How to Be the Voice of My Generation

Remember how I'm going to be the voice of my generation? I just figured out why.

For months, Codename Bronco, DP on Ballots Over Broadway, has been telling me that between him and his friend, Nice-Guy Gaffer Nat, he has all the equipment to make a movie - or, as he puts it, "we're basically a production company."

Tonight at my friend's art opening, I met the minds behind The Ballad of Roger and Rose, a very interesting, year-and-a-half long web serial that's going online in the next week to month. These kids, Matt and Dan (there's no need to try to keep them straight), are pretty much doing the same thing Codename Bronco and NGG Nat are doing - working with friends who help Matt and Dan on their projects while Matt and Dan work on their friends' projects.

Jay does the same thing. So do Victor and Pat of Therefore Productions. So does The Burg, and it just took their pilot to get them written up in Time or some shit. My friend Matt is trying the same thing with a project called The Fold that's still in pre-production. The Lonely Island turned it in to SNL-worthy success.


It's easy to underestimate the power of the phenomenon of getting together with your friends and making a movie, because it never feels like something professional - for example, Matt and Dan are still in the early, giddy stages of owning their own genuine and legally incorporated company. And, at this stage, it's awfully simple to overestimate it. It would be foolish, for example, to think that the internet has replaced T.V.

I'm only a reasonably connected guy, and the fact that so many people, and, more than that, so many people I know, have casually come to the same conclusions and organized themselves in the exact same way, and especially that these people represent a very diverse range of occupations and filmmaking abilities, it tells me that these informal groups of people working for free are going to be, if not the shape of things to come, at least more than a passing fad.

Back to being the voice of my generation. I have always naturally fallen in to the role of being a small part of a lot of different groups. It's why my birthday parties go so poorly for everyone but me: the people I invite, although they are all very excited about me, almost never get along with my other friends. It's not that they're from different demographics, or regions, cliques, social circles - it's that they're from different universes. I may be just as important to my hipster friend as my friend from the after school program, but there's no chance those two are gonna get tight.


Perfect example. I went up to my high-pedigree school for Homecoming, and one of the first and last stops I made was at the obscure co-ed non-Fraternity house where I was part (although certainly not the leader) of what I would call a core membership. The whole weekend, I was running around campus. I hung out with the people from my animation class, my friends from the theater stuff I did, the people from the school newspaper - all groups that I was not a central member in, but at least a character, a witness, a central participant.

When I went by my house right before we all headed out, I realized that everyone in my house had been there the whole weekend. They had been spending all day in the living room with each other (all night, too, since many of them had been sleeping there.) Nobody had another community. It was a what the fuck moment.

This is sort of an extreme example since my house always ended up being the last bastion for people who had never found a community in the rest of the school. But, still, I did it. It wasn't impossible to be a community member there and somewhere else. And this sort of thing has been happening to me my whole life.

I big, big part of it is that I ask a lot of questions. I'm a lot more comfortable talking about someone else than I am talking about myself - it's why I'm a good journalist. Since most people feel they've connected strongly with another person when they talk about themselves, I've consistently made many close friends.


So I have this talent for being a small part of a lot of different group, and then there's this New York phenomenon where a lot of different groups of friends are each producing these great mounting heaps of media. Then there's this thing where I keep being a bit older and a bit more of a journalist than my peers.

I don't think I'm going to be leading any revolutions, but I could definitely be the Tony Wilson of my generation - not the guy who made it happen, but one of the only ones who was there for the whole thing, who saw it happen, figured it out before the rest of the country and knew everyone who was involved.

It's spurious logic, it certainly isn't definite or even plausible, but, hypothetically, there it is. I could be the voice of my generation. Not bad for a night's brain work - few have ever realized they had a shot.