DENTLER TAKES THE STAIRS: Kevin Bewersdorf Interview

In anticipation of the release of Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, South by Southwest Producer Matt Dentler interviewed the film's major contributors then asked several film bloggers (myself included) if they would be interested in posting one of the interviews online. I warmly reviewed Hannah back in March, immediately after its premiere at SXSW, so I happily agreed. I find it impressive to see a festival director support the work he programs well beyond the festival itself. Dentler's vision has made SXSW one of the finest film festivals in America and his support of truly independent fare has helped make it so.

Enjoy the interview. And see the movie. Hannah opens in NYC on August 22. (Showtimes are here.) Rollout for the rest of the country is here.

***

On the eve of the theatrical debut of Joe Swanberg's SXSW 2007 hit, "Hannah Takes the Stairs," I wanted to check in with each of the film's principal collaborators. The film has been documented as a successful collaboration between acclaimed film artists from around the nation, each one offering their own trademark influence on the final film. "Hannah Takes the Stairs" will open at the IFC Center in New York, on August 22, as well as be available on IFC VOD the same day. As part of an ongoing series you can find throughout the film blogosphere, here is an interview with "Hannah" composer and frequent Swanberg collaborator Kevin Bewersdorf:

Dentler: How did you first get connected to "Hannah Takes the Stairs?"

Bewersdorf: Joe and I had just been touring the festival circuit with our film "LOL" (set to come out on DVD August 28). During the festivals Joe kept talking about wanting to shoot a new movie in the summer, and I guess we both just sort of assumed I would be working on it. A month later I was somehow sleeping on the floor of an apartment in Chicago and hanging out with a bunch of great people. Like all the projects I've made with Joe, "Hannah" just sort of fell in to place.

Dentler: What do you remember most about the shoot in Chicago?

Bewersdorf: The whole thing was a gift from God. Every moment was happy. I do want to bring up one particular incident however: the moment that the Bujalski vs. Rohal feud began. This mock-feud has been mock-annoying everyone for a while now, and it is time for me to mock-bring-it-out-into-the-open. One day, when we were sitting around at the office location, Bujalski told Rohal that he looked like an actor that he couldn't place of the name of. Everyone tried to guess the name of the actor as Andrew listed his filmography. Finally, Kent correctly guessed that the actor was Vincent Schiavelli ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus"). Rohal was extremely insulted. We consulted a picture of Schiavelli on imdb, and he looked like an gaunt and droopy troll, may he rest in peace. To counter the attack, Todd claimed that Andrew had a particularity to his countenance which made him appear as though he had Down's Syndrome. Andrew was outrageously insulted. For the rest of the shoot the two maintained a mock rivalry over the incident. The rivalry has continued in public statements made by Rohal on various blogs (such as the "Bujalski Sex Tape" jab on Matt Dentler's blog) although to this day Bujalski denies that the feud exists. I want to bring this out in the open so these two can finally make up, and put the feud behind them.

Dentler: How did the production process differ from your own other projects, or projects you've acted in before or since?

Bewersdorf: I've primarily worked with Joe in the past, so for me it was totally natural. None of the projects I've worked on since have been as stress-free as "Hannah." There was no producer present in Chicago, so that removed any notion of authority or hierarchy in the production. There was extremely minimal equipment, basically no lights or gear, no schedule, no script, and no typical movie pageantry (Joe rarely says "action," for example). It was just like hanging out, we were a perfectly balanced family unit from the start. Working on an indy film is almost always hell. Everyone is concerned with their own agenda, or worried about making their own reel look good, or restricted by an impossible schedule, or moaning about money problems. But, if everyone is willing to just let the movie happen, to enjoy the accidents and rock with the waves (while making sure to keep anyone with bad vibes away from the production) it can be so much fun. Usually people are a too concerned with their own success to have a good time.

Dentler: What are your thoughts on the issues of sex and relationships that come to the forefront of the film?

