All these wonderful things

On not knowing...

A funny thing happened this morning when I was powering through my morning online routine: a random click revealed that CONVENTION, the film I made with a bunch of good friends in the summer of 2008, was to premiere tonight on the Sundance Channel.

Funny not because I didn't know that tonight was the premiere, but because I didn't even know that IFC Films (to whom we sold the worldwide rights to CONVENTION) had, in turn, sold the broadcast rights to their sister company, Sundance Channel. 

Truth be told, tonight could have passed by quite easily with me being none the wiser (someone took Sundance Channel off our DirectTV rotation) and I have a feeling that most - if not all - of my collaborators and our subjects would have moved into Tuesday blissfully unaware that something they did two Augusts ago had been beamed/cabled into living rooms.

It made me think back to my first film, GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS), and how my producer and I were so actively involved and on top of every new development with the film - a one night screening in Sheboygan?  We knew about it and had probably lobbied the local arts reporter at the Sheboygan Press (actual paper) to write about it.  We talked to our distributor every day (at least up until they went bankrupt) for the latest news of ticket sales, reviews and prospects for future engagements.

This happened less so on my second film and now seems altogether quaint as I think about CONVENTION.  Part of this is what happened to indie film, alternative weeklies and the like in the intermediate eight years (as they like to say, the bottom dropped out) - it became more difficult to stay on top of the ever changing/degrading environment.  Part of it was the brutal combination of sheer exhaustion and lack of income - a new job/new film/new project/new paycheck seemed to hold more promise than the beating of the last horse, dead or otherwise.

My Documentary Decade

Dear Readers -

Apologies for dropping the ball here on the blog the past few weeks.  Between wrapping up shooting on my new film and prepping and planning for this year's Cinema Eye Honors, I've been procrastinating my return to somewhat regular blogging.

Here's a piece I started writing as I was en route to Branson, Missouri just after Christmas.  I'll be posting a couple more looks back at the year we just concluded in the coming days/weeks.  Pardon the delay.

_______________

There’s a story to what happened to me this decade and it starts in the spring of the year 2000.  I was then an Executive Producer at a production company that specialized in music videos, working with a bunch of talented filmmakers, routinely awarded budgets of $350K to make a 3 ½ minute clip that would – hopefully for the band, the label and their hangers-on – be awarded a coveted slot on the Carson Daly-hosted "Total Request Live".

The clips had to be of a certain high production value, the labels seemed to believe, or there would be no possibility of landing on the afternoon countdown show, one of the few venues remaining on MTV for music videos.  So the budgets, even for bands that you and I would never hear from again, had to be mid-six figures.  Or else said band might slip into the ether.

By the spring we’d surfed this wave for almost a year and I was starting to feel restless.  More and more of my own creative ideas were being poured into the work that was coming out of our company, but the execution of these ideas – and the ownership of same – fell, quite naturally, to the director. 

I remember sitting in the color correct of one particular video, a video whose concept I had proposed (and one that would later become such a hit on said MTV countdown program that it would help launch the band and the director’s career) and feeling like I had well and truly reached the end of my ability to stand in the shadows.

Simultaneously, there was a very real sense that the status quo in that industry could not sustain itself.  MTV was continually cutting back on the number of videos it was playing and the labels were under attack from digital downloads.  And how could labels keep spending that kind of money on bands with little hope of recouping the costs of such extravagant vanity videos?

Just prior to this – at the end of the previous decade – I started to direct my own projects – a friend’s music video here, a public service announcement there, and finally, a short film.  And by the end of the year 2000, there was a merger.

My short was out on the festival circuit.  I felt – for the first time – not like an Executive Producer (which was a job I loved and, if I do say so myself, was pretty good at) but like a filmmaker.  I remember flying to London to oversee the shoot a video in the fall of 2000 and writing “Filmmaker” on the occupation line of my landing card and being strangely, wonderfully proud of this new designation.

By that point I had already, mentally, turned my back on music videos.  For a decade I’d worked on more than 100 – respected indie bands and big pop artists – but now I was increasingly ready to go my own way.

And within three months, I’d be in New York shooting footage for what would become GIGANTIC, my first documentary feature.

The how and the why of GIGANTIC’s birth is less important than the fact that the arrival of this decade – one that has been castigated and bemoaned for its acts of terror, war, political combat and natural decay – signaled a significant shift in my life.

My documentary decade.

