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Meet Gene Baur
The Man Who Helps Protect Farm Animals
By Shirley Craig
Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 by Gene Baur who led a small group of activists who were trying to combat the abuses of factory farming and encourage a new awareness and understanding about farm animals. Today, Farm Sanctuary is the nation’s largest and most effective farm animal rescue and protection organization. They advocate for new laws and policy, educate the public about factory farming, try to stop animal cruelty and promote compassionate living. All of this on behalf of the farm animals like cows, chickens, pigs, goats and sheep, etc. I had the privilege to talk to Gene and find out how Farm Sanctuary began and what he sees in the future for animal farming.
Tell me, how did you first come up with the idea to have a sanctuary for farm animals?
Well, Farm Sanctuary started in the mid-1980s. We started visiting farms and finding animals that were literally discarded. So we began rescuing them, and that’s how our whole sanctuary began. It was out of a need, and we just responded to different needs, including animals that needed help, and we now operate sanctuaries in New York and California and care for over 1,000 animals.
That’s amazing. How in the first place, in the ’80s, did you realize that there were these animals that were being discarded on farms? And why were they being discarded?
These animals were being discarded because they were no longer considered economically profitable. In some cases, the animals were very sick and it would cost more in veterinary care to take care of the animals than they were worth financially, so they were just discarded and, in some cases, thrown literally on piles of dead animals. We didn’t know what we were going to see when we started visiting these places. The idea was just to document and get an understanding of what was happening, and when we did that, we would find animals just left for dead. So we started rescuing them and caring for them. But the idea, to address the factory farming issue, was the culmination of lots of other activists’ work, working with environmental groups, working with consumer groups, working with human rights organizations, and then coming to recognize that animal agriculture is a major contributor to significant problems in not only in terms of animals, but in terms of our own health in the environment. It was an issue that was not receiving very much attention in the 1980s. So, Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 to take that on.
What were your influences growing up that shaped your consciousness to go down this humane path?
Well, I grew up in Hollywood, California, in the Hollywood Hills.
You’re kidding. Somehow I pictured you being raised on a farm.
No. I grew up right near Griffith Park in Los Angeles. So I would see wild animals running around, and I also saw human activities encroaching on the wildlife and causing harm. As houses got bigger, animals were being harmed. I remember a deer, for example, getting stuck in a neighbor’s fence, and the deer had to be killed … that was upsetting. I remember big trees being cut down so houses could be made larger, and that was very disturbing to me, so I wanted to do something about the problems that humans were causing to other animals and the planet. So I started volunteering at Children’s Hospital when I was in high school, and I started working with adolescents who were having difficulties. And I got involved with environmental groups and consumer organizations and places like Green Peace, and I learned about factory farming, and I just wanted to make a difference. I did not want to be a cog in a wheel of a system that was causing so much harm, and so Farm Sanctuary was founded to just start addressing what was happening to animals and animal agriculture. And it’s just grown and evolved, and I feel that we’re having a real impact now.
I really think you are. Did you start Farm Sanctuary alone, or was it with other people?
It was me and my ex-wife and a handful of volunteers who started doing this work. We’ve had an internship program from the beginning where people come and volunteer to help out with the work we were doing. Now we have a staff of about 100 people.
What is the difference between your vision for Farm Sanctuary then and what it is now?
The vision is the same, but the way that we go about seeking to accomplish it is evolving constantly. When we first started, we were very small. We didn’t have very much in terms of resources or facilities or property. So we operated out of donated space and for a while lived in a school bus on a tofu farm, for example. Now, Farm Sanctuary owns three farms, two in California, one in New York. We work on legislative efforts. We also are using social media and the Internet to reach more and more people than we’ve ever been able to reach before.
So with evolving technology, with evolving awareness about these issues, I think we have more opportunities to move the ball forward more rapidly. And what’s very positive, I think, right now is that there is widespread mainstream opposition to factory farming, and there’s lots of opportunities for businesses including food manufacturers to develop alternatives that are plant-based, and there’s companies now that have significant investments to develop alternatives to meat, alternatives to eggs, and it’s a very exciting time to be vegan.
What do you think is really being done to end inhumane conditions and increase animal welfare in corporate farming, since more and more family farms are dying out?
Well, the larger corporate farms recognize that animal welfare is a burgeoning issue and that they need to address it and that they ignore it at their own peril. So some of the biggest producers, including Smithfield, for example, have announced that they want to start phasing out some of the most intensive confinement systems. So breeding pigs, for example, that are now kept in these individual gestation crates. … the good news is that they recognize that this is a growing social issue and they need to change. The bad news is that the types of changes they’re likely to make will be very minimal and the animal’s welfare will improve, but only slightly. So that’s one side of it, and that’s positive movement–but it’s not the kind of movement I get terribly excited about just because the animals are still not treated very well, and we need to make much bigger changes.
The other thing that’s happening is you have a whole other kind of farming movement towards smaller farms, towards farmers markets, towards community-supported agriculture programs, community gardens. And a lot of times, these are young people that want to do something other than get a job and sit in a cubicle.
So you have this whole other movement towards small farms, and many of them grow primarily produce. Some of them raise animals, and that’s unfortunate. I wish they didn’t, but a lot of them grow produce that is raised organically, and it’s very positive. So there’s this food movement going on now that I hope continues to gain steam and builds momentum and ultimately, when consumers choose to go to farmer’s markets and participate in community-supported agriculture programs and support these alternatives–these plant-based alternatives–I think the markets could do some very positive things when consumers start making those types of choices.
Do you also grow produce yourself on your farms, or are they just for the animals' welfare?
No, on our farms, we basically take care of animals. These are animal sanctuaries. So we have some pastureland where we graze the animals. We will sometimes cut hay. From time to time, we’ve had a small garden on the farms, but that’s not primarily what we do. These are primarily animal sanctuaries, but I would love to see us growing produce at some point. But we just haven’t gotten there yet.
It must be very expensive to take care of all these animals. How much does it cost to take care of one cow properly at your sanctuary?
It really varies because in some cases, the animals come in very sick, and the veterinary bills can be quite significant. It can run into the thousands. So it really varies from individual to individual. It varies from species to species. So cows are much bigger than chickens, and they eat a lot more. And pigs also are bigger than chickens. So the larger animals cost more in terms of feed, but some of the smaller guys, if they get very sick–again–the vet bills can go into the thousands very quickly.
Do you get a lot of support from veterinarians? Is it hard to find vets that can take care of these kinds of animals?
A lot of times veterinarians who are familiar with farm animals are involved with animal agriculture. So there’s a real education process to encouraging them to see these animals a little differently. We work with veterinarians at Cornell University, for example, which is not far from our farm in Watkins Glen, New York. And we do pay them, but I think they see it as an opportunity to learn and to actually practice medicine, because usually veterinarians that work on farm animals do not treat individual animals. They see them as a commodity, basically, and they’re not likely to spend a lot of time on individual animals. So we have had some real positive experiences with veterinarians who want to practice their skills and learn by treating our animals.
The new Mayor of New York has announced he is is going to try to get rid of the horse-drawn carriages in the city, and there are still many fairs and farmers markets that have pony rides. Do you see any good news on this front to stop these kinds of animal abuses?
I think there is a generally increasing awareness about the cognitive abilities and the emotional lives and feelings of other animals. I think there’s a growing recognition that we need to treat these animals better. I don’t know of specific campaigns in California dealing with pony rides, but I do believe that that is something that could be on the horizon and, as you mentioned, Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of New York City, just stated that he wants to get rid of the horse-drawn carriages in Manhattan, which is pretty significant. So I think there’s a lot of things happening. I think that there’s more and more awareness now than ever before about the fact that other animals deserve to be treated with respect and with kindness, and that how we treat other animals says a lot about us. So I’m optimistic about changes that can happen, but I do share your dislike of the fact that they now have these pony rides at the farmer’s markets and hopefully people will say something about it and if enough people do that, they will reconsider.
I hope so. Are there particular programs you offer at the Farm Sanctuary that inform the public on how to be a humane farm animal owner?
We do, we do. We encourage people to come visit the farm and get to know the animals, and that is a large part of what we do … connect people to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys, and create a different kind of relationship where the animals are our friends, not our food. So that is one of the things we do. We also have an Farm Animal Adoption Network where people who are interested and have the proper facilities can adopt animals from us and just let those animals live out their lives. We’re very careful, as you can imagine, when we place animals. We want to make sure they’re in a good home.
Wow, that must be quite something adopting a farm animal. Are you talking about the smaller animals, like chickens and turkeys?
No, but obviously a person who is going to adopt a cow or pig needs more space than one who is going to adopt a chicken or turkey, but we adopt them all out. They all need to live good lives. And they’ll either do that at Farm Sanctuary, or if we can find a good home, we’ll place them in a good home.
I wanted to ask you about the popularized cage-free chickens notion that we see advertise on egg cartons in the supermarket. Obviously, it’s good that the animals aren’t in cages, but is it more humane?
It’s not humane, no. I would say that cage-free is less bad than battery cages, but it’s still a long way from humane. What’s happened is there’s more and more opposition to factory farming now, and so you have animal farmers who are now treating the animals a little bit less badly, like in a cage-free operation or other egg operations or other meat-type of operations, but the animals are still not treated very well, but they’re marketing them as humane and making it sound like the animals are treated a lot better than they are. A lot of times those labels sound better than they are, and it’s important just to be mindful of that.
Right, that’s what I thought. I have this vision of hundreds of chickens all crammed together. They may not be in cages, but they’re still not living in humane conditions.
That’s right. And it’s not hundreds; it’s thousands that would be bunched together.
Chickens raised on a factory farm
How horrible is that. Do you think that there is an awareness growing about eating veal too?
Yes, oh absolutely. Veal consumption has dropped significantly across the U.S. over the last couple decades because people do not like the idea of young calves being taken away from their mothers and being chained by the neck in small wooden crates their whole lives. So veal consumption has dropped. In fact, the American Veal Association has said that they need to phase out and get rid of the crates, so that’s positive news, but the crates will be replaced with another system that’s not very humane still. So it’s less bad, but it’s still not very good.
Do you think we’ll ever see a world where predominantly more people are eating plant-based food, soy or wheat derivatives or other proteins instead of the meat?
I think we need to change. I don’t think that the planet can support this type of dietary habit for many, many years. So I think in the U.S., in fact, the number of animals being killed for consumption has actually started going down because there is recognition that this is an inhumane industry, that we eat way too many animal foods, and it’s causing harm to our own health. It also creates environmental problems. But what’s happening also around the world is in certain countries like China, for example, where you have growing wealth, there’s a tendency for people to start eating more meat, and that’s very frightening. So, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that in the U.S., right now anyway, there’s recognition that this is an industry that causes lots of harm, and there are more and more plant-based options that are starting to replace animal foods on people’s plates. But in places like China that are sort of developing right now and becoming financially wealthy, there’s a push to produce more meat, and that’s a big problem.
I was very encouraged to see the Meatless Monday program that a number of restaurants have adopted. Do you think that’s something that can blaze a trail across the country, to eat at least, one day a week, a plant alternative?
The Meatless Monday campaign has been very effective, and I think lots and lots of people are adopting that. They recognize that eating less meat or perhaps even no meat makes sense. So I think the Meatless Monday campaign has been very very positive.
Do you ever get to go into the schools to try to give kids an awareness of what’s going on and to teach kids to be kinder to animals?
There are some schools now that are offering vegetarian food and that are actually participating in the Meatless Monday campaign, so that’s very positive. Now, Farm Sanctuary, from time to time, over the years, has been in the schools. We are not currently in elementary schools, although we do speak in colleges and stuff. But what we do is encourage children to come out and visit our farms. We now have a farm near Los Angeles–it’s in Acton, which is about 45 minutes north of Los Angeles–and so school kids routinely visit our farm out there, and we love it when that happens.
Tell me, what else do you want to say that can help get your message across to people?
I think the bottom line is that when it comes to many things in this world, it’s hard for us to see how we can make a difference. But when it comes to animals who are mistreated on factory farms and all the problems that the factory farming industry causes, each of us, every day, can make choices that can make a big difference, and we can choose just not to eat animals. It’s getting easier and easier to find vegan food, and by choosing to eat plant foods instead of animals, we are preventing incredible animal suffering, we’re preventing enormous harm to the planet, and we’re improving our own health. So each of us can make that sort of choice, and it’s an empowering, healthy choice.
What do you see for the future happening in the next decade?
I think in the next decade we will see a continuation of certain trends, and I think there will be an ongoing phase out of some of the worst inhumane systems that are currently used to raise farm animals. But the changes and the improvement in their welfare will be not that great–not huge. Where I think the big movement is going to be is in the marketplace, where you have fast-food restaurants now that are completely vegan that are spreading. You have farmer’s markets that are spreading. You have community-supported agriculture programs that are spreading. You have more and more consumers that are thinking about the way they eat and the consequences of their food choices. So I think that we’re going to continue to see movement in the market away from animal foods and towards more plant foods, and I think that’s something to be very, very optimistic about.
Do you think that the general public makes a connection between global warming and animal farming, or do you think that gets lost in the rhetoric?
I don’t think most people get that message as strongly as they need to. I think a growing number of people are realizing how animal agriculture contributes to global warming. The United Nations has talked about that, and other experts have talked about it, but it hasn’t seeped into the public consciousness as much yet as it needs to.
How old were you when you got into this, if you don’t mind me asking?
23. Yes, I went vegan in 1985 when I was 23.
Wow, you were a visionary at age 23. Thank you, Gene, for all the work you are doing on educating the public and making the lives of farm animals better.
Thank you.
To learn more about Gene and Farm Santuary, click here to vist the website. They are always looking for volunteers, donations and check out Gene's book Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food available here on Amazon.
The Farm Sanctuary just celebrated 25 years. Watch the video.
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THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
By Dale Angell
REAP is so pleased to have Dale Angell reporting to us from the front lines of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival! Dale has a long relationship with Sundance and Utah filmmaking…it's great to have his depth of knowledge and experience to bring to REAP'S audience! [Please see Dale Angell's Bio below.]
Sunday - January 26, 2014 - Well the winners are in and Whiplash is a big winner winning both the jury award and the audience award for dramatic narrative.
One of the things that sort of jumped out at me this year was the sort of lack of "buzz" around the films. Naturally there was talk about all the films, but no "you must see…" talk. I don't think this is in any way reflects badly on the films, more to the point I think, audiences liked everything for the most part. But when both the jury and the audience agree on the film…
Writer/director Damien Chazelle's film Whiplash is a story about a jazz drummer, driven by a brutal teacher-mentor. As is often the case these days, the film was a short here last year.
One film of local interest, and winner of the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary is The Case Against 8, directed by Ben Cotner and Ryan White. The local interest is that California's prop 8 was funded by the LDS church and other money from Utah. Prop 8 outlawed gay marriage. It was ultimately declared unconstitutional and there has been backlash against Utah for interfering in California law. Utah also passed a state constitutional amendment in 2005 outlawing gay marriage, and this too was declared unconstitutional only a few weeks ago leading to about four weeks of gay marriage in Utah before opponents received a stay from the courts pending appeal. At any rate, this is a hot topic here in Utah right now and the film's timing was perfect.
