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Kickstarter for Cult Shows

TechCrunch just posted an idea for a way to save failed, but awesome, television shows: to make Netflix the distribution model.

I second this…with a twist.

How about instead of the Netflix model, we do the kickstarter model? I know tons of Firefly fans (myself included) who’d be willing to ante up more dough than we payed for the series DVD sets to see the show come back.

It’s the crowdsourcing age, so let’s get to it. If a service existed solely to pull the middlemen out of the system and let the content-lovers fund the project (and I think the stats show there are enough of us), then let us fund it.

With a Kickstarter model, it would prevent projects from going to completion unless the fans come through on the funding side, so the fans would have no one to blame but themselves if the funding goals are not met.

And I do understand that this kind of venture won’t be cheap, but with the advent of emerging digital filmmaking technologies it’s getting cheaper every day, and since advertisers, tv studios and other distributing middlemen won’t need their cut, it seems that costs would be reduced significantly.

Let’s imagine that Firefly Season Two has 10 episodes.

TechCrunch estimates that about 4.5 million viewers watched Firefly regularly. Let’s say 1 million of those are willing to buy episodes at $1 each. I don’t think it’s any stretch to assume that at least 500,000 would be willing to pay much more (say 30 bucks for a season). I’d put up 100 bucks (serious).  Let’s say there are 100,000 others like me (go to the forums – I don’t think it’s a stretch).

Right there you have 35 million  without breaking a sweat. And again, if you don’t have enough by the funding deadline, the crowds’ credit cards aren’t charged and back to square one it goes.

Just throwin’ it out there…

127 Hours

Near the end of his ordeal as portrayed in Boyle’s film 127 Hours, Aron Ralston, after cutting off his arm to free himself, turns to the boulder that has trapped him for the last 5 days, snaps a photo and says, “Thank you.”

While it could be argued that the film reinforces the sentiment that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger,” I think that Ralston, Boyle and co. have a different lesson in mind: “What makes you realize your weakness and dependence is better than strength any day.”

Fan Bias – Ignoring the Evidence Part 1

My daughter being silly.

I was supposed to take my daughter to school this morning,  but in my rush to sleep I set my alarm later than I should have. My wife woke me up a few minutes after it went off, and I moped off to the shower and spent way too much time daydreaming about upcoming projects (that is not a euphemism). When I dried off, I realized I was late. I knew right then that it was too late to get my daughter to school on time, but I refused to believe it.

My daughter was groggy and slow-moving, and I was curt in my attempt to speed her up. I had the data, but I ignored it. I knew who was to blame, but I blamed my daughter. Every muttered question had a perfectly logical answer:

Q: “Why is she so slow?”

A: “She’s six years old.”

Q:”Why is she so groggy?”

A:”Because she was up past her bed-time?”

Q:”Is she going intentionally slower every time I ask her to speed up?”

A:”Yes, because all you’re giving is negative reinforcement so she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t  you idiot.”

All these questions were being answered somewhere back in my subconscious, but I forged on determined to get her to school on time…even though I KNEW we would not make it.

At some point all this registered and I realized that I needed to ask for her forgiveness. It was my fault we were late, and my behavior is the type of stuff that complexes are made of. Kids all-to-readily accept blame for sins of the father, and here I am reinforcing that destructive tendency with my behavior.

Even after all that I still forged on. I was self aware enough to realize:

A. That we were late.

B. That I was not acknowledging this and making matters worse with my brusqueness.

C. That I needed to ask for forgiveness.

It was not until we arrived in the school parking lot that I turned to her and apologized. In her typical cheery voice she said, “It’s okay Daddy.”

It’s not really.

It’s not.

Next time I want to examine how this tendency to ignore the evidence contributes to Fan Bias, a phenomenon I will be exploring in detail in upcoming posts.

The Speck and the Plank

A little while back I wrote this short post on Wikileaks:

Why I Don’t Trust Wikileaks

While at a Church meeting that week, I had a little revelation that’s taken me too long to act upon (perhaps one of the greatest faults of the Western Church-failing to practice what we learn and/or preach).

One of my weaknesses is my impulsive urge to jump in with a hastily-formed opinion in reaction to some event or post that has gotten me riled up.

