Josh Harris the visionary. Josh Harris the dot-com millionaire. Josh Harris the pseudo-fascist. Josh Harris the clown. Josh Harris sending a farewell video message to his mother, who is dying of cancer – he doesn’t want to see her in person. It’s that simple.
Director Ondi Timoner met Mr. Harris when he was just starting out – and this project is the result of more than 10 years of ongoing documentary filmmaking. The film is massive, jam packed with graphic presentations and montages that summarize key events in the world of Josh Harris and the two and a half decades that shaped the man who poured his money first into Pseudo.com, the first internet television network and then into the far more disturbing "Quiet: We Live in Public".
"Quiet" can be readily described as an art project for social pariahs, a capsule hotel with every conceivable hedonistic release, all being filmed, all the time. Money is not an issue and every effort is made to allow for free expression. Only…when applying people are screened by a man trained in interrogation techniques. We see some of these videos – small rooms, a guard brandishing what looks like a nightstick and a diminutive man alternating between softly stating and gratingly barking orders. We also see, well, everything that goes on – people bathing, sleeping, eating, dancing, having sex, and of course, trying out a variety of guns at a shooting range installed as part of "Quiet". Nothing like placing 100 people in what is essentially a bunker and giving them access to loaded guns.
The documentary does not give us an adequate time frame of how long "Quiet" lasts – it could have been a month or ten days, but on New Year’s day 1999, the new millennium sees "Quiet" disbanded when police receive anonymous tips that a suicide cult may be planning something on the New Year’s eve. Mr. Harris is undaunted and puts his next project in motion shortly: he endeavors to broadcast his life with his then-girlfriend for sixth months. Every day. Everything they do. Harris has a camera installed inside the toilet for those particular (or should I say peculiar) viewers who come to his webpage to watch – well you get the idea.
There’s no question that Harris is something of a visionary – he saw ahead of his time and he acted accordingly. Director Timoner luckily does not take a position on Harris’s various eccentricities, only surveying the man with an unblinking eye – there’s a lot of information in here, but maybe less than there needed to be. Josh Harris is only the tip of the iceberg, a reminder of men who knew ahead of time where we were heading technologically and techno-socially. He is a herald and also a fascinating case study; neither broken nor damaged (some will argue otherwise) but unique in such truly striking ways. His coldness is off-putting but he carries it without shame. In We Live In Public, Josh Harris becomes bigger than himself, a representative of something disquieting in human nature, the need to watch and to be watched and the lengths we are willing to go to assure the viewership. If only for illuminating that with a degree of honesty, the film deserves a look.
DVD Bonus Features
Two commentaries are featured on the DVD, one by Ondi Timoner and one by Josh Harris himself. The Harris one is worth listening to, if only to hear the man’s reaction to seeing the film for the first time. Also included is a ten minute "Making Of" featurette and a behind the scenes look at Timoner discussing her appearance at Sundace with Harris in two. These two featurettes add up to 21 minutes. Another six minutes are contributed by “Inside the Bunker,” two featurettes that take a closer look at the conditions of "Quiet" and finally, a 5 minute video of Josh Harris recording his commentary. Also included is a trailer.
"We Live In Public" is on sale March 2, 2010 and is not rated. Documentary. Written and directed by Ondi Timoner. Starring Josh Harris, Ondi Timoner.