One film that did get some local buzz is also the Winner of the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, Alive Inside, directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett. the film is about end stage dementia patents in a nursing home who "wake up" when music is played through headphones for them. Just how the music reechoes their memory is a mystery, but the effect is amazing. The film was covered on the local PBS radio station, and was being talked about, and no doubt this helped it with audiences. But the film moves the audience, and that is what this award is all about. Several films that have won audience awards and yet were ignored by the jury went on to do very well indeed. Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi and Steven Soderbergh's Sex Lies and Videotape come to mind.
Anyway, here are the winners:
Winner of the U. S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic:
Whiplash, directed by Damien Chazelle
Winner of the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Whiplash, directed by Damien Chazelle
Winner of the Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Fishing Without Nets, directed by Cutter Hodierne
Winner of the Cinematography Award: U.S. Dramatic:
Low Down, cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt
Winner of the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score Musical Score:
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, composed by The Octopus Project
Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic:
The Skeleton Twins, screenplay by Craig Johnson and Mark Heyman
Winner of the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent:
Dear White People, directed by Justin Simien
Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary:
Rich Hill, directed by Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo
Winner of Audience Award: U.S. Documentary:
Alive Inside, directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett
Winner of the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary:
The Case Against 8, directed by Ben Cotner and Ryan White
Winner of the Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary:
E-Team, Ross Kauffman, Director of Photography; Rachel Beth Anderson, Ross Kauffman, Cinematographers
Winner of the Editing Award: U.S. Documentary:
Watchers of the Sky, edited by Jenny Golden and Karen Sim
Winner for U. S. Documentary Special Jury award for Intuitive Filmmaking:
The Overnighters, directed by Jesse Moss
Winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Use of Animation:
Watchers in the Sky, directed by Edet Belzberg
Winner of the Audience Award: Best Of NEXT
Imperial Dreams, directed by Malik Vitthal
Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary:
The Green Prince, directed Nadav Schirman
Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema Dramatic:
Difret, directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari
Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance:
God Help the Girl, directed by Stuart Murdoch, and starring Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray, Pierre Boulanger, and Cora Bissett.
Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Cinematography Award:
Lilting, cinematography by Ula Pontikos
Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize:
To Kill a Man, directed by Alejandro Fernandez Almendras
Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematic Bravery:
We Come As Friends, directed Hubert Sauper
Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Cinematography Award:
Happiness, cinematography by Thomas Balmes and Nina Bernfeld. Directed by Thomas Balmes
Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award:
20,000 Days on Earth, edited by Jonathan Amos
Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award:
20,000 Days on Earth, directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize:
Return to Homs, directed by Talal Derki
Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize:
I Origins, written and directed by Mike Cahill
And the shorts. Keep in mind that the 60 films selected were from over 8000 submitted. So just getting in is quite an award.
Short Film Special Jury Award for Direction and Ensemble Acting:
Burger, written and directed by Magnus Mork.
Short Film Special Jury Award for Non Fiction:
Love. Love. Love, directed by Sandhya Daisy Sunda
Short Film Special Jury Award for Unique Vision:
Rat Pack Rat, written and directed by Todd Rohal.
Short Film Jury Award: Animation:
Yearbook, written and directed by Bernardo Britto.
Short Film Jury Award: Non Fiction:
I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked, directed by Yuval Hamieri and Michal Vaknin.
Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction:
The Cut, written and directed by Geneviève Dulude-Decelles.
Short Film Jury Award: US Fiction:
Gregory Go Boom, written and directed by Janicza Bravo.
Short Film Grand Jury Prize:
Of God and Dogs, directed by the Abounaddara Collective.
Winner of the 2014 Shorts Audience Award, presented by YouTube:
Chapel Perilous, directed by Matthew Lessner.
Saturday - January 25, 2014 - There was an interesting panel at the Filmmakers Lodge that was called "Breaking Bold". The objective of the panel didn't seem to fit the actual subject, which was how some filmmakers create, or at least document, the conflict between tradition and the evolving modern world. In this case two documentaries and one dramatic narrative.
Berit Madsen is at Sundance with SEPIDEH—Reaching for the Stars. The documentary film is about a young Muslim girl who has taken up astronomy as something of a hobby with friends. Her father is against this as he feels it is not a proper thing for a girl to be doing, perhaps not proper for any Muslim. One of the ironies here is the long history of Persians as the "inventors" of astrology. For thousands of years Persians have looked to the stars for the future. Keep in mind that in the story of Christmas, the easterners were told of the birth of Christ with a star. It's their tradition. But not for their women.
In one of the most powerful moments in the film, the father tells Sepideh that if she continues to look at the stars with her friends, he will be required to kill her. Its a powerful example of how people who are so ensconced in their own beliefs about their traditions, or what they have come to believe are their traditions, that they loose sight of reality. And fight against change and modernity with their every thought and action.
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari is here with Difret. Difret is a dramatic narrative about a girl named Hirutt. She lives a few hours from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and is a bright 14-year-old girl who is on her way home from school when several men kidnap her. She grabs one of their rifles, tries to escape, but instead ends up shooting her would-be "husband", killing him. In her village, it is is common practice for men to abduct girls into marriage, which is one of Ethiopia’s oldest traditions. She is charged with murder and must defend her life when the entire society feels what she has done is wrong and threatens their way of life. Strangely, she often agrees, feeling she is the one responsible for all the problems.
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari is a writer/director who was born and raised in Ethiopia, Mehari attended film school in the U.S. and founded Haile Addis Pictures to produce this, his first narrative feature film. Here too, the film confronts the problems of traditional life styles that are in extreme conflict with the modern world and western ethics.
Thomas Balmès is here with the documentary Happiness. It is in Bhutanese with English subtitles. In 1999, King Jigme Wangchuck approved the use of television and Internet in Bhutan, a small Himalayan country. Bhutan is largely undeveloped by western standards, little electricity or Internet, largely "cut off" from the outside world. The King assures the people that development is synonymous with the “gross national happiness” of the people, his actual expression. Conflict ensues with the monks and other traditionalists who see any contact with the outside world as threatening their happiness. One monk in particular is adamant with the children that they need to avoid the modern world. In a wonderful twist, he himself is seduced by outside forces and moves into the city.
French director Thomas Balmès begins the film at the end of this process in Laya, the last village remaining without electricity high in the Himalayan mountains, as roads, electricity, and cable television and the Internet arrive in a rapid growth program. The story centers on an eight-year-old monk who is questioning tradition and wants to get a TV set. He leaves on a three-day journey from Laya to the more or less modern capital of Thimphu. The young monk discovers television, autos, flush toilets, bars and clubs, and all the other seductive elements of modern life.
From the Sundance Guide: Thomas Balmès is an independent documentary director and producer. He brings us to people, places, and sharply contrasting situations that reveal our society from different and completely new angles—the Bosnian war from the viewpoint of Masai warriors, the mad-cow crisis seen from the Indian perspective, a Papuan tribe being converted to Christianity, glimpses of childhood from all around the planet. His films ask questions about what connects us all as human beings.
These films all tell stories of the massive problems facing the world as traditional non western life styles collide with not just the modern world, but the westernized modern world. To those of us in the west these stories often outrage or give us a sense of what is humanistic, ethical and normal. And all show the futile fight of these traditions to survive in "our" world.
Friday - January 24, 2014 - Friday the pace picks back up, new people show up, and the biggest events gear up. One of the most anticipated panels was held at the Egyptian theater called The Class of 94. Twenty years ago there was an explosion of new talent, most totally unknown filmmakers, who together gave us all one of the most memorable Sundance Film Festivals in its history. The panel was revisiting four of the films from that year.
Fresh, by Boaz Yakin was a big budget independent film, controversial at the time as many people thought it was a studio film, not an independent. It was inevitable that as more indie films made money and got attention, that studios would want to find a way to fit into this market without simply showing up and buying films. Fresh was also a film about the black experience, but the filmmaker is white. Some people felt this was a problem, only a black person could tell stories of being black in America. So the film was getting attention of the bad kind. But also attention of the good kind. It was, and still is, a great film. And a very disturbing story. So there was just no avoiding the film at the festival. Everyone was talking about it.
Boaz told us today that his parents were mimes. Really, mimes. He grew up in entertainment and went into filmmaking as it was simply the family business. This is how he was able to get the film financed and distributed. And why some people felt it was not an independent. Today it seems pointless to even have the conversation. What does it matter? In 1994 it seemed like a big deal. The film went on to do very well.
The Doom Generation by Gregg Araki was his third film at Sundance. His films are overtly gay, about the gay lifestyle and gay experience. At the best of times this would make his films controversial, but even more so in 1995. He has now had ten films at Sundance including Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin, The Living End, Smiley Face, Splendor, and Nowhere. His films have also screened at the world’s most prestigious festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, and New York.
Go Fish by Rose Troche was also about the gay lifestyle. As well as being in an unusual cinematic style. So while some hated the film for its overt sexuality, others praised the film as unusual and bold. But there was no escaping the film. It was generating talk, good and bad. She went on to direct Bedrooms and Hallways, The Safety of Objects, South of Nowhere (TV), Six Feet Under (TV), Touching Evil (TV), Ugly Betty (TV), The L Word, Law & Order (TV), Rochelle (TV) and Futurestates (TV).
The timing of Go Fish and The Doom Generation is significant. The 90s were a time of coming out. While films like these would have been seen only in a gay festival, suddenly they were at the biggest festival in the US. And heading to other festivals all over the world. The message was clear, its time to be OK with gay. In 95 the love scenes wee so shocking that audiences left the theater. Some anyway. But what was shocking then, is not even unusual today. Even if these films were the only films to "break out" that year, it would have been a big year. But there was one more film that broke out that year.
Clerks by Kevin Smith was the classical festival "home run". And what happened with the film reenforced the mythology of the indie film getting bought at Sundance. And Kevin became a superstar of indie film overnight. While there were stories of films being bought at Sundance, in truth these distributed films had already been bought before Sundance, or the deals were made after Sundance. People seemed to think that a film showed up at Sundance, was seen, and a distributer bought the film over burgers after the screening. Well, it just didn't happen that way. Not ever. Until Clerks. The only thing different was the deal was over potato skins. At The Eating Place across the street from the Egyptian Theater right after the first screening. The film cost $25,000 and was bought on the spot for $275,000 by Harvey Weinstein.
At the panel Kevin said he was inspired by Slacker. He said, "if Richard Linkletter could make and sell a film like that, he could make a film." He naively made the film thinking he could make it, show it at Sundance and sell it, not knowing the odds of that happening were a thousand to one. But he did it. Clerks went on to be a hit too, and Kevin went on to make more quirky films including the Jay and Silent Bob films, with Kevin as Bob.
The panel was packed. Cooper was moderating. But it was clear, people were here to see Kevin Smith. The weird indie filmmaker who really did it. The myth come to life. And a great guy too.
The festival is now 30 years old. 1995 was its tenth year, and altered the indie landscape and Sundance forever. Just what an indie film is came into question, allowing films to break out of the indie mold and overcome boundaries that were put up to promote indie films in the first place. Tearing down these boundaries really proved that indie films could hold their own and there was no need for special treatment. Whether the film cost $25,000 or $25,000,000 at the end of the day, its a film. Who cares where it came from, who paid for it or how much they paid. The only question is whether it is worth watching.
Thursday - January 23, 2014 - The Moose is Loose!
Once more I could not get up to Sundance! Arug! We are working on The Giver and it's got us all running around like insane joggers. Instead of insane bloggers. But it's cool to be working on a high profile picture.
So I thought I would share some thoughts on moose. Why moose?
In 1993 the snow fall in Utah broke all records. At Sundance the snow totally covered the houses. Many owners had shoveled their roof to keep their home from collapsing. This is what we call back story. That year I was covering press conferences for the Institute. A crew of one, I would dash from press conference to press conference. The opening Thursday brought the normal Redford press conference at the Sundance Institute. I had to leave fast as I needed to cover another press conference in Park City, 90 minutes after the Redford Press conference. So. I was first out onto the road and down the canyon. As I neared the highway up Provo Canyon, something caught my eye. The biggest bull moose I have ever seen was on the roof of a house eating some leafs that could only be reached that way. I wondered how he got up there, and as I wondered it occurred to me I should turn around and shoot video of this. I turned back and ran into a traffic jam. The press corps were also coming down the canyon, had spotted the poor moose, and were setting cameras everywhere. The moose had just started his 15 minutes of fame (and gotten lunch). So I turned back and headed to Park city to the Nichols Cage press conference. And forgot about the moose.
Ten days later at the awards night party, I was talking with some nice people from Florida and I asked when they had gotten into town. They said they were not planning to come at all, but a week before there was a picture on the front page of the local news paper of a moose on a roof at Sundance and they decided they needed to be there. So the moose not only got a good photo op but boosted Sundance in the process.
Now having nothing to do with this story, some people in Park City decided to rase some money to help some problem areas in Park City, one of which was the ragged Egyptian Theater and the Kimball Arts Center as well as local artists. Reminiscent of Chicago's famed "Cows on Parade" art extravaganza, Park City launched "Moose on the Loose," 21 fiberglass Mooses were decorated in funky colors and themes by selected artists. The "moose-terpieces" were placed all around Park City, where they were displayed for months, and then auctioned off. Many were given back to the city as permeant displays.
Rebecca Lyman was the force behind the project. Lyman spent many hours getting each moose ready for the artists. When she got a moose from the supplier, it was only a taxidermy form made of foam and plaster. She glued on the antlers, hooves and the dangling neck skin called the wattle. The each moose was covered with fiberglass in a shop in Salt Lake and then driven to Park City in the back seat of her car. Lyman said she was "just moosing around" but it was a huge amount of work.
Festival attendees snap photos of the mooses, there is one right on main near the filmmakers lodge, but few know how they got there or how they helped the festival and Park City. Organizers raised well over one hundred thousand dollars helping these venues and therefore, helping Sundance. So moose are the gift that just keeps on giving to Sundance.
Wednesday - January 22, 2014 - Hump day. At Sundance this is a special day. The locals are at work. The out of state people who came to the opening weekend are gone. Out of staters who are coming for the closing weekend are not here yet. That's not to say that there are no people in Park City, the place is still packed, but you can get on a shuttle bus on the first try. On Main Street you can see the sidewalk. (in some places) And even if you don't have a ticket to a film, you may be able to get one. By tomorrow night it will be back to nuts, but wednesday is the eye of the storm.
This afternoon there was a "panel" in the Filmmakers Lodge called "This is not a Panel". Four filmmakers with films in the festival presented whatever they wanted to, but nothing about their films. So they played music (Steely Dan), played clips from films they like, It was fun. Really fun. A classic Wednesday kind of thing. After some debate, it was decided that one of the best lines in any film is "There is a truck on fire, there's a guy on the ski lift who can't get off and we can't stop the dancing chicken". Ah, Werner Herzog!
The non panel was made up of: Michael Tully (Ping Pong Summer), Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip), Jenny Slate (Obvious Child), and David Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter) Jenny Slate couldn't make it, and was on a cell phone which was held up to a microphone.Which added more fun to the not a panel.
