WEBVTT 00:04.560 --> 00:05.620 Okay. 00:05.760 --> 00:07.420 Hello, everybody. 00:07.420 --> 00:09.260 My name is Jason Scott. 00:09.460 --> 00:16.440 Today's flight is to why tech documentaries are impossible and why we have to do them anyway. 00:16.600 --> 00:25.980 This is a discussion about the documentary medium that I gleaned in my four years of production work on a documentary I just finished. 00:26.160 --> 00:38.500 And saying why we have to look at this medium, look at its flaws, work around its flaws, and encourage people to create new ones. 00:38.620 --> 00:41.500 First question, of course, is who the hell are you? 00:41.720 --> 00:43.580 My name is, again, Jason Scott. 00:43.580 --> 00:59.800 I'm mostly known, I guess, for a site that I run called textfiles.com, which is a collection of BBS-era text files that I started in 1998 because I was wondering whatever happened to my old BBS that I used to go on all the time? 01:00.160 --> 01:02.300 Does everyone here know what a BBS is? 01:02.300 --> 01:04.040 Anyone here not know what a BBS is? 01:05.260 --> 01:06.340 Okay, a BBS. 01:06.340 --> 01:07.620 Did you just have fun with me? 01:07.620 --> 01:08.160 I can tell. 01:08.160 --> 01:09.160 Look at those eyes. 01:09.160 --> 01:10.120 All right, anyway. 01:10.140 --> 01:12.420 A BBS is like a single-use website. 01:12.420 --> 01:26.400 Anyway, I created that archive of BBS-era information because I saw a gap in history and knowledge and I, as a person, happened to have collected a lot of that. 01:26.400 --> 01:34.840 So it was more a case of seeing that there was a missing piece of a story, a story that all of humanity is kind of telling about itself. 01:34.940 --> 01:41.500 And by putting it all up there, I was encouraging other people to add their pieces and actually that kind of worked out pretty well. 01:42.040 --> 01:44.340 Ah, I see that the 305 has arrived. 01:45.800 --> 02:03.060 So that theme of filling in gaps is part of what drives me and unfortunately because I have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, I kind of start at one end and just keep going until somebody pulls me up sweating, telling me to stop. 02:03.660 --> 02:18.940 So textfiles.com grew into web.textfiles.com, artscene.textfiles.com, cd.textfiles.com, all these subsites of shareware CDs and old music things and groups and all of these weird little subcultures that I was discovering more and more about and more and more people. 02:18.940 --> 02:38.640 And so after a while, I suddenly thought about this missing piece, which was when you watch a lot of documentaries, the documentary format is kind of interesting because it's always been kind of the real dismal format in terms of things. 02:39.640 --> 02:52.900 Until very, very recently, if a documentary grossed $1 million, it was in the top 20 documentaries of all time ever made in terms of box office because it's not a very beloved format. 02:52.900 --> 02:59.800 It's very, very dry, and it's a very hard sell unless it's about sex or death. 02:59.800 --> 03:01.500 And even then, you have to kind of work on it. 03:01.500 --> 03:06.380 That's why we currently have a documentary about wheelchair rugby called Murderball. 03:08.680 --> 03:13.100 There's one that came out a couple years ago about a bunch of strippers unionizing. 03:13.100 --> 03:15.020 Boy, what a tough sell that is. 03:15.520 --> 03:17.940 I think it's called Live Nude Girls United. 03:20.320 --> 03:25.060 That's the nature of general release, and I'll go into general release in a moment. 03:27.340 --> 03:32.640 Throughout this time, we've had a number of what are known as documentaries of a technical nature. 03:32.640 --> 03:46.040 I think in my encountering, the one that most people know is Triumph of the Nerds by Robert Kringle because it got on PBS, it got a lot of attention, and it's a very decent documentary. 03:46.040 --> 03:49.420 It's technical, but it's not really technical. 03:49.580 --> 04:09.780 And when you have things like, say, tech TV being the standard by which computer history is defined, you run into problems because that kind of a cable channel that has very monetary goals produces films that are not really about imparting a lot of information, 04:09.780 --> 04:20.740 but about making a lot of video transitions that move very quickly and dazzle and delight you, so you'll stay on long enough to learn why you want to buy this G4 ad. 04:21.200 --> 04:22.520 That's very important. 04:22.520 --> 04:28.100 So that money issue gets in everywhere, and it gets in everywhere in this format. 04:28.100 --> 04:48.800 Now, the documentary format, thanks to a very, very fat man, has become extremely politicized these days because what's happened is that suddenly people started looking at films like Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9-11, and they said, oh, documentaries! 04:49.300 --> 04:58.840 And because it got political to attack the arguments or arguments, however you go along that way, they went after the medium. 04:59.220 --> 05:04.380 And the medium by itself, the documentary medium, has roots... 05:04.380 --> 05:11.120 What's normally called the first documentary is a film called Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty, made in the 20s. 05:11.120 --> 05:17.880 Which tells the story of an Eskimo man and his family who was trying to survive up in Alaska. 05:17.880 --> 05:20.520 It is entirely fake. 05:20.940 --> 05:22.640 Top to bottom. 05:22.640 --> 05:29.360 Robert Flaherty filmed a bunch of Eskimos running around, took it home, realized it sucked. 05:29.420 --> 05:30.340 Just sucked. 05:30.340 --> 05:31.260 It was boring. 05:31.260 --> 05:36.280 It was shots of these guys running around in misty, bad film. 05:36.320 --> 05:39.040 So he had an accident. 05:39.040 --> 05:40.820 This is one of these things that comes out. 05:40.820 --> 05:48.880 He was smoking a cigarette and the nitrate went up on the film and the film exploded, essentially, burned him. 05:49.320 --> 05:51.500 And so the film was destroyed. 05:51.500 --> 05:52.880 He had to make a new one. 05:52.880 --> 05:56.700 So he went off and he made a film called Nanook of the North starring a man named Nanook. 05:56.700 --> 05:57.800 And it told the story. 05:57.800 --> 06:04.560 Well, you see his family huddling for warmth inside an igloo that is actually only half built and has heaters. 06:04.780 --> 06:12.640 And you have shots of people running around that are filmed in lodged parking lots and things like that. 06:12.760 --> 06:18.560 Because he needed to tell a story and he wasn't going to let reality get in the way of a good story. 06:18.780 --> 06:21.660 A common problem in documentaries. 06:22.060 --> 06:24.500 In fact, it's endemic to the documentary format. 06:24.500 --> 06:36.260 One of the funniest things that came out of the whole argument over, I think it was I think it was Fahrenheit 9-11 Bowling for Columbine got the Oscar and then Fahrenheit 9-11 people were saying it didn't qualify. 06:36.260 --> 06:44.240 And that always made me laugh about it not qualifying for a documentary because it turned out this wasn't an exactly right fact. 06:44.240 --> 07:05.360 And if you go read the Oscar rules for what is a documentary it is a narrative film that portrays historical facts through recreation, creative editing and basically narration. 07:06.180 --> 07:08.400 Everything does that, right? 07:08.400 --> 07:16.340 I mean that's not a very, very you know, so the answer is of course anyone can get an Oscar and in case you're wondering I did check and see if I could get an Oscar for this. 07:17.900 --> 07:44.260 So in case you're wondering the way that you qualify to be judged for getting an Oscar besides actually making a decent film is you have to broadcast your film on a screen greater than 20 feet in New York and Los Angeles for a period of two weeks during the qualifying year without showing it on television or cable. 07:45.020 --> 07:58.800 So in case you're wondering one of the interesting things about life is we go through life learning about things kind of in a vague surface fashion and we like to impart a lot of our own internal stories to these things. 07:58.800 --> 08:01.100 This is what people do with technical subjects. 08:01.100 --> 08:10.180 They think of the story of the PC and all they think of is once upon a time there were a few computers and then there was IBM and then everyone won and everyone went home and then there were sound cards. 08:10.620 --> 08:16.120 And that's great because for some people they just simply don't care about the subject. 08:16.120 --> 08:20.640 As a documentarian you have to wonder what will make people want to watch this? 08:20.640 --> 08:25.280 Actually before that you have to say what will make the kind of people I'm aiming this for want to watch it? 08:25.820 --> 08:28.260 And when you say, well who are you aiming this for? 08:28.260 --> 08:32.780 When you say you want to make a documentary let's say you want to make a documentary, you insane people. 08:32.920 --> 08:35.440 Let's say you just give somebody some money for a documentary. 08:35.660 --> 08:38.960 So what ends up happening is you say well who is it for? 08:38.960 --> 08:41.020 And then someone will go, everybody! 08:41.220 --> 08:44.480 No, don't do that, that doesn't work. 08:45.020 --> 08:47.520 People perceive films different ways. 08:47.520 --> 08:53.340 Some people are looking at this and going, oh my god look at that subject matter, that's incredible I can't believe somebody did this. 08:53.340 --> 09:05.480 Other people are like, well it's cool in here that's nice that's great you know you can't aim it for everybody. 