[Frameworks] Robert Nelson

[Mark Toscano]

Can't really express at
all how very sad I am to report that Robert Nelson has died.  He was
81.  He had been diagnosed with terminal
cancer about a year ago, and had decided to not receive treatment, to go out in
his own way, as he could only do, as Chick Strand had decided to do before him.
 
All things considered, Bob
was doing pretty well all year, actually.  He had moments, sometimes days, of fatigue and feeling kind of lousy,
but had plenty of good days too.  I last
spoke to him about a week ago and we talked about meeting up soon.  He sounded great, and was as sharp as ever.  So when I got the call from Wiley today, the
news was a bit of a shock to me, as Bob had still seemed so vital and alive a
week before.
 
He hadn’t been taking
any medication or treatment beyond the herbal kind, and had continued to live
on his own in the mountains in the small house he built in gorgeous Mendocino
County.  An inimitably homespun and
offhand philosopher, he would say things to me like, “what the hell, I’ve had a
good run.”  I made him some CDs to check
out a few months ago, and after he’d listened to and enjoyed them a few times
he unexpectedly sent them back, saying “they were really good, I just don’t
want to accumulate any more shit.”
 
Bob has easily been one
of the most important people in my life, a massive source of influence,
inspiration, support, friendship, and good company for the past ten years.  His films are still huge for me. and will be
til I die.  
 
I sought him out in 2001
when I worked at Canyon Cinema.  I had
seen Bleu Shut and Hot Leatherette, and they had both knocked me out,
especially Bleu Shut.  At the time, my
friend Martha was a preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in L.A., and
she and I concocted a proposal for Bob and the Academy to start getting his filmography
preserved, film by film.  After he
answered my initial letter, Bob and I had exchanged a few more letters (he was
a great letter-writer) without yet meeting.  One day without warning, he just strolled into the Canyon office on
Third.  Dominic hadn’t seen him in a few
years at least, and said, almost in shock, “…Well hi, Bob!”  Bob and I met, had lunch and talked about the
archiving thing, and a deal was hatched.  He was still very skeptical about the value of his work and his own
desire for people to even see the films, but a project at the Academy was
worked out, and Martha preserved The Off-Handed Jape and Deep Westurn right
away, with Bob still not really wanting the films to see the light of day.  I took over when I was hired to replace her
in ’03, when she left to work in Tanzania, and have worked on a bunch of ‘em
since then.  
 
Over the years, a
certain visceral block about his films, a desire to destroy many of them or at
least keep them withdrawn from view, loosened and relented, in some cases title
by title.  I worked on him to do
screenings, and though he wouldn’t initially appear in person, he approved the
occasional showing of individual films starting in late 2003.  In 2004, with Craig Baldwin’s help, we were
able to do a 3-day retrospective at Other Cinema, with Bob in person, which
marked a big change in his attitude about the work.  The voluminous positive feedback from
audiences I was able to pass on encouraged him more and more to lighten up
about it all.  He started making
appearances, including some brilliant ones at Oberhausen, Vienna, and
elsewhere.  He even started working on
several new films (left uncompleted) in 2007 or so, one of which was a
collaboration we discussed at length, and which I hope I can actually complete
now.
 
I was always thrilled to
pass word along to him about how much one or more of his films had influenced
someone I’d met, because by the 1990s, he had gotten really apathetic about a
lot of them.  But the interest in his
films over the past ten years was something he really enjoyed, and he came
around to re-embracing many of his own films.  (Some of them remained to him nausea-inducing failures, though.  Mention What Do You Talk About? or The Beard,
and he would groan.)  He was thrilled his
work still resonated with people, or just made them laugh.  Sometimes younger filmmakers would track him
down and send him their work, and he always looked at it with a fresh, critical
gaze, responding with his genuine and thoughtful reactions, which sometimes led
to extended correspondences.
 
I always found him
incredibly open, curious, wise, attentive, interested.  He was just so fucking great to hang out
with.  How many people over 30 (let alone
80)  still approach life, conversation,
questions, EVERYTHING, with a completely open, curious mind, capable of
considering and reconsidering, changing, reorienting…?  Even in screening Q&As, when asked a
question about Bleu Shut or Blondino that he’d probably been asked dozens of
times before, he would seriously consider the question and try to give a
unique, thoughtful answer.  He was so
full of consideration and wisdom, always gave me (and others) great advice.  
 
So many filmmakers are
filmmakers in some way or other because of Bob (among them Peter Hutton, Fred
Worden, Chris Langdon, Curt McDowell, Mike Henderson, numerous others).  Peter once told me that when he saw Bob’s
films for the first time, his reaction was “wait, you can make movies like
that?”, and started making films himself.  David Wilson (of Museum of Jurassic Technology fame) was deeply inspired
by The Awful Backlash, and wasn’t the only one to have that reaction.  Bob named the classic film Near the Big
Chakra, with his gift for evocative titles.  Bob could also be burtally honest about someone’s work, because he felt
a friend was due that honesty and respect, even if it cost him a few
friendships.  Bob was the person I was
most nervous and yet most eager to show my own films, and his positive,
thoughtful reactions meant something immeasurable to me, as did the criticism
of one film of mine he thought was a stinker.
 
When an artist dies, the
inevitable retrospectives follow.  But
that’s OK.  Bob was happy to have his
work rediscovered, and thrilled that anybody still found it entertaining, funny,
enlightening, whatever.  I already miss
him deeply, but am excited that his films (and his spirit, a very palpable,
inextricable part of them) are, and will continue to be, very much with us.
 
If anyone would like to
send any thoughts, reminiscences, testimonials, etc. about Bob or his work to
me, I’d be happy to share them with his family and friends.

I'm posting this text up at my blog too, with some photos of Bob and images from his films:
http://preservationinsanity.blogspot.com/ 


All the best,

Mark Toscano
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