Smile of the Week: Marc Erlbaum’s Progress on “The Meaning of Life”

Posted on July 30, 2012 at 9:41 pm

I was delighted to get an update from Marc Erlbaum about what has happened since our interview about his new documentary on what people think about the meaning of life.  Here’s his latest, a sweet reminder that while we sometimes focus on all that is wrong so that we can work to make it better, sometimes it is just as important to focus on what is right.

And here is an interview with a man who wants to help us see what — and who — we over look.

I’ve added my support to this wonderful project and if you want to find out more and look at additional stories about what people find meaningful, check out lifemeanswhat.com

 

 

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Interview: Gavin Bellour of “A Buddy Story”

Posted on May 22, 2012 at 12:13 pm

A Buddy Story” is an endearing road trip movie written and directed by Marc Erlbaum.  It is the story of a touring musician who is used to being alone and his neighbor who impulsively comes with him.  The neighbor is played by “Mad Men’s” Elisabeth Moss and the musician is played by real-life musician and actor Gavin Bellour who talked to me about preparing for the role and what he learned.  The movie also features real-life reggae star Matisyahu and is now available on iTunes.

How did you come to play this part?

I saw the breakdown and it was something I was really interested in — singer/songwriter, story of love, pursuit of one’s dreams — and the opportunity to do some music.  There was not a completed script yet so it was great that I could contribute to helping shape the character and put more of myself into it, blur the lines a bit between Buddy and Gavin.  The perception of acting is that it is all a put-on and in a sense it is but any truly good performance is going to bring as much of the actor to it.  You can only draw from your experiences.  Two amazing actors can read the same role and give amazing performances but each one of them will bring what’s best about them and what they have experienced.  Casting can be like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.

What experiences did you bring?

I’ve been in bands and I’ve been on the van.  I’ve been on the road, playing shows t for tons of people, one night for nobody where you booked the wrong thing or didn’t promote it right and nobody knows you’re there.  I’ve lived in that world, where one night you’re opening for someone you really , so to take that experience of going back to the hotel room and having someone you can go out with and joke with and share it with.  It can be incredibly fun sometimes when you have a great show and a great location but it can also have enormous lows as well as highs.  Buddy was this poor guy demonstrating his belief in himself and what he did but being alone all the time.  I like to read the lines and see what the scene brings and not overthink it.  The script was written well enough and the environment and truth of the scenes was so real it was a very fun kind of project to work on.  I brought my own experience and twisted in a way to make it more like Buddy.  A bit more neurotic here, more shyness to make it more Buddy and less Gavin, and almost an element of desperation that I love about Buddy.  He’s willing to do whatever just because he wants to keep playing.

Tell me about working with Marc Erlbaum.

He’s very hands-off, but he is there when you need him.  He doesn’t do line readings, which I like a lot.  He is a very deep guy, very spiritual.  People sometimes exude that and it’s a bit of a put-on and they have to try to be serious but he has a rootedness that allows him to be very playful, and he brings a lot of joy with his depth.  One day after I had to go to LA and was stressed out and I had to do the monologue and was under a lot of pressure because we had to finish before the light changed, and we were shooting things out of sequence and I snapped a little bit and just lost it.  I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole thing but he made it he took me aside and took the responsiblity off of me and told me to just be in the scene.  He allowed me to be in that moment and do what was in front of me and it made it tremendously easier to make a mistake — and when you’re not worried about it you don’t really make them, you know?

What does Buddy learn?

I think of that scene with him and Matisyahu.   He likes doing what he is doing but he wasn’t really helping anyone.  He has a dark night of the soul.  But when he realizes he did help one person, that helps him to understand that if he inspired someone else he does have an impact and that inspires him to reconnect with his dreams.  He did have some power — even if it is small, it is impactful, and sometimes that is the most important.

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Interview: Writer-director Marc Erlbaum Asks About the Meaning of Life

Posted on May 14, 2012 at 4:32 pm

I am always happy to talk to Marc Erlbaum, who makes films that inspire and challenge as they entertain.  I love his audacious new project.  He is “crowd-funding” a new film about the biggest question of all: the meaning of life.

Where did this idea come from?

I’ve been researching crowdfunding sites lately because we’re considering a campaign to raise money to do a soundtrack for my film “A Buddy Story.”  I get requests all the time for the soundtrack of my last film “Café,” but the distributor never produced one, so this time we’re thinking about doing it ourselves.  Simultaneously, we have this great facebook community for my company, Nationlight Productions, and so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to keep people entertained, engaged and energized on a regular basis.  As I was exploring the crowdfunding sites, it occurred to me that it would be great to come up with a huge campaign to involve people in something big and meaningful and push the envelope a little bit.

What is crowd-funding and why is it the best way to launch this project?

