Well the preparations are done the gear has been gathered and tomorrow we hit the road. The mix of excitement and anticipation is overwhelming. Mimi and I can't believe it's actually happening. We know we couldn't have gotten this far without the support of friends and family and we gratefully thank all of you.
Our months of preproduction seem to be paying off. We have yet to hit a major snag (please knock on wood here) and we feel pretty prepared for our upcoming interviews. Tomorrow bright and early we depart for Denver. The cats are taken care of and the car is slowly bieng loaded. Wish us luck :)
Mimi works the phones.
Malcom eyes us warily.
Our friendly banker Jack.
Our final preparations.
News from the frontlines of filmmaking...
What is that under our belts, you ask? It's the first few days of shooting for documentary-in-progress "Modern Tribalism" (which, by the way, is still a working title -- alternative suggestions are welcome). If the past week is any indication, this summer will be full of fascinating characters, mind-expanding experiences and beautiful footage to show for it. Keep sending those positive vibrations.
We traversed the western states on our drive to Denver, shooting some gorgeous scenes in Arches National Park and all along eye-popping Interstate-70. We spent our first night on the road camping in Salina, Utah. A good tree-hugging way to kick things off. We barely made it to Denver in two days due to lots of shooting and video journaling - that and a detour outside of Moab, Utah made it a long trip indeed.
We filmed our pals Jack and Christy getting hitched at the Stanley hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, capturing images of their union through formal vow-taking, family tears, joyous dancing...all the usual rituals. And then we balanced that experience with a quintessential Fourth of July Parade in Greeley, Colorado, complete with lipsticked cowgirls on horsetop, marching bands, and floats carrying war veterans, cheerleaders and the Kiwanis Club. Even the Jews for Jesus danced an aerobic hora down Main Street. Luckily, the fine people of Greeley loved our cameras and didn't even balk at our uniforms - low-fi filmworks t-shirts covered in legalese releasing us from all imaginable responsibilities.
At this point it's worth mentioning that we have been lucky to be joined by our comrades and fellow voyagers Scott Jones and Brian Drennan, the Director of Photography and Production Coordinator, respectively. Scott's camera tricks impress us more and more each day and Brian is keeping everyone on time, fed and watered, and as efficient as possible.
The last few days will live in our minds for a long time (and on tape for as long as digital video will hold it). On Friday we met the piercing and tattoo artists of Twisted Sol and within minutes they had agreed to let us camp out at their studio for as long as we wanted and invited us to a Bar-B-Q (immediately dubbed, of course, the Tattoo B-B-Q). Afraid of coming off like rabid filmmakers, we left our cameras in the car and went to the T-B-B-Q with intent to make merriment not movies. But as fast as you can drink a glass of rum punch (yes, even the kind with fruit floating in it) we had several willing interviewees who ended up sharing their personal stories about the art they had collected on their bodies.
Thusly encouraged, we moved into Twisted Sol on Tuesday and Wednesday and captured the full spectrum of events that transpire in a modern body art salon. Highlights include two fascinating interviews with the wise-beyond-their-years owners Alicia Cardenas and Big Mike; a day in the life of a young, successful grafitti artist apprenticing as a tattooist; and an up-close-and-personal look at a male genital piercing, the details of which you'll just have to wait for.
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Greely 4th of July Parade.
Beauty abounds at the BBQ.
Big Mike Tattooing at Twisted Sol.
Jehr and Chase at their wall.
Here we are in Sunny San Francisco, home of the largest collection of opposing viewpoints on earth. We rolled in at 11:30 Tuesday night, both cars on empty, all eyes blurry from 2 1/2 days and over 1000 miles on the road. We took the long way out from Denver, opting for the scenic route through the desert of southern Utah, the vast nothingness of Military Top-Secret Nevada and the wall of the impressive Sierra mountain range. Tired, ragged and in need of indoor shelter, we sleep.
OK, let's backtrack a bit. We rounded off our Denver shoot by following Dr. Ilana Kutinsky as she ventured into the world of personal body art. She shirked convention and decorated her sacrum with a tattoo by Lance Talon (yes, that's his real name) at Bolder Ink. At the other end of the spectrum, we covered a Promise Keepers rally at McNichol's Arena where thousands of Christian men gathered to sing loud, pray passionately, and enact rites of passage for young men and those in need of spiritual transformation. One Promise Keeper wore a yarmulke (skull cap worn by devout jews), carried a shofar (jewish instrument made out of a ram's horn), and danced wildly -- a Jew for Jesus again boogies into our path. Coincidence? We think not. Shalom, Brother!