Bewersdorf: Many girls I've spoken with have despised the Hannah character. Usually it's either because they resent that they are so much like her, frequently leaving trails of destroyed guys in their wakes, or because they have been pissed off by girls like Hannah in the past. Girls like Hannah are so awful and unhealthy to be around, and I've encountered them often. But I've never been able to hold their sporadic heartbreaking actions against them -- they are young and confused and don't know what they want, which everyone knows the feeling of.

Dentler: Ever been in a love triangle?

Bewersdorf: Yes. I was unknowingly involved a love triangle for months. The last side of the triangle wasn't apparent until much later though, when someone else revealed their feelings. At that point it sort of dissolved in to a "love obtuse angle." "Hannah" doesn't technically involve a full love triangle though, unless the character Matt is secretly in love with the character Paul (Ed. Note: they're co-workers and best friends, so it counts).

Dentler: Did you ever work with "the stairs?" Any thoughts on why they didn't make the cut?

Bewersdorf: There was one scene with the stairs, a nude scene, but Kent was worried that his balls looked too fat so Joe cut that out.

Updating Mac Software: Use Extreme Caution

To cut to the chase about what the headline of this post means, just click on the "Read the rest of this entry" link below. If you want backstory, continue on, dear reader. In my last post, I mentioned that I had a few problems setting up my new editing system. For the most part, it was fairly straightforward. Still, there was at least one big headache. Right about the time that I had everything set up (MacPro, LCD and CRT monitors, RAID, and HD capture card) I started having problems.

What kind of problems? For one, Final Cut Pro kept freezing on startup, and -- if I was lucky enough to get it loaded -- FCP would freeze upon my first attempt to monitor footage off of my Multibridge. Oh, and I had a dreaded kernel panic or two. If you've never seen a kernel panic, consider yourself among the lucky. (For the uninitiated, here's a photo of Mac's equivalent of the "blue screen of death.") To say that my excitement about this uncompressed workstation was dampened would be an understatement.

I suspected that the root of these problems was either a conflict between hardware components or just a plain ol' dead piece of equipment. After all, this new editing system has many more elements to it, and the longer the chain, the more likely it is that one of the links is weak.

I wasn't the only one to believe this. After spending an hour on the phone with a knowledgeable representative at Blackmagic Design (the folks that make the Multibridge) the rep said, "Yep, it's dead. Send it back."

That was last 5pm on a Friday, of course, which meant I could do nothing about it over the weekend. I couldn't even ship the Multibridge out. All I could do was reflect on what else could be causing the problems. And, being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, that's what I did. Surprisingly, this was time well spent.

I decided to spend the weekend troubleshooting every thing possible. I tested cables, I tested drives, I tested RAM, I trashed preferences, I repaired permissions, I ran UNIX maintenance, and I swapped cards into different PCI slots... you name it.

Finally, after several hours of troubleshooting, including a complete rebuilding of my editing system (including uninstalling and reinstalling of LOTS of software) I discovered that the problem was not the hardware, but a software problem.

I have no way of knowing for certain, but it appeared to be a software conflict between Multibridge and Apple's QuickTime and 10.4.10 OS updates.

As best I can tell, the problem might have stemmed from the way that I had used Apple's "Software Update" to update my OS (i.e., using Software Update) and because I had applications running (like Final Cut Pro) while doping so.

After several fixes and reinstalls, everything seems okay now (knock on wood), but here are, for me at least, the morals of the story:

1) Use Extreme Caution when using Apple's Software Update tool. The appropriately titled Shock and Awe: How Installing Apple's Updates can Render Your Mac Unbootable and How You Can Prevent it article explains the hows and whys of this. The problem?

When you see the "Optimizing System Performance" phase of a software update, Mac OS X is really updating prebinding. Updating prebinding has a very, very nasty bug in it....If multiple processes are updating prebinding at the same time, then it is possible for a system file to be completely zero'd out. Basically, all data in the file is deleted and it is replaced with nothing.

The solution?

When 'Optimize System Performance' appears during the update process do not touch your computer and definitely do not launch any applications. Just back away from your computer box as if it were a swarm of bees.

