NOVEMBER 2004 |
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848 announces move to
larger venue, |
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DRUNK
THE MOVIE |
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Teetotalers
Need Not Apply |
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There
was a photograph of myself that I threw away because I didn’t want to replay
the scenes of four broken margarita glasses, loss of memory, and
embarrassment at friends mentally rewinding the scenes of what I said and did
when I drank too much at a birthday party many years ago. Thus, I felt slightly guilty at
eavesdropping and taking notes as drunken strangers divulged personal
traumas, disappointments, and desires. I heard a guy talk about how he lost
his memory when he was twenty-one and was abandoned by his wife and child and
his parents and siblings. Another man
said that he doesn’t go to his college reunions because he’s ashamed to tell
people that he is a low-level Administrative Assistant at the age of
twenty-four. Another story involved a
recurring dream where a man’s ex-wife returns to him. |
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It
wasn’t that the stories were particularly earth-shattering but that they were
being divulged to strangers and might possibly become scenes in a feature
film. Then again, is there anything
that we haven’t seen in this age of reality television, where the word “cut”
doesn’t seem to be part of the filmmaking vocabulary and very little ends up
on the editing floor? |
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We
were at Sadie’s Flying Elephant, a dive bard located on the corner of
Portrero and Mariposa. The
participants had all had at least one drink prior to the interview for the
movie, courtesy of the filmmaking crew.
Sean Fagan, the director, hit upon the idea of making a film about
drunken people while drinking in a bar with a friend. “It seemed like a good idea even when I
sobered up the next morning,” he said.
He is co-producing the film with his friend, Justine Sutton. The other crew members work with Sean and Justine
on a rotating basis. |
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“I
want to see what happens when people get drunk,” says Sean about the goal of
his film. He hasn’t, however, told
his family about the film because he thinks they might find the concept to be
trite. Thus, he is approaching the
film in the manner of a scientific experiment to give it credibility as a
social experiment. He plans to attain
this by minimizing the control variables.
That is, the participants will be filmed in a studio where they’ll sit
in a chair and be interviewed in progressive stages of inebriation. |
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The
name of the film is “Drunk, The Movie.” The interview team has a list of questions
which are used to stimulate conversation.
“If you could kill anyone in the world without ever being prosecuted,
who would it be?” is one of the questions.
Although the questions aren’t entirely original, they are designed to
elicit responses that would provide character and personality insights. The goal is to find candidates who would
have screen charisma, whether it’s positive or negative. Since most of the people who were being
interviewed had already been drinking, they were quite frank with their
answers. Some were even narcissistic and loud to the point of being
obnoxious. |
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I
spoke with a few of the candidates before and after their interview sessions
and many of them had a cavalier attitude about being filmed in a progressive
state of drunkenness. |
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“I’d
do it too but I get too friendly and get in trouble when I drink,” said a
twenty-four years old woman, Becky, who was waiting at the bar while her
boyfriend was being interviewed. But,
twenty minutes after talking to me and a few drinks later, she had changed
her mind and was being interviewed by the film crew. A female friend of hers,
Victoria, a thirty-seven years old psychotherapist who had come along to see
what the fuss was about, also decided to submit to the interview. |
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The
thirty-two years old army veteran, Micheal, who lost his memory at the age of
twenty-one due to an army vehicle accident, said that he was doing this
because he “is on disability and has nothing else to do with his time and
this seemed like a fun project.” |
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A
television show producer and host, Bent, aged forty-two, said he had been
drunk in front of the camera previously and he wanted to do this for “free
booze and fifteen seconds of fame.” |
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The
twenty-four years old East Indian administrative assistant, Roy, the only
non-white person partaking in the casting interview, said that he was doing
this to get exposure as an actor. How
would your grandmother in India feel about seeing you in this film? “She’ll think I’m a movie star!” |
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A
majority of the interviewees were white male, a statistic that Sean verified
as being consistent in terms of the people who had been showing up to be in
the film. Do white men have the
least to lose by being seen drunk in a movie? Or can they simply afford to be more careless about their
image? Or, are they the ones who
drink the most? Or, maybe it’s just they trawl through craisglist.org and
tribe.net, the two places where Sean advertised, more frequently than others. Sean and I discussed the possible reasons
without reaching any satisfactory conclusions. |
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Sean
is actively looking to diversify the race and gender population of the movie
and has found some women and minorities.
