Hello, fellow documentarians!
I'll get right to the heart of it all.
During the 90s, I was the most nostalgic person in the world.
How so? I systematically saved 14 years of answering machine messages from 1988-2002.
Allow me to share some context around why I saved them.
First, I deeply loved the sound of (some) voice. Whether music, the sound of actors in film and TV, or the sound of people leaving me or my family messages. The sound of some voices thrills me.
Oh, and I also lost my father when my parents divorced at age 5. And he then started a new family in a different state.
I was shattered.
You see, overnight my relationship with him became relegated to the phone and answering machine messages. I felt like the Little Prince who was alone on the moon and could only see his dad with his little telescope.
Phones were my lifeline to my dad. His voice kind of was him.
And it did not hurt that he was almost a professional storyteller.
So, that's some context for why, when I was old enough, I decided to save each and every one of my friends and familys' answering machine messages. For 14 years. Obsessive? Maybe, but the truth as usual is more nuanced and interesting.
My documentary will be about the story that leads up to the messages, certain messages that are compelling and tell a deep story, my friend and family's reaction to hearing their messages 30-ish years later, some philosophizing about what it means that we don't leave (long) voice messages anymore, how tech is changing the way we relate to each other, how "The Medium is the Message" relates, where AI is taking us, and much more!
But mostly it will be a story that has never been told before, from someone (me) who did something that (99.99% chance) no one will probably ever be able to do. All in service of "calling you back" to the 1990's.
Now, please only continue if:
1. A doc like this blows you away and hopefully opens your heart and inspires you;
2. You are very accomplished with documentary script writing and editing, and hopefully with memoir/memory films (but that last part is not an absolute requirement);
3. You can provide links that show evidence of your skills through websites, IMBd, LinkedIn, links to write-ups, etc.
4. You are willing to write me an email that demonstrates that you read this ad, get/grok it (for the most part), and
can demonstrate some ways in which you would be a good addition to my writing/editing team
Nowmore contextmy name is Scott. I'm 58 years old. Gen-X was raised mainly in Berkeley, with time in NYC and LA.
I'm a UC Berkeley (BA History), Harvard (MA Social Studies Education), Pepperdine (MA Psychology), and Columbia (EdD in Education, Media, Storytelling) who did almost 30 years of teaching, coaching teacher, and director of school, school counseling, and specializing in teaching film and developing video-enhanced Social Studies curriculum and pedagogy.
Somewhere in there, I was a Director of a School for the Performing Arts and consulted for education leaders.
I'm particularly in love with how film is the most interdisciplinary of the art forms!
This year I attended Sundance (3rd time), SxSW (3rd time) and Tribeca (5th time) all while going through my messages.
We can have Zoom meetings if we are not in the same city. But I prefer LA-based folks.
Some of the images I provided for this ad include images that capture some element of the doc script.
I'm more than happy at some point to let you bring an audio cassette player, select any tape, fast-forward it to a random spot, and confirm that the collection is authentic. Of course, it will be essential to do this in the film, too.
Way, way below (in the optional section), you can find:
1. Video footage of me, my dad, and Paul, a Pulitzer Prize-winning team member showing a letter sent to my grandfather by John Steinbeck
2. A link to a 13-minute doc short I did 10 years ago on the topic of the SF Bay community (for which you can also find a link below).
I'm making this film with the help of 4-5 other filmmakers, including some award-winners.
This docudrama is very memoir-heavy precisely because it is made up of the messages I received over 14 years of my life.
Originally (a couple of years ago) my team were going to make a doc spanning an 80-year period that included four main pillars (below), including my father, Denis. It was going to be about a son-father-grandfather relationship during a time when technology has not only disrupted but actually (in some cases) fractured our family lives and society.
But NOW, as a result of the advice of many, I'm focusing ONLY on my collection of 14 years of saved answering machine messages from 1988 - 2002. A separate doc that "calls you back" (get it?) to the "Before Times" (before the new millennium, when everything changed).
Here is the most updated version of the film.
Title: "CALL ME BACK: ME AND MY FRIENDS' ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGES FROM THE 90's".
I did the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the inconceivable (Wallace Shawn's reference from Princess Bride, and we will have one clip of him saying that in the film). I saved every-single-one-of-my-answering-maching-messages fordrum roll14 consecutive years (1988 - 2002).
Let that sink in for a moment.
Let me be more transparent and specific.
I persistently, but joyfully, transferred/recorded EACH of my messages from the voice box on the table (yes, with those tiny tapes inside) onto those famed and nostalgic 90-minute cassette tapes. And I have upward of 80 of these 90-minute cassettes.