I couldn’t have known as I was running around New York with my Sony PD-150 following Johns Flansburgh and Linnell in the spring of 2001 what would happen in the decade that followed.

I could not have imagined KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON or CONVENTION. 

I had no notion that I would start a blog (blog? What’s a blog?) or an award for nonfiction filmmaking.

I would never think that I’d end the decade in the Ozark Mountain town of Branson, Missouri celebrating the arrival of a new decade with a camera in my hand.

I never dreamed that I would take it all so seriously, so personally, so occasionally obsessively.

I fell into documentary almost by chance and – in some kind of Faustian bargain – documentary has run away with me.

They Might Be Giants Win Second Grammy - Best Musical Album for Children

GIGANTIC Congrats to our friends John, John, Dan, Danny and Marty from They Might Be Giants on their Grammy Award this afternoon for Best Musical Album for Children for their most recent kids CD "Here Comes the 123s".

John Flansburgh and John Linnell previously won a Grammy in 2002 for the "Malcolm in the Middle" theme song, "Boss of Me".

Congrats...

...to our friends They Might Be Giants on their 2nd Grammy nomination, which came tonight for their latest kids opus Here Comes the 123s.  So far John and John are 1 for 1 at the Grammys, so we fully expect them to come home with the gold once again.

Also congrats to Death Cab for Cutie on their 2 nods, in the alternative album and rock song categories.

The Original Ragtag Cinemacafe Closes Its Doors

In Columbia, Missouri tonight, the original Ragtag Cinemacafe, a storefront micro-cinema that gave birth to the True/False Film Festival and inspired several other micro-cinemas, including the Moxie in Springfield, is shuttering.  The new Ragtag, a 2-screen venue with attached bakery and video store, will open this Thursday, one week to the day before the 5th edition of True/False.  The last film at the original Ragtag is the Oscar nominated PERSEPOLIS.

My first encounter with the Ragtag came when I was touring with GIGANTIC in 2003, and I remembered that experience 2 years ago when I attended T/F for the first time:

"When I came back to Columbia in 2003, I wondered if Columbia would have lost some of it's luster. I had such fond feelings for the place (having gone to school here) and I didn't want to be disappointed. But I was so blown away by what was happening at the Ragtag - here was a storefront that had been filled with old sofas (wine, beer and hummus sold up front) where they screened basically every major art film - stuff that never makes it to St. Louis or Kansas City, much less Columbia. It was warm and welcoming and I really fell in love with what the Ragtag kids (they aren't really kids, except in spirit, except in that "let's put on a show" way)."

Congrats to the "kids" on their new building and we raise a bottle of Schlafly to the place that gave birth to so much. 

And, as proof that even with the move, the Ragtag hasn't lost its, well, ragtag spirit, our pal Pete Bland offers this today:

"If you want to help Ragtag make the move by hauling a few couches and other assorted accouterments from Tenth to Hitt between 5 and 8 p.m. tomorrow, contact John Gilbreth at [email protected]."

A full report on "son of Ragtag" in just two weeks as we travel to T/F08.

Update:  More on the move from the Columbia Missourian, which tracks the demise of the "old, orange couch", reputedly the worst seat in the original theater:

"For years, in the front row of Ragtag Cinemacafé’s screening room, one shabby orange couch has sucked in spilled popcorn, loose change and unsuspecting fannies like a behemoth vacuum cleaner. It slumps in the middle, where the tweedish cushions have long since lost their comfortable fluff, and when you sit there, gravity seems to tug just a little harder at your backside. The couch, both feared and loved, has a reputation reminiscent of a campy horror movie slogan: You can sit down, but you can’t stand up.

By now, you’ve probably heard that the Ragtag is moving from its original abode at 23 N. Tenth St. to an expanded home at 10 Hitt St., and by late this week, they’ll be settled in. But Sarah Bantz, who’s in charge of the Ragtag’s big move, said you definitely won’t see old orange at their new hub."

The Docs of Sundance 2008: ANVIL Meets PATTI SMITH (Part Two)

Festival coverage sponsored by IndiePix.

As a student and practitioner of the sub-genre known as the music documentary, I was very interested in two titles at this year's Sundance Film Festival - the competition doc PATTI SMITH DREAM OF LIFE and the Spectrum doc ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL. What I didn't quite expect was that the two films would remind me of the themes and styles of my own films, so apologies in advance for a post that will be more self-referential than I normally allow.

There was good word-of-mouth coming into the festival for Sacha Gervasi’s ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL, and the film did not disappoint, providing a welcome relief from some of the more serious nonfiction films at the festival.

