DATELINE: LOWER EAST SIDE – HIP, GENTRIFIED DINER
The cool independent Pioneer Theater. The audience was small but enthusiastic. Even Greg Palast passed up a chance to watch himself, working on a deadline for Vanity Fair. (Rumor is he might make the midnight screening at Bowery Poetry Club tomorrow night, Wednesday.)
It was nonetheless an honor and a privilege to watch the film sitting right next to Mark Crispin Miller, catching his reactions and appreciating his laughs. When you spend hundreds of hours going through a subject’s footage, you often wonder about that person and what they’ll think of your analysis. When that person sees you, they blink at you, and if they don’t know you have been editing them, they think you’re weird for looking at them.
Mark laughed a lot, which was great. He seemed to really appreciate the style and reasoning, and only cited one small technical detail that was off, and easily fixable. Which is honestly an amazing fact-check session from the authority of election fraud issues and innovations. I feel like I just passed my thesis board or something. NYU should give me something for it.
In the Q&A afterwards, it was handy to have MCM on hand to bust out emphatic updates on election scams, citing the recurrence of machines rigged against Obama in the primaries in New Hampshire, New York, and the major swing states, which let Hillary’s desperate campaign to get only more desperate and shameless.
It was kind of like that Woody Allen movie where he’s stuck in line for a film behind some film snob who is citing Marshall Macluhan or some intellectual, and Woody Allen drags that exact intellectual out from nowhere to show up the snob’s interpretation. Woody looks at the camera and says, “Folks, don’t you wish you could do that in real life?”
My favorite moment with Miller came at a low point of the film, when I am in my depressing hotel room, kicking off my shoe with petty annoyance, apparently in disgust at the exit poll manipulation I had just covered in the film.
Miller suddenly grabs my arm, leans into my face, and whispers: “That’s how I feel all the time!” I laughed really hard; that was satisfying.
Ironically, on my immediate left, was my old friend Marc Ostrick, whom I’ve known since college. He lives in LA, he’s starting up some project apparently that brings him here this week, abandoning his newborn daughter Mitzi. He is a documentary filmmaker as well. He runs the internet superhighway-power found on the world wide web, OstrickProductions.com.
Perhaps the coolest thing, however, is how after this screening, and the last screening, several people, who said nothing else during the Q&A, came up to me and just said “Thank you for making this.” That may be the highest compliment you can hope for from a stranger.
But talk about depending the kindness of strangers — motherfucker. I lost my iPhone on the way to my own damn premiere, somewhere on the LES in the few blocks between Andrew’s condo and the Pioneer. I was blank with disorientation in reaching for my holster and finding it empty, flaccid. I couldn’t even tell what time it was, let alone pinpoint my location on the globe and check for emails every 30 seconds. I couldn’t survive. Immediately after the screening, I would have to race to the mythical 24 hour Apple store they have up in front of FAO Schwarz.
After the screening, our publicist Jen showed me an email on her Blackberry that told me to call this guy Louis, he found my iPhone, and he gave his address near Lincoln Center. I was sure that thing would have been reprogrammed with some bad music already.
Louis turned out to be a nice teenager, with a sign on his front door that said “Smile! Jesus loves you!” He saved my ass and restored my faith in the karma of NYC. He’s going to be on our mailing list now….
In the time between screening yesterday and screening tomorrow at midnight at Bowery Poetry Club, I have tried to sleep as much and possible, and dealt with the numerous details on finishing the film, mixing the sound, planning the LA premiere, updating the website, etc., all from my iPhone.
In fact, as I was walking to the screening yesterday and had probably just let the phone slide out of its holster (TIME FOR A NEW FRICKIN’ HOLSTER, btw., not this InCase crap): “Why, I can blog from my iPhone and email postings to go up right away! I’ll be so hip and tech!”
Serves me right. Thanks, Louis, your karma will be generous.
