The Awkward Off Vs. Ondi Timoner (Interloper Films)

ONDI TIMONER, of INTERLOPER FILMS, best known for her film Dig! about the rivalry and friendship between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, joined me on KVRX to talk about her latest film WE LIVE IN PUBLIC. She was in town for the documentary’s premiere at The Alamo in AUSTIN, TX.

We Live in Public explores the Internet’s role in connecting us globally but disconnecting us locally. It follows the mania of Josh Harris, Internet pioneer, from an underground bunker where people give up personal privacy for the chance to connect to the filming of his only relationship. Harris’s projects serve as a greater metaphor for how we interact with technology, leaving the viewer painfully self-aware of the Internet’s presence in our lives. This documentary took home the Grand Jury Award at Sundance ’09.

Special thanks to Robert Moreno for letting me interrupt his radio show.

Trailer for We Live in Public:

Full Transcript (Audio):

Nichole Bennett: Hello, hello. We are interrupting Robert’s programming to bring you a very very very special guest. Today we have with us Ondi Timoner of Interloper Films. Is your mic working?

Ondi Timoner: Hello, testing, testing.

NB: Yes it is!

OT: I don’t have my headphones on, hold on. Let me avail myself of my headphones.

NB: She is here all the way from California from Interloper Films. You can check them out at InterloperFilms.com, and they make everything from documentaries to short films, music videos, and even commercials. You may know her from her film Dig! about The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, but she is in Austin this weekend because she is premiering her newest. It is called We Live in Public. It’s a multilevel film in that on one side it is a biopic about Josh Harris, but on the other side it is a statement about how the Internet affects our humanity. I read an article recently on how the Internet isn’t really changing who we are, it just exploits our narcissism. I didn’t know if you had any insight into that because as a filmmaker you just document. I didn’t know what you opinion was on that.

OT: Well, I was motivated to make the film because I was noticing the way we post our lives online and how excited we all our to tweet and post and tag. We have all of these new terms, and we have all our Facebook quote “friends” and our avatars. So it’s clear the virtual world’s taking over. I happened to document something ten years ago, a bunker underground in Manhattan where 150 people lived under constant surveillance and ceded all of their privacy for the opportunity to connect and be where it mattered. It became clear to me that this society that was created by Josh Harris, this Internet pioneer who foresaw the future, was actually a metaphor for how we would react to technology in our lives today. So when I realized that, I was motivated to finish the film. I’ve been filming this for ten years, so there’s 5,000 hours of footage that makes up this crazy ass rollercoaster ride called We Live in Public.

NB: That segue ways nicely into my next question. You did have over 5,000 hours worth of material. How do you go about editing that amount of material?

OT: Well, a team of some very smart people. It was pretty funny because I made this film over a decade, and I was never motivated to finish it until early 2008. So really this film was edited in the last year. Until the, I didn’t know how it was relevant to our lives. I knew that it was extraordinary how this very very wealthy man, Josh Harris, spent his money. Everybody else was buying cars and houses, and he built the first internet television network for like 80 million dollars. Instead of doing that he was building a bunker where he was feeding people three meals a day on an 80 foot long table with a firing range and a geodesic dome shower. This guy’s crazy. I don’t know if he’s a buffoon or a visionary, and I don’t know if it really matters. I didn’t want to finish the film until really it was our story. I realized that with the Internet we have this ability to connect 24/7, and we do it all the time. We are addicted to it. In ten short years, we are checking our email 500 more times in a day, and we are tweeting. We’re on Facebook. We’re on this, that, and the other. Ultimately we are connecting out-out-out through time and space, and we are disconnecting in our physical lives. When I realized that that feeling I had was the same as the bunker, the whole film became clear to me. I got through those 5,000 hours, or we did as a team lickity split. It was kind of miraculous. This film really wanted to be born right now.

NB: So Ondi went to great lengths to get here for her premiere yesterday.