Telling the tale of a Canadian heavy metal band that apparently rivaled Megadeth, Anthrax and Metallica in the burgeoning days of metal, the film is a hilarious and surprisingly touching story of how two musicians – friends since high school – have fought to keep making music even as they reach 50 and as they’ve watched their contemporaries reach stratospheric levels of fame and fortune.

Right off the bat, this story plays right to my personal preferences. GIGANTIC, after all, is also a story of two boyhood friends who are two decades into a career that has been filled with ups and downs, yet who are still looking for ways to make music. At the time of its making, They Might Be Giants had reached a kind of sweet spot in their careers - able to record and tour and still have a decent, comfortable (if not opulent) lifestyle. The two leaders of Anvil find themselves at 50 still searching for the audience they glimpsed in the metal '80s.

ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL has frequently been referred to as “a real-life Spinal Tap” and, in fact, there are several deliberate references to the 1984 mockumentary classic (not the least of which is the fact that Anvil’s drummer is named Robb Reiner). A couple of these spot-on homages straddle the line between brilliant and contrived, such as a visit to the real Stonehenge, but the film is so fun that it seems petty to complain.

One Year Ago, Six Years Ago and Today

With all our reporting on this year's Toronto International Film Festival, we couldn't help thinking about the world premiere of our own film - KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON - at the festival one year ago.  365 days ago - to the minute - as I write this, we were still celebrating and dancing at the very fun party we had at the Drake Hotel.  It's hard to believe that the film that I had in my head for so long, had now been public for a full calendar year, and I'm glad that soon (three weeks from tomorrow), it will finally open at the IFC Center in New York.

Six years ago in New York was a landmark moment in the making of my first film, GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS), and as I write this, my producer/partner Shirley Moyers and I were eating a very late dinner, still basking in having wrapped our shooting with They Might Be Giants, after they had played an midnight in-store performance at the Greenwich Village Tower Records (now closed).  They were celebrating the release of their new album, Mink Car, which was released the next day, September 11.  Not thinking anything particular of that night - other than the fact that we were wrapping our work with the band - we ended up capturing their cover performance of the Cub track "New York City", which ended up being an emotional moment at the end of the film that no one could have predicted.

And today, September 11, 2007 - bringing it all full circle - Barsuk Records releases Kurt Cobain About A Son: Music From the Motion Picture.  It's a record that I'm very proud of, since choosing the songs for the film were one of my favorite parts of making ABOUT A SON.  And I'm grateful to all the amazing artists who allowed us to use their music in the film and/or on the soundtrack.

I hope you'll check it out.

Here's an excerpt from Ned Raggett's review at the OC Weekly:

Set to a variety of images and filmed segments of the towns in which Cobain lived and worked, the film features a soundtrack containing no music from his band, but instead mostly draws on those performers and peers from whom he took inspiration. As such, it functions almost as a ghostly, Cobain-hosted radio show, with occasional snippets from the tapes interspersed among the songs, most clearly when his discussion of Scratch Acid leads into that group’s demented semi-ballad “Owner’s Lament.”

Soundtrack producers Linda Cohen and AJ Schnack (the film’s director) do an excellent job at sequencing the soundtrack, giving new context to many numbers. Hearing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s still-thrilling “Up Around the Bend” helps show how Cobain took inspiration from the group, while placing it between Bad Brains’ frenetic hardcore classic “Banned in D.C.” and Half Japanese’s goofy sex song “Put Some Sugar On It” rescues the Creedence number from the dull classic-rock universe in which it’s been mired for years. Meanwhile, the cover of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer” by Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service singer Ben Gibbard that closes the disc gently reveals how the general play of Cobain’s influences continues.

Once again, here is the tracklisting:

Steve Fisk & Benjamin Gibbard — Overture
"Never intended" [interview excerpt]
Arlo Guthrie — Motorcycle Song
The Melvins — EyeFlys
"Punk rock" [interview excerpt]
Bad Brains — Banned in D.C.
Creedence Clearwater Revival — Up Around the Bend
Half Japanese —  Put Some Sugar On It
The Vaselines — Son of a Gun
Butthole Surfers — Graveyard
"Hardcore was dead" [interview excerpt]
Scratch Acid — Owner's Lament
Mudhoney — Touch Me I'm Sick
"Car radio" [interview excerpt]
Iggy Pop — The Passenger
Lead Belly — The Bourgeois Blues
R.E.M. — New Orleans Instrumental No. 1
"The limelight" [interview excerpt]
David Bowie — The Man Who Sold the World
Mark Lanegan — Museum
Benjamin Gibbard — Indian Summer