Alas, we had to leave Denver in the dust (that's not smog, you know, it's dust) and move on to SF. Getting a mid-afternoon start on Sunday, we set out for the destination of Goblin Valley State Park (which is exactly what it sounds like). We pulled off the impeccably paved red strip of two-lane rural highway (a trademark of Utah parks) onto a dusty dirt road that parallels the park boundary (here a 300 foot tall sheer butte) and deep into a perfect campsite aside a dry wash and a dusty cottonwood tree. We arrived just in time to shoot and witness a spectacularly unique red, purple, gray and silent sunset. Lucky us.
The evening was slept outside under the stars, complete with campfire, cold canned Buweiser, dirt, bugs, improvisational burritos and camp coffee in the AM. And not another person in sight or earshot. No ghost stories, though. We enjoyed the scene too much to put it in the category of ritual (even thought it was).
A tiny valley approximately a mile long by a mile wide, the desert floor in Goblin Valley is littered with red rock formations in various states of erosion 5 - 20 feet high. A truly eerie setting, we shot throughout the valley (really an ancient ocean bed), imagining the history of the peoples that had travelled through the truly unique setting. Cowboys. Indians. German tourists with tight t-shirts and round glasses complaining about the heat and wishing they stayed on the Route 66 motoroach tour. Filmmakers.
On to Capitol Reef National Park and a brief stop to shoot petroglyphs, the grafitti of the west a millennium ago, then on through the winding blindingly beautiful countryside of western Utah. Home of the settled and peaceful. Home of the hideout of Butch Cassidy. Home of unidentified flying objects. Speeding west we witnessed another rainbow sherbert sunset peppered by fields of Joshua Trees and jack rabbits. Pitching camp in an impossibly still sagebrush-covered desert we fell asleep with visions of tiny green men dancing in our heads.
Mono Lake, a salty terminal sea just east of Yosemite was our destination the following day. Home to prehistoric coral-like towers called "tufa," briny Mono Lake is a one-of-a-kind ecosystem of algae, flies and birds. A kind Ranger gave us an impromptu interview, teaching us about the native people who once lived on a mush made from the pupa of the brine fly. Kinda yucky, but kinda cool.
Now we await our first interviews in the beautiful city on the bay.
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The Promise Keepers Rally.
Sunset - Goblin Valley.
Goblins
V.Vale documents
Chef Ghia's table manners
Mad Dog in the Fog
L. Harvey the Hat
A Sleepytime Gorilla
Maid Marian Cats
Salads & Crepes & Coffee
The Grimes around grafitti
(The) Fakir Musafar
The Man to the Burn
A Rose for a Fire Goddess
Either or Ether
Haiku by Scott Jones - Director of Photography
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Mimi photographs V. Vale.
Talkin' religion w/ Larry Harvey.
Words of wisdom from Fakir.
After two beautiful but chilly weeks in the city by the bay we had filmed Grafitti/Tattoo Artist Grime showing off the works of SF's finest writers, danced with Crimson Rose (aka - Naked Fire Goddess) at the Beach Burn and captured the many faces of the city's scenic beauty. We also got to see a few old friends and make a few new ones. Many thanks to those who put up with us taking over their guest rooms for days on end.
After a quick (well not that quick thanks to the lovely So Cal summer traffic) jet back to LALA Land we sat down with Mark Pesce - pioneer of cyberspace, performer of virtual rituals and director of DJ Christ Superstar (An adaptation of the A.L. Webber classic to be performed at this year's B. Man) and dropped in at Dome City - an experimental community for the homeless that draws its philosophy from tribal wisdom. Whew!
At long last we sit in the office once again answering email and orgainzing for phase 2 of production, tired but unable to wipe the silly grins off our faces :)
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Fire Dancers at the Beach Burn.
A converastion and a half w/ Mark Pesce.
A mysterious pyramid lands in San Francisco.
The Co-Directors communicate telepathically.
Right now: poking down I-5 south in our motor home which has proved to be, like all wishes fulfilled, simultaneously a blessing and a curse. For three days the American Clipper was our production tankard, our Mayflower, our Trojan Horse with comfy fold-out beds. We barrelled north from Seattle to Whidbey Island and made a home beneath the lodge-pole pines on the chilly northern Pacific. The Clipper delivered us to the beach where we watched whales swim and technology employees catch salmon. It was inside the Clipper that plans were hatched, mouths fed and bladders relieved. The Clipper took a ferry ride. The Clipper was our Mother Ship.
Maybe we were too hard on her. Maybe we expected too much from a twenty-something converted Dodge. Yesterday the Clipper told us loud and clear that she's had enough. She guzzled six quarts of oil and spewed smoke from Seattle to Longview, Washington. Our fellow road travellers honked in disgust at the Clipper's bluish billowing wake. Would-be mechanics made small talk with our legs and feet while we tinkered under the chassis in Nisqually, Chehalis, Kelso. We stayed on the same page of the AAA TripTik map all the live-long day. We were in psychic pain; she in physical pain. It was a relationship soured not by heartbreak but circumstance.
