Award-Winning Director Ondi Timoner Lives in Public

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 03 March 2010 05:00

Written by Brad Balfour

Q: I very much believe in this idea of this level of independence.



OT: Well, I thank you. I think everyone who has a voice out there that's contributing some of their airtime or "finger time" to spreading the word about this film, because it is actually an extremely important social-issue film.


Q: Then you work with Josh, and no insult to him but there's a sort of childish or child-like or infantile quality to him that he still hasn't figured out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But there's some sort of a weird genius to him; he can be very focused. When you met him had his Lovey [the clown] alter-ego already been created? Or did Lovey not yet exist?



OT: I never saw Lovey show up at a Pseudo thing, but the lowest moment of my filmmaking career was when Lovey decided to bring three couples to simultaneous orgasm at the Quiet bunker in Lovey's lounge. Gay couple, lesbian couple, heterosexual couple, he was going to use the universal vibration, the sound "boing" and make that sound into a microphone, and in so doing somehow bring these people to orgasm while 100 people watched on. They were having sex on beds, being seen live in the room, and I was filming it.

It's not in the movie because we'd like the movie to show at Sundance. That footage has got to see the light of day at some point but we're still trying to figure it out. There are people in the office who have grabbed that footage and made their own cuts of it.

But anyway, point being, I'm standing there thinking, "This is the lowest moment of my career. Hands down." Just then a man walks up to me and says, "Are you Ondi Timoner?" and I said "Yeah," sort of ashamed to admit that at the time, and he said, "I need you. I need you to get on a plane with me to Africa. The oldest living civilization is being threatened."

At the sex show is when I got recruited. It's a crazy life I lead. Josh's alter ego was my way in to having compassion for him, ironically enough.

So DiG! goes on and wins Sundance, I'm on the front page of The New York Times, and I get an email from Josh, "Any interest in finishing the movie?" To which I replied, "No." And I thought, this is less pertinent than ever; maybe the bunker was somewhat revelatory the year after but who cares right now. And I don't want to be back in business with this charlatan.

So then a few months later he writes me again and says, "Will you get on the phone with me? We have a proposal." So I get on the phone with him and he says, "I propose that you are a partner now. 50% partner, creative control, I send you the masters right away." I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow. Okay well this sounds not so bad and there's no deadline."

Because [George W.] Bush was just winning the election the second time and everybody I figured in America was voting against their best interest so I was off to shoot a movie about mind control. So he said, "Here's the masters," and I said, "Okay fine, one caveat; I get to shoot you on the apple farm on the tractor."

He said fine, because at that point he was on the tractor. So we made a deal and he sent me the masters and I didn't finish the film; I just had some of the footage and media organized. I went and made my movie Join Us, about four families that escaped a church they realized may be a cult. I followed them and the cult leader over a few years.



Q: That's very ironic.



OT: It's so ironic. Look at it: The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Join Us, and We Live in Public. I don't know what the heck's going on; I think I'm very interested in what people are willing to give up to belong or have their lives matter, is what it comes down to. Or the megalomaniacs. 



Q: Or the art of insanity.



OT: Yeah; all of that. But when I finished Join Us in 2007 I saw the first status update on Facebook. It said, "I'm driving west on the freeway," posted two hours ago. I thought, "Who cares?" Suddenly all these people cared. All of a sudden it hit me like this lightning flash and I had the clearest vision for a film I'd ever had, and that's how we were able to get through 5,000 hours in eight months of editing.

I started editing this in May of 2008. It's extremely complex filmmaking so it was really like an incredible team of dedicated people who saw themselves in this film, as most audience members see themselves, and really this lightening bolt of going from blindness to knowing exactly what the film is about.

It was about all of us, and it was about the fact that the bunker is a physical metaphor of the internet, and the dark side, and the risks involved, and we are in the bunker now, we are addicted to the internet in 10 short years, we are trapped in our virtual boxes, and Josh is Facebook. He says, "Everything's free except your image. That we own."

