June 21, 2008
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Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for a New York-based actors' resource web site, Actor's Life, about the do-it yourself-phenomenon of web series. At their best, web series can be for aspiring actors and screenwriters what blogs have become for journalists--a way to eliminate the producer, or editor, from the equation and focus solely on making art for art's sake.
Of course, while clicking away on a blog platform doesn't involve production costs (aside from coffee breaks and other writer's block remedies), filming and editing one's own series requires more extensive resources and a significant time commitment. For many actors, however, simply the promise of creative freedom and the possibility of attracting a real following are reasons enough to pick up a camera. And, in many cases, producing a web series is cheaper than renting a space for a short-lived stage production with significantly less growth potential.
Wednesday's Salon.com included a story, titled 'Where The 20-Somethings Are,' that approached the web series movement from a larger cultural angle. These consciously indie productions aren't just opportunities for a new generation of actors and producers, writer Judy Berman said, but they fill a niche that much of network television has neglected: the 20-something character. The crises of teendom and the middle age are exhaustively interpreted on scripted television, but giving a face to the quarterlife struggle is often left--in all its sloppy glory--to reality TV contestants.
I was happy to note that Berman brought attention to two of the same web series in her article as I had in mine: Successful indie filmmaker Joe Swanberg's 'Young American Bodies' (as you might guess from the title, much nudity is involved) and New York-based Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley's 'The All-For-Nots' (about a touring pop-rock band). While Young American Bodies stands out for its charming, improvised rambling that simply doesn't have room in scripted network television, The All-For-Nots is a magnetic meta-tribute to web TV in its own right: In December I caught the group in concert at Lower Manhattan's Mercury Lounge, where they shared a lineup with other--but non-scripted--indie musicians.
Because the musicians were playing characters, their '80s-inspired act immediately came across as better produced than other artists who shared the stage that night. To a viewer there was, of course, something strangely deliberate about their on-stage demeanor. Watching a performer channel self-consciousness through reserved banter and decidedly hipster garb rather than mask it was an unexpectedly magnetic experience. In itself, their live act was a real testament to the power of a well-crafted story.
See Berman's Salon.com piece here: http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2008/06/18/internet_series/
See my story here:
http://www.actorslife.com/article.php?id=230
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June 14, 2008
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Most residents living in the family-friendly New York of today are unlikely to miss the crime and grime that characterized the city during its previous decades, but a certain cultural sterilization is also stirring collective panic in its artistic community. Its famous indie theater scene, for example, has become challenging to maintain amidst rising rents and subsequently closing theater spaces.
In hopes of offering some concrete figures of today's indie theater--and hopefully attracting the attention of city officials-- The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation (NYIT) is conducting a series of four surveys evaluating Off-Off Broadway's impact on the city's economy. The first one, measuring budget trends among Off-Off Broadway theater productions, was published in April, and the remaining three will deal with demographics of the city's theater artists, audience demographics and, finally, Off-Off Broadway's overall economic footprint.
"Not having statistical information for Off-Off Broadway has really hindered them in being able to negotiate with city, state and federal officials, and landlords, sponsors and funders," said Shay Gines, NYIT Foundation's executive director, in a phone interview. "Providing this kind of information will really help to propel Off-Off Broadway further than they've previously been able to."
Of the 350 companies currently included in the foundation's database, 73 participated in the first survey, and the findings closely reflect what many following the scene had surely predicted: A majority of participating companies have been in existence for less than seven years, and more than half put on only one or two productions a year.
The average production budget is 18,000, over a third of which is spent on space rental. In fact, only five percent of respondents said they owned their own space ("it was one of the things I can say I was expecting," Gines said, "and it needs to change drastically").
One positive sign, she added, was that although Actor's Equity showcase rules don't require a company to pay its actors, more than 60 percent of participating companies said they paid their cast members a small stipend for their efforts.
The NYIT Foundation itself has lost two offices to the building of condos and office spaces. "Unfortunately right now the economics and the development of New York City is actually pushing some of these smaller theater organizations to the fringes," Gines said.
"The good news about this is that Off-off Broadway is really resilient. And as long as there are artists that need to perform, they are going to find spaces to perform in, and that's exciting," she added.
