Editing David Holzman's Diary (section)

=== Relations Between Art and Life ===
Many writers have noted ways that ''David Holzman's Diary'' depicts complicated relations between art and life; how David's life motivates and shapes his art, and vice versa. How his social life, his daily life at home, his background in film—all shape his artistic energy and choices, with various affects. And, vice versa, how David's art shapes his life, and the lives of others, unfortunately often negatively. Film critic Chuck Kraemer captures some of this complexity when he writes that David is, "every down-and-out filmmaker struggling for a vision, every sensitive New Yorker overwhelmed by the city's visual fecundity, every young man suffering lost love, every inchoate artist trying to sort out his life, to explain himself to himself, and to the world."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Kraemer |first1=Chuck |title=David Holzman's Diary |agency=The Real Paper |date=14 March 1973}}</ref>

For David, art and life are fused in New York film culture. He is deeply immersed in films, constantly thinking about them, watching them, and quoting other people about them. Film is his obsession, but his daily life also includes radio and TV consumption. As Brody writes, David's city life depicts an "endless stream of Top Forty radio and a wondrous, hectic view of television."<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Brody |first1=Richard |title=Movies: David Holzman's Diary |magazine=The New Yorker |date=26 August 2016 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/david-holzmans-diary |access-date=5 July 2018}}</ref> The Top Forty radio that David listens to includes news reports of war and social unrest along with popular music; and the "hectic view" refers to the sequence that David made by filming one frame from each shot from a whole evening's worth of network TV. Sitting all evening and clicking his camera once after every shot transition, David produced a two-and-a-half minute deluge of separate shots from a ''[[The Huntley–Brinkley Report|Huntley-Brinkley Report]]'' newscast; then from episodes of ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'', ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'', ''[[The Dean Martin Show]]'', and a talk show; and then a late-night airing of the [[Shirley Temple]] film ''[[Bright Eyes (1934 film)|Bright Eyes]]''. And, as David Blakeslee writes, a lot of commercials, "Still capable after all these years, and even in this incomprehensibly compressed format of delivering their powerfully efficient subliminal messages."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blakeslee |first1=David |title=David Holzmans' Diary (1967) |journal=Criterion Reflections |date=28 September 2015 |url=https://criterionreflections.blogspot.com/2015/09/david-holzmans-diary-1967-ld.html}}</ref> This blast of television images speaks to aspects of David's life including the multitudes of images coming to him (and us) daily; and his rather boring life, insular and filled with TV and radio broadcasts along with film. It may also refer to Godard's "24 frames per second," how each individual frame conveys meaning in itself and in relation to other frames, in this case with a total of about 3,600 consecutive frames.

David's life is shaped by images and popular culture, but he is not simply a passive consumer.  He is an energetic and creative young filmmaker. Making films takes up a lot of his time, and affects his life, and those of other people, in various ways, not always with good results. While making his film, poking into peoples' lives, David alienates and even endangers women and gets himself punched by a cop. As Jaime N. Christley observes, "we meet David in personal and professional freefall. Bad choices, bad pathology, and just plain bad luck coalesce into a black cloud that eventually consumes his life, and before the spare title cards indicate the film's conclusion, our hero will have lost his girlfriend, his camera and sound kit, and revealed himself to be a minor sociopath with major control issues."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Christley |first1=Jaime N. |title=David Holzman's Diary |journal=Slant |date=13 June 2011 |url=https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/david-holzmans-diary |access-date=5 July 2018}}</ref> ''TV Guide'' likewise lauds the film for being "unafraid to present and implicitly criticize the more unpleasant sides of its 'hero.'"<ref>{{cite web |title=David Holzman's Diary |url=https://www.tvguide.com/movies/david-holzmans-diary/review/112266/ |website=TV Guide |access-date=5 July 2018}}</ref>