John Maxwell and Peter Blind:
A Conversation Through the Mail
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m obsessed with everything this book is about-art, mail, the lost art of communication, personal sacrifice and all points in between. I love the internet as much as the next guy, but is it just me or do you sometimes feel that little pang that says something achingly important got lost along the way? I’m talking about the responsibility of correspondence and the extra thrill that comes with knowing someone took the time, put something inside an envelope, licked it, closed it, figured out exactly how much the postal service was charging for a stamp this month, put the stamp on the letter package, placed it inside a mailbox and invested in the private hope of a reply. It’s too easy to type a password and listen to a digital yay or nay. I’m talking about mystery and desire here, and the small doodle that someone might put on the back of an envelope. Isn’t this one of the biggest small joys in life? I could clearly go on about this… and if you don’t feel that way, that’s fine, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. This brilliant book is still a revelation that you can’t get out of your mind.
Before I introduce you to the creators, allow me a small detour. When I was lucky enough to start directing my own scripts, I was quickly struck by an important fact. A movie is a collection of a thousand-maybe its closer to a million-small details. Check out a movie you love, very closely. The details are all there, though you might not notice them immediately. Look at how a table is set in the background. What’s on the wall? See that crazy design on the small overhead fan circling in the background? These are the details that make up the world and even more importantly the feeling a movie, and those details are often just as important as anything the actors are saying or doing.
Movie details are a personal statement, but they’re not solely the work of the director. The details are often born in the heart of your collaborators, and along those lines, I never enjoyed directing as much as when I began to work closely on the visuals with my friend and production designer, Clay Griffith, and an artist he worked with who brought worlds of personal detail to the movies I made. His name is John Maxwell, and he’s notable for the following facts and more. He collects and assembles those real-life details within scenes. He does so with meticulous personal passion and a fiercely artistic soul. His visual touch captures the way life really looks, and brings poetry to moving pictures. Plus he has the calming demeanor of a country doctor, and somehow also looks like the seventh member of Rod Stewart and the Faces. John Maxwell has painted and embroidered some of the great visual portraits of the last couple decades, just look him up on the IMDB sometime. But enough about his mastery of details. This is a book about how Maxwell learned to use the US Mail in a very creative and intoxicating way.
Almost thirty years ago, John met an artist in Northern California, a blazingly talented gentleman named Peter Blind. They casually agreed to correspond through the mail, and so began an epic dialogue. They rarely met or spoke to each other in the usual mundane ways. This was a communication that continued in portraits, photos, poetry, visuals, splotches, postcards, and packages. The Correspondence pulsed through seasons, years, life-changing events, worldwide tragedies, happiness, sadness, indifference and just plain giddiness. The letters and packages filled boxes, crates, lived in basements, attics, and ultimately became one of the true constants in both these artists’ lives. When John Maxwell casually showed me a collection of the material just last month, I knew and he knew and now you’ll know, it was time to share it. You’re holding just a bit of it, right now, lovingly captured, vividly protected over the years and waiting to breathe life outside of those boxes in the form of this book.
So get lost in the details, and if it moves you the way it moved me put a little something on a postcard or in a letter, and send it to John or Peter…or somebody you know and love…or barely know and barely love…hell, send something to somebody you dislike intensely…and keep the chain going. It’s the biggest little secret in the world. Its fun to create and even more fun to lick that envelope, and put it in the mail with a little bit of hope and desire.
So thanks for your work Peter, and thanks John. John. I’ll see you at work on Monday. I know I told you all this personally, but it sure was fun to write it all down. In fact, maybe I’ll send this to you in an envelope, via the actual honest-to-goodness mail. Feel free to send me something back…
Love,
Cameron Crowe
|