Billy On The Street Will Save Fuse

Billy On The Street is one of those TV shows that stands out because it feels like it shouldn't be on TV at all. A zippy, 22 minute version of the popular Funny Or Die web series, the show is one long man-on-the-street segment comprised of bursts of pop culture trivia questions posed to strangers. On paper, it's nothing new, but the exciting twist in this incarnation comes in the way host Billy Eichner manages to make screaming & cursing into the faces of strangers read as oddly endearing.

Mostly, Eichner's approach is running up to New York City pedestrians and asking one off questions with a determined enthusiasm that they have no choice but to match. He screams and berates his contestants all the way through, but always with an excited anticipation of wanting to see them answer correctly. The result is warm, addictive, and more times than not, very, very funny.

Billy On The Street - watch more funny videos 

Despite (or perhaps because of) his brash approach and casual racial/ethnic/sexuality-insensitivity, you'd be hard pressed to find a contestant who isn't having a great time. Even on-lookers appear to be witnessing something special - not just another guy in front of a camera with a microphone in New York City.

While the gun-to-head responses of strangers can be hilarious, much of what makes the show great is how immediate and on his toes Eichner can be in the moment. Some of the funnier clips will catch him abruptly breezing past a contestant for giving an answer he doesn't like (not knowing who Laura Linney is) or for trying to promote their website he doesn't care about. This unpredictability makes it feel as though you're planted right along side Eichner's brain while it fires neurons a mile a minute, deciding what's worthy of attention and what's shit.

Wisely, Billy On The Street separates itself from the tamer & less entertaining Cash Cab by making the game more about opinion than fact. It's way more fun to hear people have to answer if Celine Dion is 65% bird or to name three movies that don't exist than to watch them wrestle with a Jeopardy daily double. Segment titles like 'Are You Smarter Than A Gay 5th Grader?', 'Rebecca Black or Black Person?', 'Is This A Real Tyler The Creator Lyric?', and 'Quizzed On The Face' speak to the frivolous-on-purpose tone of the show.

Billy On The Street: Exclusive Preview - watch more funny videos

Fortunately, Fuse seems to be putting marketing muscle behind it, which is good since letting Billy On The Street slip by unnoticed after a season would be a mistake. Judging by how easy it is to turn people on to the show by simply showing it to them, Fuse would need to majorly fuck up to blow what could be a game changer for their struggling network.

One look at any of Fuse's programming outside Billy On The Street and it's easy to see why they're currently engulfed in a Time Warner/MSG packaging scuffle (in which no cable provider wants to pay for the 3rd rate MTV-alternative programming that Fuse currently banks on). With Billy On The Street, Fuse has a chance to diverge from the fleeting 'music channel' ideal and become a unique network with bite, the basic channel equivalent of 20-something comedy aficionado-oriented IFC with some music flavor mixed in for good measure. Luckily, it's a refreshing enough show that it may be strong enough to help steer the network into new (and far better) territory. Wooo!!!

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - 'Heart In Your Heartbreak'

Directed this video for The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart a few months ago!
Here's the Pitchfork Director's Cut interview I did for it:
http://pitchfork.com/news/42132-directors-cut-the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart/

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CHURCH

Come to our live show! The last Sunday of every month.

Facebook Page & Event Page

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Twin Sister "All Around And Away We Go" Video Shoot

Here's the video I directed for Twin Sister's "All Around and Away We Go." Thanks to Ian Perlman, Dan Devine, Seamus McGuire and Herb Hernandez for all their hard work. Andrea drew the animations!


All Around and Away We Go from Twin Sister on Vimeo.

Some pics:

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Pretty Cool Professor

Check out the new City On Film "Pretty Cool Professor" below. Our film won Best Picture at the Northeastern University Campus Movie Fest, was a finalist at the CMF Northern Regional Finale as part of the TriBecCa FF, and was selected by Virgin America to screen on their impressive aircrafts as an In-Flight short film. Also super exciting is Ali being nominated for Best Actress at the CMF International Grand Finale. Pretty Cool!

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Gordon Everyday

Think you could make a video every day for an entire year? Quite the task, but on January 1st, 2010, Mr. Gordon Kenny began an attempt to do just that. Since, his "Gordon Everyday" YouTube channel has accumulated thousands of subscribers. This passed week, G. D'Amico & I helped Gordon make three of his videos:

"Day 64: The New & Improved Gordon Everyday"
Gordon recruits FAC$Elift Entertainment to help spruce up his video blogs.

"Day 62: 'Everyday Bape' Tattoo"
Gordon promised to get a tattoo of his catch phrase if he reached 1,000 subscribers, so semi-professional tatt-artist Taylor is here to do the honors.

