Community Organizers

"I will kick ass and take names" is not exactly a direct quote.

We're longtime members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a group which helps people organize on a variety of political issues - often when facing large, well-funded, corporate lobbyists.  I got the chance recently to volunteer some video editing skill during a meeting here in Des Moines with Attorney General Tom Miller and an action at Bank of America, both in response to the misdeeds of big banks regarding home loans and foreclosures.

CCI worked with organizers from groups across the country on the event.  We relayed photos and video to the Showdown in America website, where they were online in less than an hour.  By the end of the day, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post and dozens of other news organizations were running with the story.  The next night, video from the event aired on this segment of Countdown With Keith Olbermann (without Keith Olbermann).

Coming from the world of film, where it takes forever to get something from idea to screen, it was a real thrill to see something go from raw footage to national media story in a matter of hours.  It was also a thrill to work even briefly with so many dedicated community organizers from across the country.  If you live in Iowa, I encourage you to donate and become a member of CCI.  If you live elsewhere, plug into a local group working to give you a stronger voice.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How you can... and cannot read screenplays on a Kindle

I read a lot of screenplays, so I'd been eyeing a Kindle for years.  Every time I print 110 pages to read once - and maybe not even finish - I imagine a single tear rolling down Capt. Planet's cheek.  But there are some quirks to be aware of when it comes to displaying a screenplay on the Kindle.

It all comes down to screen size.  Books converted into Kindle format display less than a page on each Kindle page.  But with screenplay formatting, and given that you're typically working off a PDF file, displaying a full page on the Kindle screen makes the print pretty small.

Getting a PDF screenplay to display well on a Kindle is the holy grail of cheap-ass screenwriters and producers.  Start Googling and scouring message boards and you'll find dozens of your brethren on this quest.  I know because I have.  If you can afford to drop $300 plus on the bigger Kindle DX, you're golden.  Otherwise, you'll have some choices to make.

Convert the PDF to text

A script converted to text

There are several free web services and programs which will convert a PDF into a text document.  I've become partial to PDF to Word.  Once you've got the script into a text format, you can use a program like Calibre to convert the text to a format your Kindle can read, like MOBI, and send it to your Kindle.

This has become my preferred method for reading scripts.  The text winds up at a very comfortable size for reading.  As for formatting, it kinda works.  Line breaks are maintained, so Dialogue and Action stays separate.  Often, the indentation is maintained, but not always.  You will get some wonky bits where action is indented, and every now and then, a character name jumps behind the character's dialogue.  But here's the thing: If you've read a lot of scripts, you will hardly notice.  You know when you're reading action or dialogue, even if the formatting cues aren't perfect.

There are a few steps involved in the conversion, but it goes very fast.  I usually process a few scripts at a time.  There is a delay before PDF to Word delivers its conversion via e-mail, but the dragging and dropping only takes a couple minutes.

The one catch: This only works from a PDF which was created electronically from the script file.  It will not work with a script that was scanned into PDF form.

Rotate the Screen

Flipping the Kindle into Landscape mode boosts the size of the text to something more readable.  This requires no reformatting.  You can just send the PDF straight to your Kindle and flip it.

Again, the catch: In Landscape mode, your Kindle will display about 2/3 of a page at a time.  So you read through to the bottom, advance the page, and now you're looking at the bottom 2/3 of that page.  The top portion will repeat text that was on the previous page, so every time you flip, you'll have to scan a little bit to find the place you left off.  It's not awful.  And if you're reading from a scanned PDF, it's probably your best option.  But I find it more distracting than the wonky formatting from the conversion method.

There's got to be a program that crops the margins

This script had all the white
space cropped, but the Kindle
has added back margin space.

Maybe someday there will be.  But I've tried quite a few and not found anything that really does what you want this to do.  Programs like Preview on the Mac and Adobe Acrobat have margin cropping options - but they don't actually crop the PDF, they just tell the viewer not to display the margins.  When you send the "cropped" file to your Kindle, the margins will still be there.

