Subdue The Universe

Those of you with money for grants and stuff, you listen up, 'kay?

-- had a "premiere" of a documentary he and some friends cooked up last year. The premiere (at which everyone was dressed stylishly, except me, who was still in t-shirt and jeans) was held at Carolann's house, out of the goodness of her heart.

The documentary is about some of the "lesser-known" (read: fringe) Presidential candidates who made it to the New Hampshire primary in February of 1996. Not only a look at the wacky and wild American political process, but what the hell is actually going on up there, the stuff the regular media never shows us.

The name of this confection is Subdue The Universe, so named after the platform of one of the candidates James had followed in 1992 and had hoped would be running again in 1996. The good Rev. Higginbotham (sp.?) did not run in 1996, but there were other good ones, some real loonies. James himself not only directed but did the on-camera interviews, and he has a deep, rich, soothing baritone that could make anyone feel as though what they were saying was the most important thing in the world.

Afterwards I asked him: "How did you keep from cracking up?"

"Practice."

It's a very good looking documentary too, not in the slightest low-budget or cheesy. I'm sure having all the network video lights around helped immensely, but still: good camerawork, good editing...

He's already working on putting together the next documentary he wants to do. If you'd like to help executive produce his next effort, you can reach him through the USC Graduate Screenwriting Program. And he didn't ask me to put this in here either.

I also spent a lot of time talking to other GSPers, like James, to whom I've never really spoken before. I even hugged him when I left. I talked to Carolann for a long time too, for the first time this semester. At one point Bernice came in and said something about tomorrow. Since the place was pretty noisy and I wasn't standing right next to Bernice and Carolann, I kept bobbing my head up and down as if I was agreeing with whatever Bernice was saying.

When she left, I said, "Was she talking about the marathon tomorrow?"

Carolann started giggling. "I have no idea."

Neither of us had been listening to her. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the outside of our program, but people at least don't try to humor me as though they're listening to me.

My other Hollywood experience happened when I was in the drive-through line at In N Out. I wanted to call Carolann's house and find out if they'd started showing Subdue the Universe yet, because I was late. What I found out was that my cell phone service had been cut off. Hey! I thought. I've paid my bill...well, I'm pretty sure I've paid my bill, at any rate... I was able to get through to customer service.

My phone had been cloned. They shut it off to keep any more calls from being made.

Dammit, I can't reset the phone until Monday.

What else did I do: worked on some papers for class, made lots and lots of phone calls, worked with the estimator from one of the moving companies to see how hard it'll be to get me out of here, and surfed. I found some incredibly disturbing things, like the site devoted to serial killers and major murder cases, including the Simpson case, with tons of extremely graphic photos.

Brrrr.

I also found a neat article about what happens when you say the emperor has no clothes. I've never been fond of "groupthink" to begin with.