words and pictures

last night we went to this really interesting event at ucla, called visible and invisible drawings, an evening with chris ware and ira glass. chris ware does the amazing acme novelty library, featuring the tragic tale of jimmy corrigan, all done in a beautifully detailed and graphically retro style, and ira glass is the host and producer of the fantastic weekly radio show this american life. this was a live event where they collaborated together, each presenting the story simultaneously using their own talents.

they profiled this guy in chicago whose passion in life, ever since he was a kid, was to preserve historical buildings, especially those of louis sullivan. louis sullivan helped usher in the chicago style of architecture and helped rebuild chicago after the great fire, as well as helping to define the look of modern skyscrapers. he built buildings with wonderfully lush and organic ornamentation, but which were being torn down in favor of the more traditional neoclassical style that had become more popular in the second half of the 20th century.

it was a very cool performance, where ira sat at a mixing board essentially doing his show live, working in the spoken bits and his live narration with the music, and chris projected his drawings to accompany the story as it was being read in real-time. like they said, it was state of the art entertainment of 1850, as if you watched a magic projection lantern show being narrated by mark twain.

it was a lot of fun, as was their discussion afterwards, where they told about how they made the show and their perspectives in creating their individual parts. i think that chris’ portion was more interesting, as it was more illuminating to the story itself, where ira got a little too meta, and talked about the challenges in making the story and how it differed from a normal radio show. which would have been great had i been in a broadcast journalism class, but i wasn’t.

the best part was that hmc not only came and saw it with me, but actually enjoyed it, which was surprising, her not being a chris ware fan (makes her sad and she thinks it’s a little creepy) and also hating talking on the radio. maybe it just needs to be live?

the funny thing is that we ended up at the same event as jack black two nights in a row, as he was at the laker game last night and at this event as well. when, oh when will he stop stalking us?

Posted at April 11, 2004 8:41 AM