09:05.480 --> 09:22.400 The story I like to tell people was my father is not fond of Bush so naturally when Fahrenheit 9-11 came out I thought what a perfect gift for my father I'll take him to see Fahrenheit 9-11 here dad, come with me, we'll go and he lived in one state and I lived in another we met in the middle and we went to go see it and we see it, 09:22.400 --> 09:33.100 I watch it it's from my eyes and he watches it and we come out and I'm a son, I want my father to be happy but he's walking around like, huh and I'm like, hey dad, did you like the film? 09:33.100 --> 09:37.700 and he's like, well yeah, they really let Bush off light 09:40.820 --> 10:01.120 and so for me I watched it, completely different perception and so when people watch a film you can't say, oh well I'm going to shoot this for everybody the rule I usually tend to use is, if I was walking down the street and I saw this was here would I want to see it? 10:01.140 --> 10:06.440 and if I walked in and saw it what about it would make me think it was good? 10:06.440 --> 10:12.060 like if I said, well no, he got it wrong, he had to do this and he had to do this, and what rules are you going to lay down? 10:12.160 --> 10:36.560 In technical documentaries the issue is technical people are very hard to please there is a lot of money in pointing out flaws in technical situations because there are so many details and every single one is important so it is very easy to hyper focus on that, 10:36.560 --> 10:56.840 it's very difficult to express how important it is how important it is that yeah, you kind of needed a semicolon there you know, that's why the spaceship flew into the moon, not by it there is a beautiful document out there of major bugs like they track down, 10:56.840 --> 10:59.760 why did this satellite hit here? 10:59.760 --> 11:19.480 and the answer is, oh, it forgot a while loop and it will be like that technical people want to focus on that minutia but the video format for instance, or even the audio format it's very hard here to describe the actual technical situation so the natural thing that I did when I went after this was well, 11:19.480 --> 11:35.940 I should focus on technical people but technical people are even more difficult than technical subjects and it's a very hard thing when you do nature photography you try to tell a story even though in fact the stories tend to be rather dull once upon a time, 11:35.940 --> 12:02.000 I got eaten you know, once upon a time a bunch of us were eating this one boar and I hit him and he stopped eating it so I could eat his piece you know, very simple stuff but you'll see a nature photographer kind of try to put things together and he ends up having to put in artifice the question is what level of artifice is acceptable when you're telling a story this is a problem that I've encountered many times in many films and once Mr. 12:02.000 --> 12:22.360 Moore's films got a lot of scrutiny of course, the narrative utterly fell apart because you end up with a problem of you're trying to tell you've got the parallel tracks of the point you're trying to get across and what reality ended up giving you and how different those are defines your skill as a filmmaker in other words, 12:22.360 --> 12:47.080 sometimes when I started this film I started out really kind of not knowing what I was going to go with it all I knew was, in my particular case bulletin board systems were composed of people and I said, well how do I how do I express that I know, I'll interview a metric fuck ton of people so I ended up interviewing 205 people across 4 years that's a lot of people, 12:47.080 --> 13:34.100 don't do it documentary formats the standard ratio is you film 1 hour you film 10 hours for every hour you do or 20 hours and I filmed 205 hours and it ended up being 5 hours so that's a lot, again, don't do that let me be your warning so when I dealt with my subjects technical subjects you have to strike this balance and the balance is where the skill set comes in and what it tells is if you want people to get an idea you can go all the way to the right to the right you have industrial films industrial films are basically videotaped instruction manuals they tell you where to put the little part in the copier and you switch like this And then you go down like this, 13:34.100 --> 13:37.500 and oh yes, remember this, and then they do a cutaway to show you this. 13:37.500 --> 13:39.380 It is unbelievably dry. 13:39.380 --> 13:42.580 You watch it because somebody is reimbursing you in some way. 13:43.640 --> 13:47.840 You do not go to see this film because you're like, oh yeah! 13:48.620 --> 13:51.020 Oh, that was much better than Lost in Space. 13:52.820 --> 13:59.560 So, on the other side, you end up with films like War Games. 14:00.380 --> 14:18.560 War Games is a film that was filmed to tell a tale, and the tale was the tale of a young man who encountered an innocent force that faced with the realities of war, you know, blah. 14:18.560 --> 14:23.040 Anyway, Professor Falken was supposed to be played by John Lennon. 14:23.040 --> 14:24.860 I thought that would have been really cool. 14:24.860 --> 14:50.760 Anyway, it is funny because as we get now to where it has been 22 years since War Games was filmed, a new generation has latched actually onto the movie Hackers from 1995 as being a seminal event of giving hints as to a way of living and a lifestyle and things to shoot for and belief. 14:50.760 --> 15:01.080 And the reason that is, is because they went to people like Emanuel Goldstein, and they used pieces of subculture that existed in various ways. 15:01.080 --> 15:06.140 Mentor's Conscience of a Hacker and other such writings. 15:06.140 --> 15:16.260 And they remixed them, much in the same way that a blender remixes a lemon, so that it would become this palatable thing with Angela Jolie's tit. 15:17.920 --> 15:28.520 And people who look to that as their indication of what their culture is, because there's a dearth of stuff in the middle, end up having to do that. 15:28.520 --> 15:31.680 They end up having to say, okay, well, that's kind of how it was. 15:32.540 --> 15:34.480 And it wasn't like that. 15:35.280 --> 15:40.060 And so there's, again, great lots of fun for technical people to go, well, it's not like that at all. 15:40.060 --> 15:45.140 Actually, it's like this, and it's like this, and it's like this, and I know you can't get away from me because I got the door. 15:45.140 --> 15:55.600 And so on, because, you know, some of you giggle, because the problem is technical people are not very good at telling stories, because that's not how they approach it. 15:55.600 --> 16:08.620 Stories are these arcs that start with a beginning and a middle and have some sort of theme that runs to an end, whereas a lot of technical stories are impartations of information, you know, peppered with puns. 16:08.820 --> 16:15.400 And that's what they do, because that's how they get the information to you as fast as possible, and that's understood. 16:16.640 --> 16:35.240 So, like you're watching on this film, this film was trying to tackle a very difficult initial idea, the idea that there was colored text that was transferred online, and that people had an entire history of collecting them and being, you know, 15 years old and working for months. 16:35.240 --> 16:38.060 And it's fascinating because it's a people story. 16:38.060 --> 16:40.960 These kids are talking with great emotion. 16:41.380 --> 16:43.540 And that's more from the interview. 16:43.540 --> 16:48.200 You interview somebody for an hour, you choose what to use from that hour. 16:48.200 --> 16:50.840 You don't make people sit through the hour of that guy interviewing. 16:51.080 --> 17:00.060 You can go the other way, which is where, like, say, MTV goes, which is where you'll interview somebody for an hour, and you'll do one of two things. 17:00.060 --> 17:13.840 You will either force something to happen to the person that they don't expect, so you get, you know, some horrified thing, or you keep peppering them with the same question over and over again until they answer it the goddamn way that you want it to, 17:13.840 --> 17:16.080 which was, yes, I fuck children! 17:17.300 --> 17:22.100 And then that'd be, you know, once again, welcome to MTV, I fuck children! 17:22.500 --> 17:24.220 The story of a pedophile. 17:26.960 --> 17:31.920 Anyway, when I was young, I loved MTV, but MTV betrayed me. 17:33.680 --> 17:35.000 Damn you, MTV. 17:36.900 --> 17:43.840 Anyway, the way I like to think of it is that a technical documentary is an engineering problem. 17:43.860 --> 17:53.450 You have the problem of wanting to naturally turn everything into either a lecture or a fictional narrative. 17:54.460 --> 18:00.650 And what you do is you say, well, how can I take the reality and portray it as a narrative? 18:01.180 --> 18:06.820 That is to say, how can I make this somewhat dry subject interesting? 18:06.820 --> 18:08.340 And there's several ways you can do that. 18:08.340 --> 18:14.420 One way is to focus on characters, humans, people, expressing themselves in a way that's engaging. 18:14.420 --> 18:16.900 And again, bringing that out in an interview is very tough. 18:16.900 --> 18:23.840 The other way is to do an awful lot of, I guess you would call it, dazzle. 18:24.400 --> 18:28.600 And that's more like one of those things, like when you inject stuff into the car to make it go a little faster. 18:28.700 --> 18:31.300 It's not so great for the car, but it kind of works. 18:31.480 --> 18:37.000 And so he's talking right now about something that's relatively interesting to some people. 18:37.000 --> 18:40.440 But for the other people, I just give them a whole bunch of pretty colors. 18:41.760 --> 18:46.500 And he's talking about this work he did, and it's being illustrated, and it's kind of interesting. 18:46.500 --> 18:48.340 But why the hell is that back part there? 18:48.340 --> 18:49.580 Well, because it's interesting. 18:50.260 --> 18:52.320 And you try to strike that. 18:52.320 --> 18:59.080 I also try to shoot, for instance, with very few exceptions, nobody, no one shot lasts for more than 10 seconds. 18:59.320 --> 19:03.360 A person might talk over something else so that his shot is 30 seconds. 19:03.540 --> 19:06.180 But in fact, the point of fact, it's just not. 19:09.340 --> 19:13.860 Right now in the world, there are an unbelievable amount of subjects that just haven't been really tackled. 19:13.860 --> 19:20.640 I tackle bulletin board systems because I decided in 2001 that it looks like the BBS movie wasn't going to be made. 19:21.980 --> 19:23.380 They missed the boat. 19:23.700 --> 19:27.300 We were having trouble where people were, you know, people were disappearing. 