 

Grey Gardens Tops Chlotrudis List of 100 Best Documentaries of All Time

The Maysles Brothers' classic documentary Grey Gardens topped the list of the 100 Best Docs of All Time, as compiled by Boston's Chlotrudis Society For Independent Film.  As explained on the Chlotrudis site:

To create this list, members were asked to come up with their Top 10-20 documentaries of all time.  For our purposes, documentaries included concert films, and films made for televsion. After receiving all of the lists, numerical values were assigned to each of the rankings, and each movie was given  a point  total.  The number of lists a movie  appears on is also a factor.

Much has been said about the rise of documentaries in the last 5 years or so, and our resulting list certainly speaks to that. In the Top 100, nearly half (49) were made post 2000, with 23 made during the 90's, 12 during the 80's, 9 during the 70's, 4 during the  60's, and one each during the 50's and the 20's.

The highest charting film from 2006 on the list is Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which came in at #14.  The oldest film on the list - Dziga Vertov's masterpiece The Man With a Movie Camera (1929) - came in second.  Errol Morris had more films on the list than any other filmmaker, starting with The Fog of War at #19.

Here's the Chlotrudis Top 20:

1. Grey Gardens
2. The Man With a Movie Camera
3. Stop Making Sense
4. Tarnation
5. The Up Series
6. The Gleaners & I
7. Titicut Follies
8. Spellbound
9. Double Dare
10. Grizzly Man
11. Crumb
12. Born Into Brothels
13. DiG!
14. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
15. In the Realms of the Unreal
16. Bowling for Columbine
17. Hoop Dreams
18. Capturing the Friedmans
19. The Fog of War
20. Murderball

The full list of one hundred is available on the Chlotrudis site.

As with all lists, part of the fun is appreciating some surprises (such as the high ranking of Jonathan Caouette's groundbreaking Tarnation) while shaking your head at some others (Hoop Dreams is not even in the top 15?)  But all in all, I think it's a pretty fine list [and I'd say that even if my own Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) did not come in at #28, which is very nice and a great honor, but, seriously folks, ahead of Gimme Shelter?  Come on, that's not right.], particularly as you get a bit further down in the rankings and the Chlotrudis folks remind you of a few films to add to your Netflix queue.

Silverdocs Praises Jesus Camp, Audiences Everywhere Love Darryl Hunt

The first half of June and it's numerous film festivals is now behind us, with the big Los Angeles Film Festival kicking off this Thursday in Westwood Village, and a number of films have won honors.

AFI's Silverdocs, which is quickly becoming the top documentary festival in the country, closed its 2006 edition with a grand jury award going to Jesus Camp, the latest film from Boys of Baraka filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Jesus Camp premiered at Tribeca, where it received a special jury prize and was the subject of much talk and some controversy.

Frank Popper's Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore took the Audience Award, while Rolling Like a Stone, which centers on an 8mm home movie of Mick Jagger and Co. circa 1965, received something called the Music Grand Jury Award (considering my feelings about music-related documentaries getting constantly shafted off into sidebars, this award - best of the displaced! - seems a relatively depressing development).

A full list of award winners, including shorts, are available on the Silverdocs website, with additional coverage on Chuck Tyron's blog and, sooner or later, there will be more up at the Documentary Insider.

Meanwhile, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's decades-long tale of a miscarriage of justice, won no less than three Audience Awards at the early June festivals, including the Audience Award at Newport (where it also received a Jury Prize), the Audience Award at Seattle and the Audience Award at Nantucket. Darryl Hunt was a previous audience winner at Full Frame and Sedona. It premiered at Sundance 2006.

Another Sundance alum, Lauren Greenfield's Black Sun. (It's worth noting that Old Joy - still my favorite film I've seen this year - director Kelly Reichardt picked up the Best Director award.)

At the Provincetown fest, the Best Documentary Audience Award winner (there are no juried prizes in P-town) was Mike Roth and John Henning's Saving Marriage, which might have had an edge in its subject matter - a look at the battle over gay marriage in Massachusetts. The narrative prize went to Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's double Sundance winner Quinceanera, which Sony Pictures Classics will release this August.

Michael Colford has a full report on the Provincetown Fest over on the Chlotrudis blog.

