Script: Episode 3 (Pre-Transcript)

Welcome to the crew coop podcast episode 3 

Someone asked recently, what do I want? What do I really, really, really, want? 

The working title of this notepad file has been “if I knew I’d be supported, what would I do?”, just another version of that, with a twist.

I want community. Loving, celebratory, playful, and full of care for each others welfare.

And ever since falling in love with the medium (not just as a watcher, but also a maker), I have wanted that to be in filmmaking. Maybe its a loyal to a fault thing - kind like how we may fall in love with people and maybe the love is only meant to be for a time, because we were meant to work through certain things with them, and you may wonder afterwards, was I in love? And you were, for sure you were, but maybe you stayed too long, and it just didn’t give back to you anymore. Do you even let it give to you? Are there too many strings attached, now? 

I’m going to articulate for y’all an experience that you may have witnessed myself or someone else having. You may have felt a way about it, too. 

Sometimes theres folks who want community so much, and want people in their lives so much (though they may not have vetted them very thoroughly), just want connection, that they give way way too much of themselves, and they wring themselves out like an orange, give everyone their juice, and before they know it, they’ve given it all away. They’re a slowly drying husk - bitter, no more sweetness left. 

There may have been one small thing they said “sure” to, where they didn’t really mean it. Sure, give that person a chance to play at the thing I wanted to do; I don’t mind. In fact, I’ll make sure to try and teach them some technique, because that will empower them wherever they go. I’ll even throw in a lot of encouragement and playful fun times. Eventually, they may feel trapped by this dynamic, because it was a ruse all along, wasn’t it? It was giving to get. Didn’t even know it, but it was there. Don’t rock the boat; don’t ask for what you really want, because it will just be a bunch of wants all butting up against each other, and one person’s wants always win out, don’t they? But - there’s an evil sort of compromise you can buy into, for a time - I get your attention, your connection, your affection, if I drop my own wants. Eventually this all falls through, because that’s no relationship at all - it’s one person, getting brighter, absorbing the other person, and the other person just… disappears.

Is this really the way of the universe? Does capitalism really win?

Fuck no!

I say it with an expletive just to bring my form back into being, put some barriers up around it, a shape! Do not go gentle into that good night.  ((against the dying of the light)) - I had that Jose Gonzales song on loop for a couple months straight this last winter, as my cat (who is basically my son) and my uncle both valiantly fought cancer - and as I fight every day this internal battle, too. I wish yall could see how strong my cat was through this time in his life - he nearly went out, like, a good 7 or 8 times. 9 lives is a real, true thing. That boy does not want to die. Fucking awesome. 

I like saying “fucking” when it’s celebratory - for all the reasons I’d rather not get into here or anywhere else publicly, because to talk about something that personal can be a form of domination, and I just don’t want to joke anymore, its not fucking funny when you’ve felt dominated after a time - fucking, though, is a great word. I definitely say it more than just in a celebratory way (just did), but thats when it actually feels like it was the right thing to say, when its about joy. Like it leaves a YEEEEEEAH in your gut, for you to enjoy, incarNATION, baby. Incar-fucking-Nation. The only nation I claim citizenship to, again and again, and again. And even there, how deep does that claim go? Deep enough to rise to the challenge of wants colliding, of doing the work required to find the compormise, rather than defaulting to overgenerous shortcuts?

I want to find the community of people I connect with most deeply, within filmmaking, and I want to celebrate this medium with them, again and again and again - our own little microcosm of myriad incarnations, within this one life we live - lets make alll the movies, y’all - make ‘em rilly rilly good. Within that, I want more, too. I want to connect even deeper; I want our affection for each other and our trust and our ability to share creative power to all grow richer over time, and within the context of those connections, I want to find the right way to let our wants all have space. I want to do the fucking work. I want to develop transferrable frameworks we will eventually have no need for, for working together - where every single person feels, by the end of our lives, like we have expressed ourselves, have been able to use that medium in the way we want to, to express what we feel about life - that we have enjoyed not just being treated fairly, but being treated The Best. I want to play on a playground, as equals. All of us. Anyone who fucking wants to play. 