He also hopes that in addition to race, gender, and
sexual-orientation, there’ll be diversity in age among the people who end up
in front of the camera. So far, the
only consistent diversity has been in the occupations of the people who show
up for the audition/interview sessions. Their occupations have run the gamut
from Computer Scientist to Sex-Workers. |
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Backgrounds
and agendas of the participants’ aside, the setup of this docudrama is
designed to remove the participants from the trappings of a bar or party or any
external stimulants. They’ll be asked questions as they sit and drink and we,
the viewer, will watch the transformation of their body language and hear
their alcohol induced stories of innermost desires, fears, or whatever other
personal territory the filmmaker decides to tread. |
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Would
I make myself vulnerable to the camera and the world for a film like this?
No! |
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Would
you? |
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I’d
probably watch, however. |
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Sean and his team might still be looking for volunteers as you read this story. If you are interested in participating please go to http://www.DrunkTheMovie.com. |
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Tagging Town & Country |
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OtherCinema @ ATA |
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DANIEL'S BOZO + PARKER'S PIECE BY PIECE + STONE'S UNDERFOOT |
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Tentatively slated to introduce his magnum opus Who Is Bozo Texino?, Bill "Flight Risk" Daniel delivers the results of 20 years of dangerous documentation of hobo and railworker graffiti. Hand-crafted from hours of super-8 and 16mm film, freight-car interviews and campfire recordings, and copious photos of chalk and grease-pencil monikers, this subcultural survey narrates a very rare history of railroad's greatest graffiti legends. Also in person, Jon Parker's hour-plus Piece picks up the story in ‘70s SF, and painstakingly chronicles the generations of urban spray-painters since. Capping off this carnival of outsider art is Melinda Stone's marvelous new movie on sidewalk graffiti! |
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SAT. 11/27 8:30pm |
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Artists'
Television Access |
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The Almost True Adventures of an Ex Mormon Stripper |
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@ The Dark Room |
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Why would a good Mormon girl end up a stripper? What does a Mormon childhood do to a developing, fragile psyche? Heidi Wohlwend's play attempts to answer that question, using puppets, projected images, music and song to tell the story of five generations of Mormon women. From convert sisters who travel from Leeds, England to Utah and marry the same man, to Heidi who is estranged from her mother for choosing not to live the Mormon life. These women are connected by their blood and silence, while Heidi struggles to find her voice, and laments the lost voices of all the Mormon mothers who came before her. “One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday, not one woman, in any country of the world, will go to church. If women simply stop giving our time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they cease to be. “-Sonia Johnson (excommunicated from the Mormon church for supporting the ERA in the 70s) |
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NOVEMBER 5th---8PM ,6th---2PM & 8PM , 7th---2PM & 7PM |
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TICKETS $10 AT DOOR & ONLINE AT ACTEVA |
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Dark Room 2263 Mission St between 18th &19th |
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Mongolian Art |
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Take advantage
of a rare opportunity to see contemporary Mongolian art. After 70 years of
Soviet rule, Mongolia is now a democracy. Many of the older Mongolian
artists were Soviet trained, so their technique is exquisite. This
painting called "1970" by Bayart-Od is one of more than 40
works on display in "Horses and Resources" from Nov. 10 to Nov. 27
at SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. (at 8th St.), San
Francisco. Meet some of the artists at the opening reception on Thurs.,
Nov. 11. For gallery information, please call Betsie Miller-Kusz
415/863-1414 ext 7 |
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The Art
Explosion Studios |
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Perpetual Motion Roadshow
#18... |
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@ Needles & Pens Back Gallery |
