Just saw this a few weeks ago and forgot to post about it. curious to see what anyone else thought of it. one of the best documentaries i've seen in a long while.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XSTwfdFwIY
i'll post more about it if there are any others out there that have seen it.
Moonage Daydream!
I watched it a few nights ago. I thought it was a fascinating subject, (dude is crazy), but didn't think the documentary itself was that well made.
someone posted it all on youtube if you don't feel like getting up and renting it or waiting an hour for it to download from somewhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZu5CkxyMIk
this is simply an amazing story about an amazing person. i'd seen Josh Harris before on First Person, but that only touched on one part of his life in detail, and was pretty abstract about the rest. the existence of the 'Quiet' experiment/human installation is one of those things that i'm shocked isn't common knowledge/more talked about. how many multi-millionaires really use their money to build their personal dreams and nightmares as opposed to just buying a bigger house and expanding their businesses? how would Josh's brilliance manifest itself had he not been discarded as a child? that is partly to say, why is 'Quiet' so aggressively crazy-making? it's so fascinating as a concept coming from this guy's head.. it's very much a painting of his mind with humans as brushes, but at the same time he's standing so far away from it all. almost like he's recreating his own family experience, but living it from his parent's perspective to better understand who they were and how they could be so heartless. it's so brilliant and brave that he flipped the whole thing inside out for his next trick.. i wish things could have worked out with his girlfriend. she understood him more than he understood himself a lot of the time, obviously, and i feel like she could have been making progress at chipping away the really troubling, psychopathic aspects of his personality. sadly he seems even more guarded and insecure than before in interviews around the time of this doc's release. especially when he insists the relationship was an act.
i don't consider his vision of the future 'scary' the way the documentary often paints it.. chatroulette is basically one degree removed from what he was hinting at, which, as P has eloquently pinpointed, is about finding some level of momentary intimacy with a stranger. it's about embracing how small (and at the same time, vast) the world has become.. hugging closer to the collective ethos of humankind. while this kind of intimacy is a double-edged sword, i don't think the bad outweighs the good.
one of the most amazing true stories available at this time that has been documented. Much like picolas, i'm suprised everyone doesn't know about Josh.
I just can't believe the information he extracted from them and what the people for "quiet" signed up for. Interrogation?
What's most interesting to me is the group of personalities he got together. It was like a gigantic 1984 character study on people who have lead either semi fucked up lives or very fucked up lives.
Everyone go see this, seriously it's free on youtube. Worth every second of your viewing. If i'm not mistaken it's from the maker of "DIG!"
ya i wanted to post about dig! before but i totally forgot. both are two of the greatest docs to come out in a long time.
Yes, I deeply apologize for not being able to contribute more to this conversation. I just don't have the talking points inside me to get out quite yet.
But, people who enjoy film, for any reason should watch this. This film deals with something that is a part of all of our lives. Hopefully soon i'll have something with actual content to post regarding this film.