Wholphin No. 2
The second issue of Wholphin includes Steven Soderbergh’s intense sci-fi homage to Godard; the Japanese “Bewitched” rescripted by Daniel Handler and writers of the Daily Show; a hallucinogenic tale of murder and absolution, featuring Boris Karloff’s melting head; Donald Trump channeling Citizen Kane; two Oscar-nominated shorts; a miraculous, scientific discovery 7000 feet below sea; an instructional video on “poke-poling a monkey-faced eel”; and a special moment with Andy Ritcher.
14 films. 157 minutes
LINER NOTES
BABY SQUID, BORN LIKE STARS
Scientific discovery of Brad Seibel, Steven Haddock, and Bruce Robison
Edited by Encyclopedia Pictura
Music: “I’ll Read You a Story,” by Colleen, courtesy of the Leaf Label Ltd.
BRAD SEIBEL: In 1995, I captured a squid in a trawl net from 1700 meters depth that I could not identify. Many of the characters used to identify squids are located on the two longer feeding tentacles. This squid had only the eight arms and no feeding tentacles. In the same trawl bucket was an egg mass that also could not be identified. The eggs had not developed sufficiently to tell even what phyla they belonged to. They were not like other squid eggs I had seen. I preserved the squid and eggs in separate jars and forgot about them for about a year. In 1996, I caught a second squid from about 1400 meters depth. In the same trawl bucket were about 2000 hatchling squids. At that point I remembered the first capture and inferred that the squid must be brooding its eggs. I did some moredetailed dissections of the adult female squids and determined they were in the family Gonatidae but couldn’t identify species. I recruited the help of a molecular biologists who compared gene sequences and determined they were Gonatus onyx. I published that in Marine Biology in 2000. As juveniles, Gonatus onyx are abundant in shallow water, but the mature females and eggs had never been seen. I figured there must be a lot of them brooding eggs in the deep sea but I had relatively few opportunities to drag nets or use submersibles. In 2001, I started a fellowship with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. On my first expedition with MBARI and their submersible, Ventana, the chief scientist (coauthor Bruce Robison) asked what species I was interested in finding and at what depths we’d find them. I said I wanted to look for Gonatus onyx brooding squids below about 1400 meters. Robison and others thought I was a bit crazy. But on the first dive, at 2500 meters depth we came across a squid carrying an egg mass. As we pursued the squid the eggs started hatching. We observed several others over the next three years and have seen five with the sub to date.
Q: What did you learn from this Gonatus onyx footage?
BS: The direct submersible observations confirmed most of my previous hypotheses. I learned exactly how the egg mass is held, how it’s aerated, what sort of swimming capacity the squids have while towing an egg mass. We learned that the depth range extends to 2500 meters. We learned that the mother squids can “trigger” hatching by waving their arms about.
Q: Would it be fair to say this discovery knocked the cephalopod community on its collective ass?
BS: As I say, it was a long process and there was accumulating evidence that other species in the family Gonatidae have a similar strategy. Nevertheless, there were some that didn’t believe my 2000 paper suggesting that these squids brood. Nesis called that hypothesis “erroneous.” There had also been some ideas put forward about the relationships between squids and octopods based on the fact that octopods brood and squids don’t. Those ideas obviously don’t hold up.
Q: Give us the stats. How long do Gonatus onyx carry their sack?
BS:We estimate about six–nine months based on the size of the eggs, the cold temperatures, and what we know about other cephalopod species.
Q: How many eggs does it contain, on average?
BS: We’ve estimated about 2000–3000.
Q: How does this affect the mother? She can’t feed while holding the sack, can she?
BS: We think that the squids don’t feed. They survive through many months utilizing lipid stored in the digestive gland. By the time the squids reach sexual maturity, about 20% of the body mass is fat. That’s a lot of energy that can sustain their metabolism at cold temperatures for as long as nine months.
Q: Is she literally holding it, or is it sort of growing out of her?
BS: She’s literally holding the egg mass with hooks on the arms.
Q: Lastly, what other currently disputed theories do you have about squid? Anything relating to cephalopod intelligence? Anything relating to Dosidicus gigas? What’s next on the list, basically?
BS: I’m working on squids that migrate daily into a layer of very low oxygen at about 300 meters. Active oceanic squids are believed to be very sensitive to low oxygen, but the jumbo squid, Dosidicus gigas, manages To survive for several hours there every day. I’m also working on pteropod molluscs (very cute slugs that “fly” through water) in the Antarctic. They’re commonly called “sea angels.” They feed exclusively on a shelled species. The shells will dissolve as we continue to pump CO 2 into the atmosphere and it diffuses into the ocean lowering the pH. I’m starting a “save the sea angels” campaign. Perhaps you can help promote it!
