Filmmakers Make Sad and Lonely Documentary about Sad and Lonely Building.

"At The Corner Of 3rd and 3rd" Trailer from Max Kutner on Vimeo.

Someone's made a short documentary about that sad, lonely building on the corner of 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue, which, as it happens, is the historically landmarked New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company building, first constructed in 1873.  How do we know that the building is sad and lonely?  We listen to the music in the trailer for the documentary, that's how!

The music in the trailer is Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No.1, and it is pretty much the go-to music for any filmmaker when he, she or it wants to create a sad and lonely mood.  Gymnopédie is a French word meaning, "I twisted my ankle on the dismount and that bitch from the Ukraine edged me out for the bronze medal."  That's why the song is so sad and lonely.  For what it's worth, "Coignet" is also a French word, which, if you translate it literally to English, means "Coignet," according to Google translate. 

I know I'm not the only person who's passed that building and wondered why no one's ever bothered to "do something" with it.  According to the trailer of the doc, it's been abandoned and derelict since the sixties.  That's reason enough for sad and lonely gymnastic injury music!

Also, that block gets flooded with raw sewage from the Gowanus Canal on a regular basis--which should make even the most dyspeptic and peremptory FiPS commenter feel like they did at that moment when Kerri Strug stuck her landing on the vault at the 1996 Olympics, but had to be carried off of the mat by her coach Bela Somebody-or-Another.  Lugosi?  Abzug?  1996 was so long ago.

But you know what else was long ago?  The announcement that Whole Foods was going to build a store on that same block. Maybe you're one of those people who likes Whole Foods, and you're eagerly awaiting the opening of that store.  Well, if that's your deal, you should feel sad and lonely--as sad and lonely as if you had a third-degree lateral sprain and tendon damage from something you did on the uneven parallel bars--because after Hurricane Sandy, that whole lot was flooded with poop, further delaying the opening of that store.  The documentary talks about that, too, apparently.

The filmmakers do, however, have ideas about what might be done with the building.  Perhaps someone might turn it into a Museum about the Gowanus Canal!  Someone in the trailer actually suggests this, without any discernable irony.  To that person, I say: "Listen, lady. I realize you're trying to provide a ray of hope, but that suggestion just exudes sadness and loneliness.  Not helpful.  You should stop suggesting things like that."

You know what they could do with it, though?  They could put a sports medicine clinic in there, and have Mary Lou Retton serve punch, cookies and good humor to everyone who walks through the door.

But that'd need a different song, I think.

Comments

[jojo]

Did you not watch Ferris Bueller's Day off? Gymnopedie no. 1 invokes the feeling of skipping school and hanging out with your buds while looking at abstract art. You write like an old guy with unkempt facial hair.