We Live in Public (2009)

Director:

Ondi Timoner

Writer:

Ondi Timoner (writer)

Release Date:

3 September 2010 (Norway)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A documentary focusing on the life of dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris, and his exploits over the last decade.

Plot Keywords:

Internet | Online | Claim In Title

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Josh Harris	...	Himself
Tom Harris	...	Himself - Brother
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Carlos Alvarez	...	Cowboy
David Amron
Alex Arcadia
Zero Boy
Brett Brewer
Owen Bush
Jason Calacanis
Cal Chamberlain
Tanya Corrin
Jeffrey Deitch
Chris DeWolfe
Abby Ellin
Feedbuck
Leo Fernekes
Donna Ferrato
Ernesto Galan	...	Himself
Robert Galinsky
Missy Galore
Marc Geiger
Jeff Gompertz	...	Capsule hotel / pods installation artist
Anthony Haden-Guest
Jon Harris
Nico Haupt
Alana Heiss
Max Heller
David Hershkovits
Harold Kaufman
Leo Koenig
Hillary Koob-Sassen
Gabriella Latessa
Timothy 'Speed' Levitch
Mangina
Andy Morris
Gabrielle Penabaz
Nacho Platas
Stephanie Platas
Michael Portnoy
Adeo Ressi
Douglas Rushkoff
Ashkan Sahihi
Nancy Smith
Gabriel Snyder
Hilary Stabb	...	Herself
Tara Subkoff	...	(archive footage)
Nikolas Van Egten
Josh White
Fred Wilson
Jessica Zaino

Directed by
Ondi Timoner

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Ondi Timoner		writer

Produced by
Keirda Bahruth	....	producer
John Battsek	....	executive producer
Jeff Frey	....	co-producer
Meagan Keane	....	associate producer
Merritt Lear	....	associate producer
Sean McKeough	....	executive producer
Vasco Nunes	....	co-producer
Vladimir Radovanov	....	executive producer
Edward Salzano	....	associate producer
Ondi Timoner	....	producer
Austin Wilkin	....	associate producer

Original Music by
Marco D'Ambrosio		(co-composer)
Ben Decter

Cinematography by
Max Heller
Vasco Nunes
Ondi Timoner

Film Editing by
Joshua Altman
David Timoner		(addtional editing)
Ondi Timoner

Production Management
M. Elizabeth Hughes	....	production manager
Scott Pourroy	....	post-production supervisor

Sound Department
Rick Ballard	....	voiceover recording
Wade Barnett	....	supervising sound editor
James Berek	....	sound mixer
Michael Farkas	....	sound effects editor
Steve Hollenbeck	....	sound re-recording mixer
Travis MacKay	....	adr recordist
Mark Patino	....	sound mixer
Jon Tendrich	....	sound mixer
Eric Thompson	....	adr mixer
Wyatt Tuzo	....	sound mixer (multiple segments)
David Louis Zuckerman	....	sound recordist

Visual Effects by
J.S. Hart	....	visual effects producer
James Hart	....	visual effects producer
Richard Hirst	....	digital compositor
Wolfgang Maschin	....	inferno artist

Camera and Electrical Department
Lincoln Lewis	....	additional camera operator
Juan Gabriel Perez Arjona	....	"b" camera (uncredited)

Animation Department
Scott Marvel	....	mosaic graphic animation
Lindsay Zimmerman	....	mosaic graphic animation

Editorial Department
Kassi Crews	....	post-production coordinator
Tchavdar Georgiev	....	additional editor
Aaron M. Green	....	assistant editor
Jed Lackritz	....	second assistant editor
Merritt Lear	....	first assistant editor
Laura Madalinski	....	assistant editor
Eric Pritchard	....	first assistant editor
Mel Rodriguez	....	additional editing
Anton Salaks	....	first assistant editor
Sandra Valdivieso	....	second assistant editor
Christopher Makoto Yogi	....	second assistant editor