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Richard Melo's post-punk eco-rad novel, Jokerman 8 starts where Edward Abbey leaves off, then never looks back. Published by Soft Skull Press, it has been called passionate, euphoric, and Whitman-esque in a review in The Believer. A graduate of San Francisco State University, Melo lives in Portland, Oregon with his daughter. He is currently working on second, third, and fourth books. His writing has appeared in Willamette Week, Too Much Coffee Man, and Gobshite Quarterly. Melo performs passages from Jokerman 8 accompanying himself on a spooky 12-string acoustic guitar. (www.misconstrue.net) Ariel Gore is Maia's mom; author of the novel-memoir Atlas of the Human Heart and 3 parenting classics--The Hip Mama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip & Whatever, Mom; editor-publisher of Hip Mama: The Parenting Zine; editor of 2 anthologies--Breeder and the brand new soon-to-be bestseller The Essential Hip Mama; international bag lady; dangerous mama. Will be ranting about wanderlust and motherwork. (www.arielgore.com) Jim Munroe is a "pop culture provocateur", according to BookSense.com.After the HarperCollins release of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask (praised by people as diverse as Naomi Klein and Neil Gaiman) he chose to release his following books (Angry Young Spaceman, Everyone In Silico) on his own imprint No Media Kings as a statement against Murdoch-style consolidation. He's touring with his new novel An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil, a tale of the urban occult made up entirely of blog entries. "It has all Munroe's trademark charm, his wonderful, rueful fondness for his own characters, and a genuine mystery: is Lilith a demoness or isn't she?" --Georgia Straight (www.nomediakings.org) |
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THuRS NOV 4 ~ 7PM |
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Needles & Pens 483 14th St.@ Guerrero |
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Bay Area sculptors are organized! |
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By Susan Peterson |
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I am an artist at the Art Explosion Studios who is active in a local sculpture group that I have found very helpful to my career as an artist. Pacific Rim Sculptors Group was formed in 1988 by six Bay Area sculptors who wanted to establish a way to meet other artists, exchange ideas, and exhibit their work. They currently have over 150 artist members throughout Northern and Central California. Pacific Rim Sculptors Group maintains an active slide registry of the works of its members. The registry is available to members as well as curators, gallery owners and collectors. Pacific Rim publishes a bi-monthly newsletter containing announcements of exhibitions, meetings, members news, minutes of the meetings, grants and commission opportunities. Pacific Rim sponsors informal slide nights where members gather to view slides and discuss work. Pacific Rim also sponsors juried exhibitions at 600 Townsend in San Francisco, as well as other exhibitions at venues throughout the Bay Area. Recent jurors can be found on our website. This summer, the group organized a 4 month long exhibition at the prestigious Ground For Sculpture estate in New Jersey, next door to the ISC, where Sculpture Magazine is published. In January we will have an exhibition at the Falkirk Art Center in San Rafael. We are a fun and inclusive group. Check us out at: http://www.pacificrimsculptorsgroup.org |
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Arts Generate $5.4 Billion
for California |
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SACRAMENTO - Political, business, and arts leaders today announced the results of a year-long study on the economic impact of nonprofit arts in the state. "The Arts: A Competitive Advantage for California II," commissioned by the California Arts Council (CAC), shows the nonprofit arts in California is a vibrant economic engine that produces $5.4 billion annually to the state's economy, employs more than 160,000 individuals statewide, contributes nearly $300 million in state and local taxes, and ranks California as the nation's leader in arts-related industries. |
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Conducted by Diane L. Mataraza, Inc. and funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the CAC, "The Arts: A Competitive Advantage for California II," is an update to the Arts Council's groundbreaking 1994 report. Employing the same methodology as the 1994 report, researchers surveyed 3,200 large and small nonprofit arts organizations across the state. The new findings represent a 152 percent increase in economic impact compared to the previous report. |
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"This study is a dramatic marker reflecting how the arts contribute to the state's economy. The results show that investing in the arts in California pays fantastic dividends," said Arts Council Chair Barbara George. "We've always known that the arts are vital to our creative expression, now, we can say that the arts mean business," she added. |
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The study surveyed major metropolitan areas, mid-size cities, and rural communities to develop a statistical analysis. Results show that in both urban and rural counties, the arts play a valuable role in contributing positively to an area's business climate. The study concentrates on several sub-geographic regions including: Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. The $5.4 billion economic impact of the nonprofit arts breaks down regionally: Los Angeles $1.97 billion; Oakland $344.4 million; Sacramento $124.1 million; San Diego $255.7 million; San Francisco $1.44 billion; San Jose $229.1 million; other metropolitan cities $941.9 million, and rural areas $120 million. |
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"When you
consider that nonprofit arts groups are, in fact, 10,000 small businesses,
nonprofit arts groups are making a significant impact on the state's bottom
line everyday," said Arts Council Director Barry Hessenius. Additionally,
new research from Americans for the Arts, Creative Industries in California,
shows that there are more arts-related businesses (89,719) - including
nonprofit organizations - and more people employed (516,054) in the creative
industries in California than any other state in the nation and nearly double
that of New York in second place. |
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