Stories of Your Life: and Others, by Ted Chiang
I’d read a lot of Chiang’s stuff online, and finally picked this up to get through the last two I hadn’t seen, “Stories of Your Life” and “Understand”. Both didn’t disappoint. Chiang has a way of developing complete, convincing characters and worlds in a very compressed period of time, which makes it feel like he stretches the space of his stories. I’m excited to dig into his novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, as soon as the library delivers it to me.

Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage, by Eamon Javers
I was hoping this would be a little less mass-market, which sounds kind of stuck-up, but there it is. Javers details how private security and detectives have turned into freelance spooks and ex-Federal agents working in shadowy Washington corridors on behalf of any and all interested customer, securing all sorts of valuable information at whatever price. Very interesting stuff, yes, and a difficult world to get access to, but I was hoping there’d be more nuts and bolts attached, that he’d get into those corridors to figure out how these guys do their jobs.¹

True Grit
I’m way behind on Oscars viewing, but wanted to get this one out of the way while it was still in theaters. As always, the Coens know how to write dialogue, but I felt some of the thematic elements were a bit unformed, for instance the snake motifs.

1. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Anonymous/HBGary thing has stirred up a whole pot of shit, with the relationships Javers describes in the book exposed. We’ll see what Javers has to say–he seems to be stuck on Wall Street at the moment.

It was so staggering, actions were forced.

The note, laden in artistic pronouncements and full-of-itselfness, begged for an extension; a dramatic reading was considered, but it turned out only a full video could to the thing justice. After all, a 1500-word yearly update email sent to dozens of people deserves the highest degree of satire you can muster.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m an earnest man. But even sincerity, in extreme, is funny as hell. (Viz. Kenneth on 30 Rock.)

Who was the sender? An unknown personage, but clearly a modern-day Benjamin Franklin, part writer, part political organizer, all full of Brooklyn potential and privilege and so indicative of our generation’s rampaging self-importance.

We christened him Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov; this is his yearly update, verbatim, brought to life as best we could.

A Letter From Brooklyn from Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov on Vimeo.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Friends,

I’m writing you with the warmest wishes on this, just another winter’s day in New York. I figured this was as good a time as any to write, in the shadow of the depression, in the afterglow of yes we can, and in what has become a season of creative stimulus, though it be a global winter of our discontent. To write you, not with a plea for your protest or your donation or your time for this or that campaign, no—to write you just to say hello. It has, as it always has, been too long.

I’m writing these words to you in my new home, an ancient apartment in my ancestral homeland of Brooklyn, New York—Prospect-Lefferts, to be precise—where you can find me most nights, at the end of long days, at my typewriter or notebook, or in the streets organizing amid the crisis.

Soon you will find me in other places, places like Guatemala, where I will live as an expat writer; like Israel and Palestine, where I hope to put in some work amid the wreckage with human rights organizations on the ground; like Eastern Europe, where, somewhere in the ashes, I hope to unearth some roots. All while working to finish my novel before I hit grad school in the fall, which will be either here in NYC or in Berkeley.

Before I leave this March on the latest road where solitude meets solidarity, I would love to see you again, if you are around to be seen, and catch up on the life we’ve each of us lived since the last time we sat down together. And if you are not in the vicinity of NYC or Boston and you have a minute, write me back and let me know how you’ve been, where you’ve been, where you’re going, what moves you or excites you these days. Looking forward to sharing stories, stanzas, tunes, ideas, and whatever it is we are doing.

To those of you I haven’t spoken to in a while and are wondering where I’ve been all this time, I’ve been trying my hand at this and that. I’ve been a freelance journalist. I’ve been a photojournalist. I’ve been an organizer. I worked on what they call The Campaign for a minute (yes, that one). I was a human rights observer in rebel territory in Mexico, working and translating for three delegations to Chiapas and Oaxaca with Solidarity Without Borders.

