Bill Watt’s Blog

It always amazes me when I think about the kind of detail required by some jobs.

I’m watching a movie right now (O Brother, Where Art Thou) and am amazed by the level of detail that the people that make these movies think through. There was a scene where the boys steal and eat a pie. They use newspaper to hold the pie and at one point the Everett (George Clooney) character throws his paper into the fire. The top page talks about the TVA finalizing the plans to flood the valley where the boys are headed. Then the fire burns off the top page revealing the second page which has an article asking, “Soggy Bottom boys are a sensation — but who are they?”

God, who thinks like this? Who visualizes a movie and works though that detail? That’s a brain I would like to engage!

When I watched The Darjeeling Limited I did some background reading about Wes Anderson and thought to myself that this is a guy I’d like to meet. That kind of brain can conceive of a movie from the higher story to every turn of phrase. When I read a Wired interview with Ron Moore, the writer of Battlestar Galactica, he talked about directing an episode and the additional creative ability it gave him:

Wired: You just directed. What was that like?

Moore: It was tremendous. It was an amazing experience. I approached it with a fair degree of fear, like, wow, I’ve never done this, do I know what I’m doing? Will I look like an idiot? And I just tried it. But I have a cast and a crew that made it easy for me, and I enjoyed it, and I directed something that I’d written. It was a thing I’d never done, which is, you write a script and you play the movie in your head as you write it. At least I do. And one of the first things you have to lose in this business is that movie, because it’s never going to be that way. You write the scene and envision them coming in camera left and sit down on this line, and then you watch the dailies and they come in camera right and stand through the whole thing. You just have to let go of that. You’re handing your script over to other people who interpret it and realize it, and when you’re directing, you can realize that. You can make the film I’m trying to make in my head. And yet you’re still free to play around with it and the actors bring stuff and change stuff, and there are still surprises. But you can actually create what it is you’re trying to achieve. That was great. I really enjoyed it, it didn’t freak me out. I was calm. I made my days. I saved money.

I liked it. I liked being the guy who had to answer all the questions. I liked people coming up constantly and asking, should it be this or should it be that? It’s that. Should we go here or there? Go there. Why are we doing this? This is why were doing this. What does this line mean? This is what the line means. Do you need coverage on this guy? No, I don’t need coverage. I liked that. It was energizing and fun.

Well… this is the kind of thing I think about on a Saturday.

(one update as of 6PM… I originally called them the Foggy Bottom Boys. Sigh. Apparently MY attention to detail is sorely lacking. )

I got a movie from Netflix today called Lost in La Mancha and truth be told I have been looking forward to seeing this movie for a few years.

A friend of mine went to see this a few years back and told me about the premise and back story (a movie about a movie) and it sounded really interesting. I shuffled it to the back of my brain and there it sat until last week. I was surfing around Netflix and the thought hit me, look for it! I did and a few days later here I am. A few hours ago I was planning to bang out this blog post and maybe two others I have rattling around in my skull, watch the movie, and then try to get to sleep pretty early. Well- none of that happened except this one post.

Anyway- I have all weekend and am really looking forward to it. Just thought I’d share!

OK… day 1 with the new toy is done and here is my review:

It rocks!

Setup was incredibly easy.  It really does take about 3 min to unpack and connect and another 3 min to enable including a firmware update. It is silent because it has no hard drive or fans or anything like that so I think Alice is going to love it too.

Now, when I first turned it on I was sitting at the end of the bed and was very close to the TV. It was a little rough given the 480 resolution and all the other things that are hooked up are at least 780 but generally 1080. I sat back, closed my eyes, reset my expectations, and when I opened my eyes it was all good. I am looking forward to the day they offer HD content but this will certainly do for now.

So- if you have a Netflix account with at least an $8 / month account then I will suggest that you consider spending the $99 and buying this toy. You won’t get all the movies ever but it is wonderful for those weekends when you want to watch something spur of the moment without all the crap from Comcast.