The foundation is currently conducting its second survey, at
http://www.nyitawards.com/survey/oobdemographics.asp.
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June 7, 2008
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This decade has spurred on a lengthy requiem for print media, a lament indicated in part by countless blogs covering media news, as well as news items reporting the downsizing of newsrooms. And if Wednesday's hour-long expert panel at my alma mater of NYU was any indication, some of the most successful media players remain as puzzled as ever on what will happen next.
Hosted by Patrick Phillips's I Want Media, the panel brought David Carr of The New York Times, Keith Kelly of The New York Post, Kenneth Li of Reuters, Johnnie Roberts of Newsweek, Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch and Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair into NYU journalism department's year-old TV studio to discuss as broad and daunting a concept as The Future of Media.
As Li noted later in his Reuters blog, cordial back-and forth remarks took up about 20 minutes of the designated hour.
And then David Carr set down his iced coffee and described Michael Wolff's analysis of The New York Times's current state as "a bunch of shit." Wolff had argued that The Times isn't necessarily getting an optimal return for the $300 million it spends yearly on news. New York Times reporters, like bloggers, get some of their tips and material from public web forums, he said.
"There's a perception out there that you aren't really offering all that that much value anymore," Wolff said after Carr's verbal outburst.
As expected, technology breakthroughs and even business strategies can potentially be discussed in a toned-down fashion in a circle of journalists, but when it comes to debating the practices of reporting, established veterans aren't likely to bite their tongues.
In their crossfire, Carr argued that news created by traditional bloggers couldn't, by the most part, replace the kind of in-depth hard news reporting The Times excels at.
"What's going to provide the host organism for all your meta-analysis?" he said. Wolff, on the other hand, described the news media as dependent on a sense of convergence between media forms, not to mention highly influenced by bloggers who often do their work for free.
"We're all sitting here in headlights," Wolff finally said, in a remark that best encapsulated the mood of the discussion. He also predicted Newsweek to not be around in five years' time, a statement that attracted the attention of The Huffington Post.
Fittingly, all of the coverage I've seen of the event thus far has been in blog form. Citizen journalism forum Groundreport was streaming online video of the event, and it would have simply been counterproductive to transfer the ordeal onto traditional print.
That, in itself, is part of our answer. But, as the panelists noted on Wednesday, getting audiences to pay for journalism is trickier. Even attending the panel in person was free of charge.
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May 29, 2008
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The last seven days have kept arts and entertainment editors busy. Amidst Cannes and Indiana Jones coverage came the season finales of most high-profile TV dramas, the confetti-accompanied crowning of an indie rocker as the newest American Idol, and the climax (sorry, I couldn't resist) of Sex and The City's publicity storm.
Among arts writers, however, no event has set the stage for societal reflection as effectively as the on-paper manifesto of a New York City blogger. Emily Gould's cover story in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday has, in a matter of days, turned her into a beacon of our maddeningly self-involved generation of artists. It has also given other writers a narrative lens through which to dissect other overexposed characters of our time, including Carrie Bradshaw.
A short recap: In her 8000-word piece, the former Gawker blogger narrated, in painstaking detail, her personal addiction to documenting her intimate affairs online. In the process she wrecked two romantic relationships, sank into a depression and realized that breaking the cycle--and consequently patching up her current identity as a writer--would be nearly impossible.
As it seems, this story has accomplished just the opposite of helping her come clean. Among both bloggers and those that follow them, Gould is now known as a calculating narcissist who chose to cash in on the very same strategy that presumably drove her to an emotional ditch. The story is
currently listed as this month's most blogged about New York Times piece. After receiving more than a thousand comments from mostly furious readers, the Times closed her article from further reader feedback (you can browse through the existing list of rotten tomatoes here).
In today's Salon, Rebecca Traister tied the Gould phenomenon to Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw, another New York City writer frantically bashed for her self-centeredness. In a way, Gould was downright asking for someone to draw the comparison: She was blogging about Sex and The City just last week on Jezebel.
