Friend, you're HOPELESSLY hooked!
Gentrification can be a plague, as it eats up neighborhoods.
That's what I love about documentary filmmaking, we never know where the story is going, we don't know what is going to happen next, and we're inside a culture of people that you have to figure out in many ways. It's a relationship between what you thought might have been the story, and what happens in the 'field. '
Every ten years or so, I liked to do a film about an artist - this allowed me to reflect on our own work.
Leon Golub was a painter. He was an artist struggling to make it in the New York City art world, but at the same time he was a very political guy, and engaged in the world around him. In the film, we saw how that world eventually encroached into his painting. One of my favorite lines in the film was how he had to be more precise, 'but now the pants have wrinkles, I hated to do it, but I had to do it. '
None of our films look alike, we are very dialectical in our approach to each one, and 'Hoop Dreams' was no exception. That's what I love about documentary filmmaking, we never know where the story is going, we don't know what is going to happen next, and we're inside a culture of people that you have to figure out in many ways. It's a relationship between what you thought might have been the story, and what happens in the 'field. ' Out of that comes the story, which was exactly what happened with 'Hoop Dreams. '
'Hoop Dreams'was an unbelievable struggle. We were trying to raise money in the midst of shooting it, and just explaining to people took a lot of effort. I remember talking to someone who should have gotten it, this person was in Public Television, and they didn't think we had a story, until 'maybe something bad happens to one of the boys. ' Besides being somewhat heartless, it was also wrong.
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
There are many ways in which people are made aware of their power to believe in the supremacy of Divine guidance and power: through music or visual art, some event or experience decisively influencing their life, looking through a microscope or telescope, or just by looking at the miraculous manifestations or purposefulness of Nature.
In the end, you can' t talk to everyone.
It's all right to be disillusioned, but you can't be disillusioning.