Gerrymandering

Here are my Top Twenty films of the decade, just for the hell of it:
1. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
2. The New World
3. Werckmeister Harmonies
4. Summer Hours
5. Syndromes and a Century
6. The Son
7. The House of Mirth
8. L’Intrus
9. Before Sunset
10. There Will Be Blood
11. Miami Vice
12. Millennium Mambo
13. I’m Not There
14. Twentynine Palms
15. Kings and Queen
16. Clean
17. Inland Empire
18. Bamboozled
19. Vera Drake
20. Colossal Youth

Check out Reverse Shot’s collective countdown.

Writing quickly from the end of vacation in lovely Fennville, MI (MI-2 for district-minded folks out there).  Tonight, THE LAST TRUCK: CLOSING OF A GM PLANT premieres on HBO.  The film was directed by my aunt and uncle, Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar, and I was lucky enough to be invited out for portions of the shooting - a few scenes I shot made the final cut! I can definitely say I learned a ton even in just the three days I was there, and that the parts of Gerrymandering that I ended up shooting wouldn’t have been nearly as good if not for the experience.

It’s a terrific film, but don’t take my word for it:

The New York Times raves…

As does The Washington Post…

So, I’m trying to figure out how to link things like this blog, facebook, Twitter and other various and sundry “social media” applications, so that I don’t have to update all sorts of different things.  Let’s see if this syndicates out to my facebook page.

Though it now begs the question: if I post news articles here that then go to my facebook page automatically, and then post the same articles to Twitter, they’ll also go to my facebook, so I’m potentially doubling up all over the place. Is this actually making less work for me?

This all makes me feel old, though lots of people seem to love it. (My mom’s a big Twitter fan, apparently.)

And will it sell any tickets for Gerrymandering? I hope so…

A little video work from my other day job:

I like producing these not only because it’s a bit of a break from thinking about Gerrymandering, but also because it gives me a chance to try out new ideas and techniques — stuff that likely wouldn’t make it into my current film, but that might find expression elsewhere later. Or, ideas that might only need to live within the bounds of one of our six-minute interviews. I’ve found over the last year that the more different kinds of mental exertion I’ve got going on at any given time (editing Gerrymandering, reviewing new releases, planning and shooting a Talkie, reading the new Thomas Pynchon…) the better the results have been across categories.More to come on the film soon…and maybe even a clip!

I’m behind on my shoot log as I still need to put together my thoughts about our last two shoots, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts. Sam’s still cutting, and I’m assessing where we need to go next to round out all of our stories. At this point, we’ve shot in eight states, including D.C., and may well add a couple more to that list. We probably won’t know exactly what the plan is until August or September when everyone’s had a chance to review the assembly cut.

In the meantime, here’s a link to something I do when I’m not working on Gerrymandering. It’s an “unconventional” video interview with Lake Tahoe director Fernando Eimbcke.

Turns out redistricting helped none other than Harvey Milk (the politician, not the super-awesome metal band from Georgia) ascend to elected office.  I recently saw Gus Vant Sant’s new film and loved a little bit about a third of the way through in which one of Milk’s campaign workers pulls out a San Francisco district map and explains to Harvey how changes in the way City Supervisor district lines were drawn could result in a district tailor-made to elect a gay politician. 

Not quite gerrymandering, but it does go to show how the way democracy is organized has an immense impact on the outcomes of elections.