"What provokes such fury, over Carrie Bradshaw, and -- for a flash -- over Gould (barring a book deal and TV show that will turn her meanderings into cultural furniture) is that in a media landscape in which there are a severely limited number of spaces for women's writing voices, the ones that get tapped become necessarily, and deeply inaccurately, emblematic -- of their gender, their generation, their profession," Traister wrote. "When we are fed -- and gobble up -- stories by or about single urban working women, those exotic and potentially threatening creatures presented to us are often doing things like confessing their self-doubt, discussing their sex lives, lying on rumpled sheets looking pretty."
Similarly, in his review of two new celeb-driven reality shows on the E! Network--one about Denise Richards and the other about Lindsay Lohan's mother Dina--Troy Patterson of Slate made reference to Gould:
"It's fundamentally gross, of course, but the apparatus of contemporary media and marketing is such that life and love are treated more as commodities every day—you might try asking Tila Tequila about that or Emily Gould —and Richards' show is just another indicator of the broader cultural decadence. No privacy, no decency; no surprise," he wrote.
Many New York Times readers accused the publication of neglecting undeniably more newsworthy tragedies around the world to make room for Gould's personal essay ("It's actually less than noteworthy, it's like an abyss, a "net negative," wrote a reader who said to be interviewing war survivors in Cambodia). Many of her fellow journalists, however, seem to have taken the opportunity to wonder what her case says about the modern media consumer.
Perhaps this debaucle isn't even about the distinctions of modern stardom: After all, we like to equally spit on fictional New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw, traditional celebrity Denise Richards and the newest, self-made breed that Gould represents. We scarf down the private, aggravating realities of each with equal appetite, and let the resulting schadenfreude provide a soothing distraction from our own neuroses.
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May 22, 2008
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For an aspiring playwright in New York, the odds of turning one's work into a stage production can feel as daunting, even foolish, as pinning an 'American Idol' audition number onto one's shirt. For those whose aspirations surpass their self-doubt, however, nonprofit organizations like Emerging Artists Theatre (EAT for short) can provide opportunities to polish
their work in front of a paying audience.
From now until mid-June, EAT is putting on its annual Developmental Series that gives theatergoing New Yorkers a chance to become part of the artistic process. A $10 ticket grants a viewer access to a work that's usually in its early stages of development.
This year, the series includes five categories: One-woman shows (entitled One Woman Standing), one-man shows (One Man Talking), clowns and puppetry (Laugh Out Loud), musical theater (Notes From a Page) and cabaret (Catch a Cabaret). A question-and answer session follows each performance, giving the featured artists an opportunity to bounce ideas back and forth with the audience.
"Our curators look for those artists who are really looking to develop the work and have a dedication to the work, not just 'I want to know what it's like to get up in front of people'," says artistic director Paul Adams, who founded EAT 15 years ago.
"It's a starting place for many of them, and they have a freedom to present wherever they are in their process. They can hold the book and read it if they want, they can do a section of it, or they can do they whole thing. Whatever makes them most comfortable and helps them develop the work the most," he says.
One Woman Standing and Notes From a Page, both dating back four years, are the oldest subsets of the series. One Woman Standing received roughly 85 applications this year, 19 of which were selected, while Notes From a Page had 15 works competing for seven spots. Inevitably higher production values add challenges to musical works, Adams explains.
"We try to keep it to New York City artists only because you really have to be here to work on it," he says.
The extra surge of motivation to improve one's craft sometimes leads to subsequent success: some developmental series alumni have gone on to produce their shows at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival, while others have picked up regional accolades (Deborah Ortiz's Changing Violet, for example, was nominated for two New York Innovative Theatre Awards in 2007).
In a community where the dwindling of arts resources is often documented as widely as arts initiatives themselves, Adams sees his organization as filling an important niche for grassroots theater.
"This is hopefully a place where people who don't have access to funds can come and have a chance to work on stage and get feedback on that work so that it can further itself down the road for them," says Adams.
His organization is among the many performing arts groups that have stumbled into real estate notches; EAT has lost two office and performance facilities in the past four years, he adds. Current performances of the Developmental Series are done in a rented space in Midtown Manhattan.
"It's a constantly changing environment. I'm hoping that people realize that if theaters keep disappearing, artists will disappear also, and that would be very detrimental for New York City to lose all those artists. Something needs to be done where they start bringing back and building more smaller theater for Off-Off and Off-Broadway, because we've lost a lot of space within the past two years."