19:27.300 --> 19:28.640 It was harder to find the stuff. 19:28.640 --> 19:30.420 The artifacts are kind of gone. 19:30.560 --> 19:32.460 And how do you get that back? 19:32.460 --> 19:36.620 And so in 2001, I started doing research, and I did six months of research. 19:36.820 --> 19:45.620 And I brought in an advisory team of about 20 people who I both respected and didn't know, and who would give me advice. 19:45.620 --> 19:48.020 And I'd say, well, you know, I'm thinking I'm going to shoot this way. 19:48.020 --> 19:50.200 And I think I'm going to go here and ask this question. 19:50.200 --> 19:51.260 What do you think? 19:51.420 --> 19:53.500 And sometimes they'd answer, sometimes they'd not. 19:53.500 --> 19:56.600 You know, they'd just say, well, I hope he's interesting. 19:56.600 --> 19:58.760 Or I hope you have a reason for going out there. 19:58.760 --> 20:01.640 Or, oh yeah, ask him about this guy who I wouldn't know about. 20:01.640 --> 20:03.660 Because that really changed his life. 20:03.660 --> 20:06.900 So being open helped a lot. 20:06.900 --> 20:08.540 There's a lot of money right now. 20:08.540 --> 20:11.500 You'll find I get really ooky when people discuss money. 20:11.780 --> 20:15.500 Whenever I say monetized, like someone says smeared with shit. 20:16.580 --> 20:19.960 But it's just, you know, that's just because I'm some sort of freak. 20:19.960 --> 20:25.340 But the money is in calling something open source. 20:26.180 --> 20:30.500 There's a lot of money in calling things a brand that has meaning. 20:30.500 --> 20:37.700 So revealing the people that you have a list of people you're going to interview, suddenly makes it open source. 20:38.360 --> 20:41.660 You know, or telling people, oh, well, you know, this new movie's coming out. 20:41.660 --> 20:43.480 We shot it using this kind of camera. 20:43.480 --> 20:45.200 This new kind of, oh, that's open source. 20:45.200 --> 20:47.120 You revealed things. 20:47.940 --> 20:51.220 So it's a case of marketing terms getting bastardized very quickly. 20:51.440 --> 20:54.920 I tried to let everyone know I was working on this for four years. 20:54.920 --> 20:57.840 And the problem there, of course, was that there were people who waited for four years. 20:57.840 --> 20:58.340 Or five. 20:58.340 --> 21:00.020 I have a gentleman here who waited for five. 21:00.020 --> 21:02.680 Gave me 20 bucks five years ago. 21:03.260 --> 21:04.620 There's an investment. 21:07.240 --> 21:10.600 Actually, when I created the film, I asked for donations. 21:10.600 --> 21:11.580 Because I was dumb. 21:11.580 --> 21:12.160 I don't know why. 21:12.160 --> 21:14.780 I thought I'd need a foundation to create this film. 21:14.900 --> 21:17.180 So people sent me five bucks, ten bucks. 21:17.460 --> 21:19.720 You know, just like, cool. 21:19.720 --> 21:20.860 Sounds like fun. 21:20.880 --> 21:25.940 So I made sure each one of them got a $50 copy, you know, sent to them. 21:25.940 --> 21:26.780 My cost. 21:26.780 --> 21:28.320 It's like, wow, that was a great investment. 21:28.320 --> 21:30.000 So, hey, it pays to be charitable. 21:30.000 --> 21:30.600 I guess. 21:32.600 --> 21:36.240 Anyway, when I shot this film, I would go out and interview people. 21:36.240 --> 21:41.760 And one of the things is that there are a lot of people out there who have very interesting stories to tell who are slowly decaying. 21:43.120 --> 21:45.060 And the longer you talk to them... 21:45.060 --> 21:50.360 When I started shooting, there were a lot of people who were names. 21:50.660 --> 21:53.640 You know, there's different levels of celebrity in any kind of technical subject. 21:53.640 --> 21:55.140 Oh, he's the guy who wrote that. 21:55.440 --> 21:56.940 You know, he's the guy who made that computer. 21:56.940 --> 21:58.440 He's the guy who created this thing. 21:58.440 --> 22:00.220 And you go and you track him down. 22:00.220 --> 22:02.080 And sometimes he's really boring. 22:02.160 --> 22:04.160 And sometimes he's really not. 22:04.340 --> 22:10.200 Most markedly in mine, there was a network of bulletin boards called FidoNet. 22:10.440 --> 22:16.280 And this started in around 83, 84, and still exists today. 22:16.360 --> 22:25.420 And it's this beautiful, self-grown, volunteer network of people all around the world who created this bulletin board system network. 22:25.420 --> 22:27.740 And at the center of it is Thomas Jennings. 22:28.820 --> 22:32.480 And Tom Jennings is fucking nuts. 22:36.340 --> 22:49.060 He is a gay, bad ass, gate punk, vegetarian, fuck you, anarchist, who did this because god damn it, it's great to write a god damn network because fuck everybody. 22:49.640 --> 22:50.960 That's interesting. 22:51.740 --> 22:54.500 And I don't think a lot of people knew that when they were doing it. 22:54.500 --> 23:02.600 So when I interviewed him, he was amazing to a person who's looking at things like, is this interesting? 23:02.600 --> 23:11.600 So he's just this beautiful, profane man who I used in my way to tell a story around him. 23:12.460 --> 23:17.060 The question becomes, how do you translate that? 23:17.060 --> 23:18.760 And I wasn't going to do this... 23:20.660 --> 23:22.260 I'm going to do it afterwards. 23:22.560 --> 23:24.320 I'll play a sequence after I'm done. 23:24.500 --> 23:25.360 I took... 23:27.420 --> 23:29.100 Here's an example. 23:29.100 --> 23:32.140 The documentary format has editing. 23:32.640 --> 23:38.960 What that means is, you take two separate recordings of events in time and you place them together. 23:40.000 --> 23:44.540 And they didn't happen one after the other, but you put them together. 23:44.540 --> 23:48.940 I know this sounds basic, but it's so easy to forget that. 23:49.080 --> 23:53.460 A good example of a documentary that really does this a lot... 23:55.340 --> 23:57.780 is something called MTV Cribs. 23:57.780 --> 24:00.020 I don't know how many people know MTV Cribs. 24:00.100 --> 24:04.380 MTV Cribs is supposed to be a documentary about the homes of stars. 24:06.100 --> 24:07.320 Yeah, okay. 24:07.320 --> 24:14.180 So for instance, there was the case where basically they go in and they shoot, right? 24:14.180 --> 24:17.220 They shoot footage with steadicams and stuff of these guys' houses. 24:17.300 --> 24:19.600 Yes, this is where the magic happens. 24:19.600 --> 24:20.660 This is my bedroom. 24:20.660 --> 24:21.640 This is my pool. 24:21.640 --> 24:23.000 This is my kitchen. 24:23.000 --> 24:23.760 And it's fascinating. 24:23.760 --> 24:25.120 Look what they have in their kitchen. 24:25.120 --> 24:26.300 Look what they have in their fridge. 24:26.300 --> 24:27.440 Look what they have here. 24:27.440 --> 24:29.100 They've got hangings, you know? 24:29.260 --> 24:32.300 Well, recently, I believe it was Usher. 24:32.300 --> 24:33.780 I don't care if I'm smearing him. 24:33.780 --> 24:35.340 It's some other guy like Usher. 24:35.340 --> 24:40.420 Usher or an Usher-like being had a little lawsuit occur. 24:40.420 --> 24:47.700 Turns out, Usher rented an island for $350,000 for two days. 24:47.700 --> 24:49.180 It's an expensive island. 24:49.180 --> 24:50.820 Nice island, though. 24:51.320 --> 24:55.560 First day, he shot MTV Cribs there to show his home. 24:56.800 --> 25:03.200 This only came out because the second day he had a party with 2,000 fucking people and they were having trouble getting condoms out of palm trees and all that. 25:05.780 --> 25:08.120 So, right? 25:08.120 --> 25:14.860 I mean, you'll see this documentary format where he's supposed to be describing reality to you. 25:14.860 --> 25:21.540 MTV and he have agreed to 100% completely create a false reality. 25:21.800 --> 25:24.720 Now, you compare that to when they interview, I think it was Ted Nugent. 25:25.420 --> 25:28.760 Now, Ted Nugent's in a house that it's fucking Ted Nugent's house. 25:30.440 --> 25:34.160 Because you can't rent that many animal heads. 25:37.570 --> 25:45.970 You have to get a clearance from the TSA to ship that many guns to a shooting location to shoot your documentary. 25:45.970 --> 25:47.770 It's Ted Nugent's fucking house. 25:47.810 --> 25:48.690 It's real. 25:48.690 --> 25:50.770 You go through it and you're like, oh my god. 25:51.190 --> 25:52.270 Oh my god. 25:52.270 --> 25:55.430 A PETA member would like explode into flames walking in here. 25:55.930 --> 26:04.970 So, you know, even a person who's watching it who's not technically oriented towards documentaries or thinking of them that way, they get it in their mind. 26:04.970 --> 26:07.910 They're like, this guy's house has four pieces of furniture. 26:08.290 --> 26:09.650 That's fake. 26:09.670 --> 26:12.310 Even if you've got a really good maid, that's fake. 26:12.310 --> 26:18.130 But this other guy's house, full of little things, and they've obviously sorted up and cleaned things and dusted them, that's his house. 26:18.130 --> 26:20.870 That kind of visceral reaction comes from right here. 26:20.870 --> 26:22.790 And it's very hard to fake. 26:23.030 --> 26:30.630 And so when I shot people, when I filmed people, I would ask them questions. 26:30.730 --> 26:37.530 And they knew, talking to me, that it was somewhat unlikely I was going to fuck them. 26:37.530 --> 26:45.410 That's very important to note, because the standard method of communication in film media is fucking people over. 26:45.850 --> 26:52.610 Where you convince people something is going to be a certain way so that you can get the thing you want, which is antithetical to their needs. 26:53.490 --> 26:57.110 This is part of, by the way, I should mention, I went to film school. 26:57.490 --> 27:05.030 I went to film school, Emerson College, Boston, film class of 1992, mass communications, concentration in film. 27:06.950 --> 27:09.750 I immediately decided not to go into film. 27:09.750 --> 27:11.210 Dad was so happy. 