Posts from Film

During my year end vacation, I read a few books and saw some films. The two I want to talk about today are Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Spike Jonze’s Her. I am a fan of both artists and have consumed most of their prior work.

Though they are very different works, both take us on a trip to the near future and show us what our lives may be like. And, though I am more than a little bit involved in the industry that is taking us to that place, I came away from both disturbed and a tad bit agitated.

Banksy says that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” And in that context both the Circle and Her are great art. If you are disturbed by the ever increasing role of technology in our lives, both works will comfort you. For me, they shook me out of my comfort zone and made me wonder whether all the things I believe in and advocate for are going to work out so well.

In The Circle, a young woman named Mae goes to work for the top tech company in silicon valley which is called The Circle. Eggers creates a company that to my mind is mostly Google with a fair bit of Facebook thrown in. Anyone who has spent any time in Silicon Valley will instantly recognize this company and all the great things about it. But the way Eggers tells the story, the dark side of The Circle is revealed slowly and surely. I don’t want to ruin the story for anyone who is reading it or will read it but I will say that the idea of radical transparency, something that I have advocated for many times on this blog, is taken to an extreme that even I would not be comfortable with.

I kind of hated The Circle. Many times I wanted to put it down. My wife and daughter urged me to finish it. Though I really like Eggers and his writing, I absolutely hated Mae and her story. It made a mockery of an industry that I love. And it made me uncomfortable loving it.

Her is about a man named Theodore who is depressed coming out of a recent divorce. He mopes around all day. He installs a new OS that is “personalized” and all of sudden he is in a relationship with Samantha who is a lot like Siri, his very own personalized operating system. Again, I am not going to describe much more than that in case you want to see it. The thing that made me literally squirm in my seat was the idea that a real person could have such an intimate relationship with a machine. I was completely uncomfortable the entire two hours.

However, I loved Her. It did not mock, but it sure did question. And all I wanted to do coming out of the movie was think about it and talk about it.

I know a lot of people in tech who are excited about the coming of the Singularity. I am not one of them. While I love machines and artificial intelligence/machine learning and all that it can do for us, I love humans and humanity a lot more.

These two works of art are, to my mind, about that human vs machines question and are an attempt to ask society if its happy with the place we are going to and getting there fast. If you work in tech, you should watch Her and read The Circle. Those of us who are building this future ought to subject ourself to this kind of art most of all.

The New Yorker gives high praise for this web video series called High Maintenance. The episodes are short (~5min) and there are eleven episodes in all. It is about a pot dealer who rides around NYC and meets all sorts of strange and outrageous people. This bit from the lead actor in the New Yorker piece rings true to me after I watched a bunch of episodes last night:

The thing about weed is, we didn’t want to use it as a punch line. Instead, it’s this substance that, like chocolate, causes people to expose their own foibles. People become so human in pursuit of this thing. And the interaction they have with the person bringing it is often tragic, because there are a lot of lonely people out there who order it and then that is their human interaction for the day.

But here's the part of the New Yorker article that has me thinking outloud this morning.

When I spoke with Sinclair and Blichfeld recently, they were on the West Coast signing a script deal with a major network, newly on the path to converting “High Maintenance” into a full-length cable show.

It's a bit upsetting to me that the "major leagues" for filmmakers, writers, and actors who make it on the web is still the cable business. Why can't entrepreneurs build something that will work better for emerging web filmmakers than that? We have investments in Kickstarter and VHX, both of which are changing the game for filmmakers. We are also big fans of Vimeo, where High Maintenance is hosted.

But this High Maintenance story tells me that we haven't yet built enough technology, distribution, and monetization systems so that filmmakers can be truly independent and realize their vision and have the financial sucess that should come with great work.

So there is more to do here.

I suspect most of you have seen this by now. It's been coming at me for the past 10 days from all angles. I must have had it sent to me a dozen times and I've come across it in social media another dozen times. But that's because it is spot on and excellent.

This is a 5min edited summary of the talk. For the full thing, go here.

My friend Cliff Chenfeld recently appeared on the Media Reporter TV show. Cliff has been in the entertainment business for over 25 years and he talks about the changes he has seen in the music industry, film, sports, and other entertainment sectors. It’s about 30 minutes long and worth a watch/listen.

The idea for today's fun friday comes from Tyrone who wrote this in an email to me this week:

fun friday idea: best entertainment this year across the board, albums, films, series, sites, youtube channels etc?

For me, the answer is the NBA playoffs (though the result bums me out), This Is The End (the jonah hill exorcism is hysterical), and my favorite records of the year so far are Lysandre, Modern Vampires Of The City, Random Access Memories, Mala, and Isles.

What are your favorite entertainment moments of the year so far?

There's an interesting project that launched on Kickstarter this week. The creator of the cult TV show Veronica Mars and the lead actress have launched a project to make The Veronica Mars Movie. In one day, the project has raised $2.5mm (as of 6:15am eastern). This is $500k more than the project goal of $2mm meaning the film will be shot this summer. It is also the largest film project on Kickstarter ever. The previous biggest film project on Kickstarter was around $800k.