One Man Talking will run until this Sunday, May 25th. For a complete schedule, visit www.eatheatre.org.
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May 16, 2008
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A week before his obsessively anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens in U.S theaters, George Lucas has a reason to bite his fingernails--and not just because Iron Man seems to already have become the blockbuster darling of the summer.
On Monday, the film will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. To refresh your memory, the last Hollywood Goliath to attempt this kind of introduction was Ron Howard's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code two years ago. Cannes critics almost universally abhorred the film, and, unfortunately for Lucas and Spielberg, some early comments by unnamed Hollywood players have already deemed Crystal Skull a flashy failure as well.
"With all the perils and with the film guaranteed a huge opening, why is Indiana Jones entering the Kingdom of the Critical Knives?" wrote Timothy M. Gray in yesterday's Variety.
He went on to argue that at arguably the world's most artistically self-important venue, Lucas and Spielberg can remind their peers that they, in fact, are right at home alongside the great cinematic names of Europe. Most importantly, he wrote, these mass-audience darlings can afford to take the risk. The Da Vinci Code did, after all, gross more than $750 million worldwide.
That Indy, unlike Da Vinci, got its first slamming feedback well before its festival screening may have been its saving grace, Gray writes. Word travels instantly in the blogging age, and the dust may have already cleared by Monday.
"Like The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not a film aimed for critics. Negative reviews can't hurt," he writes. "But after The Da Vinci Code, Crystal Skull proves exhibit B in the ongoing battle over whether critics matter."
The cultural magnitude of Harrison Ford and his whip may thus be the film's saving grace. A film this widely awaited is almost bound to return the costs of its colossal budget. Such is hardly the case for an array of small films making their debut at the festival this week and next.
As Manohla Dargis and A.O Scott wrote in The New York Times yesterday, this is just the beginning for an increasingly challenging distribution process. Warner Brothers recently shut down its two distribution channels for independent and foreign films, and with the shrinking of U.S newsrooms, fewer small-scale titles are likely to make it to public consciousness.
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May 14, 2008
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In my post last week I linked to The New York Times' City Room-section that featured reader questions for the president of the Alliance for the Arts, Randall Bourscheidt. The topic was the state of the arts in New York City, and the often verbose inquiries included questions about donor funding, treatment of older artists and whether European countries with more generous government funding have an advantage.
Bourscheidt took time to answer--in two separate sections, in fact. Access part one here and part two here. He breaks down the city's cultural funding process and even makes an attempt to explain in a paragraph why the public should care about the arts. It's a worthwhile glimpse into the frustrating, multifaceted time and place in which today's culture is attempting to thrive.
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May 8, 2008
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Judging from recent coverage on the upcoming Sex and the City film, its long-overdue release couldn't have come at a more apt time to promote public discussion. To the recession-fearing public of 2008, fictional journalist Carrie Bradshaw's Manolo shopping sprees don't just appear charmingly utopian; they seem both outdated and irksome. This week's New York Magazine interview with Sarah Jessica Parker placed far greater focus on the cultural state of Manhattan than on the film itself; in transforming into Carrie's world of $14 cocktails and $500 heels, what happened to the city's ubiquitous, defining artistry?
"You know, when I arrived in the city in 1976, New York was financially a wreck,” Parker told New York's Emily Nussbaum. “But to me it's the New York that Matthew [Broderick] and I literally try to find every day of our lives. It was the best place in the world. It was literature. It promised everything. And for someone who loved food and smells and stimulation, who was rocked to sleep by the sound of taxis—well, there’s just so much money now, and the city is so affluent, and all the colors, all the shops, the look of a street from block to block is just terribly absent of distinguishing coffee shops, bodegas. All of that stuff that made it possible to live in New York is gone.”
The New York Times' decision to feature the president of the Alliance of the Arts in its Taking Questions-section this week might bear minimal connection to Sex and the City, but it confirms that the death of New York's bohemia is a prevailing topic in cultural journalism this spring. If the 40-plus reader questions so far are any indication, New York's chic stint seriously slowed down its creative pulse.