Sorry to bring you back to middle school, but let's do the Math:
80 tapes x 90 minutes per tape = 7200 minutes of recording.
But considering silences, gaps, and sometimes the outgoing messages themselves (which we won't count), let's round down and call it 6000 minutes of actual messages.
That's 100 hours of messages or over four full days' worth.
Note: To re-listen to them, at the rate of 2 hours a day (that was listening, then I needed to transcribe them, which took another 2 hours each day), it thus took 50 days of listening and transcribing to complete the 14 years of messages.
These messages include the most personal of shares, "regular" messages, comedies messages, and many references to the historical and cultural events of the time.
The Berlin Wall fell.
The Soviet Union ended (in most of its forms).
The Clintons took power.
The freedom of Mandella and the end of Apartheid.
Rodney King-related events/riots, etc.
Madonna rose the charts.
The films Forrest Gump and American Beauty (of course, many other great films came out; I'm just mentioning 2 for brevity).
Cell phones, email, and the masses getting Internet (just that little thing).
The Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to Bush.
9/11 (side note: part of the 9/11 memorial museum is hundreds of the final cell phone calls from those in the towersheartbreaking).
Yeah.
Yes, they are 100% authentic, and at some point, if you want proof, you could use an old-school audio tape player, reach into the pile, fast forward or rewind anywhere you want, press play, and there you would hear one of the messages.
Messages from family, best friends, friends, acquaintances, and yes, those random calls from, say, the phone company calling to remind of bills due, or an annoying "Invalid Number" or "Your Number Cannot be Completed as Dialed," with that machine voice we all abhorred (which will add some humor to it all!), etc.
According to the opinions of over 100 documentarians I've met in LA and NYC, this is a priceless time capsule of the intimate voices of the 90's.
It is, if I may say so, absolute DOCUMENTARY GOLD.
No one has done a film about, for lack of a better term, the era of answering machine messages.
Ira Glass from NPR's "This American Life" (whom I met and talked to at Sundance) wants to do a piece on it, a few podcasts have expressed interest, and a friend at the Smithsonian American History Museum wants them to be part of their collection.
I imagine people like Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Malcolm Gladwell would be interested in. We'll see.
But what is the back story on why I was so nostalgic about my father, family, and other friends, such that I would compulsively want and need to save this time capsule treasure trove?
The most important part of this doc, by far, is the messages themselves. Selecting the right messages, with the ideal "preliminary setting context commentary" before each message (if it adds to the story) and "commentary after the message" (if necessary) for the message (if it adds to the story), is where it's all at.!
It will also be necessary to have a short (5-minute) narrative at the beginning of the film to set the stage before we throw the audience into these messages. For example, how my parents met, why they divorced after 5 years, how I suddenly lived away from my dad for 50 weeks a year, how he started a new family, how we developed a 99% phone relationship, how he became a kind of voice character in my imagination, how I was so lonely for him and felt like the Little Prince stuck on the moon with my flower vase, scarf and telescope (but still could not see him) and how I always felt devastated when his messages got erased from the message machine by my mom.
You see where this is leading, right?
At some point, right about when I turned 21, I decided that I loved answering machine messages so much that I would try saving them (on audio cassette tapes, pretty easy process) for a week, then a month, then a year, then 5 years, then eventually 14 years!
Somehow, I became the most "nostalgic voice-related person in the world." Or something like that.
Then, for 15 years, I set these tapes aside to do other things (career, grad school, love, etc).
Then, one day during the holiday, I dug through my family attic storage space, pushed aside a mountain of boxes, cleared away some cobwebs, opened a box, and with a jaw-drop and gasp, I saw that there they were!
I instantly realized that I'd "accidentally" discovered a time capsule of gold (in the form of "the private phone messages of the pre-cell phone and pre-internet 90's America"), featuring many messages from my dad, but more importantly, the messages of my bright, fun, funny, vulnerable friends from the 90s (when we were in our 20s and early 30s).
Now, what top filmmaker makes great films about fascinating characters in that age range?
You got it, the legendary Richard Linklater!
Richard Linklater took 12 years to film his Golden Globe filming of Boyhood, who filmed that movie over 12 years!
His film often focuses on people in their 20s (college, just out of college, or "slackers" who just did their own thing).
Let's look at his five most relevant films to the one I'm making:
1. "Tape" (obvious connection!);
2. The "Before Series" (focus on the depth of connection between actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, as well as playing creatively with TIME
3. "Slackers" and "Dazed and Confused," which depict Austin ,TX characters from the '80s (my messages capture Berkeley characters in the ''90s);
4. "Waking Life," which plays creatively with time, imagination, and dreams.