I spent a lot of time working with a program called Briss which actually does crop PDF pages.  It took several tries to get the program working, though the developer was very helpful and responsive.  Eventually though, I was able to crop out nearly all the white margin space from screenplay PDFs.

But here's the problem: The Kindle seems to buffer anything with margin space.  Comparing my cropped and uncropped files, once sent to my Kindle, there was very little difference.  This may be due, in part, do a difference in the proportions of the cropped box and Kindle screen.  For my money, the small gains in readability weren't worth the effort.

Given the intense interest from the too-cheap-to-buy-a-DX crowd, maybe someone will write a program which better addresses this.  For now, I'm pretty sure these are our best options.  Even though it's a bit of a hassle to read scripts on that little Kindle, I've never thought "I'd rather just print 110 pages."

Friends, I have joined the Tweet Elite

...at least according to Matthew Shwery (@mshwery), coffee master at Mars Cafe and all-around Guy Who Has Good Taste in Stuff.

You can follow me @bengodar, where I will try to live up to this Elite status. Or possibly spam you with some magazine subscriptions.

Tweet Elite: Fresh-brewed insights :: dmJuice.com

Kindle Sleeve with free Northern Exposure DVD

With the price on the latest generation Kindle dropping all the way down to $139, I couldn't pass it up.  I often read a few PDF screenplays a week, and have been eying the Kindle just for the savings in printing costs.

But I can't imagine carrying this around in my bag without some kind of protective case.  There are all kinds of Kindle cases on the market, including some very cool ones made from re-purposed book covers.  If you're willing to drop $20 or $30, you can get something really nice.

On the other hand...

The Kindle is almost exactly the size of a DVD.  So if you've got any kind of extraneous DVD packaging - and really, what Special Edition packaging isn't extraneous? - you may already have a totally viable case.

For me, the choice was clear: Northern Exposure Complete First Season DVD. The little zip-up outer cover provides some needed padding for bouncing around in my laptop bag, and the Kindle slides right in.  Now I've got a no-cost sleeve to protect the screen, and when I pull my Kindle out in public, everyone thinks "wow, that guy really likes Northern Exposure."

See Manhattan Short Fest this week

Two kids and the Polish Chris Cooper in Echo.

This week, the Manhattan Short Film Festival is screening at venues all over the world.  If you have a chance to check it out, I would certainly recommend it.  The program includes ten shorts from ten different countries.  At the end of the two-hour program, attendees are given ballots to vote for their favorite.

The quality of the ten films is very high.  Nine are narrative, two animated (including the one non-narrative).  Most all fit into that classic short film structure: A character at a turning point moment.

The opening short, Watching, was very reminiscent of Chris Nolan's Following.  But it creates a taut little thriller with just a meeting of two characters in a diner.  It reminded me of the classic 3-2-1 assignment at Chapman film school - 3 pages, 2 characters, 1 location.  Beauty in economy.

I was transfixed by Helene Florent's A Little Inconvenience, about a man who wakes up to find himself floating off the ground.  Some I talked to at the screening were thrown by the ending, but I found something ethereal and beautiful in the images of the man gently floating off the ground.

Echo from Magnus Van Horn felt like a splice out of a feature, with a cunning detective slowly pulling the details of a horrible crime out of two teenage boys.  War, from Paolo Sassanelli, considers young boys playing war while their fathers still argue about the real thing in 1946 Italy.  The tone was balanced perfectly, never getting too cloying or too heavy-handed.

The acting and production values were professional quality across the board, with several of the films financed by government film boards.  At the same time, most came from a distinct enough voice to avoid that "auditioning for a feature" feel that can infect shorts.  And most revealed at least one endearing flaw - an actor who wasn't quite right, a location a little too "dressed."  There is still a handmade feel.