Music Department
Terri D'Ambrosio	....	score supervisor
Liz Gallacher	....	music supervisor
Alexandra Hill	....	music supervision executive
Scott Johnson	....	music editor

Other crew
Ryan Bowles	....	production coordinator
Jordan Graham	....	office coordinator
Caiti Hawkins	....	researcher
Alexandra Hill	....	music supervision executive
Kristin Lesko	....	archival consultant
Christin Mizelle	....	production coordinator
Sara Monacelli	....	sales promotion manager
Justin Okin	....	production assistant
Amanda Phillips	....	production coordinator
Lauren Ro	....	office coordinator
Christina Sahakian	....	production coordinator
Sandra Valdivieso	....	researcher

Thanks
Rick Ballard	....	special thanks
Jonathan Becker	....	special thanks
David H. Brooks	....	special thanks
Joshua Greenberg	....	special thanks
Allison Asay Sowers	....	special thanks
Anthony Tambakis	....	special thanks

Production Companies

• Interloper Films
• Pawn Shop Creatives

Distributors

• Abramorama (2009) (USA) (theatrical)
• Dogwoof Pictures (2009) (UK) (all media)
• Gravitas Ventures (2010) (USA) (video) (VOD)
• IndiePix Films (2010) (USA) (DVD)
• Mongrel Media (2010) (Canada) (DVD)
• More4 (2010) (UK) (TV)

Other Companies

• Digital Jungle  online editing
• Hearfilm  production sound equipment
• Murphy PR  publicity
• Wildfire Studios  adr recording facility
• Wildfire Studios  sound post-production

Also Known As:

Runtime:

USA:90 min (Sundance Film Festival)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

UK:15 | USA:Unrated

Company:

Interloper Films

Quotes:

Josh Harris:Lions and tigers used to be kings of the jungle and then one day they wound up in zoos - I suspect we're on the same track.

Soundtrack:

Moonage Daydream

A Fascinating Film about a Peculiar Internet Pioneer

This film was shown at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX after winning the grand jury prize at Sundance. It was well received in Austin as well. It is a fascinating look at the early days of the Internet through the biography of one its pioneers Josh Harris. The film is well-done in a technical sense and fascinating ride, but I'm not sure if it ever figures out if it's a history of an industry, a study of the social impact of Internet, or a biopic about the peculiar mad scientist, John Harris. It tries to be all of these things and thus perhaps undermines its own ability to completely succeed at any of them.

The film is informative in filling in some of the early history and Harris's key role with the mostly forgotten 1990s pioneering ventures of Jupiter Communications and Pseudo.com. But Harris seems to move away from his role as a computer nerd and begins to evolve into a dysfunctional performance artist who seems to want to demonstrate that the Internet will break down all remnants of human privacy. The film maker seems to want emphasize his visionary qualities in which he is predictive of today's MySpace and Facebook culture.

However, this reviewer doesn't find his bunker experiment or his living in public online to be particularly insightful or predictive. The whole concept was more-or-less foreshadowed in Jim Carrey's Truman Show in the 1990s. Nor is it particularly predictive. Harris was creating venues in which people were forced to live in public in front of cameras with predictably unhealthy and destructive results. Today, we choose voluntarily how much of our lives to allow the public – and really only our chosen friends – to view online. The difference between everyone's lives being on display and allowing our friends to see limited glimpses of our lives is vast. Harris seems like a tragic and self-destructive figure, who is constantly rewriting his own experiences in his own mind. He is estranged from his family and unable to establish and maintain intimate relationships.

In the end, he seems to have stranded himself on his own Gilligan's Island (with which he is obsessed). He is either a clown (another one of his characters) or simply a reclusive madman. The film provides an intriguing picture of an internet pioneer who went off the deep end, but I'm not sure if it achieves its goal of truly using Josh's experiences to critique the virtual world that he played a key early role in helping construct. The virtual world, for all its flaws, is not the world of total public voyeurism that Josh imagined it would become.