I’m starting to realize that I keep searching for this these last few years outside of where I’m really looking, which is basically within narrative world - I search for it in my service work, and in my volunteer work, with people who want to wake others up to all the solutions we have before us with our activism - our active engagement working to solve problems in our social foundations - because this approach to the heaviness the world is moving through - now especially - has been in microcosm, for my own life, how I approach the healing process, do not go gentle into that good night. Mysterious, adventurous, and surprisingly fun, to remember that verve. A way of saying I am bound and determined to heal, and I have faith that I Can heal - which, I guess I’ve found, is really my kind of thing. The approach of all this activism being, in regards to healing, that there are things we can do. We have the creative capacities to come up with options, and we owe it to ourselves and others to try them, and see where it takes us. 

There’s a certain amount of responsibility we take on with that activism mantle; we stand up for this idea, we protect it and nurture it, and we see these activities though, working together to make sure the vitality of this work endures, reaches further - we are going to do this for ourselves and for those who don’t yet realize that there are ways out - we decide we will follow through, just to find our way, and show others, too - and really, only by actively working to find it, may we be able to show it, and it won’t come off in any kind of prostheletizing way either, it will just be a byproduct of our own travels. It doesn’t have to be us, but it could be - if we find that work fulfilling, then by all means, it’s there for the taking.

Wandering the periphery of this playground experience the last 42 years, the question comes up, in a zillion different ways, what keeps me from reaching for the experience, for going out there to play? What keeps me from saying “no” instead of “sure,” if I didn’t really mean it with that “sure?” Lots of answers swim in my head and heart. What if it does not reach back? Do my film friends even have any desire to do this kind of thing?  Where am I doing things wrong-headed? What am I projecting? What does it even mean for someone to reach back? How do I let them do that?

This whole podcast exercise is me giving film world a potential framework, for us to be able to do the work of letting wants collide and finding compromise, and seeing what develops from there. Who would like to try that out? 

I am looking for people who are really into this, who feel called to this, from the very bottom of their gut, who deeply want to connect with their coworkers in meaningful ways and work together to try and heal something, within themselves, within an industry.

Please don’t come to me if you have any whiff of “I owe her something” or sense of obligation. As mentioned, my subconscious mind may very well have played some uncomfortable tricks on you, and I want you to know here and now that you are Free, babe, free to move right along. If I’ve given help to you in the past and you felt like, gee, I oughta fuckin’ reciprocate, or even some degree of “fuck you, now you need something? I see how it was all along, when you were giving - just giving to get?”  - no, no you do not need to give anything back, at all. I don’t really want that kind of energy in my life. Anything I’ve given you does not need to be returned, all debts are cancelled - please. 

I say all that knowing that that expectation of return, that deeeeeeeeeep deep problematic and extractive maneuver, is a mechanism my subconscious has defaulted to my entire life, which certainly includes my film life. It feels sooo good to give and give and give, and be validated for that, and see something from it at the end of the day, see your labor on screen - it feels so good to hold it all higher than yourself, even, to find something holy in our service, if we want to go full throttle w it. Something at the back end of that, though, can be - If I give everything, they will call me back next time, they’ll know how good I am, they’ll want me - and my particular brand of self-effacing help. How can I be what they need? 

So. Ahem. It’s not like I can say this and think that I’m going to do it perfectly, but theres a lot of ways I’ve put that behind me, and I’m doing my best every day to stay free and clear of it, so I can just be what I am. Gratefully, many days, I still have lessons coming in - and I may or may not do this super well all the time, but I am deeply dedicated to persevering in the effort. Eventually I will tell you no - I may already have, even! - and of course, I hope you can tell me no, too, and know you are free; eventually, I will feel so adept at knowing when my answer is actually no, that I will be better able to identify the FUCK YES, the lets-do-this-thing. If this work can help others to get free and clear of it too and be what they are, or just shake the last bits of it off, that would of course be. Super fulfilling. I think a lot of us come to filmmaking on crew side with a need to heal something along that spectrum within ourselves. Serve, validate, execute the vision of next level up in the hierarchy, giving of self to exhaustion - which is an exhilarating high - addictive, how high it can feel, even. She says, several weeks into the edit for a single episode.  