5. "Boyhood," which he filmed over 12 years (I saved my messages for 14 years)
I include Linklater because we will eventually either bring him on board as a consultant or just model this film around some of his great methods/processes/tropes! At the least, I think he will agree to read our script, and I've got a couple of possible connections with him.
Now, here are some other updates that will be useful for you to know about "Call Me Back: Me and My Friends' Answering Machine Messages from the 1990s."
A. I recently finished listening to ALL of my messages. What it did to my emotions and consciousness is another story. It transformed me and rearranged my sense of the past, time, and, most of all, my relationship with my friends.
B. I already edited out about 1/3 of my messages, which I knew would not make the cut for this extraordinary film. I'm in the process of another edit, leaving my "children on the cutting room floor", not easy at all! Arduous!
C. With those messages that I feel confident will probably stay in the film, I'm doing elaborate Google Image searches to find the best image (so far, of course) to accompany each individual message. This process has been transformative, too.
D. The final version, of course, may be my current image, another image, and/or stock footage or footage we film).
E. I'm super close to being able to take the most edited set of messages, the most edited set of accompanying images, and (after an interview that goes well) have you sign an NDA and meet with you to show you the current script, and play some of the messages (keeping absolute anonymity of my friends, of course) so that you get an authentic feel for them, how they sound, and how I'm going about designing the "script" of the messages themselves.
Remember, there already 4-5 other members on my team (who I've selected from over 300 resumes) with whom we/you will eventually be interacting and co-script writing and co-editing.
I am a former group counselor and small-group Social Studies professor, so my team meetings are genuinely wonderful, transformative, and enrichingwe connect and laugh together before we jump into any kind of writing and editing!
Fun fact: Over 75% of the "outgoing messages" are fun fusions between my voice and well-known jingles from TV shows and heartfelt songs (from the 50s-70s) designed to bring about the feeling and humor that result in more interesting messages on my machine! They are so much fun!
OK, thank you for reading this far. If you can see yourself joining our team, please, please, please:
1. Be a very experienced and even accomplished doc film writer and editor in the industry.
2. WRITE ME A ONE-PAGE COVER LETTER THAT SHOWS YOU ABSOLUTELY "GET" WHAT ME AND MY TEAM ARE DOING HERE (and even a bit of inspiration, or "What I'd add is" stuff)
3. Provide links to sites, such as LinkedIn, iMBD, etc., showing the references to your work.
Finally, please BOTH email me (sph854@mail.harvard.edu) AND text me (646-696-9021) with an alert of your email (which, again, should include cover letter and links outlines above)
Thank you, and I look forward to receiving your information!
Scott
The following, below the mark, is more context about my dad, why I was so delighted and moved by who he was, and info about my diplomat grandfather and my dad's Alzheimer's. But note that this first doc is not going to focus on my dad and grandfather; it is going to be about the answering machine messages (mostly left by friends).
So to be clear, it is OPTIONAL READING precisely because I've decided to focus on the preliminary shorter doc about JUST THE ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGES.
One (meaning me) should not bite off more than they can chew. So I'm focusing on the messages for now.
MORE CONTEXT ABOUT MY DAD AND GRANDFATHER (OPTIONAL READING)
It did not hurt that some had described my dad as the most interesting, charismatic person in the recent history 50-year history of Arizona.
Even if he is in the top 3 or 5 in Arizona, it's still story-worthy!
He was not the wealthiest, most powerful, most politically savvy, or most ethical.
Just the MOST INTERESTING (an admittedly subjective term, but let's have fun with this!).
And here is why (and we have ample testimonials to back this up).
My dad grew up the son of an American diplomat (who observed the Nuremberg Trial and was part of the Marshall Plan), and got to travel all over the world as a kid. His dad was an assistant to the American Cultural Ambassador in Switzerland.
During this time, his siblings and parents lived in a castle overlooking a valley near Bern. He and my uncles and aunts remember diplomat parties similar to the famous dance scene "So Long, Farewell" from the Sound of Music.
His family returned to Berkeley in 1952-5, where he was the Sea Scout boy and newspaper boy that friends instinctively crowded around to hear stories of world travel.
Fast forward to his 20's and early 30's, my dad hung out in famed Laurel Canyon, which one associates with 70s LA (parties with Neil Young, Tom Petty, etc)!
This was, of course, a time when people experimented with many different kinds of drugs. During this time, my dad also made several trips to India and Nepal, at about the same time as the Beatles were"experimenting".
When he eventually settled in Phoenix, he slowly built a real estate business and landlord-ed (at different times) a youth hostel, a trailer park, a rooming house, and an apartment complex with 30 tenants.
