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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Satan & Adam doc @ Indiegogo
Satan & Adam doc @ Indiegogo
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kudzurunner
5610 posts
Aug 19, 2015
7:14 AM
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I'm happy to report that the Indiegogo campaign for the long-awaited Satan and Adam documentary has just gone live. Please take a look at the NEW video trailer, the prizes, etc., and help in any way you can, including tweets and forwards:
Satan and Adam doc @ Indiegogo
Here's the full text of an email pitch that I've sent out to the MBH mailing list.
Friends:
For the past few months I've been promising many of you an important update about an in-progress documentary entitled Satan and Adam. Today is the day.
Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1995, a young filmmaker out of Carnegie-Mellon named Scott Balcerek decided to make Sterling "Mr. Satan" Magee and yours truly the subject of his next film. His award-winning debut, Street Songs (1994), had focused on a blind busker in the streets of Pittsburgh. Sterling and I, flattered at his interest, gave him the go-ahead. He started following us around. He showed up at gigs; he did sit-down interviews. He gathered an amazing amount of footage. And the years went by.
Twenty years! It seems like forever. Even while filming us, Scott did what talented young filmmakers do in order to do pay the bills: he worked. He did special effects on the three "new" Star Wars movies. He did commercial work. He made a documentary about LeBron James called More Than a Game. And he watched as Sterling and I rode out our success as a mid-level national blues act before, suddenly, falling apart--a nervous breakdown in Sterling's case (1998), a minor heart attack in my own (2000). He watched Satan and Adam, the subject of his documentary, dissolve before his eyes.
I'll be honest: there have been more than a few moments between 1995 and now when I despaired of this film ever being completed. Scott and I fought about that. But we stuck it out--as Sterling and I stuck it out. We have become good friends over the years, the three of us.
By remaining friends and collaborators over an exceptionally long period of time, we created the conditions under which Scott was able to capture the deep texture of the blues-filled lives that Sterling and I actually lived. Scott was there to experience the process through which Sterling and I, down for the count by the beginning of the new millennium, ended up crawling back to our feet--making a new album after a decade's absence from the scene, gaining and losing a drummer (Dave died of a bad liver in 2011), and finally clawing our way onto the stage of the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Scott was there. After all this time, he's got something that few if any other documentarians have ever captured: twenty years worth of sequential footage charting the rise, collapse, rebirth, and triumph of a quirky, unlikely blues act.
With the help of a partner, J.R. Mitchell, Scott is suddenly in the closing stages of this thing. EVERYTHNG he has accomplished to date has been paid for out of his own pocket. No corporate money, no sponsors. Just savings, credit cards, and hope.
Now he and J.R. need your help.
It costs a lot of money to polish off a feature-length documentary film in the way required to enter major festivals (Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW) and have a shot at the big time. Scott and J.R. are planning to do that with a one-month Indiegogo campaign. Their goal: $50,000.
I am asking for your help, on their behalf. I have no financial stake in the film, although I certainly have something to gain in the way of increased public visibility when it is finally released. But my partner and hero, Sterling Magee, has more to gain than any of us. Scott's film promises to transform Sterling from a below-the-radar legend into the major-league blues star that he has always deserved to be. He is 79 years old and infirm. He deserves this: one last memorable blaze of glory that etches his name into blues history. You can help make it happen.
Here is the link:
INDIEGOGO FOR SATAN & ADAM DOCUMENTARY
Please visit the campaign homepage, take a look at the video that Scott and J.R. have posted there, enjoy the many photos, and check out the prizes being offered for donations of various sizes.
One last thing. As I hardly need to tell you, this past year has been filled with depressing news in the matter of American race relations. It feels as though America has boomeranged back to the low point, 20 years ago, when white and black reactions to the O.J. Simpson verdict were so different that Newsweek magazine spoke of "two Americas: one black, one white."
Satan and Adam, the documentary, knows about all this. Sterling and I forged our partnership on the streets of Harlem back in the late 1980, a time marked by murderous racial violence in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights. Our story is an American story, a New York story, a street story. It's a story about black and white struggling to find common ground. And that story, our story, has suddenly become relevant again. The lows and highs that Satan and Adam explores--the tensions and triumphs, the anger and the love, and the sheer dogged refusal to give up--have something to teach a struggling America burdened by the legacy of racial injustice. Or at least that's how Scott and J.R. see it. And I agree.
I really hope you'll help out. If you can afford to pledge some cash, please do. Every single dollar counts! Whether or not you're in a position to do that, please help spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other social media you participate in--and please do so TODAY, if possible. I've been told that Indiegogo campaigns that start with a real bang in the first three days tend to build on their own early success, and vice versa. So your rapid response makes a measurable difference, and is hugely appreciated.
Thanks for reading this far! And thanks for your help.
--Adam
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Aug 19, 2015 7:17 AM
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grahamonica
165 posts
Aug 19, 2015
8:54 AM
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Done !!
So looking forward to the film and congrats to everyone involved.
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Rgsccr
360 posts
Aug 19, 2015
9:41 AM
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Done.
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kudzurunner
5614 posts
Aug 21, 2015
10:12 AM
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The update is this: as you can see from the widget down below, we've raised $11,000 from 135 people in two-and-a-half days. That's terrific--it puts us on course for success--but it's not quite enough. At $15K, if we do that by midnight tonight, Indiegogo's huge publicity machine kicks into gear. They literally send out a million emails and alert people to our campaign.
I know that some of you have given, and the filmmakers and I greatly appreciate that. If you're quite sure you're going to give but were planning on waiting for a week or two, this is my plea: give today. Your gift will make a concrete difference and could just turn out to be the thing that puts us over the edge into the supercharged zone where the multiplier effect kicks in.
Thanks in advance!
Satan and Adam documentary support
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Aug 21, 2015 10:13 AM
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shadoe42
327 posts
Aug 22, 2015
9:57 AM
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woot Made the 15K goal!! sweet deal. This is on my list to find some extra bucks for once I get thru this billing cycle.
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Dr. Rev. Mr. Cheeks Miller
My Electronic Music World
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mr_so&so
942 posts
Oct 16, 2015
3:40 PM
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Now over 30K with less than 2 days left in the campaign. I made my contribution yesterday. Pony up now MBHers and let's get this done.
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Last Edited by mr_so&so on Oct 16, 2015 3:42 PM
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Harp Study
213 posts
Oct 04, 2016
7:27 PM
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Any word on when this will be released?
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