NOTE: THIS SYNOPSIS CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS. SO IF YOU CAN TOLERATE SPOILERS, READ ON.......
This is constructed from a letter I was going to give to the film director of "We Live in Public", Ondi Timoner...
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I adore "We Live In Public" so divinely. I love the Internet, I also love Facebook, but I also had seen changes in the world that affect almost everyone.
We know what happened when 9-11 happened. And ever since I saw your film at I-Cubed Hypermedia, I backtracked every part that I liked about the film and hence I made up my own synopsis that I hope that you really like...
SYNOPSIS OF "WE LIVE IN PUBLIC"
(by Charles Joseph Smith)
Down in the vast, vast city which is known as New York City---a man who would be coined as "The Andy Warhol of the Internet", Josh Harris, had got caught up in the explosion of computers when he lived in this city.
In the 1980s, Josh Harris had seen the computer/electronic age bud with the Commodore computer keyboard, the IBM chip, dot-matrix printers, large VDT screens, and of course, 8-track tapes and hi-fi stereo systems like Zenith's Allegro and a defunct brand, Electrophonic, that were about to be dead. Reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes and its boomboxes, and filmstrips, were popular in those years, as well as the Kodachrome, the Polaroid camera, and the traditional video projector.
He also had seen the birth of the cellular telephones as bulky telephones at first before the smaller cell phones came up in the later 1990s.
He also had started to see IBM's rival....Apple, which presented the Macintosh computer, take full bloom. He had also seen the rise of the telephone and its big, big contributions to Internet communications at its very onset in the 1980s when interest in computers start to explode in earnest in this decade thanks to songs like "Mr. Roboto" by Styx and "Computer Blue" by Prince.
He had seen the power of the first thing the computer "per se" is now known for---the Internet, and with the help of the telephone, the Internet led to a new form of electronic communication....chatting, or chat rooms. He also knew that the Internet would be the most popular computer trend not only for the United States...but also the rest of the world.
He also had seen the power of TV networks spreading news, game shows, sports, and talk show programs all over the world.
So with that, he set up something radical...very, very radical...he formed his own "counter-broadcast" television network that he vowed would take the big broadcast networks like CNN, CBS, and NBC out of business.
He teamed up with mainly up-and-coming young middle-class and upper-class hipsters, counterculturalists, LGBTQ people, and other free-lovers and flower-people that he really knew to set up this network, which eventually would be called Pseudo-TV. ("Pseudo"--means false.)
The opening for Pseudo-TV was wild enough before his own big "experimental bunker party" that happened in the 3rd Millennnium. Josh Harris threw a big alternative party for this network, that would attract very quickly about 200-300 potential clients that would be either participants in his forming of Pseudo TV or fans of it.
In the end, about 1,000 to 1,500 fans were made by just one party!
As Pseudo-TV reached its peak with its out-of-this-world programs---half of them derived from or inspired by independent media's "talk radio", several of Josh's subordinates formed a Pseudo-TV talk show program named for an illicit firecracker...."Cherry Bomb", which would feature its host, lively Tanya Corrin, which would eventually become Josh's temporary love-interest.
As Pseudo-TV's fanbase blossomed to 20,000 or so, the FCC had become concerned about Josh's "counterfeit" network as well as the big TV and radio networks. At that point, Josh Harris decided to make a move that he thought would beckon the big communication juggernauts like CNN or similar stations to pay attention to Pseudo-TV...only to lead to the slow decadence of this alternative station in approximately 5 years.
In the spirit of being indirectly inspired by the young life of autistic Temple Grandin, who used an alter ego of hers to create her unusual dreams and worlds, Josh Harris decided to become a clown with a stage name (and eventually his alter-ego)....called Luvvy. Josh's plan was what I call "The Luvvy Project."
Sadly, the disheveled clown face and garb--as well as his unusually erratic clown behavior----created an intolerable reaction to most of the Pseudo-TV fans, and even betrayed Josh's best friend.
And at the same time, the big broadcast networks and the FCC went on an "counterinsurgent quest" to bring not only "Cherry Bomb" down...but also the whole Pseudo-TV network with it.
Eventually, Pseudo-TV had enough and had to call it quits....and pull its own plug.....for good.
With the complete destruction of Pseudo-TV, Josh who had became "Luvvy" still, had decided on a mission. A mission on a grand, grand scale in the counterculturalist world.
I speculated that Josh found a tenement loft in New York that was abandoned, and decided that this would be the perfect place to launch one of his most radical counterculturalist projects in the whole wide world!! People who are fans of or participated in "Burning Man" would adore his project very, very well! I would call this "The Millennium Bunker Project."
"The Millennium Bunker Project" was designed for a simulation of complete protection from the outside world...probably against the end of the world....when the Millennium struck on January 1, 2000.
