you ain't goin nowhere

Hanging in the Charlotte airport. Free wifi, which i appreciate. It makes airport life much more liveable. Got up at 5:15am to drive to Charlotte. Drank green tea strong last night and couldn't get to sleep. Made more green tea strong in the morning for the drive and was pretty awake. Ready to get home i guess. The sky started lightening up as i was coming across the Blue Ridge Mountains on highway 40 and the Byrd's version of Bob Dylan's tune "you ain't goin nowhere" was playing on my ipod and Mercedes Sosa's live version of "gracias a la vida"...it was pretty nice. My robot gps woman guided me back to budget and now i'm here about to eat an omelet in a seafood restaurant in the airport....

Last Night in North Carolina

This is the end of the tour. Had a small crowd but the Q and A was the longest and most involved yet. A couple of the profs in the audience from western carolina were pushing their students to talk about my movie and get at why i made some of the decisions i made. Alison took us out to eat. Had my second salad of the day. Trying to wean off the fried foods and barbeque. Drove up to the Black Mountain College area though i couldn't find the remnants of the old school. I bought a book about it in Asheville. Tired, up at 5:10am to drive 2.5 hours to the airport. It's been great. Inspiring for me all the awesome people i've connected with here.

Moonshine in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Hanging out on the campus of Warren Wilson College outside Asheville, NC right now. Just met my friend Kelly for lunch. She works here. It's pretty beautiful. Hippyish school. Controversies on campus include nude hiking and bringing pets to work. Last night after the Orangeburg screening, we went back to Ellen's beautiful home and had marshmallows, hamburgers, salmon and salad and meatballs. It was great. I had a fan, an 11-year-old boy named David who had lots of questions about my film and told me the reason not many questions were asked was because everyone was confused. I met a woman artist who just recently decided to start working part-time to be able to devote more time to her art work. Orangeburg is very pretty. The school seems pretty supportive of the students and profs. Apparently it was a big hub in the civil rights days. The music prof works, who i thought was English, but actually is USAmerican. We had a good political discussion. Argued about one of my favorite argument topics: Hugo Chavez. He says it's like Munich in 33 or 38. I guess the Jews in this case are middle-class Venezuelans. A hyperbolic argument which i counter by saying the dude is not only democratically elected but also won in a referendum and re-elected. Then i went on a mini-tirade about OUR president saying that the kind of damage he's doing is going to reverberate for decades. I called him "that asshole" pretty loudly and then apologized because one of the students had her baby with her. She said no need to apologize for that!

This whole tour has been very inspiring. A way to meet so many great people in the South. Ellen offered me a place to sleep but i thought i'd go to Columbia and stay with my cousin instead. Then, when i was driving there i found out that she had gotten the flu and so i decided just to keep on driving to North Carolina. Screening tonight. Up at 5:15am for a 2.5-hr drive to the airport. Back to sunny Troy, New York.

Fred Sanford, Obama, Hilary, Orangeburg

Screening tonight at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. It’s a historically black state college. They have a digital media major (I think it’s called that) so they’re learning Final Cut and editing commercials and short docs and some of the students are getting paid to edit university footage. Ellen just moved here from New York City to run the museum studies and I met an English music prof as well who was excited about the design for interkosmos. Not a bad turnout: about 30. It’s a Sunday night in Orangeburg. Luckily Ellen made her students come. Dropped Cat off at the airport and we ate lunch at Maurice’s Barbeque. Heavy on the confederate décor, it was pretty much of a white supremacist family restaurant. We’d been warned but went anyway. The Big Joe pork sandwich was fine but didn’t really live up to the hype. Now the hush puppies with the confederate flag mustard was good. The fries were mediocre. Cole slaw was acceptable though i imagined it had been in the fridge for some time. Went with the unsweetened tea.

The campus is getting excited about the Democratic Presidential debate coming here to Orangeburg next week. I read in the papers that Obama is in the lead. Hilary is not generating a lot of excitement in the sovereign state of South Carolina, but Bill’s coming next week with her to pump up the show. I’m not sure where I stand. I kind of feel like the Clintons had their chance. I do think it’s ridiculous the idea that America is “not ready” for a woman president. That’s absurd. Obama seems cool but it’s hard to see what he stands for and the dude’s never been in a tough race. He cakewalked to election in the Senate in 2004 when the Republican candidate imploded in wife-beating allegation scandal. Same thing did in the Albany rep this past election. Get the wife beaters out!!! Virginia Tech is starting to fade out of the news cycle though they still show the same footage over and over of the overweight cop with an assault rifle running (sort of) along the sidewalks. It’s amazing how many cops were there in the vicinity.

