So what does an experimental, non-conforming, non-digitizing, celluloid filmmaker who's also a Film and Media Studies professor at the University of Florida think about all things digital, narrative and website-ready? I got curious and posed a few questions to Roger Beebe, whose films have been screened around the globe at well-known venues such as Sundance, the Museum of Modern Art and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, as well as at some unlikely spots like the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. On board as the current Artistic Director of FLEX, the Florida Experimental Film Festival, Beebe has also followed the rise and morphing of MTV, the vagaries of the music business and the pop magnet that is YouTube. Sitting back in cyberspace, he offers some pointed views about the current state of today's media and why artists big and small who marry the Internet and offer their artistic works as a handsome dowry should wake up before the honeymoon.
LW How did you first get into filmmaking?
RB I studied film a little as an undergrad, but the school I went to (Amherst College) didn't have a film studies program, so it was really just a couple of classes. Then I went to do a fellowship in France after I graduated, but instead of doing what they'd sent me there to do (a thesis on the clown in French literature — sounds great, doesn't it?), I ended up just watching 15-20 movies a week for the better part of a year. Then after that I went to grad school (to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature at Duke), and I couldn't find enough theory classes that interested me, so I thought I'd try the one production class that was offered.
LW You work with multiple layers, multiple projectors. You've remained true to your initial concepts about filmmaking without getting swept up in what we see as the traditional narrative structure. How did that happen?
RB There are really two answers to this. The simplest is that I don't like working on narrative films, that I don't like their "mode of production" (to sound Marxist for a moment). It's a hassle orchestrating people's schedules, lighting sets, getting someone to stand around all day holding a boom pole, etc., and that's not my idea of how I wanted to work as a filmmaker. I just wanted to make cameras a more direct artistic expression — me and my camera and the world — and narrative filmmaking won't ever allow that.
But there's also the matter of the kind of influences I was drawing on and the kind of work that got me most excited, both in filmmaking and in all of the different arts.
The first films were a total mishmash of other things I was interested in — Jean-Luc Godard, for sure, but also experimental fiction like Donald Barthelme and certain things that I'd picked out in college rock music like the Royal Trux album Cats & Dogs.
LW Your work has been called "experimental", "goofy", "important" and...what else? Which of those adjectives is true, if any?
RB Well, it's definitely experimental. As for "goofy," I still think there's some humor in the more recent films (certainly more than you'd expect to see in most experimental film). "Important"? I'm glad someone else said that. I hope that's the case — I'd hate to just be doing this as a kind of exercise or a way to pass the time until I die — but I'm definitely in no position to judge.
LW Tell us about Money Changes Everything. You shot in Vegas.
RB I did. It was an incredibly quick shoot — the whole thing was shot in 2 1/2 days and was actually FedEx'd off to the lab as I was on my way to the airport.
I really felt like all of my earlier films on Americana prepared me to finally take a direct look at Vegas. By contrast, I lived in Paris for five months a few years ago, and I had a really hard time even picking up a camera. (I finally did, just before my departure, to shoot a very short film called tour/TOWER). Vegas was speaking to me in a language that I already knew (but maybe didn't know I knew); Paris felt like it required learning a whole new filmmaking language.
LW You've co-edited a book on music videos called Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones. Can you tell us about that particular art form and why it attracted you?
RB Generationally, I think I was pretty perfectly situated to become a fan of music videos. I was just starting to get a taste for pop music (or rock or new wave or whatever) right as MTV launched. Music videos seemed to herald the arrival of another world. Of course, I've also watched as MTV abandoned videos in favor of reality TV, and that's been an interesting trajectory to see too. Now, with the internet being more suited (for the moment at least) to short form work instead of feature films or full-length TV programming, the music video has seen a bit of a renaissance. The budgets are a lot tinier obviously, but that hasn't stifled their creativity, and in a lot of ways it's stimulated creativity. This moment really reminds me of the late-80s/early-90s when indie/alternative/college rock bands all had friends with super 8 cameras making little scrappy videos for them. Back then, a few of those made it to TV on shows like Postmodern MTV or Alternative Nation, but now they ALL can make their way to the internet.
LW In an NPR interview, you recently talked about viral videos and how a band like OK Go with their single Here it Goes Again might not have made it in the brick-and-mortar days of MTV. They made it on YouTube?
RB That's exactly what I'm talking about — they didn't have to go through any filtering process in order to get that to people. They just made a little video — the sister of one of the guys in the band actually made it, on a budget of next to nothing — and stuck it up on the band's website. Then a million people forwarded it to their friends, and suddenly it's a sensation. Only after the video became a viral hit did VH1 take notice and put it into rotation (in the few remaining music video slots they have). So the web has totally upended the game — MTV doesn't decide what the hits will be & shove them down our throats; we decide what the hits are and they're playing catch up. That's a little bit of a simplification — it's not a process that's ever totally free from the tentacles of record labels, media portals, etc. — but it's still a dramatically new world.
LW And how do you see film, YouTube, cable operators, the internet and the broadcast networks sorting out their alliances in the near future?
RB I'm scared this one may not have a happy ending. It's not clear, for example, how the battle over net neutrality will end up being resolved — will our carriers be able to force us to go to certain websites or will the little guys continue to be able to battle the media goliaths on relatively even footing? I imagine we'll see corporations getting increasingly smart about how they can make a buck off of our web surfing, our user-generated content, etc. There will always be ways to make and distribute work outside of those networks though, so I'm also no believer that the outcome of these struggles will be some kind of Orwellian total control of the web.
LW Filmmaking on celluloid is definitely a way to create on that outside path. But on the other side, is "opting in" to digitizing, to YouTube, to Hulu and to HD (and getting more eyeballs because of it) the equivalent of signing an Orwellian contract?
RB Well, obviously the fine print in any of these contracts is where they get you — like you'll belatedly discover that that user agreement that you clicked on without reading means that News Corp. is suddenly the owner of anything you post on MySpace — but there have always been exploitative contracts ready for unsuspecting filmmakers. We all have to make difficult choices about how willing we are to sacrifice certain freedoms in order to have our work seen and shared, but I just hope (in an anti-Orwellian kind of hope) that these difficult choices can at least be informed ones. NewsSip
