(September 3, 1944 – January 16, 2010)
These Super 8 works were Gary’s first film pieces, and may have been created for a show he was in, called “The New Art of Orange County” at Newport Harbor Art Museum @ F-Space, June 18-19, 1972. They subsequently don’t seem to have been shown very much, if at all. It’s possible that the ones currently considered lost could turn up, but for now, they’re missing:
FOG (1972)
Super 8, silent 24fps
This film is currently lost.
SMOKE (1972)
Super 8, silent 24fps
This film is currently lost.
MIRROR MOVE (aka STUDIO MIRROR) (1972)
Super 8, color silent 24fps, 3m
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Kodachrome IIA stock.
SKYLIGHT (1972)
Super 8, silent 24fps
This film is currently lost.
CANDLES (1972)
Super 8, silent 24fps
This film is currently lost.
MATCHING (aka MATCHING I) (1972)
Super 8, color silent 24fps, 3m
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Kodachrome IIA stock.
FIRE PIECE (1972)
Super 8, color silent 24fps, 2.5m
This film comprises documentation of a performance by Gary on the beach operating a homemade flamethrower.
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Ektachrome stock.
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These pieces constitute Gary’s more widely known filmography of work, though Glass Face was possibly never (or at least rarely) shown publicly:
MIRROR (1974)
Super 8, color, silent 24fps, 4m
This film was blown up to 16mm sometime in the 1970s, but doesn’t seem to have shown much that way.
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Ektachrome stock.
PASADENA FREEWAY STILLS (1974)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 6m
Film stock notes: This film was shot on 7252 Ektachrome Commercial stock.
HAND HELD DAY (1975)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 5.5m
Initially, Hand Held Day had a soundtrack, and at least one print was struck with sound, but Beydler decided almost immediately that it should instead be a silent film. The soundtrack does survive and although Beydler did not want the film to be shown as a sound version, he was interested in having the sound preserved for historical reasons.
Beydler told me that this film was shot on a mountaintop in Arizona after a long search in numerous locations for the right shooting spot. Two grad students assisted him, including feeding him and giving him water throughout the day as he held the mirror as each single frame was captured. The film was finished extremely last minute in time for its first screening, with no time to make a print, so the Kodachrome original was projected at its premiere.
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Kodachrome KM stock.
LOS OJOS (1975)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 1.5m
This film was nearly lost. Beydler no longer had the original or any prints of the film. Miraculously, I was contacted in 2007 by a guy named Billy Davis, who had purchased a reel of three of Beydler’s films from a salvage shop in the American South in the early 1980s. (Beydler had no idea how it could have gotten there.) The three films on the reel (Pasadena Freeway Stills, Hand Held Day, and Los Ojos) had delighted Davis for years, as he occasionally viewed the reel or showed it for friends and family. He contacted me in response to a post I had made on Frameworks about working with Beydler and searching for missing copies of his films, and generously offered to send me the reel so we could restore Los Ojos at the Academy Film Archive, which we did.
Film stock notes: According to Beydler, this film was shot on 7252 Ektachrome Commercial stock.
GLASS FACE (1975)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 2.5m
Film stock notes: This film was shot on 7242 Ektachrome EF stock.
VENICE PIER (1976-77)
16mm, color, sound, 16.5m
The year is a bit uncertain for this film. It was shot over the course of a year almost definitely between 1976 and 1977, but the Picture Start distribution label on the can in which a former distribution print was stored had a date of 1980 on it, which doesn’t seem likely for a few reasons (including that by 1980, Gary had essentially “given up art”). 1977-1978 is more likely, perhaps.
Gary Beydler described this film to me as having “totally flopped”. Although it was put into distribution, he explained that he only showed it a few times to what he described as little to no interest from the audience. In its original presentation, it premiered at Gagosian Gallery, accompanied by a wall-mounted map of the Venice Pier indicating the shooting points for the film. Morgan Fisher told me that he went to this original installation of the film and absolutely loved it, and remembered it vividly decades later. It was actually because of Morgan’s information and enthusiasm that I asked Gary about the film, which resulted in him sending it to me to get restored.
Film stock notes: This film was shot on Ektachrome stock and comprises 106 segments.
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Finally, upon going through Gary’s surviving film materials prior to his death, I discovered a title roll containing the unused portions of titles for his released films, as well as four titles I had never heard of. Excited at the prospect that Gary perhaps had another four films to uncover, I asked him about these, but he said he had never actually made them, and they were just titles for films that he had conceived without realizing them. Despite this, I thought it would be appropriate to include them here, the mysterious films that Gary never got around to making:
SLO-WALK
DEJA VUE
CAMERA TIME
OCEAN CUT AWAY
LIGHTSTRUCK 