But most important and relevant is that his stories from growing up abroad (and seeing a tattered Europe), several years in Berkeley, several in LA, and a year total in India/Nepal, combined with audiences made up of his Phoenix tenants and friends, led to him being almost a professional storyteller; people crowded around him to hear his tales and humor.
He organized and ran the Phoenix Humanists group each week. He also went once a week (for over a quarter of a century) to the vast local auction in Phoenix, where a community of friends met up EVERY SUNDAY to buy rare vintage items and to tell stories over coffee.
He constantly was surrounded by people socializing, making music, doing drugs, and telling stories.
One could make a direct analogy to Jack Kerouak and the Merry Pranksters…but the Arizona version! And we may make that analogy in the film.
Now, since my dad was the most interesting person in Arizona, you can imagine how LITTLE ACCESS to him I had.
Combined with two fiercely jealous wives (the two after my mom), my time with him was limited to just a couple weeks a year, if that. All other communications occurred on the phone, often when his wife was not home.
I saved every letter and photo he sent to me.
And oh, how I treasured, even more, each conversation I had with him!
I wanted to remember them all, but how would that ever happen?
When he called but I was not there to answer, he left the most extraordinary, lovely, magical, witty 2-4 minute messages you can imagine.
I often LET IT GO TO THE ANSWERING MACHINE rather than pick it up so that I had a record of his 2-4 minute "messages in a bottle" (the machine being the bottle) to me.
Then, I'd usually pick up at the end of his message or call him back in a few minutes, pretending I'd been occupied with something or had just walked in.
Then I'd listen to his message 4-5 times before deleting them.
After many years of wishing I'd saved my dad's extraordinary messages, I started to do so in the late 80's.
In addition to my dad's messages, I also saved messages from my friends (each of whom had their charisma, many of them actors and storytellers).
Systematically. Every single message. for 14 years.
MY GRANDFATHER (optional)
My grandfather, Stuart L. Hannon, the American diplomat and Democratic presidential consultant
NOTE: I recently self-produced/published (Snapfish) a 90-page coffee table book with all his full-color documents, along with my commentary on those documents. This will serve as a guide, a storyboard, for you and/or those who go on to make the film!
As mentioned in the videos below, we have about 130 documents from his life so far.
And like any well-designed film that covers a considerable period, we must look back at the past (thus my grandfather) to understand the present.
My grandfather was raised in Seattle, and he met his wife in a Russian class in his 30s.
He loved the radio.
His wife, Mimi, had her own radio show in SF Bay.
He combined his love of radio and his political savvy to forge a career in which he:
a. Broadcast a show from the SF Bay called "Above the Battle" with updates about the state of WW2.
b. Help out diplomatically with WW2 and the Marshall Plan
c. Be an official observer of the Nuremberg Trials
d. Support the President of Greece during one of their most turbulent times (1948).
e. Be the assistant to the Swiss-American Cultural Ambassador
f. Be the #2 man to the Director of Radio Free Europe (see reference above to "Video Killed the Radio Star")
g. Advise and correspond with Adlai Stevenson in his (losing) campaign against Dwight Eisenhower
h. Advise and correspond with LBJ both while he was a Texas Senator and while he was President
i. Resisting Soviet aggression while also resisting the McCarthyist witch hunt scare frenzy.
j. Help to bring an end to the Vietnam War (letters document this)
h. MOST INTERESTING: Correspond with John Steinbeck in 1958, writing about Pasternak, the Soviet Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. Pasternak wrote the script for the famous film Dr. Zhivago.
In this climate, my dad and his siblings were raised, sometimes living with their mom away from the action, sometimes along with their dad on these diplomatic trips.
At the risk of this being too long, I'll sum it all up by it leading to some exciting life experiences for my father, combined with also not having much access to a personal relationship with his father, often having to compete with the other siblings, as well as media who came into their home.
In fact, my grandfather was gone so much of the time, and my dad missed him so much that he asked for access to his dad's radio broadcasts so that he could at least get to know him from his VOICE.
If you didn’t see the glaring way in which that last sentence gives away the key to this entire film, well, perhaps you do now.
We hope your mind is filled with inspiration for this future film, one that (if done with your expert help) could be one of the top films ever made (with plenty of authentic humility all along the way).
MY DAD'S DESCENT INTO ALZHEIMER FROM 2016 - 2023
My dad Denis' descent into Alzheimer's, 2015-2023. He died on November 12, 2023. And just so you know, I'm doing pretty good with my grievingit's a process.
His passing is why I finally have the time and inspiration to press the accelerator on this documentary.
In this section, I will reveal that I documented my dad's descent into Alzheimer's just about as systematically as any Alzheimer's patient. The footage is as raw, authentic, and entertaining as any you could imagine.
