Pain. We all have our relationships with, and definitions of, pain. There are certain kinds of pain that I don't mind, that I even like a little. The soreness in my muscles from a long run the day before is a reminder of something accomplished. A little bit of emotional pain can lead to cathartic art. However, right now I'm dealing...
In the age of the internet, to a disturbing degree, snark is much more important than fact. “Reputable” news gathering organizations seem to be devoid of fact checkers and editors are loathe to issue corrections even when the stated facts are clearly wrong. Snark is employed to tell the story the “reporter” sets out to tell, rather than having to...
At Rumur we tend to make films that focus on people who go against the grain of the system. As we have matured, our characters have matured, but they are still outsiders who have difficulty going with the flow when the flow is going in a different direction than they think it should. Our very first film, "Half-Cocked" (1993), isn't a...
We locked picture (at least on the first reel) and the sound mixer, Alex at Resoundpost, is hard at work on the sound mix. In a couple of days filmmaker Greg King (Our House) will start doing finish work on the picture. This morning we have been working with our indispensable composer David Reid, who along with Derek Bermel, has been...
Last week a good friend, and academy nominated doc director, gave us some great notes on our rough cut. He had seen a somewhat earlier version of the film so it was great to hear his notes because we had already addressed about 80% of them. At the same time, he asked a series of sharp questions about what we were...
About a year and a half ago - when we launched our first kickstarter campaign to help fund Battle for Brooklyn (a doc we have been working on for 7.5 years), I did a great deal of planning. I took the game theory aspect very seriously. We knew that we had networks of people that we could tap into, and...
This week, in addition to hustling to finish Battle for Brooklyn, we have been working on an EPK (electronic press kit) for a Danish singer named Agnes Obel. Agnes moved to Berlin to be creative, and over the course of a few years she put together an album of seemingly simple songs based around piano melodies and singing. I write...
When I was a freshman in high school, I became somewhat obsessed with photography. I was "that guy" who took most of the pictures for the school paper and the yearbook. I knew that I wanted to be a photographer, but I didn't want to go to art school, or journalism school for that matter. I intuitively knew that it...
This fall, as the pace of education"reform" in New York cranked up, I started to pay more attention to what was going on. With two children in my local public school, I quickly realized that the more I looked, the less I liked what I saw. I began to write about the subject to try to get my head around...
Today is the 5th anniversary of my father's death. My mom seems to be trying to join him. Yesterday she fell on some steps and cut her head badly enough to require staples. After poking, prodding, and some cat scans it was determined that she had suffered no long term damage. I wasn't around - she's in NC and I...
If you’ve been to a protest in the last 10 years, you’ve likely heard the chant, “The people, united, will never be defeated.” The opposite is true as well. When the government pits community against community, as it is now doing in the process of promoting charter schools designed to compete with community schools, it's important to...
The internet is a terrible place to discuss ideas and work out complex feelings. Yet, in our hyper busy culture we seem to fall back on it more and more. It's difficult to make time for a community meeting, but we end up having our days taken over by comment wars. Over the last couple of years I have followed...