And even if you're sitting in your pajamas, logging onto Facebook, accepting the terms and conditions, and posting your photos online for that feeling of connection that you can have, you're not alone. It doesn't feel like it felt like to be in the bunker, but it's a very interesting study of what we will give up and what we will make public. And we are doing that right now in more and more ways and more and more of the time. And our relationships are becoming more superficial because of it. We're connecting out 10 times more with ten times less depth.



Q: So when you filmed Quiet, you had not only yourself but multiple camera people shooting?



OT: I had four camera crews and we had a multiplex. The first thing I did was get a multiplex system where I could feed the 110 surveillance cameras into one machine that would split them so I could see nine screens, four screens, one screen, as if I was a security camera person.

I would record those feeds, someone from my team would be there with nine VHS decks, we would choose which nine cameras were going to record, and one deck was hooked up to record the multiplex and we would record the boxes. I didn't like the bunker. I wouldn't have lived in the bunker; I had a pod and I tried it but I would never check into a society like that, that wouldn't be me.

I'm very resistant to groups. I didn't like the automatic firing range. And when the metaphor was complete about our lives, the one thing I couldn't figure out was what the neo-fascistic elements were all about; how does that apply to online? It applies in one way; this was the way I was able to work it out — how extreme do the circumstances have to be that people will just check in, answer 500 questions on a questionnaire, subject themselves to interrogations, put on uniforms, and enter a society that they're not supposed to leave for 30 days, with an automatic firing range, having no idea what's going to happen to them?

They will give that up to be where it matters when it matters, to feel like they are somehow important or that their lives are significant. They want to be part of history. They want to be not just part of it; they want to be the highlight. So they are now clamoring for the attention. It was their chance to be at the Factory. But that's only for some; some people were checking in there just to escape depression or be a part of the community.



Q: I liked it because I could eat there.



OT: The meals were fantastic; the performances during dinner were phenomenal.

Q: Instead of it being a warning, you can see on the flip side, it's a positive reflection, a document of the continuity that the internet, that Josh, that Pseudo, has with a larger bohemian counter culture where the long tail has become the culture now. That's why I'm writing about it and why I think it's important. 



OT: It's an important history lesson and it begs the question of where we're headed from here. It's part of a continuum. I'm not going to let it go unnoticed.

Q: You're at the beginning of this whole other thing, and now you're in this whole new animal and how does it fit into this larger phenomenon?



OT: Well, I've had to take on another film. It's called Cool It, it's about solving the world's problems and the climate change debate and some other things in the world that need to be paid attention to simultaneously, and ways to approach that, and the controversy involved. It's inspired by a book called Cool It by the economist Bjorn Lomborg. I've started that film because I didn't sell We Live in Public, so it's not going to get my son to the dentist, and also because it is another extremely prescient, timely film [which generated controversy this year's as being a possible counter to the global warmers].

And another interesting animal to crack; I'm developing The Perfect Moment, which is a script that I optioned, did rewrites on, and am producing with actress Eliza Dushku. It's about the life of [photographer] Robert Mapplethorpe, [and] Patti Smith and their work. It's my first scripted narrative that I'm directing. But Mapplethorpe again; a cultural lightening rod, troubled artist, another New York story for everyone.

In terms of We Live in Public, it is absolutely in the middle of this and at the forefront of this. This film is a big billboard for Josh. Josh Harris has sought fame his entire life; he finally has more of it than he's ever had before.

It's a bit of a monster making thing; we flew him in for Sundance [last year], he had a roundtrip ticket, we won Sundance, he never left. He is here to launch his next project and every bit that this film does, any attention, helps him possibly get back in game.

I would not have made the film if it was not about all of us, and this time in our lives, and I want to raise consciousness about our use of internet at this crucial tipping point and so I'm committed to it.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour

• < Prev
• Next >