But don't take my word for it. Read the article.

2) Avoid using Software Update. Instead, download the updaters from Apple's Support Downloads site and install manually. You can disable Software Update in Apple's System Preferences.

3) Resist the urge to update your software. There are, of course, reasons to update software -- new features, security fixes, etc. But before you begin that next download ask yourself, Do I really need (or can I even use) these new features? This is especially important to ask when in the middle of editing a project.

In sum, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

How to Set Up an Uncompressed HD Workstation

Last February, Mike Curtis of HDforIndies, authored an article in DV Magazine about how to Build Your Own Uncompressed HD Workstation. Most people that visit this site probably also visit Mike's site and/or DV Magazine, so I didn't bother noting it at the time. I figured it'd just be redundant. But now Mike's written a follow up article that concerns the audio side of the equation, and it's equally essential reading for any filmmakers looking to upgrade their editing system. So now it seems appropriate to mention them together. There are two versions of the audio article available online -- the Mac version and the Windows version.

Last Fall, when I started putting the wheels in motion to upgrade my editing system I consulted Mike about what would be best for my needs. A lot of the suggestions generated by our conversation (and, no doubt, several others by filmmakers like me) are now in these articles. I was particularly intrigued to see that the specific system I "built" has elements from all three of Mike's quality tiers, from desperate cheap-o indie stuff to true pro stuff. That's the beauty of DIY -- you tailor it to your needs.

Mike's recently teamed up with Silverado Systems, who will now sell you one of Mike's pre-configured systems. For a lot of people that might be just the kind of convenience they need. For myself, I can say that, though I've had a few headaches in the process, it's been great fun -- and a great learning experience -- to do it myself.

Again, here are the articles:

Build Your Own Uncompressed HD Workstation

Upgrade Your Images with Audio - Mac edition

Upgrade Your Images with Audio - Windows edition

Hooray for Nollywood!

Intrepid reader Ben Hartman alerted me to a fine, if all too short, article in Wired about the third largest film industry in the world. Where is that, you ask? Nigeria. The article is really a tease -- and an effective one at that -- for two recent US-produced documentaries, Welcome to Nollywood and This is Nollywood.

Until I can get my hands on those documentaries, and some actual Nollywood movies, here are some articles that I enjoyed reading today as I educated myself about the Nigerian film industry.

Cinema of Nigeria page on Wikipedia.

Welcome to Nollywood. An extensive article from The Guardian.

Nollywood drought at Fespaco. BBC article discusses allegations of snoobery at Africa's most prestigious film festival towards Nollywood pix.

Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood. NYT article from 2002(!).

The Nollywood Phenomenom. Article found on the World Intellectual Property Association website (WIPO's website tells me that it is a "specialized agency of the United Nations").

Freeware for Filmmakers

FreeGeekery sent me word that they had recently drafted a post entitled "15 Must-Have Freeware Programs for Filmmakers." A quick glance at the list tells me that only 10 of these will work on a Mac, but all the better for me to link to this. So much of what I write about is Mac-centric; it's nice to write about something for folks using Windows. (Plus, Mac users already have iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband. There's really not much of a reason for us to be crabby.)

I cleaned out my Applications folder a few days ago, which had me thinking I should write a post about the Mac shareware I enjoy. FreeGeekery's post has me thinking that might be useful. Stay tuned...

Apple Mail: 8 Tips

Like a lot of folks, I receive and send a lot of email. Lately, I've been digging myself out from the avalanche of email that fell upon my Inbox while I was in Knoxville for a month of prep and production. Surprisingly, the "dig-out" hasn't been that bad, and I think I can attribute it to some email productivity tips and plug-ins I've picked up over the last year. These tips mainly work with Apple Mail. For years I used Eudora, and then Thunderbird. But after Apple's 2.0 version of Mail was released (2005?) I switched to it and haven't regretted it. If you use something other than Mail, some of these may work and some are Mail-specific. Sorry.

