MMMM: Roadblock!

When all you've been dreaming of is forced to a halt -- ponders & links.

This past week was going to be one of celebration for us. Vanessa, my wife, has spent six years+ working on INVISIBLE NATION. She produced it with me (and others) and directed it. It’s her second feature. If you’ve been reading HFF diligently, you know that we were hitting six festivals state-side to start, beginning this past week. In addition, we were getting to have our second screening ever on my birthday.  What a couple of weeks it was going to be. We’ve got living out the suitcase down (somewhat), but….

But we got hit with Covid and had to cancel our attendance at three festivals: Mill Valley (where I was also going to do a masterclass), Seattle Docs, and the Hamptons. And that was just this past weekend.

The screenings have been going really well though, even without us. Maybe even better without because our team is a bunch of superstars.  Some of the subjects in the film have flown in from Taiwan and speak very passionately about the subject. The crowds have been full. It makes you love regional film festivals even more. First they don’t cowtow to corporate power or authoritarian threats. You know the tie between the those two, don’t you? But regional festivals are something different. They are where democracy thrives. They are such a critical part of the ecosystem. We have to do even more to support them.

This intro by Michelle Kuo, who is in the film, totally made my eyes well up. As I had told Variety, Invisible Nation may well be the most important film I have done. ICYMI, Vanessa had a “take over” of Thom Powers’ PureNonFiction IG site and you can see more like this there. You should after all be following PureNonFiction. How does one person do as much as Thom does for nonfiction filmmaking? I’m very impressed.

But boy oh boy is the indie life hard. When one thing falls apart, everything else just crumbles in unison. Because of covid, we had to cancel a whole bunch of flights. And few have any sympathy. Or really seems to. Our heart is broken and our nose is running. We already are going out of pocket and as much as some understand, there are the others that make you feel worse. I know it may just be the covid but after spending two days making travel arrangements, trying to keep our commitments, I want to retire. It doesn’t help to also get sent the turnaround costs on a project and see how it means the movie may never get made at the same time. On the weekend no less! But I’d be a fool to complain. I am fortunate. I am privileged. I get to work in the film business. Or is that how they get us to comply? To give in? To not ask for more? Right now, I just want to be healthy again.

The covid fog has been kind of nice too. I am loving the indie films I needed to catch up with. And I don’t think it is the fog. The fog keeps me from doing real work from digging in. I mean these films have to be great, right? They are the ones on the AMPAS site. There’s that damn privilege again. I wish you could all watch them with me and we could talk about them. I wish there was a way to return cinema to the center of the cultural conversation. If you had a secret plan to make every thing mediocre and make everyone engage with it, then you will have built this world. If annoying music makes us buy things, and making us feel bad about ourselves and the world we live in, makes us buying things, does mediocre shows and films make us buy just a little bit more too? Is it one evil strategy to fuck up the world, diminish kids self-esteem, let pop music take over, and slip all the entertainment into a mediocre stew, just so we will buy more things as everything burns. If we stopped buying stuff, would they have to make everything else better?  Okay, now that IS the covid talking.

In this covid haze, I have been able to write a few new posts for you. I am getting the full argument down, the one about where we are and where we can get to. Some are full of links. I remember the early days of the internet and the excitement I found about writing with hypertext — placing links into what I was writing, not just for reference, but for increased context & nuance, or even a whole wormhole of alternative narrative. I still feel that excitement when I link to something else I wrote, or something else someone else wrote that sums up how I feel. I feel there are phrases I use that need pages to explain what I mean and are far better explored by links that could — but don’t need to — derail. I love me some links. Yeah. It is a form I have always wanted and it is a form that has always been here. It is all one song, one movie, one interconnected now.

Alright, enough with the Monday musings. They are barely about film. They mostly about me. I don’t want to become one of those sort of substack writers, do I? Well….  Let’ get down to business.

What does the recovery from the strike really look like? Do the filmworkers learn to forgive the studios and globalstreamingplatforms for their cruelty?  I certainly hope