My interview on A Photo Editor blog
Rob Haggart was kind enough to interview me about the upcoming PhotoCine News Expo for his A Photo Editor blog. You can read the interview here.
Katrina Revisited
When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, I shared an apartment in the Faubourg Marigny with my good friend Elizabeth Rudge. She was a full time resident, and I was a frequent visitor. I considered New Orleans a second home. It is an amazing place to write and shoot as long as none of it has to be done in a hurry. New Orleans is the town of mañana, mañana.
As Katrina approached I was in California on the phone to friends and acquaintances in Texas trying to arrange places to stay for New Orleanian evacuees that I knew. Everybody, I mean everybody, including the acquaintances, stepped up without skipping a breath. Then I sat glued to my TV as I watched the massive, multi-colored spiral stutter across the screen.
When I went back to New Orleans “PK” or “Post Katrina” my friend Laurel, an architecture professor at Tulane University, and I took a tour of the devastation. It was heartbreaking. The city was ringed with a line like you would find in bathtub indicating the water line of the flood. In some spots that line was ten feet over my head. I thought sweet Jesus, how is this city ever going to recover from this.
We went out to dinner that night and the first signs of recovery were already evident. Already there were a few restaurants open. In spite of the deluge, and in spite of the unbelievable ineptitude of the United States Government, the food culture and the hospitality reemerged as soon as the New Orleanian’s could find a match to start a fire and pan to cook in. The food started in doorways and was handed out to anyone brave enough to return early, and went up back into the eateries as soon as power started getting restored.
One story that stood out in the wake of Katrina was that of a woman who went to pick up her SUV from a parking garage after the storm. In New Orleans some people will take the opportunity to park their car on the upper floors of a parking structure to keep in safe from flood waters and then fly out of town until the storm passes. This woman got into her SUV and noticed that the gas gauge read full when she was sure she parked the car almost empty. There were also other anomalies; damage to the right side door, and in the trunk an unused diaper and infant socks.
During the last desperate moments of the evacuation, the parking garage staff abandoned the structure leaving the car keys locked in a valet cabinet. Someone with a child, obviously desperate to escape the city, broke into the key cabinet and took the keys to the woman’s SUV. The car was then returned to the same spot with a full tank of gas after the crisis had passed.
That my friends is New Orleans.
the best internet observation of the week
I have sheepishly been cowering in a corner with my skeptical attitude towards tweeting on Twitter. Save the occasional funny picture, my twitter stream has become a notification service of articles and blog posts I write. A pointer to longer form writing that I’ve mulled over and edited so as to spare the reader from phrases like “I just wee weed on my shoes, LOL.” Because even my closest friends could give a rat’s ass about the inanities of my life.
I did go through a brief phase of telling people when I was getting together with someone important; “I just wee weed on my shoes in the bathroom at Sony Pictures, LOL.” Yep, somehow I believed, like many on twitter, that the hook was the “wee wee” and the fact that I was at huge movie studio would appear to be intended as a background detail, when in fact it was just passive name dropping.
Pffft.
It’s very much like the twerps that use a celebrity’s first name to subtlety show off that they’re in some sort of inner circle of the celeb. “So I was at Bobby’s house having a cappuccino…”
“Huh?”
“You know, Bobby De Niro…”
“Oh.”
Well this week my social guilt is assuaged. Paul Carr, a fabulous writer whose blog I check in on every week, wrote a brilliant piece about how using social media services was diluting the value of his stock in trade; stories about his life. Or, to be more accurate, edited stories about his life.
Paul’s piece led me to a post by Leo Laporte who didn’t realize that his Buzzes, Google’s version of Tweets, weren’t making out to the internet ether. Out of thousands of followers nobody noticed. His conclusion is that he’s returning to his writing on his blog. All this culminated with the video below from the very funny and slightly biting Loren Feldman at 1938 media. I laughed so hard that I peed my pants which then dripped on my shoes, LOL.
It looks like, at least for some, quality, longer form content is making a comeback.
please sir, may i have some more…time
In my business I have to have a healthy dose of I-don’t-care-what-other-people-think, in order to write about controversial topics or attempt cranking out anything humorous. Some would argue that my dose was a bit healthier than was necessary.
However, one situation that always makes me nervous is when I have to ask for deadline extension. Such was the phone call to my publisher yesterday afternoon. Michael Britt and I have been overwhelmed with awesome interviews and incredible information for our new book. So we’re running a tad late.
Thankfully my publisher is amazing and gave me the extension without dinging me. The book will be available to give as a Christmas gift for your favorite filmmakers.
Guess what I’m getting myself for this winter
Rain Level boots. The definitive fashion statement for stormy weather.
Ooooooh yeah.
today, I wish i was ray bradbury
Just who is this icon who gets all the hot women?
Oh yeah, he’s an epic author as well.
The word is New York comedian Rachel Bloom put this little ditty together for Ray’s 90th birthday which was last Sunday.