Secondly, as a word of background, aside from spam, I keep virtually every email I receive. Email takes up very little memory and it serves as an effective history of work done, contacts, and so on. And everytime I think I don't need to save it all, I end up going back and searching for an email from 1999. Seriously.

Tip 1: Eliminate Spam Well, sure. No one actually wants spam. The trick is figuring out how to eliminate it.

One reason I switched to Apple Mail a few years ago was because its junk mail filter seemed to work pretty well. I don't know if just I started getting more spam, the Junk filter reached it's limitation for how much it could "learn", or if the spam started getting smarter (and by smarter I mean "dumber")... but regardless, my Inbox over the last year started seeing more and more of the stuff.

The solution is SpamSieve. For $30 (and a few minutes of set-up time) you get a clean Inbox. I get maybe one or two spam messages in my Inbox a week these days. I didn't believe the testimonials, but I downloaded the trial and used it for a few days. Now I'm a convert.

Tip 2: Process faster. Now that I'm not having to spend my time sorting out the spam, I can spend my energy processing the real emails sent to me. Though in some ways I'm a skeptic of David Allen's Getting Things Done, I appreciate his theory about tasks like email: If you can reply in 2 minutes or less, do it. If not, figure out what needs to happen next so you can act on it. Approaching my Inbox this way really does increase my efficiency.

Tip 3: Stop manually sorting emails. After replying to an email, I used to file it away. To do this I maintained between a dozen and twenty folders based on various contexts or friends -- my latest project, for example, or "Virginia Tech", or "parents", etc.

No longer. Yes, I still keep almost all my emails, but here's how I do it, inspired by Merlin Mann's sage email advice:

Beyond my "Inbox" (email to which I need to reply) and "Sent", I only maintain three or four folders now:

- The current mission critical project gets its own folder.

- If something catches my attention but there's NO urgency to it (say, an email with a link to an article that I might write about for SRF), I put it in a folder called "Someday?"

- I also maintain a "Waiting On" folder, primarily for email receipts of items I've purchased online. It's my reminder box to make sure something I've purchased actually gets sent to me. I don't check the Waiting folder often enough to put anything of great (ie., work-related) importance in it.

- Everything else goes in a folder I've created called "Archive".

Other folders: If I still want to maintain folders related to people (say, my accountant), all I have to do is set up a smart folder in Mail using my accountant's email address as the filter. All mail stil gets filed to my "Archive", but relevant emails will show up in the smart folder. Voila -- no more time spent manually sorting!

Tip 4: Use MailActOn Probably the thing that I miss the most about Eurdora and Thunderbird is the ease with which you can color-code emails. It's a great way to visually sort the emails in your Inbox -- either by priority or context or whatever.

Mail, unfortunately, still lags in this area: To color-code emails one has to open the color palette (Shift-Apple-C) then use the mouse to click on a color, all the while keeping Apple's rather large color-wheel window open. Clumsy, to say the least.

MailActOn, a donation-ware plug-in for Apple Mail, solves this problem -- and more. Aside from allowing you to assign keystrokes for color-coding, MailActOn also lets you to use keystrokes to sort your mail. Now, when I want to send an email to a specific folder (say, "Archive") all hit is is the keystroke I've defined (in my case, Ctrl-A).

And, of course, Merlin at 43Folders has figured out the way to squeeze every bit of functionality out of the thing by remapping the Caps Lock key. Brilliant!

Tip 5: Speed up Mail Saving a lot of email (as I do) can impact Apple Mail's performance. Mail gets bloated, as it were, and slows down. If you're not careful, the database that stores information about your emails can even get corrupted.

Luckily, there's a simple solution. The Hawk Wings website has links to two different scripts (one, AppleScript, and the other an Automator script) that will "vacuum" the bloat out of Mail.app.

The Applescript version worked like a charm for me without incident, but you should ALWAYS backup your Mail.app files before trying something like this. (See below.)

Tip 6: Back-up Mail Files This is the most basic tip of all, and I know I say it again and again on this site, but ask yourself these two questions:

How much of my life is somehow stored in the emails I have sent and received?