I have also been other places this year. For instance, I have been to the abyss and back. I was a lucky man—not everyone we know made it back. One year ago this month, I faced off with death in a New York City subway station. Death lost, and I lived to tell the tale (a hell of a tale if you ever want to hear it). My mother went on to win her own bout with breast cancer. For me and my family, it was a year of victory for life over death—and, as it was for the rest of America, for change over stasis.

What followed this encounter was a personal renaissance, a revival of the writer, artist, and musician in me. I wrote every day. I wrote, not just with ink, but with the rest of me, a new story. I learned to see with new eyes. I started to take lots of pictures. I learned to listen with new ears. I picked up my fiddle and started playing again with the bands. And I learned, once again, that it was not just the world, writ large, that needed remaking—it was the stuff of everyday life.

And it was a long time coming, as Sam Cooke would say, but a change did come to the life of this country, one so unaccustomed to change so profound. Neither November 4 nor January 20 changed everything—hardly—but they surely changed the air, the climate, the horizon. And these things, in turn, change how we walk, how we talk, how we feel. The Bush years were eight long, hard, angry years of our youth. The world was on fire. I fought fire with fire. This fire burned me out. But now there was the promise of something else. Something else that was elected, inaugurated this year—not in one man so much as in the people.

And now, in spite of my eternal skepticism, I find myself filled with what Antonio Gramsci called “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.”

So here I am, once again, a starving artist in these brother-can-you-spare-a-dime times, emerging from years of writer’s block, honing my fiction and poetry while tutoring and freelancing to support myself and send myself to more places. I’ve rededicated myself to the work of writing this novel, the third, the one that’s been waiting for me to write it all these years. It’s a story of many stories—New York stories, of course—told from the perspective of an aging tenement building on the eve of its demolition. Some of you are in it (under other names, of course).

This month I will be breaking out of this fortress of solitude so that I can see each of you before we set out on other roads. Let me know when and where you can be found. I’d also like to invite you to the following events:

1. An epic Brooklyn birthday party/benefit party/live show/reading on Thursday, March 5, celebrating my 24th year in this world – as well as our imminent departure for points south and points east.
2. Appearances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and at Bar 13 – also the first week of March.
3. Live show with my string band at The Annex on the Lower East Side (date and time TBA). Also coming soon: Open Jam with two ex-members of Shadowbox!

Hope to see you there, or here, or anywhere. I know I’m no good at keeping in touch, I’m working on it, but in the meantime, know that I carry your friendship and share your fire wherever I go. Be in touch.

Love,
Eric

PS: Many of you have asked me to see my work. The novel remains under wraps. But linked here you can find a few articles and photos, and if you want to see more, let me know and it’s yours. Others have asked for book and music recommendations, so here, too, is a brief list of what I’ve been reading and tuning into.

PPS: I want to give a shoutout to those greatest of writers and musicians who have left us this past year: Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, John Updike, George Carlin, Utah Phillips – and our dear, dear friend, Clarel Antoine.

Poems and short stories: On request. Just ask if you want to see them.

What I’ve been reading lately:

Novels:
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The Savage Detectives & 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Indignation by Philip Roth
Rereading: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Poetry:
The People Yes by Carl Sandburg
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Writings by Langston Hughes
Las Palabras Andantes by Eduardo Galeano
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish
The School Among the Ruins by Adrienne Rich

Nonfiction:
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg ed. Berman & Berger
Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing ed. Shatz
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
The Family of Man (Photography) ed. Edward Steichen

What I’ve been listening to lately:

Avett Brothers, Emotionalism
Bread and Roses, Deep River Day
Blue Scholars, Blue Scholars
Classic Bluegrass (Smithsonian Folkways)
Calle 13, Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo
The Clash, Live at Shea Stadium
Gil Scott Heron, Evolution and Flashback
Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta
Immortal Technique, The Third World
John Coltrane, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
Manu Chao, La Radiolina
MIA, Kala & Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack
Mischief Brew, Smash the Windows
Nas, Untitled
New Yiddish Chorale, In Love and In Struggle
Nina Simone, Feeling Good
Notorious BIG, Life After Death
Old Crow Medicine Show, OCMS
Paul Robeson, Songs of Free Men
Peter Tosh, The Ultimate Peter Tosh
Ratatat, LP3 & Remixes
Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls
Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend
Santogold, Santogold
This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, Front Seat Solidarity
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Utah Phillips, We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years
Wolfe Tones, At Their Very Best: Live
Woody Guthrie, The Asch Recordings

I’ve been anticipating the movie adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s landmark piece of journalism, Gomorrah, since I finished the book about a year ago and proceeded to recommend it to anyone who’d listen. Unfortunately, while it’s a good enough movie by itself, compared to the book it falls short.

First, a word or two on the book. Saviano, a native of the Naples area, lived and breathed the Camorra, the network of clans of organized criminals growing up, and after twenty-something years had enough and wrote a blow-by-blow account of all the different ways it infects the region, from its fashion output to the mozzarella it eats.  Saviano, who narrates the book while hopping from murder scene to murder scene on his scooter and detailing his own family’s determined path around the muck, published the work to the dual accolades of it becoming the most-requested tome in the Italian prison system as well as drawing death threats from the clans whose foibles and excesses it chronicles. And it made him a very rich, well known (both deservedly so) man, at the price of his own safety and freedom–a true commitment to the cause.

The movie adaptation follows a half-dozen different narratives, all part of Saviano’s story, switching between the different arcs. The tailor is under pressure to churn out designer dresses at his sweatshop. The young graduate joins an old hand at the toxic waste dumping business. A tender grocery delivery boy rises in the ranks of the clan. Two cowboys try their hand at existing outside of the system and being outlaws among outlaws. The clan’s welfare dude distributes thick bundles of Euros to wives whose husbands are in the can.

In the book, the central character is Saviano, his relationship and repudiation of this terror that’s destroyed his country and is a scourge on Europe. While he gives in-depth history of the clans and cites dozens of jarring statistics and items of courtroom testimony eventually it all comes back to him. The movie, however, takes these mini-narratives and places them all in a sort of dilapidated project-type area (seen above) where the junkies, the kids, the money man all prowl around. While there’s strength in the crumbling neighborhood epic, taking the mini ecosystem half of the individual narratives center around and making them interrelate gives you something falling short of La Haine. The other three prowl around on their own and reach a violent denouement suggesting some balance or restoration of order before the screen goes dark and cites a few statistics of medium impact (such as, one person is killed every three days in the clan areas).

Technically, at its worst, the film’s pacing feels like a made-for-TV movie, with overslow shots juiced for maximum cringe value. There are only a few notable gangsters in the movie, but dozens of colorful characters, ruthless beyond rationalization, in the book. The film’s images are shocking, but are nothing compared to the brutality described by an indignant Saviano.

That’s the film’s biggest failing–it’s inability to capture the outrage central for any impartial observer (channeled by Saviano) and contrast it with the die-and-let-die mentality that is shown to be pervasive in the area.

If you’re interested in seeing the film, pick up the book first. You’ll finish it in three days and get much more from the experience. It’s an old saw, but in this case the book is far better than the movie.

Farewell to an enormously influential writer-actor, Patrick McGoohan, who is reported to have died in Los Angeles yesterday at age 80.

I had been planning to post about AMC releasing all of the episodes of The Prisoner for online consumption, but unfortunately that news comes with this much sadder notification of McGoohan’s passing.

True screen icons are diminishing, I think, and he carried the torch. McGoohan was a forceful actor and brilliant mind–don’t forget, came up with the concept for the show and wrote and directed many episodes. As comparable as someone like JJ Abrams is in the latter, Abrams certainly doesn’t have the acting chops.

If you haven’t watched The Prisoner, take a rainy Sunday and loaf in front of the screen and watch at the AMC site. They’re preparing some sort of remake, which will be interesting.

Up North, things are particularly bleak. In the town where my parents stay, Boyne City, 95 people started Labor Day weekend with a pink slip, as LexaMar, one of the biggest corporations in the town of 3500 laid them off on Friday. It made small talk everywhere, downtown, strolling past the classic cars on display, at the police-sponsored drag race at the city airstrip, another midsized manufacturer slicing off jobs as the economy expels another ragged breath.

The one point of light in a state with its biggest industry, automobiles, breaking down, is film production. It’s exceptionally cheap to shoot anything in Michigan right now, and that has ushered in the closest thing to a business renaissance the region has seen in years, at least the latest Band-Aid to create an economic buffer around the doomed car business, like Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s Automation Alley plan that began about a decade ago.

A combination of tax credits for production and infrastructure development and job creation, investment loans, job training incentives, free use of state property and more are putting up to fifty cents on the dollar back into film production companies’ pockets. It’s having huge effects throughout the commercials industry; I’ve personally chatted with five different people or groups who’ve shot spots in and around Detroit, and there are a bevy of Hollywood productions that have moved through the state.

To second-hand a quote from the Freep, “More than 50 films have been approved since the advent of the film incentives, according to Tony Wenson of the Michigan Film Office.”

That’s all well and good, and it’s a huge source of state pride in addition to the reassuring sound of at least a few thin dimes rattling in the piggy bank, but I’m inclined to think the State and specifically the office of Bill Huizenga, the sponsor of the bill, weren’t forward-thinking enough when it comes to digital production.

See, here’s the problem: the Big Three spend millions of dollars a year on marketing, and Michigan’s plan might be bringing some of that money back to Michigan for film shoots, but the digital production is getting done offshore, at what, with the rebate and incentive conditions, are probably comparable rates to having it done in Michigan (if the hazy incentives rules cover things that are getting outsourced, like banner ads).

It’s entirely up to their advertising agencies where that money goes when it comes to production, and what communities benefit from a shoot (and there’s a big benefit, even for a two-day spot shoot, in trucking, craft services, rentals, you name it). But the biggest marketers in Michigan, the automakers, aren’t doing the bulk of their digital production in Michigan, they’re doing it in places like Costa Rica. Those dollars that go to digital production become websites, banner ads, films that play on the Internet, etc. And while the latter of those is covered in the Michigan Film Incentives plan, websites are explicitly excluded. Incentives in digital are in place for interactive games, internet video, internet programming, video games and digital animation but not interactive websites “that are primarily used for institutional, private, industrial, retail or wholesale marketing or promotional purposes.” Here’s a PDF of the application; maybe banners could be described as ‘digital animation’ or ‘internet programming’ but I’d imagine they’re excluded if not explicitly named, I’m not entirely sure.

Interactive Websites need not apply!

I’ve recently been looking quite a bit at offshore digital production, and the trend where agencies and marketing holding companies make it easier for mass-production of digital assets like banners by shops in places like Costa Rica. In the past, if your client wanted 300 different banners for a new pickup launch, for example, each customized to a different region or for a different nuanced demographic, you might quote the client a specific dollar amount and then send the project offshore; you pocket the difference. But now clients are getting wise to the pass-off, and networks think it’s smarter to own up to the business realities up front, explaining to the client the mass-production work will be done offshore and the savings will be passed along to them. The savings are great, according to the players involved, and several major holding companies are consolidating their business to make it easier to get these things done cheaper in developing nations. Read my interview with the CEO of WPP’s new venture Deliver to get a sense of where that’s going.

A great article from the Wall Street Journal shed more light on this movement, including General Motors’ involvement with Prodigious, Publicis Groupe’s offshore coordinator:

GM says that the number of variations of the ads it uses for campaigns is now several times greater than it was just two years ago. For instance, a consumer might notice 10 to 15 different ads promoting GM’s Chevy Malibu sedan online, says Mike Devereux, executive director of digital marketing for GM. But each of these ads can have up to a couple hundred variants, ranging from the background color to the text highlighting things like the car’s gasoline mileage or horse power.

GM used to work with multiple ad agencies and each had a different process for producing the ads. “It was inefficient. We never would have been able to scale,” Mr. Devereux says. Now, GM meets in Detroit with teams from Prodigious and the carmaker’s ad agencies to manage the digital production of its online advertising.

So, GM dollars funnel out through Publicis to places like Costa Rica, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, where savings occur because of lower overhead. But with these tax rebates, I’d argue it’s just as cheap to do production at present in Michigan.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for GM to take advantage of production incentives and do its part to help the local economy? It would at least soften the local economic blow when the giant ultimately topples. And wouldn’t it make more sense for the film incentives office to include potentially lucrative markets and make sure they were within range of the economic sprinkler?

Again, I have no idea why certain aspects of digital production are barred from the incentives. One argument is it would alienate present operators, but screw it, give the company that’s been making banners in downtown Detroit for the past five years the rebates too–film production companies that are already established can apply for the rebates.

Part of this argument feels like an updated, creative economy version of the old ’80s and ’90s calls against Michiganders buying foreign cars, but the shift in thinking is different than that. By clarifying the wording and specifically opening up the Incentives structure to a greater range of digital production forms, the Michigan Film Incentives office has the potential to turn the state into a center for a highly creative discipline. I can think of a few people pursuing digital startup options who, given the availability of real estate in downtown Detroit, would strongly consider a fat tax rebate on their bigger productions to be the deciding factor in their decision to open up a boutique in Michigan.

I’ll see if the Film Incentives office has any answers about what sort of digital stuff is covered. Who knows, maybe Michael Moore, yeah, that guy who used to be concerned with the Michigan economy, will want to press on the rest of his colleagues for the benefit of the next generation of communications, the good old Internet. He’s on the Michigan Film Office’s Advisory Council.

Meanwhile, Michiganders, don’t just look at the stars and the glitz when you read about the incentives, think about the how the state’s economy could look to the less fancy aspects of production and help everyone flourish.

On the set of Prayers for Bobby, a Sigourney Weaver vehicle shot in Michigan, originally uploaded by annethelibrarian.

True providence (well, an invite from a production company) got me into a preview of Pineapple Express Thursday night at BAM, complete with a Q&A afterwards from David Gordon Green. It was a funny film; it felt like the Rogen-Apatow-McBride-DGG bloc is evolving a tiny amount past previous milestones from each of them, pushing screwball, farce improv comedy a little further out onto the gangplank. Things in PE get pretty absurd, but it’s OK when they do. As the wheels come off, you’re reminded its a chummy bunch of funny guys who have tens of millions of dollars to make something that’ll hold ground at the box office for a few weeks and have a shedload of extra stuff on the DVD. Or, as Green explained the wild climax, “it only works because everything is building to such absurdity.”

Not to give the impression it isn’t a funny movie; its hilarious. I don’t bust out laughing that easily at the novies but by the end even small weird utterances and movements from characters had me giggling.

Spoiler alert: they smoke a ton of weed in the movie. Green revealed afterward it was some herb used as a substitute, and despite it tasting terrible “it was addictive.” They actually had a Technical Consultant who was a pot grower licensed by the state of California. He appeared, along with the postproduction supervisor, as a guy buying dope off Franco. The grower is the one with the rat tail.

Another interesting revelation was how much improv was used. At the end, there’s a Boy what an adventure!-type diner scene, which Green said was all improvised. He wound up cutting five different versions, testing them all in different L.A. neighborhoods and adding stuff that did unexpectedly well into a final cut.

A few more bullet-pointy notes:

DGG is working on remaking Suspiria, the Dario Argento classic, with Christof Gebert, the sound mixer he frequently works with.

Originally Seth Rogan and James Franco had opposite roles.

James Franco gashed his head badly during one slapstick scene and needed stitches in his forehead; they had to shoot him with a headband or from behind for the next week or so.

Huey Lewis wasn’t the first choice for the Pineapple Express theme song; the guys wanted Ray Parker, Jr. But there was prior litigation between Parker, Jr. and studio Columbia that killed the idea.

Danny McBride’s shitty clothes and weird wardrobe is payback for Green agreeing to do a nude scene when the two were in film school together.