The other day found us lined up outside the Film Forum with our art house brethren David Byrne and that guy from The 40 Year Old Virgin (pushing the envelope, yo!) for a screening of the upcoming doc William Eggleston In The Real World.
Directed by Hamlet (er, the Ethan Hawke version) auteur Michael Almeryreda, the film follows Eggleston as he wanders around, slowly and surely snapping photos of the mundane, ignoble and ignored parts of everyday life that make ready fodder for his romantic, lush color photographs.
We love Eggelston for his art but the film does an incredible job of showing us the subtle brilliance of Eggleston’s personality - and somehow manages to depict his alcoholism with a sensitive and deft hand. The best part, though, was the fact that Eggleston himself was on hand for a post show Q&A, which essentially consisted of various geeked out audience members asking various geeked out questions, to which Eggelston responded with a very, very dry wit.
“What kind of camera do you use?”
“Whichever one is around.”
Seriously folks, we hope that when we get this old we can hone our life to the same simple happy-melancholic perfection.