This week, filmmaker Ondi Timoner (DIG!) guest blogs about her Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film We Live in Public for Hulu. — Editor.

“Are you interested in documenting social history?” Josh Harris, the subject of my documentary, asked me in an unexpected phone call in 1999. Josh didn’t seem to know exactly what he meant by this yet, but he knew he wanted to do something spectacular to mark the turn of the millennium. He believed this next century would mark the takeover of man by machine. The result was the most bizarre and fascinating social experiment I had ever witnessed. “Quiet: We Live In Public” was a bunker which included a “pod” hotel that slept 150 people beneath New York City for 30 days. These “Podwellians” or “citizens” lived together, ate together, showered and went to the bathroom in public, slept together, and shared everything with hundreds of cameras that captured it all. “Everything’s free, except your image,” Josh stated slyly. “That we own.” Little did I know at the time, Josh was yet again predicting the future. He had, after all, built his fortune creating the first-ever Internet market research company, Jupiter Communications, and founded Pseudo.com — the first Internet television network — long before there was broadband. Though socially inept himself, Josh knew human behavior, and he knew that when broadband made it possible to share our lives, we would trade our privacy, and eventually our freedom, for the recognition and connection we so dearly crave. Ten years later, the “pod hotel” has turned into websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube — and we are the Podwellians.

After the SWAT team shut down the bunker on New Year’s Day 2000, Josh rigged his loft with 32 motion controlled surveillance cameras and 66 microphones and announced that he and his girlfriend were going to be the first couple ever to live in public, 24/7 for six months straight. This is the beginning of the biggest, most chilling chapter of this cautionary tale.

We Live in Public explores the dark side of one of the most important and powerful inventions in the last century. Without it we couldn’t have edited or released the film in fact, but any bright light has a dark side. We Live in Public captures the draw and the effect of the Internet on our human psyche and society. While our film premiered at Sundance in January 2009, almost two years later, I’ve noticed a sudden spree of films that are also exploring dark side of the Internet. Films like The Social Network and Catfish also look at the risks of deception in identity and failed intimacy in the digital realm, as well as, once again, the aspects of human behavior that drive us to connect and make the “in” crowd above maintaining our privacy and integrity. Catfish is especially relevant and eerily frightening here. We cannot forget that this is a virtual world and that people can represent themselves any way they want, whether or not its real. And I was particularly struck with the similarities between Josh Harris and the character of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in The Social Network. They both dearly craved to be the center of the social scene, but were instead the architects of social networks they could observe and exploit. They desired to control and rule a world they manufactured themselves, but also always wanted to be known and recognized in the physical world. The destruction in this human drive becomes starkly evident when Josh turns the camera on himself and lives six months of his own life in public. Zuckerberg never seemed to have this desire, or courage, but he and Josh were both enraptured with the aspects of control that the bunker “pod” hotel and Facebook provided them. It is interesting to consider the control we all feel we have online, as we willingly forfeit our data daily.

We Live in Public is the favorite of my menagerie. The message it carries is so vital, both in looking at the star of the film: Harris is the puppeteer turned puppet — a man who was raised on the electronic calories of TV and mediates his whole life with cameras, eventually ruining even his only chance at intimate love; as well as the people who willingly make themselves the pawns in his chess game, as we do online today, without thinking twice. In fact it wasn’t until 2007, when I saw the first public posting on my wall on Facebook, that I realized Josh’s predictions were coming true. We at Interloper Films pushed to finish the film in eight short months of editing (that’s 5,000 hours down to 88 minutes) to make the Sundance 2009 deadline. I realized we were on the precipice of all that Josh had predicted. Like the Quiet bunker experiment, websites like Facebook and Google had users thinking they were living their lives in public with no cost. However, just one month after the film premiered at Sundance in January 2009, it was discovered that Facebook changed its privacy policy to state they owned any content its users published on the site. Furthermore, Facebook can make changes to this privacy policy without telling us at any time, and our continued use of the site acknowledges these terms of agreement. So tread carefully, for now we are all citizens of the bunker. And your reactions to my film on Hulu are being recorded as you watch… (just kidding, I think!..)

Bon Appétit,
Ondi Timoner

Like indieWIRE‘s parent company, SnagFilms, who have been showcasing documentaries tied into Tuesday’s important midterm election in their Midterm Madness series, our curated Hulu Documentaries this week are also tied into the election. This week’s selections take a look back at various elections, on the local and national level, as well as the impact of particular politicians or would-be politicians.

With so much divisiveness in play with this election, a good place to start to make sense of it all is Kelly Nyck’s Split: A Divided America. Traveling across the nation to speak to ordinary Americans as well as politicians and pundits, Nyck’s seeks to uncover the reasons for the partisan divides that inevitably do more harm than good, examining how religion, economics, race, and geography interact with media to foster the red state vs. blue state, Republican vs. Democrat divide.

Focusing in on one red state, and one small town, Crawford, directed by David Modigliani, tells the story of the site of President George W Bush’s ranch “home.” Using the less than a thousand strong population town as a microcosm of the US under Bush’s administration, the film shows the powerful impact that his residency had on the once obscure place, from his election onwards.

Texas is also the subject of Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck’s The Big Buy: Tom Delay’s Stolen Congress. The filmmakers build a case against the Texan Congressman, as he faces a criminal investigation into campaign fundraising and his role in attempting to redraw the state’s Congressional districts for political gain.

Moving West to California, director Dan Cox follows Austrian-born Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fulfillment of the American Dream when the former Mr Universe sets his sights on the Governor’s seat in Running With Arnold. With a tongue-in-cheek approach, the film takes an often critical look at the path “the Governator” has taken towards his political career.

Marlo Poras takes a look at another seemingly unlikely political candidate in Run Granny Run, 94-year-old Doris Haddock, frustrated with the state of politics, decides to make an unexpected bid for the US Senate just months before the election in this entertaining and inspiring doc.

Finally, the humorous Anytown USA, directed by Kristian Fraga, looks at small town Bogota, NJ, where three candidates (two of them legally blind!) enter a fiercely competitive mayoral race, revealing the highly polarized and counterproductive nature of partisan politics.

As an added bonus, if you didn’t have a chance to take a look at last week’s Halloween selection, The Impaler. W Tray White’s film also fits into this week’s theme as it follows a vampire/dark priest/witch in his Minnesota gubernatorial run.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

Like last week’s selections, our curated Hulu Documentaries this week are also inspired by Halloween — some more loosely, others directly related to the holiday and the dark figures it celebrates. This group of films features both more recent productions as well as some classics, and takes as their subjects fictional and real life vampires, horror movie hosts, Halloween revelers, and underground or just plain out-there filmmakers.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “indieWIRE @ Hulu Docs” is a regular column spotlighting the iW-curated selections on Hulu’s Documentaries page, a unique collaboration between the two sites. iW selections appear in the carousel at the top of the page and under “Featured Content” in the center. Be sure to check out these great non-fiction projects each week. — Basil Tsokios, indieWIRE

A fitting place to start this week’s selections is Chris Blankenship and Michelle Canning’s new documentary, Halloween on 6th Street, which focuses on one of the most entertaining cities in the US: Austin, Texas. While I’ve only been there for South by Southwest, it’s clear that there’s a lot going on on the popular 6th Street, as Halloween fanatics like the profiled Bud Hasert gather for a huge party in their creative and elaborate costumes.

Though not exclusively focused on Halloween, American Scary, by director John E. Hudgens certainly scares up an appropriate subject: the hosts of local TV stations “creature feature” programs, who would vamp or camp it up before commercial breaks during horror/monster B-movie screenings.

Elements of horror, sci-fi, and even social issues popped up in the work of the king of bad movies, Ed Wood Jr. His former production partner, Crawford John Thomas produced Brett Thompson’s Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr. as a tribute to the creator of the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.

Spiritual and kooky kin to Wood, but more self-aware and playful, George and Mike Kuchar are the subjects of Jennifer Kroot’s It Came From Kuchar. The doc reveals how the Bronx-based brothers began making lurid, no-budget, underground 8mm films in the 1950s with titles like The Naked and the Nude and Sins of the Fleshapoids.

Keeping an eye in the past, Calvin Floyd’s 1974 film In Search of Dracula, narrated by the great Christopher Lee, travels to Eastern Europe and elsewhere to investigate the historical and cultural origins of the legends of Dracula and the vampire myth.

Moving to the present day, W Tray White’s The Impaler puts the spotlight on a modern-day self-proclaimed vampire, Jonathon Sharkey, as he runs for the position of Governor of Minnesota in 2006. In addition to his relation to Dracula’s people, Sharkey is also a Satanic dark priest and a hecate witch, which, unsurprisingly draws a firestorm of media attention to his bid for political office.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

Editor’s Note: “indieWIRE @ Hulu Docs” is a regular column spotlighting the iW-curated selections on Hulu’s Documentaries page, a unique collaboration between the two sites. Be sure to check out these great non-fiction projects each week.

For indieWIRE’s Hulu Documentaries selection this week, we’re presenting two separate themes: LGBT Youth and Iraq in Perspective. The first is a reaction to the recent spate of LGBT youth suicides, and also ties into this week’s National Coming Out Day, October 11, while the second uses the anniversary of the declaration of war on Iraq on October 16 as an opportunity to reflect on the soldiers who risked their lives there. — Basil Tsokios, indieWIRE

LGBT Youth:
As the head of NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival for many years, I was often able to bring stories about LGBT youth to NYC’s gay community, which is more aware than the larger general public about the risk this population has of suffering the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse of bullies, which sometimes unfortunately leads to suicide. The recent news coverage about this issue, and its dissemination over social media, has brought much needed wider exposure. I hope this mainstream exposure can continue in some small part through the spotlight Hulu can provide in showcasing these two docs.

Out in the Silence comes from directors and life partners Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson. When Wilson decided to place an announcement in his rural hometown’s newspaper that he was marrying his partner, the result was a series of letters to the editor condemning the listing and the men’s relationship. It also resulted in a plea for help from Kathy, the mother of 16-year-old CJ, whose coming out in school led to ostracism, hazing, and threats of violence. Returning to conservative Oil City, Penn., Wilson and Hamer set out to meet his critics and to try to help CJ deal with the homophobic bullying he’d been experiencing.

After Erin Davies discovers that her rainbow-stickered VW Beetle has been vandalized with homophobic slurs, she decides to use this as an opportunity to spread awareness about hate crimes. Traveling around the US and Canada in her car, still defaced with the words “fag” and “u r gay,” she visits other LGBT individuals who have experienced more severe abuse and learns their stories during her two month trip documented in Fagbug.

Iraq in Perspective:
While combat operations did not begin until March 2003, the Congress’ resolution to authorize military force against Iraq was signed on October 16, 2002. While President Obama declared an end to combat operations this past August 31, the legacy of the conflict remains. Regardless of their filmmakers’ politics, the four selections below share a concern with the soldiers and the impact that the war has had on them.

On May 1, 2003 President Bush gave his infamous speech that major combat operations in Iraq would cease. Seven months later, in Mission Accomplished, a celebrated BBC journalist travels to Iraq for a first-hand look at the new Iraq. Sean Langan speaks with civilians, representatives of the growing insurgent movement, and US soldiers, gaining fascinating insight into the varied perspectives of life post liberation/occupation, and how the soldiers made sense of it on the ground.

Patriot Act: A Jeffrey Ross Home Movie takes as its inspiration legendary USO frontman Bob Hope as comedian Jeffrey Ross participates in Drew Carey’s USO comedy show to entertain the troops in 2003′s newly liberated Iraq. Focusing more on the behind-the-scenes of the comedians’ experiences of the aftermath of the invasion of Baghdad than the performances, the film gives their impressions of being in a war zone, meeting soldiers, and hearing their stories.

