Out of Focus

TRIBECA'S HERE ... THAT'S WHY I'M NOT

Hi everyone. So I wasn't really able to keep up my hope of visiting this site at least a couple times a week and providing some content. I hoped to write about Sin City. I hoped to write about the end of Miramax (as we know it) more, and why everyone who owns Disney stock should sell rather than suffer through the reign of Iger. I hoped to talk about the great finale (but that damn cliffhanger ... hopefully that's not the series finale) of American Dreams. I hoped to write about the reasonably satisfying season ender on The West Wing, although I fear for this show's future since they'll probably go with Jimmy Smits in the fall, and the Alan Alda character would be much more interesting for this creative group to tackle.

But I haven't had time for any of that. The Tribeca Film Festival, which officially started last night with gala premieres of The Interpreter but kicks off with the bulk of its screenings Friday, has been kicking my ass. I don't mind it; it's been fun (and stressful), but a ton of work, and I'm basically working 16-18 hour days right now. I would say "with no end in sight," but that's not true. May 1 will absolutely be the end, and by May 6, I will be unemployed. So on the one hand, I've been hoping time would slow down to finish all I have to do before my big part of the festival starts tomorrow (with screenings of two big and great documentaries: Through the Fire about high school basketball phenom Sebastian Telfair's journey through high school and deciding to enter the NBA draft, and photographer David LaChappelle's Rize about krunking). On the other hand, I just want the whole thing to be over. But then on the third hand, once it's over, I'm unemployed five days later.

See, I need three hands to take care of everything. That's the problem.

If you're in New York, come down to Tribeca. Nothing is "sold out" at the Tribeca Film Festival until the film starts. You can always get in a "Door Sales" line, and if you're reasonably near the front, there's a better than not chance you'll get in. There are some great films being shown this year, and if you check the online guide, you'll have the most up-to-date info. (The printed guide that came out in the New York Times is mostly correct, but there have been several films added and some schedule changes, so definitely check online.

One program I've seen a little bit of that I'd like to plug is Mackendrick on Film playing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Tuesday 4/26 at 4:30 PM. If you're a film student, cinema studies scholar, wannabe filmmaker or just all around cinephile, you will love this program which is a preview of a much longer .. well, I'm going to call it a filmic textbook. It's only showing once in this festival, and it's only part of the final program, but it's marvelous, and after seeing the bits that I did (even less than what will be screened and discussed on 4/26), I couldn't wait to see more. I highly recommend checking it out, and tickets are still available.

Anyway, as I will be moving out of my apartment into a lovely hotel downtown after tomorrow, the chance of me actually visiting any website, let alone my own, or even being near a computer is virtually nil. Please don't desert me completely, however. I promise I will be back the week of May 2. And hell, after May 6, I've got nothing but time on my hands ... and plenty of things left to rant about.

THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: APRIL DAY FIVE - THE WOMEN OF WET (SASHA EDEN & VICTORIA PETTIBONE)

Thank GOD this week is over. Somehow, I always learn these lessons about how much I can handle, but when the opportunities arise to avoid these situations, I still take on everything. It's a bad bad workaholic trait which I absolutely blame on my father and his side of the family. Cause, you know, genetics -- and it's easier.

So today is the last Gothamist interview that I have to worry about during the film festival. Our next week won't be until my second week of unemployment (shudder!). Today's interview was one of my favorite to do this week, but it was also the hardest. I found myself finishing it late last night -- let's put it this way, I didn't go to bed until after the start of the Pope's funeral!

My girlfriend works at a public high school in Manhattan, and a few months ago she became involved with something called "WET's Risk-Taker's Film Series," a screening and discussion series for adolescent girls from all over New York City. My girlfriend is one of the mentors who lead the smaller post-film group discussions, and she suggested to me a few months ago talking to the women who run the thing. WET is an acronym for "Women's Expressive Theater," a non-profit theater company started and run by Sasha Eden and Victoria Pettibone.

I had a great, long conversation with Sasha and Victoria last week, and found myself talking to two of the most enterprising and with it women I'd ever encountered. You know how sometimes people talk about this big plan or that great idea, the things they're going to do to rule their business or industries? Yet the whole time you just know they're blowing hot air? They sort of turn "ambitious" into a bad word. Well, that's not the case with Sasha and Victoria. Maybe it's because their ambitions come with a mission that goes beyond simply personal success. I don't know. The only thing I can say is that after hanging up the phone with them, I didn't feel like they were full of themselves: I just thought that these were two women who had some pretty major plans, and they had a good chance of succeeding at most of them.