Crowdfunding is this innovative and alternative way for people to get projects funded.  Rather than raising large amounts of funds from traditional investors, it’s a way to harness the communal spirit of the internet to pitch a huge number of people on giving you a small piece of your goal.  For the one raising the funds, it opens up a tremendous potential funder base.  For those contributing, it offers the opportunity to get behind something from the inception and help it along toward realization.

As far as this particular project goes, crowdfunding is the best way to launch it for 2 reasons:

 

1)    Pragmatically, it would be hard to convince someone to invest the requisite funds for this – the revenue potential is iffy at best, and frankly it’s a bit hair-brained (but in a good way!).  With crowdfunding, the contributors aren’t looking at the financial revenue potential, they’re supporting something that interests them, and they’re more concerned with helping out and being entertained than they are with fiscal rewards.

2)    Ideologically, I believe the “meaning of life” probably has something to do with community and generosity.  Undertaking this kind of project with thousands of collaborators is much more exciting than going about it yourself or with a few people looking over your shoulders to see if you’re making the most commercial decisions.  We’re going to be asking our contributors where to point our cameras – they’re feedback and participation is what’s going to make this interesting.

 

Where do most people get their ideas about the meaning of life?

Good question.  My sense is that most of the time we’re too busy or distracted to think about the meaning of life.  Those who are involved in some sort of spiritual practice – whatever it may be – do seem to tend to set aside a fixed amount of time either each day or each week to consider the bigger questions, but then we get engrossed in our mundane affairs and we may lose consciousness of what’s really essential.  My goal has always been to try to keep my head in the clouds and my feet on the ground – engage in the world, but don’t lose awareness of a higher purpose, and never stop trying to figure out what that is at any given moment.

 

Where will you find your interview subjects?

From the Beliefnet files of course!  The truth is that we’ll be doing a lot of research on our part to find both known and obscure figures who have something to say about life and its meaning.  But we’ll also be looking to our contributors and fans to make suggestions – someone’s shoemaker may be an amazingly profound person who no one has never thought to interview before.

 

How will you keep your funders up to date?

We’re going to launch a website called lifemeanswhat.com (I’ve already paid $9.99 for the url, so I better raise this million dollars!)  In addition to videos that we plan to post a couple times a week, we’re also going to have an ongoing blog which will keep everyone right there with us every step of the way.

 

Why is making a movie a better way to explore this question than writing a book?

The primary output of this project will be a year’s worth of web content which we may or may not decide to compile into a feature film when we’re done.  Contributors are buying into a year long experience rather than a one-time program.  I think this will feel more like one’s along for the ride rather than just getting it all at once.  One could do it as a serialized print piece, but I’m a visual storyteller, so I’m probably a bit biased toward visual media.  What I really love about doing this as a web project is the transmedia opportunity to document our search in so many different ways.  There are some who love to read, and those who never read anymore – so I think we’ll have something for everyone.

 

Why is this question so hard to answer?

That’s too hard, I can’t answer that!

But that won’t stop me from giving my opinion of course.  I think that everyone wants meaning, but a lot of people don’t want it to be shoved down their throat.  And we’re suspect of those who try to push it on us.  How do I know that your meaning is THE meaning?  Is there only one meaning, or can everyone have his/her own meaning?  Unfortunately, purveyors of meaning have often exploited something pure for purely selfish aims, so we don’t know who to trust and we’d often just prefer to distract ourselves with more immediate concerns than wander into those murky waters.

 

Why is it important?

My goal is not to push any one meaning of life.  What’s important to me is to encourage people to search for it.  There are those who believe there is no meaning, and others who have never really been encouraged to stop what they’re doing and look around.  My feeling is that if we can make the search fun and relevant, people will be surprised what they find even if the ultimate riddle still remains to be solved.

 

Who have been your most important guides and teachers in answering this question?

My parents taught me to always think outside the box.  My wife and children teach me that every moment is precious.  The Baal Shem Tov taught that it is not enough to find one’s own way, but each of us needs to carry a torch that shines a light for those around us as well.

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Live Together — from Nationlight

Posted on April 15, 2011 at 5:51 pm

From Marc Erlbaum of Nationlight Productions:

Anyone following the world news the past couple months is aware that something huge is brewing.  Is it good or bad – that’s not clear quite yet.  But what is clear is that the internet is changing everything and giving us all the incredible ability to impact things far beyond our former reach.  An email shoots around the globe instantly and who knows how many people are affected by it.  Individuals and groups worldwide can bond, encourage, and support one another, and millions of people who have been restricted to propaganda from their censored and state-controlled media are now exposed to global views and brand new possibilities.

