And here I thought Jeff Jarvis was the only one flogging vlogs. The NYT had an article over the weekend about the explosion of vlogging, and the distribution deal that slightly funny vlog Rocketboom made with TiVo. TiVo gives Rocketboom 50% of the revenue from ads it sells on their content.
Then Andy picked up producer Kent Nichols’ call of the coming–and monetizable– “indie tv” wave, a combination of online and TiVo subscription vlogs and DVD sales, with existing TV networks cherrypicking proven content for broadcast.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and to an independent TV producer courting networks all the time, everything looks like a pitch&development process. Personally, although the mad money TV networks might throw around as they lurch toward oblivion may be irresistible to some future vloggers, I can easily imagine people rejecting the creative and commercializing meddling by network suits, and just sticking with a smaller, more manageable process and audience online.
Of course, this also takes away a lot of excuses. Soon, with exorbitant production costs and distribution strangleholds out of the way, the only reason you’ll have for not being a famous comedian is that you’re not actually funny.
The Indie TV Movement is Here [beatboxgiant via waxy]
TV Stardom on $20 a Day [nyt]
A Suggestion For Wrapping All My Gifts
I know that any day now, hundreds of readers will be emailing me, asking for suggestions on how I’d like my gifts wrapped. The answer is below. To the swiftest 150 or so of you, I suggest Cool Hunting’s limited artist-edition wrapping paper. There are two sheets of each of three designs in each set, so if for some reason you’re giving me fewer than six large gifts, you could share amongst yourselves. Above is Derek Aylward’s design. Is it tacky to mention the price? No, it is not. $24.
If six sheets aren’t enough, or if you’re too slow, I suggest the silvery silhouetted goodness of 2×4’s “New World Order” wrapping paper for Cabinet Magazine. 3 sheets are $10, and you can fit 6-9 in each mailing tube.
Making An Advertiser List & Checking It Twice
Want to see whose naughty and/or nice? Check out the greg.org advertisers; there’s a little of both:
Isn’t symmetry lovely? God bless you advertisers, everyone.
Zaha’s Cojones, Neto’s Ovaries
I’ve been waiting for anyone else to say it, but Zaha Hadid must have some serious cojones to show up in Miami–his own home [away from home] town!–sporting a gigantic Ernesto Neto fallopian tube sculpture. I mean, Neto’s Venice installation is like two blocks away in the Margulies Warehouse. Don’t even get me started on Anish Kapoor’s Turbine Hall. Seriously, woman, WTF?
My Dinner With Robbe-Grillet
Forget Louis Malle, my evening trying to catch up with with peripatetic curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for a few minutes at Art Basel Miami Beach last weekend felt like it was directed by Fellini. Or Scorsese [think After Hours]. Or John Hughes [Sixteen Candles] for that matter. It was hi-larious chaos all the way through, but somehow it worked.
As our chat got pushed back and back, HUO ended up pulling together a “very small dinner in honor of Alain Robbe-Grillet.” We were to meet at The Shore Club at 8, where HUO had “a room with a terrace for drinks.” Which turned out to be a conference room/office with a tiny outdoor space over the valet parking. It was stocked for an offsite, with rows of tiny Cokes and eclairs, but no cocktails. Or as the dapper Robbe-Grillet–who has more than earned the right to play the curmudgeon–put it, “Il a promis un verre sur la terrace, mais il y a ni de verre, ni de terrace. C’est qu’un balcon!” [Still, it would be a handy space to have on a trip. HUO is a tireless explorer of institutional collaboration; if I consumed infrastructure so voraciously, I would be, too.]
Anyway, No drinks, no terrace, no problem, because HUO’s colleague picked up the phone and ordered a mojito for Monsieur. Then fifteen minutes of smalltalk later, she called to check on the order. So often, these giant art fairs, with their overlapping VIP events, leave you wondering if you’ve chosen the wrong one and are missing something hotter. I knew I was in the best spot in Miami when she called again a few minutes later, and pleaded with the hapless bartender, “Uno mojito, por l’amor de Dios! U-NO Mo-ji-to!”
Like clowns exiting a car, a stream of waiters brought successive, differently concocted mojitos, until we had six, enough for us non-drinkers, too. Then a cart with antipasto and a bathtubful of wine on ice rolled in, which we all nibbled faux-casually in full self-preservation mode, since, except for Mr. Robbe-Grillet, whose eminence gave him the confidence that he would be taken care of, the less famous/faithful among us were not at all sure this wasn’t the only food we’d see that night. Turns out the original restaurant was too noisy, so a quieter venue–for 8 people, at 9pm, on Saturday night, in Miami Beach, during Art Basel–was being sought.