In fact, our conversation went so long that at least half of it didn't make the posted interview. For example, all the plans I just mentioned above? Yeah, not in there. But it's actually somewhat remarkable. WET is a non-profit theater company dedicated to creating productions and working opportunities for women. But they also produce events and throw benefit parties. Plus they started this outreach program I meantioned, the "Risk-Takers Film Series" at which working members of the film industry come to speak about the film they show the teenage participants. (For example, Ally Sheedy came to a screening of High Art to talk about her experiences working (and not working) as an actress over the past two decades.) And then they're starting to develop projects for film and television with the goal of also having a full-fledged production company with multiple arms.

Anyway, the two of them are impressive. It's almost depressing how fucking impressive as I sit here complaining about my little film festival job and having to write some interviews at the same time for a web site. Big deal, right? Who needs more than four hours sleep in a day anyway? But then again, it's fun to play the martyr, and I guess that's part of my Jewish upbringing and family genetics as well.

THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: APRIL DAY FOUR - JON BLOOSTEIN

I know. You don't really want to read my bitching and moaning every day about how hard it's been to do this week's series of interviews or how ridiculously busy I am at work. I'm sure you're waiting anxiously to read what I thought about Sin City, the one movie I've actually managed to see in the past month. And you know what? I want to tell you all about what I thought of it. (Short version: I liked it. A lot. But distinguish between why I enjoyed it and whether or not it's really a great movie. Oh yeah, and also? Carla Gugino. Wow!)

But really, I don't have time for that right now. As it is, I've been struggling to get these Gothamist Interviews done this week, especially since I don't have my trusted partner in crime helping me with this month's endeavor. Then there's the fact that as of Noon yesterday, I was still short one interview subject. I didn't know what to do. I thought about just leaving Anna's interview as the featured one for two days, but I know the Gothamist bosses prefer otherwise. But these interviews take time, and as it is, I'm still working on transcribing my conversation with the two lovely women who I'm profiling for Friday.

Then, who could have guessed it, but out of the blue, a publicist came to my rescue. We had done an interview with another one of her clients, and with Lily checking out the early days of Western civilization, this publicist contacted me to see if we might ever be interested in interviewing another client of hers: Jon Bloostein is the owner of Heartland Brewery and the newly opened Spanky's BBQ. I asked her if Jon might be able to turn around the interview in 24 hours if I could get him the questions by the end of the day, and the scramble began.

I foolishly took about an hour out of my day yesterday to brainstorm the questions. Thankfully, my friend Sean is a big beer (read: all kinds of alcohol!) drinker, so he helped get my creative juices flowing with a couple starter questions. I sent off the list with the belief that I would receive the responses by 8 PM last night. Next thing you know, it's 11:45 PM Wednesday and no answers. Actually, this wasn't a huge problem because I was stuck at work, once again redesigning the entry scheme for the Regal Cinemas at Tribeca. But it did mean I had to call the poor publicist at just about midnight and ask her to get on her client.

But look: everything turned out well, and what we got was an interesting chat with one of the city's most successful restaurant owners. And most importantly, no interview holes, and I've only got one left. It's just enough to make a guy really, really, REALLY thirsty. I wonder if Jon can help me out with that?

THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: APRIL DAY THREE - ANNA E. HOUSLEY JUSTER

One of the more interesting (that's not really the right word, but I'm going to go with it) things about working at a film festival, especially Tribeca and especially in the kind of logistical position I occupy, is that you can spend weeks planning and preparing certain scenarios only to have it all go poof in one day and find yourself back at square one and scrambling to make things work. So of course when does such a thing happen this year? How about during the week that Lily and I are responsible for our Gothamist Interviews, and add to that the one time that Lily has traveled to the birthplace of Western civilization and left everything to me.

If you've been to the Tribeca Film Festival at the Regal Battery Park 11 Cinemas, you'll know that the plaza in front of the theaters gets very crowded, to put it mildly. We are constantly looking for ways to make the situation more comfortable and less confusing for our customers. Without boring you, let's just say that this week, about four weeks of planning mostly went away in less than a day. And we're basically just over two weeks out from the start of screenings and the constant in and out flow or approximately 2000 people every two hours. The festival is still going to be amazing, with the best selection of films yet, and the situation outside the Regal will still be better than it has ever been before. It just means we have a lot more work to do in a very compressed time period. And of course, all of this is happening while I'm prepping these interviews.

