Before the turn of the century, coffee shops and cafes used to be little oasis’ of independent local music, no-budget film screenings, and just a good place for people to sit and talk. Sometimes you’d have a date at one, in my case gauging the potential relationship by what the other drank (So, you ordered decaf, huh? Well, listen, it’s getting kind of late…). Coffee shops, especially when you grow up in a town where only one  out of every ten people could spell ‘existentialism’, were a place to meet others, and do as much or as little with what you had  as you wanted. 

Sure, there are coffee shops still around. I’m sitting in one right now (but we’ll come back to that in a minute). But that vibe? The comfy thrift store furniture and weird kitsch that would dress the walls? The slacker champions and the chess pro’s? I’m afraid they’re gone. B’bye… see you next time around. 

This is not the fault of Starbucks. They’re big, red, shiny and rich… but they’re not the target of our ire. Starbucks is actually a great company, and the benefits provided for their employees alone make me brand-loyal. But while the Starbucks and the Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gorilla’s have dominated a landscape that used to be privately owned, they didn’t kill the Coffee Shop. 

We did. 

Let’s admit it. Every time we wanted and wailed that our favorite coffee be available at the ungodly hour of the morning we had to wake up. Every time we wanted to do a meeting with a possible business partner or collaborator. Every time we complained because the coffee wasn’t quite right. Starbucks and their competitors didn’t have to fight their way in… we invited them. 

Don’t forget that a lot of coffee shops were, to be fair, dumps. Low rent meant greater survival in a fickle and sometimes niche market. With the recent real estate wave, where a art and beauty has given way to the Great God of Lifestyle, people were practically demanding a higher-scale establishment. Want that property value to increase, dammit!

(and if that little sentiment seems a little bitter to you, maybe a little too jaded to be true? Click HERE)

So, now I sit in the Tea Lounge, on Union Street in Brooklyn. I sit between two gentlemen who, like me, or doing their best to get some work done in an atmosphere more conducive to clear thought then an office, and without the distractions provided by home. We are three monkeys, all covering our ears, as hoards of power-broker mothers and snooty nannies cart truckloads of children to and fro. There’s a young man, playing guitar, and singing nursery rhymes at the top of his voice. For what must be the eight time in ten minutes, I want to kill him. In front of the children. 

Now, I could be biased. I don’t like children. They’re noisy, rude, you can trip over them really easy, and the smell of feces has ruined my coffee. If it shits in public, keep it out of my damn coffee shop. 

So, there you have it. What used to be a place of thought and independence is a day-care center for the perpetually bored. There isn’t a single book in sight, Beyonce on the radio, and all of a sudden a thought comes into my head. 

“Dammit. Where’s there a Starbucks when I REALLY need it?”

Happy New Year,

-J

First of all, a very happy holidays to you and yours. 

Now, Renee (my fiance, for those who don’t  know) and I started off our holidays by heading out to see her family in Baltimore. we had crab cakes, drinks, and a chance to see Gus Van Sant’s great new film “Milk”. Then it was off to North Carolina to see my family in Wilmington. 

Growing up in Upstate New York, I never had much of an interest in firearms. My father had a shotgun that he showed me how to use once, but after that I never pursued any kind of passion or interest in them. I was busy with art and music, and the growth and development of a rather dull social life. 

Not too long ago, I was invited to a firing range in the city. One of Renee’s friends from work had a membership, and she invited us to go along and fire some .22 rifles and see if we liked it. 

And boy, did we. 

Combining this with my interest (addiction) to online gaming, I have since grown fond of guns, and am constantly looking to shoot new and interesting ones. While in Oklahoma City in the summer, we had the opportunity to fire a .9mm Beretta, a .357 Magnum, and an A1 Springfield. The Beretta is a military issue automatic pistol, the Magnum a sizeable revolver (it can put a hole in an engine block, btw), and the Springfield is a sniper rifle from the days of WWII. Great stuff, McGruff. 

So, on Dec. 24th, Renee and I went to a shooting range here in Wilmington. The place was a tad hard to find, but when we did, we were invited to take a look at a variety of rifles and handguns. We had a choice of Glocks, Smith & Wesson’s, rifles of a type both antique and military… and then there was my Baby. 

