EXTRA CRITICUM

Should we give a damn about the pervasiveness of product placement in today's culture?

A young filmmaker recently asked me to lunch in order to pick my brain about career issues. Whenever someone just starting out invites me to such a meeting, I'm always half-stunned, half-flattered. Stunned that anyone should want to ask my advice when half the time I'm asking myself what on earth I'm doing and whether I've made any smart choices. Flattered for the obvious reasons. It's comforting to find that in someone else's eyes we've "arrived."

Eventually this young woman turned the conversation to her first movie and what she said I found both unremarkable (for I've heard variations of it before) and depressing. Essentially, she said that she was trying to do research on a specific demographic of women that were her target audience in the hopes of crafting a screenplay that would be instantly popular. How scientific! (How sickening)

Why "40 is Fantastic" ("40 Days of Screenplays", that is). And "The Matrix."

For those of you with a screenwriting bent... I've just stumbled on something fantastic: "40 DAYS OF SCREENPLAYS", on Scott Myers' site, "Go Into the Story."  Boy, I could get into THIS!

The idea: read and analyze one screenplay a day for 40 Days. I joined the group already in progress on Day 8 (yesterday: "Dead Poet's Society") and just posted a comment on Day 9 ("The Matrix.") Oh, and they offer links to pdfs of the screenplays themselves, so it's a snap to download 'em and delve into 'em.

My And/But/Indeed/However Problem

    At an artist’s colony a few years back, I became friends with a novelist of some repute. One day over lunch she told me how impressed she was by playwrights. She said she didn’t know how we did it. She had tried to write a play years before and, in her estimation anyway, failed utterly.

 

13 Percussionists, 9 French Horns, 9 Double Basses. What a wall of sound in the all-Varese concert at Lincoln Center!

Waiting on the recently upgraded terrace at Lincoln Center. I'm standing in front of Avery Fischer hall, enjoying a gelato, waiting for my friend Gordon Smith to arrive as my date on a birthday present I bought for myself: two tickets to an all-Varese concert by the NY Phil.

The excitement I felt in anticipation of the concert was far exceeded by the concert itself. Now, it's not like Varese is Stravinsky or Beethoven or something. In the grand scheme of music history, he's a minor figure. His output was such that his entire oeuvre could easily fit onto two back-to-back concerts. But whatever this early 20th C. composer lacks in historical importance, he more than makes up for with sheer audacity. He's probably most well-known for having been the first composer ever to introduce factory whistles and other machinery of the industrial age into his orchestral music. And he's a hero to percussionists all over the world for the first movement of his groundbreaking orchestral piece, Ionisation, because the entire movement features nothing but percussion. Wow!

A Case of Multiple Identities

I've gotten fairly used to my existential crisis, consistently rebuking the question "What do you do?" when the questioner really means "What do you do for a living?"

But I was unprepared for an identity crisis, when being asked "Who are you?" forced me to choose one thing, and I don't think it was the right thing at all.

Loving Portland or: show your love to your local art house, not the multiplex

I'm in Portland (ME) for a screening of We Pedal Uphill. I have to say I'm really loving this city. The vibe during the post-screening Q&A last night reminded me of Cleveland. Really smart people with new and unusual ideas about a film I'd made a couple years ago, a film I thought I knew inside and out. One of the best parts of bringing a film out to these venues is that I really learn a lot from the audience. These folks were so insightful and thought-provoking. I could've sat and chatted with them for hours.

In Portland, Maine this weekend? Come see my film!

If you're going to be in Portland, Friday evening July 16 or Sat or Sun afternoons, I hope you'll join us for the first Maine screenings of We Pedal Uphill: Stories from the States at the Portland Museum of Art. More info on the film at: wepedaluphill.com

More info on the screening at the Museum's website. [NOTE: Tickets are only sold in person at the Museum box office and go on sale each day starting at 10AM.]

I will be there at the 6:30PM screening Friday night, which will be followed by a Q&A and discussion with myself and local political activists.

The Future of Independent Film Financing?

I met filmmaker Jacob Hensberry because I stumbled upon a music video he directed and was so impressed at how he created so much out of so little, that I wrote him a fan e-mail. We exchanged a few e-mails, eventually met up for a drink, and have stayed in touch.

I was happy to see his name in my inbox recently with the subject field “Help us make our next short film.” Even more thrilled when he agreed to share the details about the film and his crowdfunding effort via Kickstarter.com 

I've Got Great Ears for Radio

After 13 years of slaving away in the music industry, and eventually equating music with work, I'm finally falling in love with music again.

What did it?

Listening to the radio.

Share Your Secret

This has been a tough couple weeks -  as I approached and then passed by the one year "anniversary" (if it's anything to celebrate) of unemployment I wondered what the future holds for me. There are a lot of nice, educated, hard working people who aren't able to find a job and I wonder how this problem is going to be solved. There was a massive oil spill in the Gulf two months ago, but there has been an enormous talent spill in our country over the past two years.

I wish I could be one of those people who looks at the recession as an opportunity to find my bliss. In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney's character, a specialist who fires people, gives that line to people but you really don't think he believes it himself (and certainly few of the people receiving that speech believe it).

Sound Designers I Have Loved, v. 2: Ken Lacouture

In the mid-1990s, the opera company I directed began experimenting with improvised choral music and after nearly half a year of rehearsing these wild undulating fabrics, we felt we'd created enough material to compose a concert of improvised choral music.

We stumbled upon a brilliant sound engineer named Ken Lacouture who gave each member of the ensemble his or her own mic and with all 8 voices fully wired into his board, he set about manipulating the sound of our vocals with his computer on the fly.