4. Any issues/topics on which you would like to see more independent film/video projects focus?

It's hard to make a great drama on no money. It's much easier to make a documentary, because with a documentary, you don't need actors. I'd like to see more indie dramas with great writing, acting, directing, shooting and editing. A lot of indie stuff I see gets an A+ in two or three out of those five, but not in all five.

When I finally see the feature-length drama by a $30 Film School student that blows me away, I've got a script or two for him or her to look at.

5. Talk about your equipment, from camera to editing.

It's funny…a lot of people write me and ask, "What camera would you recommend?" and I say "I have no idea. I hire other cameramen."

Um…..mini-DV three-chip cameras. They're all pretty good as far as I can tell.

I hire editors also. I do some pre-editing in Adobe Premiere. (Pre-editing is culling a one-hour interview down to 15 minutes of usable stuff, then I take that to an editor.)

On "DIY or DIE", Miles Montalbano did the editing, in his garage, on a Mac G4 and Final Cut Pro. He lives in San Francisco, and halfway through the editing, I moved to Los Angeles. So for the second half of the project we worked with Miles mailing me rough cuts on VHS to make notes on, then I went back up to Frisko a couple times for about ten days at a time. That film took a year to make.

On "Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow", Ryan Brown did the editing on a fast PC using Avid Xpress Pro. He lived in the same building as me at the time (in Los Angeles), so that was pretty convenient. That film took over two years to make.

6. Describe your distribution methods. You were very accepting of internet and free hard copy redistribution of DIY or DIE.

Yup. And it still gets shown around the world, often without people asking me. But so many people have decided that the film belongs to "the people" more than to me, that I think they might be right. I still get royalty checks for sales, but if people want to spread the message that film contains, I'd only be getting in the way of the film's stated goal if I interfered. They're doing my job for me, in a way. Powerful art becomes a meme, and is spread virually, and that's what has happened with DIY or DIE. I made the film for people to see it, and apparently some people think it's a powerful film. I never dreamed while making it that five years later I'd still be getting interviewed about it, or flown out to show it and speak at colleges, or that it would be shown in film festivals without any effort (or input) from me. I say "Mission accomplished, and then some."

This methodology worked for this film, and it reflects the message behind it.

The Selby film is being released through some mainstream distributors, and that methodology works better for that one.

I don't see working with corporations as "selling out." I just like to pick and choose how and when and with whom I work. And I'm very proactive and protective about how the art I do is advertised and presented. And I still do a lot of projects with no corporation involved, and some of it with essentially no income, just because I like to make stuff. Like my personal podcast, "Clone The Homeless" www.clonethehomeless.com and my music podcast, "Deal Machine." www.dealmachine.org (Though I have applied for a patent regarding the distribution methodology on that site. It's a new thing that I invented).

7. Any success/failure stories from screening at or hosting a film fest?

I've avoided film fests, for the most part. I've only had a film in one festival, and it was a wonderful one, the Deauville festival in France. It was nice. I saw some great films there, and met some cool people. "Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow" was shown there.

The festival flew me to France and put me up in a five-star hotel, with maid service. Then I came home and wondered why my socks were still on the floor when I'd come back from coffee. But I got used to it, because I am used to it.

I've also been to Sundance and a few other festivals, just as a film fan, not as a selected director. It's interesting: There are a lot of people clamoring for attention at festivals, and some of it gets a bit desperate. Stretch Hummer limos are a big part of what's wrong with the world. And riding in a stretch Hummer limo basically just says, "I wish more people would pay attention to me." (Picture the main rental audience: drunk teenagers with low self-esteem on prom night.)

People who really *are* famous usually travel by car or minivan, because they're trying to *avoid* attention.

8. Has the response/feedback been what you've expected? How so?

Great. I get e-mail from strangers every day saying my films or books have changed their lives for the better. I'm honored by this, and always take time to write back. And isn't that one of the main goals, to positively affect people?