Definitely this was based on the people's fears that Y2K could cripple entire computer systems and even stop atomic clocks from functioning.
The setup for this perhaps one of the Josh's wildest counterculturalist parties since Burning Man begins. Sandra Bernhard was not one of the invited guests (although I guessed she would be there)....but Missy Galore....was. I had known Missy Galore personally when she was doing VJ stuff at the Boneyard Arts Festival in 2005 in Urbana, IL. Now, she was in NY in this experimental hotel, preparing to survive the ultimate countercultural test--joining the other 100 or so partyers in the most radical space of all, dealing with closed quarters, occasional bangs of gunfire from a nearby shooting range (since the guns used in the compound were allowed thanks to NY film permits for the firearms), and of course...hundreds and hundreds of survelliance cameras set up not only at the compound's living quarters...but also in the party area (the "bar area") and the interrogation room area.
As the partyers enter in the first minutes inside the compound, they are almost like cattle...milling around the beds, the firearm range, the bar area, and are searching the bunk beds to find the perfect bed for them.
As more partyers enter, there is a type of noise level that you probably only expect probably if this was the 4th of July. More people are in the firearm range shooting guns. Some people in the compound are starting to become scared of the bangs. But some others start to be impervious to the gunfire and are using anti-fear techniques like free-love and friendship with all of the mates inside this unusual hangout.
Then, the interrogation room opens and actors pretending to be
interrogators suit up and make their way to this room which I would call the "torture room."
As the last partyer enters the bunker, the interrogation room already had several participants acting as "victims". Then the "fuzz"...partyers who volunteered to pretend to be cops and security guards, mill around the area in a benign way at first at the partyers. The food and drink starts to flow, television screens go on, and the party starts off like any other alternative party.
As the big millennium party approaches and the last hours of midnight approaches as well, the fake cops and security guards start to become a bit more belligerent, a bit more violent, a bit more sadistic. The music starts to become louder, and the bar starts to serve more alcohol than cocktails.
Meanwhile, half the participants are scared of those video surveillance cameras, and those who got out of the interrogation room are afraid of their emotions and afraid that they could be sent to that dreaded room again.
Quick exchanges of friendship and what I call "hipstery" are starting to explode gradually in the bunker's living quarters and in the bar (Hipstery is, in my words, mainly friendships and relationships related to the LGBTQ or any free-love attitudes, or attitudes relating to "flower love" or "flower girls"). The music starts to grow louder and...you probably guess that something is going to turn "ugly" at the bunker soon.
As the food runs out near the millennium, participants attitudes' change. What started out as simple foreplay, debonair joys, and hunky-dory communications by partyers under the veil of video cameras started to turn gradually chaotic.
More people are joining the "bang"---firing guns at the firing range...in the tradition of Americans firing guns in the air at midnight to celebrate the first minutes of the first midnight hour of the first day of the New Year.
At the same time, about 10-15 more people had gone out of the interrogation room in shock, and this shock spreads almost all over the compound. Chaos starts to gradually grow as midnight approaches.
As the Millennium approaches and midnight is struck, the scene becomes progressively more chaotic. People are flying beer cans, and overt sexual activity exponentiates to the stratosphere, especially in the shower area, and others are starting to scream their hearts out and even fight with fists at themselves...at each other...and even at other found objects.
More gunfire explodes into the air, and then, the whole bunker scene turns into the most chaotic....leading to the most climatic scene of anarchy ever in any guerrilla documentary that I had ever seen!. People start to pillage the place with brute force, tear down papers and make messes on the floor with juices and beer; there is even more explicit sex, and even more screaming explodes into wildfire.
This ultimate anarchy is definitely reminiscent of the Disco Demolition Night in White Sox Park on July 12, 1976, when 12,000 fans out of the 52,000 in attendance decided to storm the field after the 50,000 disco records in center field were blown up by DJ personality Steve Dahl and his Insane Coho Lips Army (with the help of Lorelei, the Loop Lady) with pyrotechnics and dynamite.
Sadly, the loud chaos was overheard by those in the party outside that were supposed to work as counterculturlist security guards...I call them CDGs. CDGs were stationed outside the entrances of the bunker to keep NYPD officers from getting into the party and playing off any attempt by NYPD officers to enter the ultra-countercultrulist compound. But the exponential explosion of noise complaints inside the compound forced those CDGs to give up to the police upon threat of arrest and they (the police) had no choice but to enter the compound. And when the NYPD came right into the "compound", with a search warrant in a form of a "vacate order", it meant one big thing...