Q: Yes!
Q: Bioluminescent squirt guns. You have one?
STEVEN HADDOCK: Yes.
Q: And when you’re not making new scientific discoveries you go bodysurfing and play in a Silver Jews-ish rock band?
SH: Yes.
Q: The envy. Besides squirt guns, what are some of the more interesting applications to your research into bioluminescence?
SH: Applications are pretty wide-ranging. Markers that flash or glow are great signals because there are a lot of cameras and instruments to detect them, so people use them to light up wherever a process of interest is taking place. One specific example is automatically screening millions of bacteria and isolating only the ones that glow (the ones that have your gene inserted into them). You can light up tumors in a living animal, see a flash when an egg gets fertilized, and get a glimmer wherever calcium is released into a muscle cell.
Q: Steve, what is a “squid hugger” and why did you call me one?
SH: Sounds like you might be a little self-conscious about this. I didn’t call you a squid hugger—I just made general mention of this subset of people who become interested in marine biology. But you shouldn’t be ashamed of your proclivities—some of my best friends are serious squid huggers, and actually do it for a living.
Q: Have you named your band?
SH: Still waiting for the eureka moment. Among the names mentioned:
The Glops, Pachyphone, Bucolia, Cool Limbs, Flameflicker, Wrok- Shop, Introverts, Imagine Mañana, Thumbstaplers, Tocayo, Amphipod Juju, Elbowbump, Tame West, Bailoteo, Blue Fritter. Pathetic, isn’t it? We need more inside jokes—we just get together to play music, so don’t have that many good ones. (Dr. Haddock is accepting band name suggestions; if he chooses yours, you’ll win a Wholphin subscription. Send contenders to contiguity@wholphindvd.com.)
HOW TO POKE POLE A MONKEY-FACED EEL
Directed by Wholphin
Edited by Encyclopedia Pictura
MONKEY-FACED GUMBO (SERVES 8–10):
1 fresh monkey-faced eel fillet, in strips
2 lbs shrimp
2 dozen oysters & their liquor
1/4 lb leftover bait, usually squid
1 2-lbs chicken, cut up
1 lb andouille sausage, diced
2 large onions, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
3/4 cup corn
3 cloves garlic
2 lbs okra, sliced
2 large tomatoes, diced
1 tsp thyme
3/4 tsp red pepper
3/4 tsp black pepper
3/4 tsp white pepper
2 bay leaves
Salt to taste
4 quarts stock
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
Steamed rice
Start with the roux. In a skillet, melt butter, add flour slowly, and stir until a deep reddish brown (do not walk away, watch TV, or get too deeply involved in conversation—remain focused on the task at hand. A burnt roux ruins the whole kit and caboodle). Next, add onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic. Cook until transparent. Add okra and stir for a few minutes. Put into a large pot. Brown chicken and sausage and add them to pot. Add stock, tomatoes, corn, and seasonings. Bring to boil and cook for at least forty minutes. Add eel and oysters and cook for twenty more minutes. Add shrimp and bait and cook for an additional fifteen minutes. Pour over steamed rice. Add filè powder to taste. The eel, unlike other fish, will retain a firm texture even after intense boiling. Bon appetit!
THE PITY CARD
Directed by Bob Odenkirk.
“The Celebration”, “Husbands and Wives”, “The Office (BBC version)”; I like all these things and tried to steal something from each of them for “Derek and Simon”. Having said that, mostly I just wanted to work with Derek Waters and Simon Helberg, two really funny actors who really are friends and really are a comically perfect pairing. Having said that, I simply wanted to make some TV that I could watch without cringing, or feeling like I was being yelled at by the TV. The TV yells at me, you see. It doesn’t tell me to kill strangers or wash my hands over and over, it just yells “LOOK AT ME, I’M BEING FUNNY, AREN’T I?!!” And I usually yell back (in my head) “Nope. No, you’re not.” And then we have a stare-off. Having said that, please forget everything I’ve said and just watch.
SOUR DEATH BALLS
Directed by Jessica Yu
So enough years have passed to go on the record. Yeah, it was a struggle to make SOUR DEATH BALLS. The project generated a lot of buzz from the get-go. I was in talks with Warner Brothers for months, but they balked at my insistence on casting unknowns. It would be perfect for Jodie, theyd say. I knew what that meant. Attach the big name and a few months later, SDB becomes A Film By someone else.
