I think Eyes Wide Shut was ultimately a 'failure' but a very interesting failure. Fascinating for the complete LACK of sexual chemistry between the real life couple Cruise & Kidman.
I like the sinister uneasy feel of the whole film. Something just 'wrong' about it, in a good way
It opened in London September 1999, one of those times of my life I regard as a real ‘crucible’. Times when the fires & pressure were building up to a fever pitch, and in that great pot new things could be forged. I was just a few weeks away from travelling to Europe for the first time in my life, that first ‘Grand Tour’ that would lay down the markers for the whole rest of my life to come (a trip detailed in my book AUTISMUS (1999-2001). On that first Grand Tour I would go to Brussels, then Munich, then Vienna, then Berlin, and it was those four ‘Cities of the Autumn Stars’ as I called them (after the Michael Moorcock book of that name) forever after that I would return to again & again & again in the years that followed, and pretty much only them.
My excitement & tension in those weeks leading up to that journey was extreme and so anything else that came into my life at that time left a huge mark, like with a branding iron. So along comes Eyes Wide Shut. It will always be part of my history now, almost feels like part of that first journey to Europe. I started the journey months before I actually physically set off.
I am someone OBSESSED with my own personal history. Everything I write is a very conscious effort to record my time on this Earth as I am obsessed with leaving a record behind for posterity, and always conscious that every day may be my last, so I must hurry. That is why I publish all my books before I am really satisfied with them, I just need to get them out there in case I drop dead the next day (God forbid). Once published I can then keep reading them, making changes, uploading the changes ad infinitum. My books are never finished. They go on blooming & blossoming even after initial publication. Blooming, Blossoming, pruning too. Adding stuff, cutting stuff. An Ernst Graf book is never finished.
I am great believer in the 'crucible' idea of one's own life. 1999 was absolutely a crucible time in my life, whereas 2000, 2001, 2002 absolutely were not. 2003 was a crucible and so was 2004, but then 2005 absolutely was not, and so on.
I have also observed the seven-year cycle in my life, the 'seven year itches' when I need to start a new era. In 1992 I went to Soho for the first time, a strip club for the first time & therefore saw a naked woman for the first time, and began my 'career in infamy', and from that moment on Soho became absolute centre of my life.
In 1999 I travelled to Europe for the first time and from that moment on Europe became absolute centre of my life.
In 2006 I fell in love with a dancer at the Flying Scotsman strip pub in King's Cross and from that moment the Flying Scotsman became absolute centre of my life.
In 2013 we split up and I became single again and commenced a second 'Golden Age' of solo travelling to Europe.
In 2020 Chinese Flu came.
