I watched the movie, Silver Bullets. As one may infer from the title, it is vaguely a horror movie about werewolves because part of the movie’s storyline involves an aspiring director trying to make a horror movie about werewolves. Silver Bullets is also vaguely a horror movie about werewolves because some werewolf masks are included in the casts’ costuming. Tossed in the movie as B-roll, cut-a-ways, found-footage too, were archival clips of the writer David Foster Wallace talking about how he wanted to write a book because he thought it would make him happy, then he did write a book and the book he wrote got a lot of attention, but the attention to his book didn’t make him happy. Silver Bullets was written and directed by a young man named Joe Swanberg. Joe Swanberg also played a leading role in the movie.
The book that David Foster Wallace talked about that he wrote? It was probably Infinite Jest. But then, again, who knows? That guy wrote a lot of books, and they all got a lot of attention. As history has proven, by Mr. Wallace’s final exit, he wasn’t a happy guy and clearly didn’t get much happier. No matter how much attention was given to the books he wrote. Or how much archival footage of his interviews was posthumously included in movies written and co-starring and directed by mumblecore auteurs like Joe Swanberg.
I watched the movie, RKO 281. RKO 281 chronicles the period of young Orson Welles just after his arrival in Hollywood. The film also concerns his working relationship with Herman Mankowitz, and their partnership as co-screenwriters, fraught with alcoholism, creative jealousies, pride and ego. The film focuses on the making of the legendary Citizen Kane, the fallout and controversy it created for the crumbling giant on whom Kane is based, William Randolph Hurst. RKO 281 is a movie about a young genius and his working relationship with a bitter movie industry veteran. I was going to be Orson Welles. My work-in-progress (either entitled Such Unfortunates or Akronites Autonomous) was going to be my Citizen Kane.
I watched the movie, The Social Network. The film follows the young, magnate-to-be Mark Zuckerberg and his creation of the notorious social networking website, Facebook. Throughout the movie, scenes of depositions on lawsuits from his former friend and co-founder, Edwardo Sanchez, against Zuckerberg, are intercut with flashbacks of Facebook’s storied and controversial creation. Zuckerberg was a young genius who had created something that everybody wanted a piece of. I was going to be Mark Zuckerberg. My work-in-progress (either entitled Such Unfortunates or Akronites Autonomous) was going to be my Facebook.
I watched the movie Citizenfour. Citizenfour is a documentary about the whistleblowing leaker and former National Security Agency employee, Edward Snowden. Citizenfour is filmed almost in its entirety in a hotel room in Hong Kong. Snowden speaks with journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill. Throughout the interview, Snowden reveals piecemeal the massive extent of the NSA’s sweeping surveillance and data collecting. He puts a bag over his head before he logs onto his laptop computer. In the film, the hotel’s fire alarm goes off and stops and goes off again. The phone keeps ringing. Eventually, I think he unplugs it.
So, what was the sweeping mass surveillance that got Edward Snowden all upset? Phone calls were being listened in on. E-mails were being hacked. Everything from Facebook comments to texted photographs were all being collected into an abysmally large database where souls were being reduced to bits and bytes and binaries inside an invisible cloud hovering ominously above. Big Brother didn’t have to watch was Edward Snowden’s point, I think. We were giving it all away willingly with dependence on earpieces, microphones, cameras, navigations and quick searches.
I watched the movie Eagle Eye. Eagle Eye is a 2008 action thriller starring Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. If the Lost Project is ever adapted for the screen, your humble narrator would like to be portrayed by the actor Shia LeBeouf. Your humble narrator would like either Shia LeBeouf or Lucas Haas to portray him if the Lost Project is ever adapted for the screen and made into an original motion picture.
The Internet Movie Database describes the plot for Eagle Eye like this: “Jerry and Rachel are two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes Jerry and Rachel into a series of dangerous situations, using technology of everyday life to track and control their every move.” The movie also co-stars Rosario Dawson and Michael Chiklis and Billy Bob Thornton.
A voice on a telephone tells Jerry and Michelle what to do and where to go. They’re led on a series of adventures and near captures as they elude the FBI. In all cases, where apprehension seems imminent, aspects of technology go awry to allow Jerry and Michelle escape. Traffic lights change at intersections, causing collisions. Sprinkler systems go off in buildings, causing hysteria. All the danger and travel and near misses eventually lead Jerry and Rachel to the Pentagon.
What they find in the Pentagon is a supercomputer named Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst, or ARIIA for short. The supercomputer has been the voice on the phone giving instructions all along. The supercomputer set off the sprinkler systems. The supercomputer changed lights at intersections. The supercomputer’s interconnected network stretched into the phones, into the computers, into the surveillance cameras, into the conveyor systems of airport baggage centers, into cities’ electrical grids and automated door locks.
I don’t remember the movie Eagle Eye that well. I saw it a long time ago, and as you can imagine, the plot is pretty involved. Most of the details I used for this passage in the Lost Project, I got from reading the plot summary on the Internet Movie Database. However, I do remember I liked the movie. So, you should definitely check it out if you get the chance. The supercomputer ARIIA, interestingly enough, is voiced by Julianne Moore.
Prophet Nostradamus made a bizarre and ominous prediction that, in the future, the world would be covered in spiderwebs. Or maybe Nostradamus didn’t say that. I don’t know. But one time, a guy at work told me that’s what Nostradamus said. I think. The guy at work told me Nostradamus predicted that the world would be covered in webs. Or maybe he didn’t say that.
As for Joe Swanberg and his movie, Silver Bullets? I was going to be Joe Swanberg, the young mumblecore auteur. My work-in-progress was going to be a self-referential examination of the cross-sections of life and art. My work-in-progress was going to be two warped and splintered mirrors reflecting each other. A Reflection of a reflection: pop culture reflecting my fragmented imagination and vice versa, like the sunlight reflecting off the moon in the night sky and then the moonlight’s reflection on a pond’s still surface at night. That’s the fast and tall wave I was riding on.
Or something like that.
Radio Free Europe was a network of radio stations that broadcasted to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. It was formed through the National Committee for a Free Europe, which acted as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency. Radio Free Europe was developed out of a belief that the Cold War was a war of ideas, and radio stations played a key part in the greater psychological war effort. The station featured news as well as interviews with exiles and defectors and emigres. Their mission was to provide news where “the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.”
Radio Free Europe also played rock music.