Self-Aggrandizement: February 2006 Archives

Synchronicity
Filed February 28, 2006 9:06 AM.

I was in the Delta Grill for a business lunch yesterday, talking about films Cyan had recently acquired, and about other films we were still trying to chase down, like the great Slamdance documentary Holy Modal Rounders - Bound to Lose.

And just as the description "like a non-fiction Mighty Wind" came out of my mouth, the front door directly across from me opened, and in walked Michael McKean.

Hollow Leg
Filed February 27, 2006 9:10 AM.

I eat a lot of food. I mean, a lot of food. I always joke that, while I don't think I could win an eating contest, if there were a '24 hour total' competition, where the winner was the person who consumed the most calories in a single 24 hour stretch, I could easily crush all comers. There's no meal so large that, two hours later, I couldn't sit down and eat the same thing again.

This is particularly odd given that, by any account, I'm not very large: 5'6", 140 pounds. At that size, even using equations that incorporate my high activity level, I should need to consume somewhere around 2100 calories daily.

Usually, that's what I consume by lunch.

Honestly, I don't know where the food goes. Maybe I have a tape worm.

Over the years of running companies, my eating has been the butt of ongoing jokes: "Do we need to stop in at Subway and feed Newman before the meeting?" "I don't know, it could last as long as an hour; can he go that long without food?"

And, of course, it jacks up my grocery bill unbelievably; I can easily eat my way through $150 of supplies within a seven day span, without even counting the numerous business breakfasts, lunches, and dinners intermixed therein.

But, mainly, all that eating garners from friends and family of all ages dire warnings about the inevitable, impending slowdown of my metabolism, and of a consequent slow ballooning into late-twenties obesity.

People tell me about their friend, or child, or husband, or self, who used to be thin as a rail, until he hit 27, when all of a sudden, his metabolism slowed and he porked up.

And they tell me this as though I'm eating every half-hour because I don't have anything better to do. But, really, trust me, if my calorie needs dropped, if I could somehow eat a normal number of meals a day instead of having to constantly stuff my face, I'd be thrilled - thrilled! - at the time and money saved.

Until then, however, the eating continues. Literally, as I'm off to cook up a second breakfast.

Bon appetit.

The Tube
Filed February 26, 2006 3:30 PM.

I don't have TV.

I don't mean that I don't have a physical television - because I do. I just don't get live programming - cable, broadcast or otherwise. Nothing but DVDs.

And not because of some vague, haughty sense of moral 'superiority'. I'm not one of those no-TV people who, when someone else is discussing a new HBO show, will smile disdainfully, say, "I'm sorry, I don't have a television", then stare off, self-satisfied, into the middle distance.

Instead, it is out of profound inferiority that I don't have television. The problem is, if I do have it, I watch it.

Which, arguably, is the point of having it in the first place. But, as I said, I'm well below average in my dealings with television. I'm addiction-prone, dragged by the gateway drugs of The West Wing and Law & Order onto the icy top of a long, slippery slope that runs down, down, down, through Desperate Housewives, Survivor 8 and re-runs of Full House.

Over the years, I've slowly come to recognize in myself the procrastinatory inertia that makes going out and really doing wonderful, exciting things - the things I treasure for years, even as the rest of my daily endeavours blur behind me into an unrecognizable mass - a constant battle. And, simply put, having television just doesn't help. It's one more temptation, one more internal set of arguments. It's a painless route to forgoing reality in favor of reality TV.

So, in short, I don't have TV. I haven't for the last year and a half. And in that time, as I've slowly forced myself to stop watching and start doing, I've been reminded again: life isn't a spectator sport.

Also Applies to Life as a Whole
Filed February 21, 2006 9:22 AM.

"The beautiful thing about jazz is that if you say you're playing it well and can get a critic or two to say you're playing it well, and if you look like you're playing it well, enough people will go along with you to make up an audience. The trick is to do it all with a straight face."
- John McNeil

Findings
Filed February 20, 2006 6:05 PM.

Entries keep rolling in for Cyan's First Annual Oscar Pool. From them, I've deduced three main points:

I have no idea who you people are. Seriously, I recognize the names on, at most, 10% of the entries. Percentage-wise, that's about the same as the ratio between the number of visitors to this site, and the total number of people I've ever met in my life who I could plausibly imagine coming here. Who the hell are you other 90%, and what the hell are you doing reading my drivel?
James Surowiecki was right - there's a definite wisdom that emerges from a crowd. Though some categories are closer than others, in nearly every one, a clear Oscar favorite has shaken out. The day before the awards, I'll be closing the Cyan polls and posting the collective results; should be interesting to see how closely we mirror the Academy itself.
That wisdom only appears, however, when people use some basis for their decisions other than the age-old 'rectal generation method.' Which is to say, given the utterly random scattershot of answers for the three best short categories, it's clear you people are pulling guesses for those out of your collective ass.

