in the giant venn diagram of popular culture there is increasingly more and more overlap between those of us who are exceptionally academic and those of us who are exceptionally nerdy. sometimes this takes us by a bit of surprise (generally the more academically minded – never underestimate the obsessive power of the nerd), but mostly we can see it coming if we stop to think for a moment. i mean, someone, somewhere liked battlefield earth, right? hmm. . .maybe not.

anyway, one of the ways in which this overlap is presented to the general population is in giant science fiction blockbusters. more specifically, giant science fiction blockbusters that contain their own invented alien languages. complete languages. ones that people start learning and obsessing over, and adding to. but before they can do that, someone’s got to come up with the actual words, sounds and grammar, right? that’s where paul frommer comes in.

when james cameron needed to create the na’vi language for avatar his production company sent an email to the USC linguistics department. this email got forwarded to paul frommer, who spent several years devising the language. starting from a couple dozen words that cameron came up with, frommer generated an overall sound palette for the language, a vocabulary of over a thousand words, an alphabet, and a complete syntax. he made recordings for the actors to help with their pronunciation. he coached them on the set.

at the moment there doesn’t seem to be anyone – frommer included – who is completely fluent in na’vi. but that’s bound to change. when the language forms the core of the highest grossing movie of all time, you’re going to get your die hard fans. frommer says that people write emails to him in na’vi, which take some time to translate, even for him. i asked him to tell me a joke in na’vi, on the spot, but he said it’d take an hour or so to figure it out first. too bad. i have to say, it’s a different thing to hear the language spoken from a normal, non-blue human standing in front of you than to see it in the movie. you hear the words more, the sounds (as foreign from english) are more distinct.

all my life i’ve been able to visualize words in my head. if i hear a word, i almost always, instantly, see it spelled in my head. (this is especially true with names.) in school i studied latin and greek, but it was always written, never conversational. i have to say, for someone like me it’s a little jarring to hear na’vi words and then later see them spelled out as totally different than i’d visualized. is it too much to ask to be a good speller in alien languages, as well?

if you want to learn the na’vi language yourself, don’t worry, the internet can help you with that. look here.

there’s klingon karaoke, and i know paul frommer is looking forward to the day when we can hear na’vi karaoke as well. living on a prayer in na’vi, anyone?

i can speak for all my graphic designer friends when i say that the true travesty of avatar is in its celebration of the oft (and justifiably) maligned papyrus typeface.

i’ve said it before, the world is a small place when you’ve gone to crossroads high school.

at the beginning of the summer i got an assignment to photograph john wyatt. john is the director of the cinespia cemetery screenings at the hollywood forever graveyard. every summer weekend john projects classic movies onto the side of a giant mausoleum, and the delighted masses of hollywood lay blankets and picnic baskets out on the great lawns amidst the tombstones to take in the films. the last screening was this past weekend (rosemary’s baby, which seems like an appropriate movie to show in such a context).

so when i got the job i did what i always do, i called up the subject and introduced myself and said what i was calling for. john interrupted me and said, “yeah, man, i know. we went to high school together.” oh, right. i realized it as soon as he mentioned it. john was a year ahead of me. at the time we had the same hair, but no beards.

i just saw that cinespia ended for the summer the other day, and once again i kick myself for not having gone. it’s one of those things i’ve known about for years but somehow time always manages to slip past me. next year for sure. don’t let me forget this time, okay?

a few years back i had one other shoot at hollywood forever (of jerry stahl), but that was in the middle of winter and it was rainy and cloudy and dark. perfect cemetery weather. this time. . . middle of summer, it was near 100 degrees and bright sun. not the least bit creepy. oh well.

my thanks to john and to cpl. bennett as usual for the selfless assistance.

ruben is the CEO of propaganda global entertainment marketing. that means he’s responsible for you seeing in movies the things you desperately want but can’t afford (like a lamborghini, or robot cell phones). that means that ruben’s LA office is full of cool things that you desperately want but can’t have. like motorcycles, fake newspapers from gotham city, and an american flag made of 25,000 swarovski crystals. (okay, maybe i don’t want a motorcycle or a crystal flag, but it would have been great (in a geeky sort of way) to get a copy of the gotham city newspaper.)

ruben is the coolest guy in the room. especially if that room only contains cpl. bennett, ruben and myself. he has handmade italian sneakers. he has a custom painted macbook (blue, perhaps to match the sneakers). he rides around town on a motorcycle that transforms into a robot (well, with michael bay’s help, at least). he lives in switzerland. that makes him more neutral than you, at least, and possibly cooler than you.

i left ruben’s thinking seriously about purchasing custom made clothing, pondering why i wasn’t nearly as suave as i should be, and wondering if i could take better care of handmade italian sneakers than i could my $25 skechers. likely not. custom made shirts, though, there’s something to think about. especially when you’re me and nothing in a store actually fits you. also, pocket squares seem like an important thing that i’m missing. that’s just plain classy. i’ll have to look into that.

see the full article here, and my thanks to scott at businessweek for the gig.

i don’t meet many CEOs who share my encyclopedic knowledge of 80s movies. if fact, with just a few rare exceptions this encyclopedic knowledge has mostly been met with derision from my friends. it’s not really my fault that i memorized the entirety of legend, it just seemed to be on TV every fifteen minutes and the whole dungeons and dragons element didn’t hurt. tim curry as a minotaur? mia sara? ridley scott? sign me up! tom cruise? well, i’m willing to overlook some things.