The readers, many of whom are part of the arts scene, have presented their list of inquiries with plenty of indignation to back them up. The alliance's president, Randall Bourscheidt, will have some multilayered concerns to dissect. The questions express dismay about artists' lack of health
care, the city's sluggish arts education, high rental costs for performance spaces, and dwindling donor support during a recession. Many of them, in true New Yorker fashion, aren’t questions at all, but rather just short manifestos about the city's emphasis on money and lack of artistic support.
Most real-life Manolo shoppers will of course prevail, somehow, but their fictional artist counterpart is losing the last traces of her credibility. That economic slumps call for movie fantasies could, however, be Carrie's saving grace.
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May 1, 2008
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Even if you stopped tuning in to 'American Idol' after the unimpressive album sales of its recent winners began to give the show's title a slightly paradoxical quality, you most likely came across Paula Abdul's name in yesterday's news feeds.
If, somehow, you missed the drama that journalists have coined 'Paulagate,' here is Entertainment Weekly's Adam B.Vary's play-by play. In short, judge Abdul critiqued contestant Jason Castro's first and second performance of the night after he had only sung one song.
As if Idol's motivations weren't subject to enough hair-pulling in the blogs (is 17-year-old David Archuleta totally overrated? Does America ever vote for the best? Are these judges really qualified to judge vocal talent?), Paula's brainfart whipped reporters and bloggers into a rhetorical frenzy. Michael Slezak (also of Entertainment Weekly) wondered if this, finally, was evidence that the judges' comments have been pre-scripted all along. Paula's eventual explanation that she had mixed up Castro's dress rehearsal with his live performance has initiated further discussion over why Idol producers even allow their judges to watch the rehearsals.
Many journalists on-scene, including Richard Rushfield of The Los Angeles Times, gave their own play-by play of the night's events. Sitting in the audience on Tuesday night provided a slightly more revealing perspective than watching the events unfold on TV: You can decide for yourself by reading Rushfield's blog entry
Much of American Idol's success can be accredited to its pick-your-own-ending-formula that gives a viewer a sense of control. Any revelations of pre-determined judging could thus be seriously damaging to the show's future. Randy and Simon's consistent swooning over the same candidates already suggests a heavy bias towards a certain top two, and scripted commentary could make voters feel like little is, ultimately, in their hands. If the judges' reactions aren't based on the quality of the performances, who's then to say that the voting isn't somehow crooked as well?
Paula Abdul and Ryan Seacrest have already offered their explanations, but if Idol-tracking blogs and their comments are any indication, the public hasn't yet been willing to brush off the incident. Next season will determine if Idol's credibility is really in trouble, but there's also a good chance that amidst our speculation of the validity of reality shows like The Hills, a silly mistake on the part of one judge simply happened at the worst possible time. It's a visible crack of the surface of the Reality paradigm, and all of our eyes are drawn to it.
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April 29, 2008
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About a month and a half ago, I attended a screening of indie documentarian Virginie-Alvine Perrette's 35-minute film that documents the closing of New York City's neighborhood stores (you can see my Q & A with Perrette here).
The project is both an admirable exercise in inspired DIY-journalism and, hopefully, a wake-up call for New Yorkers. Perrette's effort to get to know her subjects during six years of filming shines through, and the result is both unassuming and genuinely affecting. She captured children reaching for treats across the counter, cardboard boxes exchanging hands and owners chatting with locals; in many cases, she stood alongside store owners with her camera as they closed their registers for the last time.
Most importantly, the film isn't structured to be a sob story; to gain insight into what gentrification says about the state of our civilization, Perrette consulted several authors and academics. Their voices offer a credible frame to the finished film.
Perrette is currently showing the film at venues around New York City. At least four screenings are scheduled for the next two months:
-Saturday, May 3rd at 2pm. Sponsored by Long Island City Alliance, Quinn Building, 35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor, Long Island City, Queens
-Saturday, May 10th at 3pm. Sponsored by Center For the Urban Environment, 167 7th Street, Brooklyn
-Thursday, June 5th at 7pm. Sponsored by Common Cents, 570 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan
-Thursday, June 12th at 7pm. St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street, Manhattan
If you're in the area, I strongly recommend attending. It's a way to show your support for both local businesses and local artists like Perrette.
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