Sitting outside on the grass at the university. Beautiful day in a nice state. Sleeping at my cousin Tracy’s tonight. Didn’t get to see them much. Then off to Asheville tomorrow. Special thanks to Mark Dabney who helped set up the show and his gaffer Walter. They were running Sanford and Son episodes before the movie. Lamont, you big dummy!

Beeyoufert

Had a fireworks event this afternoon at the high school in Bluffton. Just as everybody is leaving somebody set off firecrackers which i thought were firecrackers until everybody starts stampeding towards us and then we jumped into a hallway. I'm thinking are you kidding, is this a school shooting. Then the kids are laughing and it was done. The screening was fine, but interrupted by announcements and a moment of silence for the Virginia Tech massacre. Most kids did not really connect with the film but there were a few that came up and talked to me afterwards about it. I think those kids are the ones i would have liked to have spend time with a bit. I was tired too. Not too excited to get kids interested in why the hell i made this movie.

Staying at Sun City Hilton Head, a kind of gated community for active elders. Lots of single older women here who drive their golf carts with Mets flags on them. Actually only one woman had a Mets flag. By the way the Cardinals beat the Cubs 2-1 today. Apparently they've only won if they hold their opponents under 2 runs. Not good. Drove to Beaufort and sat on the swing benches on the river. Then slowly realized that the gnats were not only flying around us but biting us. The Lowcountry. Swampy. Marshy. Beaufort has this kind of old money South vibe but with a quaint-y tourist-y thing. Ate monkfish on the back deck of a converted bank. Never had monkfish. It tasted fine though i don't think i'd get it again. Carol was great. Met this guy Will and some other people who were really great. Lots of good personalities. I get how people live here. You put on your blinders and hang with the folks you like. Lots of characters. After the screening, a long and involved q and a with people who seemed really excited about my movie. Looking forward to the day off tomorrow. Met David from the Southern Arts Federation who i've only communicated with about crises. I told him that all i've been blogging about it virginia tech and political stuff. He said that's what it's for. More tomorrow on MY DAY OFF. Oysters maybe. The beach. Yeah!

Off The Dome and In Your Face

Just wanted to clarify something that i was confused on. I thought that when the governor moved the confederate flag off the top of the Capitol building onto the front, that no one was happy but apparently the right wing is thrilled and laughing all the way to the lawn rally. The quote above is from a bumper sticker. So after the screening we went out and I was told the story of Ernest E. Slave, a black man who dressed as Santa Clause (in a black outfit if I understood the story correctly) and propped a ladder next to the confederate flag pole and lit the flag on fire. Apparently the police or the Capitol security were streaming pepper spray at him while he was doing it. The guy who told me the story was stuck in a traffic jam on Gervais st and saw it. Amazing. Columbia seems pretty open-minded and cool; it's sad that they are forced to hoist this confederate flag by the rest of the state. They should put it up at bob jones university.

I saw this place called Maurice's bar-b-que called also Piggy Park or something. They had this great parking lot with those v-shaped 50's car-park kind of roofs with a Dodgers-stadium style design. Damn charming. We didn't go bc everyone was telling us he's like some kind of crazed pro-slavery in retrospect keep the flag dude. I'll be happy when they get rid of that damn flag so i can enjoy some barbeque.

Sold a few albums again, which is great. Lots of good questions at the q and a and then many thanks for coming with the film afterwards. We heart Columbia. Lots of good folks there. Going to the high school screening in bluffton. Cat and I drove to Bluffton in the rain from 11-2am last night. It wasn't very pleasant but i figured it would be better to get in and sleep in late rather than making today a hell day of driving and screening. More later....

Interkosmos down the street from the Capitol Building

Doing my Columbia blog before the screening since Cat Mazza, my amazing common-law wife, is in town and we are driving through the night to sunny Bluffton, SC after the show. I woke up and watched yet more coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. This time it's the kid's strange multi-media homocide artist's notes. Pretty puerile stuff really. The Columbine kids could get away with it, but this guy is a college student. The news is still talking about how "shocking" it is when every day people are killed in Iraq. Every time a gun control person is interviewed on the news, there is a gun advocate on split screen yelling them down with INSANE ideas like everyone should have a gun and then people would be too afraid of getting shot to do a massacre. They sound logical though. We might as well be in 1938 USSR.