With this in mind, we decided to reach out to people all over the world to help make a 3 minute video to encourage tolerance, coexistence, and peace.  Not sure how far it will go, but we figured it was worth a try and at the very least a handful of us have spent a few minutes trying to do something rather than just waiting to see what happens.  There’s always the possibility that it could strike a chord and get passed around, and if even 1 person somewhere sees this and is moved to stand up against corruption and violence, then it will have been worth the time.  Please watch it, and it would be great if you could forward it on to your friends/lists. It’s amazing how tremendous an impact one can achieve with a few minutes and a simple push of a button in our ultra-networked world.  Thanks for your time and your help!

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Interview: Marc Erlbaum, Maker of Inspiring Films

Interview: Marc Erlbaum, Maker of Inspiring Films

Posted on November 14, 2010 at 8:28 am

Marc Erlbaum wants to make films that touch people’s souls. He is the man behind Nationlight Productions, a film and television production company focused on creating inspiring, meaningful content for mainstream audiences of all backgrounds and affiliations. He was nice enough to take some time to answer my questions about his company and his films.

How did this project get started?

I’m a film-maker. I had made a couple of small films that I wrote and directed and about a year and a half ago I formed this company, Nationlight Productions, with an explicit mandate to make more positive and uplifting films. That was what I was doing already with my projects but I thought the time was right to create a more structured company focused on that mission. So we went out and raised money from some philanthropists who were interested in affecting the world through positive mass media. We made this film “Cafe,” an ensemble drama that we shot here in Philadelphia, that tracks intersecting stories of the patrons and workers in a little cafe, all of whom are dealing with life challenges. It’s infused with spirituality, but most of my work is about putting that in a subtle way.

One of the characters is a guy who’s always sitting in the cafe on his laptop and a young girl appears on his computer screen one day and informs him that he and everyone else in the cafe are avatars in a virtual world she has created. And of course he doesn’t believe her at first. But then things start to happen exactly as she says it will. Ultimately, it becomes a conversation with the Creator, an allegory. She wants him to do something and he asks her why she doesn’t make him and she explains she has built free will into the program. There’s nothing explicitly religious or spiritual but ultimately it is a meditation on a conversation with God.

What is your background? Have you studied theology?

I am a religious Hassidic Jew myself. I was not born that way but got into it in college and became very committed. But our goal, as someone who grew up very mainstream and very secular, my goal is not to preach to the choir but to create content that is going to appeal to people who are more like those I grew up with and instill some thematics without being heavy-handed or didactic.

Why do mainstream films stay away from spiritual themes?

Appealing to people’s baser natures is an easy way to make a buck. It’s easier to seduce people than it is to challenge them. What’s happening in recent years is that people are saying, “We’re not as ignorant as you think we are. If you do challenge us and provide us with messages of hope and redemption, that will appeal to us more than all the thrillers and genre stuff you’ve been feeding us.”

What films inspire you?

The films that don’t preach but that have inspiring themes without being heavy-handed, like “The Matrix,” which has a real message that this reality we’re living in is only superficial and there’s something much deeper. A similar thematic was developed in “The Truman Show.” And others, obvious but just as powerful, “Freedom Writers,” “Pay it Forward,” “The Blind Side.” That’s a great example of a mainstream film with positive values at its core.

What makes your company different?

We are unabashed in our mission. When I started writing, I wrote something with a clear moral framework. I was put in touch with a producer who demoralized me and told me that any art with an agenda is not art at all. I studied literature and I certainly have experienced that intellectual elitism. But we do have a mission and we are not afraid to say that. Great art has the ability to inspire. The images people expose themselves to will affect their outlook and their conduct. If we can participate in that, don’t we have a responsibility to do that in a positive way?

Michael Medved’s book Hollywood vs. America: The Explosive Bestseller that Shows How-and Why-the Entertainment Industry Has Broken Faith With Its Audience inspired me early on. He says if you’re telling me that visual images don’t affect people’s action, the advertising industry should return all those billions of dollars. “The Passion of the Christ” really proved that there is a huge audience that really wants these films. There was a story in the Wall Street Journal: “They’ve seen the light and it is green.” So Hollywood is following the money trail.

Anybody who has strong beliefs or opinions will have to face people who don’t agree with them. You can either go through your life backing off or taking a stand. Even before I was religious I was always raised to take a stand. My personal and religious beliefs are that you don’t try to force anyone but if you act with kindness, the majority of people will respond with kindness.

What is the status of your films?

“Cafe,” with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy, won the Crystal Heart award at the Heartland Film Festival. “Everything Must Go” stars Will Ferrell as a guy who loses his job and his wife and hits rock bottom before he can pick himself up and start over again. It co-stars Rebecca Hall and Michael Pena. That will be released this spring.

How can people stay in touch with what you’re doing?

We’re really focused on building up a community of people who are interested in our mission and our content. So we’ve launched a community page for Nationlight on Facebook. We want people to come on and say “We want more positive fare.” It’s really a call to action. The more people we have on this community, the more we’ll be able to do.”

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