Ah, titles.
Is 'The Sound of Music' a better title than 'Ishtar'? What about 'Gone with the Wind' vs. 'Heaven's Gate'? Is 'Tootsie' any better than 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' really?
And yet... and yet...
When you have a good one, a selling one, you tend to know it. For instance, I think we have three really great titles on board at my company now, three 'yep, I get it, and I want to watch it' titles:
* Goldtown
* Mother Knows Sex
* The World Without...
With all of those, the title pretty much says it all, or at least says enough to intrigue the viewer a little bit. Those three titles sell. Those three titles work.
And then there's the cycling film.
Here's the deal: it's a two hour documentary, which will air on the Sundance Channel this June, about a year in the life of an underdog American cycling team that is determined to clean up its scandal-ridden sport and ride to glory in the Tour de France. (First of all, that in itself is not exactly the pithiest description, which could be part of the problem - the film might be trying to do too much... Anyway....)
We want the film to appeal to cycling fans and non-fans alike (I myself knew nothing about the sport when I started this), and of course, in a perfect world, there would be a cycling term that would fit the bill -- a cycling term that somehow had already entered the lexicon -- something to embody the indomitable spirit exemplified by the riders, or their courage or bravery, or redemption, or the pain all cyclists go through, or something the film speaks to...
You know, something like BREAKING AWAY...
But we don't really have one. There was, initially, a great cycling term called 'Blast the Zone,' which meant something like: you're in that 'athletic zone,' riding as well as you ever have, but now you're spent, you've ridden your all, but your team still needs you, and though you have very little strength left -- from nowhere, like a miracle -- you find strength you didn't know you had -- and you blast the zone and ride to glory.
The problem with that one is, I made it up.
It didn't feel exactly kosher to go with a made-up cycling term in a documentary, especially in one about a bunch of guys who are so committed to, you know, not cheating.
We've cycled through a lot of puns about the sport, believe me, but now that we're nearing the finish line, we've really got to put pedal to the medal and come up with something.
I mean it. The Sundance Channel has rejected several of our offerings, and I can't say I blame them. But a few of our favorites do have some merit, and now we even have a few more.
So I put it to you -- please cut and paste this link and take this poll and help us figure out what to call this film. We're really proud of it. We just don't know what to call it.
http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/534161-136151
(And rest assured, any and all of these films can have a subtitle like 'A Year in the life of an American Cycling Team' or 'A Year in the life of the clean team' - eg, "Breaking the Wind: A Year in the Life of an American Cycling team"...)
Thanks so much for your help. Choose wisely.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
THIS FILM HAS NOT BEEN MADE BEFORE
January 20, 2009
On one of my first jobs, working as a PA and part time sound man on a cinema verite documentary about a theater company traveling across America, I was struck, on my first day on location, by the action - or inaction - of the director. I was 26 and quite full of myself, full of ideas, full of imagined brilliance waiting to be unleashed upon the world...
I met the theater company in Northern Virginia late one morning, and I arrived as they prepared for an outdoor rehearsal, at a high school. The film's director, a really nice man and my employer after all, was walking around with the camera, shooting a conversation between a couple of the characters, but after a few moments, he sighed somewhat disgustedly, turned the camera off, and took the heavy thing off his shoulder. He stretched his arms up, his back clearly aching, obviously frustrated by what he had just been filming.
I looked out at the field, the 30 or so actors and technicians preparing for their day, in the midst of a grand summer-long adventure. I spotted two of them carrying on an intense conversation while moving scenery across the football field. I poked the Director and pointed them out to him - let's go film that. He took a quick, dismissive look, shrugged and shook his head, and said, "Boring."
To say that I was astonished would not capture the depth of my horror, or my immediate loathing for this block-headed man. (I cared not at all that it was hot, that the camera was probably thirty pounds, that none of the five characters he had chosen to be the focus of the film were in the conversation I was pointing to...) All I could see was his idiocy, his stubborn close-mindedness. Wasn't the point of a cinema verite documentary to stay open to whatever happened, to follow the story wherever it took you? What about all that crap he, The Director himself, had told me in hiring me about the film being a 'voyage of discovery?' How can you discover something if you don't even set out to find it? Get the camera off the ground, you lazy shit!
A few years later, I landed prematurely in a position of responsibility on another documentary, this one about John F. Kennedy. It was a two hour biographical film portrait, and, determined to make a well-trod subject fresh, we'd chosen to tell the story using strictly voice over interviews with archival footage. On the project, we had an Associate Producer who had been brought in to help find archival footage from the various archival houses around the country. She was bright and sharp and clearly knew her stuff. But what she did, invariably, maybe three or four times a day, was to say, "The way we did it at X was..." and then proceed to tell us all how they had done some similar task in her previous job. I resisted the urge to say to her, "Oh, really, they did it that way the last time you were doing a 2 hour voice-over-only documentary biography of John F. Kennedy?"