Soon enough Tim Griffin showed up, a restaurant was apparently set, and we piled into the Art|Basel|Miami Beach|BMWs and ended up at The Forge, which sounded like an S&M club and looked like Robin Leach had done over Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It was, naturally, packed with Tony Montanas, and we threaded our way back, back, back through the din–to the chilled silence of a private table in the wine cellar. Nebuchadnezzars of whatever in individual back-lit niches filled the walls [the normal wine cellar was elsewhere]. Sure was quiet. And freezing. We retired to a private courtyard to let the room warm up, which, of course, it never did, so after first trying to set up a table outside, and after I dopily offered to drape my napkin on Robbe-Grillet’s shoulders to stay warm, we went out and joined the haut polloi.
The place was deafening. Though we were able to hear the offer of “surf-and-turf” [at $100+, you’d hope they could come up wit’ a classier name] and the birthday antics of the table next to us, we couldn’t hear across our own table. Thus, most conversation was shouted into the ears of the people on either side of us, or was relayed like a game of telephone to M. R-G. Apparently, they stop playing this game in France at age 5 or so, because R-G [can I call him R-G? I think now I can.] spent an unsettling amount of time with his hands over his ears. Unsettling for me, anyway. I mean, who wants to see anyone–much less one of the greatest writer/filmmakers of the last hundred years–do that when you’re talking to him?
It turned out, though, that several of the table’s stories overlapped: a screening of Last Year At Marienbad on an Icelandic glacier that ended with an emergency airlift; red meat; Patty Hearst and Stockholm Syndrome; Claude Lelouch. Although the owner and staff deserves full credit for their backbending hospitality, the steaks–”Wine Spectator says this is the best steak in the country”–were entirely forgettable. I confess, I ate alone at Outback the night before [come on, I’d just gotten into town, and it was right in front of the containers!], and my steak was easily twice as good, and a quarter the cost.
But whoever the angels in accounting were that night, we can only thank them from afar, because we all bolted for the door in order to make Doug Aitken’s party by 11:30.
Near the end, we were divvying up the rights to the story: Tim Griffin was getting a thinly fictionalized version for his novel; while Robbe-Grillet himself may use it–or at least the curator-as-energizer-bunny/hero version of it–in a film, since he’s apparently showing no signs of slowing down soon; Stefano Boeri may run it in his magazine. I claimed blog rights, which set off a whole new discussion of blogs, the art world, and boingboing. Turns out HUO knows Cory. I guess by definition, two guys who know everyone in the world would know each other, too.
Awesomest DVD Extra Of The Year Award Nominee: Steve Carell Chest-Waxing Docu
Unrated is the new Rated R. In addition to 17 additional minutes of edited-out footage, the New Unrated Version DVD of The 40-Year-Old Virgin contains “a four-camera behind-the-scenes look at Steve Carell’s character, Andy Stitzer, having his chest waxed.”
I feel like I’m letting down my hairier readers, but I’m unfortunately not going to be able to make the “Hairiest Chest Waxing Contest!” promotional tie-in being held in 17 markets around the country on Tuesday. [Of course, if they threw in some earlobe- and back-waxing while they’re at it, I might be persuaded to rearrange my schedule.]
As of December 13th, The 40-Year-Old Virgin will be available in both R and Unrated DVD versions. Collect them all!
Lelouch’s C’etait un Rendezvous Online, With Bonus Netnerd Features
Although it was released on DVD last year, C’etait un Rendezvous, Claude Lelouch’s classic/notorious underground film, has turned up online. The film is a Ferrari-eye view of a flat-out race across Paris, shot in a single 9-minute take using a gyro-stabilized camera mounted on the car.
Now the web is filling up with stuff that should’ve been on that DVD. Folks have mapped out Lelouch’s route [from Porte Dauphine to Sacre Coeur] and analyzed the car’s average speed, landmark to landmark. I was discussing this with Alain Robbe-Grillet last night at dinner. [thunk. Sorry, did I just drop something?]
