Bad Writing Documentary
I love the story behind this film: Guy writes poetry. Time passes — guy quits drinking, gets his GED, starts writing again. Guy finds box of old poetry in mom’s basement and is horrified to find out that he isn’t the poetic genius he once thought himself to be. Guy decides to show his bad poetry to good writers, from David Sedaris to Margaret Atwood, and get their advice about what makes for good writing.
And so, I present the trailer for Bad Writing:
Bad Writing – Official Trailer from Morris Hill Pictures on Vimeo.
“Guy,” by the way, is Vernon Lott. The film is 100% self-financed, and he’s looking for a distributor.
Learn more about the project on Facebook.
Roadtrip for a Cause
Tod and Justin Purvis
My friend Justin Purvis (who I met through Washington Improv Theater) suffers from Choroideremia, a degenerative eye disease that can lead to blindness. His brother, Tod, was recently diagnosed with the condition, as well, and the two of them have decided to do something to raise awareness of the disease, while undertaking a sight-seeing trip that they may not be able to enjoy in the future. (more…)
And Everything Is Going Fine
Spalding Gray
“I like telling the story of life more than living it.”
- Spalding Gray
One of the highlights of this year’s SXSW was seeing “And Everything is Going Fine,” a film about late performance artist Spalding Gray.
Editor Susan Littenberg and director Steven Soderbergh weave together the story of Gray’s life in his own words, artfully selecting and arranging clips from his performances and interviews from over 90 hours of footage. The depiction of Gray’s life that emerges is moving and poetic, and reveals that telling personal stories on stage was Gray’s way of keeping the chaos of the world at bay, if only for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. I related strongly to his journey to finding his artistic voice, and to his comment that writing was so hard because unlike performing, you didn’t get any feedback; I wonder what a Spalding Gray blog might have been like.
We’ll never know, of course, because in 2004, Gray killed himself. The film extensively foreshadows Gray’s suicide, but fails to reference it outright (more…)
Food, Inc. and Creative Activism
When I started my last blog, Creative DC, with its stated mission of “inspiring and showcasing creative living in Washington, DC,” the question quickly arose: What, exactly, is creativity? My friend Jaime was quick to point out that activism is a form of creative expression, and I couldn’t agree with her more. At its core, creativity is about the expression of something inside you – a feeling, an idea, a belief. While some people express themselves through paint, or film, others choose activism as their medium. For example, here’s a photo of a protester I saw at a peace march on the National Mall, back in 2007:
Protesting "sleepy corporate media"
Of course, sometimes the line between art and activism isn’t so clear. (more…)
Art for a Paycheck?
Image by dogwelder on Flickr
Thanks to Alex for pointing me to an interview with designer and filmmaker Saul Bass, which he found on the Utne Reader website. In the interview, Bass – best known for his award-winning movie title sequence designs – riffs on the tension that professional artists face between aesthetics, on the one hand, and the need to make a living, on the other. Do you sacrifice commitment to aesthetics in order to satisfy a client? Bass proclaims,
“The fact of the matter is that I want everything that I do personally to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything or that the client thinks it’s worth anything or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares.”
This is noble, to be sure, but it begs the question: how could such an attitude possibly be viable in a business context? If your work is beautiful, but your client doesn’t think it’s worth anything… does he pay your invoice? If not…how do you pay the bills? Perhaps Bass would have taken a different position earlier in his career, before he had the financial wherewithal to be such a purist?
I’ve worked with web designers who insist that anything they design for their day job is not art, even if it’s beautiful, because it isn’t theirs – it belongs to, and must ultimately serve, the client who hired them. They earn a living using their artistic skills to meet business needs, and they make art on their own time.
This arrangement seems logical to me. But I wonder if anyone would argue that it’s “selling out,” or that a real artist never sacrifices the purity of her vision for a paycheck?
Personally, I’ve chosen – so far – to keep my work and my art separate, rather than trying to get paid for anything that centers around my artistic abilities. On the one hand, this keeps me from having to compromise — doing cheesy improv, for example, just to satisfy a cheesy client — but on the other hand, I spend 40 hours a week doing something that isn’t my art. That’s 40 hours during which I’m doing something that I think is important (I’m lucky to work for clients whose work I care about), but that comes nowhere near providing me with the bliss I find through blogging and performing. Finding the right work/art balance is – excuse the pun – an art, not a science, and for me, it’s one that continues to evolve.
Here’s the Bass interview, if you’re interested:
