Ondi Timoner: We Live In Public
Tags: Ondi Timoner, Josh Harris, We Live In Public, Dig, Join Us, Robert Mapplethorpe
At a time when, however deliberately or consciously, we live our lives in public online, access to our privacy is the new currency of value. Just because you can keep track of your friends via Facebook, post and tag photos on MySpace, and spew out your every waking thought on Twitter - all easily and for free - it's easy to assume it's a good thing. Josh Harris is a man who made a similar assumption.
Described as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," Harris carved a high profile career out of being an instinctive World Wide Web visionary. Before the web was very worldly or wide, he founded Jupiter Research, a company which sold technology trend and impact information to corporations that barely understood what a website was. Harris then rolled the dot.com fortune he made there into Pseudo.com, a New York based Internet TV station that went live when most of America was still on dial up.
Serving as both business manager and creative director at Pseudo, which webcast multiple channels of original content, Harris reinvented himself in the frame of a digital performance artist during his tenure at the too-far-ahead of its time company. As the millennium loomed, Harris was forced out of Pseudo, and he subsequently invested a large amount of his considerable fortune ($80 million at its peak) in a series of two very controversial digital media social experiments.
The first was called Quiet, though it was anything but. For the project which was intended to mark the turn of the millennium, Harris built an ambitious - and expensive - fully wired environment, which housed 100 guests / experiment subjects 24/7 for a period of 30 days. The claustrophobic underground bunker featured pod bunks for sleeping, communal toilet and bathing facilities, a dining area, and a poorly insulated gun range where residents could blow off steam. There was also an onsite interrogation room.
Potential residents had to sell their pixilated souls in order to gain entry to Quiet. There was an intense intake program that involved an intrusive questionnaire, those that passed this initial test had to agree to subject themselves to random interrogations, among other dehumanizing things. All activity in the bunker was caught on camera and microphone, and relayed for the entertainment of Quiet's residents to their in-Pod TVs. Privacy was non-existent, and individuals were reduced to being "channels" for the entertainment of others - suffice to say the sate-or-the art society Harris had created was far from utopian.
For his next experiment / performance art piece Josh took things a step further, and took on the roles of both puppet and puppet master. He installed 30 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 high sensitivity microphones in a New York loft, and moved in with his new girlfriend, Tanya Corrin (who had previously worked with Harris as a presenter at Pseudo). The pair were the first couple to broadcast their everyday home lives live on the Internet, and viewers could post their comments in real time via the project's associated chat rooms. The stunt garnered much mainstream attention, and fed Harris' growing need for 15 minutes of fame - per day. But as life in public unfolded, and not in the way either of them had planned, Harris and Corrin realized a little too late that perhaps the most valuable thing online might be privacy. It's a lesson we all may want to take note of.
To this end, renowned film director Ondi Timoner set about assembling and editing footage she'd shot of Harris over a 10-year period. The resulting film, We Live In Public, which Timoner describes as "a cautionary tale," is both thought provoking and shocking, having a profound effect on all who open themselves up to it. The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2009, making Timoner, whose previous film Dig! was also a winner at the festival (in 2004), the only director ever to be given the honor twice.
SuicideGirls caught up with Timoner ahead of We Live In Public's March 1st DVD and VOD release. Here she gives us an exclusive retrospective tour of the Quiet bunker, and an insight into the mind of its maniacal master.
Nicole Powers: How did you first bump into Josh?
Ondi Timoner: I actually worked on Tanya, Josh's girlfriend's [Psuedo.com] show Cherry Bomb. I would shoot and edit for it. I picked up some really good cash and I was really blown away by this place. I'd never heard of anything called an Internet television network -- I mean for god's sake there wasn't even broadband, you know? I met Josh there and went to some Pseudo parties and so forth, but he doesn't really remember me from that.
NP:
How did that lead to your involvement in documenting the Quiet project?
OT:
When 1999 rolls around, I'm back in Los Angeles, and he called me. I picked up the phone and he says, "Hi Ondi! This is Josh Harris. I'm wondering if you're interested in documenting cultural history."
I happened to be in New York shooting a pilot for a series I was creating on music's effect of people's lives called Sound Affects for VH1. I went down [to Quiet's headquarters] in early December and they were moving scaffolding into the building right there on Broadway between Franklin and Leonard, a matter of blocks from the courthouse right near the World Trade Center.
I said, "What are you moving this metal in for?" And they said, "To build the pods." I saw another guy hanging surveillance cameras, and I said, "What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm hanging 110 surveillance cameras through the space." I thought, "I still don't know what's going on but I'm in. Somebody's got to film this thing whatever it's going to be."
I happened to be in New York shooting a pilot for a series I was creating on music's effect of people's lives called Sound Affects for VH1. I went down [to Quiet's headquarters] in early December and they were moving scaffolding into the building right there on Broadway between Franklin and Leonard, a matter of blocks from the courthouse right near the World Trade Center.
I said, "What are you moving this metal in for?" And they said, "To build the pods." I saw another guy hanging surveillance cameras, and I said, "What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm hanging 110 surveillance cameras through the space." I thought, "I still don't know what's going on but I'm in. Somebody's got to film this thing whatever it's going to be."
NP:
At any point did Josh elucidate any further about what the project was supposed to be about?
OT:
I think that his intention was to push everybody's boundaries to the limit to see what they would do. I don't know that he necessarily was trying to test what would happen when the Internet had broadband. I sort of attributed that vision to him in the film. I think it was more his haphazard genius, just seeing what would happen, and seeing just how much people would give up for their opportunity of fame.
NP:
When you were filming Quiet, were you actually living there?
OT:
I had a pod, and I was there 20 hours of the day. Josh thought it was important for me to have a hotel room, to not lose perspective entirely. I'm not the type who would ever have checked in to the bunker in the first place. By that I mean I'm not one hundred percent a no boundaries exhibitionist. I would leave and come [back]. I was one of the few people that could do that. I always had someone there - always. There was never not a documentary camera on site, but I pretty much spent most of my waking hours there.
NP:
Were you there every day for the full 30 days?
OT:
Yes. Absolutely. It got to me too. It was not a pleasant place to be. I know that I have a positive moment in the film where I'm standing at the cereal bar and I'm talking about how I've been reborn, but that was very much about the cereal bar.
NP:
What kind of people did subject themselves to this? Was there a common thread?
OT:
Josh says it's fame, but I think it's actually our desire not to feel alone. That is important to everybody. I think that fame has been held up as this cure all. Like, if I can be famous then according to what I've seen I'll be happy. I'll be surrounded always and not alone.
In terms of the bunker, it was the "having your lives matter" moment, not being alone, not being somewhere where it wasn't the center of the universe on the millennium.
I'll answer 500 hundred questions, I'll get fingerprinted, I'll put on the uniform, I'll shower in public, I'll shit in public and do whatever else you say just to be [a part of] that in New York City. Then, whatever boundaries one may have had personally fell away under the pressure of everyone else doing it. Boundaries slipped away much like they do on the Internet. You may think that it's weird posting this private picture, and the next thing you know, a year later, you're posting all your pictures, you know?
In terms of the bunker, it was the "having your lives matter" moment, not being alone, not being somewhere where it wasn't the center of the universe on the millennium.
I'll answer 500 hundred questions, I'll get fingerprinted, I'll put on the uniform, I'll shower in public, I'll shit in public and do whatever else you say just to be [a part of] that in New York City. Then, whatever boundaries one may have had personally fell away under the pressure of everyone else doing it. Boundaries slipped away much like they do on the Internet. You may think that it's weird posting this private picture, and the next thing you know, a year later, you're posting all your pictures, you know?
NP:
At the beginning it was all fun and games, and then life in the bunker devolved Lord of the Flies style. Was there any one incident that prompted that change?
OT:
No. People just got overwhelmed. It wasn't like it got worse and worse, or that more people were pulled in for interrogations, it was just people piled on top of each other. And the noise! It was called "Quiet: We Live In Public" but it was anything but that. The noise, and light, and everybody piled on top of each other, and everybody in each other's business.
NP:
I would imagine the sleep deprivation alone would send people crazy.
OT:
Yeah, the sleep deprivation was freaking people out - that's true too.
NP:
The buttons Joshua pushed with people, in the interrogations, it did seem that he wanted to get to the point where people would lose control.
OT:
Yeah, I think he did. I think he wanted to push them to the absolute limit. He had been consulting with a CIA psychiatrist saying, "What can we do to break them."
NP:
What were the worst interrogation incidents that you witnessed?
OT:
I think that the girl, Elisa, who's interrogated to the point of having to go through a suicide attempt. It was actually pretty startling, very troubling in terms of the ethics behind that. She was losing it.
NP:
That's where the CIA guy asks her to demonstrate the speed of the knife as it went through her flesh during her suicide attempt.
OT:
Yeah, that's a little bit crazy. So is the African American dude, Chouaibou, who is interrogated about his Communist party and drug past. I mean there's stuff there could get somebody in trouble, where it's no longer really fun and games. They could hurt themselves or be arrested. You never know where that stuff's going to end up. I think at that point it's questionable how much mental control people have.
But that said, people are choosing to be there, so I understand Josh's perspective as well. So I'm not judging the ethics behind it necessarily. I don't think Josh Harris would have really cared terribly much if anything really bad happened to anybody because that's the thing that makes Josh a walking cautionary tale. Everything's a game to him, and everybody is a player in his game. He doesn't feel like it's his responsibility to look out for them.
But that said, people are choosing to be there, so I understand Josh's perspective as well. So I'm not judging the ethics behind it necessarily. I don't think Josh Harris would have really cared terribly much if anything really bad happened to anybody because that's the thing that makes Josh a walking cautionary tale. Everything's a game to him, and everybody is a player in his game. He doesn't feel like it's his responsibility to look out for them.
NP:
Did you question his ethics at the time? Or did you feel your job as a documentarian was just to observe and allow events to unfold?
OT:
That's how I do it. I'm not a total fly on the wall because I don't think it's the best way to do it. Interloper Films is my company; I think that "interloper" means you're observing, but you're also in the group, you're in the group but taking notes...So, no, I'm not one to meddle and really push things to go where they wouldn't naturally go, but I also won't stand there when someone falls on the floor. I'll film them falling on the floor, and then I'll put the camera down and help them up. That's just how I roll.
But I've got to say with Josh, I think one of the most important moments in We Live In Public is the desensitization, the observation of how desensitized everybody became regarding what was going on there. Like that shower scene; everybody was just kind of sitting around - even I, filming it. I didn't know what was really going on, whether it was rape or not. I know the guy who was in the shower and I really don't think that that's where he is as a human - he's a very gentle human being actually - but there was just a fevered pitch to the whole thing, with the spectator sport of it.
The woman in the shower, I feel like she felt the pressure of all the eyes on her and things kind of spiraled a bit. Josh, when he says to the camera, "It's 6 in the morning and there's two people having sex in the shower and we're all sitting here watching and it's kind of like [makes a noise indicating nothing]" - that's a very important line in the film I think because that's what's going on. Things that used to be exciting and have some kind of glamour to them, or be taboo, or be shocking, or be off-limits, or violent, or whatever, they don't have the same impact anymore because there's so many images out there. We're all desensitized. I think that's an important metaphor that the bunker makes for life today online.
But I've got to say with Josh, I think one of the most important moments in We Live In Public is the desensitization, the observation of how desensitized everybody became regarding what was going on there. Like that shower scene; everybody was just kind of sitting around - even I, filming it. I didn't know what was really going on, whether it was rape or not. I know the guy who was in the shower and I really don't think that that's where he is as a human - he's a very gentle human being actually - but there was just a fevered pitch to the whole thing, with the spectator sport of it.
The woman in the shower, I feel like she felt the pressure of all the eyes on her and things kind of spiraled a bit. Josh, when he says to the camera, "It's 6 in the morning and there's two people having sex in the shower and we're all sitting here watching and it's kind of like [makes a noise indicating nothing]" - that's a very important line in the film I think because that's what's going on. Things that used to be exciting and have some kind of glamour to them, or be taboo, or be shocking, or be off-limits, or violent, or whatever, they don't have the same impact anymore because there's so many images out there. We're all desensitized. I think that's an important metaphor that the bunker makes for life today online.
NP:
I guess that's what people deal with when they have porn addiction issues. Because pictures and video of naked people fucking is so readily available that one can get to the point where such images no longer have any power - or the desired effect. If people subject themselves to hours of porn a day, it can cease to do the trick. Then they have to find something else that works for them - the next high.
OT:
Yeah, what's the next high? It can get really crazy. But then again, we can talk about this and it's interesting to be aware of, but at the end of the day, like Josh says, what's the point of judging it? There really is no way out. It's not like we're going back. It's an evolutionary process. You just have to figure out whether or not you're going to watch the sex that's online. You've got to determine whether you're going to post that photo. You've got to determine whether you're going to be on your virtual box as you're walking down the street. That's your choice. And that's fine.
Half the time I'm walking down the street I'm typing into my Blackberry, and I probably have a very, very arguable reason to do that. But I am missing something. I'm not going to deny it...I'm somewhat sacrificing an interaction with the world around me to be inside my virtual box.
Half the time I'm walking down the street I'm typing into my Blackberry, and I probably have a very, very arguable reason to do that. But I am missing something. I'm not going to deny it...I'm somewhat sacrificing an interaction with the world around me to be inside my virtual box.
NP:
Yeah. I have a couple of friends that when you're with them will spend more time staring into their Blackberry than interacting with you. They don't mean to be rude or anything, but they've lost their ability to be fully in the now with the people they're with. And I don't want to be that person, so I've actually made a deliberate choice not to have a Blackberry.
OT:
Wow! Pretty impressive dude. I don't know that I wouldn't be able to function without it at this point, and I hate that. That's what I love about the movie though, that you're looking at a bunker that's 10 years ago now - exactly. You can't believe how far we've come, how much that vision has come true in terms of the Internet and our mainlining addiction to it. It only begs the question, where are we going to be in 5 years?
NP:
One of the thoughts that came to me as I watched the film is how our perception of history has sped up. I mean, in the movie, the people you interview in the present that are talking about the past, they're talking about 1990 as if it were 1890. The speed of progress has really changed our perception of history. Same with the speed of social evolution. You look at the way kids interact with technology compared to the way people of our generation do, and it's very different. You talk about how you saw barriers being broken down during the Quiet experiment, but kids who have grown up with social media don't have those barriers in the first place.
OT:
Yeah, the kids today, the ones that were born after the Internet existed already, those guys, they have never experienced a life offline...For them there is no definition of public and private.
NP:
Going back to the film, right after the Quiet project ended, you actually cut together what you call the Bunker Cut of the movie right?
OT:
Yes. We're actually going to do a new Bunker Cut for the Collector's Edition DVD. In 2000 Josh asked me if I would come to New York and do a cut of the bunker. He put me up right in the heart of Manhattan so I could breathe the same energy that I had when I was filming the bunker. I shipped all my stuff over there and moved over there. I arrived and he said change of plans, I'm sending you to an apple farm.
But anyway, I convinced him to move back to Manhattan towards the end of the cut, to finish it up, work with a music supervisor, etc. So in January I moved to a loft in Manhattan. I flew out to Sundance to raise money for Dig!, and I had given Josh a rough cut in the meanwhile. I get back a week later and I open the door to my loft and it looks really, really spacious, and I realize that Josh has absconded with all of the masters and the Avid. So I call him and I say, "Josh what's going on?" And he says, "I didn't like the way I looked." I said, "That's what a rough cut's for. We talk about that and make whatever adjustments." And he said, "No. Change of plan, it's off right now. It's just not the right time."
I knew that he was living in public with Tanya but I thought things were going well. Little did I realize, she had just left him and he was at the absolute nadir of his self-image, his mental state as you can see in the movie. He was down and out and ready to flee Manhattan, and running out of money fast. He stiffed me like twenty grand, and he left Manhattan, and I left. I went off to Africa to make a movie about a dam and was grateful to feel the dirt under my fingernails, and work on real people issues, real problems, like a dam threatening the oldest civilization in Sub-Saharan Africa. You can't get more of a contrast than that from the bunker, which was like a cyber narcissistic gun range.
I just forgot about Josh, and put as much distance [between us]. I went back to LA and finished Dig!. It took years to edit, and a few years later, in 2004 Dig! won Sundance. I got an email from Josh: "Any interest in finishing the film?" I said, "No," because I thought he was a charlatan, and less relevant than ever. He wrote me back and said, "I'll give you fifty percent ownership of the film, full creative control, and send you all the masters right away." So that's how the film was returned to me.
But I still didn't finish it. I went off and made my movie Join Us. I just didn't know how the story of Josh Harris applied still - until Facebook status updates. In 2007 I saw the first status update. It was: "I'm driving west on the freeway." I couldn't believe that someone was putting something that mundane up as a public posting. Then everybody was doing it, and suddenly I realized that the bunker was coming true for all of us. That's when I raced to finish the film. We had to go through about 5,000 hours of footage in about 8 months to get it done in time to premiere at Sundance. Since then it has been so gratifying to see just how relevant the film is to people's lives.
But anyway, I convinced him to move back to Manhattan towards the end of the cut, to finish it up, work with a music supervisor, etc. So in January I moved to a loft in Manhattan. I flew out to Sundance to raise money for Dig!, and I had given Josh a rough cut in the meanwhile. I get back a week later and I open the door to my loft and it looks really, really spacious, and I realize that Josh has absconded with all of the masters and the Avid. So I call him and I say, "Josh what's going on?" And he says, "I didn't like the way I looked." I said, "That's what a rough cut's for. We talk about that and make whatever adjustments." And he said, "No. Change of plan, it's off right now. It's just not the right time."
I knew that he was living in public with Tanya but I thought things were going well. Little did I realize, she had just left him and he was at the absolute nadir of his self-image, his mental state as you can see in the movie. He was down and out and ready to flee Manhattan, and running out of money fast. He stiffed me like twenty grand, and he left Manhattan, and I left. I went off to Africa to make a movie about a dam and was grateful to feel the dirt under my fingernails, and work on real people issues, real problems, like a dam threatening the oldest civilization in Sub-Saharan Africa. You can't get more of a contrast than that from the bunker, which was like a cyber narcissistic gun range.
I just forgot about Josh, and put as much distance [between us]. I went back to LA and finished Dig!. It took years to edit, and a few years later, in 2004 Dig! won Sundance. I got an email from Josh: "Any interest in finishing the film?" I said, "No," because I thought he was a charlatan, and less relevant than ever. He wrote me back and said, "I'll give you fifty percent ownership of the film, full creative control, and send you all the masters right away." So that's how the film was returned to me.
But I still didn't finish it. I went off and made my movie Join Us. I just didn't know how the story of Josh Harris applied still - until Facebook status updates. In 2007 I saw the first status update. It was: "I'm driving west on the freeway." I couldn't believe that someone was putting something that mundane up as a public posting. Then everybody was doing it, and suddenly I realized that the bunker was coming true for all of us. That's when I raced to finish the film. We had to go through about 5,000 hours of footage in about 8 months to get it done in time to premiere at Sundance. Since then it has been so gratifying to see just how relevant the film is to people's lives.
NP:
Backing up, following the bunker experiment, the next chapter in Josh's life was him living on camera, live on the Internet with his girlfriend Tanya.
OT:
To me that's a really important part of the film.
NP:
That's where he gets his comeuppance. I mean there were no real consequences for Josh during the Quiet period.
OT:
Exactly. He climbs into the TV set and he becomes the rat in his own experiment at this point, and the results don't turn out very well for him. He really takes the only relationship that he's ever had that was close and intimate and beaches it on 30 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 invasive microphones. I mean his girlfriend who signed on to it thinking it would be fun and cool, and that they were living a fast and crazy Internet life, she ended up leaving him. She just couldn't be intimate in public. And I think that's an important lesson; the Internet, as wonderful as it is, is not an intimate medium. It's just not. If you want to keep something intimate and if you want to keep something sacred, you probably shouldn't post it.
Also the dot.com stock market crash happens during that time. Josh loses all his money while living in public. His contemporaries got to figure out what they were going to do next privately, whereas Josh is living right there on camera, losing his girlfriend, losing his money, losing basically his pride and his identity. He really had ruled Manhattan and suddenly he was kind of the laughing stock. Not to mention that fact that there was this bunch of chatter saying, "Look at this boring guy! Who does he think he is?"
Also the dot.com stock market crash happens during that time. Josh loses all his money while living in public. His contemporaries got to figure out what they were going to do next privately, whereas Josh is living right there on camera, losing his girlfriend, losing his money, losing basically his pride and his identity. He really had ruled Manhattan and suddenly he was kind of the laughing stock. Not to mention that fact that there was this bunch of chatter saying, "Look at this boring guy! Who does he think he is?"
NP:
It was interesting to see what happened within Tanya's relationship. They stopped arguing to resolve issues, and were motivated instead by winning in the eyes of those who were observing them, who would immediately post their thoughts in the chat rooms.
OT:
Exactly. It becomes about the votes of the audience, it's more of a political race. It's not about resolving the issues between them and that's really I guess ultimately what destroys the relationship.
NP:
You see so much of that behavior in our reality TV stars today. They're not interested in resolving any of their issues, they're just interested in having them as means of gaining attention, and to get more people on their side. They'll play up their victimhood rather than their skills as problem solvers.
OT:
Well reality TV is a whole 'nother topic, but it's not, it's related to this too. I mean the bunker doesn't just pre-figure the Internet, it really does pre-figure reality TV as well, and the way that people react and act, and it's not a pretty sight.
There are lots of really super positive results from social networking. You probably find on SuicideGirls that people of similar interests can find each other, and niche groups can self-organize, and revolutions can happen this way. This is a wonderful thing in so, so many ways. I've been discovered or contacted by people through Facebook that have become a very valuable part of not only my team at Interloper, but really dear friends. So there are all sorts of great, great, great things to come from it.
There are lots of really super positive results from social networking. You probably find on SuicideGirls that people of similar interests can find each other, and niche groups can self-organize, and revolutions can happen this way. This is a wonderful thing in so, so many ways. I've been discovered or contacted by people through Facebook that have become a very valuable part of not only my team at Interloper, but really dear friends. So there are all sorts of great, great, great things to come from it.
NP:
Right, there's immense potential to do good, one only has to look at what happened on Twitter with Haiti. But what Josh chose to do with the technology and money at his disposal was not exactly good. Rather than choosing to create a digital utopia, he chose to create a totalitarian, militarized dystopian society.
OT:
Yes. Josh Harris, he's not trying to do anything good. I like the guy but he's sort of like the Darth Vader. I joke that I'm the Luke Skywalker in regards to this film. I wanted to make the film to fire a warning shot, just to let people know to think a little deeper right at this crucial moment. We're at this tipping point where the virtual world is taking over. He would rather figure out a way that he can sell you your life back and exploit you. That's why he makes a very compelling subject, and also why the film wasn't maybe nominated for an Oscar. People hate him. Some people absolutely loathe and detest the guy. But I think he makes an incredible subject because of that.
NP:
I guess it was brave that he gave you complete creative control at the point where he'd lost everything. I mean he was never going to come out smelling like roses in this movie.
OT:
It certainly took a lot of guts, and to be honest with you, and to be realistic, it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't reached a point of desperation. He just wanted to make sure all the work that he had done, and all the money he'd spent to create these incredible experiences, the experiment and everything, actually came to something.
NP:
So it goes back to that fundamental need we all have to matter.
OT:
Yeah. He did all this and really blew his fortune on it - and his mind. If it wasn't going to come to something then that was it. I became his only hope, or his greatest hope. He even said that in Ethiopia in 2008. The cameraman said to him, "What's your plan to get out of Ethiopia?" And he just pointed at me.
NP:
You filmed the afterward of the movie in Ethiopia where Josh retreated after he sold his only remaining liquid asset, his apple farm. He seemed to have very similar instincts to you when after the bunker you went off to Africa to film people with real problems and to smell the dirt under your feet.
OT:
I think it was more to escape American Express. I think his reasons were: get out of Dodge, escape Amex, reinvent himself. He told Tanya something that I think is probably important, he said something to her like, "You should leave the public eye sometimes. Don't be afraid to leave the public eye because you can always come back, and come back different."
And I think he knew that his dollar would go a lot further there and that he didn't have many left. He had lived in Ethiopia when he was a child for a year with his father, his whole family. His father was in the CIA and had been based there for a year, and apparently it was the happiest year of Josh's life.
And I think he knew that his dollar would go a lot further there and that he didn't have many left. He had lived in Ethiopia when he was a child for a year with his father, his whole family. His father was in the CIA and had been based there for a year, and apparently it was the happiest year of Josh's life.
NP:
Interesting, because your movie explores Josh's relationship with his mother, whom he overtly blames for much of his emotional baggage in the film, but I guess the whole cold war, CIA psychology that he implemented in the bunker came from his dad.
OT:
Yeah. I think that's probably what it is. That's why he did the CIA thing, and I think that's [the reason for] his obsession with guns too. His dad used to carry a bunch of guns on him.
NP:
Because there was no real reason to have a shooting range in the bunker. That seemed one of the most peculiar and bizarre things. A room for video games maybe - but a room for guns? This was supposed to be an experiment in the future and guns are part of our past.
OT:
Exactly.
NP:
So you rushed to get the documentary ready for Sundance. What were your expectations and what was the reaction there?
OT:
I knew that we had sort of a silver bullet on our hands. I submitted the film to Sundance on Halloween of 2008, and heard within a week. I was pretty aware that they were super excited about putting it in competition, which meant it was going to be spotlighted as one of the top sixteen films of the festival...I knew that were we striking a chord and that this movie was really right on time or just ahead of it. And that's how it was. We were just swept away. We didn't have many interviews lined up going to Sundance, and by day three I was losing my voice.
But it was a depressed year in the economy, and Obama was being inaugurated literally the morning after our premiere, which was cool, but it meant that a lot of execs weren't there and no sales happened for docs at Sundance that year. So we were kind of holding the bag afterwards...We put it out ourselves in 15 theaters across the America, and different cities across the world.
Now for the DVD/VOD launch we're doing six simultaneous screenings in six different cities. Eliza Dushku [Dollhouse] is going to host in LA and Adrian Grenier [Entourage] is going to host in New York, and we're going to link the six cities together into a national conversation about living in public. During the movie Josh Harris and I are going to host a show of clips from the film and extras, and I'm going to banter with him lying on a bed in Chicago. I highly recommend watching that because I'm going to ask Josh some hard questions.
Then at 7.30 PST all the screenings will stop and all the cities will link together, and Josh and I will do a Q&A based on Twitter questions. All the venue information is going to be on WeLiveInPublicTheMovie.com or you can follow me, @OndiTimoner, on Twitter. I'll be tweeting my ass off in the next week and a half. I keep my private life pretty private but needless to say I'm not going to be retreating into obscurity this week.
But it was a depressed year in the economy, and Obama was being inaugurated literally the morning after our premiere, which was cool, but it meant that a lot of execs weren't there and no sales happened for docs at Sundance that year. So we were kind of holding the bag afterwards...We put it out ourselves in 15 theaters across the America, and different cities across the world.
Now for the DVD/VOD launch we're doing six simultaneous screenings in six different cities. Eliza Dushku [Dollhouse] is going to host in LA and Adrian Grenier [Entourage] is going to host in New York, and we're going to link the six cities together into a national conversation about living in public. During the movie Josh Harris and I are going to host a show of clips from the film and extras, and I'm going to banter with him lying on a bed in Chicago. I highly recommend watching that because I'm going to ask Josh some hard questions.
Then at 7.30 PST all the screenings will stop and all the cities will link together, and Josh and I will do a Q&A based on Twitter questions. All the venue information is going to be on WeLiveInPublicTheMovie.com or you can follow me, @OndiTimoner, on Twitter. I'll be tweeting my ass off in the next week and a half. I keep my private life pretty private but needless to say I'm not going to be retreating into obscurity this week.
NP:
And it's no coincidence that Eliza Dushku is hosting the LA event, because you're actually working on your next project with her aren't you?
OT:
Yeah, we're doing the story of Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith just came out with a book called Just kids about her relationship with Mapplethorpe. It was a very interesting dynamic that they had in their youth. He was a very vital artist and a cultural lightening rod that really pushed the limits.
I think that's actually very appropriate to talk about on the SuicideGirls site because the Suicide Girls push the limits of how women are perceived and what pinup art is, and what is sexy, and have effectively redefined it. Mapplethorpe obviously did that in a really "push it into the fine art world" [way]. Everything from S&M photography to some really edgy stuff that he found beautiful, he made beautiful side by side with flowers...There's I think a lot of people that wouldn't do what they're doing if it wasn't for Mapplethorpe. There were laws changed and court cases and all that kind of stuff as a result of the stir around Mapplethorpe. It's pretty interesting stuff, and that will be my first narrative film, which is pretty exciting.
I think that's actually very appropriate to talk about on the SuicideGirls site because the Suicide Girls push the limits of how women are perceived and what pinup art is, and what is sexy, and have effectively redefined it. Mapplethorpe obviously did that in a really "push it into the fine art world" [way]. Everything from S&M photography to some really edgy stuff that he found beautiful, he made beautiful side by side with flowers...There's I think a lot of people that wouldn't do what they're doing if it wasn't for Mapplethorpe. There were laws changed and court cases and all that kind of stuff as a result of the stir around Mapplethorpe. It's pretty interesting stuff, and that will be my first narrative film, which is pretty exciting.
NP:
That's a departure for you.
OT:
From documentaries, well not a complete departure because if you look at all my films they unfold over time. They're all narrative films. They're all suspense filled, that's what I like to do. That's why I started doing documentaries the way I started doing them. Nobody was really doing that at the time. I guess Hoop Dreams was just going to come out and that film followed a story over time, but essentially that was the only one. But otherwise, the films were all retrospective, like eating spinach or eating history books, too educational to be entertaining. That's why people weren't watching docs and that's why I got into documentary.
That's why I filmed Dig! over many years, and that why I filmed Join Us over years, and that's why We Live In Public I sat on because the biggest reason people go to the movies is to be entertained. If you're going to get people to really think about things, get them to feel them, you know? And the way you get them to feel them is to get them to lose themselves, to really feel what it is that they're watching. That's what I set out to do. So for me it's not really that much of a departure to do a scripted film. I was a theater studies major at Yale and worked with actors. It's just the next step in my own evolution as an artist.
To celebrate the VOD & DVD release of We Live In Public on March 1st, the documentary will be screened simultaneously in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York and Atlanta. Adrian Grenier (Entourage) will host the New York event, while Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse) hosts the screening at the Egyptian in Los Angeles. The webcast starts at 5:30 PM PST on WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com, with screenings starting at 6 PM in Los Angeles, 7 PM in Denver, 8 PM in Chicago, and 9 PM in New York and Atlanta. During these screenings, Ondi and Josh will show exclusive clips and banter wildly from a wired. Chicago pod while fielding questions via Twitter live (use the #wlip tag to send questions). Post-screening, Ondi and Josh will link up with Adrian and Eliza and all the audiences nationwide in theaters and online to have a live interactive conversation about living in public. For further details go to: WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com.
That's why I filmed Dig! over many years, and that why I filmed Join Us over years, and that's why We Live In Public I sat on because the biggest reason people go to the movies is to be entertained. If you're going to get people to really think about things, get them to feel them, you know? And the way you get them to feel them is to get them to lose themselves, to really feel what it is that they're watching. That's what I set out to do. So for me it's not really that much of a departure to do a scripted film. I was a theater studies major at Yale and worked with actors. It's just the next step in my own evolution as an artist.
To celebrate the VOD & DVD release of We Live In Public on March 1st, the documentary will be screened simultaneously in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York and Atlanta. Adrian Grenier (Entourage) will host the New York event, while Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse) hosts the screening at the Egyptian in Los Angeles. The webcast starts at 5:30 PM PST on WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com, with screenings starting at 6 PM in Los Angeles, 7 PM in Denver, 8 PM in Chicago, and 9 PM in New York and Atlanta. During these screenings, Ondi and Josh will show exclusive clips and banter wildly from a wired. Chicago pod while fielding questions via Twitter live (use the #wlip tag to send questions). Post-screening, Ondi and Josh will link up with Adrian and Eliza and all the audiences nationwide in theaters and online to have a live interactive conversation about living in public. For further details go to: WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com.
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