Lisa Sargese

Spiderman is real in the same way Santa Claus is real. Re-read “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” (http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/) where the editor writes that Santa exists just as sure as “love and generosity and devotion exist”........ There is all the stuff outside of our heads and then all of us from our particular points of view seeing, experiencing and interpreting that stuff. Your film is an interpretation, a point of view. Be authentic about your point of view and the story will write itself. Good luck!

Emmalene Pruden

Thank you for deciding not to fake peeping! I was worried when I read about the recreations…it seemed to go against any chance you had to really experience the peep culture.

Not everything will be exciting; that’s what will form your following. People want to watch other people being real. Being angry and stupid and clever…being human. It allows you a glimpse of what others see you as once it is all said and done.

I wish you the best of luck with the documentary!

Sally

You know, it’s difficult to get everything completely happening at the moment, in the real. There will always inevitably be an element of staged fakery because you have a camera crew and scheduling issues and all sorts of crap that you have to deal with in film life that doesn’t happen in real life. Still, you’d be surprised how real some of that is! For example, in the cell phone scene, although we had pre-bought the phone (completely unavoidable since we got a free one from Nokia and had to arrange for it in advance) we made sure to film Hal getting that phone for real for the first time and to just see how he reacted. It was totally real and very funny..because he was completely befuddled!

Similarly, even when we filmed him in the shower and doing the gardening, that stuff was pretty good because once he started actually doing it for real he just settled into his normal routine and we started getting some good stuff.

My biggest disappointment in the footage so far was in fact the interview which was the most ‘real’ component of the shoot. Hal and I talked about that and he confessed that his mind was elsewhere. He was getting ready for the big book tour and really hadn’t switched over to thinking clearly about the doc. In a way Hal was ‘faking it’ and that showed.

So it’s a combination of elements that are fusing together and developing into a rhythm. I think once Hal says good-bye to the book and really embraces the concept of the film it’ll start to jive. What I noticed with Hal on his tour is that he always has to be ‘on’ for his audience, and sometimes that was really tough! I was very impressed by the way he gave every little book store gathering the same presentation no matter what the size of the audience. He’s a real pro. I think up until now, however, the documentary has felt like just another book store presentation…and we are his audience. So that’s really where the fake feeling comes into it.

It’s up to me as a director to make that transition work and to make Hal feel comfortable. A challenge I will be pondering over the next week or so!