Civia Tamarkin’s Jerabek focuses on the story of the titular family who lose their 18-year-old son Ryan to Iraq’s battlefield in 2004 and must face their other son Nick’s decision to enlist. The family finds strange comfort in honoring Ryan’s sacrifice by decking their house in Marine Corp regalia, perhaps unconsciously influencing Nick’s decision. Fellow Marines who served with Ryan give their own impressions of their fallen brother-at-arms, and about the challenges faced during their tours of duty.

In When I Came Home, director Dan Lohaus turns his camera on Iraq War veteran Herold Noel, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but denied veteran’s benefits and forced to live in his car. As the film shows, Noel’s story is not a unique case, with the shameful history of homeless veterans going back from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting against bureaucracy to claim their rights. While Noel tries to get attention for the issue in the media, he faces a frustrating uphill struggle to make a difference and affect real change.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

The 48th edition of the venerable New York Film Festival kicked off September 24, loosely inspiring this week’s theme for indieWIRE‘s curation of Hulu’s Documentaries page — no, not a selection of lyrical foreign language docs, but instead a series of films about or featuring New York City and its famous (or infamous) residents.

Editor’s note: “indieWIRE @ Hulu Docs” is a regular column spotlighting the iW-curated selections on Hulu’s Documentaries page, a unique collaboration between the two sites. Be sure to check out these great non-fiction projects each week.

Though the anniversary was last month, the events of September 11, 2001, left an indelible mark on NYC. Less than a year after the events, Steve Rosenbaum assembled the footage of twenty-seven filmmakers, recorded on 9/11 and the days that follow, and released the feature documentary 7 Days in September. This powerful and moving film speaks to the need to bear witness, recording the chaos and confusion in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, as well as those moments when New Yorkers banded together in whatever way they could to support relief efforts and one another in the wake of tragedy.

Glenn Holsten’s The Saint of 9/11, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, similarly takes stock of the tragedy, and also finds hope. A photo of the lifeless body of Father Mychal Judge, a Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, being carried out of the World Trade Center became a symbol for many of the losses suffered that day, and of the sacrifices of those who tried to help. Holsten’s inspiring film tells the story of Irish-American iconoclastic priest, who battled his own inner struggles as he tried to minister to the needs of others.

Another documentary portrait shaped by these events is Matthew Carnahan and Jon Philp’s Rudyland, a look at the city’s controversial former Mayor. Though not focused exclusively on 9/11, Giuliani’s leadership in the wake of the tragedy, at the end of his term, did a great deal to restore much of his tarnished reputation — detailed in the earlier parts of this film — and elevated his national profile. The film, dedicated to NYC, unmistakably changed during the course of Rudy’s tenure.

Another controversial figure, radio talkshow host Joe Pace, is the subject of Jed Weintrob’s narrative/doc hybrid The F Word. Faced with the end of his irreverent show due to FCC fines for indecency, he chose to spend this last broadcast reporting at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan. Blending fiction and reality, this political film addresses free speech and the efforts of those who would suppress it, as well as the impact of the contentious decision to welcome the RNC to a city that traditionally votes for the other side.

Robert Liano and Thomas Coppola’s A Broad Way, like 7 Days in September, combines the efforts of nearly 400 filmmakers to create a comprehensive portrait. In this case, the subject is not a specific incident, but one city in one hour, from hundreds of simultaneous perspectives. The result is a unique collaborative documentary, exposing and appreciating every block of Broadway from top to bottom, showcasing a series of New York minutes that can be appreciated by everyone who loves this city.

Finally, in Pluck (Courage, Determination, Spirit), directors Richard Atkinson and Dore Hammond take a look back to mid-century NYC and the influential changes to the cultural and political life of the city. Tastemakers and creative forces representing a wide range of disciplines reflect on their roles in shaping the city in revealing interviews and through archival materials.

About the writer: Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

“indieWIRE @ Hulu Docs” is a regular column spotlighting the indieWIRE-curated selections on Hulu’s Documentaries page, a unique collaboration between the two sites. Be sure to check out their great non-fiction selection each week.

For the second round of indieWIRE‘s curation of Hulu’s Documentaries page, I’ve selected two separate themes: Jewish subjects, in recognition of the Jewish High Holy Days this month, and former IFP projects, since it’s Independent Film Week in NYC this week.

Reel Jews
Sandi DuBowski’s Trembling Before G-d is a truly landmark documentary that has stimulated discussion and debate since its debuts in Sundance and the Berlin International Film Festival in 2001. DuBowski tirelessly travelled with the film to countless festivals, engaging in post-screening Q&As and panels, attempting to begin and keep a dialogue going about the role of homosexuality in Orthodox Judaism. Far from preaching to the converted, the doc is able to bridge a divide between LGBT and non-LGBT audiences, powerfully showing the deep-seated internal conflict that DuBowski’s protagonists face, and the need for re-examination and acceptance.

Orthodox Stance, directed by Jason Hutt, premiered at around the US and beyond. The film profiles 24-year-old Russian immigrant Dmitriy Salita, a professional boxer who also happens to be a devoutly religious Orthodox Jew. While jokes have been made about the absence of Jewish professional athletes, ignoring significant figures across the spectrum of different sports going back decades, competitors like Salita serve as a very visible corrective. Hutt follows the fighter over multiple years, as he prepares for his first professional title and balances training with Torah study, and weigh-ins with keeping kosher.

Wrapping up the Jewish-themed selections is Richard Trank’s I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, which had its premiere at the 2007 Berlinale. The film is a portrait of the Holocaust survivor who became a legendary Nazi hunter post-WWII, who died in 2005 at the age of 96. Interviews with his family members, friends, and supporters and archival footage explore his life and mission, and the impact of his lifelong efforts to bring war criminals to justice.

IFP Alums
Since 1979, IFP has served independent filmmakers and the film industry, supporting the production of 7000 films, including the following three curated selections, which took part in previous editions of the organization’s signature event, Independent Film Week.

Rob Epstein’s Academy Award-winning The Times of Harvey Milk premiered in 1984, profiling the life and death of the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, only to be assassinated within a year. One of the most significant non-fiction works dealing with LGBT issues and subjects, the story is known by a new generation through the Academy-Award winning 2008 narrative Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant. Epstein’s film is a must-see for fans of Van Sant’s film, or for anyone interested in modern American political history or the story of the struggle for LGBT equality.

The IFP supported a portrait of another controversial gay man, German singer Klaus Nomi, in Andrew Horn’s The Nomi Song. The critically acclaimed music documentary premiered in Berlin, and charts the life of the bizarrely theatrical Nomi, whose stage appearance resembled that of an otherworldly being, complete with outlandish oversized costumes, accenting his unusual vocal range and eclectic music. Early performances and other archival footage chart his rise into international acclaim until he succumbed to AIDS-related illness in 1983.

Focusing on a very different near-otherworldly figure of its own, Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey, which first surprised audiences at Tribeca in 2009, delves into the story behind the Staten Island urban legend of their youth, an escaped mental patient who was said to kidnap and kill children at night. While the filmmakers had originally viewed the story as a cautionary tale used by parents to keep their kids safe, the stories of actual kidnappings inspired them to uncover the surprising and genuinely creepy truth.

Basil Tsiokos is a Programming Associate, Documentary Features for Sundance, consults with documentary filmmakers and festivals, and recently co-produced Cameron Yates’ feature documentary The Canal Street Madam. Follow him on Twitter @1basil1 and @CanalStMadamDoc and visit his blog.

The ‘Socalled’ Movie is a multi-faceted portrait of a similarly multi-faceted performer, Josh Dolgin AKA “Socalled,” a gay, Jewish, Montreal-based hip-hop klezmer artist. Presented in 18 separate segments, the documentary offers an entertaining and illuminating look into Socalled’s creativity, influences, and background.

indieWIRE spoke to the film’s director, Garry Beitel, last week about how he met Socalled, their collaborative process, and how the film got its shape. — Basil Tsoikos, indieWIRE

iW: How did you meet Josh/Socalled, and how did the project come together?
Garry Beitel: I used to teach documentary filmmaking at McGill University [in Montreal]. In 1998, Josh was my student, so I got to know him as an aspiring filmmaker. We talked about film and music and became friends. We kept in touch after university, going for coffee every once and awhile. This project came about after I bumped into him at a klezmer concert in Montreal – he was there with his father, trying to organize a klezmer cruise to the Ukraine, and he said I should film it.

While that was the original idea, it became clear to me quickly that he was more interesting than this one event. He was surprised that I wanted to make a film about him – it was a little uncomfortable for him at first.

iW: Can you talk about why you decided to structure the film as a series of vignettes? It seems to reflect both the practice of sampling music as well as Josh seemingly being involved with 100 projects at one time.

GB: The structure was inspired by one of my favorite films, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. Gould was someone you thought you knew all about, and the filmmaker switched things around to show you new perspectives. I wanted to do something similar, and Josh lent himself to that kind of treatment.

You have him pegged as a musician, but then he’s also a filmmaker, and a magician, and a cartoonist, and he rediscovers all these old musicians and makes old music contemporary. The structure let me get at all that, it’s like peeling away at the skin of an onion. So the structure allowed that, while also referencing the sampling of his work and the creative process that he is involved in.

iW: How much time did you film Josh, and did you have a good idea what you wanted to include in the film at the beginning of the process?

GB: Filming began in November 2006 and the film was completed in 2010. It took a long time to raise money, but that was a good thing for the film, because it meant I followed him for a long time – about two-and-a-half years of filming. There were some things I knew I wanted to include immediately, like the magic. I wanted to show him practicing his tricks just like he practices the piano, a long meticulous process of repetition. But there were other things I couldn’t predict, like following him around France on tour, or giving a tour of his childhood bedroom, which hadn’t changed at all.

iW: What was Josh’s level of input about what the project would look like? Was there anything that he didn’t want to include in the film?

GB: Every time we got together, I would ask him what he had coming up in the next few weeks or months, and based on that we would plan a filming schedule. But I would discover through other people that he wasn’t always telling me everything he was up to – things he didn’t want me to film or just didn’t think would be that important for the film. So it took some negotiating.

The way I typically film, I try to capture people doing what they do without interruption – but for Josh, I also wanted him to talk about his process while he was in the midst of passionately creative work. That was uncomfortable for him, because he’s a doer, he’s not introspective. So there was a bit of tension, because I wanted to understand his motivation, and he could get impatient about that.

The way I would deal with that was by including the two short films he made in the film, and he got complete control of those. I stepped back and became the producer for those instead, and that let me have control of the rest of the film. But Josh was incredibly helpful in the last stages of the film in working with the music of the film. There were little things he disagreed with, and we would discuss things like that, that he would have to live with after the film was shown publicly.

iW: Josh speaks to a wide range of potential audiences – Jewish, gay, hip hop, hipsters, etc – who don’t often always come together in the same place. How has the film connected with these audiences – have there been differences in the reactions from these different groups?

GB: Josh called his last album “Ghetto Blaster” because that’s what his music does – it breaks down musical ghettoes and categories. He works as a cultural archaeologist, finding treasures from the past that have been forgotten, modernizes them, takes them out of the categories they were originally in, and transforms them into something contemporary. This breaks down those categories so that all different kinds of people can enter his work, weaving in and out of traditional categories and genres. I’ve watched the film with a large number of audiences, and the group experience is great – there’s so much laughter and celebration, it seems to transcend usual self-selecting categories.

iW: There’s obviously a lot of music in the film, given the subject. Is there a soundtrack album or a way for audiences to get all the music?

GB: There’s no soundtrack planned, but the DVD will be coming out, which has extra features with additional music. So audiences can get the DVD or go to Socalled’s website to get access to the music he’s creating.

SnagFilms’ 2nd annual SummerFest, a free online festival showcasing exclusive, limited-duration runs of popular new documentaries, continues with A Fighting Chance, the fifth film in the series, having its world premiere today. [Editor's Note: Our partner, SnagFilms, is the parent company of indieWIRE.]

