Seems only right that our first post of the new decade would be in regards to solving the nation’s education crisis. We are spreading some love about a documentary a friend of ours made. Check it out.
The website for the documentary I have been working on for the past year is now live at: www.thelotteryfilm.com. More information is listed below. We are looking to collect as many signatures as possible in support of resolving the education crisis, so please, sign the Education Constitution (www.thelotteryfilm.com/homepage/petition)!
Thank you in advance for your support! If you have friends or family who write for blogs or papers and think they might be interested in covering the project, feel free to have them contact me directly or the numbers listed below.
Warm regards,
Madeleine
HELP SPREAD THE WORD!
The Lottery, a suspenseful and emotional documentary about the crisis in public education by producer-director Madeleine Sackler, will be coming to theaters beginning May 7, 2010 through Zipline Entertainment.
A trailer for the film and information about the crisis – and what we can do to help – can be found at the film’s website
www.thelotteryfilm.com
Please post the link to help spread the word for education reform!
Trailer also available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMzt7YGxLjg.
Website also features a press packet with additional information and resources for parents, teachers, and students.
The website also launches the first ever
Education Constitution. Help to solicit signatures so that we can press our counry’s leadership to improve education standards and the future of America!
Visitors to the website can also Demand the Film by entering their email address and zipcode on the home page. Do this so that we know to bring the film to a theater near you!
About the Film
The Lottery documentary follows four families as they flee their assigned public schools and enter a high stakes and low odds lottery for acceptance into a Harlem charter school. A heartbreaking look at parents who will not accept failing schools for their children but may have to, The Lottery exposes the backwards politics and nefarious agendas of politicians and special interest groups who stand in the way of improving a failing public school system.
“I wanted to show that we do not have to accept failure, because some schools are proving that all kids can succeed if given the chance. Parents know the difference and apply in droves to the better schools. The tragedy is that the demands of adults are getting in the way of the needs of kids,” said Sackler. “Where you’re born is a lottery. Going to a great school shouldn’t be.”
Interviewees include Mayor Cory Booker, Chancellor Joel Klein, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, Harlem Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz, Harlem Children’s Zone President and CEO Geoffrey Canada, Achievement First co-CEO Dacia Toll, and New York Times Magazine editor Paul Tough.
“This is a New York story about a national crisis,” says producer James Lawler. “Through four beautifully told human stories, it poses the question, do we really want an America where we’ve institutionalized the failure of thousands of schools?”
For additional information, including setting up interviews with the filmmakers:
“All of the girls in my class said that they would never watch Winners” -Sean, circa June 2006 *
“You don’t dumb down your art just because a few assholes can’t see the Monet for more than a bunch of dots.” Me, in response to Sean.
One of the planned scenes last season involved a little kid overhearing Mark swearing up a storm while working at the video store. We were having a lot of trouble casting the role so I resorted to asking people I knew if they would offer up their children. As luck would have it one guy that I talked to had a daughter who was getting into acting and said that he would help us out, just,”what was the show about?”
I told him nothing different from what I’ve said elsewhere, and even went as far as to tell him what the episode was about [the anal sex episode]. Not surprisingly he decided it would be in his daughter’s best professional interest if she didn’t take the role.
In May of this year Anne W. Semmes of The Greenwich Citizen interviewed Jon and Sean about the show. At the time, and even up through last week I had no intention of posting what she wrote, but a recent conversation with the same guy who didn’t want his daughter to do the show helped me intellectualize what I hated about the article.
A couple weeks ago I saw the guy again and we got to talking about DWI’s, his daughter, tipping bartenders, and Winners. When he told me he never got around to seeing the show I pulled out a laptop and showed him a few of the clips that we posted about each character. His response:
“Oh I get it. It’s like real life. Every guy who has lived through his twenties has had friends just like that. That’s a good idea nobody has ever done a show like that before. Shit, I wish I knew that before. You have any roles for my daughter?”
Clearly the subject matter of our show doesn’t lend itself to everyone. Despite that, we’ve always made it our goal to be completely honest with what we wanted to portray without worrying about who would be put off. In that regard I think we’ve accomplished our goal. And for that reason I wouldn’t have cared if Anne W. Semmes said our show sucks, called us misogynists, smut peddlers, or losers, at least then she would be writing A) in her honest voice, and B) about us, as opposed to whatever other agenda she had when conducting the interview.
Sure she actually did bother herself to talk about the show, but Winners just served as the framework for her to drape her hangups on. Anne seemed more concerned with waxing philosophical about the name of our production company, and stressing over loaded statistics about the rate of STDs amongst teenagers then, I don’t know, actually doing any real reporting about the show.
