Pre-Marketing

One of the hardest parts of making our last film, Journeyman, was figuring out how to describe it to people, and "sell" it, before we were even finished making it. We didn't choose our final title until very late in the game, a few months before the screening, if I remember correctly, and our poster image/branding was equally challenging... the two photos we ended up using featured none of the characters who were in the actual film; that's just how it worked out.

Even coming up with a one-sentence, 40-words-or-less synopsis is way harder than it seems, breaking down everything that goes on over the course of an hour-long story into a single subject-verb-object construction.

I'm expecting it to be just as difficult this time, but I've committed to getting an early start, trying out lots of possibilities and sharing them with people to see what seems to be working, and what doesn't.

The men in my men's group graciously agreed to let me shoot photos of them at one of our meetings, and to post this one here. It was challenging but also exciting to engage with them in such a different way, to bring a camera into the room.

Thanks, guys.

I would love to have some feedback about this image, if you're willing to respond in the comments.

Men's Retreat

I don't know who these guys are - it seems like there's a religious element to their men's weekend, which is not true of the Mankind Project - but I really appreciate this short piece. It's hard to figure out how to talk about these retreats... because on one hand, it's deadly serious, but on the other, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

It's telling to me that one of the great criticisms of our time is, "he takes himself too seriously." Seriousness and emotional vulnerability are a potent combination - most of the seriousness we get these days is filtered (and made socially acceptable) through anger and/or intellect, by politicians, academics and the media.

Emotionally vulnerable seriousness is a rarer sight - though it's making an unfortunate comeback in the popularity of Glenn Beck, on Fox News. People seem to really respond to the fact that he's willing to cry openly on national television - which would be a very positive development for our society, I think, if he weren't completely insane.

In this day and age, it's socially acceptable to avoid seriousness at all costs, especially by employing irony (I'm looking at my generation, here). Seriousness is a bummer, and it's much easier to make light of difficult situations than it is to let down my defenses and really feel what I need to feel. In talking about Men's Work, the conversation tends to quickly turn to men drumming around fires in the woods - so I'm experimenting with different ways of talking about it, acknowledging the drumming-around-fires element and letting that part be silly, if it needs to be silly, in service of the larger point about the importance of this work.

Employing Braveheart and Mel, against his will, though, is a masterful bit of macho marketing jujitsu. Because hell yeah, I responded emotionally to that (Oscar-winning) movie when it came out, sometime during my teens. Mel Gibson brilliantly managed to tap into something really potent in the zeitgeist of the mid-90s... before he, too, went insane.

I get it - humor is a great way to approach scary things, like, say, sharing deep truths about your childhood and your family with a bunch of strangers. But the danger, in my experience, is that it's easy to forget how to get serious, when it's time to get serious. Unless you practice. And that's a big part of what these weekends are about.

The Men's Center

I haven't posted here in a while because I've been too busy making the movie to talk about the movie. But there's lots to talk about.

This is an image from a Mankind Project-Minnesota Council meeting, where we went to formally ask for their sign-on to the film project. They voted "yea" on some kind of resolution of support, purely symbolically, but the gesture was much appreciated.

On the right, in the photo, is David Kaar, the leader of the weekend, who was shocked when we actually got permission to film from the executive committee of MKP. He handled the whole situation with incredible grace, in my opinion - more on that later.

But mainly, it occurred to me, looking at this photo, that I want to talk about the Men's Center in Minneapolis. It's a venerable institution, it's been around for over 30 years, since the very beginning of what was called the "Men's Movement" in the '70s. They offer classes and support groups, amazing services that have helped many thousands of people, over the years.

And, it's quite possibly the ugliest space I've ever seen. It's a suite of three or four rooms in the basement of a low, grim-looking building (at 33rd and Hennepin in Uptown), with no windows, horrible fluorescent lighting, and falling apart chairs that probably, literally, date back to the '70s. The walls are decked with the kind of posters I remember from the guidance counselor's office at my junior high school.

It's utterly depressing (speaking for myself, of course), going in there. There are probably a bunch of reasons that the space was chosen, once upon a time, and it's probably cheap to rent and maintain - but, to me, it sends a clear message: Men's Work is dark, shameful stuff to be hidden away in a windowless basement.

Now, aesthetics are probably not the primary concern of the men who run the center, or its clientele. But as a filmmaker, I think that these are relevant considerations: how does the space actually look and feel, and what message does that communicate to the outside world?

So far I've been the recipient of some great, vocal support for this project from many of the men involved in this discussion thus far. I think this is a damn good question, worth asking and worth answering: if this work is so great and important and powerful, why is it so hard to share it with people? Part of the point of this project for me is to get these ideas out of the basement, and into the light of day.