When was the last time I backed up my email files?

So, though you should probably be using something like ChronoSync or whatever to backup ALL your files, if you need to backup just your Mail files they can be found in your system here:

users/[home directory]/Library/Mail users/[home directory]/Library/Mail Downloads

Tip 7: If you use multiple computers, consider using Portable Mail

I have two computers -- a tower and a laptop. All other things being equal, I prefer working on the tower, but the laptop obviously has its advantages. Mail is one application I want to access no matter which computer I'm on, and I've found syncing the application to be a bit of a pain at times. As a solution, I sometimes use a portable version of Mail, which I can run off of a flash drive.

The premise of Portable Mail is this: Instead of trying to sync your Mail from one computer to the next, you instead keep Mail -- your preferences, mailboxes, and downloads -- on a flash drive. Launching Portable Mail launches the Mail.app application of the host computer, but uses all of your preferences, which are on the flash drive.

If your email accounts have better than adequate webmail interfaces that you can access you might not need this, but I have a few accounts that have lousy webmail, so I've found it to be quite handy during days when I know I'm going back and forth between computers a lot.

You'll probably want a 1GB flash drive or larger if you have a lot of email.

Tip 8: Use Plug-ins (if you need 'em)

I'm obviously a fan of MailActOn and SpamSieve. They're two plug-ins that help me customize Apple's Mail to be the application I need. But I draw the line there -- adding on too many plug-ins increases clutter, decreases productivity, and invites conflicts that cause applications to crash.

But maybe you need something more, or something different. If so, the Hawk Wings website has made an excellent catalog of Plug-ins for Apple Mail.

Use 'em if you need 'em. And if you don't, don't.

Rest in Peace, Edward Yang

Via the Filmmaker Magazine blog, I've just learned that writer-director Edward Yang has died of complications from colon cancer. He was 59 years old. In 2006 I started to catch up with Yang's films. The first one I saw was 1991's A Brighter Summer Day. The film is not available commercially anywhere in the world, but I had managed to secure a 2-DVD bootleg of the 237 minute epic. I was laid up in bed, sick, with nothing else to do, so I figured a four-hour movie would be a good way to pass the time.

It's a stunning film, but when it was over -- well before it was over, actually -- the devastating impact the film had on me was buoyed by my thrill at discovering a filmmaker so in control of the medium.

Still, even that film did not prepare me for Yi Yi, which I caught up with late last year after Criterion released it on DVD. As I mentioned in my year-end posting, the experience of watching Yi Yi at home last winter was the best moviegoing experience I had all last year.

One of the reasons I would never want to be a full-time movie reviewer or critic is my inability to put into words experiences like seeing Yi Yi. Peter Bowen's post over at Filmmaker quotes A.O. Scott's review of it in the Times, and that gives a hint of what I myself felt:

As I watched the final credits of Yi Yi through bleary eyes, I struggled to identify the overpowering feeling that was making me tear up. Was it grief? Joy? Mirth? Yes, I decided, it was all of these. But mostly, it was gratitude.

There's something so exciting about discovering the work of a new artist whose work you hold close to your heart: There's the thrill of going through the back-catalog, hoping that there are more treasures to discover. And, if that artist is still alive, still working, there's the eager anticipation of looking forward to their new work, which is a kind of joy in its own right.

Today, when I heard the news of Yang's death on June 29th, I -- and all of his fans -- lost the chance to feel that latter kind of joy. All that's left for us is the chance to appreciate the work Yang created while he was here.

It may take years before I can see all of his films -- none besides Yi Yi are available on DVD -- but however long it takes, I'll be thankful they remain to be seen. Yes, "gratitude" is the right word.

Thank you, Edward Yang. Rest in peace.

***

If, like me, you're coming late to Edward Yang's work here are some ways to learn more:

Online Resources:

    Edward Yang: IMDB entry

    Edward Yang: Senses of Cinema biography -- this includes several links to interviews, essays, etc.

