at the very least, i’m glad you made the movies that you did, so even if you stopped altogether, you’d be going out on a high note, in my books at least.

aaron

p.s: bomb is the bomb. thx for the add.

I’m not saying I never will, but I’m happy not to, for the moment.

Also, I never set out to be a filmmaker. I’m a musician and a writer. Film was just a side venture, to get some thoughts out there that didn’t work as well in music or writing for me. And it worked.

MWD

Me too, But We still all wanna hear more Music,.. perhaps your greatest talent.

I do recognize that its extra hard and not as gratifying to do without a band, or a live audience.

But please dont let those golden pipes get rusty! (*:

I like that.
One thing I loved about being in a band was that it felt like a gang. (Especially since I am 5′5″ and everyone in Bomb was much taller and tougher, and I liked to drink and start shit back then, and they’d jump in to back me up, even when I probably didn’t deserve backup, because I was asking for it. But they also backed me up when I didn’t ask for it. As much as we argued, even coming to blows a time or two, I felt very safe loading gear into the van in the worst ‘hoods of America and Europe, which is usually where the clubs we played were. I do remember on club in Toledo though, ‘hood was so bad that the owner stood on the roof of the club with a shotgun to protect the bands while they loaded out at 3 AM.)

But the thing I like about filmmaking is that the gang changes from shoot to shoot. It’s easier to fire people who are problematic, and you can also keep the same few who rock from project to project. Many directors always use the same cinematographer. For instance, Darren Aronofsky always uses the same cinematographer, his film school buddy, Matthew Libatique. And usually uses music by Clint Mansell and/or Kronos Quartet.

>As you point out, audio production is less a crew-served creative process, and writing even less so, requiring only a yellow pad and a pencil.

“Film will only become art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.” —Jean Cocteau

I think we’re almost to that point, but closer with podcasting. Also, there’s something immediate about the soul-to-soul connection of one voice talking to you in your ear, without the distraction of images. And it allows you to keep working, like a good ant on the pile! lol…. About 70% of the SAC podcast audience (about 10,000 downloads per episode) is, if our fan e-mails are representative, women listening in on their iPods at work while working in a cubicle in an office. I LOVE that. Feels very subversive to me. Better than what used to be my ultimate high: playing bass and singing loud on a stage to a couple of hundred men and women. I loved that too, and there’s the immediate feedback of them cheering in your face, and they really notice when you take your clothes off, but lifting amps is hard, and sleeping on vomit-stained floors is a young man’s game. I’m really happy with how I’ve reinvented myself, while most of the people I played music with are very little artistic. At best, they’re playing the same kind of music they did back then to the same old people in the same clubs, and working a day job. (Except this cat, Cliff Truesdell,
http://clifftruesdell.wordpress.com/
I mentored him into writing books, and he does that for a living now.
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Digital-Audio-Production-Professional/dp/0470102594
)

Writing self-published books is usually just me and the wife, but books I do for pay have a crew. And on the YouTube book, I got to even got the company to hire the freelance editor and freelance tech editor I’d worked with before and enjoyed working with at a different company. And the guy I co-wrote the book with, Alan, was a pleasure to work with, even though it was his first book. We’re gonna try to find another project soon.

>No VCRs, no HD recorders, none of that shit. You had to be sitting in front of the tube at the preordained time or you missed it.

My friend Danny Plotnick made a great short about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIrxc3IAbww
(full disclosure: I did the post-production audio on this one.)

MWD

It is a weapon requiring more than one person to operate it, like an artillery piece or a tank.

Film or video, similarly, is a crew-served creative process. You CAN be a one-man band but it’s damned tough. We’ve both done our long-form stuff in video, yours being by far the better, and I can only imagine the hell you went through with your Selby movie (which everyone should buy, BTW.)

As you point out, audio production is less a crew-served creative process, and writing even less so, requiring only a yellow pad and a pencil.

I still dig the short form video stuff because I can DIM (do it myself) but like my artist friend George says: “When I paint I’m the producer, director, writer, cast, crew—and often, the audience.”

So I understand what you’re saying about crafting podcasts and text.

And that’s a great observation, art that can be consumed in a factory or cubicle. Without the podcasts I download and listen to in my factory job, I’d go apeshit. This ability to time-shift (record something whenever, consume it later) keeps us from being glued to the TV or radio at certain times because we can always watch / listen later. Not like back in the day when you wanted to watch, say, Ed Sullivan. No VCRs, no HD recorders, none of that shit. You had to be sitting in front of the tube at the preordained time or you missed it.

Thanks for the ideas and thoughts. They ricochet around in my skull and keep things interesting…