Seattle's Best

By AARON MESH

What John Callahan was to Portland, poet Steven J. Bernstein was to Seattle—a troubled, idiosyncratic icon of the seedier side of the street. Now Bernstein also has his own movie: I Am Secretly an Important Man, which is arranged by director Pete Sillen as a scramble of Emerald City diners in 16 mm. With a voice somewhere between Steve Earle and the guy who narrates those Wizard People, Dear Reader videos, Bernstein became a patriarch of grunge, but describes his poetry in the old-fashioned terms of workaday duty, even appearing in a department-store window to read. Keep Seattle Weird! Clinton Street Theater.

  1. Best paired with: Black Butte XXIII.
  2. Also showing: The Odessa File (Laurelhurst), Wayne’s World (Academy).

WWeek 2015

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