Nobody’s better at the internet than Johnn - yesterday he began a viral internet campaign, that for all my uninterest in baseball, I 100 percent support. Please copy/paste/forward/consider/contribute:

Subject: $42 for Obama in honor of Jackie Robinson, Thursday, January 31
Hey guys,

Please excuse the unsolicited political e-mail, esp if I haven’t been in touch in a minute otherwise (sorry, hectic etc!) - but if we’ve talked politics recently, you probably know how much *I’ve been feeling Barack Obama’s candidacy*. Not only do I agree with most of his policies, but, maybe more importantly, *I agree with his politics*. In recent weeks he’s been faced with some cynical and divisive politicking by his opponents, not to mention internet smears exemplifying the worst of America/humanity etc, and in response he’s been unfailingly gutsy, shrewd, and most of all, classy. For the first time in my life, I’m watching a candidate conduct a presidential campaign that I can really respect, and it’s kind of blowing my mind.

A couple of days ago, it kind of struck me that the whole situation is vaguely reminiscent of when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, becoming the first black major leaguer in 1947 - a year in which he also won
the first Rookie of the Year award, the beginning of a MVP-World Series Champ-Hall of Fame career. I remembered reading a book about him when I was a kid, and there’s this famousish part where Dodgers GM Branch Rickey is
basically telling him that people are going to say horrible things to his face and behind his back, but in order to gain acceptance with the fans and really inaugurate a new, integrated era etc he would have to endure it and rise above it, and not let the haters provoke him into reacting angrily. It’s terrible that one man had to be the first, to bear the brunt of that hate and shoulder that fundamentally unfair burden of confronting it with more civility than it deserved, and it’s truly a measure of how extraordinary a player and a person that Jackie Robinson was that he pulled it off. I think Obama also has what it takes, to transcend not only race but the ineffective and depressing brand of partisan politics that has helped make US politics such a bummer for the past 16 or so years.

So anyway, out of curiosity, I looked up Jackie Robinsonon Wikipedia and it just so happens that *this Thursday, January 31, would have been his 89th birthday*. Which got me thinking about a Ron Paul-style fundraising* ‘moneybomb ‘* in his honor, just in time for the critical Feb. 5th Super-Ultra-Enormo-Tuesday primaries across the country (including my/our
own New York!).

*This Thursday *I* at least am going to donate $42 to Obama’s campaign, at BarackObama.com* - *$42 in honor of Robinson’s uniform #42*, which in 1997 was retired for every team in the major leagues, an unprecedented and unique honor. (Active players wearing the number at the time were allowed to keep it. Today, the only player still wearing #42 is the New York Yankees’ Mariano Rivera , the greatest closer and greatest post-season pitcher in baseball history. But that, much like a lengthy discussion of his many mind-blowing post-season records, such as his *34.1 consecutive scoreless innings* (!!!), is neither here nor there.)

I am not involved with his online activist community or anything like that or whatever and I’ve never tried to do anything ‘virally’ but I do know all of you people, and I know that many, maybe even most of you could probably afford to donate a bit of cash to probably *the most important candidate at the most important time of the most important election of our lives*. Just as importantly, I know that many if not most of you are well-connected, generally important and respected people, with e-mail address books filled with other well-connected, important people who might be receptive to this idea. There’s only a few days but if we spread the word quickly we might be able to make a little wave of positivity, a little news story to remind the media about why we all like Obama so much during a week that’s sure to be filled with some pretty heavy negativity and lots of distractions from you-know-who. So, spread the word, and donate with me Thursday - this is definitely the time to do this.

V best
John.

“Barackuda” is trademark Brian H. If you know him, you’ve probably guessed that already.

Hey dudes,

Our piece THIS PLACE IS A REAL MEAT MARKET is part of the group show ‘Intellectual Property’ at Meat Market Gallery in Washington, DC!

The show is a bunch of different proposals of what to do with the gallery space. Ours is a continuation of some motifs from Halloween Face, a tribute to BEE’s The Informers and waaaay bratty.

If yr in the D.C. area between now and Feb 3, check out the show!
Or you can buy an e-anthology of the exhibit.

Art,
L + W

P.S. Sweet nuts! The Post calls it, “among the most entertaining shows Washington has seen in years.” !!
P.S.2. isn’t this picture of WR on the set of The Informers great?

My friends are throwing a party in Stamford tonight. Their invitation nails a good 50% of my youth. No Fergie, but this is where I’m from…

FLO Presents: S-TOWN BANGERS

The S-Town Banger is something completely native to any Stamfordite, and consists a little something like this:

(Sketchy Kid in North Face): “Whats good, Yo my boy fogel is having a banger tonight”

(Slightly Bitchy Girl in Ugg’s) “Where at?”

