Two Lodgings

Been doing a fair number of road trips lately. On a couple of occasions, in service of Internet Marketing for Filmmakers, Marc Rosenbush and I traveled to San Diego for a seminar (refining yet further our own internet marketing skills, as taught by the phenomenon that is Frank Kern), then a week later we went to a film festival in the charming desert town of Fallbrook, California, where Marc had been invited to give a presentation. We stayed in two very different kinds of places. The first of them was what I call...

Skank Central

The Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego. Very sleek, very high-tech. Right in the Gaslamp District, which is like a little ongoing Spring Break in the heart of town. And of course being part of the whole Hard Rock franchise, the hotel has a rock star vibe, although not a single actual rock star was sighted the whole time. (Unlike, say, the W hotel I once visited, where everyone in the lobby carefully scopes out everyone who walks in the front door because s/he could very well be Somebody.) The location was terrific, and we ended up having a series of fantastic meals. In the glossy room I had, a theme of guitar picks was emulated in every conceivable place, including being stitched on the pillows. But what would have been really cool--if they'd had a place where you could plug a guitar into the room's speakers, now that would have been awesome. No such luck.

And it must be admitted that the folks loitering outside the hotel mostly consisted of, well, skanks and hos.

Very young women, wearing not much at all, and never mind that it got cool at night. Slightly older young men, wearing more but intent only on the very young women and trying oh-so hard to be Ultra Cool. The hotel has a couple of clubs that cater to these folks, and I'm sure they make a pretty penny. People will, after all, spend just about anything to be seen as hip. Part of the In Crowd, which of course mostly consists of other people just like them, just as anxious to be part of the crowd that considers itself to be the In Crowd even though they're aren't actually.

If I sound hostile, I don't think it's just a function of age. I was never a club-hopper, I just don't have it in me--and the thing that has always offended me is that oppressive sense of entitlement. That whole "I'm beautiful, therefore the world belongs to me" thing that is shared by both men and women. They are lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, and yet they're unshakably convinced that the rest of us should fall down and worship their plumped-up beauty.

I've known plenty of very gifted, industrious people who are also quite beautiful. But they weren't about their beauty, they weren't Beautiful, they were just--well, you know. Handsome folk doing what they do in the world and not making such a great fuss about it. But those folk don't typically hang out at Skank Central.

On the other hand, I must admit that I got a kick out of the hotel's collection of rock memorabilia. Including a scrap of paper on which Mal Evans wrote out (and George corrected) the lyrics to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." But in one display case, there was an outfit that Janis Joplin wore on her 1969-1970 tour.

Interlude: The Janis Story

Ages ago, Mom went to a lot of concerts, and sometimes she brought me along. That's why I can proudly boast that I saw both Jimi and Janis, not too long before they died in 1970. Janis was doing an outdoor concert on the campus of the University of Miami, and I was four years old at the time. People sat there, marveling, and of course the weed was being smoked with copious abandon. Smoke wafted. Janis sang. Janis did that unquantifiable thing that still makes her one of the greatest rock and roll/blues singers of all time (something about overtones, as I understand it).

I was, literally, entranced. (Put on "Ball and Chain" and I'm still entranced.) Mom turned away to say something to a friend of hers, and when she looked back, I was gone. I will cheerfully claim to be one of the first crowd-surfers, because what Mom saw was little four-year-old me, being passed from hand to hand, closer and closer to the stage. I was chanting to myself: "The lady. Got to get to the lady."

Now I don't think Janis was all that great with kids, and I don't she was too crazy about the idea of this kid being put on the stage with her. Alas, it didn't come to that. Mom shouted out "Send him back!" and they did, the hands turned me around and sent me back to her. Still chanting to myself. The lady. Never did get to the lady. Damn it all.

So when I saw that outfit, I read the placard, which said that Janis wore it on her 1969-1970 tour. Meaning that it's quite likely she was wearing it during that very show--perhaps was wearing it even as I moved closer and closer, murmuring to myself. I stood there staring at it for quite a long time, still wishing just as much as ever that I could have somehow gotten to the lady.

So okay, the Hard Rock ain't so bad after all. Still, I have to say that I preferred to be...

Out in the Desert

Not that I like deserts. As an ocean people, deserts are too much the other thing. But we stayed at a B&B in Fallbrook called The Santa Margarita Inn, and it was a lovely place. Nestled on a plateau deep in the canyons, with hiking and riding trails winding all around. A view beyond description of that area that has been shaped and reshaped by geologic activity for millions of years. The house is huge, with gigantic windows in all the appropriate places. And when we drove up, we saw it immediately: right there on the front gate, a big ol' cast-iron image of a guitar.

As it happens, I'd brought my guitar with me, for no particular reason. We were greeted by one of the owners, Arlene, a longtime musician with a whole collection of guitars, and when she saw me with mine, I think everyone pretty much knew straightaway that we were going to have a good time.

The B&B has only been operating for a short time, and Arlene isn't yet jaded about the whole experience, so she's still plenty proud of this house she's been building for the past twenty years, and she took great pleasure in showing it off to all of her guests. (There were some filmmakers from the festival, plus a terrific couple on their anniversary.) Arlene showed us her music room, a playground of sorts, stuffed with guitars, including a Marwin Star from the 1930s that is probably worth a bundle. Alas, we were only there for one night--we attended the opening night reception, Marc gave his presentation in the morning, and then we had to leave that afternoon. So there was never time to really wander the property, nor was there time for much of a jam session. (Although at one point Arlene did play a song she'd written that apparently Willie Nelson is taking a look at. The lyrics needed work, but musically it was pretty damn good.)

