Hubert Selby, Jr 1928-2004

Brooklyn-born author Hubert Selby, Jr. passed away on Monday. He was 75. Filmbrain first read Last Exit to Brooklyn at the impressionable age of thirteen, which might have been a mistake. Then he read all of his other novels, finishing with his masterpiece, Requiem for a Dream, which opens with the unforgettable "Harry locked his mother in the closet". Filmbrain lives just a few blocks away from the events depicted in Last Exit to Brooklyn. But now Tralala, the whores, the thugs, the transvestites, and the dockworkers have been replaced by over-paid twenty-somethings who drive BMWs and are buying the dilapidated buildings that Selby once wrote so passionately about. (Sorry for the minor rant. Filmbrain really isn't bitter.) Two brave directors dared to tackle Selby's work and bring them to the big screen. While neither film can match the 'rawness' of the novels, they were both uncompromising visions by two unique artists. While Uli Edel's Last Exit to Brooklyn is not a perfect film, he at least made the right choice in casting Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tralala, a part she was born to play. Darren Aronofsky's take on Requiem for a Dream is an incredible feel-bad experience, and it comes close to the disturbing reaction that reading the novel brings. (Filmbrain still has a hard time watching the final fifteen minutes.) Both directors put Selby in their films -- who can forget him as the sinister prison guard screaming at Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans? Filmbrain found this quote from a 1999 interview with Selby: As I understand it, there are only two emotions a human being can experience, love or fear. And when you're in a state of love, you can't think of trying to get anything. You're incapable of thinking that way. You just seem to experience the perfection of creation and want to do what you can to make everyone comfortable - you just give away everything you have. (Hmmm...maybe the teacher in Donnie Darko really was on to something. . .) Selby had been working on an autobiographical novel, Seeds of Pain, Seeds of Love over the past few years. Filmbrain wonders if it deals with the issue from the above quote. With any luck, it will be published, even in unfinished form.