Jon’s original response to how the interview went was something along the lines of, “She asked all the generic questions, then started to space out and talk about her own thoughts before going on and on about sexually transmitted diseases.” He couldn’t have been more right. She actually misquotes Jon as describing all of us as, “not too successful at anything.” This is only after she takes it upon herself to say that we hired actors to portray ourselves and that they are, “five guys who don’t exactly fit the profile of upwardly mobile Greenwich grads.” Not only is this completely wrong, it was already covered by a better journalist (who was in college at the time of writing her article.)
I’m not surprised about the content of the article given the author’s affinity for hearing her own voice, even a soldier in uniform would have trouble keeping a straight face while she talks.
I’ll leave on one final quote from her article, but before I do I want you to fill in this blank: The web address for the Winners website is http://www._______________.com.
“Saks, 24, is the writer of the WinnersSeries.com“-Anne W. Semmes
Chances are you filled in the blank correctly, and you aren’t even getting paid to know that.
Sean and I were interviewed by WGCH, and I actually got a lot of comments from people who heard it. This was also the earliest I’ve been up and the least hungover I’ve ever been on a Friday morning after having worked Thursday.
This was an article written by Tiffany Citroen for The Norwalk Citizen:
Local Group of Friends Creates Web Series
It’s a bit ironic that a local television production crew by the name of Wasted Potential Filmworks is not only producing a Web series called “Winners,” but that the show seems to be doing well. The last time head writer Jon Saks, of Norwalk, checked ratings, which was about a year ago, he learned that “Winners” had been watched on between 6,000 and 7,000 computers.That isn’t too bad for a show that is made during the actors’ and crews’ spare time. “Winners” is the brainchild of Saks, Paul Catanzaro, Charlie Roina, Christiaan Enthoven and Sean Mayo, five, 24-year olds from Greenwich who attended Greenwich High School together.
The friends had always been interested in filmmaking and would often get together over summer vacations to make home videos and short films. In July 2006, Saks came up with an idea for a movie, but when he started working on it, he realized it wouldn’t be enough to carry a full feature film; it felt more right for a 30-minute show, which is how “Winners” began.
It’s a comedy about a guy who returns to his hometown after graduating from college and reconnects with four of his high school friends who didn’t go away to school. The friends come together to, as Saks put its, try and figure things out.
The 12 episodes that have been filmed so far are available for viewing at www.winnerstheseries.com by anyone with access to the Internet. The episodes were written by Saks, directed by Enthoven, and edited by Roina. Locations are scouted and catering is taken care of by Mayo and Cantanzaro manages the production and finances for the show.
The producers fund the show themselves. Cantanzaro explained that it wasn’t too expensive to get started, since everyone had all of the equipment already. But there isn’t a lot left over for the actors, for example. They are all unpaid, as are the producers, though the film crew does pay for the actors’ transportation to the set on film days and provides food when they are working.
Another aspect to being self-funded is that there is no location budget. Scenes from the show, which are mostly filmed in and around Greenwich, take place at either homes of various producers or at certain public locations like That Little Italian Restaurant and Corbos Corner Deli, where owners have given permission for the crew to shoot there.
Filming began in March 2007 and from the beginning, it has been a balancing act. All of the producers have full-time jobs and many of the actors have other gigs, too. Two of the actors – Jimmy Librandi and Johnny Ferro – are from Greenwich. The rest are based mainly in New York City and have other acting jobs. “We have to work around their schedules,” said Cantanzaro.
For Librandi, who plays Benjamin Shepard or Shep on the show, the irregular filming schedule is part of the fun. “They call ahead of time and schedule around all of the other actor’s schedules. It’s amazing we get anything done,” he said, adding that it has been a lot of fun working with the five friends whom he knew from high school, too.
Librandi works full time in education and has acted a bit in and out of school, though unlike the other cast members, he isn’t pursuing acting beyond his work with the show. “It’s the kind of stuff I like to do, with who I want to do it, when I want to do it. It’s the perfect thing.”
The season finale was shot only a couple of weeks ago, so now with the first season complete, the producers want to regroup and reorganize a little before they start the second season. According to Cantanzaro, that means “getting back to the business end of things” and doing more promotion. Word-of-mouth is what has gotten the show along so far, plus the fact that the 45 plus number of actors on “Winners” mention the series on their own personal Facebook and MySpaces pages.
The production crew would like to try and enter “Winners” as a short in a film festival. (Currently, they are trying to get it into the Westchester Film Festival.) And because they are a Web-based show, promoting “Winners” on college campuses is another tactic they want to try.
“We just want to go to colleges and spread the word ’cause that’s kind of our target audience,” said Saks.
Of course, more exposure on the Web wouldn’t hurt either, so if you have a free moment, check out www.winnerstheseries.com.