OT: I also love Austin. So that’s one particular motivating factor. I couldn’t stay in Houston for any minute—any length of time past what it took to get to the rental car place. So there was no choice. It was either fly back to L.A. as fast as possible or get to Austin where I was supposed to be at The Alamo in South Lamar, the best theater in America. But about the soundtrack like we were talking about earlier. The artists either waived their fees. Like, Trent Reznor waived his fee or Jane’s Addiction called their management or David Bowie just charged four grand straight from the start. The soundtrack is off the hook.

NB: It’s an excellent soundtrack if you haven’t seen the documentary.

OT: It’s like a rock and roll history from the beginning of online, the spector of what your future could be. So what it does is it freaks everybody out. It’s a little identity crisis. But it’s nice because after watching this film that trips you out about your own use of the internet, you get to be with other people experiencing that, and you get to talk to people afterwards. Which is why I made the film, so I’m glad it is having that effect on people.

NB: Speaking of music, you were originally into music and not film, right? You originally thought you were going to go into music?

OT: I was a musician first. Before I discovered a camera, I discovered a guitar.

NB: And I think that shows up in your work. You have an excellent taste for where to put music and how to put it in.

OT: One time in 1998 I was making a film about Paul Westerberg from The Replacements, and it was called Seeing Through Paul. I was filming him at Capitol Studios. Don Was was producing the record, and he said “Do you play guitar?” as he was watching me shooting. I said “Yeah, I used to play guitar but not so well. I’ve sort of stopped and taken up filmmaking.” And he said “Here’s Keith Richard’s guitar. Play me something.” I played a C and an A, and then Paul Westerberg walked back in. We had to go back to our jobs. He said “You know, I figure Ondi camera/guitar it doesn’t matter. It’s how you play your instrument.” And I think it’s more the editing that I play like a guitar, and I play it like an instrument. He ended up hooking me up with Bob Dylan to play guitar because he said I reminded him of Bob Dylan the way I handled my camera. Which I think is one of the most flattering things that have ever been said to me in my life.

NB: The Bob Dylan of filmmaking.

OT: Of course in the audition with Bob Dylan I couldn’t remember any of his songs. It rapidly disintegrated into a guitar lesson. He was like “Why are you holding your pick that way. You are holding it like a banjo player!”

NB: I don’t think I would complain if Bob Dylan was fixing me. I need a lot of fixing, so…

OT: Well, listen, he did a “downward dog.” He was showing me some of yoga moves, and he needed some help.

NB: Everybody has their thing.

OT: Anyway, it’s playing down at the theater downtown, and I hope you guys will come. It’s WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com. We’re self-distributing the film this year, even though it won Sundance. We’re actually putting it out ourselves because it’s 2009, and that’s what you have to do basically.

NB: And this is the first time someone has won the Grand Jury at Sundance with a documentary twice, right? Correct me if I’m wrong.

OT: Yes, I am a statistical aberration.

NB: She’s a first.

OT: And I’m a chick. There’s not many women directors to start with, so it was cool for that. And I’ll actually be on the jury this year. I didn’t expect to win again after Dig!, and it was really exciting. The jury actually told me it was unanimous. I think it’s an important film for right now. I think it’s a really important social reality that the virtual world is taking over our lives. It’s sort of the first film that tackles that, and it does it through a microcosm individual sort of character. After Josh builds the bunker, he decides to rig his loft with 32 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 microphones and says that me and my girlfriend are going to be the first couple to live in public. He says that we’re gonna conceive a baby…and of course he loses all his money, and she leaves him. All of this happens on camera in the film. So it’s a very visceral look at someone who was raised on television and ended up mediating his life with cameras all the time. He takes his one intimate relationship and beaches that on cameras. And then, literally, loses all of his money on camera and loses his mind because of living too much in public. And then he has to go off the grid and become an apple farmer, which is pretty crazy.

NB: And the dichotomy between those two characters at the end…well, they’re not characters they’re real people. She seems very much adjusted back to normal life, and well, he’s an apple farmer…

OT: He’s blowing off the sides of buildings with his gun.

NB: Excellent scene.

OT: He’s pretty lonely, and she’s a mother now with a child.

NB: And speaking of timely, this film is actually on display on a museum.

