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HitchCult: A Movie, a Manifesto & More by Doniphan Blair
This is a video-rich article, created in tandem with "Finding the Female" (4 1/2 minutes, 2013), by Doniphan Blair and Davell Swan, which can be viewed below.
The Movie: Finding the Female
The Hitchcock Manifesto
by the HitchCult
1. Alfred Hitchcock is not the Master of Suspense but simply The Master.
2. The Master epitomizes the Renaissance Man in his integration of all cinema styles and genres, including inventing a few of his own, as well as art, movement, music, poetry, narrative and iconography.
3. All post-1930 fiction film and television are indebted to The Master.
4. The Master is paradoxical. As with all deities, his kindness and cruelty was random.
5. Although The Master's investigation of evil in the context of romantic relations accesses the romantic paradigm through its underbelly, within which he himself was trapped, about the final triumph of good, The Master remained romantic.
6. It is miraculous that despite The Master's prodigious intake of foodstuffs and drink, almost completely sans exercise, he lived long enough to produce an unprecedented quantitative and qualitative body of work: over 50 films and 300 television shows.
7. The Master tops but ties into our pantheon of the most significant not only cinema but all artists of the 20th century.
HitchCult's Davell Swan and Kim Weller deliver their manifesto to CIneSource last month. photo: D. Blair
HitchCult: Projects and Plans
A year ago, CineSource published "The Hitchcock Issue", a 13-article compendium with contributions from authors as far flung as New Zealand and New York, but also Berkeley, where we met with the daughter of François Truffaut, Laura, and learned about life growing up in the household of a Hitchcock disciple, see "The Truffauts on Hitchcock".
The feature article of that issue, "My Day with the HitchCult", covered a group of Hitchcock fanatics, cinema classicists and film fetishists (they still show 16mm films and recently acquired a 35mm projector) who gather regularly at a private San Francisco screening room to show films, parse their meanings and imbibe intoxicants.
The HitchCulters, it turns out, have been hard at work. In addition to their four minute short, "Finding the Female" (see above), concerning The Master's very troubled but nevertheless profound romantic relationship with women, and their manifesto, they have gone public. Their "AphrodisiaCriminality" event, held at their screening room in April, concerned Hitchcock's connecting of crime and sex and featured a screening of "To Catch a Thief" (1954).
"We feel that by understanding the underpinnings of The Master, we can tease out the 'illitimable wonts' through which to view a Hitchcock production," Davell Swan recently told me, in his oddly affected speech. Despite the theme of "Finding the Female", that women rule, Swan continues to organize the HitchCult while paramour Kim Weller remains the power behind the throne.
"Even those listed as 'disbelievers' are willing to agree that each subsequent viewing [of a Hitchcock masterwork] uncovers valuable new interpretations of overlooked coded expression or other information."
The HitchCulters give an enthusiastic response to a sneak preview of 'Finding the Female'. photo: D. Blair
"This comprises yet another 'miracle' regarding the filmmaker," he continued. "Imagine that you, yourself, are a director, within the so-called Hollywood Studio System. And that even when filming your own production, you are a major stockholder of the company, as Hitchy was with Universal. And that you have a very finite amount of not only money but time to invest in the project."
"How could you possibly—within this paradigm—create countless, nearly inexhaustible cinematic levels, that would continue to appear after five, ten, fifteen or many more viewings?"
"The super-human genius necessary to achieve this, over more than fifty filmic projects, including the British work, is nearly unfathomable!" Davell exclaimed. "Indeed, I believe that twenty, thirty, even sixty years on, new aspects of Hitchcock flicks will continue to be uncovered by the faithful."
"Because cinema, particularly that of Alfred Hitchcock, contains most or all of the other arts," Davell stentoriously stated, "It must perforce be critiqued via a unique and brand spanking-new method"
To this end, he intends to continue writing, see this issue's "Hitchcock’s Suave Villains", and organizing screenings and events.
His initial public effort, "AphrodisiaCriminality One" screened "Marnie" (1964) as well as "To Catch A Thief", and featured a discussion of "Family Plot" (1974) along with the nature of sensual criminality. There was also a performance by musician and guitar maker, Ronni Guitar, and Swan, riffing on various Hitchcock scenes. Posters, books and collectibles were on display and "Hitchcocktails" available.
Swan and Weller said that the event was a useful dry run and they are planning "AphrodesiaCriminality Two", which will take place this summer.