This project is interesting in a number of ways. First of all, it shows that film projects can raise real budgets. I know you can make a film on $800k. But when you can raise $2.5mm (likely a lot more as this project has another 29 days to go), then you do a lot more with a film project.

But it is also interesting to see the power of a loyal audience. Veronica Mars was a cult TV show. It only ran two years. But it had a rabid fan base. And those fans are coming out in droves to make this movie a reality. There have been over 40,000 backers in the past day (including me).

The rewards they came up with are also worth checking out. One fan paid $10,000 for a speaking role in the movie. All of the expensive and limited rewards categories sold out very early on in the project. That tells you something right there.

Like the big gadget and video game projects that hit Kickstarter last year, this will likely open a lot of eyes to the power of the crowdfunding model. Financing your project via your loyal fans opens up a lot of possibilities to the producer, including creative control and distribution control. I suspect this will lead to a lot more creativity and experimentation than has been possible with the studio model. And that is a very good thing.

Related articles

[EveryJoe] Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter Details

Best News Ever: Veronica Mars Movie (Maybe)!

'Veronica Mars' Movie Launches Kickstarter Campaign for 2014 Release

Kristen Bell Trying to Raise $2 Million to Make Veronica Mars Movie (VIDEO)

Veronica Mars movie gets crowdfunded

'Veronica Mars' Movie Is The Fastest Kickstarter Project to Hit $1 Million

At the top of this blog, in the nav header, you will see "TV". This is new. When you click on it, you will go to fredwilson.tv. This is also new.

fredwilson.tv is a linear feed of videos that are pulled from AVC, fredwilson.vc, and my twitter feed and shown in reverse chronological order (from when I posted them). You can click on the play button and start watching/listening. They will keep playing until you've had enough. You can click on the arrows on the far left and far right to fast forward or rewind. If you move the mouse, the controls will come up from the bottom and you will get info on what is playing, where it came from, and what is next.

fredwilson.tv is powered by shelby.tv. At the bottom of the shelby homepage, it says "create your own TV network". If you want something like this for your .tv page, shelby can power yours too.

I would like to thank Reece, Dan, and the entire shelby team for building this. I've been mentoring the shelby team since they landed in techstars a couple years ago. I've hung out with them, the Gotham Gal and I have had dinner with them, and in general I've tried to help them when and how I can. They are an awesome group of people and I am proud to be hosting fredwilson.tv on their platform.

In a lot of ways, fredwilson.tv is continuing the tradition of fredwilson.fm (you get to that from the Radio link on the nav bar). fredwilson.fm was launched four or five years ago on the streampad technology built by Dan Kantor and sold to AOL. Sadly fredwilson.fm is borked and has been for the past week. I am trying to find a good replacement for streampad which seems broken and I can't get any response from AOL when I email them for help. If anyone has any good ideas for fredwilson.fm, I am all ears.

The two best films of 2012 that I saw were both French films with subtitles, Amour, which I saw last night with the Gotham Gal, and The Intouchables, which we saw when it came out last summer.

The Intouchables is a joyous film about two people in need coming together to enrich each others' lives. It is uplifting.

Amour is not. It is a gut wenching account of an elderly husband caring for his dying wife. The film made me deeply uncomfortable. There were scenes I couldn't even bring myself to watch.

It is said that great art makes you uncomfortable and if that us true Amour is great art. I dreamed about the movie and woke up with it on my mind. I am blogging about it now. I can't get it out of my brain so I am hoping that by writing it down I can move on.

Amour means love and I guess caring for a dying spouse is the greatest act of love one can make. I can tell you that I am not looking forward to that part of our marriage and I got a fast forward to it last night. It was painful but ultimately deeply moving and powerful.

I would say you should go see it but honestly you might not want to. I am not sure I would have chosen to see it had I known what I was in for. But I am glad I did.

The Gotham Gal and I saw Lincoln yesterday. I would encourage everyone, certainly every american citizen, to see it. Spielberg creates a time machine via the magic of film. And Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln is masterful. I feel like I got to spend 2 1/2 hours with my favorite President yesterday.

We all know the stories we were told in elementary school about the heroic President who went to war with his own country in order to save it. We all know his speeches and about his upbringing in a one room log cabin. That was enough to make Lincoln a hero of mine since childhood.

But what Spielberg and Day-Lewis capture is Lincoln's masterful manipulation of the american political system to cause it to do things considered impossible by both sides, most notably the passage of the 13th amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery once and for all.

The film is based loosely on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team Of Rivals which is about Lincoln's political genius. I haven't read that book but I am certainly most tempted to after watching Lincoln.

But more than anything, the film conveys the greatness of this man. In the scene where he lies in his deathbed after the doctor declares the fight for his life over, you get a sense that Lincoln was a saint sent to our country in a time of need. There's also this one scene I can't get out of my head where he sits in the telegraph room trying to figure out what to tell Grant about the delegation from Richmond. He wonders outloud about his purpose and God's role in it.

The history of the United States is one where the right person showed up in times of need. Washington, Lincoln, FDR. We have been blessed to have heroic leaders in our most difficult moments. If you want to get a real sense of Lincoln's greatness, go see the movie. It is terrific.