For those without access to a major film festival, traveling events like Manhattan Shorts and The Black Maria are a great opportunity to see a variety of burgeoning work from across the world.

Wherein I Come Clean About Radiohead

This morning I bought Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele, among other reasons, because it transported me back to a time when Radiohead was what I wanted them to be.

I had a pretty intense relationship with The Bends and OK Computer, which came out the summer after my freshman year of college.  What always drew me to Radiohead was the fragile, human voice struggling to be heard under this electro-symphonic crush.

Is there any vocal and lyric more naked than Creep?  When I was 16, that rawness punched me in the gut.  There are no barriers, no twee, no irony.  You're so fucking special.  I wish I was special.

But it's a little obvious.  The Bends made me work harder to find that emotion.  There would be the dense cacauphony of My Iron Lung before the plaintive yearning of a song like Black Star.  And even then, Thom seemed quick to shrug the questions off to some cosmic forces conspiring against him.  Blame it on the Black Star.  Blame it on the Satellite that brings me home.

I should have seen what was coming, but it didn't really hit me until about the 500th time I listened to OK Computer.  I think every song on that album has been my favorite at one time or another.  On that afternoon, I was deeply into Let Down, and listening closely.  The album was all about humanity lost in a digital age - that was obvious - so I knew I had to listen harder than ever before. 

And there in the middle of the song was a line that told me something important: Don't get sentimental; it always ends up drivel.

How could I hear a line like that and not think back to Creep?  To that moment Thom stood in the slow of that grunge, slow-fast-slow and told us he wanted a perfect body.  He wanted a perfect soul.  Now I could hear the struggle against that sentiment, right there in the song.  He goes on to say that one day he is going to grow wings, but then dismisses it as just a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless.

It's a beautiful, complex song.  It was also a real turning point away from something about Radiohead I'd always loved, from Creep and Fake Plastic Trees and High & Dry and Subterranean Homesick Alien.  I kept waiting for Radiohead to turn back, just a bit, but the chaos and noise kept growing louder, the human voice growing fainter.  It was still there, and that umpteenth listen when I found it could still be transcendent.  But there was something self-conscious about burying it so far.  I missed The Bends.

I no longer sit with the cool kids.  The band went down a rabbit hole I was reluctant to follow, so I'm the old guy at the concert waiting for them to break out some of the old tunes.  Oh well, it happens.

But it's nice to think someone as hip and interesting as Amanda Palmer might share my feelings.  All but one of the tunes on her record are from OK Computer or before.  And she plays Creep twice.

Or maybe the older tunes were just easier to arrange for ukulele.

Welcome to My Documentary

After several months of work, I'm proud to announce that the website and trailer for Welcome to Daytrotter are live.  The film is currently in production, but when complete, will be a feature length look at the recording studio / website Daytrotter.  The story of how this group of people built this thing in the Quad Cities caught my attention the first time I heard it, and I believe it resonates with anyone who has ever built any kind of arts project in an unexpected place.

The film is my first foray into documentary, but given my background in filmmaking and journalism, I feel like it's going pretty smoothly.  We hope to finish shooting this summer/fall, then move into post-production.  At the moment, we're targeting January of 2012 to premiere the film.

That said, we need help to tell this story.  Non-fiction films don't have much profit potential, so we, like many films, have adopted a nonprofit model.  We have partnered with NY Arts Group Fractured Atlas so that donations to our film are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.  You can donate online and get some pretty sweet Thank You gifts through our partnership with IndieGoGo.

You can also help us show there is an audience for the film by becoming our fan on Facebook.

The site's been up for less than 24 hours as I write this, and we've got more than 200 fans on Facebook and the trailer is about to go over 1,000 views.  It's a gratifying response.

Eleven Bulls, LLC

As we began to manage money for Welcome to Daytrotter, it became clear I needed a production company to filter the money through, as well as provide a legal buffer for my gross negligence and defamation of character.