A Fighting Chance profiles the charismatic and inspiring athlete Kyle Maynard, a former high school and college award-winning wrestler who also happens to have been born without forearms or lower legs. The film follows Kyle as he attempts to make history by becoming the first differently abled fighter to compete against able-bodied opponents in mixed martial arts (MMA), facing unexpected controversy from vocal fans and athletes who believe such a goal is dangerous or makes the sport a “freakshow.”

indieWIRE spoke to the film’s directors, Takashi Doscher and Alex Shofner, last week about why Kyle’s such a great documentary subject, what motivates him, and why he’s generated controversy.

iW: How did you meet Kyle, and how did the idea for the film come about?
Takashi Doscher: We were friends growing up — we went to the same high school, and knew each other for years. After college, we were hanging out as old buddies do and Kyle asked me to update the intro video he uses for his motivational speaking engagements. After we talked about what he wanted to include in it, and he told me about his aspirations to compete in MMA, it snowballed and I told him that I thought we had something bigger than a [3- to 4-minute] video. I called up Alex, who was my roommate in college, and we got right into it.

iW: What do you think makes Kyle such an engaging, and, in many ways, such a polarizing figure?
Alex Shofner: Coming from a slightly more outsider perspective — since Takashi grew up with him, and I met him as an adult — Kyle has a magical quality. With his condition, it’s very apparent immediately that he’s missing his arms and legs, and you are blown away by how much he can do. But the most amazing thing is that, within 15 to 20 minutes of meeting him, you completely forget about his disability because he is so engaging and confident and has such a magnetic personality.

TD: As for the naysayers, I think that people in general have certain expectations when they see someone like Kyle, and Kyle time and time again has proven able to separate himself from those expectations. More so, Kyle hasn’t been participating in other disabled competitions against other disabled athletes — he’s been competing against able-bodied athletes head-to-head. I think people tend to dismiss disabled athletes in the latter situation, but when they’re confronted with someone like Kyle who not only competes against able-bodied athletes but also physically bests them — that’s like a quantum leap of perception — it’s striking and difficult to come to terms with.

iW:Kyle clearly is a very good athlete, as he’s proven in his wrestling career. What is it about MMA that motivated him to try to prove himself there?
AS: Kyle is the type of guy who sees a peak and wants to climb it. After wrestling, MMA is the next logical step — there’s no real other option. We all know “professional wrestling” isn’t real. MMA allows Kyle the chance to face able-bodied people on an even playing field, and that feeds into his incredibly competitive drive.

TD: The thing to understand about Kyle is that he doesn’t view himself as “disabled,” or, to a great extent, he views everyone as “disabled” in a different way — maybe someone is emotionally disabled, or lacking in self-confidence, or is learning disabled. It just so happens that his disability is more visible. So competing in MAA is not out of the realm of possibility, and the sport plays to his strengths as a wrestler. He wouldn’t attempt to compete in a sport in which he has no experience.

iW: While the film is clearly about Kyle and his MMA goal, it also speaks to a much larger issue — self-determination for people with disabilities — why shouldn’t he compete if he feels able to? Can you talk about this aspect of the film, and balancing that with telling Kyle’s specific story?
TD: This is one of the first things made on him that is personal, and we were careful to establish him as a person first — without knowing who Kyle is, you can’t get to the larger outside message.

AS: When he started wrestling in middle school, Kyle lost his first 34 matches, but working with his dad, they invented a new way for him to wrestle since he couldn’t use some of the basic grips that are part of the sport. This is his message, not just to disabled people but to everyone: the only barriers people have are the ones they put in front of themselves.

iW: What do you hope audiences will take away from Kyle’s story, especially those people who may have been negative or skeptical about his MMA aspirations?
TD: I hope that audiences will be inspired to attempt to do something that they’ve always wanted to do but never thought they could. Regarding his critics, we definitely don’t shy away from presenting their views in the film — their voices are reflected in the film.

AS: Kyle has always proven to have a startling impact on people. I hope that this film helps him reach a wider audience than ever before to spread his message. I am curious to see how his critics will respond after they’ve seen it and have gotten to know him through the film.

iW: In addition to the SnagFilms SummerFest premiere, a version of the film is scheduled to air on ESPN on Veterans Day, November 11. Can you talk about the significance of the film screening on this specific day?
AS: Well, it’s an unbelievable opportunity, and we’re completely thrilled. Kyle has wanted to join the military from an early age — his dad was part of the military police — and he was born at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] in DC. From a very young age, he has been involved with speaking with and training our wounded warriors coming back from various conflicts. He’s been a real inspiration to them.

TD: For some reason, soldiers can easily relate to him. They’re coming back with debilitating injuries and loss of limbs, and Kyle and his MMA story are incredibly inspiring to them. A lot of soldiers love the sport, so they have this added connection. Because of his condition, Kyle’s able to connect with soldiers on a personal level, help them at Walter Reed in rehab and training, showing them how he does things. So we’re extremely excited to show the film on Veterans Day — several vets are featured in the film as well. We can’t wait for the reaction.

SnagFilms’ 2nd annual SummerFest, a free online festival showcasing exclusive, limited-duration runs of popular new documentaries, continues with Erik Gandini’s “Videocracy,” the fourth film in the series, premiering Friday.

The film exposes a mass cult of celebrity worship that has virtually hypnotized Italian society, threatening its democracy. Gandini’s film argues that this collective fixation, or what he calls “banality,” is not entirely accidental. At its heart is the country’s long-serving prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who also happens to be a billionaire with television networks, radio, magazines and other media at the center of his personal empire. Hard news is passed over in favor of pretty girls, salacious stories of celebrity affairs, and frivolous good times. The film was picked by a survey of writers by indieWIRE as the best documentary at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival where “Videocracy” had its North American premiere. — Brian Brooks, indieWIRE

[Editor’s Note: This interview has been updated from its original version published at last year's Toronto International Film Festival.
SnagFilms is the parent company of indieWIRE.]

The Cult of Good Times and the “Culture of Banality”

“Italy is probably the only country in the world where celebrity/TV and political power is merged together in the person of Silvio Berlusconi,” Italian director Erik Gandini told indieWIRE last fall. His film, “Videocracy,” spotlights a cult of celebrity worship and TV junkies that, the director believes, has literally hypnotized Italian society to the detriment of public well-being and even democracy itself.

As prime minister (though the film refers to him as “president”), Berlusconi not only wields political power, but as the owner of the largest media empire in the country, he is also the master of cultural control. And Italians, the film argues, are willingly eating it up, watching in droves “talent” shows that feature a liberal dose of tits and ass, and an insatiable quest for celebrity.

“This is the culture of banality,” noted Gandini. “The fact of the matter is, this banality, which should have been only marginal, is promoted across the country. This is huge and it’s close to Berlusconi himself. Television [programming there] is a mirror of his taste. Berlusconi likes women – a lot. And he likes women with big breasts. It’s amazing – almost like science fiction – that one man can control a culture for thirty years now.”

Berlusconi and his henchmen live in a world that is devoid of morality, Gandini surmised, saying that the pursuit of fun, external beauty and frivolity is the ultimate in fine living. “I call it the TV Republic,” Gandini said. “TV culture has penetrated the whole society.”

Berlusconi’s empire spans movie studios, magazines and other media, but it’s his three television networks and their brand of entertainment that glorify pretty demure women and cheap tricks that titillate the senses that have turned one of the world’s great democracies into a society intoxicated by glitz and flesh, according to Gandini.

“Berlusconi has created a culture of banality so that collective societal desires are no longer important. People in Italy now just want to be television stars so they can be famous and rich.” Continuing he added, “There’s a strong tension between those who are on TV and those who are not. For young Italians, power is embodied by those who are celebrities.”

Reason in Exile

Gandini argues in “Videocracy” that Italy no longer places value in people who aspire to reason and thought, or to the challenges of the modern day. Women want to be voiceless showgirls on talent shows and marry footballers (soccer players). And with Berlusconi not only controlling his own personal media empire, but also having a hand in government controlled stations via his post as Italy’s prime minister, scandals involving prostitution and marital infidelity last year, which had received a fair amount of airtime in other European countries as well as in America, did not receive coverage on Berlusconi’s networks or the other public networks.

“People accept him, they find him ‘natural.’ It’s a politics that’s not based on truth or collective dreams, but on image only,” Gandini said. “Image is more important than reality.”

While Gandini describes Berlusconi as a modern despot, he says that his rule is not like today’s dictatorships in North Korea or even Zimbabwe, but a collective dumbing down of society that only engages in whether a footballer had an affair with someone.

“These people are super egomaniacs and they’re used to being filmed and in the center of attention and exposing themselves…It isn’t only [Berlusconi], what I’m really interested in here is how you can destroy a democracy by tits and ass. It’s shocking that the banality of culture can destroy a once mature and politically engaged populace.”

Gandini approaches the subject utilizing many of the same images he criticizes, with a strong dosage of trash TV and arrogant media and political barons doing Berlusconi’s bidding for his media empire, which has also subsequently made him the richest person in Italy.

Though Gandini is clearly disappointed by his country’s political evolution, he was gratified that the film performed well at home. “It was quickly the fourth biggest title in Italy in the first few days of its release,” Gandini said. “If TV becomes this unreal window into bad values that has nothing to do with reality, then perhaps it’s cinema that can become a safe haven for other types of stories.”

SnagFilms’ 2nd annual SummerFest, a free online festival showcasing exclusive, limited-duration runs of popular new documentaries, continues with “Disco and Atomic War,” the third film in the series, premiering this Friday, July 30th.

Disco and Atomic War reveals the unusual, provocative, and very funny story of how Dallas and Knight Rider led to the fall of the Iron Curtain. A story of coming of age under Communism, the documentary cleverly and cogently argues that the influence of “soft power” — pop culture via illegally intercepted Finnish TV broadcasts of Western media — weakened the tenuous foundation of the Soviet system in Estonia, hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.

indieWIRE spoke to the film’s director, Jaak Kilmi, from Estonia last week about growing up in parallel universes, propaganda, and the manufacturing and rediscovering of childhood memories. — Basil Tsiokos, indieWIRE

iW: Jaak, one of the joys of the film is that the viewer gets this privileged look into this clandestine world going on underneath the noses of the Soviets. It’s almost a sort of spy thriller. How much of that was really how you felt growing up – balancing daily life with this secret activity?

Jaak Kilmi: It was life under the Soviet system – we were struggling with every big problem. Publicly, my parents had to queue up to buy food, but were able to live secret lives in their private rooms. With the TV set in the living room, we were able to see Western pop culture -a different reality from what we were living. For me, it was like two different universes existed at the same time, and we got used to being in these parallel universes.

iW: The film gives the impression that this experience was fairly commonplace. Was this basically an open secret?

JK: It couldn’t remain a secret – of course everyone could see the antennae springing up on all the rooftops of our Soviet concrete buildings. All my friends were watching the same films and programs I watched – we were all fans of “Knight Rider” and talked about it. It wasn’t encouraged officially – I mean, at school we didn’t write essays about “Knight Rider!” But the Soviet Union wasn’t so closed – it wasn’t North Korea. It was a practical system. People were creative and industrious, so if they wanted to see Western TV programs, they would invent a way to do so. It’s strange in a way. There was an official truth, and there was daily life.

iW: I’m curious about the Soviet attempts to counter-program Estonia against the “soft power” of the Western media/pop culture. Did they ever try to use humor or some other more subtle, subversive means to fight against the Western media?

JK: In Northern Estonia, the Soviet authorities didn’t have a recipe on how to fight against the popularity of Finnish TV. Audiences didn’t want to watch hardcore Soviet propaganda. In the mid-1980s, however, the Estonian TV programmers came up with a clever idea: they asked Moscow for millions of rubles to make propaganda in Estonia to fight the Finnish programs’ popularity.