Something that jumps to mind in this moment is this spot on photography book called Occupants by Henry Rollins that I got for Christmas last year (fuckin’ dayum, Thank you!!), where Rollins has written up imaginary diatribes by characters he encounters in his travels, and the top of the book is all Middle East. The photos in this section are pre-Arab Spring, and his writing is kindof a time capsule of mindsets of the people on the ground in both sides of the conflicts America stirs up - as America occupies (fascinating that the 99% protests around that time came to be called Occupy). It’s a fucking great book. Anyway, there’s one part in Iraq 2004, where one character he’s conjured is an American soldier, reciting his own story to himself about vigilance and following orders - its a book full of character voices, see  - these are not his thoughts and feelings, or those of any real people, but someone from his imagination, someone in-between - anyway, this character is talking about how the people whose doors he kicks down, to whom he spreads democracy, “know that you’re bringing freedom. They may not reveal their gratitude all at once. So do not worry about that. Do not listen to the talk about the increase in soldier suicides… surge in divorce rates.”   and this, this is the this part that I think of - “As long as you’re spending money, you keep the lights on. As long as the lights are on, the illusion of prosperity burns brightly. As long as someone is getting paid more than most, the rest will fight to preserve the illusion that one day their time will come.” 

I hope you see why I can’t just quote this as being from Rollins without all this other context about what the book is, of course - this character, who adamantly deludes themselves, that voice is a voice which can sound true if you allow all the pain to be what guides you, but it is not true, which is why Rollins points to it, and why the book is ultimately about “the quieter, stronger forces of healing, solidarity, faith, and even joy,” as the cover flap describes. 

He writes this so we can see through the illusion, and he also writes so we can monitor for what that voice sounds like, should we hear it within ourselves. Does this work we do in film serve a higher good, or the good of the hierarchy? Let it not be lost on us either that film as we know it - departmental structures, comms, divisions of labor - all this comes from military systems transferred on to the medium, populated by soldiers home after the war without jobs, who had similar frames of mind to this character and who took that directly into their day to day jobs - their, ahem, occupations - later in life. And they trained people up to think that way, too. So it’s still embedded in the way we approach this, so many decades later. 

What you get is a direct result of your actions

Something that happens with this frame of mind - outsourcing my willpower to the agenda of another person - is that I’d never really take responsibility for my own agenda; my agenda remains unknown, something growing in strength just below the surface of my understanding. Something which starts to drive us in odd, uncomfortable ways. That’s why people call it manipulative - because what comes out in fits and spurts seems so out of place; some alligator monster at the base of our our brain, telling us that we need more agency, here. We get angry, at the wrong things. Plus, we come to resent people for not wanting to help us. Which is why I say to you - if you have any whiff of “I owe her something,” that you please not come forward for this project, not at this time, while its in the early stages of it - I need to exorcise this alligator from my own mind with this work, in the context of my working life. I’m already working so freaking hard just to maintain this fortitude, this wherewithal to take responsibility for my own dreams - if y’all come in with that memory of debt, I find myself slipping into old ways of being with you, and I want to serve you, I want to make you happy, I want you to stayyyy - and then I have to work even harder to get myself back on track. It’s just not helpful. This may sound like I’m in a precarious place or something - in some ways I am, because it’s getting more and more sober, about what I want to put out into the world. I’ve been concerned about legacy for quite awhile now, which is why Saavie and Disco Ship and The Crew Coop project all exist - albeit mostly in my head, to this point. But precarious is a bit mean too, and I do wish we would all stop that. That’s enough. We deserve faith - from each other, and from ourselves.

When you doubt, who do you really doubt? What do we project? Where do we not have faith in ourselves, if we are unwilling to have faith in others? Call in your projections. I do not accept yours, do not accept mine. Give grace. Give it again, and again, and again.

Bringing the horse to water but not making them drink

Thoughts on what the heck community etc

Back in Maryland when I was 3 or 4 years old, my dad found a big, wide hoop somewhere, made of metal, and he put some soapy water in a trashcan lid and we went outside that afternoon and made huge, beautiful bubbles, long and wiggly and colorful. One of those core memories. My dad, who gave me my goofy Sag moon and two weeks of red hair and so, so, so much more, has remarked on how he remembers that day, and how much he ached to see me wishing for more kids to play with, there being none nearby at the time. My sisters weren’t there that day, or my Mom - just me and my Dad. I remember that too - how I wanted to share it with everyone, and the guilty pain of not being able to just a accept what he was putting into it already - I wanted to share it with him more than I already was, wanted him to come get his hands soapy again! You know you want to play, too, Dad! At least, I want that. And my 3 year old mind worked overtime to come up with ways to bring what I wanted out of him, even if he didn’t have it in him. Toddlers don’t want to hear no. So the pain was there, for him, trying to bring me love, and me unable to see what was being given - a dark cloud I summoned, not even realizing it. I have spent a lot of time at the edge of actually fully feeling the guilt I have for these extractive measures, to move beyond the feeling, and a lot of time working to understand and absorb the process of forgiveness - first, of others, which frankly is a bit perfunctory until the second part - eventually forgiving myself. The shame, yall. That shame. The upshot is (again and again and again) that its alright to have failed, and I learned a lot - and I found out how grateful I was to be human, to have failed, how grateful I am to have the loving space in my family to have made these mistakes, and that I fought (and fight) hard enough for myself to see the light of the whole gamut of love being sent my way, stars forming. 