DIY
Filed February 19, 2006 1:43 PM.

Two months back, I mentioned that Colin suckered me into helping log his just-shot film, Underground. Logging is the process of capturing video from tape to harddrive, and of slicing, dicing and notating it for the editor, who runs with things from there.

After viewing the editor's first month of work, however, it's clear she didn't so much 'run' with the film as 'limp painfully in a sideways direction' with it.

So, combining the philosophies of 'if you want something done right, do it yourself' and 'misery loves company', Colin gave the editor the boot, took on editing the film himself, and, this morning, somehow conned me into agreeing to co-edit it with him.

There's now a copy of Final Cut Pro HD for Dummies sitting on my desk. Which, given the obvious stupidity of me jumping into this, seems an appropriate choice.

Puissance
Filed February 17, 2006 4:16 PM.

Earlier this afternoon, I stopped in to Starbucks for a business meeting. And though I normally buy my coffee beans elsewhere, I was there, I had a gift card to blow through, and so decided to pick up a pound.

As I sorted through the bags of choices, I heard myself ask, "are any of these coffees Fair Trade certified?"

Which, in all of my prior life, I had never even considered asking - having, similarly, say, never chained myself to a large redwood tree at the threat of its clear-cutting.

At Sundance, however, I had watched the documentary Black Gold, which dives deep into the world of coffee, examining the intertwining of farmers, traders, unions, multinationals, consumers and corner coffee shops. The film is taglined, "your coffee will never taste the same again," which, apparently, is correct.

So as I paid for my first (or, at least, for my first proactively selected) bag of Fair Trade beans, I thought about Black Gold, and was struck, as I am every few months, by a wave of profound appreciation for the power of film.

Somehow, ninety minutes spent sitting in the dark, watching lights flicker against a blank wall, had left me seeing the real world itself in a new, different way.

And, as I look over our year's plans for Cyan, as we prepare to make a few announcements next week and to roll ahead on some big actions throughout the rest of the month, I'm happy to see that we're increasingly refocusing on that power of film, on wielding it in a smart, purposeful way.

Which makes me think, now more than ever, this definitely beats having a real job.

Off-Color Joke Du Jour
Filed February 15, 2006 9:48 AM.

[My apologies in advance.]

A man went to his optometrist to have his eyes examined. The doctor told him, "Listen, you've got to stop masturbating."

"Why, Doc?" the man asked. "Am I going blind?"

"No," said the optometrist, "but you're upsetting my other patients."

Happy Valentines Day!
Filed February 14, 2006 5:40 PM.

Paradox
Filed February 13, 2006 6:14 PM.

I've recently noted two beliefs strongly held by nearly every one of my female friends:

Equal pay for equal work.
The guy pays on the first date.

Sorry, ladies; choose one.

Leveraged
Filed February 8, 2006 1:27 PM.

Nearly nine years back, I and a college friend named David Fischer started up a database software company called SharkByte.

It grew faster than we expected, and, in the process, he and I had to write lots and lots and lots of RFP's for potential clients. These pitch documents are mind-numbing to write for the first few, and then get progressively worse from there. So for each one, we'd try to invent a new buzzword.

Inevitably, when we'd go in to pitch the client live, they'd quote back our invented word like it was in common usage, happy to agree with our utterly meaningless, but highly technical-sounding, assessment.

Over time, a few of those invented buzzwords became favorites, appearing in long successive strings of RFPs and other documents. At the top of the heap was 'core technology fulcrum' (as in "we believe the software interface will allow you to leverage your company's core technology fulcrum."), which never failed to land the deal, and which I still occasionally use.

Yesterday, however, David emailed along this informational gem:

Newman,

Was reading the 2003 edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street and what do I see on page 61 but the phrase "core technology fulcrum" mentioned as a nonsense phrase invented in the 60s conglomerate craze.

Clearly genius is destined to repeat itself.

Indeed.

Pooling
Filed February 7, 2006 5:50 PM.

With the Oscars just a month off, we're kicking off an official Cyan Pictures Oscar Pool. So, head over, weigh in with your predictions on whose names will be pulled out of those little envelopes, and, if you're the closest guesser, win a care package of free copies of Long Tail's next five releases.

[Also, please use your full name at the bottom of the form; we aren't collecting email addresses, so we won't be able to announce your win with just a first name.]

Anyone? Anyone?
Filed February 6, 2006 8:51 PM.

If you just sent me Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in its specially remastered Bueller... Bueller... Edition:

You rock.
Email me so I can beam thankful karmic brainwaves in the right direction.

Thanks.

Stripped
Filed February 5, 2006 12:53 PM.

The last time I ended up the subject of a comic strip, it was in Yale's campus newspaper, after I had broken up with a girl who penned one of the regular cartoons, and who used that podium to extract thinly-veiled revenge over several subsequent weeks.