Back to cheerier notes. Columbia is more charming than i thought. I guess i had in my mind corporate new south. I saw the confederate flag which was moved off the Capitol bldg and put on a pole in front of the bldg, pissing everybody off. The football coach wants to get rid of it. He says, among other things, that it hurts recruitment. Good point bub. Love that. I saw the stars on the building where Sheman's cannonballs pierced the bldg. They added red onions to the tuna salad at the Gourmet Cafe. I thought it was tasty but my cousin Tracy who runs a jewelry store here called "Just the Thing" didn't like the addition. I brought it up when i got to the theater and everyone agreed that it is the South and the South tends to add onions. They did not blame her for being annoyed.

Last night while my screening was going on at Clemson, there were a number of fliers for some kind of "terrorism awareness" group, which was trying to convince people to be terrified of Hezbollah. Sure, if you are a right-wing Christian militia member in Lebanon, i agree, you should be scared. Not sure why someone wearing tan flip-flops in Clemson, SC should be scared. I guess they are trying to lay the ground work for an Iran invasion by connecting the group to the Iranians. Reminds me of the horrible Nicaraguan invasion of the 80s. Somehow that never came true. Luckily. Anyway I wrote the word Boo! on each of the papers next to the picture of the mullah and the words BE AFRAID. Pretty ineffectual but still i thought if someone's on the fence and has a sense of humor, maybe they'll get how lame it is and not go.

Anyway, Larry's great here at the Nickelodeon in Columbia. He showed me Strom Thurmond's statue where they carved his black daughter's name: Essie Mae under his white children, which i thought was great. They had to fill in the word "four" in front of children and then re-carve "five". Then he gave me a tour of the theater the city bought for them on Main street. It's an old 30's theater that became of two-story double porn theater in the 70s and then closed. They are going to be doing fund-raising and the city is excited about it. Bringing in the famous James Bond from Chicago to get it ready, who apparently just installed Oprah's home theater. This place seems great so it should be a good crowd tonight. More tomorrow. Going to try and avoid the tv and get off my massacre coverage addiction. They should bill it as the biggest US massacre since Powder River, but i think shooting Indians in those days was kind of like the War on Terror. Loose and open to interpretation.

Interkosmos at Clemson

It's hard not to watch this Virginia Tech killer's video diary between the killing. A multimedia murderer making film references and going on and on about his supposed persecution. Watched a gun control "debate" on CNN this morning. The right have talking points. If you only can arm the students, guns in England, blah blah. They are quick and fast with their argument. They move onto the scene with their foul opinions.

Back to the tour. Clemson was good last night. A big crowd. Lots of laughs during the trolley song part which i was happy about. A lot of the students have these tan flip-flops called rainbows or something. I kind of need a pair but i don't think i'm going to get one here. Amy picked me up and took me to a strange sushi restaurant that has vast open spaces to accommodate potential hoard of college kids. I was afraid to go with the fishy stuff since we're in the middle of South Carolina so I went with veggie sushi. After the screening and long and thorough q and a we went out to Nick's with the indie-rock kids who bought two of my albums (amy and jonathan) bought another). Katie, an English master's student, told us about her boyfriend's town in Alabama and his dad's church which had a guy in a wheelchair who had fallen off a roof and blamed that a number of other mishaps on the devil, which people were pretty excited about apparently. Then she said that he would press a button and nod off which apparently was a morphine drip. He said he had a vision of heaven and said "if it was a drug, i'd be taking it all the time." It was and he is.

Driving to Columbia today.

Randolph (-Macon Woman's) College

Well I survived a bumpy carnival ride prop plane ride into a windy Lynchburg, Virginia this afternoon. Drove my rented Ford Focus (electric blue) to what is now being called Randolph College. I'm using an internet kiosk and there are a number of young women watching a huge screen tv law and order episode and they all just laughed out loud. It's a bit strange. The men on campus are either security or faculty and the faculty are not here now. After my screening i got the scoop on why the women here went on strike for 5 days after the decision was made to go coed. There seems to be a feeling that a special and unique kind of club is being destroyed. Rituals like the Pumpkin parade, the ring week and the daisy chain will all be awkward for the dudes. Though i can't imagine a very macho crowd that would be willing to be the first men in a woman's college. Seems like it worked out well for Vassar but maybe there are other examples where the men dragged down the standards a bit. I had imagined (and was told to expect) a kind of dying feudal aristocratic horse culture. It doesn't really like that much. It kind of seems like a liberally haven of some kind like Kenyon only a bit Southern but the good Southern, the writer Southern not the Jerry Falwell Southern which is right up the road at Liberty University. Apparently some of the dudes at that fundamentalist university made horror films. I was surprised but people say not everybody there is hard-core christian. It's cheap. The room i'm in is very nice. A strange chemical floral scent forced me to open the window so it might be a bit chilly when i get back. Good q and a with the movie tonight. Jennifer the film prof is great. Loads of energy. I hope the move to coed get the enrollment up and i hope the dudes are cool walking with jack-o-lanterns at night. More time in the Charlotte airport tomorrow. Free wifi which is cool and rocking chairs but so far two of my four flights in and out of there have been delayed. Better luck tomorrow. Trying to avoid the TV: the virginia tech massacre is compelling coverage. People here don't seem (that I can see) any closer to it than anywhere else in the US but i'm limited obviously. Over...

