D-Feedback

Homepage, Sweet Homepage
by Roberto Quezada-Dardon
The Independent

In his film-in-progress Homepage, Doug Block trains his wry, analytical lens on personal Websites, and in the process, finds a parallel universe. The main subject of Block's documentary is Justin Hall, a charismatic Swarthmore student and Web proselytizer whose homepage (http://www.links.net/) receives 20,000 hits a month and elicits over 1,000 emails.
What makes Justin Hall's homepage so appealing? The best homepages like the best documentaries have at their center an engaging character with a well-told story. Justin's homepage has Justin. Fortunately for Luddites, so does Block's film. As the veteran documentary maker says, Justin lives an interesting life filled with conflict and drama and humor, and he just writes about it. Not only that, but, as Hall is quick to point out, in the early days he wrote a lot about sex with his various college girlfriends. When Block visits one of them, she admits she has to check Hall's Web site to see how they're doing and nervously admit she isn't sure how she feels about being so, uhm, revealed. (While verbose in his journals on the web, Hall is tightlipped when dealing with his girlfriends in person one of the many little ironies Block captures.)
Hall has quite a sphere of influence, especially now that the mainstream media has grabbed onto his story. (It was a New Yorker story that first tipped Block off about Hall, in addition to a personal connection through his stepson, who is a classmate of Hall's.) In one hilarious scene, we see Hall, a 20-year-old with a pineapple hairdo and wrinkled Reservoir Dogs suit, addressing the National Press Corps. It's a great shot a roomful of well-dressed, middle-aged journalists listening intently as young Master Hall lectures articulately on how to remain relevant in this age of Web communication.
This is just one of the stops Block made with Hall while shooting Homepage. In the film, Block follows the Webmaster as he traverses the country by train in order to make personal contact with friends and colleagues. Among them, the film's secondary characters are Howard Rheingold, founder/publisher of the Web site Electric Minds ; Julie Petersen, former managing editor of HotWired; Carl Steadman and Joey Anuff, cofounders and publishers of Suck ; Stefanie Syman, copublisher/coeditor of Feed; Aliza Sherman, aka cybergrrl, and geek soap star Rebecca Eisenberg .
But the conceptual heart of the film and the reason why it will be of interest to so many filmmakers is the way in which the activities of Doug Block, the personal documentary filmmaker, and Justin Hall, the personal Webmaster, oddly mirror each other. It's a point that's not lost on either, who each incorporate the other's documentary process into their opus. Block starts appearing as a subject in Hall's homepage, and at one point Hall finagles the camera away from Block and embarasses the interviewer with questions.
Block admits that much of the year was spent in mortal combat with Justin for control of how we would present each other in each of our published diaries. Some of that may well appear in the final film; Block shot a four-hour discussion between the two on how homepages and documentary journals differ, what the filmmaker and his subject have in common, and how the shooting of Homepage and being discussed on a homepage affected each other.
As a 43-year-old filmmaker trying to create his first Website, Block learned much from Hall and his 20-year-old friends. He wants potential distributors and audiences to know that his homepage carries as much weight as the film. "It'll give you the nonlinear Web version of the story," Block says. By excerpting the transcripts and linking the references the characters make to each other, the reader can take his own nonlinear voyage through the story. "And they can go so much deeper into the Web and into who these people are because all these people are pioneers doing what I think is the best work on the Web."
Hanging around these web gurus, especially Justin, Block came to realize an important difference between his film and homepage: "The Web is not about perfection. It's not like a documentary, where you work real hard to get this final piece perfected as best you can and then ship it out into the world for people to see," he says. "The site goes up unformed into cyberspace, and you just keep working on it. A homepage is a never-ending work-in-progress. That was a real revelation.
"Bottom-line, it's all an experiment," he says of his Web version of the documentary. "It's all fun. And it'll probably outlast the film."
Back to feedback
Roberto Quezada-Dardon is the website designer for Amnesty International-USA
Reprinted with permission from The Independent.

