Errol Morris’ Recent Book Tour

Errol Morris just signed my copy of THE THIN BLUE LINE (Morris in background). COULD THIS DAY GET ANY BETTER?
Errol Morris recently signed my DVD copy of The Thin Blue Line. Morris is in the background in the orange coat.

One of my favorite filmmakers, Errol Morris, recently stopped by his hometown of Cambridge, MA as part of a tour to promote his newest book, Believing Is Seeing. Morris is basically all the things I endeavor to be: an incredibly talented person at his craft, who is concerned with the nature of truth and the mysteries of the mind (especially as they relate to photography). For a brief taste of what his book is like, check out his series of essays for the NYTimes on the Fenton cannonball photographs.

I managed to see Morris when he spoke at the Harvard School of Design, but Morris just posted on his site a full transcript of his talk at the Brattle Theatre (a place near and dear to my heart) and it’s well-worth the read. I enjoyed his answer to a question about why the book is titled “Believing Is Seeing”:

Why the title is Believing is Seeing instead of Seeing is Believing? Well, one seems to be far more clever than the other, although much to my chagrin it’s been used by several other writers. I felt I should read their books. One is a romance novel about a ménage à trois, which was satisfying for a short while, but quickly got kind of tedious. The other is just a straight ahead art book, not to disparage art books, but it did not seem to be terribly interesting. And the third, of course, is my effort. Why Believing is Seeing? Because we somehow think that vision comes to us in some pure native state, as if we don’t bring anything to it. It’s a reminder that what we see is often based on our preconceptions, misconceptions, we don’t come to the world as neutral observers. We come filled with bias, prejudice, vested interests of every kind. Why not occasionally be reminded of that fact?

Who Are The “Most-Read” Authors on the Internet?

Read It Later, a “save it to read later offline” app for Android and iOS, has compiled usage data to synthesize a report on the most frequently read authors on the service. Obviously, this comes with a bunch of caveats; the report itself identifies some of them:

Read It Later has a unique dataset to explore these kinds of questions. Nearly 4 million users rely on Read It Later when they click the “read later” in their browser, tablet or smartphone—and they come back to our app to dig deeper into the stories they’ve saved, recipes they’ve discovered, or videos their friends have recommended. That means Read It Later users aren’t just drive-by visitors to a piece of content—they’re passionate about it. The content is important enough that they added it to their queue so they wouldn’t miss it.

Overall, though, this provides an interesting view on who and what people are reading, and what types of content are most popular on these types of services. The above chart shows authors who have the highest “rate of return,” where people actually returned to check on their stories repeatedly. No surprise: previous /Filmcast guest Alan Sepinwall, an erudite, articulate, insightful television writer, scores right near the top.

[New life goal: making this list one day.]

[Side note: Read It Later is a pretty great app for $3.]

Announcing the Launch of Davechensphotos.com

I’d like to make this official: as of this moment, my new photography website, Dave Chen’s Photos, is online!

It’s been a long journey to get to this point. I’ve spent the past year amassing thousands upon thousands of photographs from a wide variety of events and situations. I’ve studied with master photographer Jerry Ghionis and read up on the techniques of flash photographer David Hobby. My hope is that the new site will reflect the breadth and quality of my work through an elegant, simple, classy design.

Shortly, I’ll be writing a blog post about the two photo website services I’ve tried this year: 4ormat and Bigfolio (which hosts the current version of the site). I know many of us dislike flash but there are reasons why I chose to use a service that only hosts flash websites. I will get into those later, but iPad and iPhone users are not left out, as there’s a fully functional mobile version of the site as well.

In the meantime, check out the new site! Put it through its paces. And ask yourself: would you hire this photographer if he was local? Why or why not? Your answers and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

The New York Times’ Bizarre Jerry Sandusky Interview

After Bob Costas obliterated Jerry Sandusky’s reputation in a well-executed but troubling interview, one would think that we wouldn’t need to hear too much more about the matter from the man himself. Costas’ questions were pointed, relentless, and well-researched. Sandusky’s failure to provide even a moderately plausible explanation for his prosecution (and persecution) spoke volumes.

But today, the New York Times published a front-page story on Sandusky, featuring an interview with Jo Becker. The interview is bizarre, to say the least. Becker seems less interested in getting at the truth than in 1) trying to help Sandusky find justifications/explanations for his imprudent behaviors, and 2) giving Sandusky a massive mouthpiece with which to tell his side of the story. Commenters on the piece are lining up to complain about Becker’s softball questions. And as a side note, I can’t imagine this interview helps Sandusky’s cause any (Seriously, WTF is his lawyer thinking? Unless he’s playing some kind of circuitous, long game here…).

