A24 has funded a Chinatown storefront that’s about promoting David Lowery‘s A Ghost Story, which opens today. The idea is to immerse yourself in the mythology of the film by wearing an actual ghost sheet (which can also be ordered online) while meditating about eternity and whatnot. I think about the void all the time. Well, actually I don’t. I know I’m going to die and become a ghost some day, but I’m happier being in the present and sniffing aromas and thinking about movies.
I like Kate Erbland’s 6.27 Indiewire story about the pop-up, but Steven Zeitchik’s L.A. Times story (posted this morning at 11:45 am) declines to post a link to the store’s website, and both stories refuse to simply state that it’s located at 51A Chrystie Street, between Canal and Hester. Zeitchick will only divulge that the pop-up is “in a revived post-industrial stretch of the city in lower Manhattan.”
And why, may I ask, isn’t there a Los Angeles Ghost Store? The A24 guys are based in Manhattan, of course, but they seem indifferent to the feelings of their Left Coast friends. I for one think this situation sucks.
Last night I caught a 7:15 pm showing of A Ghost Story at the Arclight, and man oh man it’s so great to sit in the front row and stare at the big screen and that 1.37 aspect ratio image with the rounded corners. And I love how Casey Affleck‘s ghost garb is somewhat grayish and frayed, and looks more like a soiled paint tarp than a bedsheet. You can tell that the ghostface eye holes have been cut with drugstore scissors, and that they’re frayed. And I love how Lowery is very, very careful not to let the viewer see Affleck’s feet or footwear. God forbid should we notice tennis slip-ons or flip-flops. Affleck’s ghost doesn’t exactly float around but Lowery definitely tries to discourage viewers from mulling the possibility that the ghost gets around by putting one foot in front of the other.
Wells to Zeitchik and Erbland: Chrystie Street! 51A Chrystie Street! Take the B or D to Grand Street.