Frank Falisi, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

In its fragments, its gradations and flirtations with the experimental ambience it’s quote-unquote about, Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground renders not a history of a band or even a moment but an alternative lens to re-collect (literally, re-touch) history.

When I Look in Your Eye

Frank Falisi·

Issue 110: 1987

Innerspace is bodily—hyper-bodily, even—and in the way it upends expectations surrounding size, it suggests similar chutes and ladders for emotion, identity, for existence.

Lord Help Me, I Can’t Change

Frank Falisi·

Issue 106: Paul Newman

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid frustrates me like family.

“Loose Quicksilver in a Nest of Cracks”

Frank Falisi·

Issue 104: Opulence

I am thinking of films as haunted houses. I am thinking of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.

To Where You Once Belonged

Frank Falisi·

Issue 103: Best of 2021

Are you humming the four bars of choonka-CHOONKAs that form the first measures of “Get Back” right now? It’s always in the air. It’s always waiting to be remembered.

God Bless You, Mr. Dubois

Frank Falisi·

Issue 100: Transcendence

When I recommend Hubie Halloween to you rabidly and over-zealously, when I hum with the sweet shocked shout of an Almond Joy with two almonds, what I mean is: at our most puerile and sensitive and fearful we are just as deserving of care as anybody else. Will you remember that?

“The Love You Send is Endless”: The Stupid Futurity of The History of the Seattle Mariners

Frank Falisi·

Issue 99: Desert Island Movies

The History of the Seattle Mariners is the first cultural object I’ve encountered that painstakingly constructs a specific, relatable history—that of a single baseball team—only to use that construct to then gesture towards the futility of completion and the locks storytelling puts on our collective subconscious.

“I Said ‘Zoo’ and You Came”

Frank Falisi·

Issue 97: Erotic Thrillers

The most erotic scene I’ve ever witnessed in a television show takes place in the Reptile House of the Bronx Zoo.

Whence We Unmoor No More

Frank Falisi·

Issue 95: 1971

The principal Homeric venture of Blue Water, White Death is that there is still worth in seeing the unseen things in the world. There is still worth in testifying to the idiot spirit of human inquiry.

B Who I Want To B

Frank Falisi·

Issue 93: Dynamic Duos

Bugs and Daffy aren’t all that opposite; Bugs and Daffy just want to be bodies. When collided, they have tremendous chemistry: one unflappable and unflappably committed to mischief, the other subject to seismic outcry at the first whiff of mischief, equally committed to dishing it back in full.

Even Though It’s Breaking: On Barbarism and Barbers

Frank Falisi·

Issue 90: Frames

To be bold, to dare to be stupid: this single frame in The Great Dictator is the most essential frame occurring in Charles Chaplin’s filmography. It is the most elegant and achy navigation out of comedy, straight through tragedy, and into something like the human struggle ever captured by camera.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) | Disney

Over the Edge, Over Again

Frank Falisi·

Issue 86: Dealer's Choice

Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is a startling experience in how incomprehension, grief, and love can reshape the world.