I also get two or three e-mails a month from strangers who tell me I'm an asshole and a fraud. I don't just get letters saying, "I didn't like your book." Instead they go for me personally more than they go for the art. I have a large folder of e-mails from strangers that are personal attacks, and I've even received a few threats of physical harm, just for being me and doing what I do.

The user reviews of my book "$30 Film School", "$30 Music School" and "$30 Writing School", and my film "DIY or DIE" on Amazon are equally divided. I figure if I'm getting such a black & white range of reactions (with very little middle ground), I must be doing something right.

I used to respond to the hate mail. Now I ignore it, and just keep a copy in case it turns ugly. I have placed one restraining order in my life (a last resort, it's a bitch to do that), and have called the cops on someone else who was making repeated harassing phone calls.

If you live your life in a way that doesn't hurt others, you're fine. But if you live your life in a way that doesn't hurt others and also draws attention to yourself and to your work, you're going to have some weenies accosting you (at least on the Internet), regularly, for the rest of your life.

9. Talk about the project(s) you're currently working on.

Well, Kenneth Shiffrin and I finished "Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow"
http://www.cubbymovie.com

It's a documentary about the life and art of Hubert Selby Jr. (author of the novels "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Requiem for a Dream") who rose above tuberculosis, drug addiction and financial ruin to pen seven of the most remarkable, and distinctly American, books.

The film came out recently in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, as a two-disc set with the film Last Exit To Brooklyn. It comes out as its own release in the US and Canada on March 13, 2007, and can be ordered on Amazon, and at Circuit City and Best Buy. (Update: Also coming out April 2 in the UK as a two-disc set with the film Requiem for a Dream. Region-2 only.)

Other than that, I'm just writing scripts and books and podcasting with my wife. We're doing a rewrite of our cartoon screenplay "The Plump Buffet" for someone. (It's sort of "Fritz the Cat" meets "Waco: The Rules of Engagement.") We're developing a cartoon vodcast (working title: "The A.D.D. Family") with this great animator named Scott Ligon. I met him because he read "$30 Film School" and sent me his stuff. Some of it is on the DVD of the second edition.) Debra Jean and I are working on her memoir, and we built a little recording studio in our home. It's called ¡Casa de Llama! We do the podcasts there, I record my music, and been doing some paid voiceover work for a few different companies…Mostly me recording her. She has a great voice, whereas I sound like a stoned surfer with a slight lisp, and I haven't seen much of a demand for that.

I'm trying to work toward getting her employed at art so she can quit her day job within three years, so we can hang out all the time. That's one of our goals. I've always wanted a gal I could do art with, and have it rock, and not get in fights. I dreamed it, I searched the world, and I found her. And then I married her. A lot of my friends were shocked I got married. I think if there had been a yearbook of 80s Frisko punk rock and roll, I would have been voted "Most likely to die single."

Lately, I'm much more interested in communicating with the human voice than with the written word. There's something far more powerful, to me, about hearing someone talk than reading words on a page. Maybe I'm just burnt out from writing. I have three 520-page published how-to books, three 250-300 page novels out, and they all required incredible amounts of work and editing. I'm not saying I'll never write a book again, but I'm more into talking than writing these days. Which is why I love making and listening to podcasts. The only writing I do any more is writing e-mails, posting on forums, and answering interviews, like this one. I love doing interviews and writing e-mails. The time commitment is far shorter than with a book. With a book (or a film or a record), it's sort of like having a kid, and waiting for him to grow up and move out of the house. Doing a podcast is more like having a stellar weekend fling or great one-night stand.

I've even quit smoking to make my speaking voice better and to make it last longer into old age. And that was a bitch...I smoked 3 packs a day for decades. Also, I used to want to be dead and famous by age 30. Now I want to be healthy and effective until at least 100. I'm 42 and I really feel my life is just beginning. I've had no need for a mid-life crisis ....I did more by age 25 than many people do in a lifetime, did WAY more from 25-42, and now that I'm maybe halfway through my life, I'm trying to figure out how to REALLY kick ass with all I can do for the next 40 or 50 or 60 years.