going to jackson

I landed early at the Cabot Lodge Milsaps which is a kind of Country Inn and Suites for a Southern man. It's nice, i sat by the pool today and sunburned half my nose and my forehead at my hair part. Walked around the campus of Milsaps College and saw a statue of Gandhi and Major Milsaps' tomb. Read in a little garden-y enclave then went back to the hotel to watch the Virginia Tech shooting coverage. Tomorrow i'm going to Lynchburg, which is not Blacksburg. Ate fried pickles and sweet iced tea with Holly who is a Greek and Latin prof at the school and Michelle, a sculpture prof. They were great. Saw the awesome huge art studio area at the college. Not sure how many students are there though. The screening went great wtih a good q and a. A couple of the students really loved and came up afterwards. There was also a guy from Albany who recognized that some of the buildings in Interkosmos were filmed there. more tomorrow....

cancellation in alabama

Sadly my first day of the tour at the Capri Theater in Montgomery, Al was cancelled because there was a snowstorm in Albany which made my flight out an hour late so i missed my connection and spent 5 hours in the Charlotte airport surrounded by people angry at USAir. Part of it was the weather but the concourse where USAir is in Charlotte is under construction so the doors to the outside were open and planes were lined up in parking spaces. It was like an airport in Yugoslavia with everyone trying to get out fast and harried and upset employees. At one point the woman at the counter said that she just had to get a few more names for the "Tri-City" (wherever that is) and Milwaukee flights and then they'd let Cleveland board. The Cleveland people were sitting by me and this woman yelled out Fuck you to the speaker and then a man (another Clevelander?) tried to bum rush past the counter to close the doors which were blowing in stormy cold air. That caused a crisis as well and then the woman at the counter did close the doors but then they were opened again a few minutes later and it didn't seem worth it to close them again. I had to talk to USAir for 90 minutes to get my flight re-routed to Jackson since i'd be getting into Montgomery only to rent a car, sleep and drive 5 hours to Jackson the next day. I waited in the customer service line while this was going on and only moved halfway in all that time from the end of the line to the counter. Luckily the phone guy figured it out after 90 minutes, saving me another 90 in line. A burger at the FOX SPORTS CAFE surrounded by Joe Scarborough types talking about golf and football and then off to Jackson. A surly but charming cabby with Mardi-Gras beads and a stuffed animal dolpin hanging from his rear-view mirror while a sort of soft-jazz techno fusion was playing. Spending the night tonight at the Cabot Lodge Bed and Breakfast near Milsaps College. More tomorrow.

Mockumentary Filmmaker Jim Finn Tours April 15 - 23

Jim Finn’s mockumentary Interkosmos, follows an East German secret space mission to colonize the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This cosmonaut romance told through photographs, test and training footage, and a series of infectious specially recorded German pop songs weaves together the styles of a 70’s documentary, Hollywood musical and dry-humor comedy. Finn admits, “The story is a little ridiculous. I mean, the inmates are really running the asylum in this film.” He adds, “I wanted a communist love story; I wanted guinea pigs and a space capsule; and I wanted the radical artistic energy of the 1920s and the 60s. This is what came of it.”

Finn calls himself both an artist and a director; “I have been making small movies with miniatures, found footage, my animals, and myself as a performer for a few years. I have also established myself as a video artist.” Indeed, his award-winning films have become festival-favorites and timeless cult-finds at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, and Museo Tamaya de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

Jim Finn tours the South with Interkosmos from April 15 - 23. Click here for dates and locations.

Download and listen to our interview with Jim Finn (19.9 MB) - MP3 format - 21m:14s (also available from iTunes)

Official Interkosmos web site