“There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west –
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.”
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Sexy is as sexy does. Like a box of chocolates.
I can always tell I’ve gone too long since breakfast when the wafting deep-fryer fumes from the Taco Bell just outside my office window start to smell really, really good.
Well, not immediately next, as that’s actually Naming Number Two, which hits theaters nationwide beginning July 27th:
But, right after that, Cyan embarks on a ridiculously ambitious project I’m officially announcing here for the first time:
The First Cut Film Lab, a brand-sponsored series of five first feature films from the top five film school students in the country.
Applications in September, finished films in theaters one year later, September ’08.
This one’s going to be a doozy.
This weekend, the gym I co-own hosted a seminar with kettlebell guru Steve Cotter. The event was great, and brought in fifty or so folks, ranging from a Navy SEAL and a member of the New York FBI Swat Team through to a couple in their late 60’s.
One thing I’ve noticed about the people our gym, and seminars like this one, tend to attract, is that they’re actually really, really humble and friendly. It’s something I noticed, too, in the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts fighting. Take Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, who’s a member of one of our sister gyms, and a world MMA champion. And also an amazingly nice guy.
He’s a strong contrast with a lot of Tae Kwon Do or Aikido black belts I’ve met, who seem proud to proclaim themselves the second coming of Bruce Lee. Or with the body-building mooks at most Gold’s Gyms, who do their best to condescendingly freeze out any less steroidal folks unfortunate enough to walk into their facilities.
In both of those situations, as there’s no reality check on performance, it’s easy for folks to start eating their own dog food, believing they really are as good as it gets. But in a mixed martial arts gym, anyone training is all too aware that, on a given day, some guy with no formal training but a natural right hook might walk in the door and knock one of the most seasoned fighters onto their ass. And, similarly, at CrossFit NYC, the top ranked finisher of a workout one day might the next place ‘DFL’ – dead fucking last.
It’s a good reminder that, in real life, no matter how good you are, there’s always somebody better. And no matter how well you do some things, there are others at which you, in short, suck balls. It can even keep a self-aggrandizer like me from believing his own hype. Which means it’s, undoubtedly, some strong – and hugely beneficial – medicine.
[I haven’t really been pimping out CrossFit NYC on this site, as the gym has been growing almost faster than we can handle without any outside effort. Still, if you’re looking for a great community, the most effective and efficient way to get into world class shape from wherever you’re starting, or just a quick route to looking hot in a bathing suit, stop on by.]
Political strategists like to say that politics is retail. Despite the big ad budgets and televised campaigns, it’s the good old fashioned hand shaking and baby kissing that actually swings votes. As we gear up for Cyan’s next film release, we’re branching a bit outside of industry norm, and betting along the same lines.
We’ll be releasing the film fairly broadly for an indie movie – in NYC, for example, on five screens. So a big win for us would be a $10k per screen average opening weekend. That would set up the film for easy national expansion with strong theater chain support.
Again, $10k average, fairly broad release. But hitting that means, for the New York screens, getting just 5000 people in all of New York City to see the film. Just five thousand!
Given the relatively small size of that number, and given that we’re opening the film initially in a finite number of cities (four the first weekend, eight more the next), we’re betting it’s practical – and potentially hugely helpful – to work retail politics in every single one of those cities.
So, this week, we’ve been pulling together ten-person street teams in each of those cities, and lining up bulk orders of postcards stapled to silk-flower leis (as the film is about a Fijian family in New Zealand), enough to hand out 10,000 of them in each city in front of theaters, churches, nail salons, anywhere and everywhere we think we might find movie-going members of our target demographic.
Sure we’ll also be driving our standard print, online and radio publicity and advertising pushes. And, given that we’re a degree removed from a successful sale (you buy tickets from theaters, not from us), it may prove nearly impossible for us to determine which route is actually putting butts in seats.
Still, we think it’s worth the effort. Do what everyone else does, and you get what everyone else gets. Which, in the world of indie film distribution, sadly isn’t too much.
People frequently ask me why I’d be willing to put so much about myself online. But the truth is, there’s doubtless a lot about you online as well. The difference: in my case, the stuff that goes up – or, at least, the stuff you’ll easily find – is under my control.