    Edward Yang: Wikipedia entry

    Edward Yang: AP Obituary

    Added 7.3.07:

    Edward Yang: NYT Obituary [Manohla Dargis]

    Edward Yang reflections on GreenCine

    Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews of Edward Yang films

Books:

    Edward Yang

DVD:

    Yi Yi is the only film of Yang's to be commercially released on DVD, either in the USA or (to the best of my knowledge) abroad. Bootleg DVDs for at least some of Yang's other films are known to be available on the internet.

Flyover

I just learned about an interesting new blog called FlyOver. From the site:

FlyOver is a blog about art in the American Outback -- the people and places usually given less attention by those hopping from coast to coast. It's a way for arts journalists and artists outside the major American urban areas to celebrate, discuss, critique and share what they do. While it was established to continue a conversation begun at USC Annenberg's 2007 NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, we hope it will ultimately grow to serve a larger community of journalists, artists and institutions involved in the arts in America.

No, it may not cover issues related to filmmaking (at least not yet), but its attention to art and artmaking outside of the traditional hubs of the so-called "art world" is welcome.

DIY Underwater Camcorder Housing

Last summer I linked to a DIY underwater camcorder housing that could be built for $70. Since Summer is now officially upon us it's only appropriate that I share another design for an underwater camcorder housing. If you have a Dremel, this one's even cheaper to build than the one from last year. The downside? You'll only be able to use smaller handheld camcorders. Still, I'm sure some enterprising souls will be able to come up with something that will fit larger prosumer video cameras.

Open Thread: Superstitions

I'm back from Knoxville, where I just spent the last month prepping and then shooting a new project. I'm way too close to things to say much about it -- what it is, how it went, and so on -- right now. As it gets closer to completion I will talk more about it, no doubt. Aside from not having any distance on the thing, the fact is that I'm just generally reluctant to talk about works-in-progress. This probably seems like an odd trait for a "film blogger" to have. If so, hey, guilty as charged. That fact remains that the only thing I like less than talking about a film I've just shot (but not edited) is a film I'm in the process of writing. I don't have a problem talking about the project with collaborators -- that would be counter-productive (and very frustrating for others, I'm sure). Mainly, it's just a reluctance for me to attempt to define a creative project for others before it has defined itself to me.

The reluctance is also based in superstition. It seems like every time I say something semi-definitively about a film I'm making (especially during production) I'm eating my words within minutes. (A recent example: "I'm glad we've now decided which camera we're renting and we can move onto other things!")

On the flip side, I have certain rituals that I need to do before writing a project. And there are lucky objects: a brand of pens, old t-shirts, baseball caps.

I know I'm not alone. A lot of artists (filmmakers, writers, choreographers, etc.) that I've known are superstitious people -- practically as superstitious as baseball players. The cinematographer of a couple of films I made always wore the same t-shirt on the first day of filming. It was a promotional film from a successfuly 90s indie comedy (which shall remain nameless). He loathed the film, actually, but he wore the t-shirt because he figured it would remind him that no matter what, we could make something better.

But enough about me. What about you? Drop a comment if you have superstitions when writing, prepping, filming, or finishing a project -- or if you know a good story about someone that does.

Dialect Resources for Actors and Directors

The lead actress of the new film I'm working on is doing some dialect research. She shared this link with me, and I just have to share it here. It's the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). From their website, an explanation of the purpose:

The International Dialects of English Archive, IDEA, was created in 1997 as a repository of primary source recordings for actors and other artists in the performing arts. Its home is the Department of Theatre and Film at the University Of Kansas, in Lawrence, KS, USA; while associate editors form a global network. All recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and you will find both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. The recordings are downloadable and playable for both PC and Macintosh computers.

It's an amazing audio archive of dialects from around the United States. Maybe this is old news to actors, but it's new to me, and quite exciting.

And, just in case you were wondering, we've been listening to Tennessee Eight.