I’m not too familiar with Becker’s work. But if I may go out on a limb here, I think I can understand the motivation behind such a piece. It felt like Becker was trying to get inside the mind of a pedophile and try to make us understand his plight and condition. There is some value for society in this; if we can’t understand monstrosity, how can we ever hope to contain or stop it? But I’m also reminded of this important column about the Sandusky scandal by priest James Martin. In the column, Martin argues that pedophiles often exhibit two tendencies: grandiosity and narcissism. When the pedophile is discovered, these two qualities often fuse together:

The grandiose narcissist now focuses almost exclusively on his own suffering. His removal from office, or from ministry, he believes, is the worst thing that has happened to anyone, and he (or she) laments this fate loudly and frequently. Because of his narcissism he focuses almost entirely on his own troubles; because of his grandiosity he inflates them to ridiculous proportions. He suffers the most. This is the “Poor Me” Syndrome.

Even more dangerous: he draws others into his net, and the suffering of the real victims, those whose lives have been shattered, is overlooked-even by otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people. The focus of those within the institution is shifted onto the person they know, rather than the victims that they may not know.

We cannot allow this to happen. Today’s NYTimes interview does not help.

Thoughts on ‘The Muppets’

We had the opportunity to review The Muppets on the /Filmcast recently, and while I stand by that review, I’ve also been grateful to read a bunch more informed opinions in the past few days. One of the things that I found irritating about the response to our review (both on Twitter, in the comments, and via e-mail) has been the idea that I should’ve just “enjoyed the movie for what it was.”

This reasoning annoys me for two reasons. First of all, it plays into the whole internet mentality that only one opinion about a film can be correct and that other opinions should be discounted or cowed into submission. We’ve seen this sentiment play out on numerous occasions in the past.

Secondly, it implicitly demands that this film, The Muppets, be less than excellent. Not every film can be an amazing work of art, but is it wrong to expect each one to at least be an exemplar of its category? I think not. Jason Segel (who co-wrote The Muppets screenplay) was handed a remarkable opportunity and substantial resources to work with a beloved property. I found the film to be delightful, a lightly polished piece of light, fluffy entertainment. But as a film, was it emotionally resonant? Did it evince quality, thoughtful storytelling? Did it pay homage to the muppets while bringing their sensibility into a new era? In my opinion, it did not (you can listen to my review for more details on this).

Other people have made this point far better than me. As always, I encourage you to check out the Extra Hot Great podcast’s review, which adeptly strips away the nostalgia and evaluates this film with brutal honesty.

I’d strongly recommend Elizabeth Stevens’ sprawling essay on the muppets, which is a loving exploration to the work of Henson. In one portion of the essay, Stevens questions why Kermit (once voiced by Jim Henson but now voiced by Steven Whitmire) needed to continue existing at all after Henson’s death:

It would’ve made more artistic sense than what happened. Instead of an organic personnel shift, Whitmire became Kermit, which wasn’t only a disservice to that character, but also a real disservice to Whitmire. There was no place for him to take the role. If he strays too far from Henson, embodying Kermit with the parts of his personality that weren’t in Henson, nostalgic fans will be disappointed. He can only attempt the same impression over and over. It’s not the kind of art Henson produced. It’s very un-Muppet.

I was reading Matt Gemmell’s great essay the other day about why copying occurs so frequently in the tech industry and I couldn’t help but think of Stevens remarks. One thing that both writers agree on: a copy can never be better than the original. By consigning Whitmire to imitating Kermit, it’s a lose/lose for both Whitemire and for the character.

Stevens’ essay was written before the film came out, but if she were to review the film, my guess is it would read a lot like Jason Bellamy’s review of the film at Indiewire:

Make no mistake, watching the gang perform “Rainbow Connection” is lump-in-the-throat touching and realistic, too (not that the Muppets have ever been about realism), but it comes off like a concession – that the Muppets’ best days are behind them and the most magic we can hope for is an occasional performance of their greatest hits. Maybe that’s true. Maybe what Segel’s film shows us is that Henson and Frank Oz, the puppeteers extraordinaire who through their voices and hands gave so many of these characters their spirit, are irreplaceable.

Compare The Muppets to a film such as Abrams’ Star Trek, which does honor to the original characters while striking out on its own (quite literally, using a brand new timeline). Despite that film’s shortcomings, I truly believe it set the standard for how these film remake/adaptations should be done. I’ll take Big-Hands-Kirk over endless, empty waves of nostalgia any day. At least the former is trying something new.