But finally, I'd had enough. I went into my office, took out an index card and wrote in big block capital letters a motto, to remind everyone, and really myself, that when we make something, part of the reason we are making it is, in fact, that we want that sense of newness; we want an audience to feel and think in ways they haven't before. I hung the motto in the editing room where I knew she, and everyone, would see it, and proudly, somewhat haughtily, went on with the business of making the film.
Over the years, I actually hung the motto again in a few other editing rooms, and even after opening my own company eight years back, I would remind various editors and producers of it from time to time -- but I think that age and a certain embarrassment caused me to drop it from my repertoire.
The fact is, it is extremely helpful when making things to know the formats, the structures, and the rules by which other things have been made before. And as much as we might all wish to be the great avant garde artistes of our day, a certain maturation process had better kick in at some point, an ability to reconcile the demands of Commerce and Art, especially if one wishes, for example, to live in Manhattan, have children, and send them to private school. (Just as a for instance.)
But why not balance the two? Retain the reminder that we are here for inspiration, for the madness and illogic of the never-before-expressed -- while also remembering that we work in a Society, after all, and that it is Society which will dictate whether and how much bread we get to eat? Surely these are not irreconcilable views, and in fact when they synthesize, we can have a life of beauty and power....
Because when you see someone dare to live this way, to speak this way, to act so incredibly sanely and soberly, while at the same time embodying, with every ounce of his intelligent fiber, the greatest, most revolutionary political act in decades -- and you see this man's effort succeed and inspire...
Today, the motto returns to the bulletin board.
On one of my first jobs, working as a PA and part time sound man on a cinema verite documentary about a theater company traveling across America, I was struck, on my first day on location, by the action - or inaction - of the director. I was 26 and quite full of myself, full of ideas, full of imagined brilliance waiting to be unleashed upon the world...
I met the theater company in Northern Virginia late one morning, and I arrived as they prepared for an outdoor rehearsal, at a high school. The film's director, a really nice man and my employer after all, was walking around with the camera, shooting a conversation between a couple of the characters, but after a few moments, he sighed somewhat disgustedly, turned the camera off, and took the heavy thing off his shoulder. He stretched his arms up, his back clearly aching, obviously frustrated by what he had just been filming.
I looked out at the field, the 30 or so actors and technicians preparing for their day, in the midst of a grand summer-long adventure. I spotted two of them carrying on an intense conversation while moving scenery across the football field. I poked the Director and pointed them out to him - let's go film that. He took a quick, dismissive look, shrugged and shook his head, and said, "Boring."
To say that I was astonished would not capture the depth of my horror, or my immediate loathing for this block-headed man. (I cared not at all that it was hot, that the camera was probably thirty pounds, that none of the five characters he had chosen to be the focus of the film were in the conversation I was pointing to...) All I could see was his idiocy, his stubborn close-mindedness. Wasn't the point of a cinema verite documentary to stay open to whatever happened, to follow the story wherever it took you? What about all that crap he, The Director himself, had told me in hiring me about the film being a 'voyage of discovery?' How can you discover something if you don't even set out to find it? Get the camera off the ground, you lazy shit!
A few years later, I landed prematurely in a position of responsibility on another documentary, this one about John F. Kennedy. It was a two hour biographical film portrait, and, determined to make a well-trod subject fresh, we'd chosen to tell the story using strictly voice over interviews with archival footage. On the project, we had an Associate Producer who had been brought in to help find archival footage from the various archival houses around the country. She was bright and sharp and clearly knew her stuff. But what she did, invariably, maybe three or four times a day, was to say, "The way we did it at X was..." and then proceed to tell us all how they had done some similar task in her previous job. I resisted the urge to say to her, "Oh, really, they did it that way the last time you were doing a 2 hour voice-over-only documentary biography of John F. Kennedy?"
But finally, I'd had enough. I went into my office, took out an index card and wrote in big block capital letters a motto, to remind everyone, and really myself, that when we make something, part of the reason we are making it is, in fact, that we want that sense of newness; we want an audience to feel and think in ways they haven't before. I hung the motto in the editing room where I knew she, and everyone, would see it, and proudly, somewhat haughtily, went on with the business of making the film.