The place has only one drawback: Elvis.

Elvis is a Rottweiler. A huge Rottweiler. When I sat on the sofa, Elvis and I were eye-to-eye. And when owner Frank was around, Elvis is a softie, sprawled across an astonishing amount of floor space, docile as a kitten. But after the reception, Marc and I drove back in the black desert night, and Elvis was guarding the otherwise-empty house. Barking at that strange car he didn't yet recognize, driven by people he couldn't quite remember; and because the whole B&B thing is new, Elvis isn't yet accustomed to strangers walking into his house. So he put up a spirited defense, and believe me, it takes some fortitude to walk up a narrow exterior staircase that is guarded by a barking, snarling, utterly gigantic Rottweiler.

Marc, several feet in front of me, says he did his aikido misdirection thing. "Look at my hand, way over here," as he steadily and slowly walked, without stopping, to the front door. Elvis let him pass, then turned to look and bark and snarl at me. Me, I had no Jedi mind tricks, so all I could really do was say "Oh, now Elvis, come on. I'm too big a meal for you. Look at Marc over there. Much more bite-sized, don't you think?"

We made it into the house, closed the door, and started breathing again. Not too long afterward Arlene and Frank returned, Elvis trotted in, and he was docile and sweet all over again. He's not the sort who actually attacks, but he sure puts up a hell of a good show; and if we'd been, say, a couple of elderly folks just staying at the B&B, I can well imagine that Elvis might be something of a deal-breaker.

And yet--Elvis aside, I vastly preferred Santa Margarita to the Hard Rock. Give me homespun and warm, even when it comes with a snarling Rottweiler, over Skank Central any day.

DIY

A quote from WGA west president Patric Verrone ran in Friday's Wall Street Journal, saying that the current strike is creating new "entrepreneurial possibilities for the talent community to go directly into production and distribution.... The ability to explore this business without media conglomerates is becoming a real possibility.”

He was speaking specifically about internet TV, but his statement has broader reach than that. As any number of small, truly independent filmmakers have demonstrated in the last few years, it's entirely possible to get a film into theaters and then do a DVD release largely over the internet, without ever becoming beholden to a studio or a distributor. Marc Rosenbush and I have done exactly that with Zen Noir, and our success is by no means the most dramatic. Peter Broderick is probably the most recognized authority in town on these issues, and there is an excellent article on his website dealing with all of this.

More and more, I've come to be a believer in the whole Do It Yourself model, across the board. Incorporation for Artists is, I have no doubt, good enough to secure a modest deal at least with a niche publisher like Silman-James, which focuses on film-related books. But if I went that route, I would get a small advance, and then I would get small royalties spread out over a few years, and then at some point the book would be moved off the shelves for something newer and that would be the end of it. But I can sell it online, keep all the profits (after very modest expenses because there's so little overhead), and keep doing that year after year.

And the above-mentioned Marc Rosenbush recently launched an online course called Internet Marketing for Filmmakers, in which he teaches exactly how we put together the Zen Noir DVD launch. It is, so far, the farthest step we've taken in our growing conviction on the value of Doing It Yourself: a statement of what we believe, why we believe it, and how it might help others, as well.

Think of the possibilities: do a simple, small film (I just saw Miranda July's Me, You and Everyone We Know, which is a great movie and perfect example of a film that would fit this paradigm) (here's her blog); release it in theaters or don't, you'll probably make more money, actually, if you don't; then do your homework, identify your audience really well, put up a website and start selling. Thousands of people will see your work, they'll buy it for their friends, the story you want to tell will get told to a much wider audience than ever saw anything I did in the theatre, and all the profits belong to you and your partners. All of the profits.

The strike demonstrates the dangers of being owned by the media conglomerates. Because it's not just the writers risking their livelihoods: there are also uncounted thousands of jobs that are, simply, collateral damage. Some of the production company executives we pitched to just before the strike, for example, have already been fired. And if they're gone, so are their assistants. Hollywood's famous mailroom jobs have probably been whittled down, as well. A friend of mine who runs a temp agency tells me that even normal lawfirm staffing jobs have dried up, at Christmastime when people are going on vacation, almost certainly because everyone in town is simply buckling down and trying to get through this whole thing. There's pain out there, and it's spreading, and it has everything to do with a few big, big companies owning almost everything there is to own in this business.

Now imagine if enough frustrated indie film guys decided to start taking matters into their own hands. Internet TV, self-distributed DVDs, books online, all of it. Then it wouldn't matter what the Sumner Redstones or the Rupert Murdochs of the world, the media conglomerates who own almost all of everything, have to say about our work. Our work is ours, that's how it always should have been and now, just maybe, we can make this oughta-be into a really-truly-is.

There are dangers, to be sure, and some real challenges--not only do you have to be a good artist who makes good work, but you have to become a real businessman, and believe me, I know exactly how much that idea reduces most artists to a pile of jelly. But the alternative is becoming a slave to Rupert Murdoch, and come on, when you think about it for even a second, isn't it worth anything to avoid that particular trap?