brief role in Ghajini, and Asin hogged the limelight with her bubbly acting, which took her to dizzy heights in Bollywood.