Mikedog asked if anyone had produced a documentary.
I have. Conceived it, researched it, wrote it, directed it. What do you want to know?
And no, no one has mentioned it on this thread. (I’d put a frowny face here, but I don’t use 'em.)
~ stuyguy
Tell us about about it! There are no secrets here. If we don’t like it, we’ll nominate you to be banished from the house.
Mike
‘Waco: The Rules of Engagement’
yes this is a great one, i saw it a long time ago and i think i need to see it again , thanks for reminding me!
I haven’t seen a lot of these, although I promise to now. However, I must ask…
…does anyone really like Triumph of the Will? I’m not talking about the subject matter. If I recall it correctly, it’s mostly a really, really, really, really, REALLY long parade. I found it just amazingly dull. Of course, I watched it in an 8 o’clock course after not getting enough sleep the night before, so my memory could be just a wee bit clouded.
There’s a company in Scranton, PA called Home Film Festival that rents all kinds of movies by mail…they pride themselves on having the stuff you’ll never find in Blockbuster. Their website is simply http://www.homefilmfestival.com
I’m sure I’ve seen alot of the titles mentioned here in their catalog.
Mikedog asked about my documentary, so here goes…
It was a historical doc called “The City of Greater New York.” (And no, it was not the 10-hr. epic doc by Ric Burns, although I interviewed Ric on-camera and used many of his quotes in the final piece.)
It told the story of how 40 autonomous municipalities consolidated in 1898 to create the five-borough NYC that exists today. The main resistance to the consolidation came from residents of the city of Brooklyn, then third largest in the US, who did not want to join with currupt, immigrant-filled Manhattan. This was a hugely complex and contentious issue a century ago, but most New Yorkers today are clueless about the subject.
I got the idea in early 1997; being a NYC history buff, I realized that 1998 would mark the centennial of this milestone, so I pitched the idea to the Genl. Manager of my station who said, “Go for it.”
I spent the next nine months eating, breathing and sleeping the “mistake of '98” – as Brooklynites called the consolidation. I interviewed experts, tracked down descendants of the key players, unearthed forgotten artifacts and documents and even located a number of very, very obscure songs written about the event.
I convinced the Juilliard Music School to have some students perform the tunes pro bono, and I used the recodings as the background score. I also got a few celebrities (Frances Sternhagen, Charles Durning, Richard Kiley, Steven Hill) to supply character portrayal voice-overs, also gratis.
The doc aired on the our local PBS station (WNET/13) and NBC station (WNBC/4). It also played at the Museum of the City of NY for a year, and an abridged version was distributed to all NYC public middle and high schools. It won some minor awards, and earned me a few interviews/speaking engagements as a consolidation “expert.”
I’ve got my eye on another documentary idea, but it will never happen unless I get my ass off this MB every day and get my proposal written. Ughhhh!
Stuyguy,
Sounds interesting and a lot of work! What did you think of Burns’ treatment of the city?
And Triumph of the Will along with Olympia are great films. It is hard to watch the Olympics these days without seeing some of her film techniques.
Mike