I've moved out to the country, and I'm loving it. We have space (I've always lived in studio apartments ...I barely know what to do with more than one room, but I'm adjusting nicely.) My wife and I have coyotes in the back yard, bunnies in the front yard, and there's llamas and horses in the neighbor's yards. I used to think that I had to have junkies pawing through my trash to really be "alive", but after two decades of living in dirty, crowded parts of Los Angeles, San Francisco and DC, I've got enough images stored up in my brain of that shit to last a lifetime. I've been living out in the sticks (an hour outside Los Angeles) for about nine months now, and it's been the most productive nine months of my life, ever. I love it here.

I've also become rather reclusive. I used to NEED to be around people 24-7. Now I'm not. There are days when all I see are my wife, the cats, and maybe a few passing strangers when I walk to the post office. Other than Debra Jean, I have NO friends in this town, and I love that. I have four true friends in Los Angeles, and they come out for dinner occasionally, and I have a lot of friends around the world I keep in touch with, via e-mail and sometimes the phone, but I've entered a new phase of my life where it's about creation rather than socialization.

Most humans are just blank food tubes who exist only to consume the crap they're told to consume, and don't question much.. And I value highly the humans who exist for more.

Self-actualization is damn nifty, and I'm maybe halfway there. But I've got time.

10. Any thoughts on YouTube/MySpace or any other video streaming websites?

Lots of potential, but lots of garbage. I have accounts on both, and I'm kinda disappointed in both. YouTube should be the wave of the future, the direct link between the content creator and the consumer, and it more or less is. But the content that gets tons of views on YouTube isn't anything groundbreaking. The videos that get tons of views are people putting a tin can in a microwave or wrecking their testicles on a stop sign pole while falling off a skateboard.

I guess this is the result of a system where there are no gatekeepers. And I've bitched my whole life about needing to tear down the walls of someone "deciding" what people see. And now that it's here, I'm bored. I can finally see the reason for the gatekeeper. (I just think the World would be a better place if the gatekeeper were me, or a team of people I get to train.)

I had a MySpace account with over 400 "friends" and deleted it because I realized I only knew five of those people in real life, liked talking to maybe five more, and the rest were idiots forwarding notes in class, about crap I don't care for. I have no time in my life to read spam from yet another horrible band who care more about their clothes than their music. I have no time in my life to take (or even read) a quiz on "Who in your top 8 would you totally do?"

I dropped out of high school for a reason. I don't need to relive it in my 40s.

I did eventually start a new MySpace account. I use it to study the habits of humans, and my findings continue to disappoint, mostly. And I'm now picky about who I approve, and I don't even check the account that often.

I was on MySpace when it started in 2003 and was just a file storage site. Then it became a social network, and was cool for a minute, and then all the weenies showed up. This happens with any successful phenomena, but I usually say "Thank you, goodbye" when it does.

It makes sense that Fox bought MySpace. It's what big companies have wanted all along: A way to orchestrate the usually random phenomena of "Viral marketing." I didn't really know why Fox had spent so much on MySpace until the Borat movie came out. Suddenly, Borat was mentioned by many of the 100 million people on that site. In my opinion, THAT is why Fox bought MySpace: so they could get people to repost flashing bullshit to sell pedestrian fare much more effectively.

Most advertising is basically highly trained people picking pockets by remote control. And the things most people think are important make me laugh. Some of the worst are ads for diamond rings (big on MySpace, as well as on TV). One of the many reasons I dig my wife is she thinks diamond rings, and the need for people to buy them to prove love, are silly. (I did give her a wedding ring, but it's a tiny diamond that belonged to my mother. I don't wear rings, so she didn't buy me one. She bought me some microphones instead, and I bought her more computer memory as a wedding gift.)