Did the panel change the world? Nope. Did it advance the cinema arts? Nope. Did it connect people and money. Not even close. Was it fun, and a nice break from films and filmmaking and a great hump day thing? Yep. And I like Steely Dan and Werner Herzog so…
And as the crowds were light, I decided to do the impossible, get into a film!! The tickets all sell out in a few hours after they go on sale, so getting a ticket is not going to happen. But every film and event leaves a large number of seats unsold because there are scores of pass holders who may show up and want a seat, so they just don't sell forty or so of the seats. And that means that forty to fifty people on the waiting list will get in.
The process goes like this: You set up an account online. Two hours before the film starts they allow people to get on the waiting list from their smart phone. Don't have a smart phone? What, were you born in a barn? Get one. Anyway, when the list opens the button on the site becomes active and you click on it. Quickly. Even though this was Wednesday if you want to get into the coveted first 50 numbers you need to click just as the button comes to life. I did this in an effort to get into Shorts Program 1. I counted down with the clock, and just as the button came on, I clicked. And got number 34. Within seconds the coveted fifty were gone. Anyway, you now have your number on your phone and when you show up at the theater, you are placed in line based on your number, and as soon as pass and ticket holders are in, the wait list folks are allowed in. So, I got into the shorts program!!!! Keep in mind that I clicked within a fraction of a second and still got 34. On a Wednesday. So its still a bit nuts even on Wednesday.
I love the shorts programs. This year there were just over 8000 shorts submitted and about 60 shown, so its harder to get your film in than to get a ticket. A lot harder. Less than 1% get in. The shorts are always very "grass roots" too. The features are often well known to Sundance even before they are shot. Sundance exists to promote these films and filmmakers. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a thinking that features all are submitted and the best are picked to show, and the best of those win awards. Sort of like the NCAA playoffs. Sure this happens, but most of the films and filmmakers are known to Sundance and the film that arrives in the mail is not going to get the same shot at screening that a filmmaker who has had a film in before, or is known for some other reason is going to get. Some people freak out about this saying that its unfair, but its not really a contest, it sort of looks like one, but the real reason the festival exists is to put good films on screens. Not make it a game.
But the shorts are more like the mythology of the contest. Of all these films submitted, few are known to the programers, who have the massive problem of looking at all of them, and picking the ones that work for the festival. Notice I didn't say the best films, but the ones that work for the festival. A programer is looking for films that play well together, are fun to see at a festival, and fit the screen time they are looking for. So many of the films not picked may be great, but they don't work that year for some reason. So it's still not a "contest" in the strict meaning of the word.
The shorts are also very "cutting edge", generally speaking. There is a long standing tradition at Sundance to pick shorts that are "unusual". In other words, not usual. These films are not made to make money. They are made to showcase talent, or just for the hell of it, or just for the passion of the art. So they can function as a "laboratory" for exploration. Features often don't take risks, not large ones at least, as there is often seven figures spent and a need to repay this money. So, even the filmmakers who do have a desire to go too far, often before they can do this on a feature, they need to prove themselves or their ideas in a short.
John Copper (Cooper) festival director, was the shorts programer for years before becoming a feature programer and now the director. Cooper really picks the strange stuff. He has a real love for it. Here too, there is a feeling that the shorts can and should be riskier than the features. If Sundance wants to encourage risk, then reward it here in the shorts. And Cooper has always done that.
There are now nine shorts programers because of the huge number of submissions. I had a fun talk with Landon Zakheim, one of these programers before heading off the the shorts program.
The program consisted of:
Allergy to Originality - A humorous, animated op doc explores the rich history of adaptation, plagiarism, and other forms of appropriation in art.
Butter Lamp - A photographer weaves unique links among nomadic families.
Dawn is a quiet young teenager who longs for something or someone to free her from her sheltered life.
Gregory Go Boom - A paraplegic man leaves home for the first time only to discover that life in the outside world is not the way he had imagined it.
My Sense of Modesty Hafsia - An art history student, must remove her hijab for an oral exam. To prepare, she goes to the Louvre to view the painting she has to comment on.
Subconscious Password - Chris Landreth, the director of the Academy Award–winning short Ryan, plays Charles, a man paralyzed by his inability to remember a friend’s name. Thus begins a mind-bending romp through a game show of the unconscious—complete with animated celebrity guests.
Untucked - This documentary explores the iconic "untucked" jersey worn in 1977 when Marquette University won its first and only national college basketball championship. It was designed by one of Marquette's players, Bo Ellis, under the fearless leadership of Coach Al McGuire.
Tuesday - January 21, 2014 - Insane day! Unfortunately not at Sundance. One thing about Sundance in Utah, is that life goes on around it. For those of us in the film business, it's hard to totally disconnect when you have projects going forward. At Redman things are busy. Very busy. We have a big Harvey Weinstein film setting up post that starts production in a few days. And a big feature starting tomorrow. Plus an album in mix in the recording studio that needs help. So everyone is running around like their hair is on fire and little time for Sundance. So I thought I would take this opportunity to tell the Sundance story, after all its what we do, right?
The actual Sundance Film Festival started in 1984, making this it's 30th year. The Sundance Institute started in 1980 at Robert Redford's ski resort, Sundance. Redford had bought the resort in the seventies. It was a horrid little resort with a rope tow. I don't remember what it was called, as it was not memorable, but Bob had big plans for it. He had been coming to Utah for some time, as I understand it clear back in the sixties. The place is more beautiful than can be imagined on the east slope of Mt. Timpahogos on Utah's alpine loop. A friend who is well connected at Sundance tells a story of running into Bob and his future wife while hiking the area in 1969. Perhaps… Anyway, that year Bob's film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released. Bob had been in television sinse 1961, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made Bob a super star. He also produced Down Hill Racer that same year, which died, well the studio killed it, but it died. Bob had tried to self distribute it but couldn't not make that work.
At any rate, Bob bought the resort and after a time built a house. In 1972 Bob filmed Jeremiah Johnson there at Sundance, with his friend Sydney Pollack directing. Sydney Pollack also fell in love with the place and in 1980 the two men, with help from others, formed The Sundance Institute. Sundance's goals were to help up-and-coming filmmakers, workshop their films, find ways to get the films distributed and help put funds and films together. Simple. Or not.
In 1978 (as I recall) the Utah Film Commission started the United States Film Festival. A friend, Laurie Smith was the real force behind it, but the Commission launched it. The main goal was to get Utah better known as a place to make films. If filmmakers came, they would want to come back. Or so it was thought. After two years running in Salt Lake City at Trolley Square, it was moved to Park City because it was thought filmmakers were freaked out by the whole Salt Lake City thing, and they would feel "safer" in Park City. And they could ski. The festival lost thousands of dollars every year, but improved every year. Conservative politicians attacked the festival as a waste of the tax payer's money. They wanted it stopped. In 1983 the Film Commission announced they would not continue. It was also the first year the festival made money for the tax payers. Go Figure.
At any rate, Bob and Sundance saw the festival as a way to give their films a venue and get wider distribution for them. He had been part of the festival from the start helping the film commission to run the festival, so it was an easy thing for Sundance to take over the festival. But, Bob knew that if this was going to work it had to go big. In 1984 the festival went back to loosing money, lots of money. But what a show! What a party! Word got out that if you wanted to see something amazing, The Sundance United States Film Festival is where it's at. And with Sundance behind it, big sponsors came on board. And the Film Commission came back in with big money too. So, they too, were back to loosing money on the festival, but the critics were quiet.
Every year for the last thirty the festival has gotten better and bigger. The "United States" was dropped from the name after a few years and the world started calling it simply "Sundance" The money that Utah put up has been returned a thousand times over proving that government priming the pump is actually a good idea. Utah is the production center it wanted to be and groups like our little shop at Redman sees huge movies coming through our place, John Carter, On Mars, The Lone Ranger, Skyfall, Dr Who and a very long list of other features and television shows.
So, I've spent the day putting out fires at the studio, and I can now get back to Sundance. See you tomorrow.
Monday - January 20, 2014 - Monday always marks a return to some level of sanity at Sundance. The opening weekend is so jammed, a party on every block, no place to park, full busses and general mayhem. It took me two and a half hours to get from Main Street back to my car Saturday night, even though it was only about one and a half miles. I attempted to take the parking shuttle, as I could not get on any of the buses since they were all completely packed, so I switched to taking a bus that went to the ski resort, which passed within about half a mile of my car. So I ended up riding on a bus packed overflowing with people in ski boots, skis and snow boards. The bus can hardly move in the traffic and people. The easy part was the walk to the car.
Every opening Saturday is like this. If you don't want to be part of something like this, don't come on opening weekend. But what's the fun of that? When I was teaching at Brooks Institute we were a partner with Sundance, and threw a party every year on opening Saturday. One year we rented four limousines, put huge Brooks Institute lettering down the sides, and used them to shuttle people from Main Street to the party, knowing full well they would get stuck in the traffic and take an hour at least to make the trip. So, we set up a party in each car, the people on them had a blast while they crawled through traffic, and thousands saw our signs.
Anyway, come Monday it seems quiet by contrast. It's not at all, but it seems that way. This morning was a great meeting in the Egyptian. Sundance has promoted the event, and a general theme, as "Free Fail". There are several panels as part of "Free Fail". Mondays panel was called "Exploratory Detours" and was moderated by author, scholar, and curator Sarah Lewis, whose upcoming book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery will be out in March. Long name, but interesting subject. So many achievements, Academy Award filmmaking to tech inventions are not discoveries but innovations, corrections after failed attempts.
Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford was part of the panel. Bob as he's is affectionally known here at Sundance. When Bob shows up, it's a indication that the subject is important to Sundance.
The panel was introduced by John Cooper, Director of the Festival. Known only as Cooper, his introduction also indicates the importance of the panel.
Panel Members included:
Dave Eggers is the author of eight books, most recently The Circle. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco, and co-founder of 826 National, a network of nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for youth.
Sarah Lewis has served on President Barack Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, been selected for Oprah’s “Power List,” and is a faculty member in the MFA program at Yale University's School of Art. Her debut book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, will be released in March 2014.
Charles J. Limb, MD is an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins University, a faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and editor-in-chief of Trends in Amplification. Dr. Limb studies the neural mechanisms behind deep creativity, especially in relation to music and other art forms.
Robert Redford is recognized the world over for the roles he has played and the projects he has directed or produced throughout a distinguished stage and film career. He is an environmentalist and advocate for social responsibility and political involvement and has nurtured countless innovative voices through his nonprofit Sundance Institute and Film Festival.
Jill Soloway is an Emmy-nominated director, writer, and producer known for her work on such shows as Six Feet Under and United States of Tara. She won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance 2013 with her first feature, Afternoon Delight. Soloway is currently working on Transparent, a pilot for Amazon Studios.
Christopher Stone is president of the Open Society Foundations. He is an international expert on criminal justice reform and the leadership and governance of nonprofits. Prior to joining Open Society, he taught at Harvard University and directed the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. Formerly, Stone led the Vera Institute of Justice and founded the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
As Bob pointed out. if you fear failing, you can't break from convention. The search for success usually leads to sticking to the "normal" way of doing things, the "safe" route. When spending the kind of money and time it takes to make a film, it's not easy to allow yourself the right to fail. Bob went through a list of things he has attempted over the years that failed. His first independent production, Downhill Racer, failed at the box office. (I, for one, saw it in the theater and loved it.) Bob then took his film, bought several other films that had "failed" including Stunt Man and some documentaries, and tried to show them at universities and collages. Fail again. No one came to see the films. Then in 1980 he started Sundance and in 1984 took over the United States Film Festival at Park City and finally, success. Fourteen years of failure before launching the best known film festival in the US and perhaps the world. And not so much because of "sticking to it", but by looking at what was not working, figuring out why, and adjusting.
Over twelve years ago I was teaching at Sierra Nevada Collage at Lake Tahoe, and we had a faculty member, on loan from Carnegie Mellon, professor Randy Pausch. Randy was loaned quite a lot by Carnegie Mellon in those days. Anyway, we were working on "Assessment", something colleges address quite often, how to grade students work. Randy had his own take on the subject. "Don't grade the students work, grade the students learning". Much harder to do. A great student doing a great project seems to deserve an "A" and it impossible to make an argument that this is wrong. But what about the student whose project is a disaster, but who put themselves into the project 100% and learned so much from the failure that their next attempt will most likely succeed. Randy said this is "A" work. A complete failure of process yet a success? Randy could not sell the idea. A few years later Randy delivered "the last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon and, well - if you have not seen it, look at it. It's on Youtube. I don't know what more to say about that. But you could say he hit a home run. He also ripped my heart out.
Enough of the heavy stuff. Out on main the loonies were loose! What great fun! Monday is a relief but its still Sundance after all. Films, people. I had a free veggie burger at Morning Star farms, who were giving out a bunch of free stuff I didn't really want, including a Red Bull which I gave to someone else as I don't drink that. There was a mob of people trying to get a look at someone, no one knew who they were trying to see, but there were a few hundred people blocking the street to get a look at whoever it was. And Wonder Woman was keeping us safe from the alien space ship. Or so she said. Ah Sundance, back to abnormal.
Sunday - January 19, 2014 - More high tech news from Sundance. It seems that everyone is thinking the net and new media are going to be a gateway to new filmmakers. And they may be right. Just yesterday one of the actors in the morning meet and greet for up and coming actors at the Filmmakers Lodge, Josh Wiggins, got his start on YouTube acting in shorts he and his friends were making.
Last night hitRECord on TV launched on Pivot. Joseph Gordon-Levitt hosts a new show made up from pieces pulled from the hitRECord site. hitRECord gathers thousands of videos from its members, much like YouTube. Unlike YouTube the videos can be downloaded by the other members and altered, edited, added to or whatever, and then re-uploaded. The site also asks its members to post videos based on a subject. For the pilot they asked for videos on the number one. These were edited into longer pieces, other members added music and more content, HitRECord also edited and altered them until they had enough material for the pilot. The show airs Saturdays on Pivot at 10e/7p.
HitRECord's Jared Geller was presenting clips at the New Frontier area Saturday morning. The New Frontier area is in the box office - Sundance Store area and has displays and films in new media. Several others were also presenting new ideas on internet distribution, all of whom are former Sundance filmmakers who have embraced this new and changing media landscape and of filmmaking and distribution. Chris Horton (director, #ArtistServices, Sundance Institute) along with Jill Soloway (director, Afternoon Delight), Tiffany Shlain (filmmaker and founder, The Webby Awards), Jared Geller (producer, hitRECord), and Dennis Dortch (CEO/founder, BLACK&SEXY.TV) were sharing their thoughts in these areas. Soloway also showed her television pilot Transparent.
But hitRECord is the really the new thing. And while it seems that media made in this way would just be strange, interesting perhaps, but just plain weird, this is not the case. It's amazing what is being made this way with tens of thousands of "filmmakers" collaborating on each piece. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's talent certainly helps make this a hit.
On the dark side…..
Shortly after the presentation at the New Frontier there was a presentation at the Egyptian Theater. The venue is significant. Sundance only puts important films and events in this prime venue. This presentation was called "The Power of Story". The theme is documentary story and involving and motivating people by selling stories.
From the Sundance catalogue, "Stories tell us who we are. They allow us to form values, organize meaning, and interpret the world. When shared, they transmit ideas, influence behavior, and inspire agency. They are the key to our understanding of society, democracy, and the world."