Find a download/streaming source at Jerry Kindall’s C’etait un Rendezvous post
Here’s one Googlemap of the route
Here’s a breakdown of the average speeds from The Physics Factbook
Mission Accomplished, Indeed
Just when you [and by “you,” I mean “Scott Sforza”] think it’s been a rough month or two, and you’re reduced to staging photo ops in a yurt on the backlot of Far and Away, you wake up and find one of these on your doorstep, and it makes it all worth while. It’s an early Christmas at the White House.
And then you catch the headline right under it: “US is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers,” and it hits you, like the helpful list the super slides under your door with the names of all the building staff, or the Xeroxed holiday greeting from your mail carriers: These guys are hitting you up for tips.
Colonial, Williamsburg. Williamsburg, Colonial.
Living in both towns for a few years, I should be used to this by now, but it never fails to amuse. The Washington Post dispatched a correspondent to uncover rumors of hipness in Williamsburg. Brooklyn. You know, to distinguish it from the expensively fabricated, “keepin’ it real” dress-up themepark built with lots of parental money:
… Grand Street is a rich gallery row: The “chess set” of pedophiles and their victims at Ch’i disturbed; a collection of deli coffee cups at City Reliquary amused; and Martin Gurfein’s kaleidoscopic scenes of daily life at the Hogar Collection dazzled….
…I assumed that the gig by Montreal’s Bell Orchestre would be a casual CD-hawking session in a corner of the shop. But Sound Fix hides a back room that’s like a slice of fin-de-sicle Vienna, a dimly lighted, sofa-filled bar/coffeehouse with pressed-tin walls. It was crammed with Billyburgers who clearly knew of the band…
With this much hipness sloshing around the scene, I predict that one day soon, someone will write a book about one of these young, edgy, emerging musicians, and it will be a smash.
No, Not That Williamsburg [wp via gawker]
The Number I Want To Know: Libeskind’s Net From The 9/11 Memorial Racket
Grr. Sometimes I don’t know which is worse: the cloying, dishonest schmaltzfest of a master plan put forward for the WTC site by Pataki’s democracy organ grinder monkey Danny Libeskind, or the de facto plan that eviscerated it, the one that’s actually being built under political cover of Libeskind’s handiwork.
Then, I read about a 9/11 memorial he built in Padua, Italy, which uses the same bogus, headbanging numerological symbolism to beat its message into visitors heads–in this case, the debunked email spasm that claimed Nostradamus predicted the 9/11 attacks–and I feel relief that that opportunistic little Minstrel of Death won’t leave a fingerprint on my city. [via archinect]
Proulx on Lee’s Brokeback Mountain: Happy As A Ranch Hand In Love. Er…
Annie Proulx has seen “Brokeback Mountain” twice: once, when the characters and story originally made their way from her head to her short story in the New Yorker. Then again, when Ang Lee’s film rose up before her on the screen. She’s as happy as a woman can be about doomed gay cowboy love.
The Village Voice’s Jessica Winters has an account of the story’s translation from the page to the screen:
In transcribing a 10,000-word story onto a celluloid canvas, Brokeback Mountain takes the opportunity to enlarge and embellish upon Proulx’s glancing details and grace notes, or as [co-screenwriter Larry] McMurtry puts it, “We milked it for every single sentence, every single phrase we could.” Proulx adds, “Usually, screenwriters work with novels, and that means whittling and chopping and squeezing it down into 90 minutes or whatever approved movie length.”
Madonna: What I Really Want To Do Is Tell Everyone What To Do
Presumably because he was made to by his editors, Andrew Pulver momentarily entertains the notion that a film directed by Madonna would somehow not be an utterly self-absorbed, epically unwatchable trainwreck:
She certainly has the strength of will to become a film-maker, too. [Jonas] Akerlund is the credited director of [the widely panned as sycophantic] You’re the Next Best Thing, but you can’t imagine a single edit got in without Madonna’s approval. And she knows the worth of a good photographer and art director, which is half the battle of film-making.
What I really want to do is not have to see or hear about another Madonna-related film project ever again.
Can Madonna beat Guy at his own game? [guardian]
2005-12-05, This Week In The New Yorker
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ FLOOR WAR/ Hendrik Hertzberg on the war over the war in Congress.
BEIJING POSTCARD/ POPPY, SHOPPING/ Peter Hessler traces the steps of Old Bush.
VISITING DIGNITARIES/ GIBBONS/ Nick Paumgarten meets the lead guitarist of ZZ Top.
TEXTURE DEPT./ WALING/ Ben McGrath attends a meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Club.