OT: In the Museum of Modern Art. It’s in the permanent collection there. As is Dig! And it’s showing. It’s showing at The Alamo on Lamar. It’s showing in San Fransisco at The Roxy. It’s opening at The Music Box in Chicago. The best thing to do to see what it’s about is to go to WeLiveinPublictheMovie.com. You can see the trailer. You can see the widget in which everyday we release another 15 seconds from the bunker. It’s pretty wild stuff. Tune in. Check it out. I think it’s pretty important for our time. I made it for all of us. I hope you feel that way too, and thanks for having me.

The Awkward Off Vs. Los Campesinos!

In the green room of the EARL in ATLANTA, GA, I was surrounded by members of LOS CAMPESINOS!

For the whole interview, I concentrated on trying not to pick up their British accents…with limited success. In between laughter and tangents, we discussed the importance of an album as physical art, the internet’s huge role in music, and starting up a Russian hamster fighting ring. They tried to convince me they were more music lovers than they were musicians, but their concert definitely proved otherwise.

Full Transcript: (Audio)

Nichole Bennett: This is Nichole with WSBF, and I am here with Los Campesinos!

Los Campesinos!: Hi!

NB: Would you guys like to go around the circle and introduce yourselves?

Neil Turner: Hello, I’m Neil from Los Campesinos! and I play guitar.

Gareth Paisey: I’m Gareth from Los Campesinos! and I sing.

Oliver Briggs: I’m Ollie from Los Campesinos! and I play drums.

Alex Berditchevskaia: I’m Alex from Los Campesinos! and I sing and play keyboards.

Ellen Waddell: I’m Ellen, and I play bass.

Tom Bromley: I’m Tom, and I play guitar.

GP: There’s normally Harriet as well, but she’s not here because she’s ill. She normally plays violin.

NB: So tell me a little bit about your history. How did you guys get together?

GP: We’ve been a band for getting on to three years now, which seems to have flown by.

EW: That long?

GP: It’s weird because we still get called a new band. I guess there’s not that much to tell. We started the band whilst we were at University. We then finished University. We released some records. We’ve toured…a lot. We’ve been to some really interesting places…some not so interesting places. It’s been, generally speaking, a lot of fun. I guess the rest is just what happens to bands.

TB: A series of clichés.

NT: Lots of interviews.

OB: Sex.

GP: Tell them about that time!

NB: So where did the name come from?

GP: The name is Neil’s fault.

NT: Yeah, I used to speak some Spanish in school. It was just a word I knew. When it came time to think up a band name—it sounded fun.

GP: It looks nice. It sounds nice. It’s quite exotic to our English tongues.

NB: So the exclamation point is the only thing keeping you from being a Peruvian band. I think there is a folk band there. Are you guys rivals?

GP: We’ve not had the pleasure of meeting them.

NB: So how is it? Is it just a mishmash of all sorts of things? The songwriting process, in general. Or if you don’t want to answer the question, you can make up an story….at any point in the interview.

GP: We’ve already given you the good story…Ollie’s story. Back to the question. They’ll write a song and then we’ll take it as a band and it will develop through that. I will write some lyrics over top of that, and I guess that is the boiled down version of how to write a song. Lyrically, recently, I tend to write quite autobiographically and honestly.

NB: We were speaking a little bit about the internet earlier. It’s radically changed how a band gets out. It’s definitely helped you guys along. How do you feel? Is it a negative and a positive thing at the same time?

GP: I think, first of all, to say that it was anything else other than an absolute positive would be really ungrateful. We admit that if it wasn’t for the internet, we would not be a band. In this case it was us recording a demo and putting it up on Myspace. Within five days of putting songs on Myspace, we were being offered record deals in Australia. We’ve not even been to Australia, so I think that shows just how powerful the internet was for us.

TB: There are lots of negatives.

GP: Yeah, there are things that the internet has changed the way people write about music  and the way that people interact with music.

TB: And the positive things massively outweigh the negatives.

NB: Yeah, I think it levels the playing field.

TB: Yeah, completely.

GP: It has put a lot more power in the hand of bands as opposed to labels. It’s getting where you can do a lot of things without a label. Obviously a label helps with putting a record out, but you don’t need it to get heard.