27:11.970 --> 27:18.110 I instead went into video games, which, by the way, is worse than film, but still, it's film at that time. 27:19.010 --> 27:24.690 So I went to work for a company called Psygnosis, and they had all sorts of beautiful things, and I thought it was like film, but it wasn't. 27:24.690 --> 27:25.770 It was just mean. 27:26.970 --> 27:29.770 And so I didn't actually make films for a long time. 27:29.770 --> 27:38.470 I didn't want to, because the more I learned about the film industry, because, you know, after a while, they take you away from, oh, look how beautiful Citizen Kane is, to around your junior year. 27:38.470 --> 27:45.830 So this is how the film industry works, and you're like, ah, you know, it's like petting the bunny and then seeing the inside of the bunny. 27:48.350 --> 27:51.850 Bunny ain't cute no more, even if they put the bunny back like they did before. 27:52.070 --> 28:03.870 So I got tired of looking at the inside of the bunny, and instead I went into computers, and computers have been very well by me, and have actually been rather lucrative, and because of that, I could afford to have a stupid hobby. 28:03.890 --> 28:08.430 Um, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't do PowerPoint. 28:10.270 --> 28:11.970 So, yeah. 28:14.990 --> 28:21.750 So what ended up happening instead was that, you know, I got into, like, doing little projects, and doing film projects, and computer projects. 28:21.750 --> 28:26.930 So when I decided I was going to do this documentary, I was like, oh, I guess I'll do it. 28:26.930 --> 28:28.710 I guess I'll use that damn film degree. 28:28.910 --> 28:31.270 Now, ironically, I've had people say, well, is this your first film? 28:31.270 --> 28:33.670 The answer is no, I had a film play at Sundance. 28:33.670 --> 28:35.930 And they're like, ooh, that's really impressive. 28:35.930 --> 28:41.770 Um , it was a two-minute film I did for a comedy troupe in 1993. 28:41.970 --> 28:45.870 It is a schoolhouse rock animation about the Kennedy assassination. 28:47.670 --> 28:57.130 And what happened was, was that Comedy Central bought it, and played it on the 30th anniversary, across the weekend. 28:58.930 --> 29:04.050 For that, I got, for that, five of us got the princely sum of $1,200. 29:04.630 --> 29:06.930 And they got the rights for one year. 29:07.010 --> 29:11.650 And they proceeded to play it 300 times, you know, because it's two minutes long, they could shove it everywhere. 29:11.930 --> 29:14.870 So that was my introduction to the industry. 29:16.650 --> 29:21.310 Yeah, you know, I lent a guy the tape 15 years ago. 29:22.110 --> 29:26.530 Every year, like clockwork, he apologizes and says he's going to get it to me. 29:27.130 --> 29:29.310 I just have to get it off the 16 millimeter film. 29:29.310 --> 29:30.850 I used to do stuff in film. 29:31.090 --> 29:33.450 When I shot this, I shot it using film techniques. 29:33.450 --> 29:35.050 That's why everyone looks kind of goofy. 29:35.450 --> 29:38.090 Because I use indirect lighting and shots like that. 29:38.090 --> 29:40.390 That is nine processors, by the way. 29:40.650 --> 29:42.450 Give you an example of Artifice. 29:42.450 --> 29:46.630 That shot right there, dark as crap, didn't look good, he wasn't there. 29:46.650 --> 29:51.630 I've applied softening filters, lightning filters, highlight filters, everything, to make him look like it. 29:51.630 --> 29:52.730 But no, it's real. 29:53.510 --> 29:55.790 And there's a lot of that, a lot of noise reduction. 29:55.790 --> 29:56.950 You take what you can. 29:56.950 --> 30:00.750 When you're a one-man crew, you make an enormous amount of mistakes. 30:01.750 --> 30:07.010 Anyway, so when I decided to actually shoot this film, I hadn't even looked at that for 10 years. 30:07.010 --> 30:11.290 But I had a pretty good salary, and I could afford to pretty much do it myself. 30:11.990 --> 30:18.370 Budget-wise, because I engineered it, the film, this film, okay. 30:18.490 --> 30:23.090 When I made this film, how many people here were at my talk last year? 30:23.410 --> 30:24.210 Two, three, four, five. 30:24.210 --> 30:24.830 Okay, good, good, good. 30:24.830 --> 30:25.330 All right. 30:25.970 --> 30:26.830 Thank you very much. 30:26.830 --> 30:40.550 The film, when I saw the film, I decided that I was going to make a film that was, you know, when people make a film, they want it to be like an hour and a half, you know, because that's what plays in theaters. 30:40.650 --> 30:41.690 But I was like, fuck theaters. 30:41.690 --> 30:42.830 I don't need to put them in theaters. 30:42.830 --> 30:43.770 I'll put it on DVD. 30:43.810 --> 30:45.290 What a delightful format. 30:47.450 --> 30:49.590 Boy, DVD got the hivies. 30:50.610 --> 30:53.750 DVD sucks, as a person who uses it, by the way. 30:53.990 --> 30:56.350 You have never seen, you want standards. 30:56.350 --> 30:58.310 Don't go to DVD. 30:58.550 --> 31:03.850 People put out, as far as I can determine, peanut butter jelly sandwiches that claim they're DVD players. 31:04.310 --> 31:05.870 I've gotten more, anyway. 31:05.890 --> 31:07.090 So it's like, it'll go like this. 31:07.090 --> 31:08.890 And the answer is, well, maybe it will. 31:08.890 --> 31:13.650 If the Fong Song Trading Company, when they made it for five minutes ten years ago, think it was good. 31:14.090 --> 31:15.350 And you get this, anyway. 31:15.350 --> 31:16.810 So I love DVD. 31:16.810 --> 31:18.090 DVD has been good to me. 31:19.410 --> 31:21.870 So DVD was the format I was going to go into. 31:21.870 --> 31:24.090 So I said, well, okay, well, I'm going to have subtitles. 31:24.090 --> 31:25.450 I'm going to have director's commentary. 31:25.450 --> 31:26.170 I'm going to have this. 31:26.170 --> 31:27.150 I'm going to have that. 31:27.630 --> 31:30.910 And so when I shot it, I knew it wasn't going to be an hour and a half. 31:30.910 --> 31:35.490 I thought it was going to be nine hours, which hurts people. 31:35.670 --> 31:44.750 I mean, I explain to people, what it is, is when you take on a subject that's 25 years long, because nobody else has done it, you have to make up for a lot of slack. 31:44.810 --> 31:50.250 And there are stories that aren't in any way paired up. 31:50.250 --> 31:51.090 They're not paired up. 31:51.090 --> 31:53.210 PhytoNet is not the story of the BBS industry. 31:53.210 --> 31:54.470 It's not the story of ANSI art. 31:54.470 --> 31:56.210 It's not the story of the hacking BBSs. 31:56.210 --> 31:57.510 It's not the story of this. 31:57.670 --> 31:58.190 So what do you do? 31:58.190 --> 31:59.410 Well, you make separate episodes. 31:59.410 --> 32:00.850 So I made a miniseries. 32:01.170 --> 32:06.850 And I shot it, like I said, 250 hours, edited it down to five and a half hours. 32:06.850 --> 32:08.310 The rough cut was seven. 32:09.230 --> 32:12.110 Each of these episodes is about 40 minutes. 32:12.110 --> 32:13.270 Some of them are less. 32:13.410 --> 32:17.670 And the whole thing, shooting-wise, cost me $21,000. 32:18.930 --> 32:23.030 Now, some people drop their payload on that. 32:23.030 --> 32:25.190 In fact, that's actually rather cheap. 32:25.190 --> 32:26.970 It actually works out to a very cheap price. 32:26.970 --> 32:29.610 And the way that I did it was to kill myself. 32:30.030 --> 32:31.910 For instance, I would land. 32:31.910 --> 32:35.850 I would determine 14 interviews I had to do in the Midwest. 32:36.390 --> 32:45.710 And in one trip, in 10 days, I went from Chicago to Indiana, back up to Milwaukee, over to Minneapolis, down to St. 32:45.710 --> 32:52.030 Louis, over to Kansas City, down through Oklahoma City, over to Texas, and then flew out of Austin. 32:53.030 --> 32:54.170 That hurt. 32:54.530 --> 32:59.010 I can also tell you that I can drive precisely 302 miles at a stretch. 33:00.230 --> 33:05.730 But by doing that, by combining what would have been a whole bunch of little trips in the one trip, it cost me almost nothing. 33:06.570 --> 33:07.970 I didn't sleep in my car. 33:07.970 --> 33:09.210 I should have, but I didn't. 33:09.310 --> 33:13.870 So by just adding these prices together, I was able to shoot very cheaply. 33:13.870 --> 33:15.250 I had a crew of one. 33:15.510 --> 33:21.970 I had a camera that I purchased as a floor model. 33:21.970 --> 33:27.870 You know, I edited it on a PC because it's much cheaper to edit on a PC than a Mac right now. 33:28.170 --> 33:33.450 I shot, I guess for anyone who cares, I used a product called Vegas Video. 33:33.830 --> 33:40.930 And I had a PC, a one gigahertz PC, and four terabytes of USB storage. 33:43.110 --> 33:48.570 And I lost 14 drives in the two years of editing. 33:48.870 --> 33:51.950 So anyway, that's the price you pay. 33:52.390 --> 33:55.030 Mac store is the James Dean of hard drives. 33:56.990 --> 33:58.510 Just so you know. 33:59.650 --> 34:05.870 It, you know, it tries to seduce you with, look, I'm $50 and 200 gigs. 34:06.130 --> 34:09.050 And then the next day, I'm not feeling too good, man. 34:10.590 --> 34:13.810 Jesus, man, I can't feel anything right now. 34:14.910 --> 34:19.070 So that's, you know, the things you learn when you put things through stress tests. 34:19.070 --> 34:27.410 I had people going like, like I had one time where I was really pissed because I put 200, I put 205 gigabytes of footage on something and it died. 34:27.610 --> 34:30.470 Like, it was like, here's your data, foot. 34:31.410 --> 34:34.910 And I went on IRC bitching, which is a mistake, by the way. 34:34.910 --> 34:36.470 IRC will bitch you right back. 34:36.490 --> 34:39.530 And someone's like, you dumb fuck, they're not meant to be used that way. 34:41.170 --> 34:43.850 That tells you a lot about customer expectation, doesn't it? 34:45.410 --> 34:48.450 Hard drives aren't meant to store data, you dumb fuck. 34:49.370 --> 34:50.170 Anyway. 34:52.410 --> 35:03.110 So one of the side effects of me going through and doing this as a one-man crew is that I interviewed a lot of people who had never been interviewed before and people who'd always been interviewed, like been interviewed for all their life. 35:03.350 --> 35:06.670 And so when they met me, it was like, oh, here's some guy. 35:07.350 --> 35:13.510 And there's an old quote in the movie industry, which says that honesty is the most important thing in the film industry. 