my parents were in show business. they had a TV in every room, including their bathroom. every TV was always on. they slept with the TV on. if i went in and turned it off in the middle of the night they’d wake up, turn it back on and go back to sleep. my dad claimed he couldn’t sleep unless something he wanted to watch was on. the point is, i saw every 80s movie many, many times over. can’t buy me love? just one of the guys? the flamingo kid? coming to america? doctor detroit? gotcha!? howard the duck? once bitten? check. all of ‘em. my father actually took my brother and i out of school to see the very first show of indiana jones and the temple of doom. when my mom took me to a special industry-only screening of superman II, i burst into tears in the theater when superman lost his powers. my very first date ever was with lani miller and my sister drove us into westwood to see ferris bueller’s day off. (lani, you were adorable and i was scared to death. thanks for going to the movie with me.)

my point is that wade bradley is a CEO. a real CEO. he wears ties, and nice suits and commands power and respect and wealth. he can say “Yes” and actually make things happen as a result. and he knows all this crap, too. that means somewhere in the world an important CEO has filled up some part of his brain with the same useless trivia that i have, and actually is happy about it, too. wade spent time as a venture capitalist and eventually started a company called indievest, to make independent movies.

so all i lack is that venture capital background, nicer suits and ties, any sort of business sense at all and credibility. oh, and any desire to make movies.

the nice thing about living in los angeles is that everyone i know eventually comes through here at some point, so i never really have to truly lose touch with anyone. a few weeks ago trillium came to town to visit her godmother, mary lambert (also pictured below). trillium and i went to college together, sort of. that is, trillium went to my college, starting the year after i graduated. when i went back to visit i kept hearing all about this new photo hotshot around campus, and how i’d better look out. nobody told me she was also so beautiful. maybe that was part of them telling me i’d better look out.

trillium and i became friends and mutual photo geeks. trillium first told me about photobyte which allowed me to pretend to be way more professional than i actually was early on. lucky for her she had the good sense to get out of the photo business. now she’s a pro golf instructor. this involves entirely too much time outdoors for my tastes, and she moves all over the place depending on the season. it’s been over four years since i last saw trillium, and we might make it a habit of taking photos each time she’s in town. sometimes i think my friends just use me as a tool to figure out if we’re all getting older. the short answer, unfortunately, is that yes, we are. but trillium doesn’t seem to be any worse for it, certainly.

trillium’s godmother is mary lambert, a film director most well known for directing stephen king’s pet sematary which scared the crap out of me as a kid. mary had a really intense and unusual look and was very gracious about having her picture taken and about letting me post them here. she asked me to be sure to mention that she’s actually a very funny lady, and not as serious as i made her seem. sorry about that, mary.

i’m perpetually grateful when i’m sent to photograph people who are vastly more accomplished and important than me, and those people turn out to be gracious, thoughtful, open and giving with their time. elizabeth farnsworth certainly was this and more: a journalist, a correspondent/anchor on the newshour, a documentary filmmaker and an expert on places and events far and away. the story this picture was meant to illustrate was about her new documentary “the judge and the general” about chilean dictator pinochet and the man who investigated and prosecuted him for human rights violations.

we took the pictures at elizabeth’s home in berkeley. she was kind enough to invite me there rather than some studio, since i always prefer shooting at the subject’s home if at all possible. when i was loading equipment back into my rental car elizabeth asked me if i had ever been a dancer. maybe i slipped up and had a moment of grace that’s not usually present. later in the week someone else commented that i was built like a dancer, too. i think what all these people are saying is just that i’m skinny. in his younger years my father was a dancer on broadway, and while i have his old worn tap shoes, they don’t fit me and i certainly couldn’t do them any justice. anyway, it was a nice thing for her to say, regardless of the statement’s relation to reality.

i just received a copy of the magazine in the mail the other day, and so figured it was safe to show elizabeth a selection of out-takes from the shoot. i was disappointed to hear that she felt the pictures made her look old in a way that drew comments from her friends. she claimed not to have minded it herself, and i hope that’s true, but i’m still sorry that she didn’t find the results pleasing. as a photographer – who is decidedly not inclined towards fashion or beauty – this is a problem that comes up from time to time. unfortunately (for some subjects) you find that often the most interesting part of a person’s character (in portraits) is not also the most flattering. many traditionally “flattering” portraits lack the compelling qualities of their less glamorous out-takes. it’d be nice if every picture i took was equally beloved by the subjects and the editors, but sometimes it’s one and sometimes it’s the other. then again, sometimes i’m the only one who likes the result. oh well – as long as one of us is happy, right?

this was an odd sort of press junket. well, all press junkets are kind of odd, unnatural affairs, but this one was particularly odd as nobody really seemed to know about it. the hotel didn’t seem to know about it, and the only other media person there was a writer for some film technology blog whose name escapes me. this interview was strange in that it consisted of the writer and john sayles talking to each other on their cell phones while both sitting on a couch together. recording technology has come a long way. the result of this was that i had to set up my lights in absolute silence so it wouldn’t be recorded by the cell phones. it felt like very awkward ninja lighting.

this is one of the first frames, and i just kind of like that sayles looks a little forlorn in it. it’s a really great expression. i’m not sure if it’s indicative of how he really is, but i sure as hell feel the way he looks most days. just not quite as cool. and my ears are smaller.

sayles and i got to talking about film and aspect ratios. i, of course, complaining about the 2:3 rectangle of digital SLRs and he complaining about how he sometimes doesn’t like the widescreen format much. then he let me in on a little secret:

“you know what i do when a wide shot just isn’t working for me?”

 ”what?”

“i just stick somebody in the foreground, then i like it better.  problem solved.”

other than that, we talked mostly about blues.  oh, and for the unaware, john sayles is a director/writer/actor. go watch his movies. then go run three miles, which is what he did right after this shoot. needless to say, i did not.