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

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Boring!
Monday, December 9...

Return-Path: billw@iwaynet.net

Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 10:52:36 +0000

From: Bill Walker <billw@iwaynet.net>

To: dbblock@el.net

Subject: Boring

All promise and nothing new since you first put it up 

as far as I can tell. Sounded good but you should read 

Justin's advice about minding your page on a regular 

basis if you want anyone to come to it.The journal in 

progress sounds great but where's the process? 



DisappointedInOhio

__________________________________

Return-Path: <billw@iwaynet.net>

Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 01:22:59 -0500

From: billw <billw@iwaynet.net>

To: dbblock@el.net

Subject: old news

You gonna put somethin new on this site some day soon? This

moment to moment sharing of the process of making your film

doesn't seem to have anything added to it in months. Am I 

missing something?

____________________________________

Okay, okay. So I took a not-so-brief hiatus from D-Evolution. I'm all too aware of letting down my legion of fans out there who live for my entries.

Thoughtfully thought I'd give you a break from my endless whining about funding. Except for occasional bouts of filming, everything's been put on hold 'til I raise some money-- some serious money.

But you're absolutely right to be Disappointed-- I promised to include you in on the process and I'm not holding out my end of the bargain.

The truth is the filmmaking process is 90% dealing with business issues,and it's totally unglam-- endless phone calls, faxes, proposals, meetings, negotiations, agreements. But you wanna be an indie filmmaker, you've got no choice but to deal with it because hey folks, films cost a ton of money to make!

Even the most lowly budget ones. You can take a Hi-8 camera and shoot til the cows come home (and I did, I did), but at some point you're gonna have to pay the piper. I've been at that point for the past three months.

Looks like my efforts will be rewarded, though. I'm officially in talks with The Man With The Checkbook at Sin-A-Max (owned by HBO owned by Time-Warner merged with Ted Turner). Does this make me a sell out? The question doesn't keep me tossin' at night. I keep final cut and full control of the content. My concern is finishing it and getting it out widely. I have zero interest in spending two years making a film that's seen by my friends and preaches to the converted. Home Page is a story of the Web and that story has wide appeal, I'm totally convinced.

I'll write about the deal later, to the extent I can. They don't want me talkin' numbers (they never like producers to talk numbers, cause if someone's getting more than another they get pissed). And I'm not suicidal so I won't. I will say it's not nearly enough to get the film made, but enough to get it through the rough cut. I can hire an editor to help me wade through the almost 100 hours (!!!) of footage I've shot to date.

I'm just about done with the shooting. Just got back from two days at Swarthmore. Josh was performing a tap dance routine and in the semi-annual Cabaret. Re-visited with Nick Lehmann-- his Quad-Cam site is down but now he uses a CU-See-Me camera. Denise showed me her plane ticket to Atlanta-- she's off for a RL rendevous with a guy she's chatted up on Spacebar. And caught up with Carew, who I like more and more each time we meet. Swatties are an impressive lot in general.

In October, I spent three days with Justin and Abbe at the Digital Storytelling Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado. And last month I spent another week in San Francisco, in the days leading up to the launch of Electric Minds.

Howard Rheingold always looks at me funny when he sees me. "Boy, you're persistent," he keeps saying. Justin thinks I'm relentless, too. They have no clue how docs get made. It's about showing up before the others arrive and (even if you don't) remaining long after they leave. Oh yeah, and making sure the batteries are charged.

Re-visited with Carl Steadman (now gone from Suck), proudly ensconsed in a condo he recently bought. He didn't want me to shoot his makeshift desk -- he was eagerly awaiting the delivery of new furniture. His bunk bed used to reside 30 feet from his desk at the Suck office. It now has a proper bedroom.

Re-visited with Julie Petersen (now gone from HotWired) She and Jim were building loft beds for their apartment. Heading into the home stretch of filming Home Page and everyone is fixing up their homes.

Justin's home is a sparsley furnished apartment on Waller St. Just a mattress he leans up against a wall, his laptop, and his shorn hair in a drawer. With Electric Minds about to launch, Justin looks to the future. 2 am -- he sits amidst a circle of candles and rolls the I-Ching. Looks up the meaning in his I-Ching program on the laptop. Fidelity. Dispersal.

My time with Justin for the doc is pretty much done.

I go with an impulse and hand him the camera. Ask me anything, I say. Anything. See, we haven't talked much about the documentary the whole time I've been shooting it. With Justin I've always been afraid of missing something if I'm not rolling. If he refers to me or the process, I want to incorporate it. Media commenting on media. Hall of mirrors.

And I've been real circumspect about what I say around the boy. He doesn't miss a thing. Let your guard down for a second and it's bound for the eternal annals of Justin Webdom.

"Having been around it a while now, Doug, what do you make of the whole SF/NY Web geek scene?" he asks.

The lens is on me now, but I try not to think about how I'll come across. I've been shooting for 16 hours and beyond all caring. I likethe people I've met very much, I say. They're bright, ambitious, funny, idealistic, self-absorbed, obsessive. But mostly they're young. They're worried about getting laid, as opposed to keeping romance alive in a long-term relationship. They can afford to worry about selling out, they don't have kids. They don't have to think about anyone beyond themselves, and mostly they don't. What's not to like?

What I like most of all are the ones who lay themselves on the line in this new medium. O pioneers, explorers of hypertext, trying out new ways of communicating their longing.

"But what have you learned, Doug, from making the film?" I love the way Justin keeps dropping my name into the conversation.

"I've learned a lot, Justin." And I have. Much of it from him. I've learned to let go of my need for perfection. When I started filming I naively thought getting the web site up would be the triumphant ending. Justin taught me it's just the mid-point, just part of the process. And the point is to put it up before you're ready. It'll never be perfect. And so I've let go.

Meanwhile, I've seen Justin grow a lot in the last six months. He's more considerate of those around him. His writing is much improved. He filters himself more. His sentences are complete. His hair is gone. It's been a privilege to be around him.

After taping ended, Justin and I spent another hour talking. He rarely writes in his online journal about my videotaping him and never about how he feels being a central character in a documentary. (He talked about it once on camera, though. He complained about my persistent phone calls and likened it to "being called up by a voyeur and asked to raise your shades." It's the single best description of being a documentary subject I've ever heard.) I'm one of the few ongoing "characters" in his cyberdrama not given his own page with Justin commentary. Which is all to the better with me, but not unobserved.

Justin doesn't have much to say about it. The attention I've shown him is flattering. He's grateful for the platform and appreciates that he'll have this documentation of a vital period of his life. Justin's big on archiving his life. But if he's given any thought to what effect this may have on his future when the doc comes out he doesn't say.

And who knows? It's a doc, after all. Most come and go, casting nary a ripple in the waters. My guess is unadorned Justin and his various links will cause a stir.

The next day I rented a car and drove out to the wine country. It was a beautiful crisp day and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I mulled over our conversation, feeling that I was unable to clearly sort a tangled web of feelings. I drove further and further down a deserted country road and followed a very strange impulse.

What I did next may or may not end up in the film, but it certainly expressed Justin's influence better than anything I could forumulate in words the night before, on camera or off. If he ever sees it I think he'll laugh.

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