My wife works for a non-profit organization that is slowly but steadily planning and rebuilding one neighborhood of our city. I love hearing her talk about her work. To grow my knowledge about what she does a bit more, I picked up a copy of Jane Jacobs book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It’s a classic resource for city planners and a great read for anybody curious about how people living in cities use the space provided for them. The principles in the book apply only to high-density city life, not towns or suburbs.

Among other insights in the book around why a neighborhood thrives, Jacobs points out the importance of certain public figures. They are not the mayor, the neighborhood association members or the district alderman, but the shopkeepers and bartenders. Jacobs calls them the “keepers of public knowledge.” The daily life of these people is pretty ordinary. They sell goods and make small talk with people from the neighborhood people buying those goods. But these “knowledge keepers” serve an incredibly important function. They are confidants who carry the public knowledge of the neighborhood and transmit it to everyone else. So Mrs. Smith knows that Mr. Parker’s mother died last night and Mr. Moore knows to keep his eye out for a strange looking man who’s been wondering around, and so on. It’s a seemingly small service, but it keeps the neighborhood unified, in touch and safe.

These keepers of public knowledge are on an immediate, street level serving the function of the news media (or the news media in its most noble and rarest incarnation) does on a global level. When I watched Hotel Rwanda last year I remember feeling what a lot of people felt walking away from that film: the shock of waste and the weight of responsibility. A genocide that didn’t need to happen happened. Thousands upon thousands of people could have been saved if only we had known publicly what was really going on. When the keepers of public knowledge are absent or silent, we have an excuse to keep to ourselves.

For me, it reveals the power of sharing stories. Really, that’s what the keepers of public knowledge are sharing. Neighborhood stories. Like, “Little Billy was doing terrible in school. Two weeks ago I see him carrying a violin case in here and he says he’s taking violin lessons. Yesterday his mom tells me his grades are getting better and she swears it has to do with this violin teacher.” In a week, that violin teacher has four new students from the same neighborhood, all through storytelling, not a big advertising budget.

Stories don’t have to be true to have an impact. A movie or novel can make a difference in the life of a person the way a documentary can. An article on predatory lending can mobilize people to go after crooked mortgage brokers the way Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle changed legislation. We sing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer because somebody at Montgomery Ward thought the story of a rejected reindeer would make a great advertising campaign. It did and we’re still sharing that story each Christmas. But if stories aren’t shared there is a breakdown between us, between humans making important connections to one another.

It’s the simplest thing. It’s so simple it seems too easy. But tiny little stories can really alter the course of a person’s life. So share them.

P.S. Be sure to ask yourself whether it’s public or private knowledge you’re sharing. I don’t want to hear that the SpoutBlog promotes people starting rumors.

The other day I was having a conversation over lunch with my friend, Ben, who is a student of Roman literature. Although some consider it an aimless, catch-all major for a college student to choose, he explained the Roman origins of Liberal Arts are quite different than what we assume. Liberal comes from the latin phrase “artes liberales” meaning worthy of men born free. Liberal Arts were the free man’s arts, withheld from slaves who were only taught
science and math. Liberal Arts were considered the “persuasive arts.” Slaves didn’t have access to this education because they were required to remain subservient, they could not have the power to persuade.

Then our conversation turned to film, and my friend started connecting dots between our American culture and its roots in Rome. We continued the conversation later over email, where he wrote,

A major studio might do a Gladiator or The Matrix but it is made to appeal to a massive audience.  By its very nature, then, the film is in complete subservience to that audience.  It confirms the audience’s suspicions, it repeats their beliefs back to them. It serves no purpose higher than entertainment. I felt a twinge of irony while watching Gladiator, for example, as Maximus roared to the bloodthirsty Roman populace at the Coliseum, ‘Are you not entertained?’…

Today, films appeal to all kinds of basic American values, not just American pride.  If they don’t, we don’t like them and don’t buy them.

When we sit down in a theater we expect to see movies that tell a story we want to hear, the one repeating our values back to us. Which is why I love Gone with the Wind. I watched it again the other night and rolled my eyes as Rhett Butler, personification of the rebellious hero with a heart of gold, embodied the American values of practicality and loyalty. But Scarlett kept throwing a monkey-wrench into each scene as  she embodied our highest values of strength and courage and also our overlooked tendencies toward greed, ruthlessness and avoiding the present in favor of the future. She throws what we assume into question. The closing scene, with Scarlett looking into the camera saying, “After all, tomorrow is another day,” is riddled with questions. Tomorrow you become a woman? Tomorrow you’re a jerk to everybody in your life again? Tomorrow you exploit some more freed slaves? Tomorrow you find love? Tomorrow you use your wealth to help others? What?

For me it’s an American question. What will we do with tomorrow? Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. We are people who each day look toward the horizon, sometimes at the expense of the present or without regarding lessons of the past. I love that one of our most loved American movies calls into question our American values. In fact, Spout is banking on the fact that there are lots of people out there who love films that make us question.
It’s one of the reasons we’re in business. To find films that aren’t playing the same old pep rally songs, but are exploring what it means to exist, right now.

We believe ultimately, as my friend Ben says,  “A good movie teaches viewers how to watch the film, a good book teaches readers how to read it, and so on.” We want to bring those films the attention they deserve.

So if you haven’t yet read the latest issue of Fast Company, you should. Alan Deutschman and Scott Kirsner cover the changing, bomb-shelled landscape of movie distribution. ("Hollywood’s New Wave" and "Maverick Mogul" only available in print right now)

Of course, for some of you the issue will be mostly review. They cover the usual names-Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh (2929 Entertainment and Landmark Theaters), Harvey Weinstein, Lloyd Braun (Yahoo!)-but they also give some back-story to what the studios are doing to keep up. Still, the coverage around film distribution and the digital age is heavily slanted toward the question, "How will Hollywood survive digital download?"

Who cares? Why is it that corporate brass monopolizes the discussion around the coming new age of film distribution? I really don’t care what happens to them, I care what happens to me. It’s no surprise to me that Chicken Little was released this year because the mood with these media execs seems to be "The sky is falling! And it’s raining every film ever made and they’re available for free! And Mark Cuban is the mad scientist controlling the weather!"

So silly. But as Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban are quick to point out, the Hollywood system is terrible at innovating and very skilled at reacting. So they’re reacting to what happened to the music industry and jumping on the the iTunes train to salvation. But what about me? Why doesn’t Anne Sweeney at Disney-ABC TV, Brian Roberts at Comcast, Kevin Tsujihara at Warner Bros and Blair Westlake at Microsoft sit back, take a deep breath and imagine what it is like to be a little fella like Paul-a father and film lover living in the gloriously snow covered Midwest?

Please, imagine me suddenly being able to get 100,000 films for $2.99 each downloaded onto my iBook over a wicked fast internet connection. Imagine me sitting in a cafe, sipping the House Blend, reading a one paragraph synopsis on a movie-a movie I will commit two hours of my life to. Now imagine me picking up my cell phone and calling one of my film club buddies and asking them if they’ve heard about any good films lately.

Bingo. The real winner in the coming age of Video Download is Verizon Wireless. That is, of course, unless there is a place called Spout to find out about what the people in the know are saying about the diamonds in the rough. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see Fast Company covering some problems we’ve been working on for over a year now. Maybe it takes the whining of Hollywood brass to get the attention of a magazine like Fast Company, but it’s the rest of us who will determine the real future of film.