Steer that ship hard left and turn a corner, slingshot off the side of that black hole’s orbit, traveling fast away to galaxies unknown. Or is it a hard right, deep into the center, body torn asunder, reattached on the other side into some new shape? Am I intact?

A little bit later in life - early grade school - I’d plead with my parents: can we just move into my friend’s neighborhood? There were kids two houses down, three houses down, then more, and more, and the street went on forever, and the houses were so close together you couldn’t possibly count how many kids were there. Halloweens there were fucking spectacular, with everyone out and about. Can we pleeeeease just participate in a nominally more communal life and live with all those people? I mean, wait, No, right. Full stop. You’re very right Mom and Dad, no I did Not want to lose our back yard out in the boonies and the woods and the peepers and the skunk cabbage and the deer and the foxes and the trees and just that forest. Those woods never uttered a harsh word - they only made everything more magical. Sometimes they could convince my sisters to come play. A pile of bricks on a cement pad  as the easter bunny’s house - would we see him? Where does he sleep? Where does he spend his time, what crease of air will he unfold and slip out of, like a rip in the backdrop fabric of reality? Or, as the cold drew closer- a wire bridge across the creek as an unsteady route for a dire rescue mission- a challenge to keep our caps on, leaning into the wind, stopping ourselves from slipping on the painted metal, grasping guard wires dramatically to stay upright. Can I carry you on my back? Yes, yes I can. The Gully as a portal to creatures in our dreams - giants, whose footsteps feel like thunder, or a decaying serpentine monster made of leaves, tremendous muscles drifting slowly over the same wavy shape, changing course and pace imperceptibly over time. They were Good Woods. Good woods like that hold the fraught and the sweet with the same gentleness - true companionship. But Still. People. More human connection.

Not living in my friend’s neighborhood, I was ever at a remove - not on the level of all these other kids. I could come for a sleepover, but thats it, hon. And maybe a part of me thought it would be a relief to retreat home, too - something about never knowing where you end and I begin. There’s a picture of me at Christmas time, 3 or 4 again, in a cardboard house that has a mail slot - I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if someone dropped mail in the slot, just for me. But, decidedly uncommunicatively, I’m laying on a doll bed, looking up at the ceiling. In the scrapbook my Mom made for me (the ultimate letter-drop, my golly - thank you Mom, too, who gave us so so so much), this picture is labeled in her looping, lovely, sophisticated handwriting, “When Elizabeth had enough, she sought refuge in her own little bed in her own little house... protected by Big Bird.” Years later and I still don’t know what of this was my parents’ projection, and what of this was my own wanting to be at a remove, either from my own pains I brought into this world (who knows what we really bring into this life - again, and again, and again) or just by that time in my small life. Chicken, egg; nature, nurture; apples falling, etc. Nor do I know fur sure if the query is really all that useful; probably the more truthful thing is that we just need a balance. 

I think there was something healthy, something right, about wanting to be around more people. I followed that impulse all the way out to OKC, where I’ve lived in apartments or duplexes or 1-bedroom homes tightly packed on city block lots for the last twenty years (holy fucknuts how’s it been that long!). I’ve lived with or next door to - and of course sometimes felt crowded by - cats, best friends, lovers, artists, addicts, musicians, writers, dogs. Even with all this presence, though, feeling like I belong to a group of people - or really, anyone beyond my damn self - can be a bit of a struggle. So, it’s not about the shape of the neighborhood, or at least, it’s not anymore - it’s about all those emotional patterns of distance. A knotted wad in my brain I keep picking at, very sure that one of these loops has got to give. My mom says that in the mall as a toddler (you may be catching onto a theme here, about that age), I liked to go up to strangers and hug them, and she was pretty baffled. I’ve always felt a great, profound affinity for people. I just fucking want to hold them all, be held. But that vexing, persistent remove - it really hampers that. 

Something in this remove is much ado about distrust - the foundation of the fawning, the foundation of competitive thinking; capitalism. Highlander. Clearly I am not, like, coming to this like I’m free from that mindset - I grew up in this system and it grew up in me, but just like any other wound, I think it’s something that can be healed. I think love basically wins. 

