Coming back to Chicago from the 1984 World Series of Poker tournament at Binion's Horsehoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas was like watching The Wizard of Oz in reverse.
The technicolor hyperbole of the Strip giving way to the slate gray skies and brick tenements of the Milwaukee Avenue neighborhood where I then lived.
We had a lot of great footage in the can, but we were as busted flat as one of the poor-luck gamblers we had been filming, so we had few resources to complete our documentary. Our cameraman, Jean de Segonzac, who went on to cement his reputation as "the human steadicam" on pioneering shows like "Homicide: Life on the Streets" and "Oz" for HBO, had studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, and his teacher there was a Polish emigre named Marion Marzynski.
"Marz" as he was affectionately known to his students, (including Gus Van Sant the director of "Milk") took us under his wing and became our editor, post production supervisor, sound mixer and godfather to get us to an answer print.
In hindsight, the 30 minute documentary we came up with to fit the format we thought we needed to sell the program to television, probably left too much blood on the cutting room floor. I wish I still had all of the original footage of the interviews we conducted with these Poker Legends, as so many of them are no longer with us, and their way of life and world view and insights into the game would be fascinating to revisit for a new generation of fans.
"Pokertown" did air on Public Television in most of the country, and on a few cable networks, but our big gamble did not really pay off, as the investors who backed the project did not recoup their money from these few broadcasts. We were just too far ahead of our time.
But, unlike the high stakes gamblers who use money and chips as a means to "keep score", for me the measure of success of any project also comes with the experience of doing it, the people you meet along the way, in front of and behind the camera, and the lessons learned, relationships formed, and experiences earned.
The journey truly IS the destination, and I'll never forget when my road took me through Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada back in the spring of 1984.
william
The "Human Steadicam" is a very funny nickname! This was a great mini-series of posts. You've whetted my appetite. Any way you can shop around this documentary for PBS so that I could see it?
Posted by: dutchbaby | February 10, 2009 at 04:24 AM
From your perspective as a Producer and someone who has a library of projects that include "Pokertown" do you see a channel for potential distribution that could satisfy an audience hunger at the same time, minus theatrical, cable, or broadcast contracts could be made available for viewing? Although I find it astonishing the amount of video footage and material now available on the internet, through YouTube and other sources, in some ways the "promise" of independent, alternative, artistic, and mature media is still limited in the realm of "video-on-demand."
And over the years there is a lot of product out there that, rightfully so, never could survive the business model of traditional theatrical distribution. It only makes sense that releasing and distribution companies "get their money back" as well as the producers and investors but what about films, dramatic and documentary, that could have a financial reward outside the film print circuit? What about dramatic and documentary films that have run their financial course or will never be released but serve a general interest in being seen?
Could there be a low-cost, low-risk channel of on-demand distribution that would serve both the audience and the rights holders?
Posted by: Robb Mitchell | February 13, 2009 at 09:34 AM