With other studios the battle was over the films projected length. Couldnt I just add, say, another 85 minutes or so? No, I wasnt willing to sacrifice my vision so they could sell more popcorn. Sometimes the sticking point was the sour death ball itself. Was its extreme sourness enough to wow the 18-25 crowd? Couldnt it also burst into flame? And was I aware that shooting in black and white would kill box office? The doubters started to line up and take numbers.
I came closest to making the film with Paramount, but that fell apart as well. The film, they felt, was simply too bleak, the sour death ball too relentless in its attack. As one executive infamously protested: Its just that, in the end, the sour death ball is still so? sour. Couldnt it sweeten up a little?
“Look,” I said. “Maybe you live in a world where every candy has a soft gooey center, but those arent the streets where I grew up.” And I left. Six months and several maxed-out credit cards later, the film showed at Sundance, and from there well, enough said. You dont polish the trophies when companys over.
THE MYSTERIOUS GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF JASPER MORELLO
Directed by Anthony Lucas
Q: What, or rather Who are you going to wear to the Oscars? Are designers coming out of the woodwork to send you their wares?
A: A suit by Cubec Clothing. They sure were.
Q: What single item do you most hope is in the nominee schwag bag?
A: I didn’t know there was a showbag.
Q: Do you get a plus one? If so, who are you taking?
A: Co-producer [wife].
Q: Did you get invited to the Vanity Fair party? I hear that’s a real scene.
A: No invite, but I believe if you show up with gold statuette its a breeze.
Q: If you win, what will your acceptance speech be like? Will it be of the “I’d just like to thank God and my agent” variety, or will you do the right thing and rant obscure political views until dragged from the stage?
A: I thought maybe a kind of random sobbing and mumbled words type deal.
Q: What is the next adventure for Jasper? Please, just a hint.
A: What is life really, and can machine be more human than man.
Q: What is the worst disease you’ve ever contracted?
A: Children.
Q: Are scientists evil?
A: They tend that way- it’s an age thing.
Q: Why do you make films?
A: Unemployable.
AMERICAN STORAGE
Directed by Andrew Jay Cohen
Written by Brendan O’Brien
Q: Was that a real paintball gun? Don’t those things hurt at close range like that?
ANDREW JAY COHEN: That was a real paintball gun. I still have 9,992
paintballs left—we didn’t want to run out. We used very rudimentary “movie magic” to create the appearance that the paintball explodes on Martin Starr’s chest. For the shot of Steve, he fired the gun at a stuntman wearing a vest. For the shot of Martin getting hit, at the start we put a couple of frames of Martin wearing a clean shirt—then we cut to a shot of him wearing a paintsplattered shirt. So the paint just magically appears, complete with a sound effect of the gun going off. That special effect cost us $0.
Q: Did you send a script to everyone cold or did you pitch them verbally?
AJC: We all kind of know each other through projects we’ve worked on, so it was more like, “Hey, you want to make something together?” I really wanted to make a short with Martin Starr, who I met through producing the Freaks and Geeks DVD and who I think is hilarious, and then Martin hooked us up with his friend Dave Krumholtz, who is insanely funny. I had worked with Steve Carell on Anchorman, and in addition to being one of the funniest guys ever, he’s quite possibly the nicest guy ever, too. At the time, Steve was writing The 40 Year-Old Virgin with my boss Judd Apatow, so I just asked him. He was kind enough to say yes. We then rewrote the part for him and sent the actors the script.
Q: What did he do with the #2?
AJC: It’s an age-old dilemma. Civilization was founded on this question.
Q: How long did it take to shoot?
AJC: Three days. Everything went wrong. The cops interrupted us
shooting on a street we weren’t permitted for, and my producer BeauBauman had to talk to them while we shot Martin jaywalking across
the street. The last day, the power went out and we were forced to shoot
close-up shots using power generators.
Q: How did you choose to go with “Sweet Emotion” for the end scene?
AJC:We needed a song that would build during the last scene of Martin
and Maya talking—and then explode on the last shot. “Sweet Emotion”
explodes like few other rock songs. You can’t listen to that song without
wanting to run a marathon or stand up to a bully or fly a spaceship.
It worked perfectly. Every other song we tried paled by comparison.
Q: Were you ever worried it was going to cost some poor startup DVD magazine of unseen things a month’s wages to clear that damn song? No, you weren’t. That wasn’t a question.
AJC: Truthfully, the last thing I expected was to be contacted by Wholphin. That’s like the Met calling you up and saying they want to exhibit a crayon drawing you made.
