Independent America

Hyperlocal

My favorite meal from our recent, long-overdue vacation last month was so intensely local in its ingredients, it could only be described as...hyperlocal.

Heather picked tomatoes, figs and lemons from the garden at our B&B in Lucca Italy, with the blessing of our hostess, Lucia.  The northern Tuscan town is famous for its meats, so we picked up a nice mixture of ground pork, veal and beef from a butcher shop inside the old city's walls ten minutes away.  Both the olive oil and wine (less than $10 each) were Luccan as well.  The only thing we couldn't truly account for was the pasta, but we're pretty sure it was Italian...as was our small car, an Alfa Romeo.

So these little moments of local delight help confirm our change in lifestyle since we set out on our expedition two and a half years ago.  It has all culminated in a move to Seattle, to live in a corner of the city where we've quickly befriended our neighbors, where I bike to our co-op for groceries, and where I get to explore the use of digital technologies in community building (great local examples: West Seattle Blog, Citizen Rain and Seattle Chic) in my new position at the nearby University of Washington.

IA in BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek.com just posted an excellent article about "Independent America," including an interview with us about how small business is doing in the Big Box era.  This is probably the best representation of the message we're trying to convey through the documentary.

And just in case, part 4 and part 5 of our Yahoo! series are now up on the Hot Zone site.

Yahoo! for the Holidays

There's something to be said for momentum.  We truly expected Independent America to be winding down by now.  Instead, Australia has overcome the "tyranny of distance" to give us our single-best sales and feedback boost after the film was broadcast there at the end of November (thanks Oz! I'll answer some of your questions in the continuation below).

And we're excited to announce our new partnership with Yahoo! News just in time for the holidays.  On Monday, December 11th, Yahoo!'s "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" will feature "Independent America" with different clips from the film every day, and interviews with Heather and me.  It's part of Kevin's desire to highlight "documentaries of conflict" that cover stories the mainstream media miss, before he sets out on his next road trip.

The first time I met Kevin was in Macedonia, when we were both there to cover the war in Kosovo for NBC News.  The last time I saw Kevin was in Israel in 2004, after we had spent a few weeks in Baghdad, once again for NBC.  We share the same philosophy about using "backpack journalism" technology to cover stories that the networks don't, won't or can't.  Most appropriately, Kevin's house was our last stop during the pilot trip for "Independent America" along Pacific Highway 101 back in 2003, before we headed back north.

Now we have this great collaboration just in time for the holidays.  Many people have asked me how they can shop more locally, and "independently" -- especially during the Christmas rush.  It is a challenge, particularly because independent toy stores have been decimated first by Toys R' Us (who were then, fittingly, chewed up by a bigger fish: Wal-Mart).  But it can/should be done.  People just need to know where to go.  Take, for example, this article from Austin, TX: "Holiday Shopping: The Anti-Mall."  Or give our DVD as a stocking stuffer!

The Audience is Listening

Hello from Port Townsend WA. Where 'Independent America' was just awarded the prize for 'Audience Favorite.' Festival organizers told me 'nothing else came close.'

The beautiful Rose Theatre here is filled beyond capacity. Guess word got out quickly.  The film looked better than it ever has on this screen: all the pain and effort that went into shooting it in HDV, and then editing and transferring it to digibeta paid off.  Even the projectionists were commenting on the richness and visual quality of the documentary.

This all means so much to us. Everything about Independent America has been 'bottom up' (as opposed to the usual 'top down' in media dissemination). From the premise of the movie itself - communities taking back control from corporations - to how we shot and distributed it ourselves. And so, when the audience votes overwhelmingly in our favor, it just seems right.

Thank you Port Townsend.  Monday night, we're first up as part of "A Moveable Fest" -- where the best films from the festival are brought even closer to Seattle.  So 7:15 Monday night at the Lynwood Theatre on Bainbridge Island.  See you there?

(Just in case you're new to the Independent America movement, check out some of the reviews we've received...including our interview on ABC News).  And here's the Seattle Times wrap-up of the festival...which also mentions our win.

Three Screenings & Three Stars

We first envisaged "Independent America" as a quick U.S. broadcast sale and maybe a follow-up book.  And then we could happily move on to the next project.  None of that has really happened.

Instead, it's the documentary that just won't die.  My adoptive homeland here in the Pacific Northwest (and Heather's home and native land), will play host to three (3!) screenings this month.  The Port Townsend Film Festival will show both the 81-minute version and the 52-minute edition in the main theatre on Sept. 15th and 16th respectively.

And then the festival extends into the Seattle area with a special screening on September 19th, at the Historic Lynwood Theatre on Bainbridge Island.

The organizers of these events have kindly invited us to participate.  Of course we'll attend, mainly because Port Townsend and Bainbridge Island are both fabulously beautiful...

A year ago, I was still slaving away on editing the documentary.  So it amazes us that we continue to get bulk purchases for the DVD.  And, the reviews keep rolling in.  Here's a good one published this week by Film Freak Central, which gives us three stars.