But what is documentary and what is propaganda? If the goal is to motivate people to take action, or donate money, or vote, then are there lines that can be crossed? And how do you know if your story motivates people? You can show the film and hope, go by your own reaction, test with sample audiences but is there a better way to test? It seems there is. The panel was made up of filmmakers and scientists.
Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors (six Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship). He’s also an accomplished author whose work includes Ties That Bind. Most recently, he is the executive producer for StoryCorps animated shorts and the half-hour animated special Listening Is an Act of Love.
Louie Psihoyos is widely regarded as one of the top photographers in the world. He was hired directly out of college to shoot for National Geographic and created images for the magazine for 18 years. He brought the Academy Award–winning documentary The Cove to Sundance in 2009 and continues to work to expose global environmental issues.
Jess Search is a producer and CEO of the BRITDOC Foundation. BRITDOC works to fund and promote social-justice films and journalism and also administers the PUMA Impact Award. Her recent Sundance films include Dirty Wars.
Who is Dayani Cristal?, Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer, and The Square. She is the cofounder of Shooting People, an innovative online filmmakers' community.
Darren Walker (moderator) is the president of the Ford Foundation. Prior to Ford, he held senior positions at the Rockefeller Foundation and the Abyssinian Development Corporation. His career in the social sector followed a decade in international law and finance. He is a member of several boards, including the Arcus Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Friends of the High Line, and the New York City Ballet.
Paul J. Zak is a scientist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author of The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity. He is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University. His current work focuses on the neuroscience of building high-performance organizations and the neurobiology of narrative.
While the panel seems to be about filmmaking, the "star" of the panel was Paul J. Zak, AKA Dr Love. His work with the molecule oxytocin has gained him that name as he claims the oxytocin hormone is responsible for feelings of love and trust. Though often referred to as the "trust hormone" or "love hormone" oxytocin is also being seen as a brain chemical that does a lot more than just bring people closer together.
Paul J. Zak thinks it can be used to measure a persons response to a story. In conjunction with other bio feedback, he is testing films to gauge their influence on people, are they motivated to action? To donating money? To voting? He claims an 80% accuracy with his tests. The story can be adjusted and edited until it creates the greatest influence. The testing involves showing a person the film while monitoring pulse, respiration, palm sweat and other vital signs. At the beginning and end blood is drawn and tested for oxytocin and other markers.
It seems that some people are not moved at all. Ever. But most people are moved to some extent by the story. Bench marks can be established for motivation in different areas. The story can be adjusted until the goal benchmark is reached. At that point they have your vote. Or your involvement. Or your money.
In a time of NSA data collection, databases on every humans shopping, driving, eating and sleeping, will filmmakers and the people they work for also have a database on how we react to story and what we need to hear in order to get our support?.
While technology is providing new markets, there is a dark side to everything. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Where does this path lead?
Saturday - January 18, 2014 - It seems that the subject on everyone's mind is how the high tech world can launch more film projects and give filmmakers more access to audiences. But this morning, that was set aside, to get back into the film industries favorite subject, actors. There are several young actors here, some in their first features, who are blowing minds.
Josh Wiggins is in fhis first feature, Hellion. Wiggens plays a boy from Texas who is a hellion, an out of control trouble maker with attitude. His father seems incapable of gaining any control of the boy. What make the film work is Wiggens character. Wiggens feels the writing made the acting simple, also he is from Texas and is in ways the hellion of the story. Yet nothing could work this well without everything being right, not just the script, which truly is as good as Wiggens says, but Wiggins breathes life into the character. Wiggins got his start on YouTube, not only making film there, but getting seen there. It would not be overstated to say he launched his career there. Sort of the modern day equivalent of of the thirties stories of being discovered at a lunch counter in Hollywood. Just tonight I overheard talk about the film on the bus back to my car, and yes, that's a good sign for the film. And good news for Wiggins who is perhaps only 16 although he plays someone younger in Hellion and totally sells it. Wiggins is also unique as he is one of only two Americans featured this morning.
The other American is Boyd Holbrook whose career has taken off. His first film was Milk in 2008 and he has amassed a large list of credits since. He was here last year in Very Good Girls, and back this year in two films, Skeleton Twins and Little Accidents. His roll in Little Accidents hits close to home for him. He is from Appalachia, and while the story takes place in a coal town in West Virginia, he said this morning, these are the people he grew up with. This is close to him, and he empathizes with the character and the story. In the last year he has also been in The Host and Out of the Furnace.
Kodu Smit-McPhee is an Australian and another young actor who is amassing a long list of credits. He is at Sundance with Young Ones. In the last year he also shot Dawn of the Planet of the Apes with director Matt Reeves who he also worked with on Let Me In. He also just wrapped on Slow West. In 2012 he appeared in The Congress which premiered at the 2013 Directors' Fortnight at The Cannes Film Festival. He has also played in The Wilderness of James in the title role of 'James', and starred in A Birder's Guide to Everything which premiered at the 2013 TriBeca Film Festival, and played 'Benvolio' in a film adaption of Romeo & Juliet. He was also the voice of Norman in Paranorman which was nominated for 'Best Animated Feature' at the 2013 Academy Awards, and also received a 2013 BAFTA Awards nomination for 'Best Animated Film. Quite a year for him. He was in The Road in 2009 and My Father in 2007.
You may mistake John Boyega as an american from Los Angles, as his accent in Imperial Dreams is totally LA. But he is 100% brit and has the accent to prove it. His LA voice is made up, but he told us his background is the english equivalent of growing up in Compton. And his love for films like Boys in the Hood helped him perfect his LA accent. He stars in the anticipated Half of a Yellow Sun due out later this year and in March he starts filming Testament.
Astrid Bergès-Frisbey is at Sundance with I Origins. She has acted in films in Spanish, English, French and Catalan. Her english debut was Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides in 2011. In the last year she finished Home is Where Your Heart Aches, and was in Julliette released last summer.
Carla Juri is here with the German film Wetlands. She was born in Ticino Switzerland and speaks Italian, English, French and German. In 2010 she was in the Italian film seres L'uomo die baschi and in 2011 the english film Fossil.
Friday - January 17, 2014 - Evening - Main Street in Park City is the heart of the action. Crazy things, fun things, wild things. Just walking the street is part of the experience.
Main is the location of the Egyptian Theater, the old venue, the symbol of Sundance. It's a small venue, remodeled ten years ago, it was rather "rustic" before that, but always fun. Many years ago some of us would sit in the spotlight nook outside of the projection booth treating it as our "private box seat". It's a requirement to see at least one film here.
There are kiosks covered with film posters. Most will be covered by someone else's poster within minutes of going up. A few years ago David Roy had a film here (Man of the Year) and many of us were "papering" the town with posters for about 90 minutes before each screening. As we would be hanging posters working around the kiosk people right behind us covering our posters with theirs. The harry eyeball was used to try to dissuade this, but to no avail. After about 3 laps around the kiosk we had a "peace accord". We agreed that anyone whose screening was within the next hour would have their poster respected until 20 minutes before their screening. The things you need to do just to get your poster up for half an hour or so. By the end of the ten days most of the kiosks are about 2 inches deep in paper.
And there is music. Bands, street musicians, I've even seen a guy with a piano out on the sidewalk in the snow. Can't be good for the piano. And other performers doing their thing.
There are small festivals that have tagged onto Sundance. Slam Dance is the best known, but there has also been Slum Dance in a fake soup kitchen, Slam Dunk, Moon Dance and the list goes on. Sundance is not too keen on these people, they brought the crowds here and these shows ride their coattails, but they are for the most part harmless and add to the weird atmosphere and fun.
There are many Sundance non-film venues here too. Sponsors set up displays and hospitality suites here and throw big parties, Sundance has Sundance House, the Music Cafe, the Filmmakers Lodge and other offerings.
And people give away swag. Expect to get a free burger, one or two CDs, I was given a novel today, a CD and a burger all within about ten minutes. Some people treat this as a sort of scavenger hunt, seeing who can get the most stuff over the week. Drop into the Utah Film Commission, you will need a shopping bag to carry all the stuff they give you, which is fine because they will give you the bag too.
And this is the best place to see stars, if that is something you are into. All of the filmmakers are here, walking around, talking up their film, doing interviews, and eating free burgers. Main is where it is at!
Friday - January 17, 2014 - Afternoon - Friday afternoon brought #LessonsLearned panel to the Filmmakers Lodge. The panel was packed, with spillover in the eating spaces and even outside listening on the PA system. Why the hype? Perhaps because Joseph Gordon-Levitt the head of HITRECORD ON TV was there, better known for his work in films (Inception, 50-50, The Dark Night and way more), and television, or hosting Saturday Night Live.
He is also in a film here, Don Jon. But what brings him here is his online "thing" HITRECORD where media is presented, edited by users and reposted. Totally new concept in entertainment. And not boring. Just how this works long term is anyone's guess, but it is evolving. Which is what it is supposed to do.
Also on the panel was Jason Hirschhorn of REDEF, Evan Ratliff from Atavist, Chet Kanojia of Aereo, (an online distribution company) and Bob Moczvdlowsky from Twitter. Twitter, nothing new there right? Wrong, Bob is head of music at Twitter. Yes, Tweeting music. Something new, possibly something big. Bands can Tweet their new tune. And connect to resources to sell their music.
The music landscape has been changing, changing like the weather. Remember albums? 20 million sales of those albums? A big sale these days is 2 million. Downloading single songs is the new reality. So, Tweeting your new single? Easy to see that more changes are coming.
And not just to music. HITRECORD alters the way movies are made and distributed. In some ways it changes what a movie is. Where sites like Aero are more like "normal" distribution, as is Amazon and others, they can change with the winds as the entire notion of filmmaking shifts. And they also distribute books. And they give a large split to the artist.
Just as REAPMEDIAZINE.COM and other sites have changed the way we all get film news, and sites like YouTube have changed what is available as video, (do check my weekly show on Toy Man Television channel on YouTube) sites like these continue to alter the entire notion of film, video, books, music and interactive media. So there were lots of people there. Some to see a famous actor, most to see where they fit into this brave new world. And hoping to get their film out and sure, make money. Nothing wrong with that.
Friday - January 17, 2013 - Morning - Have you ever noticed how much fun it is to laugh at totally inappropriate times? This morning in the Cinema Cafe was an appropriate time. Three very funny comedy writers, who have films in the festival, were presenting their stuff, and making people laugh.
Richard Ayoade is a well known professional 'fool' with great credits. Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, Man to Man with Dean Learner, (which he directed and co-wrote) IT crowd, Making videos for the Arctic Monkeys, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Super Furry Animals, Kasabian, The Last Shadow Puppets, and Vampire Weekend. His first feature was 2011's Submarine.
Yeah, he's funny. His film here is The Double about a timid isolated man whose exact double appears one day. And no one notices. Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Simon and James. James is nothing like Simon, except he looks exactly like Simon, which is easy to overlook as Simon is so easy to overlook. Great comedy for the modern world. Ayoade claims it's based on a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And he should know so let's take his word for that.
Maya Forbes has been a comedy writer for The Larry Sanders Show on HBO as well as many other TV shows and moved into features here at Sundance this year with Infinitely Polar Bear. A film from her own past, it's a story of a manic depressive man trying to raise three children on his own in an attempt to win back his estranged wife. What could possibly go wrong? Starring Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Imogene Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide.
John Slattery, who has four Emmy Awards for his work in Mad Men, is here with Gods Pocket about Mickey who looses his stepson in an "accident" and trying to hide the truth from the boy's mother ends up juggling the body which he can't seem to bury. See, it is fun to laugh at totally inappropriate times. Slattery is best known for his rolls in Iron Man 2, The Adjustment Bureau, Traffic, The Station Agent, Flags of our Fathers, and Charley Wilson's War.
The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks and John Turturro. Looks like a winner!
The script is based on a novel, which Slattery had the rights to when he wrote the script, then lost. Yet he kept writing for two more years without knowing if the film could ever be made. He claims he had nothing else to do, loved the script, so just keep working on it. The rights then opened up and the film moved forward. And now it's on the screen.
At this point none of these composition films have been shown, so there is no buzz as yet about them, YET! But if clips and the filmmakers are any gauge, they are all three worth a watch.
Thursday - January 16, 2014 - For almost 30 years, the third week in January marks the start of the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance took over the United States Film Festival in 1985 and transformed it into the premier film festival in the United States. The original film festival was started by the Utah Film Commission in Salt Lake City and after a few years made the brilliant decision to move it to Park City where it began to thrive. I bring all of this up because the festival has out grown Park City and runs venues in Salt Lake City, Ogden and at the Sundance resort in the mountains above Utah Valley.
The opening day is always full blown nuts. The festival offices are packed, lost people wandering about and people like myself trying all day just to get their press pass. Then it gets more on Friday and Saturday. Some complain about the crowds and the fact is seems you can't get into a screening. As a person who has been there from the very beginning, working with the United States Film Festival and later Sundance, I can tell you, the crowds are great. They are the fans that make the movies happen, the people standing in line all night to be in the seats for the first screening on a major film, the average person who shells out their cash to see a film, buy a DVD, watch a pay per view or download to their iPad. And they come to Park City to be there when the next big thing happens. Somewhere in a hotel room or condo the next Kevin Smith or Michael Moore or Steven Soderbergh may be planning to build audience support at their next screening. People come from all over the world to be here when that magic happens. And the magic happens because people come. So don't complain about the crowds, celebrate them. You are one of them and they are you.
So how do you get into a film? Ah, now it gets extra fun. It's your goal to get into the film you want to see. And now you need to play the festival game. Everyone has a plan, when to get into a waiting line, how to find a ticket, how to choose a venue. And don't think you can impress your way into anything. "Do you know who I am?" buys you nothing except perhaps a smile from a person who is being polite. So make a plan.
Assuming you didn't get a ticket, which is the easy way to get in, you need to join a waiting list, which means waiting in line just to get on the waiting list. But don't despair, depending on the film and the venue and the schedule, if you get in line early you will meet some fun people who are doing the same thing, and usually will get into your film. If you are early. The venue is large. And you are not trying to get into a seven PM screening of a premier.
Now, as I pointed out a while back, the festival has outgrown Park City. And films are showing in other venues in other places. Salt Lake City has some of the best venues. Ok let's just say the best. But it's not Park City and so some of the magic is lost. But on the flip side, there is parking, light rail, cheaper food and massive venues. And inspite of perceptions, Salt Lake City is a real uppers area, with regular people who like regular things like a good film and a good beer. You will not want to come to Sundance just to hang out in Salt Lake, but it's only a short drive away and often a nice break from the madness of Main in Park City. And on weekends at prime times it may be a way to get into a film you want to see. But you still need to be there early, these venues are full too. But often you can get in there with a bit more ease than Park City. 
The Broadway Theaters are in the center of town, are good theaters, have off-street parking, and are a block from a light rail stop. They are also the home of the Salt Lake Film Society.
The Tower is Salt Lake's art house theater. Fun and a bit eclectic, the Tower is in Salt Lake's 9th and 9th area, a unique district with good food and shops. Parking is a bit of a problem, but a fun venue. Often very hard to get a seat as it very popular and rather small.