35:13.510 --> 35:15.570 And once you can fake that, you're golden. 35:17.830 --> 35:27.470 And so I was very honest, and in fact, I was very honest and I made a lot of, I offered a lot of things that people didn't normally get when you deal with media. 35:27.470 --> 35:39.450 I told people, after I've interviewed you, even though you've signed a release, if after one month, up to one month, preferably, you think you said something you didn't like, tell me and I will erase it off the tape. 35:39.870 --> 35:43.390 Because I'm not going to hurt you for my film. 35:43.770 --> 35:47.290 I'll get four other guys to say what you said that you're not comfortable saying. 35:47.510 --> 35:50.930 I don't need you to get in trouble with your buddies. 35:51.090 --> 35:58.810 And I don't, and I, and a lot of people, I would explain to them what I was doing and I would send them cuts and say, okay, I'm going to use you this way. 35:58.810 --> 35:59.710 Is that okay? 36:00.010 --> 36:10.930 I also had what I called the jerk crank index, which was, if I made somebody say something funny and that made them look weird, they had to be somewhere else saying something smart. 36:11.310 --> 36:13.910 If I couldn't find that, I wouldn't use it. 36:14.270 --> 36:18.490 Because, and the thing is, that's antithetical to how a lot of films work. 36:18.710 --> 36:20.270 These films work that way. 36:20.430 --> 36:25.970 I have, I have a, I have a, I have a recording of a guy, still good, okay. 36:25.970 --> 36:27.950 Well, anyway, there's a recording with this old man. 36:27.950 --> 36:31.970 He just goes, you know, man, I used to get laid off that BBS. 36:32.810 --> 36:35.470 And it's really funny in the shot, trust me. 36:35.470 --> 36:39.790 And I love audience feedback. 36:39.830 --> 36:44.750 The , anyway, I made sure that that old man told another story. 36:44.750 --> 36:47.050 That it wasn't just the old man who said that. 36:48.050 --> 36:56.410 And at the end of the day, if people do not get these stories on tape, they disappear. 36:56.750 --> 37:07.730 And what you end up with are very, very, I would almost call them, you know, cliff notes of history. 37:07.730 --> 37:09.650 You say, well, there used to be this. 37:09.650 --> 37:11.190 And that's it, that's all they'll say. 37:11.190 --> 37:14.090 You know, Ward Christensen, he invented the BBS. 37:14.090 --> 37:20.290 And there is a massive story behind why he did it, how he did it, involving a snowstorm. 37:20.330 --> 37:23.830 And it being, you know, Chicago. 37:23.830 --> 37:28.910 And because he couldn't get to the guy's house, he was like, let's just write something to transfer files, wouldn't that be neat? 37:28.970 --> 37:31.250 And this whole industry rises up from that guy. 37:31.770 --> 37:33.570 And there's things before him. 37:33.570 --> 37:35.990 And there's things after him that are actually very important. 37:35.990 --> 37:38.910 He actually got the idea for BBSs off the ARPANET. 37:39.790 --> 37:41.230 The ARPANET was around. 37:41.230 --> 37:44.850 He was on the list because he had written XMODEM and he was kick-ass for doing that. 37:44.990 --> 37:53.210 And so they gave him an ARPANET account and everyone was saying, wouldn't it be a great idea to have something where you could use these little toy computers and leave messages on them? 37:53.210 --> 37:54.370 And he was like, hey. 37:54.550 --> 37:56.570 And he was like, so when's anyone going to do it? 37:56.570 --> 38:00.570 Or as he puts it, nobody was plugging in their soldering irons to get started on doing it. 38:01.250 --> 38:03.230 Which tells you how long ago that was. 38:05.870 --> 38:06.670 Anyway. 38:07.350 --> 38:10.870 You know, it's funny now because, like I said, I have these hacking text files. 38:10.870 --> 38:16.410 And when they start out, it's like, well, here's how to write machine language to be able to play Crisis Mountain for free. 38:16.630 --> 38:20.910 And I get over here with, here's how to remove ads from your GeoCities account. 38:21.870 --> 38:25.790 And it's just this amazing, well, the progression doesn't go this way. 38:25.790 --> 38:26.930 Let's put it that way. 38:27.850 --> 38:31.850 I love the present, but I love the past more. 38:31.870 --> 38:33.090 Let's put it that way. 38:33.430 --> 38:34.130 Anyway. 38:34.630 --> 38:38.810 At the beginning of this film art scene, there's an old man. 38:38.810 --> 38:40.530 His name is John Sheets. 38:40.530 --> 38:44.210 John Sheets was the pimp of teletype art. 38:44.510 --> 38:46.190 A lost art. 38:46.190 --> 38:51.750 It was a way of sending text over ham radio and other ways. 38:51.750 --> 38:54.210 So that you could write things and other people would get it. 38:54.210 --> 38:56.130 So, of course, they used it to send porn. 38:57.390 --> 39:00.750 But they also used it to send, you know, images of Snoopy and everything. 39:00.750 --> 39:09.070 And they used to have art contests in the 60s and the 70s of who could draw the best, you know, Bordeaux-based art and who could do this. 39:09.070 --> 39:13.550 And so nobody had ever talked to John Sheets about this. 39:13.550 --> 39:15.750 And I was doing this thing on Antsy Art. 39:15.750 --> 39:21.430 And wouldn't it be funny, I thought, to go interview this man about this technical subject. 39:21.430 --> 39:25.890 And when I got there, he was stunned that I had driven from Boston to New Jersey for him. 39:25.890 --> 39:28.790 And he had all this old art out that nobody had really seen. 39:28.790 --> 39:30.650 And I interviewed him for one hour. 39:30.690 --> 39:31.610 Asked him all about it. 39:31.610 --> 39:34.710 He talked about his family and working on this stuff and everything else. 39:34.950 --> 39:37.210 And then I did that and I never saw him again. 39:37.210 --> 39:38.570 You know, I went away and I edited. 39:38.570 --> 39:42.010 And this year I went to go give him his free copy and I discovered he had died. 39:43.530 --> 39:44.910 And I got his widow. 39:45.110 --> 39:53.590 And his widow was absolutely delighted that somebody had an hour of her husband talking for me to give to her. 39:53.590 --> 39:54.010 And 39:57.200 --> 40:02.340 the thing is, that little story plays out over and over again. 40:02.480 --> 40:09.180 You know, you get all these things where it's like, well, just sit the guy down for an hour and ask him about this technical subject. 40:09.180 --> 40:11.880 Because people don't just tell those stories that way. 40:11.880 --> 40:16.220 They actually tell stories that are actually indicative of other things. 40:16.220 --> 40:20.500 I'm a very big fan of this idea that when you record something... 40:20.500 --> 40:23.340 I'm collecting all the podcasts right now. 40:23.460 --> 40:25.060 This gets me some press. 40:25.060 --> 40:26.640 It's cute that it does. 40:26.640 --> 40:27.800 But it's not that hard. 40:27.800 --> 40:29.180 It's an RSS feed. 40:29.180 --> 40:30.220 The guy's doing... 40:30.220 --> 40:36.000 It's like a self-service anthropology experiment. 40:36.060 --> 40:40.380 It's like driving by an African village and there's a pile of videotapes for you to pick up. 40:40.600 --> 40:42.120 Not that hard. 40:42.320 --> 40:43.780 I have a little bash shell script. 40:43.780 --> 40:47.080 I'm currently collecting 4,800 podcasts. 40:47.360 --> 40:49.820 It's something like 600 gigs now or something. 40:49.820 --> 40:50.420 Why? 40:50.420 --> 40:51.420 Why not? 40:51.420 --> 40:54.920 And people go, well, they're boring. 40:55.360 --> 40:56.940 And I'm like, well, they're not really boring. 40:56.940 --> 41:00.760 They're actually stories about what it was like to be alive when that person was talking. 41:00.960 --> 41:02.780 It's supposed to be about wine. 41:02.780 --> 41:04.080 You know, the wine cast. 41:04.080 --> 41:11.580 But no, it's actually kind of about his friends and how they had wine together and what it was like to be alive in 2005 and order wine and be at this place. 41:11.580 --> 41:13.200 And places that won't be there anymore. 41:13.200 --> 41:15.860 You know, we live on shifting sand. 41:15.860 --> 41:17.200 Sand that disappears. 41:17.520 --> 41:19.600 And people, you know, they don't want to hear that, of course. 41:19.600 --> 41:22.540 That's why it's used to sell, you know, cigarettes. 41:22.540 --> 41:28.300 But, you know, it's one of those things where people don't really think that through. 41:28.300 --> 41:29.680 And the answer is, you know, will... 41:30.480 --> 41:34.060 I will not live to see a lot of the results of the work I'm doing. 41:34.060 --> 41:35.920 You know, like where somebody, you know, people... 41:35.920 --> 41:44.500 I'm like, if you think it's difficult, if you think it's difficult to tell the BBS story in 2005, imagine trying to tell it in 2050, you know. 41:45.380 --> 41:58.420 I love how in about 200 years, we're going to be these Afro-wearing, silver-suited, grunge-tattooed kids from the 20th century. 41:58.640 --> 42:04.560 Because they'll just take all of that, that 10 years, which we think of as a lifetime, and just compress it. 42:04.860 --> 42:06.700 And so you'll just have all everyone together. 42:06.700 --> 42:08.120 Because that's what we do as a people. 42:08.120 --> 42:10.200 We just go, oh, like Roman centurions. 42:10.200 --> 42:14.480 They all got little brushes on their heads and run around clanking metal. 42:15.100 --> 42:15.920 That's it. 42:15.920 --> 42:18.560 And they have a big wooden horse somewhere, I think. 42:20.120 --> 42:21.800 You know, that's what people do. 42:21.800 --> 42:22.820 And people go, ha, ha, ha. 42:22.820 --> 42:23.980 They don't really, you know. 42:23.980 --> 42:24.860 And the answer is no. 42:24.860 --> 42:25.620 I mean, people do that. 42:25.620 --> 42:27.200 They compress them in their minds. 42:27.200 --> 42:31.660 And they'll compress this in their minds, except now, by recording this history, we get it. 42:32.700 --> 42:37.920 Anyway, all that said, I should open this up to questions. 42:38.020 --> 42:42.080 I don't have a really zinger closing statement. 42:42.080 --> 42:47.800 Other than to say that, like I said, don't shoot for perfection. 