Most people who know me, know that I really enjoy keeping abreast of whats going on in the world of Technology news, be it watching TWiT netcasts, browsing various blogs (such as Engadget, Gizmodo, BGR, AppleInsider, CultofMac, 9to5Mac, Techcrunch, ThisIsMyNext) subscribing to ConsumerReports, etc…I love knowing what’s coming next, Apple Rumors, etc. So I was really excited when Ryan Block, the former editor-in-chief of Engadget, and Peter Rojas, the founder of both Gizmodo and Engadget, launched their new site, GDGT, in mid-2009.
I spent a some time on the site after its launch and never could really figure out what it was supposed to be. A place to brag about what you just bought? A wishlist for what you wanted to buy next? A message board? A rumor mill? It didn’t seem to do any of those things well. So I moved on. I figured I would continue to follow @GDGT and @Ryan on Twitter, as I thought they had some interesting things to say and I hoped at some point they might announce an overhaul or new objective for the site.
Over time, though, it seemed like most of what I saw on those Twitter feeds were some plugs for Ryan’s appearances on other shows, which I do appreciate, and lots of announcements of meet-ups, usually these appeared to be ads for the companies that were sponsoring the meet-up (T-mobile, ATT, HTC, etc.) I finally got tired of it and decided to unfollow both accounts. So I wrote the following:
@jwreeve: Finally unfollowed and - I still haven’t figured out what that site is supposed to be. Seems like mostly just spam for meet-ups.
A few minutes later I received the following response:
yes. gdgt has no concept, and all I want to do is spam those foolish enough to follow me. Nailed it!
First, I was taken aback, that someone with 45K followers would choose to respond to me. But, then, I had a thought: I bet this isn’t the first time Ryan has heard that before. I bet there are a lot of tech-interested people out there that really respect Ryan and Peter, but have no idea what GDGT is trying to be or accomplish. Perhaps I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Anyway, I will continue to periodically check-out GDGT and see if it has morphed into something I might use. In the meantime, I will continue to visit the sites that do offer me content that I am excited about (I can’t wait for the ThisIsMyNext team to launch their new site).
In the end, I did respond to Ryan with the following:
Didn’t mean to sound like a troll. I was a big fan of your work on . I guess I am not target demo for . Good Luck!
No response yet…
I read was reading this quote from Zach Galifianakis in an interview he did here: www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/the-hangover-part-ii-interview
I had a talk show [2002’s Late [World] With Zach]. We had this actor come in and we were like, “Let’s just put one person in the audience and act as if nobody wants to come to our show.” The actor got so p*ssed. The interview had happened and we had the laugh-track of a six-year-old girl. It was the creepiest thing, it was the greatest thing.
Who was the actor?
His name is… He did a movie. He’s Jewish. And I want to say his name’s… Adam. I don’t know his name. He was so p*ssed, and then I saw him years later and he was like, “I got what you were doing.” And I was like, “Oh, you did? I don’t know what we were doing.”
So I did some quick youtube searching and sure enough I found the clip. It turned out that ‘Adam’ was Adam Goldberg and this segment is one of the oddest, yet greatest, comedy bits I have ever seen. It plays out like the pilot or proof-of-concept of Galifianaki’ “Between Two Ferns” shows that he would later do for Funnyordie.com. Only, as one youtube commenter observed, “with production value.”
On The True Authorship of Hearts of Darkness:
“I think the more appropriate way to look at it is that Hearts of Darkness is Eleanor Coppola’s story. It’s not her film. Hardly. It’s her story. But that’s because I decided to make it her story.
“When I got involved with this project 20 years ago, Showtime was going to make it a one-hour TV special called Apocalypse Now Revisited. It was going to be basically an hour-long special about how they did the war pyrotechnics. It was going to be dull and stupid.
“At the time I told Steve Hewitt and my partner Fax Bahr that “nobody cares about a making of movie, especially one that is 14 years old.” I argued that the film had to have an emotional component. At the time, no one was familiar with Eleanor’s diary ‘Notes.’ My father had purchased it for me on my 16th birthday. I ate it up.
“When I got involved with HoD, I advocated using her diary as the narrative thread. I got incredible resistance from Showtime, and I got initial resistance from Eleanor. Not much, but some.
“Once I was able to convince everyone that the film would best be told through her narrative voice, it was then and only then it became her story.
“Eleanor did shoot the footage in the Philippines back in 1976, but she only stepped twice into our cutting room on the back lot of Universal. Twice. For a total of eight hours. I was there for a year, 15 to 18 hours a day. So it’s not a film by Eleanor, but I guess it’s sexier from a marketing angle to make it look that way.”
George Hickenlooper (1963 - 2010), http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/10/hickenlooper_in.php
I was really bummed to read about the death of George Hickenlooper this weekend. I will always credit HIS and Fax Behr’s documentary, “Hearts of Darkness,” with opening my eyes to the idea that what went on behind the camera, could not only be relevant to what was captured on film, but could also be an equally thrilling adventure. I always felt bad that he and Fax did not get more credit for such a masterpiece of documentary film-making. I send my condolences to his family and loved ones.
As an aside - George would frequently comment on Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Blog (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) and it was always interesting to see an insider’s point-of-view as it would cut through most of the PR-bullshit-speak that Entertainment Industry lackeys usually speak in.
I am trying to figure out the logic for the Genius mix that iTunes created today based on Lindsey Buckingham’s Big Love:
- Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac (makes sense) ->
- The Royal Scam by Steely Dan (ok, same time period) ->
- Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Wings (hmm?) ->
- You Only Live Twice by Nancy Sinatra (maybe because Wings did a Bond theme, too?) ->
- Summer Breeze by Seals and Croft (What?) ->
- She’s Like the Wind by Patrick Swayze (Now you lost me!) ->
- Celice (Paul Van Dyk Remix) by Aha (Ok, now this is just crazy!).
Random thoughts from a Jonathan Reeve.