They got millions from the government, but what they made was not propaganda at all! They simply made good, entertaining programs – no one in Estonia recognized them as propaganda, only Russia thought it was, so they got away with it. Of course, Russia provided their own propaganda programs, but Estonians knew to avoid them.

iW: Your film is often sardonically and even blackly humorous. Can you talk about how you found the right tone for telling this story?

JK: Yes, that tone is intentional. I have so many funny memories from these times. You know, my childhood in the Soviet Union was not terrible, it was very joyful. Life under the Soviet system was often funny, absurd really, especially for children. So in making the film, we felt we couldn’t escape the inherent humor, and we didn’t want to escape it, because everything was so absurd. The whole idea of this totalitarian system trying to fight against Western influence was so ridiculous. So I think this sardonic humor was present at the time, and it made sense to embrace it in the film.

iW: Speaking of children, talk about your decision to incorporate the re-enacted scenes of childhood memories in the film. Are these re-enactments 100% true or have they been fictionalized to some extent?

JK: My producer/co-writer Kiur Aarma and I knew that we wanted to explore the memories of children who were around our age. We announced in newspapers and on TV our campaign to collect these memories of the Finnish TV broadcasts, and received about 40-50 emails. From these, we saw about 20 stories or motifs that we wanted to use in the film. We realized we could more effectively present them if we constructed characters. So they are constructed, but based on true recollections from these materials we received and our own stories.

For example, the part of the film where I write to my niece regularly about what happened in “Dallas” and “Who shot JR.” In real life, I promised I would write to her, but I never found the time. So I finally corrected that broken promise by writing to her in the film. She saw the premiere and was really happy – she told me, “At last, I get the letters you promised me!” So while I didn’t actually write them, I’m sure someone wrote these kinds of letters at the time.

Another funny story from the film – where Estonian boys would talk into their electronic wristwatches as if they were communicating with the car from “Knight Rider.” Kiur and I invented that. But after the premiere, a guy approached us and said he did that as a kid – so it was actually true!

iW: Did you have any trouble getting the participation of the TV executives interviewed in the film?

JK: Nobody had been interested in their work before – we were the first ones to ask them – so they were quite happy to talk. There was one guy who probably could have given us valuable information but he wasn’t sure what our intention was. Working under the Soviet system made you very paranoid – people were afraid of everything – and this paranoia is still in people’s minds today. But most of the TV people are really nice guys who have a sense of humor about what they did. You needed this in order to survive in the system.

iW: In screening the film, have you noted any generational differences in response from audiences?

JK: The film really resonates with people of any age who grew up in the Soviet Union, but we have shown the film to younger people, and it still works. It’s a very human story – basically, people want to see what they want to see, and if someone else tries to prohibit you, you find clever ways to see it anyway. The film is about a very human fight against any kind of totalitarianism.

Using the tagline “15 Years, 3 Wars, 1 Photographer,” Shooting Robert King tells the story of the titular war correspondent, beginning as a naive 24-year-old covering the war in Bosnia in 1993, following up when he is a hardened man in Chechnya in 1997, and finding him more at peace in 2007, both embedded within the US military in Iraq and at home in the Tennessee woods on a deer-hunting trip. Robert King is the focus through which the film explores the complex and at times contradictory forces motivating journalists to put themselves in harm’s way to bear witness to war and atrocity.

For the second week of SnagFilms’ SummerFest, indieWIRE spoke to the film’s director, Richard Parry, from the United Kingdom earlier this week about how the project was developed, the parallels he sees in his own life, and the dangerous life of a documentary filmmaker. — Basil Tsiokos, indieWIRE

iW: Richard, how did you meet Robert? What drew you to him vs other war correspondents you came across while you yourself were covering the war in Yugoslavia?
Richard Parry: I met Robert in Sarajevo in the Holiday Inn where all the journalists were staying. He was at the bar at 10am, drinking the local jungle juice. He looked out of place . I introduced myself, and he said to me, “I’ve lived in Brooklyn for six years, so I thought I knew what war was, but man, this place is crazy!” I liked him from the beginning — I found him to be honest, candid, and funny. We latched on to one another — I didn’t know I would be spending 15 years making this film!

I was there doing my own story, working as a freelancer, packaging stories and selling them to outlets. The idea was born to make a documentary about the hack, about the underbelly of war correspondents. The intention was to make a genuine film about this type of people who you rarely see, especially the photographers, who drink a lot and get shot at more.

iW: You are extremely close to your subject. Was there anything that you felt was off-limits or that Robert declared off-limits for filming?
RP: Robert was very open, that’s the way he is. He allowed me to film almost everything. Sure, there were small requests in there, but they weren’t a big deal. He’s always trusted me. That trust may have wavered at times over the course of the 15 years, but the general trust has remained, and we’ve retained our friendship.

iW: How much of yourself did you see in Robert, given your similar work in war zones?
RP: Quite a lot. The film is in many ways also about me and about how I see the role of war correspondents. I think I share with Robert the complexities that drive someone to want to do this kind of work. But it’s not unique to Robert or myself — the film is dedicated to the journalists who died in this field — it’s a tribute to them.

iW: You’re with Robert in literal war zones – your own life was in danger. Can you tell us about the most dangerous moments that you filmed?
RP:The most dangerous was when we were in Bosnia, the episode Robert describes at the beginning of the film. We were in a car, and bullets were flying through it, literally piercing the metal. We didn’t know where they were coming from, it was chaos. A bullet ended up hitting my camera, in the viewfinder. I couldn’t see anything, I didn’t know if the camera was still operational, but I kept filming.

iW: Can you tell me about the process of filming over 15 years?
RP: I grabbed footage whenever I could, wherever we happened to be together, and my camera was there to pick it up. We would do stories together occasionally, and we would stay in the same flat together. Filming him just became natural. We had a symbiotic relationship — every time we worked together, it would feed the documentary. Initially, the film was about 25 to 30 minutes, covering Robert in Sarajevo, and it played at one of the first Sheffield fests. But I couldn’t sell it, so I decided to expand upon it, and included Robert in Chechnya. By this point, Robert had achieved the success he was searching for, he had become a different person. This gave the film more depth. It was a 52-minute version, but I couldn’t sell that either. So I put it on the shelf for awhile, until years later, a UK distributor told me he could distribute it theatrically if I expanded it to a 90-minute version. And I’m glad I did — it became a much better film, more honest and reflective.

iW: How did the deer hunting trip come up as the setting for the present day interviews?
RP: The film needed a point of reflection, needed a space where Robert could reflect back, and hunting was a good avenue to find that. There’s a lot of downtime, a lot of waiting time, and Robert doesn’t shoot at the deer much – plenty of time to talk and think about his past. It’s a dialogue between the two of us, how we felt about our experiences, and about our involvement in the field.

iW: Can you talk about how Robert changed over the 15-year span of filming?
RP: Robert changed in similar ways that I changed. I notice changes within myself that are similar to changes within Robert. He and I began with this sense of invincibility – we never thought anything was going to happen to us. We didn’t understand the complexities or question our motives. After that, we found the fear, that sense that something would happen to us. We had our times with using drugs and drinking when we weren’t in war zones, which were themselves a kind of drug. And later, we both calmed down, found more time to reflect and some more stability.

iW: You’ve had a healthy festival run. What’s the most surprising question or response you’ve received?
RP: Because of the hunting setting, we have been asked what we thought of vegetarianism, which was a weird question. But really, while the hunting can be seen as a metaphor in the film, it really is there just because that’s what Robert does to unwind. Q&As are always interesting because they are an opportunity to look back on the film and reassess what you think of it. It is a very personal film for me.

Following up on its inaugural edition last year, SnagFilms is launching the 2nd annual SummerFest, a free online festival showcasing exclusive, limited-duration runs of popular new documentaries, beginning with Franny Armstrong’s acclaimed film, The Age of Stupid.

Unique for a documentary, The Age of Stupid incorporates a narrative thread, starring Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the year 2055, when the Earth has been completely devastated by climate change. The film is his recording of a last message for his archive, intended not for humanity — “It’s too late for us,” he gravely intones — but instead, “for whoever, whatever, eventually finds this recording” as a “cautionary tale.” The message consists of documentary footage from around the globe, focusing on stories of climate change and the world’s addiction to fossil fuels.

indieWIRE spoke to the film’s director, Franny Armstong, from London earlier this week about the project’s origins, its creative fundraising, and the groundbreaking (and environmentally friendly) ways the film has been reaching audiences. — Basil Tsiokos, indieWIRE

iW: One of the striking things about the film is its unique hybrid of documentary and drama. Tell us how this happened, and why you felt the hybrid form made sense for this project?
Franny Armstrong: You can find out a lot more details from watching the “Making of” documentary , but basically, the original idea was to follow five different people, with none of them being the “good guy” or the “bad guy,” because the issue is not black and white. We made the film as a pure documentary and showed the rough cut to investors. What we found was that everyone who was already into climate change thought it was brilliant, but everyone else didn’t get the links between the different people followed. It wasn’t anything greater than the sum of its parts, and it was never going to go mainstream, which defeated the point. So we had a few dark months there while we found the structure to make it

iW: And this is when Pete Postlethwaite become involved?
FA: Once we decided on incorporating a dramatic element, we needed to find the right person. Everyone in the UK adores Pete. We didn’t think we would have a chance of getting him, but I Googled him to see if there was any chance he was into climate change, and I found a recent article in his local newspaper about his efforts to get permission to install wind turbines, where he was quoted saying that “everyone’s responsible for climate change.” So we reached out and he agreed to do the project.

iW: Let’s talk about the documentary elements of the film. How did you find your subjects and stories?
FA: We had about ten researchers amassing different stories, split up into different themes we were considering – areas like ever-increasing consumption, alternative energy, etc. For example, they found the story about low-cost airlines in India, and that was perfect – we wanted to involve India or China, and it’s very difficult to film in China – we found Jehangir Wadia and his interest in ending poverty through the airline. A fascinating character, a rich guy – a person of contradictions. We didn’t want the viewers to love or hate any subject. To find all the characters around the world, it took three years of researching.

iW: Tell us about how you’ve released the film and the reactions you’ve received.
FA: We had our global premiere in September. We broadcast live from New York City to 63 countries. Rather than go the traditional route and physically travel all over the world, we could leave a much smaller carbon footprint by having one enormous event, linking everyone by satellite. We had an amazing response – Kofi Annan spoke at the event.

The most amazing thing to happen has been the 10:10 Campaign, which aims to reduce our carbon emissions by 10% this year. Huge companies have signed up, committing to this goal. It started in the UK but it’s spreading to other countries quickly.

iW: The film’s title, and the tone the archivist uses, really issues a challenge to the viewer. What kind of personal changes have you made from learning all that you have in the process of making this film?
FA: Well, I’ve been into the subject since I was in school, so I have been making changes for over 20 years now. But I can see the impact around me – My dad installed solar panels a few weeks ago. I’m most proud of the way that we made this film, and how we’re getting it out to audiences and the change that is still possible.

iW: Franny, can you tell us about how you used crowdfunding for the film?
FA: I had tried to get my previous film, “McLibel,” made in the normal way for the UK, by having it commissioned, but nobody wanted to support the project. I ended up making it with credit cards and a rich boyfriend. This meant that I completely owned the rights, and could control the distribution, and this became very important for me [and] for my next project. It was going to cost more than the previous film, and by this point, the rich boyfriend had departed, so I invented a funding plan on the back of an envelope. My lawyers told me it was the most original film financing scheme they’d ever seen, but they needed to rewrite it to make it legal.

