Another shitty law in NYC

Two tasks for the day...

1. Watch this clip.

2. Send an email to Julianne Cho [sample follows].

*****

Dear Ms. Chow -

I now longer live in NYC. But when I did, from 2002-2004, I worked on over a dozen short independent films.

These films provided cast and crew with an incredible amount of experience.

They provided some laughs to the 20 people who probably watched them.

They gave exposure to some artists and other documentary subjects.

They provided local restaurants and cafes with income from all the coffee and donuts we needed to fuel us to get them done.

Hell - they even gave an off-duty member of the NYPD a break in his first ever on-camera performance.

But they never, I repeat never, hurt anyone. Not one soul. Zip. Zero. Ziltch.

This new law is a horrible idea.

The spirit of New York City is the spirit of independence.

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

And if you can't, in the greatest city on earth, where are you supposed to be able to make it?

Some of the most captivating images of NYC have been created by independent filmmakers.

Don't silence them.

To do so in the name of security is to let those bastards who attacked NYC on 9/11 win.

Please - for the love of some kid from Toronto or Toledo or Tudor City with a story to tell, all of the students who need to complete thesis projects, and all the hipster chicks with non-traditional narratives that no-one will ever finance and only 14 people will ever watch, please, please PLEASE....

Don't allow this law to go forward!

Please - in the name of free-speech.

Please don't let it happen!!!!!

Sincerely,

Michael

Mention in the NY Post

Yesterday, the Sopranos/Beatles mash came in at number five on the NY Post's Hot List.



Over 7,000 hits as of this morning.

Sopranos/Beatles Clip Mentioned on Front Page of IMDb

Way cool! My Sopranos/Beatles clip is mentioned today on the front page on imdb.com in the "IMDb Hit List" section.


There it is...
"As the End of "The Sopranos" Nears, See An Alternate Beginning from YouTube"

Sopranos/Beatles has apparently been mentioned on radio stations

Tomorrow marks four weeks since I posted my first clip on youtube, three weeks since the second, and two weeks since the third.

The results as of this morning are interesting.

Posting Number One: “Son of Sam Peckinpah” (aka Elliott Smith meets The Wild Bunch)
428 views.
2 ratings – both 5/5 stars.
1 viewer marked it as his/her “favorite” clip
5 comments – two people seem to like it. One massive Elliott Smith fan seems perplexed by it and quoted back Elliott’s own words about what the song meant. And one Peckinpah fan hated it, calling it “lame and an insult to Peckinpah.”

There are five links to it that have generated 21 of the 428 views…
7 clicks from the creative department’s blog where I work
5 clicks from the original entry at my blog
5 clicks from the homepage of my blog
3 clicks from the blog of another Peckinpah fan named Nate in Texas
1 click from an apparently bogus site (x-gadget:///flyout.html)


Posting Number Two: “Fugeddaboutit in the Road” (aka The Sopranos meet The Beatles)
803 views
no ratings
no comments
no viewers marked it as his/her “favorite” clip

There are five links that have generated 190 of the 803 views…
99 clicks from the site of a DJ at a Hard Rock station in Philly – I guess he must have mentioned it on air and provided the link
29 clicks from the site of an afternoon drive-time DJ in St Louis who referenced it in his Monday morning show recapping the episode of the night before – he also quotes my explanation of the clip’s background on the website
27 clicks from another page on the St Louis DJ's site
22 clicks from the site of a conservative AM radio station in Nebraska that must have mentioned the clip on air and provided the link with a bit of my story
13 clicks from the site of a radio station in Rockville, Maryland. The mid-day DJ that must have mentioned it on air and she posted it online quoting a bit of my story.

Posting Number Three: “if…. Meets Old School” (aka I create sacrilege with my favorite film of all time and one of the funniest films of all time)
227 views
1 rating – 5/5 stars.
no comments
1 viewer marked it as his/her “favorite” clip

There are four links that have generated 7 of the 227 views…
3 clicks from the original posting on my blog
2 clicks from the homepage of my blog
1 click from a broken link
1 click from a site called rel8r.com: “an experiment that uses many of the latest trends and technologies in web technology and development. Social networks, community sites, the semantic web, tagging, rss/atom feeds, object databases, ajax, web services, etc.”]

The number of hits on the Sopranos/Beatles piece seem to have grown exponentially since yesterday when it got its four on-air & online mentions. It will be interesting to see if it grows any further.