Hopefully in Eugene our Clipper will rest and at some point be rehabilitated. Could we possibly hope for a patch-up job satisfactory to carry us to Black Rock City for our date with a thirty-foot tall Burning Man? It's possible, as is anything really. Shooting the film has proved that. Just in the past two weeks we have interviewed a man with a pierced stomach and opals imbedded in his teeth and sat with author Tom Robbins for three hours in a cabin in northern Washington talking about sex, drugs and storytelling. We have filmed epic sunsets, sleepy fishing towns, a slaughter house, and a nuclear reactor. We ate for free in a fancy seaside restaruant during a small electical fire. We haven't run out of money, lost limbs or (as far as I can tell) stopped liking each other. We are young, healthy and completely free. And as I look around the Clipper's faux wood interior I know that in one of her many compartments there's a big bottle of cheap red wine.
All is not lost.
Forging on, The Crew
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The Seattle sunset minus rain clouds (rarely seen).
Mr. Tom Robbins
The American Clipper in repose.
Quality time under the home.
Building pyramids with Ralph and Will.
Woo-Woo!
A quick note:
All is well. The laid back atmosphere of Eugene and the Oregon coast seems to have calmed the Clipper and it's been behaving pretty well (Thanks to Mom & Pat for our happy mobile home). We are all in frenzied preparation for the Man. Watching the sun set every evening, as its last rays throw every color of the spectrum whimsically about the sky, we are reminded of the playa and draw a quick breath of anticipation. What will the Man hold for us this year?
We listen to the wind. We dream about the fire. Come Saturday, we are bound for Black Rock City :)
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Black Rock City or Bust!
Where to begin? Let's see it started in a windstorm on the playa, no it started before that. It started with a bottle of sake and a rainstorm, no too abstract. I guess it started with a Man -- a giant stick figure man/woman, an effigy to... to whatever we cared to give it, and a man in a hat who built him, oh and a slew of crazy Oregonians.
Our characters began their journey to Black Rock City by camping next to a natural hot springs in rural Nevada. Three pick-ups, a motor home, a camper and two vans all loaded to the hilt gathered at this mosquito-ridden base camp in anticipation of the week ahead. To express their collective excitement, the wagon train drivers howled at the moon late into the night.
As the sun rose Will called wagons HO! to the playa and the Man. It's incredible to arrive on the Black Rock Desert at the beginning of an event like Burning Man. Here and there are scattered the overly anxious early arrivers, like ourselves. Surrounding them is the blank canvas of the playa, a dead lake that stretches completely flat to infinity. We staked our claim (4:14 Mars) and woo-wooed with elation. Production Coordinator Brian Drennan even dropped his pants in salute to our new home. The playa answered back with 70 mile per hour winds that toppled all efforts to erect our cottages in the sun.
By sundown the next day the elements had let up, allowing the Cosmic Woo-Woo Field to take shape. We hoisted Will and Ralph's copper pyramid, John's shower tower of power, two parachutes, Dan's tee-pee and a ridiculous amount of noise-making equipment, mostly Carl's. About fifteen of us staked claim to our playa lot and by the end of the week our numbers would double. A few of us traipsed to center camp just in time to see the setting sun's rays focused by a silver spiral shield ignite a cauldron. Naked Fire Goddess Crimson Rose reminded us that this fire would be watched and fed throughout the week and these very same flames would light the Man himself. We ululated and celebrated. And then we were interviewed by an internet film crew. Burning Man is, after all, a media mecca.
From there the blurring, mind bending, celebratory cleansing that is Burning Man rollicked into full swing. The events of the next week were one long continuous stream of music, art, friends, and filming, filming, filming. Hats are off to our amazing crew who held up in windstorms, freezing desert nights, and under threat of being ignited at any moment and also to our amazing campmates who gleefully subjected themselves to our cameras and our version of Burning Man fun (don't worry guys, next year no filming). Before we knew it our community had formed, the wheel of time had spun and the burn was upon us.
Burning Man is changing. Rumor has it that at least 25,000 souls show up to cast their cares into the flames. The masses make the event more powerful but at times, less magical. The night of the burn found us several yards away from the Man, as the diameter of safety around him continues to grow every year. Also noted was the amount of drunken revelers (not that alcohol is an evil drug, but it ain't the quickest route to mind expansion), and one can't help but wonder if the increased litter might bespeak a growing lack of respect for the desert that hosts our yearly ritual. Our spirits werenžt dampened, though. Change in the hyper-culture that is Burning Man is inevitable and there is still no better way to shed the past and plunge into the future than destroying a massive, artistic effigy to our personal transformations.