Q: What did American Storage teach you?
AJC: That I need to keep doing this for the rest of my life. I spent all
my money on this short, so now I have to make it back.
BUILDING NO. 7
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
STEVEN SODERBERGH: I heard them in the kitchen again last night (NO BLACK BOX). The drugs they put in the food keep me paralyzed until morning (THE WHITE VAN). My name will be Scott (DOMAIN NAMES). I will be calling from a telemarketing company called Perrenial Investments (THE STAND DOWN). I need to be strong about everything (NO BLACK BOX).
HOME, JAMES, AND DON’T SPARE THE HORSES
Directed by John Dolan
Q: Why do you make films?
JOHN DOLAN: Filmmaking is an adventure. I feel like I’ve joined the
circus—traveling, entertaining, physical work, creative acrobatics, the special language, the storytelling, the visual flair, the illusion, the community, the strange people—I love it, I curse it, but it makes me feel alive.
Q: What was it about this story that made you want to adapt it? Any one scene?
JD: There wasn’t one scene. There were many: Graham getting dropped off at the gates at night and walking down the driveway to Maurice Perrin’s mansion; the specter of Gio; smashing the Degas; hitchhiking at the end. Also the way that Graham’s nocturnal photographs were described was beautiful and powerful. I was captivated by the story: the ideas, the characters, the humor, and the cinematic visual possibilities.
Q: Do you know where the title phrase comes from?
JD: Antoine Wilson, the author of the short story, was pressured by editors and publishers to change it to something less cumbersome, but he never did, thankfully. The phrase is, of course, what the chauffeurs of horse-drawn carriages used to hear from their wealthy employers. It serves as a satirical commentary on certain patrons of the arts, in this case, Maurice Perrin and the guests at his party.
Q: Is this a true story?
JD: The story is a work of fiction, but some variation of it happens everyday in Los Angeles and anyplace else where artists’ success depends on the rich and powerful.
Q: What was the hardest thing about making it?
JD: It was a difficult film to make every step of the way. Perhaps the biggest blow was losing our principal location forty-eight hours before we rolled. All of our prep was done for a house in Pasadena: every scene was storyboarded according to the layout, the set dressing was loaded into trucks down to the window coverings, all the artwork had been chosen and made size-specific for certain walls, etc. And then we lost it. It was really disheartening. But the house we ended up in worked out great, even better than my original choice. It’s in the Los Feliz hills.
Q: Have you ever sold out?
JD: How could I sell out when I don’t expect much of myself? In all
seriousness, the perceived dangers of “selling out” as an artist and the
cult of personality that some artists want to create were the concepts that attracted me to this project. A lot of artists struggle with this, especially those in fine arts. I direct television commercials where there’s a much more explicit marriage of creativity and commerce. That process can be artful and creative, but ultimately I’m selling beer, or cars, or whatever. In many ways fine arts are also tied to the world of commerce, to the corporate underwriters, the patrons with money. The connection is often more subtle, but it’s bad form to discuss it and draw attention to it.
THE MESMERIST (A REVISION)
Directed, produced, and edited by Bill Morrison
BILL MORRISON: Originally written by Alexandre Chatrian and Emile Erckmann in 1871, Le Juif Polonais was first adapted into a featurelength silent film by James Young, who directed The Bells in 1926, starring Lionel Barrymore and newcomer Boris Karloff. The copyrights to this film fell into the public domain in 2001. A deteriorated print of The Bells was re-edited into this short film, The Mesmerist.
In the 1926 version of The Bells, the character played by Lionel Barrymore basically gets away with murder. He first befriends and then betrays his Jewish guest. But the most haunting scene comes when he drags the murdered corpse into an incinerator, eerily foreshadowing crimes against European Jews that were to become widespread only a few years later. The murderer feels guilty, but nothing that can’t be assuaged by a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Bells ends with murderer in sound financial shape and his daughter married to the newly appointed chief of police. He falls asleep at peace with his conscience.
The Mesmerist begins with this final shot of the sleeping man, and reinterprets the strangely anti-Semitic tale into one more aligned with modern sensibilities. With the horrors of the Holocaust now a historical reality, the profane absolution of guilt delivered in the name of religion seems all the more obscene. And it is all the more relevant today. Just as the murderer survives to rob his victim and revise history, so does this short film steal from, and butcher, its predecessor to retell its story.