And so it was that on the Nineteenth Day of July, Two Thousand and Ten, Eleven Bulls, LLC was created.  It's been a bit exciting to setup a business, especially if you're into such things as filling out forms and paying fees.  But now, here we are.

As for the name, it is an allusion to this series of lithographs by Picasso, which I've always found to be a potent metaphor for abstraction, art as a process, etc.  Or, if that's too highfalutin, I chose it because Bulls kick ass, and we turn it up to eleven!

If you or anyone you know are a logo designer who enjoy working for extremely low pay, please contact me.

My Bacon Number

A friend pointed out today that The Oracle of Bacon now lists me with a Bacon Number of 3.  If only the Oracle of Bacon counted instances where Kevin Bacon was a director, I could cut my number down to 2.

I will not rest until I have a Bacon Number of Zero, at which point I WILL BE KEVIN BACON.

A Weekend of (filming) Music

So it took me a little longer than expected to recap the weekend.  It was a great weekend of music and we got some great footage for the documentary.  The only downside was that working to get that footage left me little time to just sit and listen.

The third 80/35 felt like it really hit a groove.  It's big enough to draw A-list bands but still feels like a neighborhood festival.  We shot a great interview with William Elliot Whitmore, and after negotiating level after level of handlers, and with the help of the amazing Jill Haverkamp, we were able to shoot an interview with Spoon's Britt Daniel.

Mr. Daniel, or Britt as I've decided he'd like me to call him, was very cool and had a real perspective on Daytrotter.  I'm so glad we were able to sit down with him for the film.

After watching Spoon's headlining set on the main stage, Naura and I were both feeling too tired to head to The Mews to catch the always amazing Poison Control Center.  But I must admit my head exploded a little the next morning when I saw this picture from the friends we would have gone to the show with:

Sunday morning, we rolled east to the Codfish Hollow Barn just outside of Maquoketa for the Daytrotter Barn on the 4th Show.  We went in with a few interviews in mind, a few performances we wanted shoot, but aware we wouldn't be able to get everything.  We got everything.

We shot performances and interviews with The Walkmen, Dawes and Justin Townes Earle, as well as performance from Jonny Corndawg with Dawes as his backup band.  We got great interviews and footage of the Daytrotter crew making the whole thing happen. 

But what made the footage so killer was the atmosphere of the event itself.  I've never seen musicians and fans so charged to be with each other.  The Walkmen and Dawes both played afternoon sets in Des Moines and then drove through the rain to play a second show because they wanted the experience of playing a Daytrotter barn show.

We wish we could just throw all our material into the social media stream.  But aspiring to put together a feature as we are, and in the interests of only putting out what we've had the chance to polish, we'll be sitting on it for now.

Once we're happy with the cut of our trailer, we'll be launching our website and Facebook pages, and then we will be posting shorter bits of video and pictures from these amazing shoots.

Several people approached us while we were shooting the barn show with enthusiasm and curiosity about the film.  We look forward to staying engaged.

Dick Prall in a Backyard

Last night, we joined about 50 friends in a backyard for a "house concert" from Dick Prall.

After more than a decade of touring, often with a full band, Dick's put together a tour "from Portland, Maine to the Napa Valley" playing in people's homes.  It's an innovative idea, and it makes for a hell of a show.

Dick played without amplification, but his percussive guitar and booming voice didn't need it.   The pop of a beer can or the rattle of a lawn chair sometimes caused a moment of distraction, but it was all in the spirit.  And it sure beat the cracking pool balls and TV sports chatter of even the most intimate club shows.

He build his set entirely on requests, with someone in the crowd occasionally helping remember a lyric for the more obscure numbers.  Brief gusts of wind and other surprises from the natural world highlighted the organic feel.

And after the show: Drinking.

Today we'll be rolling out to Day 1 of 80/35 and hopefully have enough left in the tank for Poison Control Center tonight.

