The Pioneer Hour

Tonight at Vinegar Hill I saw outtakes of Albert Maysles films and spoke to him briefly afterwards. With his brother he made Gimme Shelter which is one of my favorites. I had been thinking about this movie a lot lately--about the way the camera lingered on certain scenes longer than you would in other types of films. I realize now that it's an approach called Direct Cinema or Verite, and that I've probably been thinking about it in relation to my own radio work.

I'm working on a story now, about The Extraordinaires and I'm narrating. Because it's a short piece (maybe 5-6 minutes if I'm lucky) this means I won't get to use much of the verite tape I gathered. I have arguments, hanging out, crying, storming off... all these revealing moments I could use to tell a much different story. And while I think the story that I'm working hard to tell is true, I'm not sure it's the story that intrigued me in the first place.

I think now that if I had pitched the story as non-narrated, I could have done it much differently, and perhaps told the story I wanted. Narration seemed like an interesting challenge (it's often scared me and I do think I'm a lot better at it) but as of now, I officially want to make a non-narrated version. And If you want to give me 1000$ to do it, I'm listening.

Reviewers are people with steady jobs denigrating the people out there working harder and having more fun.

I suspect.

I don't know Ms. Maslin personally so I'm willing to admit I could be totally wrong. But what she's basically saying about Stephen Colbert's book is that the only thing good about it is he wrote it. Maybe it would just be better to say that it's a bad book (which it sounds like it is). I don't know. Reviewing is a weird sort of industry.

I haven't figured out how to delete this... So I'll simply say that this is a freebie. It's a flashlight beam shined at Proxima Centauri.