MUCH LATER in Santa Fe:
"NEVER QUIT" someone had scrawled in the playa dust on the side of the faithful blue Ford Explorer. "Never Quit?" I thought as I loaded the last of the gear into the back of the blue beast, careful to brush off the ashes of yet another fantastical cleansing ritual. "But this is the end, credits roll, fat lady sing, ride off into the painted sunset." I turned around expecting to see the playa and my fellow Woo-woo's instead a Camaro screamed down Santa Fe's main strip. "Viva la Fiesta!" they shouted. The scenery is different but the celebration continues. Last week we burned a man, last night we blew up a clown, somewhere in San Francisco the performance group Crash Worship staged an end of millennium fiesta of their own, this weekend is the Jewish New Year. It's a lot to take in.
Zozobra, the annual torching of Old Man Gloom was our last day of shooting, so we were hoping for those fireworks that all cheesy movies end with. And fireworks we got. The community surrounding Zozobra welcomed us with open arms and gave us front row seats for the pyrotechnics. Now, Old Man Gloom doesn't just burn. He moans and groans, his arms waving and his eyeballs glowing from the inside. Thirty-thousand people cram like sardines in a baseball field and ridicule the 50-foot clown as he goes down. He is Santa Fežs scapegoat, their boogey man, the thing they love to hate, together.
There could not have been a better way to end principal photography. We went out and joined the joyous throngs in Santa Fe and let go all of the pressures of two and a half months of continuous filming. The following morning seemed utterly unreal, as we hugged our crew good-bye and hit the road westward. Yes this WAS it. We were finally driving into the sunset.
It is strange and wonderful to be back in our home office in Hollyweird. We have brought home exactly 100 hours of footage. Coincidence? We think not. The making of "Modern Tribalism" has been cosmically guided every step of the way.
Don't worry faithful readers there is still more to come.
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Black Rock City from the air.
Our home at the Man.
Carl gets down on the get down.
Dan in lovely morning attire.
Ralph, master of all he surveys.
Chet entertains the troops.
A suspension by the knees at Burning Man.
Building Old Man Gloom.
The fire dancer watches Zozobra burn.
News from the home front.
Well the journey is mostly over but the discovery has just begun. low-fi's home office is now in full effect and we are busily sifting through our interviews, gleening the pearls of knowledge that will tell the story of the modern tribe. Our interviewees gave us so much great material that cutting any of it out can be almost painful at times but we're thrilled to see the story we envisioned so long ago slowly emerge from the footage.
Since our last update we had an enlightening interview with author and Dagara tribe member Malidoma Some. His insights on western culture and tribal knowledge kept us awake for days, reflecting on society and spirituality. He has already become an integral part of the film.
For now we split our time between editing and tying up the loose ends of production. We both look forward to focusing on editing together full time and hope to have an extended trailer for the film to show everyone around the end of the year.
Many thanks for everyone's continuing interest and support. Keep the emails comming.
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Things come together.
A few words with Malidoma Some.
Well, that which we were looking forward to in our last update has come to be. We are now editing together full-time and then some. The last several weeks have been spent gluing together the skeleton for Modern Tribalism, and from where we sit - in completely subjective seats two inches from the screen - it's going really well. We have too many great soundbites from our interviewees (which is a much better position to be in than the alternative) and we are overjoyed with the images Scott and the crew gathered along the way. Editing this film is going to be the easiest, most difficult job of our lives.
Major news: we may have shot our final story for the film. A few irons are still in the fire, but after our last shoot in San Fran three weeks ago, it's hard to imagine needing any more footage whatsoever. Scott met up with us to spend a couple of days at Fakir Musafar's advanced piercing class. This is the place where the Shamen-in-training meet to trade secrets and moral support. For being a magician in today's day and age can be lonely. Fakir's class is where the best piercing artists in the world come to learn even more. The people we documented were works of art, outside and in, and they welcomed us selflessly into their midst. We witnessed several ritualized body piercings and saw many clients walk in one person and walk out another. We saw with our own eyes the way the right piercing, put in the right place by the pure-of-heart can have a profound effect on the person who wants it to.
Other shoots recently tackled were a rave in a warehouse in downtown L.A. and an interview with Mark Lacey, the president of www.raveworld.net, THE place for ravers to find the party and promote their group ethic of P.L.U.R. ã Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. Raveworld is a unique company trying to make a difference and Mark gaves us an entertaining and interesting interview. Shooting the rave was fun, however we are certainly looking forward to going to a party without camera and gear and releases in hand. And when we do, look out.
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