Borat is mildly amusing to me, basically I look at his stuff as a higher-budget version of the tin can in the microwave. And the actor who plays Borat said in Rolling Stone that as far as he knows, he invented walking up to strangers and pretending to be someone else while cameras roll. Come on…. people did that in 1910. In fact, one silent film star got the crap beat out of him for doing it, on camera.

I'd rather watch Beavis and Butthead play "Frog Baseball" anyway. Beavis and Butthead IS art. (And I pretty much dress like those guys, and always have, so I easily relate.)

Of all the "next big things" foisted onto us on the Internet, very few make me say "How did I ever live without that???" Skype amazes me and Google search amazes me. MySpace and YouTube do not amaze me.

I recently turned down a offer to write a book for a major publisher on "how to network your art on YouTube." I turned it down even though it was good money, because writing it would have meant spending a lot of time on YouTube.

The main thing I use YouTube for is looking at clips from The Colbert Report and the Daily Show. Not much else.

11. What are your political beliefs?

There's a saying, "If you're young and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you're old and not a conservative, you have no brain."

I recently asked a 70-year-old friend "What is your political affiliation?" He said, "It depends on the issue. If it's abortion, I'm left of Nancy Pelosi. If it's social welfare, I'm right of Genghis Kahn." (This cat also votes Republican, but is a registered Democrat, so he can vote AGAINST the better Democratic candidate in the primary.)

Basically my goal is to have tons of money, and do nothing but make art and have sex all the time. And I'm going to attain that goal, like I've attained all my other goals.

I don't live extravagantly, and will spend the money mostly on art supplies and travel, and very little on the bullshit that people usually spend money on.

I want to live with my wife on many acres of land somewhere in rural Southern California. (I like the weather here. I'm typing this on my patio with no shirt on, while much of the US is buried under snow.)

We'll live on top of a hill out in the sticks in a large, comfy concrete bunker with gun turrets and a moat, no telephone, and a buried T-1 Internet line. The wife and I will be attended to by female art interns who come by a few times a week. (Send resumes here.)

As for where I stand on "the issues": I think drugs should be decriminalized, but I don't take any. And I'd take the money spent now on the War on Drugs and spend it on on-demand rehab. Extrapolating that, I think heath care in general should be much much cheaper, for everyone.

Spammers and identity thieves should be taken out and shot, but I'd be nicer to file sharers than current laws seem to be. I think cruelty to animals should be a felony, but I like to eat meat. I think welfare should be easier to get if you really need it, if you can prove you need it, and if you can prove you won't spend it on drugs. But I think welfare should be very hard to stay on for more than six months. Gay marriage should be legal, and embraced by all states. I think abortion should be legal, but I'm fixed. And I think the government should give a free iPod to anyone willing to get fixed. The government should pay rappers, country singers and rockers to be spokesmen for that campaign. And I think that pornography featuring consenting adults should be completely ignored by the government, forever. It's none of their business.

So…..What's the name for THAT political party? Who do I vote for to install these programs and protect these rights?

Oh, and most advertising pretty much offends me, so does most TV programming, but not for the reasons most vocal people are offended by media. (I'd show more sex, less violence, and far less ads for cars and the Army, for starters.)

I realize that it's impossible to eliminate the fluff from media with legislation, so here's a modest proposal: Maybe my job should just be running Hollywood and Madison Avenue from my concrete bunker, via the Internet. (Although, while it is a job I could do, I'm not sure it's a job I'd want to do.)

Another modest proposal: Contrary to a lot of people who dig my stuff, I'm not entirely opposed to limiting some personal freedoms, as long as I'm the guy in charge of choosing which ones get limited. I guarantee I'd do a better job than the people doing it now.

12. How did you find the interviewees for D.I.Y. or DIE?

Well, like I said, I got three for one with Watt. Then I decided to do more, and basically got half from my Rolodex, and the other half were people I own work by.