NB: As much as I hate Myspace at times, it is good at that. So I guess we could talk a little bit about the latest CD that has come out…the second one of the year. It comes with a lot of goodies.

GP: It does. Sadly not as many in the U.S. as it does in the U.K. The U.K. version of the record is so much nicer than the U.S. version. It was a matter of record labels.

NB: Yeah, you are on Arts & Crafts here.

GP: And Wichita in the rest of the world. The Wichita version is infinitely nicer. The U.S. version is nice. It has the extra DVD and a sort of ‘zine.

NB: Yeah, I remember getting the package and thinking they had sent me a novel as well.

GP: Yeah, I don’t really like that package. Pretty cheap. It’s just a lot of plastic and a lot of cardboard.

NB: It is nice in that way, in our digital age, to have something physical. That’s why I’ve gotten into vinyl lately. It’s a piece of art. It’s something you can own.

GP: Yeah, you have to give people an incentive to buy something physical rather than downloading the album for free in the space of two minutes. So when it comes to packaging, we want it to be something that people are going to want to actually go to a record store and buy and enjoy it in more ways than just listening to it off a computer. So, I hope that more and more bands will consider things like that.

TB: For me, I see doing things as a band the way that my favorite bands did. Like when you get a vinyl and it opens up three ways, it’s like the best thing in the world. If we are in a position to do things like that, we will. Maybe we sort of romanticize about things like that.

GP: We’re music fans. We don’t consider ourselves musicians at all. What we do is that we are several people who started a band who like a lot of music and are getting to do what people in bands that we like do. We want to be a band that we would like and be excited about ourselves.

NB: I’ve heard rumors that this one is going to be pretty limited. Like one run? Is that true?

GP: That is the idea.

TB: In the U.K. they had to print some more, but I think that had to do with somebody fucked up the preorders.

GP: They clearly over-ordered the record because we’re more popular than we ever thought we were.

TB: It’s not really a proper second album, so were able to do something special with the packaging. It was more for people that really loved us.

NB: Since we talked about you guys being more music-lovers than musicians, what is in your CD player right now or your iPod? What is really hitting you lately?

GP: I’ve been listening to a lot of orchestral music. I’ve realized that as we’ve been on this tour, I’ve listened exclusively to OMD, The Smiths, Paul Simon, and Simon & Garfunkel. It’s weird. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

TB: Yeah, that’s unusual for you, especially.

GP: Yeah I don’t know, but I’m loving it, especially those 80’s drum sounds.

OB: The drums are really good on Graceland.

TB: I’ve been listening to Guided By Voices.

NT: I’ve been listening to a band called Chlorox Girls from Portland. It was Tom’s birthday yesterday.

NB: Happy late! Is that what this cake is? Are they animals? And, what is your most embarrassing CD?

NT: I have the whole Alice in Chains back catalogue.

GP: I have Pearl Jam’s CD.

NB: One more. This is the only question that actually counts. If you were an animal, what would you be?

TB: I’d probably be a cat. They are really cute, and they don’t really do anything. They get lots of attention and don’t do anything.

GP: The thing is with questions like these, I’m totally incapable of giving and off-the-cuff answer. I have to really think about it. Neil just brought up a good point. I’m allergic to horses, and if I was a horse, would I still be allergic to them? I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t be a horse because I don’t want to take that chance.

OB: I’d probably be a monkey.

GP: I can see that.

TB: You’re already halfway there.

OB: I’ll take that as a compliment.

GP: I don’t really want to be an animal, if we’re being honest. I’d end up being eaten. What good animals are there? What do they actually do?

OB: Should we pick something for you?

TB: A vegan questioning the point of animals.

GP: I don’t like animals. That’s why I don’t want to eat them. What should I be Ollie?

OB: What about some sort of bird?

GP: If you were a monkey, what sort of animal would you want to hang out with?

NT: I like Russian hamsters.

OB: What is the difference between Russian hamsters and normal hamsters?

NT: Russian hamsters are really cool.

GP: A friend of mine had two Russian hamsters, and he named them after the Hardy Boys, Matt and Jeff. And they always used to fight each other. The thing about this is that the Hardy Boys were a tag team. So, it made no sense at all.