Peter Bogdanovich
Saint Jack

_______________________________________________________________________________ Drive In Summer / Night Business.

(Change the Weather) Revolution.
What is the soul at the Equator? Nobody knows or can know. The soul could be wandering the streets at four in the morning and discover your best friend first flirting and then having an affair with a transsexual at an all-night street restaurant on the island of Singapura in 1974. Never seen a soul like that before.
Just about 150 Km above its axis. Why something of nothing from nothing?
Then what is the soul in Beau Fleuve, in Marina Bay, in Malaysia, in Sri Lanka, at the Equator?

Singapore is the side effect of a dream. Port of an army of saints. Singapore in this vision.
An apparent paradise, in reality, a grim and venomous metropolitan city. An open-air and in the light of the rising and setting sun brothel. Moon Gate. Photographs of a transformation taking place in the early '70s.
Day and night, old music. Air conditioners blasting, fans on, heat that hurts the heart, skyscrapers, sleaze, brothels, liquor, cigars and cigarettes, frenzied, tireless traffic. Exhaust pipes. Life is two pieces of crap served on a silver platter. Everyone is in disguise in the interzone, colonialists and former businessmen perpetually drunk, stupid, homophobic, and terrified of any nasty surprises. Veterans of the Korean War treated like sex, ruins of a drifting humanity, remnants of English colonization, old, sick, and dysfunctional, lost in exotic places tequila sunrise and boom boom, in a spectral and Mephistophelean city where it's easy to confuse and misinterpret a swastika on an evening gown. Vietnam in the background, the zenith of Singapore on the meridian of paradise. It's not Baltimore here, and you could already glimpse the end of the world. The law is the law, especially the one of that street. Triad Gang.
Singapore, whose name comes from a dazzling oversight. Southeast Asian seas, calls from Taipei, CIA agents, dreams of Sentosa, Indonesia, Indochina, goods packaged in a sweatshop, The Sound in Taiwan.

Hope at the Movies. (New World Pictures)

(Match the Permanent) Resurrection.
Corman produces, Theroux writes, Welles suggests, Hugh Hefner, Playboy boss, finances, the film critic, writer, actor, director Peter Bogdanovich directs. A sense of loss written beautifully and with elegance, devoid of prejudice, on the border between the New Hollywood of potential success, a mid-range circumstantial ethnography, and the most authentic world of auteur b-movies based on dialogues, for the time a nonconformist film with detailed and seductive sound. 1979.
Jack Flowers is of Italian origin, eats almost nothing, sleeps almost zero, he doesn't play squash, he drinks. Jack has a degree in literature, lived in Manila, but now no longer writes. No quiet retreat. In Singapore, in the only possible season, in summer it's not for vacation, but you do what you have to do. 24 hours.
Jack of Hearts. Ben Gazzara, who if you watch him here becomes and remains unforgettable for your eternity. Jack of Flowers. A shard of U.S. history. Middle age and hardships, but that seem the happiness of awareness. He, the city, and its inhabitants are physicality in a single organic movement, an office job as cover and to secure a visa, the legitimate desire to open a house of tolerance all for himself. People make love for so many stupid reasons. Why shouldn't money be one of them? And it's nothing, it's just money. Military and brothels have always gone hand in hand with gambling and business. Heroin, marijuana, Việt Cộng. But Jack is a saint who fits well in hell and the devils are all his friends, he greets all of them with sincere affection and all of them welcome him with heartfelt respect. Jack distributes his flowers to everyone. Down there he found a true friend who visits him once a year from Hong Kong. And there will be nothing left but ashes. Jack is rare, of unobtainable feminine kindness, Jack is a peripatetic humanist, loves his women and they love him, loves and therefore does not bind to exclusive feelings, and America does not exist, it's just a name given to an abstract idea. The regular sound of sirens from the port. Jack will be sought in Ceylon.

Then what is the soul? Certainly not something that can be said, nor can it be a confession, and surely the soul doesn't get spoiled, even if it's not convenient, even if it doesn't work, and a secret must remain a secret, and a man must remain a man, even if human behavior includes betrayal.
Heat, children crying, lovers whimpering, dogs barking, cats meowing, vans banging on pavements, neighborhood yelling, markets yelling even louder, horns honking, cars revving, mopeds skidding, motorcycles crashing, ambulances zooming, alarms blaring, fans blowing, garbage trucks bursting, heat to make a westerner go mad and canicule, and drought, sun pounding, night gushing fervor, noise, noise, noise, compressed air, air conditioning, silence, cicadas, silence, silence, silence, Port of Saints - Enough.
Quiet private furnishings, certain sparse entrance rooms, pineapples, lemons, cholesterol pills. Pollution, public health, strokes and fires from Sumatra, noon without shadows at the equator. Mystical fried heat in the eternal summer of the island of Singapura, sewers, the nadir of Singapore on the parallel of hell.
And everyone laughed, and everyone cried. Heat, more heat, tropical nights, humidity, sudden or constant rains, the sun's fire dripping, palm trees, moons sweating, night shop, sex toys, prostitution clubs, pieces of time, degradation, Hollywood Sunset in memoriam, Experimental Economic Literature.
Jean-Pierre Ruh, Robby Müller. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich: Saint Jack.