Rock & Roll Weekend

I'm on the verge of an exciting and diverse weekend of music, and it feels like there's only one thing to do about it - blog.  That's right, blog - as a verb.

The four shows/events range from a multi-day festival to a backyard concert.  All are happening in Iowa, three just in Des Moines.

Tonight I'll be at a small, backyard performance by singer/songwriter Dick Prall.  Dick's doing a nationwide tour exclusively of house parties - a cool concept and an exciting, intimate way to see a show.

Saturday and Sunday bring the ever-awesome 80/35 Music Festival back to Des Moines, with a really killer lineup this year.

If I'm not face-down from exhaustion or otherwise Saturday night, I plan to get over to the Vaudeville Mews to catch a free show from Poison Control Center - great guys who just put out an amazing record.

Then Sunday night I'll be rolling across the state to a barn outside Maquoketa for a 4th of July Barn Show being put on by Daytrotter.  Another unbelievable lineup in an unlikely location.   This will be more of a working event, however, as I'm currently producing and directing a documentary film about Daytrotter.  It's an exciting project we've been working on for some time, but keeping mostly under wraps.  We expect to launch a more public face for the film in the coming weeks.

I'll work to post updates on the shows here throughout the weekend, and will absolutely post more on the documentary as soon as I can.

Black Maria 2010

This weekend the Black Maria Film Festival rolled through town, and I made my annual trek to catch one of its two programs.

I enjoy the grab bag nature of shorts programs, and Black Maria always feels like it contains even more variety.  So many shorts feel like an audition for a feature - be they narrative, documentary, animation.  Black Maria always features some work that lies outside those parameters.

A notable example in the program I caught was Neil Needleman's film Corporate Art Policy, which was essentially a video essay.  I've heard work like this derided at festivals as better suited to a blog or You Tube.  But despite it's low technical aspirations, it tells a story, it's got a point-of-view.  Plenty of more glossy films don't manage to do that.

On the high end of the production scale was the PBS-ready documentary Worlds of Sound: Ballad of Folkways, telling the story of Folkways founder Moe Asch, and narrated by Pete Seeger.  If this hasn't been picked-up for broadcast, I'm sure it will be.  It's a solid, informative doc.

Pickles for Nickels was a unique, hand-crafted piece of animation.  It was so well-done, I wasn't surprised to see CalArts scroll across the credits.  There was a bit of narrative to the film, but also plenty of non-linear elements more associated with art film.  The filmmaker, Danielle Ash's voice comes through very strong and makes the film something more than an audition for Pixar, as animated shorts so often are.

Sebastian's Voodoo by Joaquin Baldwin is more Pixar-like in its computer animation and its storytelling - but in a good way.  The simple story of individual sacrifice elicited an audible gasp when it ended.

As always, this Black Maria program delivered a variety that made it well worth making time for.

Final Thoughts on True/False 10

I was more prepared for the rhythms of True/False in my second year, but no less impressed by event and its films.

I enjoyed every film I saw, which makes it harder to distinguish between them.  Restrepo has stayed with me the most, but given its life-and-death nature, perhaps that's to be expected.  But I largely devoted my time to my favorite kind of doc - focused on a single, eccentric personality.

Smash His Camera and The Invention of Dr. Nakamats both fit well into this niche,  and took distinctly different approaches.  Smash His Camera broadens its perspective on Paparazzo Ron Galella to include wildly differing critical views of him and his work.  Nakamats never steps back from the portrait the subject paints of himself.  It creates a more unified POV, but made me long for the context of Smash His Camera.

One of the richest experiences when attending a festival is drawing connections between the films - something you simply can't or wouldn't do when watching them separately.  My buddy Travis pointed out as we left Waking Sleeping Beauty that the events it chronicles ended 14 years ago, exactly as had the life of the comedian we saw documented in one of the Secret Screenings the night before.  Is 14 years some kind of magical gestation age for a certain historical perspective?  Maybe, but I never would have wondered if I hadn't seen the two films within hours of each other.