But anyway, something you’re going to see here, or least, something that I see here, right away (wow, candid-ish video of yourself is instructive, sheesh), is how much healing about distrust there is still to be done - for me, it’s a bit uncomfortable to watch myself in this video, even just hanging out with friends, even after all the work I’ve done  - I am fawning, presuming rejection, and placing too heavy a burden on my friends to validate my ideas. Maneuvers of distrust, a performance of othering. But the other thing that happens when I watch this, is that I can see all that happening, and I also- actually - love myself for it, just a bit. I love that I get to be in this human body, doing these human things, feeling this human feelings. I love that I showed up at all - it was pretty hard that first day, especially. I love that these other people bring their inner material as humans, I love that they showed up too, I love that we all got to let a small piece of life unfold its weird little origami wings and squawk at our psyches for awhile.

Trouble is - well. To get this project wings, it’s got to have a running start, real momentum. I can run a bit, but I’m no runner either - I clocked a 17 minute mile in high school and enjoyed taking my time. And I’ve certainly taken my time getting this out there. I think it’s better for it, but still. A lot of my momentum gets slowed down when people drop out, too - for all that they’re going through in their own lives, for all they’re trying to preserve - so they, too, don’t get to the point of just saying “sure” and losing their own juice. Eventually I get the feeling to move forward again, but something which needs to be addressed, though, which may never be said, is if the people who drop out or drop off simply are not wanting to be involved with the clingy sort of residue I’m trying to wash off of me. I don’t like it either; I see enough now to know I know better than this. I know that even as I am healing further, I am healed; that I forgive them and love them and love myself. But I’m still wary, a bit - I’m not fully used to not needing to do this fawning stuff, not fully used to stopping it in its tracks so hard it doesn’t even come up. Lots of people say yes and then no. Thankfully, there’s yes’s that still do continue on through, but the real important thing, though, is the yes I say to myself, there, so that the residue really gets washed. The yes that I say, to this project and any other. That is what really drives the whole thing right out the birth canal and into the great wide world. Fuckin’ PUSH, bish.

So, upshot is, I’m not worried about the no’s, that’s alright. Even if im worried that I am worried about the no’s, that’s just a part, and it’s got things to say, but it doesn’t need to run me. My main focus is to make sure that my own yes keeps on feeling true, and gets put into action, activism - that I take responsibility for my own dreams, focus on them, give them their due. 

And further in regards to yes/no hot cold - that title of that short, Horsewater. I mean, it’s supposed to mean many things, be open enough to let your mind wander about it. That one easy angle, of course - can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Can’t make me drink, and I can’t make you drink. After a while thinking about it, one of those folks who withdrew, who I still hold in high esteem regardless, finally added, “but you can put salt in its oats.” I puzzled over that, in turn - isn’t that kindof mean? He says, no, see, it’ll get thirsty. 

A theme I keep returning to in my own life, and which will show up in this podcast at least a few times by design and potentially more as desired - is the odd experience of forgiveness all the way through to gratitude, that sortof changes everything.  All the way through. Because that, I think, is also deeply related to how we get out of where we’ve been stuck systemically. I think that’s actually a tremendously important part of this; that in the process of the transference of pain (salt?), something much much deeper is happening, as humans, here on this earth, having this human experience, among humans, and many creatures. As we receive this transference of pain from another, we have received a great gift - an opportunity.  Think of it - we have these opportunities all the time. Someone cuts us off in traffic is an easy, non-confrontational way to get into it - non confrontational in the sense that it doesn’t get like, personal at all really, bc we all have this experience if we drive - but like, this is true of all kinds of pain transferences - all these are gifts. We have the opportunity, at that time and thereafter, for growth, for forgiveness, to crack open our hearts. Any chance I have now to open my heart further is a chance I want to take. I know I have to, to heal it.

So, a great debt of gratitude to all those in our lives who bring the salt to our oats, and thus, a whole productive gamut of emotions, which eventually reach - gratitude. Deep, deep graitude; a well spring. From salt, comes water. 

The only way out is through. 

Before we begin on this next section with me talking to some folks in person, a couple things coming up for you if you want to take part in this weird experiment. We’ll meet in the library that first full week of July, hopefully on the weekend so it’s a little easier for folks. I’m looking to screen the first two items on the syllabus - both of them documentaries on Mondragon, which was part of my first exposure to the idea of worker coops - and the following week, we’ll gather up some folks for a roundtable discussion on the docs and how it translates to film. 