Seattle handed out a number of prizes at the close of its nearly month-long festival. The doc jury prize went to Erik Gandini and Tarik Sale's Gitmo: The New Rules of War, with a special jury prize going to Linas Phillips' Walking to Werner. The top prize at Seattle - the Golden Space Needle for Best Feature went to the French spy spoof OSS 117: Nest of Spies.

Anne Thompson was in Seattle, as was Jeffrey Wells and, of course, the entire crew at the Stranger.

You'll also find numerous reports on Seattle and the other fests at must-read-daily GreenCine.

I was sad to miss out on Seattle this year, both because of having spent so much time there this past annum, but also because I had such a great time there when Gigantic played in 2002.

Also was disappointed to miss out on Cinevegas (I was back in the midwest all last week), which is always a great, if somewhat surreal time in the desert. They handed out their top (narrative) prize to G.I. Jesus. While Cinevegas had a documentary audience award when we were there (again in '02), they now seem to only have juried prizes, which seem to be for narratives only.

Will be around the LA Fest a bunch this week and will post what I can when I can.

Learning to Walk: The Blog Turns One

One year ago today, I posted for the first time and All these wonderful things was born.  As most enterprises like this go, I had no idea if I'd be still doing it a year later, nor that it would be such a wonderful outlet for random thoughts, quixotic campaigns and good old rah-rah-ing for the cause.  Much of all the above reflected my work as a filmmaker, specifically someone making documentaries, and I'm glad that we've occasionally raised the nonfiction banner here. 

I'm glad that I've been able to write about my own filmmaking, although I'm still conducting an internal debate on what to reveal and what to keep personal in that arena.

I'm glad that I've occasionally been able to spout off on politics or my latest notion of what Democrats could be doing better.  This ability to send my ideas into the electronic void (which has lead to me talking less about these notions with my friends) has undoubtedly made my friends very happy.

I really enjoy when something happens on a topic, whether it's Mark Cuban or Al Gore or film criticism or our campaign to get the Academy to recognize documentaries or whatever that leads to a discussion here and elsewhere.  I love when I get the opportunity to read a lot of what others have written on a subject and then can write some longer piece in which I somehow pull together all my varied thoughts.  I'm thrilled when something I'm doing here crosses paths with something that another writer, filmmaker or blogger is writing about, and suddenly I am connected to someone in Philadelphia or New York or Santa Monica that I didn't know a year ago.

Looking back on the year, I decided to highlight, in chronological order, some of my favorite posts.  Some are short, some very long, most about filmmaking (and the business that surrounds), although a couple are part of my amateur political naval gazing.  In total, they provide a nice look at where we've been and where we might be headed.

Audiences will love/hate  - June 18, 2005.  The first time I wrote about filmmakers and film critics working out their issues with one another - this time Scott Foundas and Sally Potter - and it was the first time that I would dissect my own experiences on Gigantic.

BREAKING: Indiewood Responsible for Hollywood Slump - June 28, 2005.  The first investigative piece in which we pinned the blame for the studios woes snugly on the shoulders on Todd Solontz.  (Strangely enough, the sole commenter took it seriously.)

Contempt! - July 2, 2005.  The first big politics piece was actually a reflection of my journalism school background.  Poor Judith Miller gets the brunt of my fury.

This Week at the NYT: Cover-Ups Yes, Bisexuals No - July 11, 2005.  More Judy Miller fallout, plus fun with google search.  Would you like to take a guess how many people came to this post after searching for "bisexual porn".  Sorry to disappoint.

You Mean I Have to Pay For That? - July 18, 2005.  The first posting on the issues of rights clearances and fair use, specifically music clearances for the filmmakers of Tarnation and Mad Hot Ballroom.

Murderball By Numbers - August 1, 2005.  If you think I'm all into following the box office of An Inconvenient Truth, last year it was Murderball, which I was fascinated with, in part because people felt it was somewhat of a disappointment.  I guess that everyone was thinking it was going to be another Mad Hot Ballroom or something, but I thought that it performed pretty on target for a sports-related documentary.

Blue Chip and Coveted - September 13, 2005.  I take offense at a few of the interviews that Mike Mills is doing for Thumbsucker and I break my solemn rule of not bitching out another filmmaker - on the three month anniversary of the blog! I suck!

Fauxhawks: The Dems' National Security Problem - September 19, 2005.  More fun with google search.  People look up fauxhawks, hoping to discover how they too can have the thrilling new rooster hairstyle that was all the rage three years ago, and are lead to me instructing Democratic candidates for president in 2008 on how to own up to their failures.

