Editing David Holzman's Diary (section)

== Synopsis ==
L. M. Kit Carson plays David, a young white man living alone in his modest studio apartment on Manhattan's West 71st Street during July 1967.  The film begins without the conventional opening credits or music that would signify a professionally made documentary or fiction film.  Instead, it's just David at home saying plainly that he has recently lost his job and may soon be drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam.  He does not identify the job in question, but his apartment décor and [[cinephile]] personality imply that it may have involved film.  Sitting on a chair with film equipment and posters behind him, and quoting [[Jean-Luc Godard]], he says he has decided to make a video diary to try to document and understand his life.  After this introduction, what follows is a series of filmed diary entries that David makes over a period of several days, depicting his daily life, his surroundings, and his most personal thoughts and feelings.

In some scenes, David goes around filming his neighborhood, from various people and historical buildings to spontaneous moments such as police officers helping an apparent robbery victim.  This video is sometimes silent and at other times accompanied by dialogue or ambient sound, or sound that he may have taped separately and added to the film later, such as radio broadcasts.  David interviews some people and lets others talk freely to the camera.  In a scene about one-third of the way into the film, his friend Pepe gives an extended monologue on his critical assessment of the diary as it is shaping up so far, namely that David is making "a very bad work of art."  Saying, "Your life is not a very good script," Pepe recommends that David try harder to find what is truly interesting.  If he's going to focus on himself—someone who "is not a good character" to watch—then maybe he should take more risks, expose his vulnerabilities—perhaps even try filming himself standing naked in front of the camera, for as long as it takes to find some interesting truths.  ([[Andrew Noren]] is one underground filmmaker from this time and place who had a lot of such nudity in his films.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mekas |first1=Jonas |title=Kodak Ghost Poems |journal=The Village Voice |date=15 January 1970 |url=https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/62910c_adfea87abe4d41509015abd8d497d66b.pdf |access-date=5 July 2018}}</ref>)

Most often in the film, David sits at home talking to his Lavalier microphone and 16mm Éclair camera about topics important to him, from film theory to his girlfriend Penny, who is a fashion model.  Over the several days of making his diary, and maybe following some of Pepe's advice, David becomes increasingly obsessed with filming Penny, without her permission, and even once when she's sleeping in the nude.  In that particular moment, she wakes up and attacks him for this transgression, and breaks up with him; this is followed by several failed attempts to contact her, and his monologue praising masturbation. David also repeatedly films through the window of a woman across the street, whom he nicknames ''Sandra'', after the title character in [[Luchino Visconti]]'s eponymous [[Sandra (1965 film)|1965 film]]. And, in another scene, he follows an anonymous woman out of the subway and onto the street, quietly stalking her until she turns around and tells him, "Beat it!"

David's diary project hits bottom after he leaves town for a day, to attend a family funeral, and returns to find all of his film equipment stolen.  He reveals this in his last diary entry, which combines an audio recording of his voice with a series of photos David made of himself with rented or borrowed equipment.  Disappointed and disillusioned, he says that this is the end of the film.  The sound then stops and the image goes black for about ten seconds, seemingly the end of this diary film.  But then ''David Holzman's Diary'' takes a sudden unexpected turn.  It displays a title card (still no sound) saying simply "DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY," followed by another card identifying L.M. Kit Carson as the actor playing him.  Then some cards for the rest of the cast and the crew.  The cards effectively acknowledge that the preceding was a work of fiction posing as an autobiographical documentary.