Check in tomorrow for more updates on Sundance - time for some Zzzzzzs.
Please CHECK OUT Dale Angell's great production facilities and resources for when you are in UTAH!
Redman Movies - (camera grip rental, shooting stages)
LAB6 Studios - (film dub stage, recording studio, edit rooms)
Toy Man Television - fun films which will include filmmaking, the studios, model railroading, auto racing, tree house building and just a bunch of fun things)
Radar - (mobile post rooms, DIT service
Dale Angell started recording sound by recording bands in high school in Salt Lake City. Later he turned to art and attended art school in Utah and Paris, but in 1974 he accidentally discovered filmmaking when one of his room mates needed cash to buy weed and sold his cameras to Dale. The camera bag included a Bolex and the book Independent Filmmaking by Lenny Lipton. The book and camera started a life long love and vocation in filmmaking. As Dale had experience with sound, the Utah film community turned to Dale and his friend and soon to be business partner Tom Ruff to do their sound work. Soon they were mixing and scoring dozens of films in Dale's garage in a makeshift dub stage which soon was out growing the garage location. Not your average garage studio, the "Hall of Audiences" had 35 and 16m dubbers, film projection, Crown tape recorders and a 5 rank pipe organ. (Yes a pipe organ, Dale and Tom are still into that.)
They were soon doing work for the networks and indie films and relocated to a downtown location that they shared with Film Group. Many films were edited here, some mixed here some only edited, but included cult classics like Don't Go In The Woods and Lady Street Fighter, network television movies of the week, IMAX films for the national parks, and one of Jimmy Stewart's last films, Mr. Krueger's Christmas.
Dale was also designing soundtracks during this period for Sunn Classic Pictures. Sunn Classic was known for four walling odd pseudo documentaries such as Chariots of the Gods and In Search of Noah's Arc as well as network television such as Grizzly Adams. (Dale was the voice of the bear in the final feature film). Sunn was also instrumental in helping the Utah Film Commission launch the United States Film Festival in Salt Lake City. Dale was involved from the outset, mostly as a "seat warmer", as few people attended the events and films, Sunn employees would be shuffled to venues to provide audience so it looked like there was more interest than there actually was. After floundering in Salt Lake City for two years, the festival was moved to Park City where it became a success. Several years later it was taken over by the Sundance Institute and became The Sundance United States Film Festival and later just Sundance.
Soon Dale and Tom removed to LA, Tom went to work at Sound FX, later Film Leaders mixing and recording ADR and Foley. Dale continued as a sound editor but in 1984 returned to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah in their MFA program. He soon started mixing sound for the student films, building a dubbing setup, as well as teaching. A post he held for the next 14 years. He continued to work with Sundance at the festival in Park City, now mixing sound for events as well as shooting video.
He then moved on to teach at Sierra Nevada College at Lake Tahoe, and two years later, moved to Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara and Ventura California. There he once again built a dub room as well as a Foley-ADR room. He also penned books on editing workflow and sound design using Pro Tools. He continued to work with Sundance, now as an Institute Partner (sponsor) with Brooks Institute.
After 10 years at Brooks, in 2013 Dale retired and returned to Salt Lake City. He has rejoined the University of Utah as an adjunct as well as working with Sundance mixing sound for events. He has also opened a sound studio, LAB6 as part of the Redman Movies complex and has also just released a YouTube series, Toy Man Television detailing the fun things to do as a retired person. (Perfecting the high art of screwing around.)
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Keeping the Dream Alive!
By Christine Brondyke
Big dreams are wonderful! You wouldn’t be a creative person if you weren’t using some of that creativity to dream up big, beautiful ways to get your work out into the world. Dreams give us something magnificent to shoot for—a goal, an experience, or an expansion of our current reality. Dreams are born out of our innate creativity. What we dream tells us so much about ourselves and where we are headed. Whether you dream of connection, fame, riches, accolades, inspiring others, or evoking emotion, your dreams are a part of your artistic palette; and they are as important to your process as practicing breathing, sounding, or writing.
So, what happens when your dream feels so clear and true, but it seems to be taking forever for it to be realized? How you keep going through one deterrent or rejection after another? What happens when you wake up and find you just aren’t sure if you have the energy to pursue this dream to completion? Do you get discouraged? Become negative or jealous? Do you pull the covers over your head and skip that audition or writing circle?
It’s normal to get discouraged sometimes, and disappointment can be part of the process because it provides clarity about your focus and intent. Sometimes it’s when you have lost patience that you insist, push, or find strength in your desperation. And it’s OK to let yourself doubt, to examine your dreams and make sure that they are still a fit for the person you are right now. There’s nothing wrong with amending a dream if it suits you better. That’s just smart.
Once you have decided, “Yes–I still want to achieve this!” (Or “Yes–I’m adjusting my dream to include this … ”) you may find renewed vitality for pursuing your dream.
One of the most satisfying ways to progress toward your dream is to find ways to have it right now.
Throw yourself into the next audition as if it were your dream job come true. Write a dialog that inspires you.
Pick a project or an experience that makes you feel rich or attended to. Play as though you have already achieved your wildest dreams.
Because in those moments, the dream is alive. And you will be, too! It is those moments that attract more of the same–more of your magical, passionate, creative, and beautiful dreams.
To quote my actor friend, when in doubt, “dream bigger!”
Visit Christine's website for more information
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Carmen Lundy:
America's Great Original Jazz Artist
By Tina Valin
Being invited into Carmen Lundy's music studio was like entering a boutique art museum. I found myself surrounded by a curated collection of global instruments, Carmen's beautiful inspiring artwork lining the walls, and a color palette that would ignite anyone's imagination. We spoke for over three hours sipping tea and coffee and I felt like only a mere five minutes had passed by. We covered a great deal of territory that I hope sheds light on a remarkable and ever expanding career.
Carmen, what were your musical influences growing up in Miami?
I can remember that the way my family had the most fun together was when music was playing. I think for me as a kid, that was a way of getting to know family life and kind of who the fun people were, and the fun people were pretty much everybody. I remember spending my time after kindergarten at my grandparents’ house, and I know for a fact that every home I've ever been in then or lived in had a piano in it. My grandmother had a piano in the living room, and my grandfather played guitar. My mother sang. Everybody sang. I have an aunt who still plays the piano now at the same church as when I was a little girl.
So the piano has been a really core instrument for me in my upbringing. I played that little piano coming in from kindergarten and just [remember] banging away on it. Then, spending so many hours with people who were very dedicated to church life. And now, as an adult, I realize that the church and all, that was part of a community. It was a way that a community kind of came together. My grandparents owned the family market in the little town I grew up in, and my grandfather built the church at the other end of that same street that the market was on. Everything, that whole communal thing and the way the music was part of that, gave me a sense of belonging. It gave me a feeling of importance.
My mother sang in a gospel group called The Apostolic Singers. The Apostolic Singers were born out of this Apostolic faith, which is kind of a Pentecostal fundamental Christian religion. I think that’s what made going to church fun for me, that there was going to be some awesome music within that two-hour period. I watched my mother and the group rehearse at my house: “You sing this note.” “No, you got that.” “Now put it together.” Ahhh, you know, the chord.
Listening to that and how they would just pull these things out of the air, it seemed like they knew exactly what to do. For me, as a little girl, it was like, “Gee, I want to do that. I want to sing with them, and if I stay at the rehearsals, I’ll know their part. So I can do her part or your part.” The feeling was the thing that was so powerful. I think that was the most impactful thing, was the emotion behind what they sang and the energy that they put into something. That carries me to this day. I think I come to the stage with that same kind of need for a certain kind of energy to be in the music, yeah.
Now, when did you realize that you could actually sing, that you had a good voice? Did your family acknowledge it? Were you like the star child because you have this exceptional gift of a beautiful voice?
I think this idea of wanting to sing with my mother’s group was the goal. There was a younger group. They called us The Junior Apostolic Singers, the junior choir, and in this choir I picked the tenor part, which was one of the harmony parts, because it was more challenging. And I think the harmonizing was how I came to develop the confidence to say, “I want to lead that song.” Everybody was noticing that I had a good ear because I could find those harmonies, but the whole idea of singing as a soloist was a very scary thing for me, very scary. At the same time, I was my mother’s daughter. [Laugh] So when you’re the daughter, you know how that is. Whitney Houston’s mother is Cissy Houston, so Whitney’s going to sing well because Cissy did. So I think there was an expectation that I was already going to do something like that, but I was very scared and needed a little pat on the back. I needed a little reinforcement, but I didn’t really think I had a nice voice.
My thing was I loved music, and I thought I was going to play the piano. I really did. When the piano lessons began and I realized that I was cheating, I was learning the piano lesson from the teacher when she played it, then I would just hear what she did and copy her. I wasn’t connecting to the notes on the page, and eventually I realized that in order to do that well, I was going to have to spend a whole lot more time on the piano than I was singing songs. I kind of struck a balance, and then I didn’t, and I would lean more by ear, and I started to pick tunes up from the radio, my favorite songs, and I would just learn them like that. So my little thing was still coming from that visceral place and just connecting to the sound, the music, but the whole idea of having a beautiful voice, a pretty voice, nah, forget it. That was never really in my scope. I just love to make the sound of music and the whole idea of singing well was not something I really connected with.
When did you finally realize that you really had this gift? At what age?
I think I was probably getting closer to my teen years, maybe 15 or 14. By this time, I knew I was going to do music. I had made that decision, I think, in eighth grade or something like that. I joined the chorus in school, and because of my vocal range, I was an alto. In this chorus, they had talent shows at the end of every school year. You know, there’s a talent show, so the singer, I was at the end of the alto line and the singer at the end of the soprano line, our voices were always together, and that was our blend. I could hear her and she could hear me. We knew where we were in the song. She asked me one day if I would play piano for her for the talent show. “Sure, I’ll play piano for you.” [Laugh] So we did something and we ended up doing a duet. Whatever the song was we picked, I’m singing and playing, and I’m singing the harmony and she’s singing the melody, and that’s where it began. I think I grew into a certain confidence by singing with another person. That’s really what happened to me.
Well, that’s very interesting how it evolved for you. And then what happened when you were approaching graduation?
I met a guy in my junior year who came in to accompany the choir when we had these really hard pieces, and he became our accompanist. By doing his little ditties here and there, I recognized something very special about the way his chords sounded that I was not accustomed to. This guy introduced me to jazz, and it was through the way he played the piano that I heard things that I’d never really associated with the classical music or with the pop music that I was doing. I just never heard those luscious, rich, beautiful sounding chords.
You were first introduced to jazz by this kid, it didn’t come from your home or extended family? It really came from this one young guy?
This one little Jewish kid from North Miami Beach named David Roitstein.
That’s very cool that he turned you onto it.
Yeah, so now I’m playing piano for this duo, Steph and Tret, we called ourselves. We actually made a little record with an A side and a B side. The A side was called “The Price of Silence.” The B side was called “Boy, I’m the Girl for You,” and we actually went to Criteria, which is a major studio. Aretha Franklin recorded there many times. James Brown recorded there many times. Bona fide professional studio, that’s where we made our first record. We were doing this little thing, and we were kind of getting known around school for having this cute little duo. David came along and began to play piano for me, and it freed me. Now I don’t have to sit and do this kind of thing. I’m just absolutely free. When he began to accompany me is when I began to notice that there was something in that for me, that recognition, that liberty to just kind of go and not have to hold down the chorus and he made me sound really great. So that’s the end of high school.
Then we put a little group together, David and I, and it was his idea. We had, I think it was maybe four or five singers. He played the piano. We used to go into all the hospitals and do little concerts for the people there and that kind of thing and that gave us something to do in the summer. So now, here we go. “What are you doing for college?” “What school are you going to?" “What college are you going to?” What college?! Who’s thinking about college, right? My parents never even said, “OK, so we’re looking at this college and we’re looking at this college.” That never happened to me like it does with a lot of very fortunate people. My high school choir director asked me one day, “Carmen, what are your plans for college?” And I thought, “I don’t know.” [Laugh] It turns out that she took it upon herself to make sure I got placed in a school somewhere. And the next thing I know, I don’t know how, but I ended up at the University of Miami. I think I applied to the University of Miami and I was accepted in the music program there. I never auditioned.
I still didn’t have a clue about jazz vocals, jazz singers, not a clue. It was really through David. He got the role of the pianist in the youth jazz band at the University of Miami, and they needed a singer. They needed a singer for two songs, and those two songs were God Bless the Child, the Blood, Sweat, and Tears version, one of the first jazz songs I ever sang; and a song called Just Be Yourselves by a group called Dreams, which was a group that was started by the Brecker Brothers. I was singing these songs with the youth jazz band. This is all so cool to me.
When I entered my freshman year of college, I entered as an opera major because if you wanted to be a singer, you had two choices: education as a major or applied performance as a major, and I chose applied performance because I didn’t have to take math. [Laughter] David’s upstairs in the jazz program. So it turns out that we ended up at the same school without even planning it or talking about it, arranging it. There we were. It’s pretty fascinating, actually, that that happened, when you think about it.
What about that exposure to opera? You didn’t have exposure to jazz. Where did the opera come from?
That choral music, singing Stravinsky, singing the Berlioz, the Bach Magnificat, singing all of these great choral works was where, and then there’s the solo. There’s always a solo in those great works, where the soprano gets this and the mezzo gets that. So this is my entry into this whole genre of music. It wasn’t that daunting for me when I entered the program. I just never believed that I was ever going to excel as a singular voice in classical music.
When did the jazz thing happen for you?
There was an elective called Jazz Vocal 101 and I decided, “Oh, I have room for that. Let me just take that. That sounds like fun.”
So I go in there and now all the musicians are saying, “Hey Carmen, I've got this song. I was wondering if you could sing this song for me.” “Sure!” So I take the song that I’m learning from upstairs and I do it in the Jazz Vocal 101. I was just singing these other people’s songs and it was fun. The harmony’s more like Manhattan Transfer. So I’m still doing all this harmony though and it’s fabulous, but something interesting happened. I noticed that when I did the Italian art songs, that’s what most beginning opera students work with to develop their repertoire. And I noticed that I had to sing that note that was on that page, exactly that note, every time I sang that song … I’m coming from an opera–opera is like, I got that part from classical high school, but I’m a gospel kid, you know? I’m a kid [whose] parents did the blues and James Brown and stuff. So to have to be on the exact note every time was very constricting for me. I just felt no, I couldn’t make music that way. I felt like I was kind of boxed in.
This whole idea of the jazz came in and it was great. I felt liberated immediately when I could just express myself in that song without any restrictions, and that was the coolest thing of all to me. From there, I started to get a little reputation around the campus for being the singer that if you wanted to try your song out, ask Carmen, she’ll do it. Then I would go upstairs with David after the classes were over and listen to what he was doing and listen to how they were kind of doing stuff. This is when I started hearing solos, some saxophone, the guitar, and all that. At some point, I think it was toward the end of that freshman year, my private voice teacher had an idea, a suggestion, for me, that perhaps I could change my major to jazz, but they would have to see. “There’s no curriculum for the singer up there.”