My Baby is a gun I have wanted to fire for some time. It is a Belgium-made PS-90 (pictured above). Classified as a ‘personal defense weapon’, the ‘90 is a top fed semi-automatic (this one was, they can go full-auto) rifle, ambidextrous (the discharged shells come out of the bottom of the gun, God Bless It), and can feature a liquid-level balanced holographic sight through it’s scope. 

I took one look at this thing and knew that it was the one for me. The young man who helped us was ex-military, and resisted my urgent pleas to load the magazine because “you’d need a bit more training to figure out how to do it”. 

Taking it out to the range, it couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds. The kickback, however, was enough to bruise my shoulder and not go with another box of ammo. That being said, almost all of my shots were fatal for center-mass, and I could draw a line with bullets up the throat of the target. 

I loved it. And with it, I now love the world. 

So, from a coastal town in the Southern US, I wish you all once again the Happiest of Holidays. God knows Mine is.

(the following interview was a piece I had written on spec for Filmmaker Magazine. They didn’t decide to go with it, so now I present it for you…)

Josh Koury is a documentary filmmaker and festival programmer in New York. In 2002, Josh directed, shot, and edited a documentary entitled ‘Standing By Yourself’, chronicling the exploits of two minors in Upstate New York as they grow up, and apart, from each other. It was nominated for the 2002 Slamdance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary. 

Since then, Josh went on with pals Cris Moris and Myles Kane to establish the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival (B.U.F.F.). The festival was a celebration of independent and personal cinema, and ran for four years until it’s closing in 2006.

Now, two years later, Josh has teamed up with many of the faces from the Brooklyn Underground to bring us ‘We Are Wizards’, a documentary exploring the Harry Potter creative fan culture.

Recently, I sat down with my old friend to discuss ‘Wizards’, ‘Standing’, the nature of collaboration, and the final resting place of B.U.F.F.

JEREMY BERGER: So, Josh. You have a new documentary coming out, called ‘We are Wizards’. Talk to me about it. 

JOSH KOURY: ‘We are Wizards’ is a feature length documentary which tracks a select group of people who are involved in the Harry Potter fan culture. We chose about five that were really strong and we connected with who were really funny and interesting. We tracked them for the year before the final book came out. It’s more about the fan culture and the base that has been created through these writings, and what that means to all these people. Our goal was to go in there and find some specific people that not only represent (the fan culture), but that we also connect with and we feel like audiences can connect with. A film festival just contacted me, and the first thing he mentioned was that he’s never seen a movie, he’s never read the book, but it didn’t matter to him. It was still strong enough. That’s great. That’s what we wanted to do from the very beginning. 

JB: How did this idea begin off? How did this project begin for you?

JK: The film was directed by myself, it was produced by Gerald Lewis, who’s a long-time colleague with whom I have worked on some other films. Great guy. It’s edited by Myles Kane , who’s tremendous all around. Gaia Cornwall does the animation and Stan Oh is composing the film. Basically Gerald and I got together, and decided we wanted to make another movie. We hadn’t done a movie in a long time. Post-school, you get a lot of stuff going on, it’s hard to concentrate on creative work. So, we got together and decided we wanted to make something. That was the first time we threw out a whole bunch of ideas. One of them was a Potter film. It was the one that was most attractive to us, you know? Not only because the sub-culture is so massive, but also because it just felt like the right time. The reason that this film stood out, amongst the other four or five ideas that we had was because… if we were to make a movie about, let’s say, Tae Kwon Do, or something else that was happening, we could always make that. But if you’re going to make a movie about Harry Potter sub-culture, there’s only going to be one time to do that. And that’s now. Because you wouldn’t have another opportunity to do so.

JB: How did you first hear about this movement? Most of the people that I’ve talked to about this have been like ‘Wizard People? Wizard rock? What the hell is that?” 

JK:  I’ve read all the books and I was really intrigued by them. I knew that there was going to be a subculture there, a story to be told, but I didn’t know to what level. Melissa Anelli was the first person we interviewed who runs the Leaky Cauldron (www.the-leaky-cauldron.org), which is one of the biggest Harry Potter sites out there, she tuned me on to the Harry and the Potters, then I discovered the whole Wizard Rock phenomenon, and then it was Harry and the Potters that introduced me to Darius, The Hungarian Horntails. I started to understand it was more than about singing about books. I knew Brad Neely from a prior festival, I connected with Brad and turned it into a whole new direction. Heather Lawver, the last character, who did Potter Wars in 2001, strictly found her through the internet.