If there was one disappointment from the films I saw, it was that they didn't open up to me more.  The experience I most enjoy when watching a doc is that moment the film goes beyond that quirky hook of its subject and becomes "about" something different.  Smash His Camera had moments of this - questions of the nature of art and celebrity.  Probably more than any other film I saw, Restrepo left much to be discovered between the images and the rationalizations of the soldiers involved.

One day after leaving the festival, I wonder about the films I didn't see.  Two of this year's Best Picture nominees screened at last year's fest - but I only saw one of them.  Critic Karina Longworth Tweeted several films she was impressed with last night.  I had seen none of them.

It's a credit to the festival that it can't be fully digested, even spread over four days.  I spoke to filmmakers and attendees alike whose reaction was the same as mine last year - "how did I not know about this?"

Four Film Saturday at True/False

We planned to see It Felt Like a Kiss first thing in the morning, but some schedule confusion led us into the queue for Waking Sleeping Beauty instead.

The doc follows a renaissance in Disney animation and the overhaul in management that took place between 1984 and 1994.  It feels hard not to damn the film with faint praise.  It is essentially a history, and for anyone interested in Disney or the business of Hollywood, and I count myself as one, it's an interesting history.  One interesting choice, noted before the screening by producer and former Disney Exec. Peter Schneider - the filmmakers chose to only use footage from the era itself.  In Schneider's words, there are no "shots of old men talking."  It's a subtle choice, but keeps the film grounded in the moments it documents.

Disney luminaries like Eisner and Katzenberg appear more or less as expected, but I was surprised and even moved by the creative contributions of lyricist Howard Ashman to the production of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

After a couple beers and a couple sliders at Booches, we began our afternoon at the Blue Note venue with The Red Chapel.  The film follows a Danish filmmaker and two Danish/Korean performers he recruits to travel into North Korea under the guise of a cross-cultural performance.  The ruse of the filmmaker's crew is manipulative and even crass, but it pales in comparison to the group performance of the entire population of Pyongyang.

Every action the crew encounters is choreographed to display an image of perfect unity and loyalty to the Great Leader(s).  The crew plays along, even as their North Korean handlers edit their performance entirely into something more appropriate for North Korean audiences.  But the strain on the faces of the people are clear.  Filmmaker Mads Brugger attributes their every action to fear, and it would be hard to disagree with his assessment.

Some of Brugger's actions set my ethical spider-sense tingling, but the film is worthwhile even if just as a window into this hidden society.  It's an often hilarious piece of absurdism, but the fear and tragedy of North Korea lend weight to the humor.

The Invention of Dr. Nakamats brings humor with much less baggage, as it documents the Japanese inventor with the most registered patents in history.  The Doctor's inventions include legitimate technological breakthroughs such as the floppy disk, but it appears from the film far more oddities, including an underwater pencil/notebook and products to stimulate female arousal.

As the title suggests, Nakamats is also meticulous about sculpting his image and orchestrating the events around him, down to a moment he orders his children to redo a presentation of a birthday gift to him.  It's a funny film about a truly eccentric character, but by the end I wished it could have taken me to some deeper level of understanding of Nakamats.

Restrepo was our final film in the standing-room only Blue Note.  The winner of the Grand Jury Doc prize at Sundance did not disappoint.  It's being sold as a true story version of The Hurt Locker, and that's not an inaccurate description - especially in the opening moments when the camera is inside a vehicle as it is exploded by a land mine.

The bulk of the film follows a team of soldiers as they man the most remote outpost in Afghanistan, under near-constant attack from the remnants of the Taliban.  

I heard several people dismiss the film as "good, but nothing I haven't seen before."  Sure, the war doc isn't a new thing - but I don't remember feeling as much a feeling of actually being there as I did watching Restrepo.  The camera is there with the soldiers as they are taking fire, and in the most harrowing sequence, with them on patrol as fellow soldiers are being killed just a few yards away.