Over the years, I actually hung the motto again in a few other editing rooms, and even after opening my own company eight years back, I would remind various editors and producers of it from time to time -- but I think that age and a certain embarrassment caused me to drop it from my repertoire.
The fact is, it is extremely helpful when making things to know the formats, the structures, and the rules by which other things have been made before. And as much as we might all wish to be the great avant garde artistes of our day, a certain maturation process had better kick in at some point, an ability to reconcile the demands of Commerce and Art, especially if one wishes, for example, to live in Manhattan, have children, and send them to private school. (Just as a for instance.)
But why not balance the two? Retain the reminder that we are here for inspiration, for the madness and illogic of the never-before-expressed -- while also remembering that we work in a Society, after all, and that it is Society which will dictate whether and how much bread we get to eat? Surely these are not irreconcilable views, and in fact when they synthesize, we can have a life of beauty and power....
Because when you see someone dare to live this way, to speak this way, to act so incredibly sanely and soberly, while at the same time embodying, with every ounce of his intelligent fiber, the greatest, most revolutionary political act in decades -- and you see this man's effort succeed and inspire...
Today, the motto returns to the bulletin board.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
It Might Be, It Could Be....
It's caught at the warning track.
Nothing anyone can say at this point can properly prepare us for tomorrow night. We are looking at either the greatest upset in modern American political history - and a gruesome rebuke of the entire polling industry - or the dawning of a new era in American history.
The time cannot go fast enough.
Nothing anyone can say at this point can properly prepare us for tomorrow night. We are looking at either the greatest upset in modern American political history - and a gruesome rebuke of the entire polling industry - or the dawning of a new era in American history.
The time cannot go fast enough.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Smart Entertainment, anyone?
One of the things that I find genuinely inspiring about the campaign run by Barack Obama is that he really does treat us as adults. He acts as if voters are smart people, able to handle difficult and complex issues and sort through a complicated truth. (His speech on race was probably the best example, but really, just in general, the level of disingenuousness in his campaign is simply so much lower than any politician in recent memory, it's almost awe-inspiring...)
And the real test, coming in 6 days, is whether it will work or not. If he wins, of course, it won't just be because he treated us as if we were smart - more likely it will be because we want a change and our economy is in the toilet, swirling around with our truly putrid international reputation. But an Obama victory will be an undeniable boon to those of us who have tried to build our own careers on the idea that we can treat our audience -- our voters, our consumers -- as if they are smart. I've always wondered how it could be otherwise, given that we are our audience, after all -- but one more sign that we can do this and succeed is always a welcome thing.
And the real test, coming in 6 days, is whether it will work or not. If he wins, of course, it won't just be because he treated us as if we were smart - more likely it will be because we want a change and our economy is in the toilet, swirling around with our truly putrid international reputation. But an Obama victory will be an undeniable boon to those of us who have tried to build our own careers on the idea that we can treat our audience -- our voters, our consumers -- as if they are smart. I've always wondered how it could be otherwise, given that we are our audience, after all -- but one more sign that we can do this and succeed is always a welcome thing.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
No Problem
When, exactly, did "No Problem" replace "You're welcome" as the standard response to "Thank you?" Did it? Or is it just with me? Because guess what? I don't like it.
When I thank you, sincerely, for something -- even if it's just some small, insignificant favor I've asked of you, I don't assume that it was a problem for you to fulfill my request. When you say "no problem," it makes me think, "well, why would it have been?"
Telling me "You're welcome" tells me that I am welcome, that I am worthy, that I am okay in your book. I like that. It makes me feel good.
Telling me "no problem" tells me that I am lucky you didn't think it was a problem, that you had to think about my request, that you fulfilled it with some hesitation and possibly even resentment. It makes me feel bad.
So cut it out. Please.
When I thank you, sincerely, for something -- even if it's just some small, insignificant favor I've asked of you, I don't assume that it was a problem for you to fulfill my request. When you say "no problem," it makes me think, "well, why would it have been?"
Telling me "You're welcome" tells me that I am welcome, that I am worthy, that I am okay in your book. I like that. It makes me feel good.
Telling me "no problem" tells me that I am lucky you didn't think it was a problem, that you had to think about my request, that you fulfilled it with some hesitation and possibly even resentment. It makes me feel bad.
So cut it out. Please.
Monday, October 20, 2008
What An Audience Wants
I don't much care for the Boston Red Sox. I grew up a Yankee-hater, and so was forced to root for them a couple of times, most notably and frustratingly in 1978 (Bucky Dent, pop fly), but I couldn't really bring myself to throw myself into their legendary suffering with any real passion. After all, I had my own suffering to tend to...