I had four criteria for inclusion in the doc, and everyone in the film had to fit three out of the four:
1. Make a living at art
2. Influence many people in their respective medium
3. Do something unique, or in a unique way
4. Make art I like.

There were probably two other criteria I subconsciously used that I didn't notice until later:
1. I like them as people.
2. The camera likes them.

The second criteria may sound a little shallow, but I did tend to pick good looking or at least interesting looking people. It's a film, not a radio show, ya know? If there were two people who said the same thing and I only had room to use one of them, I probably used the more interesting looking person, or the one with more confidence and charisma.

(One cute ironic thing that occurred with contacting interviewees was with Lydia Lunch. It took eight months to get a hold of her, going back and forth with her manager in Europe. When Lydia finally agreed to do the interview and e-mailed me her address, it turned out she lived two blocks from me, on the same street.)

And as for using people I like personally, I think it's a no brainer. Who wants to be in the same room with someone they don't like? Or moreover, wants to have to deal with someone who's unpleasant to deal with for the many follow-up e-mails and phone calls throughout the editing process?

(I also turned down a few people who ASKED to be in the film. I wanted people who were too busy making art to bug someone about being in a film.)

Nepotism is commonly considered the main bane of filmmaking by people on the outside looking in, but it makes sense: Creative people tend to surround themselves with people they like being around, because they have a choice. People working in an office don't have this choice. If you're not getting rich, you might as well at least be hanging around people you dig.

Nepotism is NOT a bane in true indie filmmaking, because you aren't outside it looking in, but rather just creating your own network of creative friends.

13. Were there any documentaries/films that inspired your style?

I'm not sure I have a style, at least in DIY or DIE. That film is very functional, I didn't insert much of my personal "vision" into it. I am in the intro, reading the mission statement I wrote, but that's only because Iggy Pop agreed to read it, and then his manager told me there was a scheduling issue. So Iggy wasn't in my city when I needed it done. So I just "did it myself."

But DIY or DIE is more of an easy-to-digest essay than a typical motion picture. And the interviewees make the points, not me. I guess my "style" comes into play in that I did have a mission statement, and I picked people who I knew would reinforce that mission statement, and we edited them in a way that would further strengthen the mission statement.

The editor, Miles Montalbano, was very proactive in helping make these decisions with me. He was a perfect choice for the job, much more than a simple technician. He loves punk rock, he's slept on floors playing bass with Sister Double Happiness, and he's damn smart.

There is a common misnomer that documentaries are pure empirical science….that they start with a question and then decide through interviewing "experts" which of the various viewpoints is the "answer." I find this is rarely true. Most documentary filmmakers have an agenda, and make their point with the people they chose to interview, the stuff they cut out, and how they arrange the stuff they leave in.

As far as docs I like? I love docs and non-fiction programming. I love the History Channel, Mythbusters, and of course, Cops. As for guilty pleasures, I love VH1 "Behind the Music."

The stuff I mostly watch isn't necessarily the kind of thing I like to create. My mind works really fast and when I watch TV or a movie, it's kind of an emollient-- softening and smoothing the skin of my brain. I like to watch shows that are more escapist and lowbrow than what I'd probably make myself.

But I love consuming the art I make. I'm attracted to interesting niche voids, and live to fill them. I basically make movies (and songs and books) that don't exist, but that I feel need to exist.

14. Any closing comments?

"Whoever dies with his art on the most people's hard drives, wins."
--Michael W. Dean
www.michaelwdean.com

January 15, 2007

Photo of Debra Jean Dean and Michael W. Dean by Lydia Llam.
Photo of Debra Jean Dean with microphone by Michael W. Dean.
Photo of Debra Jean Dean and friend by Tracy Hatfield.
Photo ofMichael W. Dean on phone by Debra Jean Dean.
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