Because I had plans to interview representatives of an oil company, I didn’t want too many people to know what I was doing, so the funding plan was kept to friends and friends of friends, which kept growing. I needed £450,000 for the production and another £450,000 to distribute the film. Under my plan, individuals could invest a minimum of £500. The maximum individual contribution we received was £35,000. And we made our first payment to our investors this January.

In many ways, the documentary Fantasyland is a David-and-Goliath sort of tale: What happens if you pit a little guy — in this case, an interloper (and rabid fantasy baseball fan) Jed Latkin — against the big guys: one of the most revered fantasy leagues in the country. Cameras were following as Latkin tried to trade, cajole and even harass his way to the top ranks of the Tout Wars, a league for the upper echelon of fantasy baseball bloggers, commentators and experts. To learn more about this documentary — which premiered on Hulu and SnagFilms on Friday — Hulu spoke to filmmaker Stephen Palgon. — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor, Hulu

Your documentary was based on Sam Walker’s book of the same name. How did the book serve as a starting point for your film?
Stephen Palgon: During the summer of 2007, I was working on another project. I saw an interview with Sam about the book and I just found it really intriguing. I thought, “Oh, this could be a really great documentary, if only someone was following Sam around when he was doing it.” It just came to me as an idea to check to see who had the rights to the book. I reached out to Sam, and he responded. Then I got in touch with John Limotte and Doug Bernheim, who had the rights, and started on the adventure. But the one holdup was that they were looking to do a feature film based on it. And then the writer’s strike happened and they started looking for non-scripted material and came back to me about the documentary and off we went from there.

Much like Sam’s book, the film was an experiment. Can you explain what that experiment was?
The experiment is basically this idea that in the world of fantasy [baseball], there’s sort of these two separate worlds. There’s the guys who are the experts who tout all the advice and tell all these people who to draft and stuff like that, and then there are the people who play. There’s sort of a divide there. The idea was can we take somebody who plays and is highly into the game — in our case, Jed Latkin, who is seriously obsessed with it. Can he go in and take on these people and win or do really well? That was sort of the idea, like a regular player versus these guys who earn their living doing it. But what came up a lot with Jed was, like he was always saying, “I’m a fan who loves this, and this is what these guys do for a living.”

What are the Tout Wars?
Tout Wars is a league of all the experts in the industry. It gets its name because these are the guys that tout information. All of them have websites or newsletters or things like that and put out various sorts of information about fantasy sports, about the statistics, all that sort of stuff. They do three different drafts. One is American League only, another is National League, and the other is American and National league. Tout Wars was started by a guy named Ron Shandler, who is highly revered within the industry. He’s the guy who’s sort of Jed’s main focus in the film.

What about Jed Latkin — who is he, and how did he fit into all this?
Jed is — and I think he knows this — Jed is kind of a lunatic. We actually had this big audition and this big call to find out who would be this guy. As it turned out, Jed was the first guy that we interviewed. I remember that day, we were shooting and after Jed left, my camera guy was like, “Is this guy for real?” Jed is like his own separate species of fantasy player. He only sleeps two hours a night; he will do anything to trade with you. He works in the financial industry and trading is part of his DNA. He used to, as a kid, sort of trade and rip off other kids. He’ll just pursue you to no end. He’s traded apartments in his building, and he’s just unlike anybody I’ve ever met. He’ll even outwardly come out and say, in front of his wife, “You know, she’s definitely in the top 10 of my priorities, but fantasy is very close to first.” He’s really a kind of amazing character. He’ll quote random movies like the Devil’s Advocate and he never turns off. It was sort of a crazy thing to toss him in these waters with these fantasy guys who have a real routine. Jed really shook it up because, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., he could send somebody 200 emails. We really lucked out in finding someone like him.

And it probably didn’t hurt his story to have twins on the way, either.
No. I think some people might watch this and think that we prodded him to do these things. The reality is that we didn’t. We walked in there and he started talking about how his plan was to use the fact that he was having twins to try to get people to make a trade with him. He openly was like, I can say to my twins that on the day they were born, I traded for Carlos Gomez or whoever. He literally almost missed the birth of his kids. I mean, he didn’t take the call from the doctor upstairs telling him to go to the delivery room because he was on the phone with Sam, trying to make a deal. And also, right after the birth, he and his wife were talking fantasy. It wasn’t like we told them to say it. It’s all-encompassing with him and it’s kind of amazing to watch. He’s open about saying he’s totally addicted to it, right after the birth.

How did Tout Wars feel about being filmed? Were they at all protective?
I think they weren’t. Ron Shandler was great with us, and Lawr Michaels and Sam. We had a lot of cameras there at the draft. Everyone was great. I think what they got more sensitive with was with Jed, because he just plays the game so differently. For these guys, how they draft players is looked at by all the other fantasy players out there. But Jed wanted to make trades right after they’ve drafted players and these guys are like “we can’t do that.” There was a bit of a clash between old school and new school and expert versus amateur, definitely between Ron and Jed. They’re sort of oil and water to the extreme.

Jed obviously rubbed some of them the wrong. Was his technique typical of what you’d see among amateur players, or was he just above and beyond that, too?
He’s definitely an amateur player on like every kind of steroids out there. He’s just insane, but I think that most of the guys who play fantasy sports … the exciting part is making trades. Nobody likes to hang on to their players. I think in that respect, he’s sort of normal, but the fact that he wants to trade every 10 seconds is different. Ron and those guys, I feel like, in some ways are very distanced from that. They’re doing this for a living, and like I said, when they draft a guy or bid on a guy and say that guy is worth $20, all the other competitors, the amateur competitors who are doing their draft are saying “Ron Shandler bid $20 for him, so that must be what he’s worth.” Jed didn’t care about any of that stuff. Also, Jed at times, he’s basing all his stuff on their information, so it’s also strange in that way. I think if other amateur players tried this, they would do the same thing, though probably not to the extreme that Jed did.

Do the people in the Tout Wars league actually fly around the country like we saw Jed do in the film?
I think that a lot of them sort of look down on that. I feel like the players aren’t going to give them any information. Sometimes they’ll talk to coaches but I think a lot of people in that industry feel like the players are never going to reveal to them any sort of information that they can use. That’s also the thing about Jed — he’d also go up these players. He’d say the sort of thing like “I’m the kind of guy that likes to go to the games and watch the games, and a lot of these Tout guys don’t even watch the games, they just look at the scores and stuff like that.” I think Jed likes to present it in a way that these guys are about the numbers and he’s about the love of the game. I think the stuff that he did, I think some of the Tout players would never even think about it.

And what about you, do you participate in any fantasy leagues?
I do fantasy basketball. I’ve begun referring to it all like this: fantasy football is like dating somebody. Fantasy baseball is like being in a long-term relationship. It’s a big commitment. You’ve got to be willing to hang in there. I’ve never really successfully done baseball. And these guys, they know every single every player on every single team. It’s hard to hang in there on that level.

Recently I had the chance to interview Kevin Fitzgerald, director of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme. His documentary (released in 2000) chronicles the rise of hip-hop MCs as their improvised freestyling began taking its hold on pop culture. It includes some truly mesmerizing talent footage from known and unknown artists alike, from the early days of Run DMC and Kool Moe Dee to the The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac and Eminem. How did Fitzgerald get started with this project? Read on to hear his story. — Jocelyn Matsuo, Content Editor

Jocelyn: Can you just tell me a little about the story of Freestyle, like how it got made?
Kevin: I was in college at USC, going to film school. My friends were DJs and I grew up as a DJ as well. But they were doing this open mic, off of Crenshaw, called the Good Life. Which was kind of a famous open mic and a lot of great artists came through there, like Freestyle Fellowship, Fat Joe, Das EFX. Basically it was like a spot where you could hone your skills. I started in ’93 or’94, checking it out because of my friends, Cut Chemist [Jurassic 5] and Wolf from the Breakestra. So we’d go up and rap and stuff.

It was real cool. They had wheat grass (it was a health-food store) and there were gangsters out in the parking lot. And there was a rule, you couldn’t cuss there. B — everyone called her Aunt B, she was like the house mom — she ran the thing with R. Kain Blaze, her son. This was all before Project Blowed, the other [open mic] off of Crenshaw and Leimert Park, started at Chaos Network (Aceyalone and Bus Driver and those guys), where they could cuss and stuff.

I was like, “Oh my god,” this is a movie. We gotta start filming this, so I asked her if it was cool if we brought a video camera up. For just years and years, we just filmed stuff. And that’s how it started. I didn’t even have a camera, I got it from my school.

You have some fabulous footage in this movie, I was wondering, where did you get that Biggie footage? That blew my mind.
Yeah, the Biggie footage, we didn’t get that ’til we went to New York. Went out there, discovered this guy, his name was Mr. C (who discovered Biggie, originally, then introduced him to Puff Daddy). My friends were hooking me up with these people like “Aw, you have to hear this person, you have to hear this person.” And I knew about Biggie, obviously, everyone knew about Biggie, but they were like “this guy has some [Biggie] footage.” He just brought the tape up to where we were editing. He was like “Here you go, gimme a call when you guys are done.” And I was like “OK, man, this is dope.”

I know you guys got a lot of awards after the film was complete, how did you find going to festivals, distributing and marketing this film to a mainstream/independent film audience?
We couldn’t clear any of the footage, or the music, because it was all a total underground thing. We shot on every format known to man, except betamax. We didn’t own cameras. We just kinda piggy-backed the project, like if we had extra film, 16mm or 35mm, whatever, HD, Hi8, Super8, it didn’t matter. It was a freestyle process. By any means necessary. We just tried to get whatever footage we could. We had 400-500 hours of footage at the end of the thing. We couldn’t clear the music because we couldn’t figure out what the beats were or whose beats they were. VH1 helped us out with that — I think my lawyer played basketball with the president or vice president. We had lawyers and a bunch of people go through the stuff. Eventually I was able to show it around at film festivals and a lot of people helped us out. It took years — it took like three years to track down everything and clear the rights.

We created our own hip-hop film festival. We took it on the road, it was a total DIY thing, all over the country and even the world. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Europe; we showed the film everywhere and did the hip-hop film festival thing. A bunch of film festivals, and now, I’m kinda burnt out on the whole thing, to tell you the truth. I wanna switch gears and get into some other field, because it was a wild ride. Ten years of just lashing hard on this film and I got a little burnt out. Not on hip-hop — I’m still DJ. I had a son also, a year and a half ago.

I still want to make movies, but I’d like to do them a little differently than I did. I wouldn’t have changed anything, but obviously it would have been nice to have a bigger budget.

If you were gonna start from scratch, what would you do differently?
I would have a big, rich uncle to give me money for all the cameras. It’s funny because, I think if we did it that way, we wouldn’t have had the access. A lot of people that were in the movie, they were my friends. I knew them from being a DJ, and not from “Hey, I’m this filmmaker…”

Will you tell me a little bit about what you think about the hip-hop world, post going mainstream?
It’s cool to see that people are still into hip-hop, and I’m still into hip-hop; I play it. I play all sorts of other music too, but when I play it, people come up to me in bars all drunk and stuff and “Aww, that’s my song!” To me, it’s like folk music. It evolves and becomes something else. People ask, “Is hip-hop dead?” but you’d never say that about classical music or rock or jazz or any of those [kinds of] music. They had their peak period, but then they come back in different forms.

There’s bad stuff that I hate, but that’s the same in all sorts of music. People try to put hip-hop on this higher ideal sort of level, but it’s just like anything else. You like pizza from over here, but you don’t like pizza from over there.

But really, you like pizza?
Yeah, you like pizza. That was one thing, being in the streets of New York. New York has a certain energy. You can just be walking down the street and you meet somebody [who] tells you about something. And you go there at night and you meet some amazing artist and you hear some amazing music. It’s just an incredible vibe. Walking down the street. Always something happening and stuff to film everywhere. It was just an amazing time.

