Video Killed the Dot-Com Star: 'We Live in Public' Exposes Josh Harris
Source: AOL
Posted: 05/01/09 2:55PM
Filed Under: Hot Docs 2009
The opening scene of Ondi Timoner’s documentary We Live in Public has former dot-com millionaire Josh Harris recording a goodbye message to his mother. He hasn’t seen her for years and it's not her birthday, nor is she going on vacation. Mrs. Harris is dying, and her son is so angry about their non-relationship that he refuses to see her even on her deathbed. He resorts to communicating with her the only way he knows how – through technology.
“I probably wouldn’t have been as interested in making the film if it weren’t for [Harris’] obsession with media and with fame," Timoner says of We Live in Public. "I think [this obsession is] often an attempt to compensate for something we’re not getting in the way of love."
Timoner is a raspy-voiced gonzo documentarian who eats, sleeps and breathes filmmaking. In 2001 she won the Sundance jury award for Dig!, her music documentary about the feud between The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. She made the film over seven years, during which time she went from being friends with the band members to being their nemesis.
Despite the fact that Dig! led to a rift between Timoner and her subjects, the director remains devoted to presenting the people in her films as they are, no matter how unlikable they may be.
“People suggested that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for me to show [Harris] saying goodbye to his mom like that at the beginning of the movie – that I needed to build up the audience to like him,” she says. “I absolutely disagreed with that. I felt like this is who Josh is.”
Hot Docs 2009 Must-Sees |
Simply by splicing together handy cam footage and voice-overs, director Anders Høgsbro Østergaard and a handful of undercover Burmese journalists have created a documentary as exciting as the best Bond film. Burma VJ follows 27-year-old Joshua and his fellow independent video journalists, all of whom make up the Democratic Voice of Burma. These men risk torture and life sentences in order to broadcast internationally the truth about Burma's military regime. The small phalanx of reporters with dodgy equipment are our only view into the country as foreign TV crews were banned by the Burmese government. We watch from behind trees and from within backpacks as these journalists surreptitiously cover the 2007 political uprising. Hundreds of Buddhist monks came forward to protest against a military regime that had mercilessly ruled the country for decades. Unfortunately, the blood spilled in this film is real. SR |
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PHOTOS |
Josh Harris is the founder of Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting website, which launched in 1993 and acted as the prototype for today's social networking sites. Harris made millions from the site and used the money to support artists as well as his own “art” projects. One of these was "Quiet: We Live in Public," a bunker that housed 100 artists and webcams that captured their every movement.
To document "Quiet," Harris commissioned Timoner, whom he found through a mutual friend. She lived in the bunker throughout filming and documented its residents as they transformed the place from a den of ecstasy to a dungeon of chaos. In fact, Timoner was one of the few residents not to lose her cool or to mug for the camera.
“I guess the camera somewhat protects you from being subsumed by your environment like that,” she says, referring to her job as documenter of the bunker. “Maybe it’s just because I already had a position in that world, so I didn’t really have anything to prove in that environment.”
WeLiveinPublic.com is Harris' other infamous art project. In it, he and his girlfriend at the time, Tanya, lived their lives entirely on camera. Webcams planted throughout their loft document their relationship as it slowly breaks dowh under the pressure of the public eye.
We Live in Public, Trailer
Soon after he and Tanya broke up, Harris filed for bankruptcy and left the city to run an apple orchard. It was during this time that he announced to Timoner, who was editing "Quiet" at the time, that he was closing down Pseudo and keeping the archives for himself. When the filmmaker asked if Harris would be providing footage to the people who had had shows on the Pseudo network, Harris said they could buy them off him if they wanted.
“I was already dubious about his ethics,” Timoner says, “then I went to Sundance in 2001. When I got back he had taken all the masters out of my loft – I was three weeks away from finishing the film and he had stolen everything and shut it down.”
Despite having discovered that Harris had stalled her "Quiet" documentary, Timoner had to leave for Africa to finish another film she was working on. She then proceeded to win Sundance with Dig! That was when Timoner heard back from Harris, who asked if she wanted to finish what she started with "Quiet." She said no.
“I didn’t want to be back in business with this guy, he already owed me a lot of money,” Timoner says. The filmmaker caved only when Harris offered her 50% ownership of the film, full creative control and all the masters. But she still didn’t know what the movie would be about.
“It wasn’t until technology and society caught up with the bunker that I connected the dots,” she says, referring to the advent of Facebook and the likes of famous-for-being-famous folk like Paris Hilton. “It’s more and more common on the internet for people to expose themselves for fame in the same way the people in the bunker did.”
Though she was able to finish We Live in Public, Timoner was still wary of her fickle subject. “I can tell you that I had a real hard time finding love for Josh in editing the film,” she says. "In shooting the film I had no love for him. I kind of have to find love for everybody I make a film about.”
What got the filmmaker through the project was Harris' alter ego, Luvvy. Harris had created the character in his heyday, which was a clown with garish make-up and an emotive personality. Luvvy scared most of Harris’ colleagues, the exception being his ex-girlfriend Tanya.
“The way Tanya talks about [Luvvy] is: “This is me! Don’t you want me?,” Timoner says. “That was kind of where I started to feel like I had compassion for Josh. I really gained a lot of respect for him for just kind of letting it all hang out.”
What better mascot for a generation defined by its inability to keep anything about itself quiet?
We Live in Public premieres at Hot Docs on May 6 at 6:30 pm at Bloor Cinema. It also runs May 7 at 11:00 am at The Isabel Bader Theatre.
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