I fare better this time through, popping up mid-way through the latest, Slamdance-focused iteration of CulturePulp, a strip penned by Mike Russell for The Oregonian.

Also, for the record, and even if the tinting of my glasses as drawn in the strip might make it appear otherwise, I have not yet reached the point of Hollywood douche-baggery that is wearing sunglasses indoors.

Sundance Post-Game
Filed February 2, 2006 8:58 PM.

Though I'd hoped to blog Sundance as it happened, or, at least, to recap it soon thereafter, things went better than expected at the festival, and I've been swamped nonstop since. Look for exciting news, on both the Cyan and Long Tail fronts, over the next week or two.

Still, before I try to jump back into blogging per usual, I wanted to throw out a few Sundance thoughts.

---

By most counts, Sundance, Slamdance, and the other concurrent festivals bring some 70,000 people to Park City, Utah. And while that's not far off from the numbers the Toronto or Tribeca festivals attract, dropping 70,000 bodies into New York or Toronto barely makes a dent. In a city of 7,882 people, however, the infrastructure is completely overwhelmed, everything starts falling apart, and life more or less grinds to a functional halt.

---

There's a running joke within our company that we all look essentially the same: guys in their mid-twenties with spiky hair, scruffy beards, and indie-preppy clothing. Which, in short, made us blend perfectly with every single other film person invading Park City.

---

If the people all looked the same, so did the films. The secret recipe to get into Sundance or Slamdance this year appears to be a combination of jump cuts, out of focus dreamlike sequences with overlapping snippets of voice over, and an ending that involves panning slowly to the sky. Would-be filmmakers, take note.

---

Sundance was also a great verification of our collective taste. We somehow managed to pinpoint, and send distribution offers to, every lower-profile film that went on to win audience or jury awards. Fortunately, it looks like our song and dance was good enough that we'll still be able to lock at least several of them down for Long Tail release. Plus, on the Cyan side, one film in competition that we had initially signed on to finance but missed the chance to actually produce was an ongoing festival belle. Sure, there's no money in near-misses, but it's always nice to discover we're not totally off the reservation.

---

Ten days is a long, long time to spend at a film festival. It essentially consists of three great days, followed by three tiring ones, followed by four where everyone is moments away from stabbing themselves in the eyeball with a fork. Liver damage and lack of sleep added up, and we were fairly loopy for the last weekend. A VP at a company we're collaborating with suggested we have someone follow my colleagues and me around with a camera, with an eye towards a Comedy Central special. Though, in the cold, well-rested light of post-Sundance day, I suspect even we ourselves would have found everything a bit less 'clever'.

---

Speaking of cold, it snowed and snowed while we were there. My shoes soaked through, but we did get in at least one morning of fresh powder skiing (which included a Cyan / Long Tail VP plowing into a bottom-of-the-run tree), and I even got to take over the wheel for a shuttle driver who had wedged his van into the ice in front of our driveway. I tore up my hand squishing salt under the back wheel, but, at least, after rescuing the airport-bound passengers from missing their flights, one joked that they should give me rather than the driver the tip.

---

Sundance in twelve words: a great reminder that I love movies but hate the movie industry.

---

Along those lines, why are industry parties fun? I'm not sure I remember any longer. Especially during the first weekend, we spent full hours elbowing our way to the door of parties, even when we were on the list. Echo Lake's party for Dreamland was one happy exception, if just for the chance to stand next to a drunken, salsa dancing Matt Dillon. And special thanks to Belvedere and Grand Marnier, who sponsored a series of small Cyan / Long Tail cocktail parties at our house. The birth of a new Sundance tradition.

---

Another new tradition: the house itself. While we wedged in fourteen people the first weekend, by mid-week, it had cleared out to just the four attending members of the Cyan / Long Tail crew. Large, beautiful, with hot tub and sauna, and just a half block from the Main St. shuttle stop, the house is already ours again for next year. Though we do, unfortunately, have to read the owner's screenplay as part of the bargain.

Ah, the joys of the movie business.

Synchronicity Filed February 28, 2006 9:06 AM.

Hollow Leg Filed February 27, 2006 9:10 AM.

The Tube Filed February 26, 2006 3:30 PM.

Also Applies to Life as a Whole Filed February 21, 2006 9:22 AM.

Findings Filed February 20, 2006 6:05 PM.

DIY Filed February 19, 2006 1:43 PM.

Puissance Filed February 17, 2006 4:16 PM.

Off-Color Joke Du Jour Filed February 15, 2006 9:48 AM.

Happy Valentines Day! Filed February 14, 2006 5:40 PM.

Paradox Filed February 13, 2006 6:14 PM.

Leveraged Filed February 8, 2006 1:27 PM.

Pooling Filed February 7, 2006 5:50 PM.

Anyone? Anyone? Filed February 6, 2006 8:51 PM.

Stripped Filed February 5, 2006 12:53 PM.

Sundance Post-Game Filed February 2, 2006 8:58 PM.