"if...." meets "Old School"

if.... (1968, UK, dir. Lindsay Anderson) was one of those films which changed my life. I was about 16, and Toronto’s City TV, in addition to showcasing pioneering new wave music from the UK in shows like The New Music, also dedicated itself to screenings of quality films, uncut and uncensored in the late-evening. I had turned on the TV one night about halfway through the film, right before the scene in the Packhorse Café, and I was entranced, mesmerized, and finally horrified by the way the rest of the film played out. I then spent the next year reading the television listings looking for a movie whose description might match what I remembered seeing (these were the days before the internet, and I hadn’t yet discovered film compendiums), knowing only the second half of the plot and that it featured Malcolm McDowell (who I knew from A Clockwork Orange). Finally, about eight months later, I found a description that matched, and managed to capture it on VHS. That copy went into wide circulation at my high school, along with VHS copies of Rude Boy (1980, UK, dirs. Jack Hazan & David Mingay) featuring The Clash and D.O.A. (1980, USA, dir. Lech Kowalski) with the Sex Pistols and Generation X (not to mention vinyl albums by The Jam and The Undertones). This was subversive stuff to 16 year old Canadian boys in a Catholic school!

I've been waiting for if.... to be released on DVD for YEARS. And Criterion is finally giving it to us on June 19, 2007.If you haven't seen it, perhaps this mashup will intrigue you and you'll check out one of the most important films of the 1960s. If you’re a fan of if…., hopefully you’ll take this in the spirit in which it’s intended, and not as sacrilege. Now if Warner would only release O Lucky Man!….

Fugeddaboutit in the Road

Before The Sopranos became the best show on TV and made over ten million Americans wake up in the morning and get themselves some HBO, it was a labor of love long in development hell.

We all so equate Tony Soprano’s opening credits drive through the netherlands of New Jersey with Alabama 3’s song about getting himself a gun, that it’s hard to believe that the credits were originally set to different music. During David Chase’s pitch of the pilot to HBO, he tried to go to the rights clearance mat with the folks at Apple Corp. But at the time, The Beatles were still bigger than The Sopranos, and Chase lost out on his first choice. Here’s what might have been…

Son of Sam Peckinpah

Over the last ten years, much has been written about "The Dark Side of the Rainbow" – the experience of watching the classic 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" with the volume turned down and simultaneously listening to the classic 1973 Pink Floyd album "The Dark Side of the Moon." The synch has been made easier with DVDs and CDs. Simply begin the album at the precise moment that Leo the lion roars for the third time during the opening MGM logo animation. The resulting sychronicitous audio/visual trip is quite intriguing, often astounding, and exceedingly surreal.

To watch a few of the finer moments, check out this page at Rolling Stone Magazine.

I’ve done a bit of research into other such moments of musical/filmic synchronicity that are less well known.

Here is my current favorite…

Elliott Smith’s demo version of “Son of Sam” (2000) and Sam Peckinpah’s "The Wild Bunch" (1969).



While living in Brooklyn in the late 90’s, tragic sadcore genius Elliott Smith spent a lot of time shooting up heroin and watching classic, art, and foreign films at the BAM Rose cinemas. Top of his list – the restored director’s cut of Sam Peckinpah’s classic "The Wild Bunch." When he wrote the original acoustic version of “Son of Sam,” he set it to the penultimate scene of the film – the gathering of the bunch before one of the bloodiest battles ever filmed. The track is available online if you don’t happen to own the “Happiness” single – and no, it doesn’t work with the album version on the "Figure 8" album. Start the song immediately as William Holden leaves the bordello. Watch as Ernest Borgnine plants his knife into the ground perfectly on the downbeat. Elliott sings: “Something’s happening” as the bunch get their guns from the horses; “I told the boss off and made my move” as William Holden walks back with his rifle; “Got no-where to go” as the bunch gathers to make their death-march. Listen for the chord change immediately as the bunch begins walking with confidence to the line “Not uncomfortable.” And of course – the line “But I know what to do” plays as the camera angle changes on the bunch as they continue the walk towards certain death as they go to avenge the honor of their fallen compadre Angel. The long shot begins to zoom in on them with the line “acting on orders from above.” A ton more of great moments. Excellent pairing. Well done, Elliott. Sleep soundly.