THE "COUNTERCULTURLIST PARTY TO END ALL COUNTERCULTURALIST PARTIES" IS OFFICIALLY SHUT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU ARE ORDERED TO VACATE THE COMPOUND IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All of the partyers were escorted out of the compound 12-14 hours after the millennium struck by NYPD police, citing several things: a very dangerous cult that got out of hand, forced confinement without giving the partyers additional food and water, and hosts allowing the partyers to resort to criminal mischief and a litany of disorderly, lewd, and dangerous acts, which included mob action and of course, the firing of guns, and not having a general permit to hold such a party.
Then, Josh Harris entered the already closed compound and saw 3 other partyers who successfully hid from the police after the partyers were ordered vacated. He tells them with a point of a finger and gives the heave-ho signal and says to them....."OUT! OUT! OUT! I don't want to see you in this place anymore...Out! Out! Out! OUUTTTT!!!"
As the final people are forced out, Josh is feeling extremely depressed and dejected.
With his "bunker project" flatlined, Josh had decided to hold the "After the vacating of the bunker" party with 25-30 of his bunker party participants on a boat on a New York river. He went to one of his love interests, Tanya Corrin, who appeared as the host of "Cherry Bomb" until Pseudo-TV came under, and proposed marriage. Tanya very gladly accepted, and then with that, Josh Harris started his new project that came out of the defunct "millennium bunker" project.
He and Tanya decided to retrofit their apartment (probably a condo) with 50 to 60 survelliance cameras. I watched "Enemy of the State" and I had seen the awful power of the denuding of a person's privacy when surveillance cameras are rolling at that person...it happened to Will Smith. But Josh's and Tanya's project of having their entire intimate relationship life on survelliance cameras was extremely shocking. I see their private talkings, their conversations in the bathroom, sex in the bedroom, and even domestic violence!! Then, as the crash of April 14, 2000 wipes out half of Josh's financial assets....and eventually a lot more assets than that....Josh and Tanya resort to more fighting, more arguing, and even more talk about money. Eventually, Tanya's realization that Josh cannot afford expenses to keep up with her causes Tanya to say, "THIS RELATIONSHIP....IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
As Tanya leaves the camera-ridden house, Josh is left alone in the apartment to suffer for a long time not only the loss of Tanya, but also the pain of nearly being homeless.
Indirectly, it is the attitude of Josh being "Luvvy" that caused Tanya to opt-out, and eventually, with exponential expenses of living hitting at Josh very, very hard, Josh had no choice but to leave the apartment about a short time after Tanya left the place for good. And like Tanya, Josh leaves the place for the last time...as I say again, for good!
He resorts to a partial exile by temporarily living on a tree farm, where bits of "Luvvy" still continue. He uses his rifle to shoot at an abandoned barn in the farm in angry gest to the "big brother" and all of the juggernauts that ruined his life. Eventually, Josh had enough of living in the country and had thought of an idea of going back to the city to try to create a brand new pitch that could rescue him from his downfall. Will this thing work for Josh, and will he do it without Tanya Corrin at his helm?
In one last pitch, Josh goes to the city, to a software developing company that also is home to the corporate offices of MySpace, for his pitch...he was telling that company about his strong tech-savvy accomplishments in the 1980s decade of the computer world, to try to make his own company...Josh's. He already founded a netcasting company, Operator 11, which ran quite well for a time, and had thoughts to expand the company. Regrettably, the software developing company declined his offer and he was left holding the bag in shame. The reason for the rejection was simple...his "Luvvy-like" behavior when he was living it up when Pseudo-TV was on the air and the domestic fight with Tanya Corrin in Josh's second project. Soon afterwards, Josh ran out of money very quickly--so quickly that he had no choice but to end his "Operator 11" project forever.
With the "Luvvy" ego completely destroyed in his life and Josh on the ropes to severe penury, he resorted to Garveyism (acting like Marcus Garvey, an African-American who had Pan-Africanist ideals when he moved to Africa to escape the racism of the United States of America)....he moved out of the country in exile, almost like Romeo was when he was forced to in "Romeo and Juliet."
His exile was under raps for awhile until Josh Harris was spotted in another country....in Africa.
Even with the exile to Africa complete, at the end of the movie, Josh said his newly ascetic behavior cleansed him from all of the toxic cravings that ruined his business, his former girlfriend, and his sanity, and he declares that he had seen the effects of the exponential growth of the Internet in the form of social networks like Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace, where any person joining such networks, regrettably, have to give up privacy in return for trying to create their own fame.
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I am no Roger Ebert...but I give the movie FIVE STARS! I am not kidding....FIVE STARS!! Good job, Ondi, but I am sorry that I was unable to see you Monday night in Chicago......
Very good job, Ondi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
:):) :)
Most sincerely yours,
Charles Joseph Smith
Fan of "We Live in Public"
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