#guy maddin

Al Lewis, April 30, 1923 – February 3, 2006.

i haven't seen any discussion of this yet but I think it's a super interesting element of TVL that isn't something directly connected to Anne Rice.

The person doing the voice over for "The Failures" ("you're listening to The Failures" etc) is Canadian artist and filmmaker Guy Maddin! I won't pretend to be an expert on all his work (i'd like to see more of it!) but I have seen his "documentary" My Winnipeg.

My Winnipeg is a collection of true-ish stories where the main character Guy Maddin (played by an actor) recounts his own life growing up in Winnipeg (reenactments by actors) as he tries and fails to leave his hometown. The movie cuts between personal stories to reenacted histories about Winnipeg (from somewhat real to actively false stories) to like, long, descriptive monologues about the real-life destruction of historical Winnipeg buildings.

I hope its obvious from my very simple summary of the movie that the overall seasonal structure of TVL is very similar in themes of unreliable narrators, what stories are true vs feel true vs are just lies, how people are remembered, and how an ostensibly "true" record of events can ever be considered unbiased.

Guy Maddin is a really cool artist and also made a Dracula movie (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary) which is an recording of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of Dracula, shot like a (somewhat) traditional film and also with the hottest Dracula.

Anyway, I went "GUY MADDIN??!" beyonce-meme-style, when I saw his name in the credits.