The D-Word's life is one of glamour and riches, as only a documentary filmmaker can live it

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7:22pm

I wake up early this morning and I don´t want to get up. Home Page opens theatrically in New York City today and all the newspapers and many of the weekly magazines are coming out with reviews. We get the New York Times delivered and I know it´s lying there outside our apartment door.

I have a bad feeling.

Not that I think it will get terrible notices. In fact, we’ve already gotten some really fine advance ones. Roger Ebert, who´s been such a champion of Home Page, made it his Video Pick of the Week on his syndicated tv show this week, and called it "groundbreaking." Time Out New York, Entertainment Weekly and the New York Press had kind, if all too brief, words for it. And John Anderson of Newsday has been a long-time supporter, so I know his review will be very favorable.

But everyone I know reads the Times. And even though Stephen Holden is a far better critic than the wretched Janet Maslin, I´ve had the strange feeling the past few days that he´s a luddite who's going to really hate Justin, and that it will color the entire review.

I also remember that despite all of my efforts to frame Home Page as a multimedia narrative, with the film being simply the leaping off point for a story that continues to be played out online, a theatrical opening means the film will be judged solely as a film. I don't mind, but I suddenly fear he's just not gonna get it.

I lie in bed thinking about the events of the past few weeks, in absolutely no hurry whatsoever to read his verdict.

I think about how BigStar has come on board as the exclusive online video retailer of Home Page (okay, only after hearing about Ebert´s pick, but still…) and put in some much-needed, last-minute cash into our IFILM launch and Home Page premiere party last Friday.

I think about all of the massive effort involved in coordinating the release of Home Page simultaneously on the Internet, on home video and theatrically-- all on the tiniest of marketing budgets. There was the postcard and e-mailings for the party and the separate postcard mailing for the theatrical run at the Cinema Village. There was the mass email I sent (with Jonathan Swerdloff´s crucial assistance) to over 5,700 people who’d come in through my email in-box in the course of making the film. There are the two small ads the Cinema Village is running in Time Out New York and the Village Voice. There was the press release to journalists and the countless emails I´ve sent out to various individuals and groups. The work was never-ending.

I relive the surreal hurlyburly of the party, with a constant stream of people coming and going. The event planner, who had someone signing in guests, told me over 700 people showed up. I drank an endless cup of vodka (thank you Skyy), took part in untold numbers of conversation fragments, hugged and kissed everyone in sight and walked around with a perpetual grin.

I think about how no matter what happens now Home Page will continue to have an online life. And that over the years it will only increase in value as an historical document of the Web´s early years.

I still don´t want to get out of bed.

I don´t want to see my convergence project dissected as a stand-alone film. I feel like a pitcher waking up on the day of the big game with a sore arm.

It´s only in the past two days I´ve even given thought to the reviews. Possibly because I´ve been through this mill before a number of times with my other films and I´m pretty hardened to it. I´m used to the New York Times, in particular, always being among our least favorable reviews (they were particularly nasty to Silverlake Life, which only won practically every documentary award that exists).

Then why do I want to pull the covers over my head and stay here? Because you never really get hardened to it.

I dwell on what a wonderful life I have. What an amazing wife and daughter I have to share it with every day. How blessed I am with good health and a comfortable place to live. How well off I am compared with so many others.

I remind myself that it´s not a competition. It´s not about outdoing American Movie or the new Errol Morris doc. That the film has already succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. It´s been to Sundance, to Rotterdam, to Berlin and beyond. It´s been broadcast thoughout Europe and America. It´s gotten incredibly positive reaction from those who have seen it.

And I´m on to new exciting projects. Nerve. Jennifer´s doc. The D-Word community is growing up and thriving before my eyes. I don´t need the New York Times or anyone else for validation.

I creep slowly out of bed and pee.

The toilet is clogged. I get the plunger and fix it.

I fix a cup of coffee.

I go out in the hallway for the newspaper.

Clinton and Yeltsin are peeved at each other, it says.

I open the Arts section and, well…

Sure enough, Holden doesn´t like Justin. He calls the film "intriguing" (well, alright!) but also disorganized. (Entertainment Weekly called it "artfully structured." Go figure.)

As I feared, he accuses "cyberfanatics" like those in the film (and me, presumably) of rejoicing over the destruction of personal privacy on the Internet.

Good Lord. I don´t think so.

He misreads other things as well, most disappointingly when he says the Julie Petersen affair is "offered as a utopian paradigm for cybersexual liberation." As if I´m including it as something people should aspire to, instead of treating it as the complex, heartbreaking, misplaced search for intimacy that everyone else has always understood it to be.

Sigh.

This isn´t fun. We live for the raves, not the mixed reviews. But more than anything, we want to be understood. When we work so hard for so many years to get all the details right, and when so many others get it, it hurts when the New York Times doesn´t.

Lucy has no school today so I hang out with her at home. I get a bunch of congratulatory calls and emails. One friend is impressed with the length of the review and the big photo of Justin. Another doesn´t see anything negative about it at all, short of the disorganization accusation. "No, it actually made it seem really interesting the way he described it."

I don´t try and dispel them of their feelings.

A school friend of Lucy´s (a boy, no less) calls her to congratulate me (hmm, what´s that about?). Suddenly, she wants to read the review. It has her name spelled right up there in the credits, so she thinks it´s totally cool.

My daughter´s happy and I’ll get there again. It´s hard not to be when I´m with her.

For those of you in the NYC area, come to the Cinema Village over the course of the next two weeks and see Home Page on the big screen while you can. I´m sure you’ll find it intriguing.

Heck, the New York Times says so.

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