42:48.580 --> 42:50.220 Perfection is not attainable. 42:50.880 --> 42:54.100 Shoot for something. 42:54.100 --> 42:56.360 Because something is attainable. 42:56.360 --> 42:58.460 And something is much better than nothing. 42:58.800 --> 43:01.480 Nihilism is not an answer. 43:02.160 --> 43:03.760 It is a symptom. 43:06.180 --> 43:09.580 So I guess I'll open it up to any questions, people. 43:09.580 --> 43:10.360 Yes, sir. 43:10.360 --> 43:13.460 Do you have any plans for another book project? 43:14.200 --> 43:14.500 Yes. 43:16.140 --> 43:20.460 My next documentary will probably be on text adventures. 43:22.720 --> 43:23.980 Yeah. 43:24.280 --> 43:26.300 Oh, yeah, that's right. 43:27.420 --> 43:31.100 There's another one I might do on arcades. 43:31.140 --> 43:35.660 Like, not arcade games, like 1980s arcades. 43:35.660 --> 43:41.020 I found a guy who worked as an arcade technician. 43:41.020 --> 43:43.420 And he was working at a Namco timeout. 43:43.420 --> 43:48.360 And they had thrown out this booklet of slides. 43:48.360 --> 43:54.180 And it was 1,000 promotional arcade slides from 1980 to 1982. 43:54.640 --> 44:02.540 It was just perfectly posed pictures of arcades and all the games that were in them in pristine shape and everyone looking good and all the shots. 44:02.580 --> 44:02.980 So I'm... 44:03.720 --> 44:05.260 He put up, like, 50. 44:05.260 --> 44:06.320 Wasn't this funny? 44:06.320 --> 44:08.360 And I'm, like, I'm going to send you a scanner. 44:09.220 --> 44:12.660 And I'm going to pay you to put them up. 44:13.180 --> 44:15.400 And, you know, and he's, like, well, I've got to give them away. 44:15.400 --> 44:16.760 And I'm, like, hells yeah. 44:17.400 --> 44:18.720 I don't care. 44:18.820 --> 44:19.760 Do that. 44:20.120 --> 44:38.080 I got a lot of press because having finished this five and a half hour, eight episode documentary with all the bells and whistles and the little twirly bit, I licensed it Creative Commons Attribute Sharealike, which means basically leave my name on it. 44:40.540 --> 44:44.720 And so I have people who tell me, oh, they're going to pirate your documentary. 44:44.720 --> 44:46.460 And I'm, like, you can't pirate it. 44:48.180 --> 44:49.600 It's copyable, sure. 44:49.640 --> 44:50.280 There's no... 44:50.280 --> 44:51.260 Oh, yeah, I should say that. 44:51.260 --> 44:52.280 When you go through... 44:52.280 --> 44:53.500 This is an important thing in life. 44:53.500 --> 44:59.560 If you always dream of doing something and you do it, take the extra time to do all the things you promised yourself you were going to do. 44:59.560 --> 45:03.840 Even if by the time you do it, you're a bitter old man who can't walk very well. 45:03.840 --> 45:04.760 Do it anyway. 45:05.080 --> 45:09.980 So if it's, like, when I own a car, my car is going to have the shiniest gas cap ever. 45:10.140 --> 45:13.680 And when you get older, you're, like, well, that's a stupid thing to want. 45:14.060 --> 45:15.480 Get yourself a shiny gas cap. 45:15.480 --> 45:15.840 What's the... 45:15.840 --> 45:22.040 Well, when I got this thing, I was, like, I'm not going to have any menus you can't get out of. 45:22.040 --> 45:24.320 I'm not going to have any fucking FBI warning. 45:24.640 --> 45:29.220 I'm not going to have it be region encoded because that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen. 45:29.220 --> 45:30.900 So it's region zero. 45:32.620 --> 45:38.200 You might not know this, but it actually costs money to put CSS on a machine. 45:38.200 --> 45:43.700 Like, you pay a royalty to MacroVision to make your disk not work well. 45:45.140 --> 45:47.800 Like, my printing company was, like, don't do that. 45:48.080 --> 45:48.940 Like, don't use it. 45:48.940 --> 45:49.660 We offer it. 45:49.660 --> 45:51.700 We offer this service you should not do. 45:51.920 --> 45:53.560 But we have to offer it. 45:53.560 --> 45:55.120 Because MacroVision is right here. 45:55.180 --> 45:56.380 Behind us. 46:01.780 --> 46:04.420 So I made sure that all that stuff was like that. 46:04.420 --> 46:07.860 And I also found out, by the way, don't do DVD layer dual layer. 46:07.920 --> 46:09.860 It actually works really shittily. 46:09.860 --> 46:11.600 The laser goes like this. 46:11.720 --> 46:13.080 And at one point, I found this out. 46:13.080 --> 46:15.520 You know what it's like to find out, you're, like, I must be doing something wrong. 46:15.520 --> 46:16.980 And you find out the world is wrong. 46:17.540 --> 46:21.500 The way they get dual layer is that they have two separate areas on a disk. 46:21.500 --> 46:22.720 And they're, like, kind of like this. 46:22.720 --> 46:24.680 And the laser goes along like this. 46:24.680 --> 46:25.540 And it goes, oh, time switch. 46:25.540 --> 46:26.160 Whee! 46:26.240 --> 46:26.360 Okay. 46:26.360 --> 46:30.460 Except that you kind of can't completely control where that is. 46:30.800 --> 46:31.980 You kind of can. 46:31.980 --> 46:32.860 Sort of. 46:32.860 --> 46:34.940 And at one point, it goes, whee! 46:35.760 --> 46:41.220 Except, like I said before, some DVDs go, man, battle stations! 46:41.700 --> 46:42.660 Whee! 46:45.000 --> 46:47.680 And to get around that problem, they have buffers. 46:47.680 --> 46:49.540 Which are sometimes too small. 46:50.520 --> 46:52.300 So they go, whee! 46:53.700 --> 46:54.660 Eee! 46:54.660 --> 46:59.700 If you look at a lot of dual layer DVDs in Hollywood, how do they solve this? 46:59.700 --> 47:01.700 They move it to between transitions. 47:02.400 --> 47:03.780 So it goes black. 47:03.780 --> 47:06.000 And you hear, and then it goes over here. 47:06.000 --> 47:06.680 That's great. 47:06.680 --> 47:10.220 What a fantastic future jetpack world we live in. 47:10.800 --> 47:12.080 Piece of shit. 47:12.100 --> 47:13.920 So I would never do that again. 47:14.460 --> 47:15.440 Don't ever do that. 47:15.440 --> 47:17.860 And once you learn all these things, you're, like, oh, Jesus. 47:17.860 --> 47:18.480 Oh, man. 47:18.480 --> 47:19.540 That's horrible. 47:19.960 --> 47:20.640 Anyway. 47:21.160 --> 47:22.360 Other questions? 47:22.360 --> 47:23.720 Can I... 47:23.720 --> 47:26.240 Can you make fun of DVD more? 47:30.560 --> 47:32.100 Yeah, you just asked, how do you... 47:32.100 --> 47:34.900 How do I feel about people torrenting my DVDs? 47:35.440 --> 47:39.220 I wrote an essay called, Why the BBS Documentary is Creative Commons. 47:39.620 --> 47:44.780 And in that, I talk about why I very specifically understand what's going on with this whole thing. 47:45.000 --> 47:48.640 You know, there's a little bit of a horror going on in a lot of industry. 47:49.840 --> 47:50.240 Because... 47:50.640 --> 47:51.780 Okay, I'm gonna get in trouble. 47:51.780 --> 47:52.060 I... 47:52.060 --> 47:53.700 I call media... 47:53.700 --> 47:54.740 I call a lot of media... 47:54.740 --> 47:55.740 I'm gonna get in trouble. 47:55.740 --> 47:57.920 I call a lot of media makers air sellers. 47:59.160 --> 48:02.240 Because they enclose some air and try to sell it to you. 48:03.100 --> 48:05.300 And, like, the oxygen bar. 48:05.300 --> 48:05.820 And that's not... 48:05.820 --> 48:06.580 You know, I mean, that's one thing. 48:06.580 --> 48:08.020 They're, like, it's my fucking livelihood. 48:08.360 --> 48:11.760 I'm, like, well, your livelihood is extremely duplicatable now, sir. 48:12.840 --> 48:19.920 You know, when we used to be able to make a wheel, and it took three days for Bob the Cobbler to make the fucking wheel, great. 48:20.260 --> 48:23.320 But now we have a machine that makes 4,000 wheels a minute. 48:23.320 --> 48:24.600 Don't stop thinking... 48:25.860 --> 48:27.540 Give Bob a, you know... 48:28.500 --> 48:30.060 Make Bob the guard or something. 48:30.060 --> 48:31.260 You can watch the machine. 48:33.640 --> 48:36.000 So, stop trying to keep Bob around, okay? 48:36.000 --> 48:36.660 I understand. 48:36.660 --> 48:37.220 Poor Bob. 48:37.220 --> 48:38.140 You have a lot of jet... 48:38.140 --> 48:42.320 We have a lot of jet companies in this world that have people whose job is to wind the propeller. 48:43.080 --> 48:44.400 And the thing is, is... 48:45.140 --> 48:50.000 When I made this, I realized we're in a world now where some people simply do not pay for media. 48:50.780 --> 48:51.880 They don't. 48:51.880 --> 48:54.840 They have tools to do it, to get it for you. 48:54.840 --> 48:56.940 No matter what you put on it, they're going to get around it. 48:56.940 --> 49:06.840 All you've done now is treat the rest of your audience like a bunch of, you know, criminals, twitchbags, who are going to steal. 49:06.840 --> 49:07.560 You never know. 49:07.560 --> 49:08.180 Get back here. 49:08.180 --> 49:09.100 I have a knife. 49:09.320 --> 49:12.040 And meanwhile, the guys over here are like, whee! 49:12.040 --> 49:16.260 And so they feel really elite over here, because look at all the... 49:16.260 --> 49:18.560 Look at how they're pounding mom into the ground. 49:18.560 --> 49:19.800 They didn't even touch me. 49:19.800 --> 49:21.260 I got 20, ah! 49:21.260 --> 49:24.980 So what you end up with is this kind of a stupid dichotomy. 49:24.980 --> 49:26.380 So my take on it the whole time... 49:27.860 --> 49:32.300 Around two or three weeks in, I think it was like two weeks in, info fallout. 49:32.660 --> 49:34.340 Where's the documentary? 49:35.560 --> 49:36.860 And I contacted them. 49:36.860 --> 49:38.500 I'm like, you go, girl! 49:38.900 --> 49:40.700 And I found where they posted it. 49:40.700 --> 49:46.540 And I put up this thing going, just so everyone's clear here, it's region zero. 49:46.540 --> 49:46.920 It's... 49:46.920 --> 49:48.160 There's no CSS. 49:48.160 --> 49:49.360 It's Creative Commons. 49:49.360 --> 49:54.660 So they essentially went into a McDonald's and scooped up all the sugar and ketchup packets and went, free food! 49:54.660 --> 49:56.340 I scammed some food! 49:57.540 --> 49:58.780 And I said, okay, well... 49:58.780 --> 50:01.800 Okay, well, here's a link to a PayPal account if you want to send me some money. 50:01.800 --> 50:03.240 But otherwise, you go. 50:03.240 --> 50:05.620 When I was 20, I couldn't afford pizza either. 