We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

This is, I think, the longest delay between posts at Self-Reliant Film. Between the events at Virgina Tech and the preparation for a project of mine, well, what can I say? My attention has been elsewhere. Anyway, it's good to get back to the blog. Thanks, again, to all of you that privately emailed or publicly commented with words of support. On an unrelated(?) note, I just remembered that today marks the 15th anniversary of the "premiere" of my first film, a film called "Pure", which I made with a Super-8 film camera graciously loaned by Chris Cagle. The film screened for about twenty people in the living room of my friend Wade Guyton, who lived in the house next door to Chris.

I remember that the evening ended with various people singing along to the Xanadu soundtrack. Yesterday, my friend Alan sent me a link to this. Plus ça change, plus c'est la méme chose.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech: What You Can Do, How You Can Help

A number of you have emailed me privately to ask how, if at all, you can be of help regarding the tragic events of the past week. Thanks for asking. Here are some ideas:

* If you are as concerned and offended as I am about decision of the various news outlets to share the killer's self-taped images and/or manifesto, let them know your thoughts about it.

* If you have no connection whatsoever to the events of the past week I request that you pause, for at least 24 hours, reading any news stories on the event, especially from news outlets that have featured the killer's vanity kit. Instead, use that time -- even if it's 5 minutes -- to do something positive in the world.

* If you feel compelled to read the news, I encourage you to visit The Roanoke Times, whose in-depth and respectful coverage has been a source of pride for many of us in the area.

* If you are able to do so, I encourage you to donate to one of the many memorial funds set up to honor the victims.

* Finally, if you are a film professional, in the coming weeks I will be looking for internships and summer work for my 26 filmmaking students. It's vital, to me, to help them find meaningful summer activity, which will move them forward in their career goals and get their minds off of the terrible recent events.

Please contact me directly if you can offer an internship or, even better, paid summer work: pharrill AT selfreliantfilm DOT com

Last Word on the Subject

Last night, I was disgusted that the various media outlets were giving airtime, ink, and webspace to the videotape and writings of the person behind the massacre here at Virginia Tech. Amidst the images I saw on the New York Times website, one that stuck out as odd -- an image of the young man brandishing a hammer. To me, the image called to mind a still from a movie -- at first, I thought, something from a Gasper Noe film. Then, later, I remembered it was the revenge movie, OldBoy.

For others, the image might have suggested something else, but I am a filmmaker and I suppose I am inclined to make comparisons between images of cinematic texts, if one can use such coolly academic terminology for a killer's self-taped imagery. Both images feature people looking into a camera's eye brandishing a hammer and, importantly for me, both images are "revenge texts." The fact that both images are of Asian males was largely inconsequential to me; if either person had been of a difference race, nationality, etc. I would have, I feel, made the same connection. As I said, at first I thought the image came from a French film.

Certainly, I thought, some readers and viewers would be perplexed by such an image, and I wanted to suggest a possible reference. Mainly, though, I wanted to use this opportunity of having the Times' attention to tell them how I would prefer that they did not show such images in the first place. This message was included in my email to them though, perhaps not surprisingly, they chose not to acknowledge that comment. I believe that giving airtime to a killer's ramblings does a disservice to those of us here in Blacksburg who are deeply, actively grieving; I also believe that it likely gives the killer the attention he so desperately desired. For me, sharing these images publicly goes beyond pornography.

How misguided and naive can a person be, particularly in light of the comments in my last post? I should have said nothing, done nothing, and ignored it all. I made the mistake of attempting to make sense of the nonsensical, assuming that my comment could be a simple footnote to a single still image, and above all, presuming that a person can have any control over any comment he feeds to the Media Machine.

This morning I awoke to several emails and blog comments accusing me of everything from racism against South Koreans to blaming cinema for the carnage on Monday. And all day I have been courted by several major media outlets salivating for an interview with me, as if I could somehow explain the events of Monday to them by way of a movie. How sad. How absurd. The answer to all of these individuals has been "No."

Let me be clear: My comparison of these two images was not meant to suggest in ANY way that movies, any movie, "made him do it." Likewise, my comparison of these two images is IN NO WAY an attempt to make ANY generalizations based on racial, nationalistic, or any other sorts of lines.

