An invitation to a revolution.

Howdy friends.

I wanted to share the fruits of our labor again with you all. As many of you know, we have completed, edited, and released my first feature film FAILED STATE.

After realizing it would cost thousands more to do what they call QC in order to have the film “fit within specs” for Amazon and Hulu etc, we decided not to double our budget in order to line the pockets of Space billionaire Jeff and release the film our own. The idea being - we only need to find 10,000 people to watch our film to break even. We were not in it for likes or followers, but good old fashioned fans.

I’m aware that this could devolve into something akin to paid advertising on your local news channel for a new robot broom that specializes in pet hair removal, but I’d love to share what we have discovered about the intersection or art and commerce these days because buried in it may be keys for someone else to come up with an even better idea. Isn’t that what it is all about?

We treat https://ohkeydoh.com/ like a digital farmer’s market, but instead of buying scented candles farm to table - you get to but a film directly from the source. And not only that, you can choose how much you want to pay. Yes, we borrowed a pay what you want model that independent comics, and rock-n-rollers have been using for years to combat the changing economics of our times. I did that with intention because the great blight of second wave internet came for them first, so they have had the longest to adapt and survive.

What have I learned from this partisan, under ground punk rock experience?

We have to think creatively or so much art will be lost in the backwash of commerce. We have to lean into and invest in our community. And participate in it. And so I am inviting you to participate by navigating to ohkeydoh today and pay what you want. You get a private link and password sent to your email in addition to admittance to our screening room. It is easy, even I can figure it out.

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Another thing I’ve learned is the power of the status quo. I have seen the metrics. I know how hard it is to engage turn out in this time when we are experiencing an almost padlock inertia from the prolonged effects of algorithms, and autocracy. Everyday disenfranchisement is by design. It is a kinaesthetic response to the onslaught to simple check out. It is not a conspiracy. It is observable fact. We have all kind of gone asleep. Including me. So I know first hand how difficult it has been to engage with people to get them to trust and try something different right now.

One of our rally cries as we made FAILED STATE was to experiment with intention every step of the way. In how we made it - short days, not consecutive, what we made it on - an iPhone (even edited), and how we released it - ourselves. Under those actions was a principle that my friend and partner on the project, Mikey Philbrick, introduced me to. He said we must interrogate the idea “why do we keep doing the things the way we have always done things, when doing things the way we have always done them has brought us here?” Isn’t that the essence of creative and critical thought?

And what do we mean by “here?” Here is a time post pandemic, that has suffered work stoppages, union strikes, an exodus of film and TV, the shrinking of an industry into one or two “shops” and now being overrun by unchecked advancements in AI.

Yikes, right? But here is another way of re-framing that interlaced crisis as opportunity.

The times were and remain ripe for the counter culture to once again save the day. I don’t delude myself into thinking it is us, this rag tag group of misfits making a conspiratorial comedy on a phone that will do that. But what we belong to- WILL.

And what do we belong to? A movement of artists rising up all over who are thinking creatively to solve a revenue problem that all too long has left them behind ever since we blew up a perfectly good model and replaced it with some poison from the north in Silicon Valley. And it is happening in our cities as we rethink why are we doing things the way we have always done them when doing them the way we have always done them has brought us here?

I am sure you can ask yourself the same question in your own life. I invite you to, at least. After you watch Failed State. Like serious, what are you waiting for? A Failed State? Thanks for letting me share a little on a subject that is near and dear to my heart - that is, finding ways that might improve this untenable situation through community and innovation.

Lastly - its fucking funny. So go to Ohleydoh today, tell a friend and have a laugh. Don’t we all need one?

me laughing so hard because these barbacoa tacos in CDMX were that good. After visiting the pyramids.