"Day 61: Cleaning Out My Closet!"

Gordon discovers a secret dimension while cleaning out his closet.

Every Yin Yang, Bape.

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SUNDANCE 2010 FAVORITES: Hilarious, Life 2.0, Daddy Longlegs, Cyrus, I'm Here, Enter The Void

I was lucky enough to spend the past 6 days in Park City, Utah while attending the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Long story short, it was unforgettable. Hopping around snowy Park City from theater to theater, waiting in lines for extended periods of time, and managing to function on 3-4 hours of sleep daily might not sound like a blast, but I couldn't have had more fun. I can't imagine another environment in America where film is appreciated and talked about with such collective enthusiasm & excitement. Everyone, including the filmmakers, actors and writers whose work the festival consists of, is on the same page; everyone is cramming into the same buses and everyone is waiting in the same long lines. I would recommend the festival to any fan of film in a heartbeat - there's nothing like it. (Check out my iPhone YouTube page for some videos taken during the fest!)

Of the bajillion films showcased at Sundance, I caught 10 features, 2 documentaries, and 13 shorts. If it weren't for non-guaranteed wait-list ticket lines draining valuable time out of each day, I might have managed to double my film intake. Regardless, I saw some fantastic films. Here are my thoughts on those worth mentioning:

Louis C.K.: Hilarious

It would be wonderful if this stand-up "concert" film could arrive in theaters, if only to simulate the live audience experience when this screened at its premier. Prior to this film, my perception of Louis C.K. was as a smart comic mind (as stated in my Eric Rohmer post, he's written and collaborated with Chris Rock for a number of years) who was a better writer than he was a performer. His HBO show Lucky Louie was canceled in its infancy, and outside his small but solid role in NBC's Parks & Recreation, I didn't know him from much else. He didn't seem like the type of stand up that would knock me out. Well, I was wrong and Louis C.K. is now one of my favorite comedians. Prior to the film, his problem seemed to be that he looked and sounded too normal. What was his angle? Where was his Romano / Seinfeld / Rock / Lopez-esque ethnic background that seemed to brand each successful stand up comedian? He was just an average, slightly overweight white guy - arguably the hardest position in American comedy to define. What this doc highlights is that THIS is EXACTLY what defines him: the anger and self-loathing that come with being white, comfortable, and jaded in America today. Brilliant & hysterical, his show had the theater crying.

Life 2.0

Do you know Second Life? That internationally popular online computer game that kinda looks like The Sims? Turns out it's not a game, but a sort of advanced social network that has grown so intricate and nuanced that people are giving up their real lives to live vicariously through avatars in the simulated world of Second Life. Life 2.0 presents four subjects whose cases are absolutely fascinating: a couple who's romance has blossomed beautifully within the game, and are now meeting in person for the first time to attempt a real life relationship; a woman who spends months designing digital houses, clothes & jewlery and makes an actual living (as in American dollars) by selling such items within Second Life; and a grown man who spends the majority of each day embodying the avatar of an 11 year old girl. For these people, the false reality they've created in Second Life is more fulfilling than their real lives, and their stuggle to balance the two is incredibly interesting - and many times, sad - to watch. But the film can also be very funny, and at its best poses fascinating philosophical questions about the role & future of online life in our increasingly plugged-in real lives.

Daddy Longlegs

Daddy Longlegs is one of those films that are hard to pinpoint just what it is that makes you keep chewing on it days after you see it. It's a small film shot on grainy 16mm film which tells the story of a divorced father who isn't exactly the shining example of parenthood. In one sequence, neither he nor his girlfriend can be up in time to watch the kids, so he breaks up a sleeping pill & feeds it to them in an attempt to add hours of sleep to their morning. The kids don't wake up. They freak out, call a doctor, and when informed that they have to wait out the children's coma-like sleep, he continues on his day. While this main character is seemingly unlikable, conniving, and a despicable parent, what makes judging his character challenging is that he clearly loves his kids despite his questionable actions. The young filmmakers Josh & Benny Safdie described their film as a jumble of memories of their father, who while not perfect, was a man of compassion. At the screening they passed out posters that they themselves designed, along with postcard-sized reprints of an actual photo taken during a wind tornado of sheets of paper - a sequence from their lives recreated in the film. D.I.Y. filmmaking at its best & most inspiring.