The Bells, like all films of its time, was printed on the highly volatile cellulose-nitrate-based stock. Made up chiefly of cotton dissolved in nitric acid, nitrocellulose was originally used as an explosive before it was discovered that with the addition of camphor and alcohol it could be made into photographic film. Unfortunately, it retained much of its volatile nature. Nitrate film decomposes almost continuously at temperatures above 38º F, emitting poisonous nitrous fumes. If ignited, the film is impossible to extinguish, and entire collections were lost in warehouse fires.
So archives that house old films tend to be somewhat cautious with them, and they are continually on the lookout for signs of decay. The Library of Congress held two prints of The Bells, one in pristine shape and one that had fairly advanced deterioration in three of its seven rolls. They were going to dispose of this print, but George Willeman, a library staffer who was familiar with my use of deteriorating nitrate films in my earlier work, Decasia, saved the print for me.
I was struck by what I saw. In certain scenes spectacularly decayed faces appeared to melt, bodies exploded, the very fabric of the film seemed to buckle before my eyes. And then other scenes were left unscathed. And due to the high silver content of the emulsion, these scenes appeared sharper and more pristine than most films we commonly see today.
I had the print sent to a lab to be copied. As I logged its rolls, I began to notice that scenes that were decomposed suggested a new story, one full of multiple realities, decayed and pristine. I edited the
film on video, and then matched the edit back to the original print, which was optically printed onto a new 35mm safety stock. The original print was returned to the Library of Congress where it was disposed of as hazardous waste.
The music heard on the film are two tracks taken from Bill Frisell’s 2001 Nonesuch release, Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones. I met Bill during my prolonged tenure as a dishwasher at the Village Vanguard in the early ’90s. He was (and is) a regular performer at the venerable club, and remains an enormous source of inspiration to me as an artist. I used one of his tracks on my 1996 short The Film of Her, and we talked about one day collaborating on a project where he would score an original soundtrack to one of my films. In 2003 the New York Guitar Festival commissioned Bill to write new music for a few silent films, and he asked me if I had anything ready to go. I immediately thought of The Bells footage. Bill told me that in the past when he had worked with filmmakers, they had laid a scratch track of his music over the image, to give him a sense of timing and mood. I was thrilled to have a chance to use my library of Frisell CDs for this exercise, and soon settled on “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa” and “Again” to accompany the sixteen-minute edit. I sent it to Bill and waited for a response. When I finally spoke with him, he admitted that it was hard for him to imagine new music working better than those previous recordings. “You kind of messed me up!” he told me. Today Bill performs his two compositions live to The Mesmerist with both his trio of Tony Scherr and Kenny Wolleson, as well as with his 858 String Quartet.
MORE
Written and directed by Mark Osborne
MARK OSBORNE: The entire first year of my eight-year-old daughter Madison’s life occurred during the production of this animated short
film. She doesn’t remember it too well, but she remembers the aftermath and has seen the film many, many times over the course of her life. Recently, I realized that we’ve never really talked about what the film means to her, or what she thinks of it. I was very curious, since, really, she was the impetus and the inspiration for the project. So in honor of this Wholphin release, I’ve asked her to reflect a little on the film and interview her old man about it.
MO: If you had to describe the film in one sentence what would it be?
MADISON: Is he an alien or a robot or something?
MO: Well, I’ve always thought of him as an alien.
M: Okay. It’s about this alien person who goes to work and there’s this mean guy, who I think is the boss or something, and so the alien person doesn’t like it so he buys these glasses and crushes them and puts them together with other pieces and makes these glasses that have happy things in them.
MO: Pretty good. What was your favorite part and least favorite part?
M: I didn’t really like the part when that guy was being kinda mean. My favorite part is when the glasses are all joyful. Why in the story was the guy like “get to work, get to work” but then in the glasses he was like waving?
MO: Why do you think?
M: Because it was the opposite?
MO: Well, why was it the opposite in there?
M: Because he made the glasses so people could see happy things.
MO: And why do you think he did that?
M: Because he didn’t like the man that was so mean to him so he made the glasses to change it.
MO: I think that’s a good way to look at it.
M: Did you make the movie all by yourself?
MO: No, I had lots of great helpers. Remember it’s how we met Shannon and Keith and Rick? And remember David and Debra and Kelly? Remember the shop?
M: Oh yeah. What was in his stomach?
MO: What do you think?
M: His heart? His spirit? What was it?
MO: Well, I really like that different people have different ideas about what it means. Most of the time I think it’s his spirit too.
M: Why did he give his spirit away?
MO: Well, maybe sometimes people don’t know that they are giving their spirit away. Or they think that it won’t run out. Why do you think he gave it away?
M: Because he wanted to be nice.
MO: That’s a great answer. Do you know why your picture is at the end of the credits?