The showing of 'To Catch a Thief' (1956) was followed by a spoken-word performance by Swan, Ronni Guitar and Kim Weller. photo: D. Blair
"We barley skimmed the surface of The Master's deeply erotic, criminally-connected preoccupations in 'To Catch a Thief', 'Family Plot' and 'Marnie'," Weller said with a lascivious twinkle, adding. "Not to overlook those themes, to a lesser degree, in many of his other projects."
After meeting many times with the HitchCulters, I have come away with the impression that eroticism is at the heart of their "sacraments," even though in "Finding the Female" they claim to practice "Paradox Meditation": grunting loudly while covering and uncovering one's ears.
Given the many rumors and verified stories about Hitchcock's libidinous quirks and tragic obsessions, it would seem that any congregation worshipping him would inevitably interact romantically and erotically. I can assure you, dear reader, that CineSource will research this intriguing possibility to its natural consumation.
The Back Story: How HitchCult Came to Be
Truth be told, if you haven't already guessed, the article "My Day with the HitchCult" was CineSource's first venture into fiction, a little like Netflix's and Amazon's venture into content creation.
Yes, there is a screening room with a bar and some of its events are organized by Davell Swan, a CineSource writer obsessed with Hitchcock; and, yes, he does have a girlfriend named Kim as well as some friends and fans who join with them. (Full disclosure: Davell Swan also goes by the name "Dog" and was my across-the-hall neighbor for a few years.) But that's not quite how we told it.
Nevertheless, Swan is a prescient Hitchcock pioneer, as well as media maven, cultural anthropologist and longtime, local spoken-word artist. In fact, he started his four-part "Why Me: An Investigation of Hitchcock's Vertigo" in November 2011, well before Sight and Sound published the critics poll proclaiming it the "greatest film of all time," in August 2012, and he suggested and partnered with us on the Hitchcock Issue.
To dramatize our Hitchcock interests, HitchCult was concocted, the name coming from Weller, a fine artist as well as independent (from Swan) Hitchcock enthusiast. It was not such a leap: they were certainly full-blown Hitchcock fanatics and, when Swan moved from across my hall in 1997, he took up in a three-floor building in San Francisco's South of Market district, part of which was built into a nice screening room where they show Hitchcock.
The HitchCulters want you to not only join their film viewing/discussion group but to make the world safe for more scintillating cinema by Lynch, Antonioni and perhaps even themselves. photo: D. Blair
Indeed, starting HitchCult seemed eminently logical since A) Hitchcock was a great fabricator and joker and would have heartily approved, and B) it fit CineSource's assignment, as a publication about Northern California media, to promote filmmaking in San Francisco and the city's use as a symbol.
Although iconizing San Francisco was almost as old as the city itself, it reached its heyday in the 1950s, when almost a half of all Noirs were set there, albeit filmed in Los Angeles, which was too sunny and spread out to provide the needed urban and foggy malevolence. That the city named after St. Francis was a boutique town soon to become the world's flower power capital was irrelevant.
In CineSource, we have periodically discussed the idea of place as "first actor," Alain Resnais' notion, magnificently manifested in "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961). In a nutshell, you start with architecture and then place your characters and stories in it.
Hitchcock also advocated this, setting the climax of "Blackmail" (1929) at the British Museum and "North by North-West" at Mt. Rushmore. He finally came up to film in San Francisco, after living in Los Angeles for 15 years, when he wanted to make a Noir so advanced it blasted right through the Surrealism, he adored in his youth, to Psychedelia, predicting the hippies, albeit on a bad trip, while predicating them by almost a decade.
Hence, the idea of a HitchCult, which studied his oeuvre and pilgrimaged to his "Vertigo" locations, was so good that, if one didn't already exist, it had to be invented. With this in mind, Swan, Weller and I wrote "My Day with the HitchCult", shot photos at various "Vertigo" locations to illustrate it and even took some video.
Although the video was rather amateurish and consisted of just a few quickly concocted scenes, which didn't even relate to the photos, which, in turn, were designed to illustrate the original article, the whole mishigas gradually grew on us. Eventually, we felt compelled to compose yet a fourth narrative, do some voice-overs and add a smokin' hot jazz track, by yet another old friend, Charles Thomas, composer, band leader, bass player and native San Franciscan (Fillmore District).
In this manner, HitchCult was born and continues to grow in leaps and bounds and projects and membership.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, filmmaker, graphic designer and fine artist living in Oakland and he can be reached .