Truly Indie - October 19, 2005.  A harmless little post praising Mark Cuban for thinking outside the independent film box leads to a series of posts: More on Mark Cuban and Truly Indie, Gigantic. Truly Indie? (And Save the Brattle), Landmark vs. The Brattle, Mark Cuban Responds, Some Truly Indie Answers and Truly Indie: What Have We Learned? .  Accusations are made, honors defended, questions answered.

Letter to the Academy - November 3, 2005.  The official kickoff of our asking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to announce the documentary feature nominees during their official announcement ceremony.  The official rejection, written about in Just In: Academy Says No to Doc Announcement, comes two months later.

Aberdeen's Memorial Project - December 3, 2005.  My shooting my Kurt Cobain documentary in Aberdeen, Washington, and my subsequent blog postings about it (and the local newspaper's printing some of my blog posings as an op-ed piece) cause me to get in the middle of Aberdeen's ongoing debate on how best (if at all) to recognize their most famous son.

Eats the You Are: First in a Series - January 11, 2006.  More from the Cobain film and more fun with different google tools.  Here, the "translator" tool that makes information about you and your film sound very very silly.  Or, as I am "quoted" in this article - "the colloquies between the Kurt Can hear and the Michael, with the Kurt to count the history of its life for the such book".  Exactly.

Beating a Dead Doc Horse - January 31, 2006.  As Oscar Nominations are announced, I reflect on the fact that one of the documentary nominees - March of the Penguins - made more money than any of the nominees in almost all the other top categories.  And again I hammer the point that the doc feature nominees should be announced.  This leads to my first pangs of blogger envy as the box office point is later raised by other writers, without mentioning the subtext of our campaign.

Joe Swanberg, DIY Distribution and the Wave of the Future - February 13, 2006.  This post on DIY filmmaking and distribution led to some amazing conversations online and off and connected me with a bunch of other great writers and filmmakers.  It's also clearly a conversation that is ongoing...

The True/False Is Out There - February 28, 2006.  A long recap of a great weekend at a great documentary film festival in Columbia, Missouri.

The David E. Kelley Oscars: Crash, Penguins Take Top Prizes - March 6, 2006.  Taking a gander around some of my favorite sites and trying to capture the shock and awfulness of Oscar night.

Caveh, Cuban & Day and Date: "The Worst Thing to Happen to Indie Film..." - April 11, 2006.  Mark Cuban again, this time tangling with filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, with the winner somewhat unclear.  This is one of my longer posts as I try to understand some of Zahedi's blog posts.  Caveh would later comment on my (what some would later call) "healthy skepticism" in Caveh Zahedi Responds.

Caveh Zahedi Takes On His Critics - April 25, 2006.  Still ruminating on Caveh and still not sure how I feel about his open battles with film critics that review his film.  But my reconsidering of his position would be later reflected in a very long piece I wrote a few weeks later called Dog Days for Film Critics?

Is Gore's "Truth" the Next Doc Hit? - May 23, 2006.  Another long piece, this time surveying others on their expectations for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.  As noted here, I thoroughly expected Truth to join the small club of docs that had grossed $10 million, but everyone else's skepticism around me caused me to rethink.  Who's smiling now losers?  Later, I wondered why the liberal blogs were only reporting a small part of the story in Why Are Liberal Blogs Underplaying the Success of An Inconvenient Truth?

All's Fair Use in Love and Documentary and More on Fair Use: The Michael Moore Lawsuit - June 2, 2006.  Two recent posts that explored the topic of fair use, getting permissions, legal ramifications and the rights of documentary filmmakers.  Another subject likely to come up here again and again.

Throughout this year, I have relied on a number of websites for information, perspectives and entertainment.  Most of these are listed as links to the right of this screen, but I want to particularly make note of those in the film world that I look to each day:  Eugene Hernandez and everyone at Indiewire, David Hudson at GreenCine, Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog, David Poland at Movie City News, Matt Zoller Seitz, Anne Thompson, Agnes Varnum, Paul Harrill, Jeffrey Wells, Scott Macauley at Filmmaker, Sarah Jo Marks, David Lowery and all my compatriots on the Indiewire blogs/links page.  There are many others that have been instrumental to my doing this, who have linked or sent comments or in some way been supportive and encouraging and I am quite grateful to you for that.

Here's to a second year.