The guys upstairs already knew that I was doing this anyway. So the following year, I was allowed to move into the jazz department as a vocalist without any particular design for the singer, and now I find myself in arranging classes, composition, improvisation. “OK, Carmen, your turn.” “What?!” And that’s really what happened, “OK, it’s your turn.” It was really kind of like being thrown into the fire - that way was so cool and now I have a little bit more information. David has introduced me to his albums of Miles Davis, albums of Herbie Hancock, albums of Cannonball Adderly. So now I had a little bit more information, still not having heard any jazz singer.
Really?
Not even a clue.
Never went to a jazz club?
No, never went to a jazz club. The first time I heard of a jazz singer was when Diana Ross did the role of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues and I went to the movies by myself to see it. That was the first time I’d heard anything about it, anything at all. So now David’s jazz piano teacher enters the picture. He understands that there’s this singer in the jazz department. He gets a brilliant idea to create a class. He created a class just for the solo pop singer, jazz singer, and this was where I learned of all the greats, from Ella Fitzgerald to Sarah Vaughan to Billie Holiday and I learned about the value of the lyric, Carmen McRae versus Barbra Streisand versus Dinah Washington.
This is where I began to study the stylistic approach to all the great music, and that’s how it happened for me. It’s one of these things that I still wonder about it. This kid, David, saved my life really because I was kind of leaning toward Dionne Warwick. Roberta Flack came along and when Roberta came along, it was like, “Oh, so I don’t have to have this big giant voice like Aretha Franklin to make a career.” Roberta has the easy way. She kind of plays for herself. The songs are pretty. There’s quality there. So this is really what happened to me and how the whole jazz thing happened. 
It’s almost by happenstance that your college education actually educated you from soup to nuts on what became your jazz career. It doesn’t often unfold that way. People in college experiment with a lot of things and it’s only later on that they really get the knowledge, but you really got the knowledge right there and then in college. What’s fascinating to me is that not only did that happen but, at some point, you had to put more than just the music together because you became a songwriter too, a composer, and that’s a big step from being able to do other people’s work and interpret it – to doing your own original material. Let’s talk about that, when that form of creativity evolved for you.
As a result of this lifelong friendship that started in high school with David, we put a band together and started to play all the clubs in Miami. We’re going around and playing six nights a week for one year in the same club, and I did that for the entire time I was in college. I’m now going to school all day, learning songs from my classmates, also doing all the pop songs, cover tunes, from Chaka Khan to Stevie Wonder. You name it, we were doing it. That’s the transition into my own songs. I was introduced to Joni Mitchell around this time, who was one of the preeminent and most prolific songwriters of our era.
I’m learning about Joni Mitchell and I’m learning that Pat Metheny upstairs - he’s writing songs. Bruce Hornsby is upstairs. Bruce was my piano player for a while. Bruce is learning these songs. Jaco’s in town. Jaco’s playing his tunes. Bobby Watson comes from Kansas City, sax player. He’s doing his songs. His wife is a writer, Pam Baskin. She’s writing, and everybody’s playing their own songs, and I’m thinking, “I want to do that, too. How do I do that?” So now I start to put it together, that’s what the arranging course is for, that’s what the composition course is for. I enter my junior year and I have no choice, I've got to take this composition course. So the guy comes in, Ronnie Miller, first day, he goes to the board and he writes down three chords, a B-flat Lydian, a D minor, and an E-flat [sustained], OK? He just writes down three chords. He says, “Everybody, take these three chords, and come back tomorrow with a composition.”
Challenging, to say the least.
“Whoa, OK, what’s Lydian? Can somebody tell me what Lydian is?” [Laugh] So it was really like that for me, but when I brought that song back and they actually played what I had written, oh, my God, your idea comes off the page and other people are interpreting it? That was it! That was like a leap forward. That was a quantum leap forward! That’s how that whole composition thing began for me.
Was it a true epiphany of saying, “I now know I want to write music. I want to get into the chair of being a composer as well as a stylist?”
Yeah … but it took me years to develop enough confidence to actually bring all these ideas to the musicians to play them for the audience. It took years. I was much more comfortable learning the music of Cole Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and on and on and on. So I have this measure now. Anything I write has to be as good as all the stuff I’m singing. Otherwise, it sucks. Excuse me, but it’s nothing. So I’m learning all of this music and singing this music six nights a week, year in, year out, year round. Then Stevie Wonder does Music of my Mind. Stevie Wonder then does Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life.
So here comes the free spirit that was inside me just waiting to burst open. Stevie Wonder was singing about what life was like for people like me in 1970-something. I wanted to sing about what life was like for me. I couldn’t sing a lot of those charming songs from the theatre, from the Broadway stage, those things were not really for my generation.
Much more of life being fantasy based?
Yeah, we kind of cut to the chase [reality]. Our whole sexual [and social] revolution was happening. I was a child of that time, and the songs that have those lyrics were the ones I wanted to sing. And I felt now I have to get serious about this as a career. I mean, what am I going to do with this? School’s out!
Was anybody else in your life influencing and supporting you? Helping to point you in the right direction?
Well, I met a wonderful man, Bill Morgenstern, who was an art dealer. All the Black Broadway shows were coming into Coconut Grove Playhouse. My last two and a half to three years I was singing in Coconut Grove, just around the corner from the Playhouse. All the Broadway children would come to my gig after their show was over, and it was sort of like the hang and I was the singer at the hang. Bill had an album collection that is still the most incredible I've ever seen. So I used to hang out at his house and just play records, play records, play records. When the singers and the dancers and the hoofers would come to Miami, he invited them to his house for the parties.
Now I’m listening to all this jazz, and we’re at these parties, and all these New York children are just turning it out, turning Miami out, and I made friends with a lot of these artists. I’m hearing about New York for the first time. My family never talked about New York. What did I know about New York? Greenwich Village, old coffeehouses? I heard a little about that, but still clueless, just in my Miami sheltered little girl singing my heart out every night [place]. They start talking about New York. Everybody’s graduating. Bruce is leaving. Metheny’s leaving. Bobby Watson, we were in a group together for a long time, he and his wife move to New York.
Then I started hearing things like, “Oh, well, Bobby lives down the street from Bruce and Bruce lives down the street from … ” I’m getting this vision of Manhattan, and 72nd Street is very close to 84th Street. I’m hearing this and I’m thinking, “OK, if they’re going, these are my friends. I’ll be cool.” Phyllis Hyman was in Miami at this time, and Hiram Bullock was her guitarist. Hiram Bullock was famous from David Letterman’s show. He was the guitarist on that show for many years. So he’s playing for Phyllis, they’re all moving to New York. What am I going to do? I’m moving to New York, too!
How did your family feel about it?
I think, at this point, I had moved away from the home I grew up in. I was already in my own apartment. The last year I was in the University of Miami, we went to the Middle East, North Africa, the Montreux Jazz Festival, so I was already starting to do things professionally, and it kind of made sense. It was like a natural progression. I think my mother was really missing me. I’m the oldest of seven kids; one less person in the house, there’s more room for everybody. [Laughter] My brother was going to school at the University of Miami also, so now there’s five kids in the house, and I think it was having a brother in music who was also doing his thing professionally–we had each other to kind of reinforce this idea of moving away from Miami.
Your mom was supportive of you and your dreams?
She was the reason why I was able to pursue this career, because my father, on the other hand, we can talk about that later. But if not for her, I don’t know that I would’ve ever had this fearlessness, you know?
So it really came from her. You’ve mentioned two of your pals who were also very influential. Were there any other people at that time, a professor who perhaps mentored you?
Yes, there were two, Ann Duncan in my high-school years and then Dr. Robert Brewster. There was a handsome black man that came into the University of Miami voice department, and he became a chairperson for the department, and he was American, but he had just come from Germany. He had been in Germany for 20 years or something making a career, and he had now returned to the United States, and I think he did because his mother was failing, was ill, in another state. He came to Miami, to this reputable university, and when that guy showed up on campus, I said “I want to study with that guy. I want to study with him.”
I made a change, which was kind of unexpected, with my original voice teacher. I don’t think she was happy about it, but I was evolving and I went with it. So Dr. Robert Brewster took wherever I was in my development and really shaped my understanding of the whole physical reality of making a life of singing and what happens to you, what happens to you physically, what happens to you musically, making that connection. As a woman, I think it was helpful to me to have the opposite sex in my development at that time. He was a great teacher, and I learned a great deal from him about the instrument.
And taking care of it, healthwise?
He says, “You know, Carmen, you can’t smoke. It will definitely shorten the life of your voice,” just kind of matter of fact.
Very wise words.
[Laugh] I didn’t smoke until many years into my performance life. I don’t get that whole thing, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing when I went into the theatre and started traveling in Broadway companies, and really needing friends. And I guess my friends turned out to be the 20 packs.
Right, the loyal fun loving cigs. [Laugh]
He moved to New York about five years after I was there, and I resumed studying with him.
When you’re in the city, what was the reaction that you had? Was it, “Oh my God. I don’t have a job,”? Unless you had a job.
I put the word out that I wanted to move to New York. One night on my gig in Miami, someone approached me and said, “I have an apartment in New York. I can sublet it to you for so and so.” I planned on it for a year. I saved enough money to move to New York and move right into an apartment. So I got there, and the apartment that I moved into had a piano in it. Remember I told you that every home I've ever been in had a piano? The universe would have it so, that the one apartment that was made available to me was complete with piano. So I’m now in New York.
The year prior, George Butler, who was the head of the jazz department at Columbia Records came to the University of Miami because the University of Miami Big Band was all the rage. We had just played the Montreux Jazz Festival the year before, so it was like record deal time for the University of Miami. I meet George Butler. I said, “I’m moving to New York” and he says, “Oh really? Get in touch with me.” You know how people say, “Well, here’s my card”? What I did was, I went into the recording studio with my band, and I recorded four songs as a demo tape for Columbia Records.
The big time!
Moved [temporarily] to New York with my demo tape, and I checked it out. I was smart … went into the Village Vanguard, and I had my Big Band charts from the Montreux Jazz Festival .
Was that the first club you went to in New York?
Yes, and I asked Thad Jones and Mel Lewis if I could sit in with and sing with them!
Wow, you had cojones.
I had cojones, baby! I walk in and they say, “Look at her. She wants to sit in. OK, why not? Come on–sit in,” and I did. On May 28, 1978, [with their acceptance] I moved to New York with everything. Now my friend Bill, [who] I mentioned to you, has a brother that owns a jazz club called Jazz Mania. Jazz Mania was on 143rd Street and Park Avenue South. From the time I landed, I would go to that club every Friday and Saturday–or was it Saturday and Sunday? I don’t remember– and I would sit in with whoever was booked. I have the newspaper ads and the billings of “Carmen Lundy sings with Jaki Byard and Walter Bishop, Jr. and Don Pullen.” I have all those things still. I was singing every weekend in my first year in New York. I sang every weekend with some of the most important jazz figures in the history of the music at that time. I was so determined.
And this you got from your mother, this determination?
My mom is my example, really how I live my life now. She had a love of life. She loved people. People loved her. She was smart. She could sew. She could cook. She was a milliner. She had a regular job. She was a social worker for many years, and she sang her behind off with four or five other great women. And I’ll tell you that story. I took them into the studio for the first time in their lives in the late ’90s. I realized they’d never made a record, so I wanted to do that for them. My mom made all of our clothes. I never even shopped for school clothes until I was like 16 because she made everything I wore. She taught me to sew. I used to sew everything in New York. I sewed my winter coats, I sewed my underwear, I sewed my pajamas. I made the clothes I sang in.
I just did all of that because it was cheaper, for one thing. It was exhausting, but I did that, and it was because she gave me a sewing machine for Christmas one year when I was in New York. I stuffed it in the closet, and then thought maybe I should show her how much I appreciate her, and I became a mad woman for clothing. She did all of these things, and she made them look effortless, you know? My parents divorced [when I was 16 or 17]. Being the oldest child, seeing this family in that kind of a crisis was very difficult for me. That also shaped me, I think. I’m the woman I am today because of some of the hard memories of that as a child and the way it affected my family so adversely.
I’m sure you used a lot of that in your music?
My mom said to me, “If I hadn’t divorced your dad, you wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing.” My father’s never heard me sing professionally. He’s alive, and he is a very deeply, deeply religious man, and does not approve of my choice, that I've made this professional choice. So she said–and now I understand what she meant all these years later, a fully realized woman–when she said, “You couldn’t have done this if I had stayed.” So it’s not my fault really, but she was realizing something about how we were developing as kids, and that it wasn’t going to happen.
She was very strong to do that, especially with so many children and financially, I’m sure it was difficult for her?
She was a very hardworking woman, and I think it caught up with her later in life. That’s probably why she’s not with us now, because she gave so much of herself, and always kind of like forgot about herself sometimes.
Maya Angelou would say when she walked into a room, she brought her entire family. So now I’m in New York, I’m going to the stage and I’m calling tunes. Now that I have this college education, and I know my music, and I know how to say A minor and I know how to say the key of E flat-
And you’ve finally been in a real live jazz club! [Laughter]
I have wonderful stories of meeting Carmen McRae, wonderful stories of meeting and coming to know Betty Carter, great stories of coming to know Shirley Horn, Sarah Vaughan, playing the role of Billie Holiday. This is all what I was doing and I’m in New York. I’m not singing any original music, OK? I’m going in there and singing, “How about let’s do [sings] I hear music, mighty fine music, the murmur of a morning breeze up there.” OK, that’s me, and I’m in it, and I’m really knee-deep in it and having a wonderful time, making a name for myself, getting gigs. Do you know from the time I moved to New York in ’78 to the time I left in ’91, I sang for a living. I sang in that hardcore city, and that’s how I made my bread and butter. That’s how I fed myself.
Not any easy feat for sure. How did you leap from the club scene into the theatre scene?
There was a magazine called Backstage. There was a magazine called Show Business. Someone said, “Go get those magazines from the stand. Look in the back pages, and you’ll see there’s auditions for so-and-so and so-and-so.”
Did you ever act before, in college or high school?
I took a drama course just because, but I never–
You weren’t starring in the high school or college musicals?
No, nothing like that. I was taking dance classes, I was taking acting classes. Whatever to develop as an artist, I did. If someone said, “Can you read these parts, please? I have an audition.” “Sure.” So that’s what I did and around the time of the release of my first record, I met a man who became my manager for a while. And he came from the theatre side of the industry, and he started sending me on auditions. At this point, I also was taking classes at HB Studios. I was studying with Gene Frankel, you know, the Gene Frankel Theatre on Bond Street, Broadway. So I did that for a while.
It sort of made sense that I should go to these auditions. I didn’t really want to. It was just to become more comfortable as a performer. In between the song, what are you saying to the audience when the song is over? What do you do? How are you with yourself? How do you work through that clumsy feeling? I’m in New York, the whole level of criticism, everything is just so much more magnified. So I went to this audition kicking and screaming, but I did it. I thought, “How bad could this be?” It’s Duke Ellington’s Broadway show, Sophisticated Ladies. So I went in there, and I got the part. There was a play called They Were All Gardenias. It was a story about Billie Holiday, not Billie Holiday’s life story, but about Billie Holiday as a professional artist coming back to the studio after the war ended, when there was no vinyl being pressed at all. This was a chance to get back in the studio with all her old cronies.