The fact that the comparison of these two images has been co-opted in various ways is extraordinarily painful to me, particularly the accusations of racism. Anyone who knows me knows that this truly, truly breaks my heart. As if it weren't already broken.

To everyone outside of Blacksburg, the events of the past few days are a circus, an opportunity to use others' tragedy for their own ends. It is not a circus for me. There is only the event, the profound sadness of its aftermath, and the utter confusion about what has happened.

I am mourning the loss of my colleagues, friends, family, and students. Here in Blacksburg we are all grieving. Deeply. The headline writers for many news outlets have determined that today "The Healing Begins." It has not.

If what was intended to be my tiny footnote on a minor point has stirred up passions in you, I truly regret that. If you have taken my comment to be implicitly or explicitly racist, I hope you can believe me when I write with utter sincerity that this was never the intention.

And if you are with the media, do not bother contacting me. I have learned my lesson.

Finally, to reiterate: My point in all of this, however misguided the effort, was to initiate a conversation about what Jill Godmilow calls "the pornography of the real" -- in this case, news outlets using a mass murderer's fantasies as sick spectacle and -- let us never forget -- as a source of revenue.

The Pornography of the Real

The names of many of Monday's shooting victims were released on Tuesday; more have trickled out today. What little that was still abstract to me about Monday's events is gone. Last night, as I was drafting this post I was able to write "Ashley and I have known none of the victims directly, but I know several people who have lost immediate family, friends, classmates, and colleagues." Now, sadly, the first half of that sentence is no longer true. Out of respect for the privacy and dignity for those who are confronting unfathomable losses right now, I'm going to refrain from sharing any further details. Why? Because since Monday I've witnessed reporters sticking their microphones into the faces of people with very red eyes, hovering near the homes of those who have lost loved ones, and taking photos with extreme telephoto lenses, lenses that don't require the photographer to have a personal relationship with his subject. Frankly, I'm sick of it.

The past 48 hours have been one long, ongoing demonstration of what Jill Godmilow, in both her incomparable film What Farocki Taught and her essay "What's Wrong with the Liberal Documentary?, labels "the pornography of the real":

The "pornography of the real" involves the highly suspect, psychic pleasure of viewing "the moving picture real" ... a powerful pornographic interest in real people, real death, real destruction and real suffering, especially of "others", commodities in film. These "pleasures" are not brought to our attention. The pornographic aspect is masked in the documentary by assurances that the film delivers only the actually existing real -- thus sincere truths that we need to know about.

As I said in my previous post, I think of storytelling as a kind of citizenship, so I don't blame people for wanting to know the stories unfolding in Blacksburg, nor do I blame journalists for telling those stories. Still, how one gathers the facts, why you gather them, and the way you tell them can't be separated from the story you're telling. Sadly I've been witnessing firsthand how many journalists, particularly those from out of town, seem to have forgotten that common decency is also facet of citizenship. My main consolation, and it isn't much, is knowing that the members of the media will move on to another spectacle in very short time.

A Very Sad Day

Today was supposed to be a good day. Last night, like a kid dreaming of proverbial sugarplum fairies, I literally dreamt of the Red Camera, which was set to be unveiled today at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. Instead, today has been -- well, there aren't words.

As many of you know, I teach at Virginia Tech. If, somehow, you have not heard, there were a series of shootings on campus today that left over 30 people dead. Apparently this is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, though I find it sad that there's a need to keep such statistics.

For those of you that emailed me, some of whom I've never even met face to face, thank you so much for your concern. I am alright. Shaken, for sure -- we were under "lock down" for several nerve-wracking hours -- but deeply thankful that my students and I made it through the day unscathed. More than anything else, though, my heart is just broken to pieces over the victims and their families. I expect that things will only grow sadder as more news comes out, particularly when the names of the deceased start to be released to the public. I do not look forward to waking up tomorrow and reading the news.

I tell my students that storytelling is citizenship -- a "service profession", really. Tomorrow I'll try to think of something positive and useful for my students to do with our video cameras.