M: Because I’m cool.
THE MOVIE MOVIE (EXCERPT)
Directed By Errol Morris
ERROL MORRIS: The Movie Movie, an aborted project, is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev, and others and putting them in the movies they most admire. Isn’t it possible that in an alternative universe Donald Trump actually starred in Citizen Kane? Here is the beginning of the screenplay:
INT. VAULT
A vast, labrynthine warehouse filled with floor to ceiling shelving as far as the eye can see. An aging ARCHIVIST (in his early nineties) is standing on a tall library ladder, reaching up to a high shelf, twenty, maybe even thirty feet up. The shelves are filled with rusting film cans. (Could they be filled with silver-nitrate prints ready to burst into flames?) The archivist shifts one can on top of another, making his way into the middle of a pile.
CLOSE ON
His rheumy eyes searching. He blows dust off a label. And then the Eureka moment. He’s found something.
He’s found it.
With the can in hand he makes his way slowly through the vault. He puts the reel on an aging Movieola and on the screen a scene from Citizen Kane flickers into view. It is one of the lost scenes from Citizen Kane, one of the scenes that has DONALD TRUMP in it…
INT. SAN SIMEON - DAY
THE DONALD, a man in his early fifties with a spectacular hairdo, is reading a newspaper at breakfast… (continued)
See more of these films at www.errolmorris.com. Coming soon: Mikhail Gorbachev discusses Tarkovsky’s The Mirror and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
THE QUEST
Conceived by Andy Richter
Directed by Wholphin
Edited by Brady Moss
Some possible explanations as to why people throw shoes over power lines: bullies do it to be mean; gangs do it to mark out their territory or, according to the internet, to memorialize the death of a gang member; drug dealers do it to show people where to buy drugs; graduating seniors do it as a last-day-of-high-school ritual; foot fetishists do it because bras and panties won’t stay up; it increases visibility of power lines for low-flying planes; soldiers do it when they are leaving a post, have just finished basic training, or are leaving the service for good. Sometimes they paint their boots orange or yellow first. (Many people think this is where the practice started.) It is criminal mischief and tampering with property to throw shoes over
a power line.
OKUSAMA WA MAJU (“MY WIFE’S A WITCH”)
Resubtitled by Daniel Handler, Dan Kennedy, Rich Blomquist, Scott Jacobson, and Jason Reich
My Wife’s a Witch is the bluntly titled Japanese remake of Bewitched. We obtained, from Malaysia, what is perhaps the last surviving copy of the former hit show. It came in a nice box that doubles as a purse. We kept the purse and immediately sent the footage to Daniel Handler, Dan Kennedy, and Rich Blomquist, Scott Jacobson, and Jason Reich the last three are writers for The Daily Show—for interpretive reimagining of the subtitles. Separately, they have taken the show places we would not have imagined possible. As always, no offense whatsoever is intended by the writers towards the actors, Japan, witches, lesbians, small persons, or any other group.
FILMMAKER BIOS
Rich Blomquist is a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a regular contributor to Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse cartoons. He lives in Manhattan.
Andrew Jay Cohen
Andrew Jay Cohen studied film at Yale University, worked at Creative Artists Agency, then on the basis of a spec commercial he directed while working at CAA, went on to work for director Adrian Lyne on Unfaithful. He has worked the past three years with Judd Apatow, producing the DVDs for Apatow’s critically-acclaimed television shows “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared.” Most recently, he served as Associate Producer on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, starring Steve Carell, and the upcoming Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, starring Will Ferrell. “American Storage” was an official selection at this year’s HBO Aspen Comedy Arts Festival.
John Dolan
John Dolan was born in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where he spent most of his early years, together with his five siblings. Television and motion pictures were frowned upon, mere distractions from school work and athletic pursuits. Logically, he set his sights on a career as a filmmaker. A graduate of Kent School in Connecticut, he went on to UNC-Chapel Hill, where he played four years of Lacrosse and earned a BA in English Literature. He soon moved to San Francisco where he trained and worked as an actor, doing improv and theatre, including a stint in the acting training program at the American Conservatory Theatre. In 1996 he moved to Los Angeles where he wrote and directed a short film called “The Line,” which served as a springboard into his directing career. Next came a commercial spec reel, made over the course of several years. He signed at Anonymous Content in 2000. Since then he has directed award-winning commercial campaigns for Mini Cooper, ESPN, BMW, Got Milk, IBC Root Beer, among others. “Home, James, and Don’t Spare the Horses,” the second short film he wrote and directed, was finished in late 2004.
