Just ask Dharma. According to the Formula, you can have only one creatively named character per sitcom. Fortunately, Wired Magazine articles have no such limit. And so, in this month’s wacky episode edition, Choire and Xeni team up to report on NYC Midnight, a DV Dojo -sponsored contest to write, shoot, and edit a film in New York, all in 24 hours.
What’s that, the contest was in October? And it started in May with a rewritten press release on Daily Candy? So Choire and Xeni had to sit on this great story for months, at least until the damn check cleared? That’s magazine publishing for you. I’d call it tired, but it’s the end of the year; everything’s tired.
the crew are on their …
the crew are on their cells till the last possible minute of signal & the coast guard is doing orange alert laps around us as port recedes. Hasta
im on a cruise ship to cabo
Follow along by reading DFW’s “a supposedly funny thing i’ll never do again ” with me.
In orange alert
taking belligerent drunks off a diverted plane is now the FBI’s job. Not the entertainment exper. Song is hoping for, surely. Song nerd: don’t call me Shirley.
JAP to-do list
1. alienate everyone in speed dial list
2. alienate everyone around me on plane
3. do nails.
hint: after 2am, combine 2+3
the crap crappiest TV
BBC America, TLC, HGTV, A&E…Some ATL suit at Song: gimme all those channels with cheap-ass makeover shows
Sample cell conv. II:
But I’m your daughter! And I’m stuck on a —-ing plane in —-ing Denver!! (pause) Hello?
Sample cell conv.
I had to check my duffle bag. (pause) But you know I hate checking my Louis. (pause) The graffiti gets all —-ed up. (pause) Noooo, it’s like paint.
the jap jappiest time of the year.
The biggest jap on the island is whining into her cell phone about our diverted flight. She sounds like a 5 hr episode of behind the velvet ropes.
next year in Las Vegas
I’m like the only gentile on the plane. For jews on Xmas, Las Vegas is the new chinese food.
Christmas travel log, via consolidated cell phone posts
7:58PM huh. I am stuck on the new JFK AirTrain, 50 feet away from my terminal. Oh, and the seats are very shabbily upholstered, puckering after just one week. Needed: more Eurostar, less Ikea.
Separated at Birth?
On Cycling
Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has solicited Art Top Ten lists from some folks, partly as a rebuttal to the too-hip-for-him lists in Artforum. [He reserves his best Ike Turner for Thelma Golden, who I like very much.] Anyway, my list is up now. Most of it is culled from the site, so fanatic greg.org readers [Mom, I’m talking to you] will probably not be shocked by any of it.
But I did surprise myself with one choice: I felt obliged to put the Guggenheim’s Friday marathon screenings of The Cremaster Cycle on my list. [I mean, I survived it, didn’t I?] But then I actually got choked up reading David Edelstein’s account of Trilogy Tuesday, the marathon screening of Lord of The Rings.
Granted, not everyone is going to thrill to the point of life-defining religious fervor when they see Return of The King (I’m not really much of a fan myself), but by any standard, LOTR must be considered a far more important, influential, and authentic achievement than Cremaster. And that’s before and after adjusting for budgets.
More On Dependent Filmmaking, or Barney Cam II: White House Boogaloo
[via Gothamist] Jimmy Orr, the Choire Sicha to George Bush’s Nick Denton, has posted his new short film, Barney Cam II: Barney Reloaded, on his weblog, whitehouse.gov. Elizabeth Bumiller, the Times‘ specialist on the dependent film industry, gives it a glowing review and talks with Orr, who co-produced Barney II with Bob deServi. DeServi is best known for his work as the key grip on many of Scott Sforza’s productions, which are being shown on TV everywhere, all the time, on every channel.

Magic Hour? Scott Orr demonstrates his handheld video technique in
the making of Barney Cam II. Image: Paul Morse, whitehouse.gov
Like Elephant director Gus Van Sant, Orr prefers working with non-professional actors (although it doesn’t seem like he budgeted much time for rehearsals). He’s got a scrappy, run-and-gun style which constrasts sharply with Sforza’s theatrically staged fictions.
As these behind-the-scenes shots reveal, Orr also scorns the debilitatingly large budgets favored by his White Housemates. His equipment package and crew are strictly barebones: a Sony VX-2000 (good, but not Combat Camera good), with a camera-mounted mic feeding into the XLR adapter (no sound guy) and using only available lighting. Of course, none of this is unexpected; compensating for a small package is a recurring theme on Orr’s site.
Also screening at whitehouse.gov:
Secretary Evans Reads “Cowboy Night Before Christmas” [Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, FYI]
Mrs. Bush Reads “Angelina’s Christmas”
Related:
Ungrateful criticism of diServi and Sforza by their star actor
Bumiller’s first review of Scott Sforza and Bob diServi productions.
Combat Camera
Finally, someone’s asking the right questions in Iraq, like, “how’d they get that shot?” Virginia Heffernan reports in the Times on the ultimate embeds: the soldiers who go into battle armed with digital video cameras (“the camera is our first weapon”) to record US military activity. Like Saddam Hussein’s medical checkup, which includes shots–like the glowing underside of Hussein’s tongue–that Heffernan rates as high art.

what’s the opposite of independent? Film, that is. image: nytimes.com/getty images
These combat camera crews use Sony PD 150’s, just like civilian photojournalists (and the rest of us). In fact, I bought my first camera, a Sony VX-1000, from a war-documenting friend (whose production company, no coincidence, is named Combat Camera), who was supposed to star in Souvenir November 2001 until he got pulled into Tora Bora (ahh, the memories).
Like most documentarians, these filmmakers have a hard time getting distribution; Pentagon suits are even tighter-fisted than Miramax. But if they make a real heartstrings-pulling story –like the Jessica Lynch rescue or the Hussein body cavity search–when it does hit screens, it opens verrry wide.