Auteur Watch - Jon Jost

Now THAT'S what I call an Auteur! The kind of guy you're probably not going to be taught about at USC film school. No, no, better things await you, my pets. Or all you Cal-Arts grad with your 3 minute Pixar wannabe under your arm, or on a WD External Hard Drive. It'll take you about seven to ten years to get that PDI/Pixar feature you so desperately crave. Hopefully you won't have to settle for anything less, or for something like Hoodwinked 2.
But I digress as usual. Frankly, I don't know much about Jon Jost, and after reading what little about him I could scrounge up, sounds like he'd rather be left alone anyway. Man, that dude's worse off than Matthew Meshekoff! ...okay, you got me. Not that bad. Still, he would've been better off marrying Catherine Breillat from the sound of his personal life.
But as with most of you, Jon first appeared on my radar with All the Vermeers in New York which, if nothing else, taught me that living with an opera star is not all that it's cracked up to be. It's not Aida all the time, in other words. More like AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDA!!!! Holding your ears because of the annoying exercises they have to do to stay limber. But this film is a sneaky disguise. Apparently he's more of a country boy, filming the bulk of his films in Oregon, Montana, Utah, places like that. The video store I used to go to religiously has most of his back catalog, but on VHS. Sigh. Gotta drag out the DVD burner from deep storage.
As for what his favorite decade might be, well, a complex guy like that is probably not going to favor the 90s, or the decade he finally had his mainstream breakthrough in. No, it's probably the go-go 70s (bell bottom afro wigs, disco music, cocaine flowing like wine, yeah yeah yeah...) when he was just starting out, living in a cabin in Montana for two years with no running water or electricity. And no, his neighbor WASN'T the Unabomber... or was it? Could this be his piêce de rësistancé? My Dinner with Uni? Hell, he's already ripped off Five Easy Pieces with his sequel, 6 Easy Pieces. Why stop there? But he'd better hurry. In 2013 he's going to be SEVENTY! Oh, so depressing. And I thought everyone was turning forty: Jeniston, Yasmine... Carson Daly? No, not Carson Daly. He'll be around forever. How cool is that? ...Don't answer that!

Jon Jost on IMDb
Jon Jost on Wikipedia
...and really, what more do you need?