// THE IMAGINATION THIEF — Literary Fiction with a touch of Magical Realism and a dusting of Horror
Those New York ’Nineties—Reality by Rohan Quine
Those New York ’Nineties—
Reality by Rohan Quine
(fun and frolic)
This footage that I’ve called Those New York ’Nineties (residing in the top-menu called “Film & TV Acting”) is just for fun—a frisky little soufflé laying no claim to profundity, presented for moral instruction. My presence in all these 115 items of footage probably adds up to something like one full B-movie’s worth of performance in total. A general introduction and an insufficient apology for Those New York ’Nineties as a whole is here. (See also my pages at the Internet Movie Database and the Oz TV Wiki.)
Reality 1. A brief Manhattan roofscape shoot at dawn—a sweet little whim suggested by my friend Edward Vilga because he had an unused fragment of old Super-8 film that he felt it would be a shame to leave unexposed. So up that stairwell we headed at a painfully early hour of the morning, to his Soho rooftop above Sixth Avenue. Those classic rooftop water-tank silhouettes in the distance, on soft-toned black-and-white celluloid… (36”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 8. In the Times Square dusk, shot by Wayne: just wandering the streets and the subways that feel like the Centre of the World. (2’21”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 32. “Mallucinations”—me processed and reprocessed on screen, through the inspired creativity and unfailingly generous labours of my dear friend Mal, by means of an arcane and unrepeatably Malefic conjuration of analogue data cables that coiled like alien spaghetti behind the TV set at 400 East Ninth Street above the south-east corner of First Avenue, all dusted with that fine seasoning of dead roaches and stray nickels and lost crumbs of controlled substances that always accumulate on wooden floors behind TVs in old East Village apartments, however often one may flit about with the feather-duster and one’s little hoover-nozzle for just such awkward corners… (3’59”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 12. At the Perry Street apartment, including Mal’s Welsh-hat-and-flying-penis routine—always a hit at weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs. (2’05”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 30. Samantha Peterson making a great job of my Angeldemonfish tattoo design (still swimming there on the right arm), shot by Mal. (2’53”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 25. A party at my second apartment, 126 East Fourth Street, with DJing by Mal and a very early appearance by Cradeaux. (54”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 14. A spontaneous performance comprising equal parts ham and cheese, involving lip-syncs, smoke, light-projections and undoubtedly alcohol or grass all around, shot by whoever was still sober enough to hold the camera—silly fun times and many golden happy memories of Mal and Kim’s apartment, 99 Perry Street, between Bleecker and Hudson, Greenwich Village. (22”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 3. Just the back courtyard at Perry Street, shot by Mal, with the sounds of falling rain, thunder and those familiar New York police-car sirens wailing in the distance: nothing more and nothing less. (14”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 7 & 5. Nearing Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road. Most people I knew would have seen this train’s journey in three easy categories, if they’d thought about it at all: (1) its origin in obscure and deathly Long Island suburbs where people’s grandmothers lived; (2) its trundle through Queens, which was of course one of NYC’s five boroughs and therefore technically in the First World, but still a huge suburbia in many ways, let’s admit it (and on the few times they’d been there for the occasional party, most of the streets were called by some ridiculously confusing number system lacking any reliable street-grid); and finally (3) a wake-up during the downbeat glamour of this industrial waterfront section of Queens near the East River (shot by Wayne), all leading up to arrival in the place where life can finally begin, on that island with the skyscrapers … you know the one. (1’08”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 31. Me modelling “X’ray V’zyn” fashion designs by Tania Sterl, then “Space Girl” fashion designs by Pamela Thompson, on the catwalk with various reprobates at Alternative Fashion Week, shot in Webster Hall by hands unknown. (2’30”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 29. Tattoo artist Samantha Peterson in Chelsea, making a great job of my Voguing Egyptian Boys design (still looking nicely crisp-edged on the left arm there), shot by Wayne: two silhouetted boys in profile, as from the tomb-walls of an Egyptian pharaoh’s catamite, in mirror-image of each other; self-portraits, of course… (1’22”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 11. A sensitive performance, or perhaps just a bit of a meal, comprising the eating of an apple, probably because I’d just realised I forgotten to eat anything for a day or two—an unplanned little camera jaunt with my friend Koji when I visited him in Greenpoint. Faded Brooklyn streets and abandoned buildings in nearby McCarren Park, and by the look of it a hang-over. (2’11”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 22. Oops—trashed on the cooking-sherry already, re-videoed on Perry Street yet again and reciting Coleridge into the face of the darkness (and it was only 11 in the morning). (1’19”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Reality 24. Channelling odd characters for a moment, during an unrepeated wander into a small bare room in a briefly vacant apartment above Mal the cameraman’s. (1’32”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
And in the YouTube playlist “Those New York ’Nineties—Reality”: Those New York ‘Nineties Montage Video: Intro and Stills, Reality 1, 8, 32, 12, 15, 17, 4, 2, 28, 35, 18, 30, 20, 13, 23, 25, 9, 14, 3, 7 & 5, 31, 16, 29, 11, 10, 22, 24 and 36. (If playback of any of these videos looks at all fuzzy on YouTube, then you can quickly and easily adjust the YouTube video-player’s playback “Quality” setting, by doing the following: (1) if you’re on a mobile device, first touch the video image, then touch the three-dots symbol that appears in the top-right corner of the player, touch “Quality” and choose “1080p” (or the highest other setting available on your device, e.g. “720p”); or (2) if you’re on a laptop/desktop device, click the cog symbol on the lower edge of the video-player, click “Quality” and choose “1080p” (or the highest other setting available on your device, e.g. “720p”).)
If you’ve enjoyed any of these tales, then my warm appreciation for leaving a quick rating or just a handful of words of feedback on it, at the online retailer it came from. If you are able to do so, then this really would help me enormously, so very many thanks! 🙂
Film and TV Acting: Those New York ’Nineties
Films inside ebook of novel “The Imagination Thief”