The above post qualifies.

That Sunday I scribbled the following in my notebook:

“This week do not reveal evil, but reveal good. This week do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. You can spend your whole life working on the evil within. Repent for [the] Wikileaks [post].”

Again, this was over a month ago, and just yesterday I found myself writing another reactionary blog post in response to a video praising Assange.

So, very belated, here is my official post asking for forgiveness for the previous post.

Why?

Because I’m just adding to the noise. I realize that the problem is not just “out there,” but I have plenty of problems right here in my own cynical and self-righteous viewpoint.

The world has enough pundits. It has enough people pointing the finger, and I have followed suit, assuming that the best way to beat the finger-pointers is to continue pointing the finger.

But it’s all just a silly game of tag that will never end.

So, rather than point out the faults in other’s writings and thinking, would it not be a better move to learn something from them? Take the meat and spit out the bones?

Is there something in their life and work that I can learn from?

I am much more self-deprecating than many people I know, so I always have people telling me that I’m too hard on myself. I think the reverse is true actually. I don’t think that any of us are hard enough on ourselves. We’re hard on ourselves with the stuff that doesn’t matter, but ignore the big issues, and sometimes it’s the opinions from people we respect least that get at those issues on some level, so rather than deal with it, we toss out their opinion on a technicality (and write an incendiary blog post as punishment).

I still disagree with Wikileaks, but what does my opinion matter? Why should you trust me if I have yet to deal with my own evil? Rather than fight forced transparency with an appeal to censorship, perhaps the best response is voluntary transparency.

I believe that individual evil is the problem with the world, and I’m not immune to it, so rather than focus on others’ evil and feign objective righteousness (the modus operandi of journalism which is now being one-upped by Wikileaks), if I am really to live out my worldview, I need to turn that magnifying glass inward.

I have plenty of baggage to unpack.

Jesus said we are to remove the plank in our own eye before focusing on the speck in our neghbor’s. What would happen if we Christians actually lived that one little command?

MPAA and the Growing Christian Film Industry

Just wrote a little piece for RealLab Productions with the above title: http://reallabproductions.com/2011/01/03/the-mpaa-and-the-growing-christian-film-industry/

I’ve been tapped to do some shooting for RealLab in Georgia for the upcoming documentary Soul Winners.

 

True Grit

I watched the original True Grit recently in prep for The Coen’s remake, and while I usually have nothing good to say about the concept of remakes, I think the Coens may be on to something here.

The original is a classic, to be sure, and I don’t want to give the impression that the original didn’t succeed, but I think the Coens have plenty to add to the film, and, yes, even improve upon it.

1)      The acting – It seems to me that many, if not most, older films hold to a different standard for acting greatness. It’s not that theirs were bad actors or actresses, but the artifice that characterized older films is unfamiliar and often oft-putting to viewers from our generation. Some performances seem affected or stilted by our standards. I think that Bridges, Damon and Brolin will adapt the material in a way that will resonate with more authenticity to present day viewers.

2)      Direction – Fresh off my first viewing of Fargo, I can say with all confidence that the Coens will certainly one-up director Henry Hathaway when it comes to setting a mood and blocking the action. In True Grit’s first act we witness a murder that serves as the instigating action propelling the rest of the plot. In the original, this murder is chronicled with such matter-of-fact objectivity that the emotional gravity is totally lost on the audience. You don’t really feel anything when it happens. But most every time someone dies in a Coen film, you feel it, and it hits hard. They know how to transform something objective and sterile into an experience that is subjective and visceral. I think they will do that here.

3)      Overall Look – The film is called True Grit, and while the resilience and determination of these two characters shines through in the original film (when Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn rides head to head against against Duvall’s Ned Pepper, you just can’t help but admire him), even from the previews I think the Coens have done a better job of making this film gritty, which it should be given the title, right? The art design, lighting and Deakins’ cinematography look like they’ll make this material pop in a way that the original director and crew did not (or could not).

So I’m believing in the Coens here, and I think I will be vindicated. I do not think they win the best pic Oscar this year because the Academy has to spread the love, but I will go on record to say that this one will reside near the top, and I think it will deserve its place.