Because by this time, the discography and the challenge of embodying the spirit of Billie Holiday without singing like her, her voice went through so many changes throughout her career, so I had to make a choice about how to sound, not only how to convey this magnificent human being, but how to sing her songs in a way that you could believe but not pretend to sound like that. All of that was great. It was just great.
Did you feel you wanted to stick with being on the stage now? Were you torn about returning to jazz?
It [theatre] helped me, but I really wanted to be center stage with the rhythm section. The whole Broadway stage experience is great for any performer. You understand cues. You understand blocking. You understand light, and you understand that the show goes on. 8:00, there’s a curtain and your feet could hurt and you could have a toothache and you could have all kinds of issues but at show time, it is show time, and it is your time to bring it and that discipline … I really have a lot of respect for the Broadway stage actor. That discipline in itself can develop the career in ways that nothing else can.
Was your manager pissed off at you that you wanted to return to jazz?
Tina, you got it right. I wanted to sing jazz! That’s what I wanted to do. That was it! My journey was really about singing the jazz.
That’s great that you were able to find exactly the perfect creative space for yourself. Let us now segue into when you started actually writing your own material. When did that light pop on in your head, that, “Now is the time,” and feeling comfortable enough to do that, and how it came about?
I started writing my own material seriously the very first year I moved into New York and that great apartment with the wonderful Shoninger piano, and I was in there cranking it out every day, and that’s what I do to this day. When I’m not on the road, I’m in the woodshed. What I did was I would write these tunes, and then I would take them to the band: “Check this tune out.” And I think the very first song of mine that was recorded, very first song of mine, is called Never Going to Let You Go, and it was on my brother’s record.
Curtis is 11 months younger than me, and I remember I was taking piano lessons. One of my mother’s side jobs was cleaning house for people on the other side of town. This lady that she worked for was a classical pianist, and I got my piano lessons from her. Her son was a drummer, so Curtis got his lessons from him. Curtis and I were always in the house listening to some new record, and one Christmas my brother got a bass guitar under the tree. I think he wanted a go-kart or something, but he got a bass guitar. I started fooling around with his guitar, so I was doing this kind of thing. [Plays guitar]
My brother took it seriously. He said, “That’s my guitar. I’m playing it. Give me my guitar!” [Laughs] Curtis began to take it very seriously, playing that guitar, and he, interestingly–he’s younger than me, right–but he was the one that became a professional player first. At 14, he had started a band. The band was a child’s version of James Brown’s music. My brother was doing gigs at 14 all over Miami, playing a gigantic electric bass. He was kind of alongside Jaco. Their careers paralleled in an interesting way because Jaco was from Fort Lauderdale. So now Curtis is out there doing his thing, and I’m thinking, “Well, I want to do that, too.” I think I was 16 when I got my first paying gig. Curtis enters the University of Miami the year after I enter. He is still playing the electric bass. He, like myself, went into the classic idiom and, as required, has to play the contra bass, the bass violin.
While my brother is taking bass violin lessons, that same year, Bobby Watson comes to the University of Miami for his Master’s Degree. He’s playing alto saxophone. His wife is an incredible pianist in her own right, and we’re all friends. We put a band together. Now you’ve got me, Bobby, Curtis, Diego Ibora, Caesar Eally, Peter Harris, and we’re just playing the Miami scene. Curtis is establishing a wonderful relationship with the great Bobby Watson, and this is where he took the upright bass seriously. He put that electric bass down, and c’est la vie. My brother and I played many gigs together in Miami. He had his own thing for a while. I had my own thing for a while. We came together. We put our bands together. We started a few groups like that, but we worked all of the time. We all worked all the time. That’s what we did, we went to school during the day and we gigged until 1 in the morning. Ask me how, I don’t know. We pulled it off.
Curtis got a great gig in New York with Betty Carter a year or so into being there and was with Betty for years, maybe five or six years. As a result, I would go to hear Betty all the time because I was on the guest list with my brother, and that’s how I came to know her. Curtis somehow found his way into a recording situation, and asked me to come in and do something on the record. That was my first and only recording with the great Hank Jones, who was on that record, and other great people on his record Just Be Yourself. That’s where my first song is.
This is fascinating, absolutely fascinating how you and Curtis shared such a tight musical bond. We’re still in an era where rock was reigning supreme, pop was surging, punk was happening, but you were doing something completely different–maybe nobody else was doing–and, as a woman doing it, that was extremely rare and truly extraordinary. So how did all that happen? What was the reaction from the established jazz world to your original material?
The reaction was completely 100% supportive. I never ran into any kind of issues before recording, before making my first record. All the junk happened after I made my first record, which was interesting to me, because I was just young enough to represent the next generation of jazz vocalists, because I could still go and hear Sarah Vaughan and hear Carmen McRae on any given night of the week in New York City. I was just young enough that I couldn’t get their kind of gigs. I wasn’t going to get those gigs because, after all, why would you get Carmen Lundy when you could have Sarah Vaughan, you know? I started to think about this, well, how am I going to make a career if all of these artists are still the choices? I mean, these are the choice acts, so where do I fit in? Where’s my sound? Every time I do a song, they’re going to say, “Oh, that reminds me of the version Ella Fitzgerald did. Can you do that song that Ella did, and can you scat the way Ella scats?”
I’d get on the train and go to Connecticut, go to D.C., all the way the heck out … for a gig, I’d do that. But I could show up on that gig, write a list of songs down, call them in my key, and we could play them because they weren’t originals, right? There’s no music. There’s no, “How does this go?” There’s no versions, nothing. I made a career that way, but the minute I started doing my own songs, the minute I released Good Morning Kiss, now here’s what’s interesting. There’s eight songs on Good Morning Kiss, my first album. Good Morning Kiss, I made two demos. In–let me get it right–1984, I made my first demo with a trio in this guy’s living room, and I still have the tape, still have everything, OK? I got a job singing background vocals for a singer from some gig. Turns out, the person that was funding her gig became a friend of mine, and he wrote me a check for my next demo.
My next demo, I go to the famous Rudy Van Gelder Studios to make my demo for Columbia Records. This is my second chance now. I was turned down once when I first got there, so I get my act together, and I redo and rethink, write some stuff, get some money together, and I go to Rudy Van Gelder Studios because I’m making my record for Columbia, because I’m going to get a recording contract with Columbia Records because they said bring it back, and that’s what I’m going to do. So I take my finished demo, eight songs, to Columbia Records and they say, “Oh, Ms. Lundy, we’re going to do our thing with you. This is lovely what you’ve done, but we want to do our thing with you. So, let me introduce you to this producer.” I’m not going to mention their names, but they’re very famous producers. “We want them to do your next record.” Everything was great!
So long story short, that never happened, and I don’t have to get into the details of why it never happened, but it was very disappointing, came out of left field, didn’t understand it. To this day, don’t understand it, but I still have this eight-song demo. My manager at the time called up an A&R guy at a record label called Blackhawk. Blackhawk Records was in northern California, Palo Alto. We released my first demo for Columbia Records on Blackhawk, and the album is called Good Morning Kiss. Good Morning Kiss came into the Billboard charts at, believe it or not, No. 23. Then shot to No. 8. This is the same year, if I got it right, that Whitney Houston released her first record, OK? So I’m on the Billboard charts, No. 23 to No. 8, bang. Then I go from No. 8 to No. 5 over a span of two or three weeks. Now I go from No. 5 to No. 3. No. 1 was Round Midnight –
Wow! Were you having a heart attack as this was going on?
Hang on. So now it’s No. 3. The No. 2 record at that time was the other side of Round Midnight. No. 3 is Good Morning Kiss, and it stayed there for 23 weeks, and I still have all the Billboard pages. I’d go every week, get the Billboard page, pow, pow, like this. Do you know that I could not get a job in New York City after that record came out? No one would hire me! I could not get a job! Because I could not get a job, my manager at the time signed me onto Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies Broadway show. So now I’m in Europe. I’m on a bus and truck tour all through Europe, and they’re selling my records. They’re selling my records at the Sophisticated Ladies Broadway show. My record is out in the lobby: Good Morning Kiss.
Why do you you feel you were having that sort of reaction after releasing your incredibly successful first album with doors slamming in your face? Was it because you had the nerve to believe enough in yourself? Columbia turned you down, boom, you rebounded quickly, you got another label. The record knocked the socks off of Billboard and they thought, “Wow, that’s just a little too much,” maybe? That’s my interpretation. Perhaps good ol’ jealousy and envy. What do you think?
I don’t know. I think that it was because I didn’t do enough standards. That’s what I think it was.
Right, because you were doing all of your own original compositions?
The majority of the songs on that record were mine.
And that was so rare. How did you finally get back into performing in jazz clubs again?
Well, it was interesting how it took going into the theatre and going on the road all over Europe to solidify that, “Wait a second. I've got a record that’s shot up the charts. What am I doing over here doing this?” I need to regroup and harness what I've established and get myself back on the [jazz] stage, get back into doing what I do. I said, “I’m out of here.” They said, “You’ll never work in the theatre again.” I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m really scared now. That’s really going to keep me here?” No. I needed to find a way to get back [to jazz], and that’s what I did. I returned to New York after the four months of Sophisticated Ladies. And I might’ve had a gig here or a gig there because I was still kind of one of those go-to singers where if a really wonderful jazz instrumentalist wanted a vocalist for something, I enjoyed having those kinds of gigs.
It was quite an honor to always be asked to join some fine accomplished jazz musician to do something. That was great. Around 1989, I think I was emotionally spent. I was having a lot of personal stuff, and the crack epidemic hit New York so hard. The whole scene was changing, The whole night-club scene. I remember doing gigs where they reinstated some Cabaret Law where now you couldn’t even go onstage with a drummer anymore. The gigs you had, you’re used to having a band, and now you can only have a pianist, things like that. Now I’m trying to get other record deals because the thing with Blackhawk was a one-shot licensing deal. I still own those masters, by the way, to Good Morning Kiss, and I still own the publishing to all of my songs. So now I’m trying to get another record deal. I want to record. I go to Blue Note, I go to RCA, I go to Verve. They all turn me down: everybody, everybody, and then some. 1991 comes. I get an offer from another independent label called Arabesque. I got an offer to make a record, and around this time, I took on new management, some of the best people that had ever handled my career for me. Around that time, some friends of mine, some of my old hoofers that I met in my Miami days, the Broadway stage people, they have now moved to Los Angeles to branch out their careers and go from the stage into film. My friends say, “Oh, you’ve got to come out to L.A.” I’m thinking, “What’s L.A.?” It’s like me all over again, “What’s New York?” Now it’s, “What’s L.A.?” I had no idea that Los Angeles is what it is. I just didn’t know. “Why don’t you come out and visit? Come hang with us.”
I come to Los Angeles and stay with a friend, and coincidentally, my agents at the time were opening a theatrical office out here. “Come and see us.” So I visit them, and they send me out on an audition for a television pilot. Some of my friends that invited me out, they’re going out for this same part. [Laugh] “I’m on vacation, and you’re sending me to an audition? Fine, I’ll go. I’ll go.” I grab one of my songs. I think I did the song from Good Morning Kiss, “Perfect Stranger,” one of my collaborations. It was a CBS pilot, and the pilot was called Shangri-La Plaza. I told my agents I don’t want this part: “You’re making me do this.” [In audition] I sang one of my own songs. They won’t know it, and this way I’m sure not to [get the role].” They called me back. Then they called me back again. Then I booked the pilot.
I like how being negative worked out for you.[Laughter]
The character I played was Geneva, and she’s based on Aretha Franklin. Her name was Aretha. The script said Aretha, and I went to them and said, “Under one condition: You’ve got to change the name. I will not be Aretha on any television show. You will not have me trying to live up to that.” So they changed the character’s name to Geneva. [Laugh] Now I’m playing this sassy little singer, who’s got attitude, and I’m working in a donut shop, and I hate my job. I want to sing, sing, sing. And here I am acting in this situation comedy pilot in L.A.
Someone would sell their soul to get a great acting job that quickly. [Laughter]
[After the pilot] I was kind of getting tired of that crack scene in New York. It was very dark and not good, not good energy.
Did it totally infiltrate the jazz world as well and really harm the musicians?
A lot of my friends come to mind as I’m speaking to you, I can see them, who succumbed to that time and that abuse and that horror. I got out. I mean, I was never into that. Some of them survived. But that time was terrible. It killed a certain kind of spirit, a joy in the music.
And then in a funny way, when everybody got clean and started to behave themselves, it killed a lot of things too. It was a paradoxical dichotomy of all the wrong things at the wrong time happening to the music. So I got out. My first performance gig was in Santa Monica at a little club where they didn’t even have a microphone for me, it was a place called The Red Sea. Leonard Feather came to review me. Leonard Feather is one of the most famous jazz critics of all time. He’s there with his wife. I get a great review. My first review singing in L.A. is a great love letter of a review.
But of course - because everything that you do finds a way of turning into gold ...
Well, they didn’t pay me! They wouldn’t pay me!
Are you kidding me?
No! My agent says, “Call the cops!” Now the cops show up at my gig, they see me, and grab me to arrest me!
Arrest YOU?
Because I’m Black and I must be a problem. The first Black person they see when they walk in the club, I must be the problem. “No, she’s the singer and they wouldn’t pay her.” So because the cops are there … suddenly the money appears like magic.
Oh my – what a horrible ordeal!
Meanwhile, I’m here [in L.A.], but just kind of checking it out. This is my welcome. I get a great review and [was] almost arrested on the same night at same gig! My dressing room for this place was a little apartment down the street, and the guy who didn’t pay me had disappeared. All of my belongings are in the apartment, my passport and everything. That’s a movie! I go back to New York, regroup again, return to Long Beach, and that’s where I began to paint. My cute little apartment with a backyard that was the Atlantic Ocean, and I got my first easel from Canal Street.
And you had never painted before in your life?
Never painted before in my life. When I was on the European tour with Sophisticated Ladies, I bought some paper for watercolors and I had a little can–you know those little can things that would open up and had watercolors in them?
Yes, yes.
So when I had nothing to do in-between 30 days straight of one-nighters, I would just sketch just to kind of stay sane. I come home from that tour, and I really felt like I needed to find my sanity after that. Can you imagine, all those shows in a row in foreign countries before you have a day off?
Unbelievable. I’d be wasted after one.
I bought a $20 starter kit. It had four tubes of paint and one little 8x10 piece of cardboard thing and bang, that’s how I started. That’s when that happened.
Do you feel that when you’re a creative person - that the gifts come and show themselves if you allow them to?
I think the manifestation is definitely through the need to create or maybe even connected to survival, your own survival, your emotional stability.
Was it the painting that centered you? What kept you on track to remain being a jazz artist? Any secrets that you can share?
I love my family, and I love music. It was love. It was actually the love and a certain kind of self–a certain level of self-respect or a certain dignity.
I think I have a purpose. I think all this happened to me for a reason, and there’s a certain responsibility handed to you when a gift is revealed, something that you really didn’t create yourself, but somehow you discover that you’ve been handed some opportunity to really express or to really help other people. So there’s a sense of, I think I valued life and I think I had a dream. I had a dream.
And you didn’t give up on that dream easily?
No, no, I didn’t. It never even occurred to me. It was always like, OK, there’s a way out of this. There’s that door slammed, but there’s another way out of here, and I’m going to find that way out of here. It was just that kind of sense of determination, and a love of what I do.
