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

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Turned 44 the day before yesterday. Justin is 22.

Debbie is cutting the section with Justin and Howard Rheingold in San Francisco, my first trip out there. I always knew it was rich material, but their relationship is so funny and complex and real that it’s now clear it’s far more central to the film than I ever imagined.

Justin has always been a mirror for me. I look at him and see my reflection. Not necessarily the way I am, but the way I wish I’d been. My lost youth, not so much as I lived it but as I once imagined it could be.

What makes this project so interesting is that I sense I’ve been a mirror for Justin, as well. Not so much me personally, but the gaze of my camera. The attention I pay him. The serious questions I hound him with, which cause him to reflect deeply. When I shoot from behind my camera, he peers into the lens and what does he see? Himself.

When I finally managed to get my own online journal going and he linked to me here, it was like another layer of reflection. Now I write about Justin and link back to him. The media is beginning to pick up on the interaction. It adds yet another layer to the hall of mirrors.

Now even my age mirrors his.

Marjorie and I went to see a play the night of my birthday called God’s Heart, by Craig Lucas. It has an internet theme, with three interconnected storylines. One involves a liberal-minded, white professional couple who take a laptop computer into bed with them. Another is about an interracial lesbian couple-- one is dying of cancer, the other has videotaped their life together for years and continues to tape even as the others’ health deteriorates (did anyone say Silverlake Life?). The third is a street kid who dreams of making enough money to buy the computer set-up of his dreams.

An interesting play on a dream level, short on characterization and story, rich in mood and imagery and ideas.

It’s good to get other takes and artistic visions on the internet. Needless to say, I have notebooks filled with my own takes and visions, but in the end Debbie and I totally agree to let the material guide us. And it’s all but screaming out that the film is largely about Justin searching for his father. Not literally, of course. But dealing with issues of abandonment and intimacy. Searching for a father figure. For home. For community. For manhood.

And since I see so much of myself in him, it’s no coincidence that I’m looking more carefully at the footage I’ve shot over the years with my own father. Initially, Debbie gave it little significance, but I’ve always felt it had a role, I just haven’t known how prominent a role. Now I think I’m beginning to understand how it all fits.

So much so that I drove out today to my parents house where I shot a long-delayed interview with my mother. Most of it is for archival purposes, just so my sisters and I have her family’s history on tape. Just as I did with my father last year. But there were a couple of questions I popped her about Dad with the film in mind.

There’s also the fact that I’m old enough to be Justin’s father. Am I a father figure to him? Don’t know. I am a father -- to a 7-year old budding cybergrrl, and step-father to a 22-year old classmate of Justin’s. I find it interesting that Justin dedicates his manifesto/book-in-progress “to my mother, and all of my fathers.”

All of this is much too complicated to explain in depth, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s largely intuitive-- stuff I work out with myself, with the footage, and with Debbie, in fragments. Make the individual moments and scenes work, then see how they fit into the larger scheme. The larger theme. Pieces get moved around, the jigsaw puzzle eventually fits together. Hopefully the picture it forms is an artful one.

Of course, I forget sometimes this is an interactive forum for musing. More and more folks are popping out of the woodwork offering up critiques. Like my erstwhile web design guru, Tarikh.

Tarikh is in his mid-twenties and just got accepted at NYU’s ITP program, one of the best new media schools in the country, so he knows his shit. He’s been helping me out for months without pay, always reticent and respectful. I was finally able to advance him some moolah recently, which I guess frees him to sass my ass.

He had this to say about my Generations entry:

Read your latest journal entry... I may never understand Baby Boomers.

Of course I can’t leave well enough alone; he’s in my employ now. I demand an explanation.

As per that Baby Boomers thing... I think my generation has gotten a crappy deal from the Boomer generation (in general mind you, nothing personal here). We've been misunderstood, exploited and given short shrift. Woodstock II is a good example. How could anyone hope to recreate a spontaneous gathering of Hippies? Well they tried, and then pinned it on my generation like a misplaced tail on a donkey. What's worse, this time they were gonna try and make a buck off us--sponsored by Pepsi and MTV with product tie ins and corporate memorabilia. The two events are apples and oranges. The thing that irks me is Baby Boomers at large will make the inevitable comparison, realize the general suckiness of II and blame me for it. I didn't design the thing--a baby boomer did! I think there is a generation gap (I hate the word and idea) unfortunately-- something about my generation confuses Baby Boomers--so much so that I've been labled X. And that which is not understood sucks I guess. Does Steve Mullen really believe that there hasn't been any good music in 20 years? I almost hate to argue the point, if he believes that, there may be no argument that could convince him (he may not be worth convincing for that matter). The past twenty years have
witnessed the rise of Hip Hop! Perhaps he doesn't like it but could he argue that it's bad??? It would be like saying," jazz is bad". What kind? Which artist? What time period?

Oh well.

Oh, by the way, he points out a week later. Wasn’t there a Simpsons episode that had something about Bobo and Rosebud?

Hey, who knows? I love the Simpsons. Sounds vaguely familiar. Who remembers the associations at my advancing age? Who cares? You take from everything: memories, dreams, pop culture, Justin, my mother’s kvetching...

You smoosh it all together, raise a few bucks and hope ya come out with a half-way decent movie.

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