“George is not going to be a film about autism, it’s going to be autism,” says filmmaker Henry Corra. It’s a documentary film in which the director, Corra, gives his son a camera, and together they make a film which explores human perspective and ideas of normalcy. At first George seems like a regular kid, adventurous and inspired by nature, but as the film slowly digs deeper into George’s world, you begin to notice quirks, such as his repetitive speech, his obsession with airplanes, and his jerky, swirling camera movements. The personal story that develops incidentally takes on larger societal issues of awareness when HBO drops their support for the project in the middle of shooting, saying that George “isn’t autistic enough.” Since this film came out in the late 1990s, there have been many studies and documentaries dedicated to autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, but few of them try to capture what George does. It’s more experiential than informative, and what you can’t understand is intentional. Hulu recently spoke with the director of the film, and George’s father, Henry Corra. The interview follows. — Lee Foley, Hulu Content Editor

Hulu: What motivated you to make a film about autism with your own son?
Corra: At that time I had been making documentary films for about 8 years, and I had made films about the artist Christo, and all kinds of crazy stuff. So my 12 year old son George, who had been diagnosed when he was 3 years old as high functioning autistic, he expressed the desire to learn how to make movies like daddy. In a lot of ways I’m not sure how to relate to him, but this is something, we can do something quite meaningful here. So we began the film with a simple plan that I give George a camera and teach him how to shoot, and then I film him and he films me, and we see where it takes us. So that’s how it all began. And at the same time I had been doing various projects with Sheila Nevins at HBO, and I mentioned that my son and I were doing this experiment, and she was like fascinated by the idea, and agreed to back the project. So suddenly, the whole thing started as a little home experiment for me as a filmmaker dad, to try to get to know my son better, to we were making a film for HBO. So I must say that Sheila really motivated me to take it so much farther than perhaps it would have gone.

From your perspective, what is autism?
Corra: Really what the film is trying to get at is, we’re really questioning the whole idea of perception, the fundamental nature of perception itself. … Kids are diagnosed as lacking in affect, having difficulty with abstract concepts, and they have very splintered intelligence, so that they can deal with facts really well, and they can process concrete information really well, but when it comes to the idea of making connections, or empathy, it’s a severe social impairment.

This film seems to be about more than autism. How does this method of filmmaking comment on human relationships and behavior?
Corra: It really is about what’s normal. George developed his own filming style really quickly. He would often film himself speaking directly to the camera. His camera movements were always quick and kind of fragmented and shaky. He had been kind of an elusive character to me in the past and it was hard for me to have deeper conversations with him, but suddenly when I began looking at his footage, I began seeing the subtle and intricate ways that he related to the world around him. I began to see someone who is actually quite emotional and sensitive. This filmmaking project actually gave us a tangible way to relate to each other.

Did you have any idea that George would enjoy filming as much as he did?
Corra: No, yeah you know he tends to be very obsessed, as you see in the film, with airplanes and other things. The actual self-documentation could have gone either way, and he went for it.

In your film, you continually ask the question, “How is George different from other children?” How do you think George is different from other children? How is he not different?
Corra: I wanted the viewer to go through the same transition that I was experiencing, so the first 30 minutes of the film are very deliberately disjunctive and kind of autistic, kind of afraid of eye contact, if you can call that a style of filming. We deliberately structured the first part of the film so that the viewer is unsure who is autistic and who’s normal. Some of his “autistic” classmates are presented alongside George’s normal friends, and we didn’t make the distinction between the two in the first part of the film, so that everybody started at kind of a base level. And then in the second and third act of the film, the pieces begin to come together.

In the film, there’s a conversation between you and your producers at HBO, and they threaten to kill the project. It’s disturbing because their reason is that “George doesn’t seem autistic enough.” Can you tell us more about that conflict?
Corra: When I showed HBO the first 30 minutes of the film, they were completely baffled by it. Because of this deliberate confusion of who is normal and who is not, the way that they received the first 30 minutes was that George isn’t autistic enough. And they also complained about it being confused and fragmented. I tried to explain to them that this was a work in progress, and that the film would go on to reveal more about George’s past and how he suffers from a very serious neurological handicap. … I was devastated. George was devastated. But I was more bound and determined than ever to finish this movie, because George and I were making great progress in our relationship, and I also realized that we were doing something quite new and different. The topic of autism and neurological impairments had been dealt with, but never quite in this way. So, I finished the project with my own money and it got picked up by the Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art. … It piqued HBO’s interest again, and Sheila Nevins, and my hat goes off to her, said she had re-looked at the film and that she was wrong and that it really was an important film about autism. She said she wanted to air it, and I was a little skeptical but also kind of thrilled. I was like, “You mean you want to air it as is, with the scene of HBO dropping it?” And I admire her to this day, because she said, “You’re the filmmaker, the film should be the way you want it to be.” And I told her that, well you must agree that it’s not just about criticizing HBO, it’s the idea that the film was dropped shows a kind of more universal cruelty that exists out there, in terms of the idea of who’s normal and who’s not. So, it was a very important scene for reasons much larger than just the politics of filmmaking.

From a wider perspective, do you notice a change in the general awareness of disorders like autism and even ideas of normalcy since you started making the film in 1995?
Corra: Oh my God, yes. When George was 12, I guess it was the mid 90’s. The United States’ awareness, acceptance and integration of learning disabilities has totally transformed in the 12 or so years since this film has been made.

Do you think George had anything to do with that?
Corra: You know, I really don’t know. I can’t think that way. As a filmmaker, I can’t anticipate on changing the world, I try to create a window into it.

What is George doing now?
Corra: George is 25 years old. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama. He has his own apartment, his own car. He’s got a job. His mom is from Birmingham, and the extended family is all down there. He’s got this great life — he’s extremely social. He’s looking for a girlfriend, just like the adult with autism in the film. You know, he’s become a little bit like Mark Ramoser, and Mark is an interesting character in the film, because not only is Mark the first autistic standup comedian, … but in the film, Mark’s role was so people could project forward and sort of see George where he is now. And he is that. He kind of has become Mark Ramoser. It’s very interesting. He’s doing well, though. [He has] a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress around social situations, a huge desire to be normal, which is really what he is fighting right now. He is learning to accept himself versus wanting to be normal, [which] is the root of a lot of his anxiety. Now, again, it’s just like the rest of us, but it’s sort of magnifies in his case. … Now he’s so smart and he’s so aware, that he’s kind of figured out all these situations. He won’t break the law, and he won’t drink and drive. He’s a very straight, law-abiding citizen, rule-bound. But, he has figured out that if he goes to bars late at night, you know, like to college bars and stuff, when everyone is drunk, that they don’t notice the difference so much. So, he kind of has figured out, that if he can be with impaired people, he can sort of lead a normal life. He’s developed all of these amazing techniques, but he does confide in me on a regular basis, and he tells me, “I just want to be normal.” And I said, “George, you’re just George. You’re always going to be yourself. There is no normal.”

Does George still like to make films?
Corra: You know, he’s into still photography now. He travels. Right now he is systematically traveling in his car, taking a two-day trip to every state in the union. And I think he’s covered 38 states so far. He’s documenting his journey with still photography. He goes by himself; he’s very independent, he’s happy, and he’s checking them off the list.

Have you considered making a follow-up project or film?
Corra: I’m just beginning to now. I mean, I have to tell you, making that film almost killed me emotionally, because not only did the family kind of disintegrate during that film, but it just was a combination of the divorce and actually processing George’s diagnosis from eight years prior to that was kind of devastating. In a way, the film kind of forced me to confront his diagnosis for the first time. I was really shattered and almost in hiding before that, about it. It’s almost like three lifetimes ago for me. Every film has been like climbing Mount Everest for me, but this film was like climbing 10 Mount Everests. All the films that I’ve made are personal in that they’re very intimate, but to take on my own life as a subject, I haven’t been ready to do that again until recently.

What do you think about the film being available on Hulu?
Corra: Oh, I’m honored. It’s a wonderful film and it deserves to be more available to a wider audience, but it’s also an odd film that’s been hard to classify. So, you guys are great. I think the film George, was ahead of its time a little bit, because it’s not just a video diary or an autobiographical film. It’s a really, deeply psychological kind of construction of what it is to be the father of an autistic child. I think now, viewers have become more sophisticated. Documentaries have changed and become more adventurous. It will be interesting to see the responses to the film, because it’s been getting out to a more art world audience and to people interested in autism, but yes it will be interesting to see what happens.

What are you working on now?
Corra: I’m working on a movie called The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan, and it’s a ghost story. It’s a feature-length documentary. I’m just finishing it now. I’m just in the color correcting and mixing stages. In a nutshell, it’s about a poor black guy from Texas who went to Vietnam in 1967 and defected. He went over to the Vietcong and then kind of disappeared. And two years ago, an old Vietnam vet visiting the battlefields of his youth ran into a black guy who said his name was McKinley, that he was from Texas and that he wished he could go home but he couldn’t. And then he kind of slipped away into the crowd when the guy started asking too many questions. And so, the visiting vet came back and found the family in rural Texas, and reported to them, this sighting. And they all concluded that he was probably still alive. And so the film follows a two-year journey, searching for McKinley Nolan.

Well we will definitely to see want that film. It sounds fascinating. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Corra: Thank you.

Filmmaker Sean White’s documentary, Beyond Gravity is a visually stunning look at the experience of mixed climbing (on both rock and ice). Currently, White is on a new adventure in the Philippines, but patiently spent time and effort working with local internet to answer some questions about himself and his film over email. — Jocelyn Matsuo, Content Editor

Hulu: Which came first, you as a climber or you as a filmmaker? Did one influence the other?

White:The mountains came first! Everything else was a natural progression. After high school, my friends and I got interested in mountaineering and climbed peaks all over the Pacific Northwest. We learned to climb technical rock and ice in order to improve our skills in the mountains. We’d photograph our trips on 35mm transparency (oh, the old days of film) in order to share our experiences with others, often in slide shows put to music. Inspired by magazine and outdoor gear catalogues, myself and Aaron Black enrolled in a year-long professional photography program to learn the art of the stills image. Our backgrounds are as stills photographers; we never took film school. So I guess climbing influenced the photography which influenced the film making. Evolution!

It was in photo school where we met Aaron Jackson who was also studying photography so he could apply it to his surfing passions. That was 1997. Two years later, I bumped into Jackson and he told me how he was making his first film using “prosumer” [a cross between professional and consumer] video cameras. This was the start of the digital filmmaking revolution, where wannabe filmmakers could afford a quality video camera and a computer and could create something professional in their basement. Jackson went on to complete Canada’s first surf movie, 5mm Canada, an instant classic and our inspiration for making Beyond Gravity.

What is the story of the project, how did it come to be?

In 1999, I was working as a photojournalist for the daily newspaper in Victoria, British Columbia. Aaron Black was photographing climbing and snowboarding for magazines in Whistler, where he was heavily exposed to the action filmmaking scene. Aaron Jackson showed us what was possible with a small investment in video equipment and lots of determination. Black recognized the opportunity to combine our photography and climbing backgrounds to create a film. My inspiration stemmed from combining all our passions and applying my journalistic background to create a groundbreaking movie. Beyond Gravity would be our film school.

What is your vision for the project? What do you want your audience to take from it?

From the beginning, we wanted to create a film that captured and celebrated our passions for the lifestyle of climbing. This meant having to cover a range of climbing disciplines and to weave them together in a coherent story. It had to be action-packed enough to satisfy the cravings of hardcore climbers, but also informative enough that non-climbers would be inspired into the sport or at very least take away some insights into the lifestyle. The concept was to bring the world of climbing to the masses.
It was also the perfect vehicle for meeting, interviewing and climbing with some of the best athletes in the world.

How did you find the other climbers for the project?