Cyrus

You may not yet know of the directing duo the Duplass Brothers, but you will. Their previous two films, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, are two of the coolest & most unique examples of how digital filmmaking is changing the way stories are told in movies. The two loosely map out their films within a genre - The Puffy Chair is a road movie, Baghead works within the most obvious of horror conventions, and Cyrus is, on the surface, a romantic comedy - but by allowing their actors the freedom to improvise heavily, capturing the action in documentary-like handheld (racking up hours and hours of digital tape in the process), they create some of the most realistic, genre bending and uniquely unfolding stories that are being told today. Cyrus is their first studio film (Fox Searchlight), and with it comes bigger talent - John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei. It's fascinating to see these three in such a realistic, low-budget-feeling story, and they all thrive wonderfully. Reilly is a recently divorced fuck-up until he meets Marisa Tomei. Everything is well and grand until he encounters her needy, live-at-home son, Jonah Hill, who shares a strangely close bond with his mother. What's more is that Hill's character appears disarmingly mature. Reilly now has to juggle entering their lives while dealing with Hill's increasingly hostile and clever attempts to thwart the relationship and keep his mom all to himself. Not only is the film fucking hilarious, it's one of the most realistic and truest movies you will ever see any of these actors in. Cyrus was one of my favorite films at the fest. (View the trailer for Cyrus here.)

I'm Here

Spike Jonze is one of my favorite filmmakers and this 25 minute short film about robots falling in love is, I think, my favorite thing he's done. In a way, I'm Here feels like the culmination of everything Jonze does well - inventive, playful visual storytelling with a big ol' sad heart behind it. Have you seen Wall-E? My favorite part of that movie was watching the process of machines falling in love because it's love in it's barest, most elemental form. I'm Here is like Wall-E with characters that appear in their early 20's and actually live on present day earth with humans. The robots don't look stupid or hokey as I was afraid they might, but instead have disernable personalities. Due to the film's seemless interjection of CGI (very similar to the process used in Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are), the robot characters are in a way better actors than any human filling the role could have ever been. I'm Here is Jonze making a simple, melancholy love story that essentially could have been told without robots. But, that's what makes the short fun and fascinating to watch.

Enter The Void

CAUTION! ONLY DIE HARD FILM VIEWERS WILLING TO SUBJECT THEMSELVES TO CINEMATIC ABUSE PROCEED! SERIOUSLY, NO JOKE. Have you seen Irreversible? It's a film by bald-headed french filmmaker Gaspar Noe that is incredible but not for the faint of heart. It is a tough, brutal art film that separates itself from many european 'art films' by not using the slow, static shots for dramatic effect that have become their staple. In contrast, Noe's camera is almost always moving, winding, twisting and breathing; colors are dense and plentiful. He also embraces CGI in some of the most inventive ways of any modern filmmaker. Sounds great! Here's the hard part: Noe is a master of making you feel absolutely horrible. I want to clarify: his films are nothing like the Hostel or Saw torture porn films we in America think of as pushing the bar on what audiences are willing to subject themselves to. You won't see his films playing at the local AMC. On 1/22/10 at 8:30 AM, I saw a screening of Enter The Void and it was without a doubt the most intense & visceral film experience I've ever had. I know, I know, when "visceral" gets thrown around to describe a movie, the intended meaning is vague. I'll put it this way: you know how jarring, surreal, disturbing & metaphysical your most powerful & disorienting dreams can feel? The kinds of dreams where emotion and atmosphere are heightened to your subconcious imagination's max? This is like that. Sound plays a major factor in this effect, creating a paranoid, stomach-turning soundtrack, and, in a few key moments, nerve-stinging jolts of sound to coincide with the more physically-jarring sequences in the film. First-person camera is used through much of the film and the beginning 20 minutes or so are especially clever in placing us inside the head of its drug-influenced main character. The film's opening title sequence is one of the coolest, most electrically-charged mix of music & text that I've ever seen. But its not just craziness; the film is at times profoundly sad, and Noe has no problem sucking you into a strong emotion as a way of muddying the waters of what your feeling. It's an infuriating, exhaustive experience, but its a testament to just how good a filmmaker Gaspar Noe is. Enter The Void is almost impossible to convey, and even harder to recommend, so I'm not even going to try. I will just say that if you think you are up for it, take a chance and check out what I will definitively dub The Most Fucked Up Movie I Have Ever Seen.

Quick Note: infamous graffiti artist Banksy had a documentary at the fest called Exit The Gift Shop which I didn't see but was supposed to be great. As myself & a small group walked down main street at 7am for the Enter The Void screening, few others were walking the street. But the ones that were were talking about the couple of marks that Banksy had left on the city over night. This, an image calling to mind the idea that artists kill what they find beautiful by making it art, was one of them:

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