On Friday July 3 we’ll be hosting a screening and discussion of the movie “Police Beat.”
At this screening of Police Beat, the film’s screenwriter, Charles Mudede, will speak with urban theorist Thomas Sieverts, author of Zwischenstadt, and writer Matthew Stadler about the new shapes of cities and the ways that film can make them legible.
The discussion is part of a great series of events going on in the city called “Suddenly.”
Seattle has been called a “picaresque city” because its geography is so episodic, an archipelago of hills divided by water and dominated by scenic vistas that stun us into forgetting. Z the peripatetic bike-cop hero of Police Beat is content to drift across this fragmented sequence of views, witnessing the petty humiliations and violent assaults that trigger 911 calls to the police. He is polite, but always looking outward, his mind on the mountains, somewhere west or east of here, and his absent girlfriend, gone camping with another man.
What kind of city is this? It cannot be mapped, so it must be filmed. In Police Beat, Seattle’s fractured landscapes are remixed and made sensible by Z’s path through them.
To watch the film and join the discussion, be at the Film Forum on Friday at 1pm. Tickets are just $7 and available at the door.
In 1983, outside of the Los Angeles location shooting of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, interviewers asked many among the throngs of young fans who’d shown up why they liked Michael Jackson so much. For the most part, the girls thought he was dreamy and the guys though he was super cool. Of course all of them praised his dancing. But I think one young boy said it best, and simplest: “I like the way he pops.” The kid was referring to the sharp and energetic movements in his dancing, and using a term from the break dancing craze that was just starting catch fire around the country. But I think his simple statement is so right on a larger level. In terms of both his singing and his dancing over four decades, what set Michael Jackson apart from the rest is his “popping”- from his screeches and moans to his kicks and glides. Like his childhood idol James Brown, Jackson’s whole body- his whole being- WAS the music. Besides the Godfather of Soul, one would be hard pressed to name another entertainer who committed half as much of himself to every performance and presentation. And it showed- it popped. That’s why the Jackson 5, fronted by a 11-year old Michael, was a phenomenon right out of the gate in the late 60s (their first four singles on Motown were all smash hits). And it’s why his solo career, a decade later when he was a young adult, changed popular music forever (1979’s ‘Off The Wall’ generated more top 10 hits than any other album before it, and you know 1982’s ‘Thriller’ topped that record by a mile.) Its why, when he busted out the moonwalk during a live TV performance of ‘Billie Jean’ in 1983, the whole world went completely silent for a moment before letting out a scream. (After seeing that TV special, Fred Astaire called him personally to praise his dancing.) And its why the world has memorized every move in his classic videos and still no one can pull them off like Michael. The guy just completely embodied his music, or vice versa. It was the magic of his delivery that moved us. When they call him the “King of Pop,” it doesn’t mean popular music so much to me as it signifies just how electrically charged Michael was when he was doing his thing, how much he popped out from the mundane, and how powerfully his music popped us all out of our lives and onto the dancefloor.