Many of the climbers in the film were friends from the climbing scene in Squamish including Matt Maddaloni, Andrew Boyd, Conny Amelunxen and others. We met Sean Isaac in a parking lot and he invited us to film with him. Isaac introduced us to many of the ice climbers in Canmore, Alberta, including Jim Gudjonson and Abby Watkins. We also cold-called some of our climbing heroes like Peter Croft, Barry Blanchard and Lynn Hill as well as then-young star Katie Brown. Everybody we approached and filmed was genuinely excited about the project and gave generously of their time and energy for the film.

Are there any anecdotes you’d like to share?
So many … how to choose?

In California, we filmed Peter Croft free-soloing the Cardinal Pinnacle in the Sierras. After scaling the peak, I rappelled several hundred feet down to capture him on a crux move beneath an overhang. As I hung above Peter with the camera, both of us several hundred feet off the deck, the rope above me rolled over to a sharp edge and began to fray away at the protective sheath. I didn’t notice at first, but when I started to ascend the rope with my jumars [mechanical devices used for ascending on a rope] to position for another shot, I could see the nylon core above slowly ripping apart. I untied, then free-climbed to the damaged section with the camera, then re-attached the ascenders above the wrecked rope for the rest of the ascent. To this day, I honestly believe that if I had stayed filming for another few minutes, the rope probably would have failed and sent me to my death.

How has the project influenced the climbing community? How would you like it to?

I’d say people were really stoked about what we had created, especially in terms of the level of cinematography and the style in which we edited the film. It’s probably the first climbing movie that has transcended from the action-only genre into an exciting and insightful documentary for the mainstream public. Certainly it’s a timeless piece that still resonates with viewers, even years after its release. I hope Beyond Gravity will carry its message of inspiring people to get out and climb, explore, and have heaps of fun in the process!

When filmmaker Dan Lohaus learned that there were over 150,000 homeless Vietnam War veterans, he decided he wanted to take action. He started reading up on the subject, visiting assistance programs, and talking to vets who were living on the streets, filming their experiences along the way with the intention of turning his footage into a documentary on the subject of homeless vets from the Vietnam war. At the start of the Iraq War, though, Lohaus’ documentary project took a slightly different focus as the veterans started telling Lohaus that, soon enough, soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq would find themselves without options. Enter Iraq War veteran Herold Noel. It was his story, his fight to get assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), that became the focus of Lohaus’ When I Came Home. The film is a sharp, candid look at the struggles our war heroes face when they find themselves unable to work due to injury or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and unable to get benefits from the VA.

Lohaus is currently working on another documentary that will follow the experience of Vietnam veterans and the 10-year battle it took to have PTSD recognized as a mental disorder. He took a break to talk to Hulu about When I Came Home, which he screened at a benefit for Services for the UnderServed (susinc.org) on Veteran’s Day. — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor

Hulu: How did you decide to do a documentary about homeless vets?
Filmmaker Dan Lohaus: Back in 2002, I was interested in making a documentary about homeless Vietnam vets; that was really the focus of this film. I had found there are over 150,000 homeless Vietnam vets. I wanted to look at their experience when they come home. Staggering numbers of Vietnam vets ended up in prison when they came home, or ended up ending their lives prematurely. That statistic, that there were over 150,000 homeless Vietnam vets, just really made me angry. I just felt like so many of these guys were in their late 50s or early 60s, and had been out in the streets for years. This is kind of the final chapter for them in terms of being ignored and forgotten when they came home in the early ’70s.

So that’s where it all started, and as I started filming homeless Vietnam vets out on the street, the war in Iraq started. Once that war started, all the Vietnam vets started telling me to keep my eyes open for kids coming out of Iraq, because they were like “This VA is so backlogged, we can’t even get help from the VA. We’re still fighting for our benefits, and we just don’t understand how a whole new generation is going to come and get taken care of.” Then I started seeing little articles on the Internet about homeless Iraq veterans. The first one was in the Boston Globe, about a woman named Vanessa Turner. She’d gotten back from Iraq and ended up homeless in the Boston area. Basically, at that point I decided this is ridiculous; I couldn’t believe this was happening again. I wanted to find homeless Iraq veterans to include in the film and kind of show how history’s repeating itself. And then [in late 2004, early 2005], I found Herold [Noel] in New York. It just took off from there.

Who is Herold?
Herold Noel, he was in the Army, in the 37 Cavalry out of Fort Stewart, Georgia.

How did you find him, and why do you think his story is representative of others?
He was the subject of a cover article for this newspaper here in New York called The Indypendent. They did a cover story about Herold called “The Invisible Soldier.” I just couldn’t believe it — here was this guy in my neighborhood, going through this. At the same time, I had been going to this one organization in [Bedford-Stuyvestant] called Black Veterans for Social Justice, where I had found a couple other Iraq vets, but they weren’t quite ready to be in the film. It just so happens that Herold was also going to Black Veterans for Social Justice to try to get some help. My contact there told him “Hey, if you want to be in a movie, there’s this guy looking for homeless Iraq vets.” Herold was just really determined. The first day I met him, he said “I want you to document this, I want you to show people what a soldier has to go through when they come home. I want you to follow me to the end of the earth with your camera. I want the country to see what we have to go through.” He was a perfect subject. Right after the first day of filming, he was obviously the main subject for the film.

Where is he today?
He’s still in New York. He’s actually working with a non-profit, Urban Neighborhood Services in Coney Island, and he started a veterans’ project there. He’s really trying to reach out to low-income vets that are coming back to the neighborhood where he kind of grew up, just trying to make sure they know where to go for help. He’s just trying to make sure that what happened to him doesn’t happen to anyone else.

It seems like the subject of homeless Iraq war veterans is quiet, not something you hear about in the press very often.
Back in 2003, when I was first starting to see little articles on the Internet, I had a list of organizations that help homeless veterans. I would call them and say, “Hey, are you guys dealing with any homeless Iraq or Afghanistan veterans?” They’d say, “No, we’ve had maybe one come through our program, but they’re doing OK now. We’re ready for them; we’re expecting to see them.” Now, if I call those same organizations, every one of them has 10 or 15 homeless Iraq or Afghanistan veterans in their program. According to the VA, there’s somewhere around 2,000 at this point, but it’s so frustrating, because it’s the same thing that happened with Vietnam vets. I just feel like it’s a generation getting swept under the rug. There have been some stories about them here and there, but I really feel like people don’t know. When they hear what my movie’s about, the first thing they say is, “What? There are homeless Iraq veterans? That’s ridiculous.”

Before this, were you all that aware of homeless veterans? Was this something you’d already been involved with?
Yeah, I had been working in the non-profit world and helped start a couple of organizations that help employ homeless people and, ever since college, volunteering at soup kitchens and stuff. I think along the way, I met a lot of Vietnam vets. I think I was aware in the back of my head that there were a lot of Vietnam vets on the streets, but it was only when I started doing research on it that I really found out the numbers. It’s pretty staggering. One in four homeless people is a veteran, which is kind of staggering. Twenty-five percent of our whole homeless population are vets. I was aware of homelessness among veterans, but it was only when I said “OK, I’m going to do some research; I think I want to do a film on this,” when I really discovered the numbers.

What moment most stands out for you from shooting this film?
The first thing I filmed was the San Diego Stand Down for homeless veterans in 2002. The Stand Down is meant to be a three-day event where homeless veterans can come off the street and live as a community. They actually get like a coat check for all of their stuff. There’s no drinking, there’s no drugs. They just come in off the street, they live in these military-style tents, and they live in a little community together where they can get not only hot food and new clothes but dental care, too, and they can get hooked up with benefits counselors. They’re constantly hearing speeches from formerly homeless veterans. The event is all about motivating these guys to see that there is an option to get off the street, and that there are people out there that care about them. So I went to this event, and there were 1,000 homeless veterans that came in off the street. Of that 1,000, over the course of the weekend, about 400 or so kind of saw the light and were ready to jump into a program. They had kind of had enough and were inspired by everybody there. This was the very first thing I was filming, I was like “Oh my God, we’re about to see 400 homeless veterans get taken off the street. They’re ready to go, they haven’t drank in a few days, they’re signing up for these programs.” In the course of filming, I was trying to see if I could follow someone who was going to get into a program. That’s when I learned that, in fact, even though 400 vets had made the choice to try to get into a program, there were literally only seven spots available in San Diego County. It just became so frustrating.

So here’s this great event called Stand Down that really connects with these vets, it gets them off the street, it gets them to come in and start thinking about what they need to do to get out and get off the street. I was so frustrated when I learned that only seven guys would get a shot at getting into a supported housing program. It just became really obvious to me. If the money was there to create these supportive housing communities — and there are some great models out there like US Vets, which has supportive housing communities across the country, and there’s one in San Diego called the Veterans Village of San Diego, which has like an 85 percent success rate. It was just really frustrating. It became really clear to me. A guy in the movie, the founder of Stand Down, really says it best: “Why is it that we keep asking why there are so many homeless veterans when we don’t ask where are the resources?” It just became really clear. If the government would put the money into supportive housing programs in combination with the Stand Down event, we could literally get these guys off the street. It was really tough for me. That was the first thing I filmed, I got to know a bunch of these guys who decided that was the weekend they were going to get off the street, and I watched them have to pack up and go back out on the street. It just really, really pissed me off, but I think it was a good thing because it pissed me off enough …That was a real point where I decided I was going to have to make this film.

Are you seeing that the same factors that contributed to Vietnam veterans becoming homeless are the same for the new Iraq war veterans?
I think overall, it’s definitely different. It’s 40 years later, but some of the same things are happening to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I think, in general, the nation is familiar with the term post-traumatic stress disorder, which is good. I think it’s basically, if you’re affected by war and you’re coming home with PTSD, oftentimes, it’s tough to hold a job. If you can’t find a job, it’s hard to pay rent. It’s a downward spiral that I think veterans of any war can fall into. Just like Vietnam vets … We have 1 million Iraq or Afghanistan veterans who are waiting on decisions from the VA on their disability claims. That’s a staggering number. It was at 600,000 earlier this year, and now it’s at a million. There are literally a million veterans who are not able to work right now who are waiting for a decision from the VA on whether they’re eligible to receive benefits and how much they’ll receive. If they’re unable to work because they’re injured, and if they’re waiting on these benefits, I don’t know how we expect them not to end up homeless. I think vets are a very proud people. For some vets, they maybe didn’t leave a good home situation. Once again, they’re coming back to an economy that’s hurting. I think there are similar factors for any generation of vets that come home. When vets don’t get the proper care they need for PTSD, a lot of them will to start to self-medicate. That’s a factor in that whole downward spiral, as well.

To learn more about this film and how you can help homeless veterans in your area, please visit to WhenICameHome.com.

For Veterans Day this year, our content team scoured the site to bring you Honoring Our Soldiers, a collection of videos that pay tribute to our Armed Forces. It contains a number of war flicks — Saints and Soldiers, Time Limit, Thunder Birds, McHale’s Navy (the 1997 version) — but there’s plenty more to watch.

The collection also features shows like Mail Call with everyone’s favorite honorary Gunnery Sergeant, R. Lee “Gunny” Ermy; War Stories with Oliver North; and Carrier, a favorite here at Hulu HQ. We also included a number of soldier-related documentaries and news stories for true-life stories of the brave men and women who serve our country. Among titles like Return to Tarawa, Nanking, and PBS’s Medal of Honor are two new documentary features: Jerabek, a candid look how the death of U.S. Marine Ryan Jerabek — killed in a firefight in Ramadi nine months after his high school graduation — impacted his family in Green Bay, Wisconsin; and When I Came Home, a documentary that chronicles the struggles of Vietnam and Iraq war veterans who end up homeless when they return to U.S. soil.

We’ll be posting interviews with filmmakers from each of the new documentaries in the next few days. In the meantime, everyone at Hulu would like to say a collective “thank you” to all of those who have served or are serving our country.

Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com)
Editor

In Independent America, husband and wife journalists Hanson Hosein and his wife, Heather Hughes, packed up their car (and their dog) and traveled the U.S. But their cross-country road trip doesn’t take place in chain motels and interstate highways. Instead, the couple searches for independent businesses — mom and pop stores, local restaurants, and family-owned inns — off of the country’s more scenic secondary highways. Along the way, they discover fiercely independent communities who are against chains and big-box retailers, an issue, it seems, that unites conservatives and liberals alike. Below, Hulu spoke to filmmaker Hosein about their journey. — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor

Hulu: Can you give us a summary of the film?
Filmmaker Hanson Hosein: The big picture is that it’s about what I call the rising insurgency against corporate chains in American small towns and cities across the Heartland. The smaller story is of a road trip my wife and I took across the United States to document that, by taking only secondary highways to see what we thought was a more authentic view of America, before the corporate chains took over, and by only doing business with independent businesses along the way.

What were some of the more surprising things you discovered while you took this trip?
I think the most surprising thing is that this issue transcends politics and the standard conservative-liberal divide we keep hearing about in the United States, which is obviously quite true with many other issues. But we were in Midwestern towns in Nebraska or Wyoming, and these are conservative areas, but they also had the same concerns; they just call it something different. In Seattle, they call it sustainability; in these places they call it conservation. They’re just as concerned about these sort of concentrations of power by large corporations, which they don’t trust as much as they trust their neighbors in terms of how they do business.

One of the reviews about this documentary points out that you aren’t actually anti-Wal-Mart, that you actually provide equal time to their company. What’s your perspective on Wal-Mart?
It’s changed over the years. Because we come from a traditional journalism background — we both used to work at NBC — we take this fair and balanced thing very seriously. It was very important for us to actually get Wal-Mart in the film. They get 800 requests a week — that’s what they told us — for interviews. They looked at our website while we were doing our trip, and they said “Well, they obviously have a point of view that’s critical of us, but they’re giving us fair opportunity to talk.” So they decided they would give us some time. They gave us free access to their stores and their advertising, and there were no conditions whatsoever. So my thought on Wal-Mart as a company is, you know, I’m concerned still about the amount of power they have in the community and some of the things they’ve done in the past, overturning what communities have decided in terms of how they want to run their neighborhoods. On the other hand, I think the fact that Wal-Mart has been very open about some of the mistakes they’ve made along the way doesn’t necessarily endear me to them, but I believe in giving them a fair opportunity to state their case. It’s been said that a book can be written about Wal-Mart and all the bad things they’ve done, and a book can be written about all the good things they’ve done. Especially in this downturn, there’s a sense that that Wal-Mart is not necessarily the bad guy as much as they had been in the past.

You mentioned that you traveled the country with your wife, Heather. What was that like for the two of you?
[Laughs] It was tough, because we had both worked in television news traditionally. We both had real jobs. This was this crazy flight of fancy we had … We tried to get PBS and Discovery Channel and these other broadcasters to support us, and nobody did. We had this incredible pressure to do this story anyway, even though we didn’t have a major supporter. We had a partner, Tom Powers from Open Door in Toronto; he’d give us some funds to do this. But this was like driving into oblivion, not knowing whether we’d have something to show and whether anybody would care about what we were doing. Doing it was a little scary, but going out with your wife and your dog, there’s some moral support there — but it’s also like you’re facing every day, like “Gee, I hope I’m not leading my family into ruin on this creative urge that may not lead to anything.” It was tough, and you have the usual squabbles that happen between husband and wife: the husband never wants to check directions, and the wife always wants to stop and ask for directions — there’s a moment of pride there. But amazingly, we got along pretty well given all the stress of what the trip was about.

How did you determine your route? Did you have certain towns you wanted to hit, or was it all a “flight of fancy?”
I used to work at NBC covering breaking news around the world, so I’m really into covering things organically and letting the story tell itself. On the other hand, I knew that we couldn’t just take a chance and just close our eyes and point at a map. So we did some research before leaving — where we thought some of the hot spots might be, and we decided that we would visit some of those along the way. But what happened –this was a few years ago, before even YouTube had launched — we decided that as we were making our trip, we would share our video and share our thoughts on our blog with the world. As we kept going, more and more people kept following us, and we’d get covered by NPR stations and local newspapers. All of a sudden, people started sending us requests and recommendations of where we should go and said [they'd] put us up for the night. Fifty percent of the trip was very serendipitous based on that interaction with the audience. I’d say that the best half of the film was actually done through improvisation from these suggestions.

You created a follow-up film where you go to New Orleans. Can you tell us about that, and why a film about New Orleans was important?
We were actually supposed to go to New Orleans on the first trip. This was in 2005, and we got a call from Wal-Mart saying “We will talk to you,” so we had to rush to get to Arkansas, where Wal-Mart has their headquarters. We were thinking, “Oh, we’ll get there sometime.” Six weeks later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. We’d always been told that New Orleans was the classic independent American city, where they had a really strong local economy and local culture, and they didn’t like big-box stores in the city. We knew that was going to change after Katrina. The second film was kind of like a lost chapter of Independent America. It’s my attempt to capture what the city was like before, and how it was actually small businesses that came back immediately after Katrina. I mean, I heard stories of people opening up the day after the floods to help their neighborhoods, and how vital that is to a community after a disaster like that. So that’s the story of that second film. There are some concerns about how city officials have been favoring big-box stores like Home Depot with tax incentives while not giving the same incentives to small businesses. It’s very much the same themes as the first film, but it’s really focused on one community right after a major disaster.

And what are you working on these days?
Right now I’m a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. And funnily enough, all the stuff that I did for that first film — creating your own content, telling your own stories, using engaged community members to help spread the word about what you’re doing — is pretty much what I teach now. It’s like the future of digital media and communication and social media. I’m also working on a book on storytelling in the 21st century. Independent America is going to be the main theme to it, which is essentially that if you ever want to cut through all the noise — everybody can communicate these days — you have to tell a really good story and you have to find a way to connect with your community using these different platforms to have them engage with you, kind of like we did in having them tell us what the second half of the story should be. That’s basically a book on the future of storytelling.

Thanks so much for your time — good luck with these projects!

How do you make a story about marathon runners? You really get into the human stories, says Spirit of the Marathon director Jon Dunham. The documentary tells the stories of six runners who are preparing for one of the fastest marathons in the world: the Chicago Marathon. “I cast it just like it was a feature film,” Dunham says. “I knew I was looking for first-time marathon runners, Boston qualifiers, and a world-class athlete or two. We sent profiles out all over the country, in running magazines, on websites, and the responses came streaming in. Then it was just the process of narrowing it all down. We looked for amateurs, individuals in and around the Chicago area, and the stories evolved from there.”

Of all the famous marathons — New York, Boston — why did the Los Angeles filmmaker choose to focus on Chicago? “All roads were pointing to Chicago,” says Dunham. Because he was looking for someone training to qualify for the Boston Marathon, Chicago made sense. “Chicago sends the most runners to Boston,” he says, because it’s such a flat, fast course. But Chicago was also on the agenda for 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist Deena Kastor, who suffers a foot injury early in her training for the Chicago race. But, for Dunham, it was also about the location. “It’s one of the bigger races, and it has a skyline rife with opportunities for filming. It’s a beautiful city,” he says.

As we learn more about Spirit ‘s subjects, we learn more about marathons: the training involved, the deep inner strength required to keep your feet going one step after another for 26.2 miles, and the sheer spectacle of the event: tens of thousands of people streaming through the urban city streets.

With this year’s Chicago Marathon taking place on Sunday, Hulu caught up with some of the runners we met in Spirit of the Marathon to see where they are now. (Professional runners Daniel Njenga and Deena Kastor were not available for interview.) — Rebecca Harper (rebecca.harper@hulu.com), Editor

Ryan Bradley — Boston Hopeful
Though Ryan Bradley’s race didn’t turn out quite like he planned, he was back to his routine about six months later. “I’ve been doing about one marathon a year since then,” he said. Like the other amateurs we meet in Spirit, he’s not running the Chicago Marathon again this year — but that’s because he’s planning to run 26.2 miles in Des Moines next weekend, instead. His wife will be doing Chicago this year, though, so while she’s running the race Ryan’s on kid duty. “I’ve got to somehow manage to get three kids under the age of five down there to watch their mom run,” he said. “It will be fun — it will be a challenge, but it will be fun.” He and his wife had the opportunity to run the Boston marathon together, and now Ryan’s hoping to requalify within the next couple of years so he can return when he’s 40. So what’s it like living in a household with two marathon runners and three young kids? “We’ve broken our treadmill quite a few times,” he laughs. They take the kids with them on some of the shorter runs — the kids love it, he says — and the whole family recently ran their first 5K together (with strollers, of course).

Leah Caille — First-Timer
A knee injury slowed Leah Caille down in her first marathon, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to do it again. “I got to the first finish line, and the only thing I wanted to do other than sleep for three days was go out there and do it again,” she says. This year, though, she’s unable to participate in the Chicago Marathon due to spinal issues. “When you’re a runner, if you’re sidelined for even a few weeks, that kind of sets you back for a bit,” she says. “Well, I’ve been sidelined for a good long time more than that,” thanks to back surgery last year and then two herniated discs in her neck in March. “When God was passing out healthy spines, I might have been at the bar or something — actually, I was probably out for a run,” she laughs. She’s back to shorter, three- or four-mile runs now and hopes to get back to doing both the triathlon and a marathon this year. In the meantime, she’s started a run team at her daughter’s school — they’ve done several 5Ks together — and she’s coaching her volleyball team, as well. “Things are going really well,” she tells us. “My career has moved forward. I’m in the ‘business’ — I sell sponsorships for major races throughout the country, and I love it. Being a runner helps me to speak with not only knowledge, but also a deep passion for the sport.”

Gerald “Jerry” Meyers — Veteran Marathoner
In Spirit, we meet Jerry Meyers as he’s training his daughter for the Chicago Marathon. And though he’d love to be running this weekend, he won’t be able to make it. “I’m on the injured-reserved list,” he says. “I threw a blood clot in my leg in January and it’s still there.” Though he hasn’t been able to run since the beginning of the year — the longest he’s been off in 30 years — he’s still walking every day. After the film, Jerry ran the 2006 Chicago Marathon but had to pull out at mile 16, when an exposed nerve on the ball of his foot kept him from going any farther. “My family told me that if I didn’t quit, they were going to come after me with a baseball bat,” he says. “I was going to hobble in, but they said, ‘No way, you can’t hobble in on two broken legs, ‘cuz that’s what we’re gonna give ya.’ That’s the first time I was not able to complete a run.” Despite the blood clot, Jerry says he feels great today. “If I didn’t know better, I’d go out and run,” he confesses.

Lori O’Connor — First-Timer
Lori got the marathon bug during her first Chicago Marathon and had every intention of doing it again the following year. “During the first one, my training went really, really well,” she said. “I stuck to the schedule. I missed maybe one run that entire training session. I finished, I had a smile on my face, and I felt great at the end. I thought, like some runners do when they finish a race, ‘I can do it a little bit faster!’ There’s always this push to be better.” She prepared for her second marathon the next year, only to find out that she was pregnant after running the 20-mile training run. “My doctor gave me the option [to do the marathon] and I said ‘Hmm, I think I’m going to stay on the sidelines for this one.’ I know it would have been perfectly safe, but I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to go for speed, and I knew I wouldn’t be going fast.” This year, Lori’s out of the race because she and her husband are both wrapping up their dissertations. (Lori is getting her PhD in Sociology.) “It’s very time-consuming to train for a marathon, and so this year I said I’m basically just sticking to half marathons,” she said. “I did a few halves in the spring and I’m doing another at the end of October. I’m holding off until the degree is in hand — that’s my reward, so I’ll probably train for one again next summer.”