It releases tomorrow so if you get a chance to catch the film and agree or disagree let me know. I hope to write my own review once i get a chance to sneak off to the theater.

Flannery O’Connor and Fargo

A good friend of mine says the Coens hate humanity, and while I do think they often push their dark themes to the edge of watch-ability, I didn’t get this feeling from Fargo. As dark as this movie is, the film does not vindicate the villains. And while some say that Marge is the butt of the Coens’ joke, I disagree. I think they admire Marge. They poke fun at her, sure, but I think the film vindicates hers as the best path among the available options presented in the film. Naïve? Yes. Indifferent? No. Incompetent? Absolutely not.

But I do not agree with another friend who thinks that Marge is the film’s real hero, and that the Coens go so far as to put her and her husband forward as the antidote to the evil we have witnessed.  I give as evidence the curious sequence involving Marge’s old high school friend who makes a pass at her. This sequence seemed odd and out of place to me at first, but watching Marge’s handling of the situation speaks to a broader theme of the film: naïve optimism serves as an incubator for human evil. Marge refuses to acknowledge the obvious conclusion that this man is trying to have an affair with her. Though she has already witnessed a grisly murder scene, which would have caused the other Coen Sheriff (Bell from No Country) to sigh with resignation, she still cannot fathom that something as scandalous as adultery could be perpetrated by someone she knows personally. While she proves herself confident and skilled in dealing with the effects of evil, she is entirely ill-equipped to deal with the cause. “I just don’t understand it,” she says to Grimsrud after witnessing the fated wood-chipper incident.

It is this inability to acknowledge that such evil is closer than she thinks that makes it possible for such evil to flourish. So, for me, the film is very close in theme to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” but in this story the protagonist does not realize her error. She trudges on believing in the inherent goodness of people, blithely hoping for a better tomorrow that will never come until “good” people like her are willing to “burn the cancer at the root” as the Greek tragedist had it. To summarize:

1. Human evil exists.
2. It’s closer to home than we think.
3. Ignoring its presence and proximity enables its growth.

If you made it this far, thanks. Next time I will give a few reasons why I think the Coens’ version of True Grit will improve upon the original.

Cooking With Chef Mike Garlic Course 2: Shrimp Scampi Over Rice Pilaf

Second video in a series of videos produced for Liza’s Kitchen:

The Coens Part 1: Fargo and The One Shot Theme

I’m dedicating my film chatter this month to the Coens in honor of their upcoming True Grit remake, which hits theaters December 22. First off are some musings on Fargo, which will translate into two posts, a couple other snippets if I have time, and I’ll finish off with two posts detailing my opinion on the remake before and after I’ve seen it

I’m just a tad bit late with my Fargo review, having seen it only a few weeks back, and while I am sure that my observations will come as no surprise to Fargo aficionados, I thought it would be fun to jot down a few observations . So, if you have not seen this film, be warned that spoilers follow.

I love when filmmakers can encapsulate entire themes in one scene or, even better, one shot, and the Coens manage to succeed in both ways here. First, in the scene in which the teenage witnesses are chased down by the gunman  resulting in the car wreck, the Coens give us the shot of the young man leaving the car and running out into the middle of the enormous snow-covered clearing. He is gunned down. His girlfriend, trapped inside of the vehicle, is likewise executed. In this scene I think the Coens hand us the theme on a silver platter: there is no escape.

William H. Macy’s character is like the girl. He tries to deal with impending doom by remaining within society’s constructs and playing along, mistakenly assuming that in so  doing he will be able to have some control over the situation. I think the boy represents the kidnappers. They’ve shirked all of society’s protections and throw themselves into “freedom,” but one that, like the barren landscape beyond the road’s shoulder, offers no place to hide.

This theme is reinforced when the most frightening and sociopathic character in the film is reduced to throwing wood at a pregnant Police Chief and running helplessly onto the middle of a snow-covered clearing before being shot in the leg. This is followed by one wide cinematic shot in which the kidnapper is alone  in the middle of nowhere with Marge behind leveling her gun at him. This bleak picture hands us that theme: judgment is coming; you can’t run, or as Sheriff Bell’s friend Ellis says at the end of No Country For Old Men: “You can’t stop what’s coming.”