By the time the Yankees hired Joe Torre and I'd gotten out of my childhood, my own Yankee-hating softened, so much so that when the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry heated up again, I was pulling for my home town Yankees now. No love for the Red Sox. Not now, nor ever.
And so I was rather pleased, last Thursday night, to flip on the TV and see that the Tampa Bay Rays were ahead, 5-0, in the seventh inning of Game 5 of their Championship Series, poised to close out the series 4 games to 1. I watched enough for the Rays to score a couple more runs off the Red Sox' truly hateful closer, the brilliantly intense frat boy Jonathan Papelbom, and then, with a rather confident and self-satisfied explanation to my baseball-not-understanding wife that the networks will be pretty displeased with the resulting Phillies-Rays World Series, I flipped the TV off. As I dozed off, I thought of my poor Dad, now inexplicably a Red Sox fan (explicable, really, because he lives in Maine now, but still inexplicable to those of us who think loyalty should outweigh geographical happenstance), and how it must be maddening to him to see the Sox go down without more of a fight... but for the most part, I just thought of how potentially boring the World Series would in fact be. But I would have said I was happy about it.
Until I woke up. And went out to the front door and got the paper, scanning for a final score. For a moment, I was surprised not to see some photo of Tampa Bay Rays jumping on each other, but then I saw it, the news stunning and inevitable and somehow right: Boston 8, Tampa Bay 7.
Boston had come back.
And I grinned. Smiled. Shook my head in a kind of wonder and joy that they'd done it. Why? Not because I wanted the Red Sox to win, no, far from it -- but because of one very simple fact:
It made a better story.
And that's why this election scares me right now. We - we Americans - we audience members - we crave, more than anything else, more than a good explanation of our financial meltdowns, more than a health care plan, more than ending illogical wars - we crave a good story.
And what's a better story right now? That Obama wins going away? Or that scrappy old warrior John McCain, left for dead so many times, makes one last stirring comeback? Pulls off the upset of the young century?
I don't deny that the overall narrative of Obama winning is just as good a story (and after all, the Rays did win the Series, but it took a full Seven games) -- but right now, in the immediate 24-7 culture that craves a good story all the time, I think what we need and want is a good comeback story, and looking at McCain the last few days, I get the sense he's got one in him.
Just don't turn off the set.
By the time the Yankees hired Joe Torre and I'd gotten out of my childhood, my own Yankee-hating softened, so much so that when the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry heated up again, I was pulling for my home town Yankees now. No love for the Red Sox. Not now, nor ever.
And so I was rather pleased, last Thursday night, to flip on the TV and see that the Tampa Bay Rays were ahead, 5-0, in the seventh inning of Game 5 of their Championship Series, poised to close out the series 4 games to 1. I watched enough for the Rays to score a couple more runs off the Red Sox' truly hateful closer, the brilliantly intense frat boy Jonathan Papelbom, and then, with a rather confident and self-satisfied explanation to my baseball-not-understanding wife that the networks will be pretty displeased with the resulting Phillies-Rays World Series, I flipped the TV off. As I dozed off, I thought of my poor Dad, now inexplicably a Red Sox fan (explicable, really, because he lives in Maine now, but still inexplicable to those of us who think loyalty should outweigh geographical happenstance), and how it must be maddening to him to see the Sox go down without more of a fight... but for the most part, I just thought of how potentially boring the World Series would in fact be. But I would have said I was happy about it.
Until I woke up. And went out to the front door and got the paper, scanning for a final score. For a moment, I was surprised not to see some photo of Tampa Bay Rays jumping on each other, but then I saw it, the news stunning and inevitable and somehow right: Boston 8, Tampa Bay 7.
Boston had come back.
And I grinned. Smiled. Shook my head in a kind of wonder and joy that they'd done it. Why? Not because I wanted the Red Sox to win, no, far from it -- but because of one very simple fact:
It made a better story.
And that's why this election scares me right now. We - we Americans - we audience members - we crave, more than anything else, more than a good explanation of our financial meltdowns, more than a health care plan, more than ending illogical wars - we crave a good story.
And what's a better story right now? That Obama wins going away? Or that scrappy old warrior John McCain, left for dead so many times, makes one last stirring comeback? Pulls off the upset of the young century?
I don't deny that the overall narrative of Obama winning is just as good a story (and after all, the Rays did win the Series, but it took a full Seven games) -- but right now, in the immediate 24-7 culture that craves a good story all the time, I think what we need and want is a good comeback story, and looking at McCain the last few days, I get the sense he's got one in him.
Just don't turn off the set.
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