Luckily, some of this week's interviews were easy, and today's with Anna Housley Juster was one of them. Anna is actually one of my girlfriend's very close friends, and months ago my girlfriend, while brainstorming interview subject ideas, thought of Anna first. The two of them met while in grad school at Columbia Teacher's College, but neither of them went on to teach in the traditional fashion. In fact, Anna works for Sesame Workshop, the organization who makes Sesame Street. I never really had a grasp, though, on what Anna did for the organization and the show. I also had never taken the time to ask her.

Who knew Anna was so fascinating? Well, I guess most people who meet her do. But really, I had never discussed with Anna in any sort of detail what she did at her job. Anna is a playful, funny, easygoing woman. I think that comes across in the her interview. What you wouldn't necessarily realize simply by meeting Anna is that she's also an incredibly accomplished professional who has an enormous impact on the growth and education of this country's children through her work on what is the most popular children's television show of all time. Sesame Street began its 36th season on Monday, and if you turn on the show, you'll see content that was designed to incorporate the educational curriculum designed by none other than Anna.

If you regularly read this site, you might wonder why it is that having the opportunity to talk to someone at Sesame Street, I didn't ask about the show's reaction to my favorite Broadway musical Avenue Q. Well, I did actually, but as is the case with all these interviews, believe it or not, a lot of editing is involved. Anna's answer to my question was very basic: "Saw it. Loved it. Genius." Considering that her other answers were a bit more interesting and detailed, and she didn't really talk about a general Sesame Street reaction to the show, I figured it wasn't a big deal.

Two more days. Somehow, I'm making it through.

Famous last words.

THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: APRIL DAY TWO - DAVID HASKELL

Wow. I'm just really getting no sleep. Not good, you know? I was up until about 3 AM again last night transcribing the Gothamist Interview that will run on Thursday, and I still have more editing on the one that will run tomorrow. Oh, and how about the fact that Friday's interview, as of now, doesn't actually exist. Ooops.

But today is a little chat with David Haskell. Does David qualify as a wunderkind? Maybe. At 25 years old, he's manager to start and edit his own magazine: Topic. And I don't mean some 20 page fanzine photocopied and stapled at Kinko's. No, an actual magazine that gets distributed through professional channels, has real subscriptions and can even be found on newsstands. Topic is nine issues in, and hopefully it will continue for a while. It's a great idea which seems to find the middle between what people would normally distinguish a magazine from a journal: each issue focuses on one specific "topic," and all the pieces focus on various looks at that one subject. Family, War, Prison, Food ... these are just a few of the topics which Topic has already tackled.

Once again, the vast majority of the work on this one was done by Lily. (The opposite will be true for the next two days.) So David and I haven't really talked. I hope to remedy that because I have a few ideas ... depending on the topic, of course.

THE GOTHAMIST INTERVIEW: APRIL DAY ONE - VINCENT SKELTIS

You know what's a really dumb idea? Thinking that less than three weeks before the start of the Tribeca Film Festival that I would have time to properly do a week of Gothamist Interviews. Even dumber? To think that I can accomplish this while my trusted partner (and more importantly, big time editor) is off galavanting in Greece covering the 7th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival for indieWIRE.

Oh, we're in some trouble now, I dare say. I mean look: it was only a week ago when I said how I was going to try really hard to at least come here and spit out some sort of content on a regular basis, and suddenly, here we are a whole week later already.

Well, the fact is that aside from the fact that my brilliant fifth interview subject (a real coup, in fact) seems to have fallen through (so I will be scrambling for someone interesting), we actually have a great week of interviews for you starting today with photographer Vincent Skeltis. I actually had less-than-normal to do with this one; Lily had the contact and went to see his exhibition in Williamsburg a few weeks ago. But wow! What a fascinating guy with some -- shall we say gripping? -- experiences, and an interesting perspective on life, the world around him, and his own experiences. It would be easy to dismiss Vincent as one with the stereotypical story of the tortured, tragic artist, but there's something about him that comes out in his responses which to me seems, for lack of a better term, very real, and again, to me, it's a reality with which I'm quite unfamiliar, but certainly curious.

This week, I actually will be here every day providing the links to the interviews. Hopefully, I'll get them all done. Hopefully, I'll do so while also getting some sleep. Hopefully, this week will move at a slightly slower pace than the last two.

See, that's an example of not being "very real." That was being full of hope. Really ... oh, am I in trouble!