Steve Haddock
Steve Haddock is one of those people lucky enough to have his dream job, although it didn’t always look like this was going to happen. Like many kids, he became fascinated with marine creatures while playing and diving at the beach. Studying toward an engineering degree at a small college, he was came to the realization that he would rather do something he enjoyed, even if he might not make much money doing it. A far-sighted professor, sympathetic to his crisis, steered him to graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Within a month of arriving, he was on a research ship off the Bahamas, diving in submarines with a team of experts who studied bioluminescence and jellyfish. From this point there was no turning back. He continues to study these wonders in his lab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in central California.
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth, and as Lemony Snicket, a sequence of novels for children collectively entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events. His latest novel, ADVERBS, is out now.
Scott Jacobson
Scott Jacobson is a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a regular contributor to Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse cartoons. Unlike Rich Blomquist, he lives in Brooklyn.
Dan Kennedy
Dan Kennedy is the author of “Loser Goes First” (Random House/Crown). His next book, “Rock On: A Corporate Rock Comedy (Algonquin) is scheduled for Spring 2007 release. He lives and works in New York City.
Kirk Lombard
For speaking engagements, poke poling seminars, sea shanty singalongs, eel inquiries, or a subscription to the Monkey Face NewsLombard’s hand-crafted, eelskin-bound compendium of fish stories, sea shanties, eel facts and oceanic oddities (including a full-length audio CD of ribald whaling ditties) contact Kirk Lombard at: www.monkeyfacenews.com
Anthony Lucas
Anthony Lucas’s short films have been in competition at Cannes, BAFTA, Annecy and with his production company, 3D Films, he has animated numerous TV commercials, children’s television shows and a national TV station identity series for SBS television. “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” is his 15th short film and uses a unique style of animation he affectionately calls the ‘Shadowlands’ “a silhouette world of gothic horror, of spindly figures dwarfed by bleak landscapes and Jules Verne machines.” “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” premiered at the Annecy International Film Festival in 2005 where it won the Grand Prix. Since then it has garnered awards at the Palm Springs, Toronto Worldwide Shorts and the prestigious 50th Anniversary Prize at Valladolid in Spain. Within Australia it has scooped the animation pool with 2 AFI awards , an IF Award and Flickerfest’s award for Best Animated Short.
Errol Morris
Since the premiere of his groundbreaking 1978 film, “Gates of Heaven,” Errol Morris has indelibly altered our perception of the non-fiction film, presenting to audiences the mundane, bizarre and history-making with his own distinctive lan. Morris completed his most controversial film, The Thin Blue Line in 1988. Billed as “the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder,” the film is credited with overturning the conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood, a crime for which Adams was to be executed. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, which was theatrically released in December, 2003 is his seventh documentary feature film. Morris lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Julia Sheehan, an art historian, and their son, Hamilton.
Bill Morrison
Bill Morrison has eight titles in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, including “Outerborough” (2005), “Light Is Calling” (2004) “Decasia” (2002) and “The Film of Her” (1996). Morrison’s films have been screened in conjunction with live musical performances by The American Composers Orchestra, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bill Frisell Trio, London Sinfonietta, Michael Gordon Band, Mirror, MusikFabrik, Tactus Modern Ensemble, and Wilco. A member of New York’s Ridge Theater since 1990, Bill’s projected set work with the company has been recognized with two Dance Theater Workshop Bessie awards for excellence in theatrical design (1993, 2003), a Village Voice Obie Award for collaborative design (2001), and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Art (2003). Bill has received support from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NEA, NYSCA, NYFA and Creative Capital. “Decasia”, his feature-length collaboration with Michael Gordon, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was named one of the ten best films of 2003 by J. Hoberman of the Village Voice. “Decasia” was performed live with a 55 piece orchestra surrounding the audience in Basel in 2001 and in New York in 2004, and has performances scheduled for Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall and in St. Plten, Austria, in 2006.