50:05.880 --> 50:13.800 So of course, you know, you can afford a $50 hard drive, but you can't afford the $10,000 worth of movies you're putting on it. 50:14.400 --> 50:17.640 And they don't see a problem with that, because it's very hard to explain to them why. 50:17.640 --> 50:20.660 So this is going to look like I'm doing a sales pitch, but I'm not. 50:22.040 --> 50:26.640 When I did my documentary, I wanted to make sure that it would have, you know, three DVDs. 50:26.640 --> 50:29.060 It has the photos of everybody there. 50:29.160 --> 50:30.660 It's frigging huge. 50:30.660 --> 50:32.140 It's got the photos in it. 50:32.180 --> 50:34.300 It's 18 gigabytes of data. 50:34.300 --> 50:37.600 It's got a DVD-ROM with the stuff, all the photos I took. 50:37.600 --> 50:39.200 The idea being twofold. 50:39.200 --> 50:42.840 Number one, make it worth the money that I'm selling it for. 50:43.160 --> 50:46.200 And two, make it so fucking big, it's really hard to BitTorrent. 50:47.920 --> 50:50.300 I will out-feature your ass. 50:55.140 --> 50:56.540 I did nine hours. 50:56.860 --> 51:03.680 Some people, I mean, but some people, they're quite happy to watch a postage stamp-size rip of your film with no subtitles. 51:04.040 --> 51:08.080 And trying to convince those people that they want to spend $50 on anything is impossible. 51:08.520 --> 51:09.600 So I don't do that. 51:09.600 --> 51:12.160 So when I saw the BitTorrent thing, I just hopped right on there. 51:12.160 --> 51:13.220 And I was like, hey! 51:13.220 --> 51:15.100 I mean, I have the NFO framed. 51:16.000 --> 51:17.540 And I've talked to the kid. 51:17.540 --> 51:19.000 And the kid's like, I hope to be like you. 51:19.000 --> 51:20.560 And I'm like, yeah, ripped off, like you. 51:20.560 --> 51:22.000 No, I didn't. 51:22.700 --> 51:24.280 He's like, I hope to go into film someday. 51:24.280 --> 51:25.880 And I'm like, oh, what a great start you are. 51:25.880 --> 51:27.500 What a great start you're getting up there. 51:28.380 --> 51:31.620 So no, my attitude with the torrent thing was like, you know, go ahead. 51:31.740 --> 51:34.400 At worst, I mean, I get mail from kids. 51:34.400 --> 51:36.060 I got mail from a kid just recently. 51:36.060 --> 51:37.180 He was like, I'm 17. 51:37.200 --> 51:38.660 I never used BBSs. 51:38.660 --> 51:41.160 This is the best fucking documentary I've ever seen. 51:41.680 --> 51:43.760 You know, I downloaded off a BitTorrent site. 51:43.760 --> 51:44.400 It's great. 51:44.400 --> 51:46.060 Wow, thanks for making this thing. 51:46.420 --> 51:50.540 You know, I'm like, oh, at worst, you know, it makes me sad, actually. 51:50.540 --> 51:52.760 I had a school write to me. 51:52.760 --> 51:53.720 They had purchased a copy. 51:53.720 --> 51:55.900 And they said, can we show this to the kids? 51:57.020 --> 51:59.320 May we show this to the kids? 51:59.400 --> 52:01.860 And I was like, you can make copies for the... 52:01.860 --> 52:07.160 I wrote this big thing back where I'm like, you can make copies for the teachers so they can all evaluate it. 52:07.160 --> 52:10.260 You can have a fundraiser where you charge money to show it to everybody. 52:10.520 --> 52:16.460 You know, you can edit it to take out the profanity, which is, you know, pretty big in some places to show it to the kids. 52:16.460 --> 52:17.720 Do what you need to do. 52:17.900 --> 52:18.680 You bought it. 52:18.680 --> 52:19.220 You own it. 52:19.220 --> 52:20.660 It's a piece of fabric in your house. 52:20.660 --> 52:21.160 Cut it up. 52:21.160 --> 52:21.680 Put it somewhere. 52:21.680 --> 52:23.720 Put it on your front yard. 52:23.720 --> 52:26.580 You know, don't come back to the fabric maker going, please. 52:26.960 --> 52:30.220 You know, don't call up Singer going, oh, sir, can I please do it? 52:30.220 --> 52:31.160 So, no, anyway. 52:31.160 --> 52:33.500 That was a very long answer for a very short question. 52:33.920 --> 52:37.820 Was there an internal anger as a fuel? 52:40.560 --> 52:42.940 Any other questions? 52:43.540 --> 52:49.200 Actually, you know, I always thought that was the reason why the Hacksaw CD got, the DVD got so ripped last year. 52:49.220 --> 52:55.180 Was because, or it was the year before, where they were just ripping it and coming up to him and trying to get him to sign the rips. 52:57.380 --> 52:58.700 Yeah, the porn DVD. 52:59.860 --> 53:06.200 Because it was a cynical exploitation of a subculture presented to that subculture in an attempt to make them swallow it. 53:06.700 --> 53:07.820 And they knew it. 53:08.280 --> 53:12.160 They're like, wow, this was made as long, this probably took as long to make as it is long. 53:13.660 --> 53:15.020 And they felt that. 53:15.020 --> 53:17.960 You watch this thing and you're like, okay, well, this guy really worked on this thing. 53:18.040 --> 53:19.120 Maybe I want to buy it. 53:19.120 --> 53:20.140 Or maybe I can't afford it. 53:20.140 --> 53:21.300 But I would if I could. 53:21.480 --> 53:25.100 You know, I would, I'll keep an eye out for him and maybe something else some other time. 53:25.740 --> 53:28.380 People know, people know when you're not even trying. 53:28.640 --> 53:30.180 You know, when you're just, anyway. 53:30.180 --> 53:33.820 So that, so I think that's why, I mean, I didn't, I didn't have that happen. 53:33.820 --> 53:34.960 I mean, don't try it now. 53:34.960 --> 53:38.660 But I mean, I had, I didn't have anyone walk up to me and go, you know, hey, I ripped your DVD. 53:38.660 --> 53:39.260 Can you sign it? 53:39.260 --> 53:39.920 Ha ha ha. 53:40.320 --> 53:41.420 They stayed away. 53:41.420 --> 53:44.200 They either bought a copy, thanked me for it or whatever. 53:44.860 --> 53:45.840 Oh, he's waving. 53:45.900 --> 53:49.040 Okay, that's, oh yeah, oh yes, exactly. 53:49.040 --> 53:58.600 Just so you all know, I'll stand here and answer questions and sell DVDs for a little, you know, while longer here, gladly. 53:58.600 --> 54:03.580 Just, but you should know that the awards ceremony will be starting over in the big room. 54:03.600 --> 54:08.640 So if you want to go to Jeff Moss's Box of Hot, you know, you should go. 54:08.960 --> 54:10.400 Any other questions? 54:13.500 --> 54:14.480 Oh, hello. 54:29.290 --> 54:36.310 How do I make something as boring as somebody typing on a computer and looking at a screen interesting in a film environment? 54:37.010 --> 54:43.670 And the answer is, you instead focus on why that person was there in the first place. 54:44.110 --> 54:46.510 You ask them, why are you at this keyboard? 54:46.510 --> 54:47.810 Why were you doing this? 54:47.810 --> 54:49.370 Why did you think it was so important? 54:49.370 --> 54:51.810 Why did you think it was important to do that? 54:51.810 --> 54:58.830 And you focus on him, knowing that the story of his thing, you know, the pure technical aspect can be downloaded. 54:58.830 --> 54:59.990 What did the software look like? 54:59.990 --> 55:00.950 Well, you can download that. 55:00.950 --> 55:02.190 What did it, who made it? 55:02.190 --> 55:03.350 It's over here. 55:03.450 --> 55:04.370 Who was on it? 55:04.370 --> 55:05.590 Here's the user list. 55:05.590 --> 55:08.370 But asking a human being, why are you even here? 55:08.370 --> 55:18.810 Why, why, you know, why is the Onion Shack BBS so important to you versus the, you know, the Cat Box BBS, which you hated? 55:18.810 --> 55:21.250 What was so bad about the Cat Box BBS? 55:21.370 --> 55:28.730 And so you go, you know, it's, it's one of these things, you know, instead of asking why, you know, how do I make this interesting? 55:28.730 --> 55:30.670 Ask why they're even there in the first place. 55:30.670 --> 55:31.810 Go back to the human thing. 55:31.810 --> 55:32.870 That's the answer. 55:33.010 --> 55:37.670 When I do text adventures, people are like, I love the, I'm shooting it in high definition. 55:40.010 --> 55:45.590 Which I think is, anyway, I'm sure, yeah, anyway, yeah, yeah, actually the URL is getlamp.com. 55:45.590 --> 55:47.530 The movie's called Get Lamped, don't make one. 55:48.510 --> 55:52.270 And anyway, so it's like, well, what, how could you possibly make that interesting? 55:52.270 --> 55:53.490 It's a bunch of text adventures. 55:53.490 --> 55:54.850 But it's not. 55:54.850 --> 56:03.850 It's actually the story of a bunch of storytellers who had to decide everything their readers could ever want to know ever. 56:04.650 --> 56:06.690 And how do you write like that? 56:06.690 --> 56:12.490 How do you say, I went across a bridge, and you know some people are going to go, can I whiz off the bridge? 56:13.330 --> 56:14.950 Can I blow up the bridge? 56:14.950 --> 56:16.950 What if I bring a dragon on the bridge? 56:16.950 --> 56:18.150 Can I move the bridge? 56:18.150 --> 56:20.290 Is the bridge, is there actually a bridge? 56:20.290 --> 56:21.590 Is the bridge in my mind? 56:22.430 --> 56:25.330 And he had to think all this stuff out beforehand. 56:25.610 --> 56:26.750 And you had to do it. 56:26.750 --> 56:27.670 You had to come up with this stuff. 56:27.670 --> 56:32.890 So to me, talking to the people who came up with those ideas will be fascinating. 56:32.910 --> 56:38.150 How much of that comes out in like just scrolling text is another thing. 56:38.570 --> 56:43.310 Because it's not, it's not, again, it's not, how do you make Zork interesting? 56:43.810 --> 56:47.310 It's, why did you make Zork? 56:47.810 --> 56:49.830 Why did you decide to make a Gru? 56:49.830 --> 56:53.650 Why did you make it, why did you do full sentences in that way? 56:53.650 --> 56:54.890 Why did you insist on doing it? 56:54.890 --> 56:55.590 And so that's the thing. 56:55.590 --> 56:59.350 Those answered questions are where the interest comes from. 56:59.790 --> 57:01.810 And then people go, wow, that's pretty interesting. 57:02.690 --> 57:03.950 Anyway, any other questions? 57:03.950 --> 57:04.630 Yes, sir? 57:04.810 --> 57:06.650 When is Slashdot coming out? 57:06.650 --> 57:07.350 When? 57:09.030 --> 57:14.350 Slashdot is a really great place to get very informed, useful comments, especially if you go to negative one. 57:15.210 --> 57:16.250 So I did that. 57:16.250 --> 57:17.810 A few times I've been announced. 