MOONLIGHTING DEPT./ MOB APPEAL/ Lauren Collins on a best-selling prosecutor.
POSTSCRIPT/ CECILLE SHAWN/ Remembering the wife of the late New Yorker editor William Shawn.
ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY/ Seymour M. Hersh/ Up in the Air/ Bush’s intransigence and the coming air war.
SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Bruce McCall/ Getting Started
FICTION/ Alice Munro/ “Wentlock Edge”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ Adam Kirsch/ Strange Fits of Passion/ Wordsworth’s revolution.
BOOKS/ Louis Menand/ Everybody’s an Expert/ Putting predictions to the test.
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ Bleak House/ A child’s fantasy life and a failed inventor Off Broadway.
THE ART WORLD/ Peter Schjeldahl/ In the Mood/ New works by Gerhard Richter.
MUSICAL EVENTS/ Alex Ross/ The Evangelist/ David Robertson lifts up the St. Louis Symphony.
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Company Man/ “Syriana.”
FROM THE ARCHIVE
DAYTON, TENNESSEE/ Marquis James/ A Summary/ A 1925 report on the Scopes monkey trial, in which a teacher stood accused of teaching evolution in school.
This Thanksgiving Dinner Was Brought To You By…
Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish was what finally woke us up. Attributions are a vital ingredient to that get added after a recipe is passed along, often without the original chef’s knowledge.
We’ve been eating Val’s rolls at family gatherings for as long as I’ve been on solid foods, but once when my mother mentioned them to Val’s granddaughter–who then asked Val–Val said she wondered if she’d ever made such rolls. She doubted it.
Winifred’s granddaughter, meanwhile, called on Wednesday to ask my mother a recipe question. My mother–whose tenure as the food editor of the local paper followed and was dwarfed by Winifred’s–said, oh, you should have her bring something. Her cranberry relish. It’s Susan Stanberg’s recipe, but she gave it to me years ago. Within five minutes, Winifred called my mom to find out what her own cranberry relish recipe was, because she’d just been asked to bring it. When they’re passed along, recipes get marked and remembered by the recipient, and every taste ever after is a one-way mnemonic trigger of the connection.
Also on the table:
[Mandate of] Heavens To Murgatroid
White House Productions ordered up this backdrop for use at GWB’s hotel press conference.
As the camera angle in the BBC screenshot above shows, the “China” & “Beijing” characters are perfectly placed to flank GWB’s talking head (in the TV camera’s frame).
The trompe l’oeil gates and knockers–they’re copied from The Temple of Heaven–complete the backdrop, and provide an exit “backstage.”
According to wikipedia, the Emperor would visit the Temple of Heaven each winter to make elaborate ceremonial offerings. “It was widely held that the smallest of mistakes would constitute a bad omen for the whole nation in the coming year.” Fortunately, no one believes that kind of superstitious mumbo jumbo anymore…
No exit, stage right.
And in other Sforzian news…Dateline – Ulan Bator:
To see what a barebones Sforzian Backdrop set-up consists of, check out this wide shot of GWB on stage in Mongolia [addressing the Mongolian parliament who, it turns out, meet in the auditorium at Ulan Bator High]: one head-on and two profile backdrops, and then 2-3 setups from the side and below–note the panels in the foreground next to the podium and the little planter/flag thingies below that. I wonder if that pendant hanging above center stage gets into those photos from below?
Also, Mongolian Dutch photographer Iwan Baan was on hand the official photographer for the Mongolian president during Bush’s visit, and his images capture a lot of the backstage activity that is normally invisible in the work of the wire service journalists.
Some highlights: a Mongolian TV crew’s ancient 35mm Arriflex 35BL camera; knots of cameramen perched on the ridge to get wide shots–as if the Mongolian landscape demanded anything less; the Secret Service-issue Porta-potty, surrounded by Mongolian horsemen; the meticulous set dressing, presumably Mongolian-driven symbols of hospitality–the wrapped candy showed up here as well; and the suspicious glances of security agents toward the random Baan, who gets pretty close in to Rice. [Rice & Baan. heh.] The whole thing looks like a visit to the set of a Kurosawa film. I’m thinking Ran, Kagemusha, or Dersu Uzala.
[update: thanks to Iwan for the corrections, and to Chris for ID’ing the Mongolian crew’s camera: “heavy as shit and none too quiet, either,” he points out.]
