That is sad. I am so sad to hear of this. What a loss. He was
certainly an inspiration and an enormous presence in the scene back
when I first got into film mid 60s in the Bay Area. I was there when
these films came out, he would be at the screenings....oh the memories.
Myron Ort
On Jan 10, 2012, at 5:27 PM, Mark Toscano wrote:
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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