Yesterday, I posted about Jamie Stuart’s In Spring, a video which had the filmmaker visiting the offices of THINKFilm and turning an interview with Werner Herzog (ostensibly occasioned by the impending release of Encounters at the End of the World) into––I thought––a brilliant piece of satire on the current state of indie film distribution in general and, unavoidably, the rumored struggles of THINKFilm in particular. It was also, on a not entirely subtextual level, about the thorny relationship between journalists and their subjects. Stuart has been doing meta festival coverage for awhile, but In Spring felt like a giant leap forward in his critique of the press process. In my post, I wondered how he was getting away with it. “What does he tell publicists he’s going to do?” I wrote. “Will any of them ever let him do it again?

By the end of the day yesterday, Stuart had removed the video from his website. He replaced it with a short video response, in which he explained that although THINK had no legal recourse against him, when they asked him to take the video down he complied based on the inference that somebody’s job was on the line.

I was away from the computer for most of yesterday afternoon and was kept abreast of the ongoing status of In Spring via emails and IMs on my phone. It wasn’t until today that I noticed that around the same time that Stuart was being pressured to remove the video––and just about when a FILMMAKER Magazine blog post about Spring was being removed––another blog post popped up, defending THINK’s right to protect themselves from negative reporting. Or, “reporting.”

…Read more

Can he do this? Is this legal? How does he do it? What interview questions does he ask? What does he tell publicists he’s going to do? Will any of them ever let him do it again?

All of those questions, and surely more, are sparked by Jamie Stuart’s latest video, In Spring. Described as a tribute to Bunuel and Dali, it’s a highly stylized document of Stuart’s visit to the New York offices of embattled distributor THINKFilm to interview Werner Herzog about his latest film, Encounters at the End of the World. Except Herzog is playing “Gunter Merkwurdigeliebe, THINKfilm Chairman, CEO and President.” Except I don’t think he knows that. After the interview, Stuart’s voiceover inform us, his “crew took part in snorting lines of Grade A Bolivian cocaine with the executives,” an experience which led them to conclude that “the film industry is as solid and secure as ever.” Well, after all that, who wouldn’t?

Watch it here.

It’s Internet Week in New York City! That means all my Twitter friends are going to three parties a night and texting from each about about how bored/drunk/drowning in nerdy masculinity they are. Because they keep going back night after night, I have to assume that either the NY tech community is full of self-destructive masochists (probable) or these events are actually kind of fun (naaaahhhh).

I’m going to see what all the fuss is about tonight, as IndieGoGo, FILMMAKER Magazine and the IFC Center co-host an Internet Week event called Where Internet and Film Collide. The evening will begin with screenings of Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno shorts; one of Jamie Stuart’s short films produced during the annual New York Film Festival press screening grind; Beyond the Rave, an online series for which Lance Weiler created an interactive game; and web neo-Western The West Side, about which we’ve gushed previously. After the screenings, Stuart, Weiler, and West Side creators Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Leiberman will join Ari Kuschnir and Scott Thrift of web video studio M ss ng P eces and Christopher Barry, a digital media exec from the Sundance Channel for a panel discussion. I’ll Twitter it, I promise!

“At the age of 15 or 16, same as some kids discover pot, I discovered Martin Scorsese and David Lynch.” Jamie Stuart sent an email pointing to FilmInFocus, an advertorial portal newly launched by Focus Features, in partnership with Faber and Faber and FILMMAKER Magazine. Stuart has produced three new short films for the site. My favorite of the three is called “Jamie Stuart analyzes Atonement,” but that seems like a slight misnomer–it’s really an analysis of the inspirations and influences of Atonement’s director, Joe Wright, who’s literally on the couch and under the microscope.

Another FilmInFocus feature that may be of interest: Behind the Blog, an (apparently) running series of interviews with film bloggers, including Friends of Spout David Hudson and Andrew Grant.