WE LIVE IN PUBLIC: On DemandMarch 11, 2010

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the perspective of watching them from the comfort of your home. This week, Gravitas Ventures WE LIVE IN PUBLIC. Learn more about Gravitas with our one-on-one interview with founder Nolan Gallagher here.

Award-winning director Ondi Timoner’s (DIG!) latest documentary comes to Video On Demand. WE LIVE IN PUBLIC covers the career of who the film feels is “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, Pseudo founder Pseudo Josh Harris. Not dissimilar to DIG!’s main subject, the rock band’s Brian Jonestown Massacre’s lead man Anton Newcombe, Timoner has found a public visionary that goes to the beat of his own drum, even if that means destruction.

The film’s decade-long journey following Harris also wants to be a cautionary tale of the internet controlling our lives. “Everything he does is a precursor to something that will happen to all of us,” said Josh Harris’ brother Tom.

Harris, once called the “Warhol of the Web”, made his first fortune with his consulting and analysis firm Jupiter Communications. In the mid 1990’s he then launched Pseudo, an internet network of web-based video programs. It was with Pseudo where he became a more public figure, including threatening to replace entrenched networks like CBS on 60 Minutes of all places. His peculiarity would then reveal itself when he descended into his elderly, clown-like character Luvvy, who he channeled from Gilligan’s Island and perhaps his version of his estranged mother.

Following the success of Pseudo, the artistically frustrated Harris then funded controversial multimedia projects: In 1999, with the new millennium approaching and Y2K front and center in the public mind (thanks to overhyped media). he created “Quiet,” a basement of pods for people to live in equipped with cameras and TVs. Everything was provided for the participants, but Harris made it clear he owned the video. What could go wrong in a bunker complete with free food, an armory of guns and its own “Interrogation Artist?” Lucky for them, the New York City police shut it down.

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