Interviews with the surviving soldiers frame and add poignancy to the footage.  It feels like the filmmakers have been true to the words and intentions of those soldiers as they tell their story, but the end result left me feeling that all their sacrifice was done in tragic futility.

We ended our night, as we did last year, with pizza and pitchers of beer at Shakespeare's Pizza - a classic college town pizza parlor, filled with a vibrant young crowd that makes me feel every one of my 31 years.

Friday Night at True/False

Last night kicked off the 10th True/False Film Festival (at least for us).  It's my second year at what I'm already planning to make an annual event.

After gathering our passes and applying some social lubricant, we got into the packed Missouri Theater to see Smash His Camera - a doc which premiered at Sundance and was just picked up by HBO this week for distribution.

The film documents the life's work of Ron Galella, a lifelong paparazzo who was sued by Jackie O. and punched in the face by Marlon Brando.  Galella and a cadre of supporters and detractors narrate the story, from his first work in the late '60s up to today.

Director Leon Gast also directed the stellar When We Were Kings.  While Galella doesn't have the charisma of a figure like Ali (and then again who does?), both films focus on a singular personality whose actions ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, resonate into the culture at large.

Beyond just the character story of the eccentric photographer, the film raises interesting questions about what constitutes art - particularly in photography.  Galella's work has recently been exhibited at museums, and it's hard to argue that he hasn't taken some beautiful photographs.  His shots are snapshots, often with a prominent flash bulb glare, but the candid, vulnerable moments he captures can be fascinating.  His critics argue that anyone who takes that many shots is bound to wind up with a few good shots, and also point out that it's always the subject that makes the photo interesting.

Galella comes across warmly, though seeing he has applied his techniques to subjects including children can be stomach-churning.  I was particularly struck by his string of photos of Angelina Jolie, going back to when she appeared to be only eight or nine years old.  He argues in several archival interviews that his intention is to show celebrities at their most human.

That argument felt rather thin to me, but there is a fascinating moment late in the film when a young girl, probably in her teens, wanders through an exhibition of Galella's work.  She tries to identify the subjects of the photos - the likes of Onasis, Steve McQueen, Bridget Bardot, etc.  She recognizes almost none of them.  It's subtle but striking evidence of the fleeting nature of fame, and perhaps lends credence to Galella's claim that in the end, he's just capturing images of humanity.

After Smash His Camera, we caught and enjoyed the Secret Screening Black.  But by the request of the programmers, I'll leave my thoughts on that a secret.

Support River Will Take You

My friend, the talented filmmaker Andy Brodie, is preparing to shoot River Will Take You, a short film starring Iowa music icons Greg and Pieta Brown. And he could use your help.

Andy's looking for patrons to help finance the production costs.  In addition to just helping get a truly independent film made, patrons will receive a really nice package of incentives including an invitation to the premiere event, DVD, and more.

Having been lucky enough to read the script and talk to Andy during the development process, I am excited about the film.  Filming will take place around the historic Sutliff Bridge near Iowa City.  The great Iowa blues guitarist Bo Ramsey will create a soundtrack for the film.  It's an impressive collection of elements which should make for a great film.

More details about the film and how to donate can be found here.  You can also listen to John Pemble's piece with Andy as it aired today on Iowa Public Radio:

Short Movie to use Damaged Sutliff Bridge

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Roll Out the Barrel...

Here's some video from our good friend's 1st Annual Backyard Bock Fest. Inspired by the event at Schell's Brewery in New Ulm, MN., it featured kegs of Bock (Shiner), bratwurst, saurkraut, polka music, drunkenness, etc. If you've never had your Bock poked, you're really missing out.

They're also maintaining a Tumblr page documenting the glory of the Backyard Bock Fest. In the midst of a dreary winter such as we've had, it's a hell of a way to spend an afternoon.