Copyright © 1996-1999 D.B. Block. All Rights Reserved

	Homepage, Sweet Homepage by Roberto Quezada-Dardon The Independent In his film-in-progress Homepage, Doug Block trains his wry, analytical lens on personal Websites, and in the process, finds a parallel universe. The main subject of Block's documentary is Justin Hall, a charismatic Swarthmore student and Web proselytizer whose homepage (http://www.links.net/) receives 20,000 hits a month and elicits over 1,000 emails. What makes Justin Hall's homepage so appealing? The best homepages like the best documentaries have at their center an engaging character with a well-told story. Justin's homepage has Justin. Fortunately for Luddites, so does Block's film. As the veteran documentary maker says, Justin lives an interesting life filled with conflict and drama and humor, and he just writes about it. Not only that, but, as Hall is quick to point out, in the early days he wrote a lot about sex with his various college girlfriends. When Block visits one of them, she admits she has to check Hall's Web site to see how they're doing and nervously admit she isn't sure how she feels about being so, uhm, revealed. (While verbose in his journals on the web, Hall is tightlipped when dealing with his girlfriends in person one of the many little ironies Block captures.) Hall has quite a sphere of influence, especially now that the mainstream media has grabbed onto his story. (It was a New Yorker story that first tipped Block off about Hall, in addition to a personal connection through his stepson, who is a classmate of Hall's.) In one hilarious scene, we see Hall, a 20-year-old with a pineapple hairdo and wrinkled Reservoir Dogs suit, addressing the National Press Corps. It's a great shot a roomful of well-dressed, middle-aged journalists listening intently as young Master Hall lectures articulately on how to remain relevant in this age of Web communication. This is just one of the stops Block made with Hall while shooting Homepage. In the film, Block follows the Webmaster as he traverses the country by train in order to make personal contact with friends and colleagues. Among them, the film's secondary characters are Howard Rheingold, founder/publisher of the Web site Electric Minds ; Julie Petersen, former managing editor of HotWired; Carl Steadman and Joey Anuff, cofounders and publishers of Suck ; Stefanie Syman, copublisher/coeditor of Feed; Aliza Sherman, aka cybergrrl, and geek soap star Rebecca Eisenberg . But the conceptual heart of the film and the reason why it will be of interest to so many filmmakers is the way in which the activities of Doug Block, the personal documentary filmmaker, and Justin Hall, the personal Webmaster, oddly mirror each other. It's a point that's not lost on either, who each incorporate the other's documentary process into their opus. Block starts appearing as a subject in Hall's homepage, and at one point Hall finagles the camera away from Block and embarasses the interviewer with questions. Block admits that much of the year was spent in mortal combat with Justin for control of how we would present each other in each of our published diaries. Some of that may well appear in the final film; Block shot a four-hour discussion between the two on how homepages and documentary journals differ, what the filmmaker and his subject have in common, and how the shooting of Homepage and being discussed on a homepage affected each other. As a 43-year-old filmmaker trying to create his first Website, Block learned much from Hall and his 20-year-old friends. He wants potential distributors and audiences to know that his homepage carries as much weight as the film. "It'll give you the nonlinear Web version of the story," Block says. By excerpting the transcripts and linking the references the characters make to each other, the reader can take his own nonlinear voyage through the story. "And they can go so much deeper into the Web and into who these people are because all these people are pioneers doing what I think is the best work on the Web." Hanging around these web gurus, especially Justin, Block came to realize an important difference between his film and homepage: "The Web is not about perfection. It's not like a documentary, where you work real hard to get this final piece perfected as best you can and then ship it out into the world for people to see," he says. "The site goes up unformed into cyberspace, and you just keep working on it. A homepage is a never-ending work-in-progress. That was a real revelation. "Bottom-line, it's all an experiment," he says of his Web version of the documentary. "It's all fun. And it'll probably outlast the film." Back to feedback Roberto Quezada-Dardon is the website designer for Amnesty International-USA Reprinted with permission from The Independent.
	Copyright © 1996-1999 D.B. Block. All Rights Reserved