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This was originally appended to the original lonelygirl article some weeks ago. I’m moving it to the blog stripELZR itself because I doubt anyone noticed it.
It’s frighteningly fast how the avant-garde becomes the status quo. Not long ago Google was an underdog. It is now unarguably a behemoth. (“Google is the weather.”EEM) Two months ago it payed 1.65 billion for YouTube, the new media underdog. Now lonelygirl15, YouTube’s first star, has made the cover of this month’s Wired. And her article, The Secret World of Lonelygirl, is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how it all started. From Jessica Rose’s misgivings about the shady project, to her browseresque beauty, to lonelygirl’s origin as the alter ego of a commune-raised, bullied boy.
Jessica Rose was suspicious and frankly a little pissed off. She had come to this organic-tea shop to discuss what she thought was a feature film called Children of Anchor Cove. Now Beckett and Flinders had made her sign a nondisclosure agreement and, clearly pleased with themselves, told her that they wanted her to play the lead in what they billed as the future of entertainment. For free. It was an Internet-something-or-other –- she wasn’t listening. They were also going to “hire” another actor to play a character named Daniel. It sounded a lot like porn.
It was exactly what her acting coaches at Universal Studios’ film program had warned her against: unkempt producer-types hawking shady deals.
When he got to college, Flinders [cocreator of lonelygirl] dreamed up an alter ego—an awkward, geeky homeschooled girl. As a camp counselor, he told fireside tales about her experiences. He wrote short stories about her, and when he tried to make it as a writer in Hollywood, he put her in his screenplays.
There’s something about Jessica Rose that the webcam loves. Her distractingly large eyebrows and small round face are bent and stretched by the fish-eye lens into a morsel of beauty that fits perfectly in a pop-up window. That’s not to say she isn’t pretty off camera—she is—but every step she takes closer to the cam multiplies and enhances her looks. It’s a face made for the browser screen.
[Miles] Beckett was at home trying to decompress. He had been working as an urgent care doctor to pay the rent and was exhausted. Between filming and editing the Lonelygirl15 series and dealing with severed fingers and dog bites at the hospital, he wasn’t sleeping much. It didn’t help that Goodfried called at 2 am.
”Miles, it’s time you quit being a doctor,” he said. “We just passed 200,000 views.”
Within 48 hours, the video had half a million views. Goodfried knew that to be considered a success, a cable television show needs to get between 300,000 and 500,000 viewers. “My Parents Suck …” had vaulted into that territory.
Each episode needs to be short, no more than three minutes. ”You wouldn’t show a sitcom at a movie theater, right?” Beckett says. “You make movies for the big screen, sitcoms for TV, and something else entirely for the Internet. That’s the lesson of Lonelygirl15.”
This Web series not only looks different, it’s made differently than other filmed entertainment. As Bree’s universe expands, each new character will have his or her own vlog. Flinders can’t write and film them all, so new writer-directors have been hired and paired with actors playing the new characters. Unlike television, where writers sit in a room and come up with a single script, the Lonelygirl15 team comes up with a general plotline and then sends its writer-directors out to produce independent but interconnected videos. All the characters, in essence, have their own show.
Rose leaps onto the bed and jumps up and down. She makes faces at the camera and waves her hands, knocking askew the picture of the rose hanging on the wall. Beckett got it at a 99-cent store because it was cheap and looked like something a teenage girl would buy. Nobody seems to have noticed the faint pink quotation printed beneath the flower: ”It is by believing in roses that one brings them to bloom.”
Continuing that foreign names thread, GuzmanWP, ELZR (a small, not particularly migrant town in my state) offers these intriguing sights, pocho on so many levels:
I loved Little Miss SunshineWP, IMDB! Deeply. Hadn’t had this fun with a movie in years. Please do go watch it. Now. (Particularly if you live here in Guadalajara. I doubt it’ll be on theaters beyond this week—there are some 7 people per screening.)
I bought them New Year’s Eve at VallartaWP and they’re ugly and cliché, I know, but they’re uncannily comfy (almost like a second skin or a squishy crust) and I’m still amazed at how happy some silly Naussica-ish shoes can make me.
(...and a teriyaki New Year!)
Last night’s dinner, courtesy of Nippon-do (Miguel Ángel no. 224 Tel: 36-41-29-69) —in my opinion, Guadalajara’s best kept oriental secret. They even cooked it all at 10PM so we would eat it hot!
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom,
like the bee that hath gathered too much honey;
I need hands outstretched to take it.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra EEM
Some days ago my cousin Cris got married to Julio in a beautiful, simple civil ceremony. They’re having a (huge) Catholic ceremony come December but as of that Saturday they’re already husband and wife. It was the first time I got to see a civil wedding (in Mexico, they’re usually done privately, shortly after the religious service, a furtive formality between the mass and the party) and since I was Cris’s witness, I even took part in the ceremony itself. I loved every minute of it.
The lunch—delicious carnitas WP, F (we all ate too much)—was held at the family’s over-used reception room and most of the guests were either bride’s or groom’s family (each, as tradition has it, at opposite sides of the room) with a small contingent of the couple’s mutual friends (all looking disturbingly middle-aged from my vantage point). Chemito superstar came from Monterrey in a one-day round trip and got the bride crying :). Most anyone looked stunning. Most anyone looked happy.
The party would extend well beyond sunset with the polemic smuggling of a TV to watch the Chivas-America soccer classic and the road back home would prove an adventure onto itself owing to treacherous potholes and a monsoon, but it was the actual signing of the marriage contract that so impressed me that day. On one level, of course I was excited and bewildered and happy that Cris was (finally1!) marrying. And it was the first time it happened to someone so close—all weddings before I felt an spectator, only indirectly related to the bride or the groom.
The judge arrived, the music stopped, and we all gathered around a simple table where Julio, Cristina, and their witnesses sat—everyone expectant. The judge declared the ceremony started with a sibilant, annoying voice, asked the parts to the contract if they had come on their own will (no dramatic “Speak now or forever hold your peace.” though), and proceeded to read a long, overly politically correct text that is still a marked improvement from the 140-year-old anachronism that used to be mandatory at weddings (turns out that was only discontinued 6 months ago). They were then asked to read a brief formulaic statement to each other and finally, in a great anticlimax, bride and groom, and later their witnesses and their parents, got to sign a seemingly endless string of documents amid nervous laughs. The judged pronounced them husband and wife (”...in the name of Law and Society”), the ceremony was over, and in a roar we all came tumbling down to congratulate the newlyweds, tears sprouting all over the place.
So you see, it was actually a very simple affair—and yet dramatically different from a religious ceremony. To begin with, it felt unbelievably more intimate to me. Yes, I was the witness and I was there at the table and I loved the bride and all, but I still think people all over felt very much more involved, standing at arm’s length around us, smiling and crying at the happily terrified couple. The ceremony may have sounded formal, it was, but that’s nothing compared to the rote convolutedness of a religious service. It pretended to be nothing more than the signing of a human contract—which is, of course, what it is—and I delighted in such simplicity—it felt so unadulterated, so raw, so human. Alas, there was still, to be sure, the specter of the State all over the place2, but I was so cheerfully entranced by the absence of God that I didn’t notice it then. I was happy.
Adolfo (a best mind) has onsite photo coverage and there’s also a Flickr photopool on Mexican elections (442 pics so far).
(The title’s of course a snowcloneWP from HowlWP, so don’t take the hyperboleWP too personally: all sorts of minds have been destroyed :)
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