Kicking truth to the online youth

This may surprise you but there has yet to be an Internets Celebrities get-together that has started at the time we originally planned. The problem is both Dallas and I operate on C.P.T. (Computer People Time) so if you tell us to show up somewhere at 7, that’s about the time we get off the Internets and get on the road. You can probably expect us there sometime between 7:30 and 9.

This goes back to our beginnings. On the fabled day that we all got together for the first time to shoot Ghetto Big Mac, Dallas hit us up by phone around the time he was supposed to be showing up to give us directions to where we could pick him up instead. When we were all flying out to Sundance for our first professional gig, Cas and Ian caught our early morning flight, while Dallas and I both showed up to the airport a few minutes too late. By the time we made it to our Park City hotel we had lost a whole day. You’d think that would have been an effective lesson to teach us to change our ways but … not so much. That’s why I only appear in half of the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival video footage. I was on C.P.T. that day.

In September, after spending the summer focussed mostly on other things, the IC crew reunited on the night of Rooftop Films screening Checkmate. We planned to meet up early to grab a slice of pizza, discuss upcoming projects and shoot some press photos in a Bodega.

I called Cas from the highway to tell him I was going to be about 40 minutes late. In frustration at myself I said “next time, just tell me a time about an hour before you actually want me there.” Without missing a beat, Cas shot back a no. He shouldn’t have to lie just to account for my irresponsibility. “How about you just learn to get to places on time,” he chided.

When I finally showed up to the pizza place, I apologized to Cas and to Dallas who told me it was no big deal to him as he had just gotten there himself. Rushing to eat, I ended up burning my lip and chin with some scalding hot cheese from a shrimp and chicken slice. We still ended up getting off a couple of decent Bodega photos, with that red burn mark on my chin giving me some badly needed street cred.

So, we faced a great challenge at the start of this month. Bodega was showing as part of the Documentary Shorts program at the Woodstock Film Festival. Cas had been up there for the whole festival but Dallas and I were to join him on Sunday morning at 11 when Bodega was showing. We decided it made sense for the two of us to share a single Zipcar for the two hour drive to Woodstock and so we formulated a plan for Dallas to pick me up around 8am so that we could be in Woodstock by 10. Knowing our tendencies it was important that we add in this extra hour. Of course the problem with a padded hour as CPT is concerned is that if you know it’s just an imaginary self-imposed deadline, you tend to imagine it away.

So at 7:45 I gave Dallas a call to see how he was doing, he had a zipcar reserved for 7 but the garage wasn’t open until 8. When I spoke to him ten minutes later he was taking a cab to a different zipcar location where he was going to pick up a different car. So much for 8am. On the other hand we had given ourselves that extra hour….

Around 8:30 I realized I needed to pick up something from the supermarket for my family. Called Dallas who was now on the highway heading towards my home. We agreed that I definitely had 5 minutes for a supermarket run. But what I didn’t have time for was the McDonald’s Drive Thru visit plus longer supermarket run that I went on instead. By the time I got back home it was right around 9 and Dallas was already there waiting for me.

The only thing Google Maps didn’t count on when it estimated the two hour drive to Woodstock was that we’d be driving a BMW (Zipcar had given Dallas an upgrade from the Toyota Matrix for his troubles) which seemed to ramp up to 90mph with the greatest of ease.

A hundred miles, a piss break and a tightly rolled blunt later, we showed up in the parking lot of the community center in Woodstock around 10:40 am. There was a line already assembling for people to buy tickets. Cas wasn’t around yet but we knew he had our tickets and should show up any minute if he wasn’t already inside the building.

Behind the community center was a baseball field and a group of middle aged to senior-aged locals were playing some mean softball. A long drive was hit to rightfield and Dallas and I watched in astonishment as the rightfielder – whose hair was more salt than pepper – stepped on the gas looked back over his shoulder and made a Willie Mays style grab. The very next play was a bullet to shortstop which was also fielded like a pro. That guy’s Willie Mays and that one’s Ozzie Smith, Dallas said instantly and convincingly transforming the race and professional experience of these older softball stars.

As it was now just about 11, I gave Cas a call. The cell phone signal was finally working and Cas was on his way and had our tickets. He said not to worry as he’d be there within 10 minutes. He seemed rather calm considering he was about to make us late for our screening. “Doesn’t the show start at 11?” I prodded. Cas paused, “Yeah, uh, it’s actually starting at 11:15.” I congratulated him on the nice job lying to me about the start time. Apparently an hour was out of bounds but fifteen minutes was fair game to our director. I hung up the phone and said to Dallas, “the show’s actually at 11:15!” Yeah, he already knew that.

The important thing is we made it on time and we were thus rewarded on that Sunday morning with the phenomenal defensive acrobatics of the Woodstock AARP crowd. That’s not the kind of thing you want to miss out on.

As for the festival, we feel like we got so much love that day. We got love from the crowd during the show, from the festival’s organizers, from the other talented filmmakers we met and then from people stopping us on the street repeatedly to chant “Bo-de-ga” or tell us they loved the movie. That’s also not the kind of thing you want to miss out on.

All of this grows out of the love we’ve gotten from you. That’s what sustains us: the comments, the blog posts, seeing people who want to spread our work to people they know or who want to support our efforts by donating their dollars and becoming producers.

I don’t want to get too lovey-dovey on you guys but there must be something in that chili I ate up in Woodstock. When I tell you the joy of having the all-important fourteen year old white girls excited to see you on the streets of their small town, that is a high like no other. You put us there so when we go we always represent for the Internets.

We are stardust, we are golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden… at a reasonable time.

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The Internets Celebrities all have dayjobs.

Dallas works as a construction manager.
Rafi is a programmer for a non-profit.
I make commercials for cable channels.

Dayjobs are how we make money.

We want to make money off of our movies.

Not fuck you money. Not retarded money. Maybe just a little make-it-rain money? No, just enough money to support taking some days off work, to justify spending some night-time hours on an edit and maybe most importantly, actually paying the good people that shoot, score, design and help us craft the IC flicks.

So we’re asking you kind souls who have enjoyed Checkmate or Bodega, Ghetto Big Mac or Cereal is Dope, Rock the Bells or Hip Hop Honors to help fund our next movie.

We’ve even implemented a handy widget on the right side of this site where you can throw us whatever loose digital dollars you’ve got floating around.

Seriously, even 1 dollar would be appreciated. The great thing about our internets is that we’re lucky enough to be able to get our documentary on check-cashing places in front of almost 500,000 people. If even a fraction of that group pitched in a dollar each, we’d be able to make movies our dayjob.

Now, we don’t have tote bags. And we’re working on T-shirts. Sweet Jesus, we’re working on some T-shirts.

But what we can offer you as a small token of our appreciation is a producer credit.

We don’t have a patron at the moment. We don’t have an agent. We don’t have any sponsors yet. So, basically, we’ve got a lot of room in our end credits and we want that space to go to the people who fund our next movie – essentially producing it.

The producer on most projects is the one who either comes up with the money or handles the money’s distribution throughout the set. For a $1 minimum contribution, you will be listed in our next movie’s end credits as one of our producers.

The wheels are turning on the next project and it’s going to be great. We can’t talk about its content yet as we don’t want to be scooped. But if you’re interested in finding out more before committing some cash, email us for a short synopsis on the next opus.

We’re always happy to discuss future projects with our producers.

Thanks very much for any consideration.

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