Bob Odenkirk
Brendan O’Brien
Brendan O’Brien is a graduate of Georgetown University. His plays have been produced Off Broadway and his sketch comedy has been featured at The Second City in Los Angeles. Brendan has worked extensively on both Film and TV productions, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Mark Osborne
Academy Award nominated director and Guggenheim Fellow Mark Osborne studied Foundation Art at Pratt Institute in New York before receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts in June 1992. “MORE” is a mid-life crisis film about reawakening the ‘fire in the belly’ and the perils of seeking success. Funded as an independent project, “MORE” has the distinction of being the first fully animated, stop-motion film to be presented for exhibition in the IMAX Giant Screen format. The six-minute short not only was the first IMAX animation film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award, it also ran with the film “Everest” in New York and London for six months. 35mm reduction prints of this film were utilized for more traditional venues where it garnered such prestigious awards as Best Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival (1999), The SXSW Best Animated Short (1999), the ResFest Grand Prize (1999), the Critics Week selection for CANNES (1999) and others. “MORE” has screened in over 150 film festivals worldwide. Osborne has also directed a majority of the live-action material for the popular animated TV series “Spongebob Squarepants” as well as all of the live action sequences for the feature film released in November of 2005. Currently, Osborne is working on a new personal short film project titled “The Better Half,” while simultaneously co-directing a feature length animated film, “Kung Fu Panda” for DreamWorks.
Jason Reich
Jason Reich is a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has been there longer than Rich Blomquist and Scott Jacobson.
Cecile Schott as Colleen
Colleen is a French musician working within a minimalist and melodic aesthetic using acoustic instruments and modern technologies. She has released three albums on The Leaf Label, ” Everyone alive wants answers” (2003), “The golden morning breaks” (2005) and “Les ondes silencieuses” (may 2007). She has also released a live recording in cult series “Mort aux Vaches” on Staalplaat in 2006 and an EP made entirely with music boxes, “Colleen et les boîtes à musique” (the result of a commission by national French radio station France Culture), in October 2006. In 2007 she also completed her first dance score for Franco-Swiss choreographer and dancer Perrine Valli’s “Série.
While her first album was made up entirely of acoustic samples taken from an eclectic record collection, her second album saw her explore a music full of magical details - instrumentals filled with warmth, melody and soul, phasing in and out, on the verge of collapse – with Colleen playing all the instruments herself (cello, classical guitar, ukulele, music boxes, windchimes, and a rare 19th century glass harmonicon). But her last album, “Les ondes silencieuses”, is a kind of highly personal tribute to the sounds of bygone instruments and their resonance : the deep sounds of the viola da gamba – the 7-string ancestor of the cello – are left to shine out on their own, while other tracks explore the spinet (a small harpsichord), clarinet, classical guitar and crystal glasses.
Colleen’s live shows, with their wide array of acoustic instruments, reflects her deep love of acoustic sounds, and the occasional use of looping and delay pedals brings her live music closer to the layered feel of her albums. For the past five years, she has been playing live all over Europe, the US, Singapore and Japan, giving more than 130 shows in sometimes prestigious or original venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Union Chapel and the ICA in London, various churches in the UK, the Britannia Panopticon music Hall in Glasgow, Dublin’s Spiegeltent, the Brussels planetarium, the Sé cathedral of Lisbon, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre or New York’s Society for Ethical Culture, as well as some world-reknowned festivals such as The Wire’s Adventures in Music Festival in Chicago, Transmediale in Berlin, Mutek in Canada, Présences Electronique in Paris, and many more.
http://www.posteverything.com/colleen
Brad A. Seibel
Brad A. Seibel’s research explores the constraints placed on organismal function by the environment and how organisms have compensated for, or adapted to, these constraints. In order to increase the “signal to noise” ratio in physiological investigations, it is useful to compare animals that live in extremes of environmental conditions. He has worked primarily in deep-sea and polar environments. He has focused primarily on cephalopods (squids and octopods), which are a valuable model for metabolic and locomotory physiology. Previous studies on shallow-living cephalopods have demonstrated very high metabolic rates due to the inefficiency of their jet-locomotion and energy-demanding pelagic existence. Because of the constraints on their oxygen delivery systems, cephalopods appear to operate chronically on the edge of oxygen limitation. Yet, unique aspects of their physiology have allowed cephalopods to exploit hypoxic deep-sea environments. This research has recently taken on new significance with proposals to mitigate global warming by dumping CO2 into the deep sea.
Steven Soderbergh
Jessica Yu
Jessica Yu is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for BREATHING LESSONS: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK OBRIEN, an intimate portrait of the writer who lived for four decades paralyzed by polio and confined to an iron lung. Her black & white short, SOUR DEATH BALLS, won several awards, including Best Live Action Short at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and was featured at Berlin, Sundance, Telluride, Toronto, San Francisco, Sydney and on the national PBS series ALIVE TV. Yu serves as an Artist Trustee on the board of the Sundance Institute, and was on the Board of Directors of the International Documentary Association, where she was an organizing member of the first International Documentary Congress. Yus current documentary feature project, PROTAGONIST, compares the experiences of four men who have experienced a similar kind of epiphany. It is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2006.
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