Let’s face it: a preemptory Googling precedes nearly any business or personal meet-up these days. And if the first page for your name is littered with drunken frat pictures and embarrassing high school musical credits – or, worse, no confirmation of your existence at all – you’re up the proverbial shit’s creek, without so much as a digital paddle.
What you need, then, is some way to put yourself forward in the best possible light, and a way to get that putting forward indexed atop the search result heap.
What you need, in short, is the newly crafted bigsight. A “directory of people doing good work”, bigsight creates user profiles that index remarkably high (mine is number four for “joshua newman”, despite a slew of competing Joshua’s), yet leaves the content under users’ direct control.
And while you might not, in all fairness, be doing much good work at all, you’re luckily still basking in my second-hand goodness glow. So, while the site is still by invitation only, for the next week or two, using “self-aggrandizement” as a passcode will get you through the gate.
Head to bigsight, and start building ASAP, lest your shitty digital presence continue to weigh down upon your offline life.
Although we’ve now been in Cyan’s new offices for a couple of months, the place is still, sadly, exceedingly barren. We have desks, chairs, and a conference table. And that’s it. No art on the walls, no extraneous seating, not even a table for our printer, which instead sits in the corner on the floor.
While we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to this minimalist chic, visitors persist in giving us a hard time about it. So, as of this week, we’ve started a half-assed decorating campaign – buying up reception seating and side tables, and strategizing about art options.
Unfortunately, the standard approach for production and distribution companies’ wall art is more self-aggrandizing than this site, and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek: framed movie posters from the company’s releases, organized in as looming an assortment of star power and combined theatrical gross as the company can muster.
Companies short on egotism, or at least short on films they can brag about, sometimes veer towards a more idealized approach, instead framing classic posters from film’s better eras.
We however, think it would be funnier to instead frame posters from really, really bad films: From Justin to Kelly, Glitter, Anaconda, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Battlefield Earth.
Toss in SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, for which I was for some time erroneously listed as Art Director on IMDB, and we’re pretty much good to go.
For the past year or so, we’ve been using Vonage for our business phones, and we couldn’t be more pleased with how well it’s worked thus far. Aside from cheap, reliable service, Vonage has provided a slew of bells and whistles we’ve much appreciated – first and foremost, emailing us voice mail messages as .WAV files.
And while that’s worked quite well, sadly, my trusty Blackberry Pearl is unable to open those audio files. So I was quite excited when, a few weeks back, Vonage added a new voice mail feature: emails now include not just the .WAV, but also a transcription of the message in the body of the email.
Ninety percent of the time, the transcription is spot on. But as the service is clearly the result of offshore outsourcing, every so often, messages come back in a language halfway between English and the writer’s native tongue.
Observe this email from yesterday, to my colleague Chris, and from Jeremiah at PostWorks, the post-production facility we’re using to finish the trailer for Naming Number Two. The actual message basically says that the tape is 24p, and they want to make sure that works for the editor. The transcription reads.
Hey Chris this is my gosh we’re supposed to work calling you regarding this this down converse That’s questions natural that sort tape this is true 24 P. So in order to do it down whereas in we would have to run it at 2398 I’m wondering if this is going to work for you or but but what do you make of all this we were expecting a true 24 PE for the dog person. if you get a chance give me a call [phone number] again it’s my gas burner from post works and and so she emailed as well as if we catch either take it by
Very naaaice.
In the past year or so, at least five of my friends have had children. And while that makes me contemplate my own fast-increasing age, it also makes me think long and hard – though still far pre-emptively – about the important topic of baby names.
As readers of books like Freakonomics already know, economists have extensively researched the impact of names on things like job prospects and lifetime earning potential. And while the jury’s still somewhat out on the details there, I’m convinced we’ll soon be seeing a new, much more clearly fiscally-driven trend in baby names: baby branding.
To illustrate: if I have a daughter, I’m naming her Palmolive. For a son, definitely Chef Boyardee.
The revenue opportunities from being a life-long product placement should at least cover their college costs, if not first homes and even eventual retirements.
Pure capitalist genius.