Tell me about the connections that you were building with your fellow musicians?
The musicians I had come to know–all the musicians who took me in as a sister, as a partner, as a family member–I just remember nothing but a lot of love coming from most of the musicians I met in my journey. Those musicians were the sustaining force for me. They made me feel like there was something special about what I was doing, and I didn’t want to let them down. If I let them down, then I’d let myself down. It was sort of like that. But the musicians and that camaraderie, that spirit, that I cannot do what I do if that energy isn’t around me. I just can’t even do it, and I think that’s so much of why I hung in there.
Were there any other reasons that projected you into being a fine artist?
The art was because I started to lose members of my family. That’s what it was.
Please expand on that.
When I saw how changed my family had become when my grandmother died–first my grandfather–but when my grandmother died, my family was never the same. The matriarch was gone, … my grandmother [was] also a November birth, she’s also left-handed, she’s the oldest daughter, she had 11 kids. My mother is her oldest; my mother had seven. When my grandmother died, my whole family dynamic changed. I wanted to remember my childhood when it was sweet, when it was beautiful, when it was so great to just feel all of that energy from a bunch of people running around having a great time, and the respect in the community. All of that was lost, all of it.
And no one in your family said, “I’m stepping up to the plate?”
My mother tried.
It’s hard to replace someone that amazing.
It was irreplaceable. For me, when I started to paint, it was like an old photograph. My aunt gave me a photograph of my grandmother in the little market, in the family market, and I can remember so many times going in that market and my grandmother would give me a cookie or candy bar or an ice cream sandwich or something, and I would just be the happiest little kid. And I wanted to remember that. It was a way to hold on and kind of freeze it, freeze that moment. I think some of my earliest paintings are of my grandfather’s sisters, my grandmother, my mother, the family portrait. The one that mattered the most was of my mother with cancer, and one day my stepfather was coming in the house, and he clipped a bird of paradise that was blossoming in the front lawn and brought it in for her and put it in the vase of flowers that someone else had given to her. Little things like that meant so much to me. So I painted gladiolas with the bird of paradise in it, and I sold that one. I wish I hadn’t sold that painting, but I sold it because I needed the money.
Your family must have been in awe that you were able to do this. Any other artists who had this talent in your family?
I’m waiting to see.
Nobody has said, “I want to try that painting thing that Carmen has been doing?”
I hope so. I really really do. For me, I think of the artwork definitely as a way to maintain my sanity because it’s quiet, you see, and there’s no applause. I don’t have to rehearse with the band. It’s finished. It doesn’t matter what you think or how you criticize it because it’s already done. I’m not going to go paint over it. It is what it is, and I can work through something, and I can hear the music, and I can come away from the music and go back to the music with fresher ears. And the fact that it’s a quiet way to create, and now the colors are the chords, and the lyrics are the lines.
I understand. Now, let me ask you a tough question. You have developed into a great artist in terms of a visual artist. You already are a great artist in terms of your vocalization, your jazz artistry, your writing ability. How do you choose now, am I going to continue on doing jazz? Am I going to balance it with my art? Or am I going to now give myself time to spend more time with art? How do you figure this out on a day-to-day basis?
I have been very, very consumed with the creative process in the writing of the music. I can actually come here, and bring something, and leave something here on this planet that didn’t exist before me, not something that pre-exists for decades, for centuries. I've been in this space where I've allowed the music to lead me. And if I feel like painting, if there’s something I really want to do, I take the time out, scratch it out. I’ll find the time, but I feel very drawn and very pulled into the space we’re sitting in [Carmen’s art-filled music studio]. I've spent at least six to eight hours a day in this space working on what I hope will be an offering and an expression of my experience that will speak to other people and this is where I am now.
I’m just letting myself be with this musical process, this creative process that I’m in. And maybe when I’m free, when I release it, I can go back to the canvas with a little bit more clarity in exactly what I want to execute. But I am so absorbed in this creative process now of getting these songs out. But my statement really is, you know, just because I’m a jazz singer doesn’t mean I have to be, “Shooby shooby shooby shooby doo, isn’t this cute? I can do now what the horn player does. Be ba doo ba dee ba doo.”
The most uninteresting thing about the jazz singer is saying, “Look, I can do this. I can improvise this, too.” I get words. I get to create, and whatever I’m improvising can be a song in and of itself. I don’t feel I have to hide behind these little gestures that define the genre, and why do you want to stick me in the 1950s? It’s going to be 2020 soon, and you want to stick me in 1954 singing, “It’s delightful. It’s de-lovely,” and it’s not happening for me. That’s a great song, that’s a great composer, but what about now? What about the world we live in now? This world is so much more complex than it was in 1950.
What can be done to embrace Jazz in America today?
Wow, I wish I knew the answer to that question. Oh, wow. I think that there’s a confusion about what jazz is big time. I mean, I think the average person thinks that jazz is when you hear music and there’s no words, or when you hear a lot of notes that are beyond what seem like they’re part of a major or minor scale. I think people think it’s an elitist, complex art form that does not cater to the pop culture or the general listener. I don’t know. I also think jazz is old-fashioned, like “once upon a time” kind of music.
We confuse jazz as Dixieland, as something like Louis Armstrong would do. If it sounds like Louis Armstrong, then it’s jazz and if it doesn’t, then it’s that other kind of jazz that’s avant garde and I can’t listen to that. I remember somebody saying to me, “Oh, I hate jazz. Doo de doo de doo de doo.” I’m thinking, “Well, you know, that’s what I do for a living. You must hate me. If you hate jazz, then I don’t want to know you,” you know? It’s a very funny thing to have people off the cuff say things like that.
Well, again, it comes from ignorance of not having the education, the exposure.
Exposure, there is none. We don’t get it on our television commercials–rarely. We don’t get it in our underscore in our movies, and … even if you hear jazz in the movies, it’s a period piece from another time. So you don’t really associate it with the now of our lives. I think that with hip-hop entering the culture, cultural music, pop culture, which is where I think jazz had a perfect opportunity to kind of fit, the hip-hop artists don’t really relate to the jazz music.
So they’re not embracing it, either?
Black culture doesn’t really embrace it the same way as it once did, and then you have another part of it which is like my father, where it’s religiously speaking, “This is not something I can condone because it’s not of and from a certain way of life that I’m most comfortable with.” I don’t know. It’s a very complex question. I wish I had the answer, but that’s kind of what I’m doing. I’m kind of writing songs that say, “Hey, this is what’s happening right now to me and what’s happening to you right now. This is the world we live in now.” And I kind of want my songs to be about my lifetime, and not the lifetime before me.
I think you excel at this and you’re a great storyteller and this is why you’re such a great painter too because even in your songs, it’s filled with imagery. You can experience your song as if it was a movie or a play or a book that you’re imagining and fantasizing about. You have that ability. I think globally, maybe we both hope that other countries are embracing jazz in a whole other way than America is, which is so crazy that we’re not able to do this here. Why don’t you share your experience about performing in South Africa, performing in a couple of other countries and what a different experience that is for you?
I have sung to the Greeks, to the Turks, to the Israelis, to the Africans. [Laugh] My little voice has seen and been in places that you cannot imagine, and it’s because of jazz that I have seen the world.
They have sought you out. They want you because you’re an American, female jazz artist?
And I’m singing my own songs to these people. Whoa. So it is global. I mean, it’s just phenomenal. I think that jazz is what most non-Americans associate with what American life is, which is so incredible to me, because it represents liberty, it represents a freedom of expression. A freedom of expression? I can stand here, and sing freely about anything and convey it in a way with the same things you understand, form, right, melody. And this is something else that’s fascinating to me: Most places I've performed outside the United States, I know that the culture loves and understands a melody, that I can’t fool this audience. This audience knows, I mean, you’re a part of the whole history of music, period, you know, in written form, the whole essence of everything that is becoming institutionally recognized as music. These are the cultures that understand.
Because they’re older cultures?
Older cultures, and much more evolved. They know when you’re faking it, or you’re blowing it, or you can’t hang. You can’t fool them. I know when I go in front of an audience, even if they don’t know the words, they don’t know the language I’m singing. I've gone in countries where I've seen young children sing to me, and play for me, and sing in English perfectly, and can’t even have a conversation with them, OK?
Music truly is, as clichéd as this saying sounds: Music is the universal language?
Absolutely, absolutely.
And it just brings people together.
And why we can’t in this country, the birth of this art form that we call jazz that the rest of the world identifies as the essence of all things American, why in our country we can’t embrace it the same way, I don’t understand it. And at the same time, it’s not necessary for me to understand it. I’m doing it. My job is to just keep doing it, and hopefully the understanding, my little contribution to the music will bring more people into the fold. But I can tell you this: More often than not, it’s a beautiful sound. It rarely has distortion in it–rarely. Not to say that distortion isn’t a beautiful sound; I’m just saying the sound of the instrument itself is not going to be distorted by some electronic process. You have that essence, essential aspect, of what makes jazz a beautiful sound.
It usually is not a gratuitous form of art. So the player, the musician, the artist, is usually going to be from a very sincere, honest place and is not going to try and entertain more so than convey true musical skill and ability.
You’re not having aerialists on bungee cords to deter you during a performance? [Laughter]
Or 14 dancers behind me kicking and screaming to kind of entertain you while I do my short little thing.
Jazz, in my experience, is a very intimate experience and maybe people have to feel more comfortable about being intimate with art, not so involved with multitasking that they have to be distracted and just get into the moment. Allow yourself to feel the music. Let it evoke your own emotions and don’t be afraid of it.
Yes.
I think you summed up jazz perfectly in terms of being a definition of jazz, is that it really is this freedom and we take that freedom for granted today and the freedom of spirit. The beauty of jazz is that you have different musicians onstage and, at times, yes, people are doing their particular solos and their interpretations, but it’s still a beautiful unity. I just hope more people give it a chance.
Give it a chance, yes. There’s not enough radio stations that play this format, and that’s part of the problem, too.
How do you begin a song? How do you begin creating music?
Oh, several different ways. Listening is a very important thing to do in one’s life. Listening is the best way, I think, to grow, to learn, and to find out some of the mysteries of life. I listen to the things that people say, and a lot of inner truth comes from what I hear. Observation is huge. Then there’s the exercise. There’s the skill, the actual working at the craft. Working at the craft involves increasing and developing your understanding of the language of music, the combinations of things and what they can create. I can pick up this guitar and just kind of sit here while I’m talking to you, and I can start doing something like this and play one note. And if I do this long enough, my finger might hit something else accidentally, and now I hear something [plays guitar and sings.]
I’m thinking, “Oh, wait a minute. Is that the beginning of a song, or the end of a song, or the middle of it?” But I kind of like that. I started recording things, and writing every little thing down that people say, and I keep a little notepad. The process is just a constant, a constant, constant conscious effort to be in touch with yourself and in touch with the world around you, and or just a certain something that triggers a memory or absolute silence. Sometimes it’s silence, and that’s where the real creativity comes from. The process, all of these things I mentioned to you mean nothing if I don’t sit myself down and work at it.
How does the writing come to you?
It’s a feeling. I get a feeling. The other night, we went to the theater. I love going to the theater. I love experiencing other things that don’t have to do with my particular genre because I get ideas from that too. Just seeing how another person goes about their craft is inspirational to me. I’m moved by the way people interact, the human condition.
Carmen playing in her studio during the interview.
What’s your advice to somebody who’s just starting out, and is thinking along these lines that they would like a career as a jazz artist?
Well, if you make up your mind, if you decide this is what you want to do, then just do it! Follow through, and pursue that dream. Every time you sit down and commit yourself to improving your craft, you create the opportunity. As long as you work at that craft sincerely and are dedicated to the fulfillment of your goal, however small or big that is, you create the opportunity for someone else to appreciate what you do. And just remember that that equation in and of itself is enough of an incentive and encouragement to follow your dream, and to really work at realizing your dream, and that the opportunities are there for the taking. The one that’s for you is for you, not for the other person.
You can’t compare, “How come so-and-so got so-and-so is getting this and I didn’t get that?” You can’t worry about that. Do not be concerned with that. Just know that your opportunities are yours and no one can take those from you. You own that, and you create them by trusting in yourself, trusting that your dream is what will lead you there.
Yes, there are times where you’ll kind of realize, “This isn’t fun anymore for me,” and I've heard people say, “You know, all of you musicians in this room are not going to be famous musicians,” and then the person that said that said, “But you know what, we need agents. We need managers. We need people who know what we do and appreciate what we do, who don’t necessarily want to do it anymore, but we can trust you.” So yes, if you decide along the way that, “I don’t want to be this jazz musician anymore. I don’t feel that I really have enough to offer,” then that doesn’t mean you have to give up. Maybe it’s just that that one aspect of it, you just turn into something else.
What can we look forward to Carmen Lundy doing in the future?
Well, I would hope that you’ll see me more on the concert stage. That’s really what I’d like to do. I’d like to find a way to be intimate with the music that I do in a concert setting. That brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment.
I look forward to catching more of your awe-inspiring concerts soon. And thank you for such an honest and informative in-depth interview. This was truly a special experience for me. I only wish I could sing even one note in tune.
For those of you who would like to find out more about Carmen’s upcoming concert dates and how to purchase her music please click here to visit her website.
Photo Credit: Tana Lopez - Carmen performing at the Blue Note in New York City
Photo Credit: Bob Barry - Carmen performing with the Luckman Jazz Orchestra in Los Angeles
Photo Credit: Elisabeth Oei - Carmen performing in concert at Yoshi's in Oakland and Carmen by the beach rocks
Photo Credit: Robert Wade - Carmen performing at the Monterey Jazz Festival
Photo Credit: Hal Fairchild - Carmen performing with Ryan Cross at the Pasadena Jazz Institute
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Go To Work And Do Your Job ...
Pay Your Bills. Obey The Law ...
By Andrew Mathwick
Noah Ciceros’ writing is like drinking a cup of painfully hot, dark coffee. No creamer or any sweeteners, just scalding hot water poured over crushed Italian coffee beans. At first sip it’s bitter and harsh, but you don’t stop. Keep drinking. It begins to hurt so good. Time goes by, you drink more, and you become addicted. You cherish and crave every sip like it’s your last. You enjoy it, in a great yet, painful and depressing way.
Noah's latest book, Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products., is exactly like that. Noah Cicero, to me, is the dad of alternative literature. He’s been in the writing game since 2003 with his novella The Human War, and he hasn’t stopped making us feel sad/good since, pumping out great books almost every year. This year, I had the pleasure of reading his newest and possibly best novel, Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products. With a title like that, you know you’re in for a wild ride. What Noah does best is his integration of political and world issues through his books. His latest possibly does this the best.
Go to work is about a just out of college graduate looking for a job, and with not many options, he turns to a different type of prison (NEOTAP) for work. In this situation, Mike (the main character) learns of prisoners vanishing completely off the face of the earth and with one of his fellow employees discovers what is really going on in NEOTAP. They even watch a movie on Netflix together in the process of uncovering this mystery.
Go to work is a book that will make you feel smarter after you’re done reading it. It will make you feel smarter in a sad but good way, I believe that this book is not only one worth reading, but a book worth making everyone around you read. You truly won’t regret it.
