Some news about the long-awaited Martin Scorsese-produced documentary about the Dead: its scope has changed and the project is now not a feature, but a four-hour long documentary with a release (tentatively) scheduled for the fall. Showbiz411 broke this news, but as usual TotD has the real scoop.
I sat down with director Amir bar Lev for this EXCLUSIVE interview:
Amir, how are you?
“I’m well. Thank you for asking.”
You have a rather foreign name. Where’s it from?
“Go fuck yourself.”
Ah. Israel.
“Ken.”
Barbie. Anyway, Amir: you told Roger Friedman of Showbiz411 about the Dead documentary becoming a mini-series. Can you talk more about that?
“Of course. We had so much great footage–stuff no one’s ever seen before–that we couldn’t say no to some of it. It was too much for a feature, so it needed to be a four-hour presentation.”
This is very exciting.
“Yes, it is. Deadheads are going to go nuts when they see our six-hour mini-series.”
Um.
“They’ll say, ‘Only eight hours?’ That’s how good it is.”
Amir, I’m a little confused. How long is this sucker?
“Like I said originally, it’s a tight eleven hours.”
…
Have you lost control of the footage?
“There’s so much of it.”
Did you stare at the Grateful Dead too hard and then you went insane?
“Does that happen a lot?”
Almost every time. Don’t feel bad: even Garcia went nuts making a movie about the Dead.
“The mini-series is now infinite: it has been playing forever, and it is playing now, and it will always be playing. We will measure our lives against it in the fullness of the allnow.”
Yeah, okay. Oh, hey: what’s the name of the movie?
“This project is too big to have a name.”
Wow.
In an effort to understand what a mini-series is, and how a documentary about the Grateful Dead could fit in one, I consulted the leading authority on the subject, enkivillage.com. Here I discovered that Downton Abbey is a mini-series and left none the wiser.
I think you should get back on to Amir bar Lev and subject him to a serious grilling. How much can you fit into a mini-series?
This much?
There once was a man from Boston…..
There once was a thief born in Boston
Who purchased a brand new shiny Austin
He found all the loot
Wouldn’t fit in the boot
So into the back it was tossed in
Two of the occupants were cropped by ToTD’s AI, presumably on the grounds of credibility.
Is that the bridge to Little Aleppo in the background? And the Route 77 ?
I think you are right, that is why TOTD AI cropped the pic, didn’t want us to know how to get to where to go to get the T shirts wholesale.
“ah, israel.”
beyond hilarious!