Times are different for documentary filmmakers now, because, everyone’s lives are out in the open, so they’re much less afraid of leaving their bubble, if you will. Of course it’s easier to communicate with people, but people in general are accessed, they’re already so used to being out there. They’re on myspace, they’re on facebook, everybody’s got a blog, everybody’s got a social site. You know, profile. So, finding somebody is really easy, and connecting with them on a personal level is much easier then it was before. 

JB: When I first saw the rough cut screening you had at Pratt (Institute), one of the things that impressed me was, and I’m hesitant to call it bravery, but the willingness of this subculture to stand up to the juggernaut that is Warner Brother’s Communications. At the end of the day, we’re still talking about creative works based off of an intellectual copywrite. 

JK: It was never our intention to represent Warner Brothers as a Juggernaut. We tried to give them as much respect as possible. But, I think if you’re talking along those lines, really, the character you’re speaking about is Heather. That was really one of the reasons we wanted to explore her and represent her, because, in a lot of ways, what she did in her movement changed the ways that Warner Brothers interacts with their fans. Right now they have a very, very good relation ship with their fans, they’re very respectful to them, and they offer them things, and they work with them. J.K. Rowling has always been incredibly supportive of her fans, a lot of that came to be because of what Heather did back in 2001. So, it was important to us to show her story, not only because she’s great, she has a wonderful, somewhat tragic, beautiful story to tell, but because she’s really the reason that this all exists. Warner Brothers, you got to give credit where credit is due, but she’s the one who sparked the fire, and started creating the dialog that changed things a bit. And this great fandom, that everyone loved and appreciates, the Wizard rock, the websites, the fansites, the reason that fan fiction is able to be out there and not torn down is because of this movement. Warner’s pretty cool, you know? They’re pretty cool and the gang these days. You just realize eventually that these are the fans that support you, everyone’s here for a good reason, and that’s important. They still step in, but it’s more along the reason of stopping pornographic material, that’s still all over the place. 

JB: It’s not the first time that we’ve seen a subculture spring up around what is basically, a piece of entertainment. We’ve seen it with Lord of the Rings, we’ve seen it with Star Wars…what makes this different?

JK: What’s really changed is not only the scope and the excellence of the writing, but we’re in a different age right now. The Communication Age. Where you can start a band, put it on myspace, get ten thousand people to listen to it, become friends with them, virtually, and the big leap is taking it to the big stage then. The fire starts burning, and people get interested in it, and it kind of spreads that way. You know, one of our professors in it, Dr. Henry Jenkins, said it’s kind of like old pirate radio. Where you would start these little communities, and they would start to gain more friends, but it was such a localized community, that it never really expanded into the world. But this is maybe 10,000 times fold, because these little viral communities can expand, can recreate and turn into this ultra network. Which crosses the globe, coming back to Heather. I mean, you really think a young woman in Virginia could start a global movement boycotting Warner Brothers/Harry Potter products without the internet? They were global, they were everywhere, and that happened because she was able to tap in, and utilize the internet in a way that people maybe hadn’t done before, or hadn’t realized that it could be. We’re seeing a whole new generation of tech kids  who are really savvy, and are able to do stuff that I can’t even understand. There’s a huge network out there that you are able to access, if you are willing to invest in it, personally, and utilize it. And that’s what these guys have done, and ultimately that’s the difference between other big fan subculture. 

JB: I’d love to talk about ‘Standing By Yourself’, a little bit. How did that project start off for you?

JK: That project started a little more slowly. I was in  school then, and I made a film with the two gents, the two little gentlemen that were in ‘Standing’ . My little brother and his friend Josh. It was a narrative film, and it was very ill-concieved, and it never really went anywhere, to my folly. But I fell in love with these kids, and I had a great time with them. At some point, I figured that if I was going to tell a story about these kids, why not tell a story about these kids, and go right to the point. I made a twenty minute short for my Junior class at Pratt Institute, and then the next year I decided to that that was going to be what I concentrated on for my senior thesis. I was almost 22 when I started it and I finished it when I was 24. it’s a different game now, I never really thought about film festivals. I was pleased as punch to even submit to a film festival. I was like ‘Cool. I have something that’s worth watching maybe’. 