Next up before that though, I’mma break down that syllabus I put out recently, so folks have an audio format to listen to - one of the best things about having a VHS/DVD/BluRay/whatever collection is pulling a stack of movies off the shelf that you want to watch over the course of a few sittings, and talking with someone you want to watch movies with about why its been added to the stack if you or they didn’t know already - just a lil bitta taste, baby. Some of these movies I’ll be watching for the first time, too - I kinda need the podcast as a reason for the stack-pull! All of this is material imma get jazzed to talk about, and I want to talk about it fresh. The aim is to get a set of questions to you by the end of the screening for you to take home and consider that week, though, so you have some time to digest it - so I’ll keep just a little bit ahead of the screenings.

Thanks again to those who met with me, whether or not you had the time to get back and give permission for your image to be used onscreen (I feel like that should be super consensual, so its just abundance-of-caution territory for me). Looking forward to seeing folks in the upcoming episodes!

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My answer to this was totally incorrect, actually, so I’m not even going to include it - I misheard Matt, and responded with something totally different, which is another inconvenient trick my subconscious was playing on me - He’s asking about what movies we’re going to cover in the next seasons after season 1 here where we’re learning about what coops are and how we want to use the format. These later seasons, I’m aiming for us to follow worker coop crews making 3 separate films (seasons, 2 3 4, consecutively), different genres, with 3 potentially very different funding and distribution networks. Why cover the making of these movies? Well, to ground it. Thats the whole point. For people to be able to pick it up and run with it, make it their own. So much of education - especially technique - really has got to be experiential in nature. 

Brief origin story here of this podcast idea - this whole project exists because of writing Saavie, basically, a short I picked back up and expanded into a feature during covid. I wanted to do that production as a workers cooperative, and as I got deeper into the weeds with taking it beyond the writing stages, it became quite apparent that we might all benefit from sitting down to educate ourselves on what that can mean for us and what the nitty gritty details looked like. And it grew into a podcast idea, which has also grown substantially since it just started as a one-on-one sort of affair. But back to what movies would we even be covering for seasons 2, 3, 4? First up is Saavie, a sci-fi, which I have a whole Lot to say about, and which got called back for round two of the Sundance Development track in 2024 - this would be our first up project, to take all we’re learning in for a landing - one, because I’m happy to fall on the sword and take the hit as we encounter whatever struggles we encounter - I’m bound and determined, in fact, to see it through the struggles we encounter - and also, because, well, it gets the dang movie made, after all, which gives us a much greater chance of getting some of the AI material I really want the collective consciousness to get to discussing in much greater detail than one sci-fi script can do, even if it is a really cool and weird and fun to make lil script if I do say so myself.

If you hadn’t guessed from the intro though, I have in the past a bit of a hard time marketing myself, so it feels odd to pipe up about things I want to do or accomplish, and my brain kindof sends it to the back burner/I may avoid speaking about it, thus the subconscious trick. Matt here definitely does know that I wrote Saavie, and he may be giving me a prompt to talk about it - but he just as easily may be gauging for himself whether he’d like to throw his own hat in the ring, as a nuanced, emotional, extremely relatable horror screenwriter and director himself - which is also to say, as my other thing that my subconscious just bypassed entirely, is that yes, yes I do not have two other films lined up at this time, which in the context of all this yes-no business I’ve been dealing with for so long, certainly does feel awkward so thus, another subconscious trick - just gloss it over - but I do remain hopeful about it, and think that we’ll find the right voices sure enough eventually. So yes, yes Matt, for Season 3 and 4’s movies, I do indeed anticipate that as the season goes on, we’ll start to pick up on what we want to hone in on, and filmmakers will take the torch. I feel hope in my bones. Never let hope into your heart, they say? Sorry, baby, it courses through my very VEINS, my marrow can’t help but produce more of it or whatever and ever amen et cetera okay moving on…

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A little bit of insert here - the livestream part of this is an aspirational goal - we’ll start off just on a zoom call with the roundtable, so it will basically still be a live conversation uncut - unless someone specifically reaches out and wants me to delete something from the zoom recording, which you can certainly do. I’m looking to edit these talks as little as possible, because I’ve been teasing the best cut I can out of this for at least two months now, and that’s probably absurd. I have a bit too many perfectionist tendencies to think that that crap is going to be sustainable with the momentum I’m reaching for on this syllabus schedule.