We happily accept that "Independent America" might have found more financial success as a Moore-like diatribe.   But that would have just added to the shoutfest that constitutes national debate these days.  For what purpose?  McDonald's sales continue to rise despite "Supersize Me."  Greenwald's Wal-Mart film will go down in history not as quality cinema, but more as a clever way to raise funds for the 21st century version of a "smudged pamphlet" distributed on the street.  Then again, his DVD sold 100,000 copies, and he's moved on...

Road Trip Independent America Style

The May long weekend signals the start of summer road trip season in North America.  Except gas prices might intimidate us road warriors.  We're grateful we did IA last year, when it was about 60 cents a gallon less.

Still, if you're going to hit the road, we encourage you to do it Independent America-style.  Stick the secondary highways.  They're more scenic, more interesting and are home to some unique retail experiences.  And of course, patronize Mom & Pop as much as you can.  We guarantee that you'll have a much more fun, and more often than not, have a more memorable time.  Just watch our DVD to find out how!

And as I learned at the fabulous Sustainable Business Network conference in Philadelphia last week, as oil prices increase, so does the importance of "local" and food security.  Until now, cheap oil allowed us to travel far afield to find the cheapest labor and cheapest products.  Hence the rise of the big box store, their really big parking lots and their worldwide distribution and supply system.

But as gas prices rise, it makes more sense to find what we need closer to home.  In fact, it becomes more crucial that we can find those essentials closer to home to ensure our security and survival.  This is a point that Judy Wicks, owner of the famous White Dog Cafe, and godmother to the local economy movement stressed at the conference.  That high oil prices are the worst thing that could happen to our national economy -- and possibly the best thing for our local marketplace.

ABC: The Influentials

Click on the player below to watch our entire 16-minute appearance on ABC News Now's "The Influentials."  Anchor Hari Sreenivasan was terrific, as was his producer Katie.  She was the one who selected the Vermont general store sequence for the interview, since she had fond recollections of Dan & Whit's from her college days!

This, and seeing many of our good friends in New York City, made last week's screening all the more important to us. (Update: ABC says the interview excerpt that they posted to their site yesterday was in the top ten of videos viewed online.)

Our Wikipedia mention

We noticed this a while back, but neglected to point it out.  But we're proud to be part of Wikpedia's Wal-Mart entry (in the Documentary section).

For those of you who are just tuning into the Internet's community-created encyclopedia, here's a good primer on it.  Or just look up "Wikipedia"...in Wikipedia!

How To See Independent America

Many people are beginning to ask how they can acquire a copy of "Independent America" to show to their friends and community.  We're working on that right now, in collaboration with a number of independent, locally-minded organizations across North America.

We're excited that there's so much interest out there.  We intend to make the movie available within the first week of November, along with the rollout of our new Independent America website.  So stay tuned to http://www.independentamerica.net for details on how you can request a DVD.

Hanson and Heather

The Movie Trailer - Update

You can now watch the definitive six minute, twenty-five second trailer for "Independent America: The Two Lane Search for Mom & Pop" in high resolution on our HRH Media website.  It should start playing almost immediately if you have a high-speed connection
(and the latest version of Quicktime), Windows XP/2000 or a Mac.

UPDATE: Although that's the best way to view the trailer, we've added two other options -- though they're not quite as sharp.  The first alternative is to go to our Independent America video clips page and select "Movie Trailer."  The second is to watch it in the player below.

I apologize for all the choices, but I'm a stickler for production values.  For those who care, Option #1 is an H.264 file, which is a really efficient compressed version of our 1080i HDV trailer.  Option #2 is your standard MPEG-4 file which should work anywhere.  And Option #3 below is the equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy: from 1080i HDV to AVI file to whatever it is that Audioblog.com does to it to post it to our site.

Although I've sworn off war zones --- except for the metaphorical one we discovered in Independent America -- this documentary would not have been made without them.  It was our road trip after my six months stint during "Operation Iraqi Freedom" back in 2003 that first inspired us to look for an unchained America.  It was the joy I experienced in Israel/Palestine, on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, and going live from one of Saddam Hussein's oil rigs, by experimenting with the latest digital technology under extreme conditions.  It was my last stint in Baghdad that helped finance our trip.

When I returned from that last assignment, I met Tom Powers, who would later become our collaborator and executive producer.  The film would have been far less interesting had we not stumbled across an old contact of mine from my Tel Aviv days, Chris De Witt.  She adopted us once we hit her hometown of Austin, and made sure we got the attention and interviews we needed for the rest of our trip.  And much of the music you hear in the trailer was composed and recorded by our friend Hyshi.  He's a Kosovar Albanian whom I met during the war in the former Yugoslavia.  He now lives -- and jams -- in Toronto (I composed the title sequence and the closing music).

War.  What is it good for?  Sometimes a few things.