Remember, during these 7 years of Alzheimer's, I recorded someone who had accumulated (up to the start of the Alzheimer's) 75 years of one of the most interesting lives in all of Arizona, and he did not shy away from telling those stories, even as he lost his memory.
IT IS THE FACT THAT DAD WAS ONE OF THE TRUE LOVERS OF STORY AND MEMORY (AS MOST STORYTELLERS ARE) WHO THEN LOST HIS MEMORY (THUS HIS CAPACITY TO COVER ALL THE DETAILS) THAT MAKES THIS FOOTAGE SHOCKINGLY RELEVANT, POWERFUL, AND BEAUTIFUL.
I'll remind the reader that Alzheimer's is one of the most relevant topics in all of medicine and psychology at this time, the 5th ranked killer and perhaps the most mysterious. With much money going toward research about it!
A relevant film clip of the hundreds that could be used in this film are the two below in SECTION D. Admittedly the first one needs the lighting adjusted with the help of video technology.
In it, you will see me and Dad listening (while looking at his own 1959 high school photo) to a famous 70's song titled "Cat in the Cradle," which, to some extent, captures the Zeitgeist of my dad's relationship with his father, and my dad's relationship with me.
The other short clip is of my dad discussing memory and time passing.
MORE NOTES ON THE LONGER DOC, TO BE DONE AT THE END OF NEXT YEAR
How is all of this pulled together in one paragraph?
Perhaps something like:
"An epic son-father-grandfather (with other important characters, but its focus is male parent-child issues), a tale spanning the last quarter of a century. The smash of modern society and technologies took them away from each other. And yet hidden in the cracks were breadcrumbs, in the form of recorded voices, that provided clues to knowing each other.
The son, yearning to understand, not wanting to delete an already much-deleted dad continually, surrendered to his nostalgia and saved 16 consecutive years of his answering machine messages, in the hopes of finding his lost dad and granddad.
Title: "I Miss You: Please Leave a Message"
This film will be, in a sense, a MESSAGE for humanity.
The audience will be invited to leave a message for us afterward if they choose.
Now, here are a few links that provide some sense of added reality to this project
A. A preliminary trailer (if you can even call it that) in the form of a 3-minute narration (in two parts) I made of my dad,
a Pulitzer-Prize-winning member of our team named Paul Brinkley-Rogers, evidence of the 200 papers that make up my grandfather's diplomatic career, and footage of the original 16 years of answering machine messages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EjIQfvvfM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wjRIVUcR2Xc
B. A doc-short I made in 2015 about the community in the SF Bay Area that provides a small example of 2 of the approximate 10,000 messages I saved from 1988 - 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcTJq9QrTa4&t=7s
C. For those who geek out about the period of my grandfather's heyday (diplomacy, resisting Soviet aggression, Radio Free Europe, etc), you might want to listen to only known (as of yet) audio recording of one of my grandfather's many talks. This one took place in September 1960, just before Kennedy beat Nixon, titled "The New Soviet Offensive".
And yes, this is PARTICULARLY RELEVANT as of Feb 24, 2022, when Putin invaded Ukraine!
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/new-soviet-offensive-09021960
D. Two of a few thousand video clips made by me from 2015-2023 documenting my dad's descent into Alzheimer's,
which play a role in telling the larger 80-ish-year story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAQY0FvL8Cc
Here is just one of several hundred videos showing my dad's presence while he speaks, his tone,
and his simple wisdom. Just imagine what can be done with videos like this in the process of telling this story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qcjMM277c
E. This is (in 3 parts) a video I made explaining the content of the self-published 90-page book I made about my grandfather, Stuart L. Hannon. For anyone working intensely on this part of the film, I'll provide you with an actual hard copy of the book!
PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR THEM BEING UPSIDE DOWN, YOU CAN FLIP YOUR PHONE OR COMPUTER.
I'LL TRY TO FIX THIS SOON.
Part 1: https://youtu.be/m44bGhCZ6F0
Part 2: https://youtu.be/34FBhaBHyqo
Part 3: https://youtu.be/oeQs67d5K9o
Finally, if you have made it this far (which demonstrates your true interest), and think you can help write/edit the script to profession standard, please reach out!
Please, in your email to me, in addition to your resume, include A PARAGRAPH OR TWO WITH YOUR REACTION TO ALL OF THIS!
Finally, I humbly ask you, please do NOT respond to this ad unless you are pretty accomplished and qualified.
My regular film team, which we might extend an invitation to join in the future, is full of award-winners and other extraordinary talents.
Thank you immensely,
Scott