(Kid): “North Stamford”

(Girl): “Word, hit me on my nextel”

(later that night…)

a caravan of 25 cars meet up at Burger King and roll up to the party, hoodies up, starched popped collars w/ 30 racks of beer, vanilla dutch in pocket, and immediately consumes kegs of coors light while running the beirut table and somehow finding ways to rip off every mail box on the street… The next day u decide that the party was def. an S-Town Banger - something completely indescribable to people anywhere else in the world.

Word.
L

Something happens every time we make a movie. During early stages of post-production, we become convinced “man, we’ve really made an accessible piece now. This is so straightforward.” Then we finish, see what we’ve done and are like “oh, right. We’re WEIRD filmmakers.” All the mixed emotions of self-recognition follow.

Right now, we’re editing a piece of Blondes in the Jungle where a narrator takes the viewer through a book he’s read. The book has back information and asides and complicated setups. In the original edit of this sequence, the narrator talks the viewer through all of those.

I screened this edit with the actor last week and realized (duh) it is very hard to follow flashbacks within flashbacks - especially when they aren’t illustrated. At best you can visualize the narrative you’re hearing right now, not the frame story around it. At some point you are inevitably lost.

That night, I stayed up in bed for hours worrying and finally decided to suggest we pare down the sequence - just tell the most important story and not the framing stories around it. I made my case to Whit…

Then tonight I was reading Documents to Serve as an Outline, written by Raymond Roussel in 1932-33 (Why didn’t anyone tell me about this guy?!). It’s a truly internetty piece, where EVERY PARAGRAPH is a backstory to the paragraph before. Here’s a sample:

The autopsy furnished proof of a double poisoning.
An investigation of foodstuffs having led to naught, it became necessary to look elsewhere. Suspicion finally settled on the glue of a supply of stamps of touching origin.
Two years previously the American T… had attempted, on his vessel the B…, an audacious polar expedition.
When the anticipated time of his return had been largely exceeded, a public subscription drive to finance a search party was launched.
Notably a stamp was created which, showing theB… lost amid floes, accompanied the franking stamp on many an envelope.
More than one hand was forced by the ploy of sending out an unsolicited sheet of a hundred stamps - for which a canvasser soon appeared, to request either the return of the sheet or a contribution.

It’s impossible to read these stories and not get lost. Being lost is essential to both the pleasure of reading them and to their meaning (that Europe is so old that everything in it has a complicated, beautiful history.) And remembering back to writing the Blondes script, the maze-like texture of history’s provisional and incidental details was part what we wanted to convey. We wanted you to get lost.

Still - is being lost in a story as fun on the screen as it is in a book? After all, in a book you can reread, and with effort retrace your steps. But in films, you’re pressed endlessly forward (of course, if you’re watching at home, you can rewind, but that’s considered “cheating” in someway it isn’t with books). In other words, is being lost a rewarding experience only when you can find your way? Or is being lost in itself worthwhile? And even if so, is that right for this scene? in this movie? in this way? etc…

Um,
L

Here’s a Ross McElwee quote from (awesome x-mas gift) A Critical Cinema 2 by Scott MacDonald. I’m posting it partially because Whit and I are dealing with similar stuff producing a non-fiction piece right now, but mostly just to experience typing these words and fantasize about being this articulate and smart about film…

In objective, detached, “classical” cinéma vérité, you may have very strong emotional feelings about what you’re shooting, but basically the world plays itself out in front of you without any of your feelings being directly represented in what you’re shooting. You’re detached, separated. This enables you to develop layers of complexity within a single frame, foreground/background relationships for instance. In Space Coast there’s a shot of Papa John sitting in a chair rambling on about how he can’t get a job, while in the background you can see his wife struggling to load the refrigerator with groceries; all kinds of interesting ironies and complexities are set up in that shot. When you start taking on part of the burden of the narrative and the interactions yourself, you can lose this kind of complexity. The interaction becomes more perpendicular to the camera. Often, you’re giving up the observed detail that reflects the depth and multileveled complexities of the world, both visually and sociologically. What you’re getting instead is a self-reflective complexity that turns back on itself. Occasionally in Sherman’s March, however, there are moments when I was able to step back and observe what was going on. The scene with the survivalists is an instance of that. They’re not really part of my world, so I can step back and film them objectively. Ideally, I want my films to phase in and out of these two kinds of experience.

What kind of films do you make if yr big influences are Ross McElwee and David Lynch?

I love this campaign, the emails I get.
L

Subject: Turn on your television
From: Barack Obama
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 23:56:14 -0500
To: Lev Kalman <***********>

Lev –

We just won Iowa, and I’m about to head down to talk to everyone.

Democrats turned out in record numbers tonight, and independents and even some Republicans joined our party to stand together for change.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to make this possible.

Barack