And that’s also a good example of the way the times have changed, you know? There’s a lot more film festivals out there now, but the way that the technology has advanced, it’s not just a film festival. People are used to showing their stuff on Youtube, used to showing their stuff on Myspace, putting their stuff out there and getting criticized, getting praise for their work, and back in the day, it wasn’t like that for me. It was getting twenty five people together, maybe having a show on campus where you can muster up sixty people and give them beer, so they stay. You show them a bunch of work, and hopefully, they like it. Times have changed, yeah.

JB: I worked a little on Standing by Yourself. And you had a very organic approach to that. How has your process changed since then?

JK: I have never in the past considered myself  a classic documentary filmmaker. I was always very taken with Avant Garde in my younger years, like Bruce Conner, and Joe Gibbons, and all these personal documentarians and filmmakers, who had great work and would get into the Whitney Biennial, and it would be celebrated within a small community, while the mainstream rarely had any idea who these people were. I loved that and I celebrated that. But now I’ve grown up a little bit. I’ve seen so much that it’s, its just sharpened me a bit. And attacking this film, it was just a totally different animal, because it was shot and it was produced as if it was a documentary ready for film festivals, packaged for film festivals. I mean, that’s the big indie dream, the difference between now and then is that I made this film, not necessarily with the intention of selling it, but with the possibility if all the cards played right, maybe there’s a sliver of a chance. 

JB: We started making films when we were what? Fourteen? Fifteen? 

JK: Yep. 

JB: Both you and I are of the D.I.Y. School of filmmaking.  But this piece was a lot more collaborative. How did you take to that?

JK: First of all, I literally could not have made this film without the work of everyone who worked on it. And that’s important too, because from the limited amount of people that we’ve shown the film too so far, one of the great comments that I have heard is that you can feel all of our voices in that film. And that’s a beautiful testament to a collaborative piece of art. And I celebrate that. I understand that, in my past, my prior days, I was a bit of a whip cracker  and it, you know, how do you say nicely, that I was a bit…

JB: A slave driver.

JK: Yeah. A control freak, if you will. But look. I couldn’t have made the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival by myself. The Hamptons Film Festival, working as a programmer, everything is a collaborative effort. You grow up and you learn that you’re not the center of the universe (laughter) and everyone has incredible things to offer. The people I work with are trully talented in what they have to offer. You know, Gerald is a great thinker, he is. He connects well with people on the shoot, you know what I mean?

JB: Yeah.

JK: Myles is a great problem solver, and is one of the best editors that I’ve ever worked with. Gaia is an amazing animator, she brought a lot to the table. Stan is a wonderful musician. It’s like making anything. It’s like making a film festival. It’s not his vision or her vision or your vision or whatever. Everyone has their level of control over that piece of the bigger picture. I mean, if it was one person cracking the whip on ten people, that wouldn’t be a good festival, it wouldn’t be a good film, that wouldn’t be a good anything. It’s the person who brings in all the right people who have incredible talents, ultimately all working towards the same goal. Much like when you watch this film, you can sense everyone’s personal presence as well. And that stuff’s important.

JB: Now what’s the future? What’s the next step? Are we going to have to wait another five or six years before you come out with another doc?

JK: No, hopefully not. Brooklyn Underground ran for about four years. Five years, including a year we took off, and did independent cinema for about four months. After five years of running it, Myles and I, everybody, essentially, decided that it was the end of it. Mostly because we wanted to be back in our filmmaking careers. If you have so much stuff on the table especially when you have creative projects that you aren’t getting paid for, it’s mostly a side project, that becomes your film, becomes your creative outlet. It becomes increasingly difficult to juggle more things. So we decided that if we were ever going to get serious about making films again, we’d have to kill our little baby, the Brooklyn Underground. And we did. And the good thing about that is that two years later, we have something that we feel strongly about. We have something that’s going to do well. So that means that it was worth it, for us. Now that we’ve created this, I’m ready to jump right into something else. I don’t know exactley what it’s going to be yet, but we’re talking to everybody and getting them ready. 

You can check out more of We Are Wizards at wearewizards-themovie.com

My first feature-length screenplay is finished! “Benny Burns’s Guide to the Apocalypse” was finished last night, at about one in the morning. I went around, ran a few copies off, and have passed them to the many people who have helped me with the vast learning curve between shorts and features. I’m going to give myself a few days off (Ha… I should say, writing the next), and then it’s off to festivals! I am officially celebrating with a cup of coffee and… well, see the prior post.