An documentary-in-the-making by Bari Pearlman about the notorious Murder Inc. gangster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter - her grandfather's first cousin.
So after I left my incredible 5-month residency on Governors Island last summer, followed by yet another nurturing August at Yaddo, I thought "Well, that's it then...back to the corner of my cramped apartment to make a film." But what can I say, I'm a lucky girl, and instead I have now landed at a wonderful shared artists' studio space in Dumbo. I've got the rasp of oil paint in my nose and throat and burning in my eyes courtesy of some fellow studio occupants (one is madly stapling away at a canvas just next to me), and indeed I'm back in the saddle making my film. .JPG)
At the moment, I'm looking out the window at the top of the Brooklyn Bridge as it peeks out through the base of the Manhattan Bridge. If I crane my neck out of one of the picture windows just right, I think I can actually see my old digs on Governors Island....okay, maybe not, but hell, it sure feels like it. In any event, I seem to be managing to circle the Lower East Side of Lepke's childhood before he became the Brooklyn mob lord he was. And though his view from his adopted Brownsville wouldn't quite be as picturesque as this, this feels just right for my work of visualizing him walking and talking his way from birth to the electric chair. Here we go loopty loo.
My Governors Island residency is coming to a close, so this weekend is your last chance to visit me in my studio and see LOOKING FOR LEPKE in progress...here's photos from the first event in May. [This time around, you'll also get to sample some of the film that I've been editing together.]
This is where I subsequently spent a celluloid-soaked 8 hours on my old friend the Steenbeck and his buddy the 3/4" Umatic deck, sifting through all sorts of newsreel footage from the 1930s and 1940s, sporting the requisite white cotton gloves. I found some gems depicting the beginning of WW2, the Dewey-FDR showdown, and of course the proclamation of the end of Lepke, ultimately getting through only a handful of the 60 films I wanted to, but hey, that's not bad for a novice. Never made it to the floor with the photos, nor the extensive textual collection, but left there satisfied with the beginnings of accomplishment.
And so back to work....the heat has broken and there's been a delicious breeze and perfect sunshine on the island all week, which has been less than inspirational for studio work, but great for exploratory walks. Yet the show must go on and work I have. Spent the better part of the week getting into the latest theories on the subject of psychopaths and the nature-nurture question, and have reached out to a few of the leading researchers in the field. Should be meeting one of them this weekend!
anticipated first Skype conversation with the other member of my new "band", that is Gurrah Shapiro's great nephew. We had a lot of fun comparing notes, which were surprisingly similar when it came to family cover-ups of our sordid relations. Here he is peeking out from his initial disguise as his "Uncle Jack". It was the start of a beautiful friendship, though it left me with very profound thoughts about how what goes around come around. Not that we're gonna be following in our ancestors' footsteps, but just how worlds collide over and over again...
