Help A Brother Do His Real Work

It happens to every artist. At some point, being hungry and poor gets old. So, you do a piece of work which pleases an audience. Or you take a commission which will pay your bills. Meanwhile, you keep on doing the “good work,” the stuff that feeds your soul. Invariably, that work you did to hook another gig; please an audience; or pay some bills comes back to bite you in the ass.

I have mine. Fortunately, you can no longer find it on the web.

But, my friend, Chris Ivey has finally gotten his. Those of you who have been following along may remember mentioning Chris Ivey when I was observing the gentrification of Hackney in East London. He had just released Part Two of "East Of Liberty"

Today, in an email he wrote:
“Okay... so the absolute ridiculous has happened.
A bar owner I know hired me to make a stupid movie about an overweight guy who practices rapid tai chi, stares into the sun for energy and claims he has the Guinness Book World Record for high scream....
Okay...
So... The people at the LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN saw the clip and want him to appear this Fall on the show. The other day... NETFLIX saw the stupid thing and bought up 30 copies for starter. BLOCKBUSTER is now interested because NETFLIX is interested.”

The good thing is that if you rent the film from Netflix, they’ll buy more copies.

This will help Chris finish his important film, “East Of Liberty.” It is a three part documentary about the affects of gentrification on a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Pittsburgh. It’s great work. It’s important work. It is necessary work which touches people beyond the borders of Pittsburgh. So, go ahead. Put it on your queue. And as Chris says,
“I really don’t care if you watch it or not.”
The point is to really get them to buy more copies so he can raise some money to do his real work. Here’s the link to it on Netflicks. And here is a link to the movie, Chi Guy: Weapon Of Mass Decibels. (I can’t believe this made it to Letterman.)

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