57:18.090 --> 57:19.470 Oh, humanity. 57:20.530 --> 57:24.590 But one of them was, this film was actually the sequel to Mr. 57:24.590 --> 57:29.790 Scott's first film, The History of Drying Paint, a 200-hour epic. 57:31.090 --> 57:36.350 And I wrote back, like, you know, like, dude, you know how hard it was to get Dutch Foy to sponsor that? 57:37.610 --> 57:39.870 But one of the other comments was, oh, fuck this. 57:39.870 --> 57:42.030 I'm waiting for the extended director's edition. 57:42.870 --> 57:47.270 Actually, one of the Easter eggs is a sequel, is a trailer for the sequel to this. 57:47.270 --> 57:51.770 You know, I went and hired a drive-time DJ in Seattle called Smiling J. 57:52.730 --> 57:58.650 Andrews to talk about The Tears of Bordeaux, this epic. 57:58.650 --> 58:00.470 Anyway, so that's buried in there. 58:00.470 --> 58:04.630 Yeah , because a lot of people are like, well, are you, you know, where's the sequel? 58:04.630 --> 58:05.530 I do get that, by the way. 58:05.530 --> 58:06.850 I do get, where's the sequel? 58:06.950 --> 58:13.770 The answer is, I'm going to be taking pretty much all of the 250 hours, cutting out the parts where they're like, where do I look? 58:13.770 --> 58:14.370 Where do I look? 58:14.370 --> 58:16.370 And that kind of stuff, which is question answer. 58:16.370 --> 58:18.750 And I'm just going to put them all up on archive.org. 58:19.170 --> 58:23.050 So archive.org is getting like 200 hours of footage. 58:23.890 --> 58:24.850 Attributes share alike. 58:24.850 --> 58:26.570 And I'm like, make your own fucking documentary. 58:27.310 --> 58:28.510 Right there. 58:28.870 --> 58:33.590 So no, that's pretty much, that's how I'm going to handle it. 58:33.590 --> 58:35.030 I've already made arrangements with them. 58:35.030 --> 58:38.510 I'm going to be another sub-collection of 200 plus hours of footage. 58:38.510 --> 58:39.750 And people can make their own. 58:39.750 --> 58:42.350 Because of course, you know, when I make it, I'm American. 58:42.650 --> 58:44.810 And it's kind of shot in North America. 58:44.950 --> 58:46.350 So the Europeans hate me. 58:46.930 --> 58:48.250 Because I didn't tell their story. 58:48.250 --> 58:49.210 And I'm like, well, I couldn't. 58:49.210 --> 58:50.390 I couldn't tell it. 58:50.450 --> 58:51.590 Where were you? 58:51.650 --> 58:52.310 Fucknut? 58:52.450 --> 58:53.250 2005. 58:54.670 --> 58:58.930 So now they can take my footage and they can remix it under the license any way they want to. 58:58.930 --> 59:00.610 And redo it and do whatever they want. 59:00.650 --> 59:02.450 So I hope people do it. 59:02.450 --> 59:06.590 I always say, I hope this is the worst documentary on BBS's ever made. 59:06.850 --> 59:09.170 And that all the rest of the ones that come kick my ass. 59:09.210 --> 59:11.870 But currently, I am the lowest priced one. 59:13.690 --> 59:14.910 Any other questions? 59:15.490 --> 59:16.290 Yes. 59:20.860 --> 59:21.660 Okay. 59:21.740 --> 59:23.280 Netflix, what was the other one you said? 59:24.180 --> 59:25.380 Green Scene? 59:25.640 --> 59:26.820 I never heard of it. 59:26.820 --> 59:28.000 But beyond that. 59:28.060 --> 59:32.860 The traditional relationship with rental agencies is traditionally an adversarial one. 59:32.860 --> 59:34.320 Normally, the movie directors don't, yeah. 59:34.320 --> 59:36.660 So actually, there's very little... 59:36.660 --> 59:37.480 I have found this out. 59:37.480 --> 59:40.340 There's very little mechanism to go, no, please, rent me. 59:40.620 --> 59:42.820 Because people think that's a money loser. 59:42.960 --> 59:44.340 So they normally want to go through it. 59:44.340 --> 59:45.900 So I've told people... 59:45.900 --> 59:47.180 I mean, I have an ISBN number. 59:47.820 --> 59:49.580 Go tell Netflix the ISBN number. 59:49.580 --> 59:50.920 And a couple people have requested it. 59:50.920 --> 59:53.040 But Netflix hasn't figured out how to reach me. 59:54.200 --> 59:55.460 I wouldn't care. 59:55.460 --> 01:00:00.020 I mean, I know that I'm in at least a few rental companies. 01:00:00.380 --> 01:00:03.140 I had a friend who I hadn't talked to for like 10 years. 01:00:03.140 --> 01:00:08.200 He was like, I was walking by the computer film section of my rental place. 01:00:08.200 --> 01:00:08.960 And there was your film. 01:00:08.960 --> 01:00:13.300 And I thought, oh, I guess I might as well see the film my friend made. 01:00:14.720 --> 01:00:16.160 And Need for Speed. 01:00:17.180 --> 01:00:18.320 Just in case. 01:00:18.460 --> 01:00:19.560 What he said to me. 01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:22.180 So I know it's out there being rented. 01:00:22.180 --> 01:00:24.140 But it's one of those things of like, yeah, I'd love to do it. 01:00:24.140 --> 01:00:27.900 I mean, again, this is where you get into distribution issues right now. 01:00:27.900 --> 01:00:28.900 I'm the distributor. 01:00:28.900 --> 01:00:30.280 I'm doing it all myself. 01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:32.180 Because money. 01:00:33.020 --> 01:00:35.980 And when you go through a middleman, middleman goes, money. 01:00:35.980 --> 01:00:37.140 And you go, money. 01:00:37.280 --> 01:00:41.820 And then a little bit later, when you go through other ones, it's like, money, money, money. 01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:42.640 Nickel. 01:00:44.020 --> 01:00:44.660 Nickel. 01:00:46.600 --> 01:00:51.360 And so, and you know, and that's fine when it's one billion nickels. 01:00:51.360 --> 01:00:52.240 But anyway. 01:00:52.380 --> 01:00:53.100 Amazon. 01:00:53.140 --> 01:00:54.100 I sell through Amazon. 01:00:54.100 --> 01:00:55.160 Here's a good example. 01:00:55.200 --> 01:00:56.160 I sell through Amazon. 01:00:56.160 --> 01:01:00.420 Everyone's like, because I had a lot of people who were like, well, why would I buy it from some anonymous fucking up with a computer? 01:01:00.420 --> 01:01:01.700 I want to buy it from Amazon. 01:01:01.940 --> 01:01:02.380 Great. 01:01:02.380 --> 01:01:02.820 Excellent. 01:01:02.820 --> 01:01:03.160 Good. 01:01:03.160 --> 01:01:04.120 60 bucks. 01:01:04.820 --> 01:01:08.200 Reason why is because Amazon takes 55% of the cover price. 01:01:09.500 --> 01:01:12.780 So when you sell, so people like, why are you selling 50 on your site? 01:01:12.780 --> 01:01:17.120 And, you know, and you're selling it for 60 on Amazon. 01:01:17.120 --> 01:01:20.140 I'm like, well, because less than half is a bitch slap. 01:01:20.840 --> 01:01:22.560 I'll deal with half. 01:01:22.840 --> 01:01:27.560 I don't mind getting 25 of the 50 instead of 50. 01:01:27.560 --> 01:01:31.520 But man, I'm not going to do, you know, that's just, that hurts. 01:01:31.520 --> 01:01:31.880 That hurts. 01:01:31.880 --> 01:01:34.140 That hurts in the no-no hole. 01:01:36.620 --> 01:01:41.040 So I actually ended up just, you know, selling through them. 01:01:41.040 --> 01:01:41.880 And it's nice. 01:01:41.880 --> 01:01:44.500 They'll call me and say, we need 30 units. 01:01:44.660 --> 01:01:46.400 So I box up 30 units and mail it. 01:01:46.400 --> 01:01:48.880 I have 5,000 copies in my basement. 01:01:49.540 --> 01:01:50.960 Because I think big. 01:01:52.040 --> 01:01:55.200 Oh, that's, yeah, that's the thing I probably should make clear. 01:01:55.960 --> 01:01:57.300 You know, I shot it for this. 01:01:57.300 --> 01:01:59.400 And a lot of people were like, wow, you're really fucked. 01:01:59.400 --> 01:02:01.180 But I really pull in for you. 01:02:01.240 --> 01:02:02.080 You know, that kind of thing. 01:02:02.080 --> 01:02:04.100 Like, I'm going to walk backwards across the United States. 01:02:04.100 --> 01:02:06.120 It's like, you go. 01:02:06.380 --> 01:02:07.440 Kind of a deal. 01:02:07.440 --> 01:02:11.300 Anyway, the BBS documentary was profitable within three weeks of coming out. 01:02:12.180 --> 01:02:16.700 And I mean, like, including the $30,000 duplication price. 01:02:17.940 --> 01:02:21.180 So it was like $30,000 to duplicate it. 01:02:21.180 --> 01:02:22.660 It was like 20-something thousand. 01:02:22.660 --> 01:02:24.860 We're still arguing over exactly how much it was. 01:02:24.860 --> 01:02:27.180 My wife is mad at that and so on. 01:02:27.700 --> 01:02:28.720 You know, she's the shit. 01:02:28.720 --> 01:02:30.800 As soon as it was a product, she grabbed it. 01:02:30.800 --> 01:02:32.160 I don't even see it anymore. 01:02:32.300 --> 01:02:33.000 She's shipping. 01:02:33.000 --> 01:02:33.940 I don't see it. 01:02:35.340 --> 01:02:37.820 So, you know, it was like 50 grand. 01:02:37.820 --> 01:02:39.620 I made 50 grand within the first three weeks. 01:02:39.620 --> 01:02:43.840 Because I knew that there was a story to be told. 01:02:43.840 --> 01:02:44.880 I saw the gap. 01:02:45.120 --> 01:02:46.400 And I didn't do it for money. 01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:48.180 Or it would have been shot in six months. 01:02:48.500 --> 01:02:50.540 I did it for four years, because let's get it right. 01:02:50.820 --> 01:02:52.440 And I got it right, I think. 01:02:52.440 --> 01:02:53.380 I got it somewhat right. 01:02:53.380 --> 01:02:54.460 I got a good start. 01:02:54.720 --> 01:02:58.940 I got something where someone can go, it's like that, except actually it was blue. 01:02:59.440 --> 01:03:04.160 It's much easier to go, and it was blue, as opposed to trying to explain to somebody everything this tells them. 01:03:04.160 --> 01:03:04.660 So that's good. 01:03:04.660 --> 01:03:05.180 I like that. 01:03:05.180 --> 01:03:06.980 I don't mind being put down that way. 01:03:06.980 --> 01:03:11.840 Um, but yeah, I definitely was able to, um, what's the word? 01:03:11.840 --> 01:03:14.380 I was able to recoup my costs almost immediately. 01:03:14.660 --> 01:03:17.320 So that reminds me, I'm selling these. 01:03:17.400 --> 01:03:18.380 I think we have to get out. 01:03:18.380 --> 01:03:19.220 Do we have to get out, sir? 01:03:19.220 --> 01:03:20.060 Yeah, we got to get out. 01:03:20.060 --> 01:03:21.200 They're going to close the tent. 01:03:22.320 --> 01:03:24.860 It's been wonderful to have you all stick around.