Man, I had no idea all the stuff Teri Garr has been through. She’s had MS for 20+ years and had a brain aneurysm where they had to drill a hole in her head and wrapped a coil around her brain. I’m watching her on Late Night with David Letterman and she’s amazing. Also- she’s promoting her new movie “Expired” where she plays twins.

I can’t begin to imagine the type of strength this woman has and I have a new found appreciation for her. Watch the Letterman clip then you tell me if you’d go on national TV after all she’s been through and how you’d compare to her.

Apparently my Roku Netflix box arrives tomorrow… woo hoo! I really can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to playing with this thing.

It does make me wonder how the world thinks we’re moving to metered bandwidth. Everything is moving online. How will I know how much bandwidth everything consumes? What if I’ve moved my phone to VOIP? “Too bad” seems like a harsh answer.

I was listening to TWIT this week and Leo was going on and on about how the proposed pricing makes sense for now but will eventually bite us all in the ass. His reasoning was that the proposed caps are all well and good for what the normal person consumes and what the providers currently classify as “bandwidth hogs” but that in a short amount of time all of us will be consuming more. Natalie Del Conte (not on TWIT) pointed out that everything is connected now and none of those devices have a way to tell you when they’re connecting.

Plus- my biggest concern is that I want to get away from physical media. I want to (legally) download movies the day they come to the theater and store them on my multiple TB drives (I have but 1 TB drive now but in the dreamy future of later this year that will grow). I want these guys to encourage me to consume content in this manner and not try to stop it in the interest of their IPTV or Pay Per View schemes.

Let the content flow!

Ok… I think the job might kill me but in a good way.

When I worked for FairMarket and for eBay I was pretty removed from users. I got to do tech support (and I loved it) and I worked directly for the customers who paid us (big companies) but there was a real separation from the end user. That’s ok… our business was different and we built cool tools that the people paying us wanted to let them better work with their end users. It was just a layer removed is all.

At Current I’m not exactly close to the users… but it won’t be long. I’m talking to the community team, using the site, and working my way to the point where we’ll have a product management voice out there too. The delay is that I’m still trying to get a handle on the day to day PM duties, working on better PRD’s, getting in front of deals, and generally trying to make all the internal stakeholders happy. But I can see the day when we have that stuff firing on all cylinders and I can get out there an work with the community directly.

Anyway- what prompted this? A community member posted the item, “what happened to current.com” and generated a good amount of discussion. My assumption is that by the time I wake up tomorrow the thread will be much longer.

I want to post a thread right now asking people for feedback but until I can be prepared (time wise) to actually address the expected flurry I’d better hold off. It won’t be long… and it will be good.

I don’t care what Alice says… Jerry Maguire rocks. Hell… tomorrow might be Jerry Maguire quote day!

Ofer better be on the lookout for this one:

“I am out here for you. You don’t know what it’s like to be ME out here for YOU. It is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about, ok?”

We just ordered our Roku Netflix player and I just added Jerry Maguire to the watch instantly queue. In about a week I’ll be watching a bunch of movies on this toy and will let you know how it works.

I love the marketing behind the new Hulk movie and how it ends with this line, “every bit as good as Iron Man.” Wow… talk about a real world application of PageRank transfer.

See this interview with Jupiter’s Bobby Tulsiani. I like that he ends with, “Give (users) what they want, when they want it and how they want.” He speaks the truth!

I like my Apple TV and the flaws have always been the kind where I thought, “Oh, this will get fixed in a patch.” Those patches have started happening. I downloaded my first HD movie and watched it today on the new TV. It looked really good, didn’t take too long to download (about an hour but it offered me the ability to start watching when it was at 3%. I chose to go on a Starbucks run instead.), and generally the whole experience was solid.

The problem is… I don’t want to pay $5 to rent an HD movie. This is why I have Netflix and have basically an all I can eat model. The convenience of downloading on the Apple TV or xbox is nice, the quality is equal to or better than standard DVD, and I get all the value these services bring me.

Here’s the rub… I also understand the value this brings the content producers. They know more about me when I purchase online, they have better cross-sell and up-sell options, they don’t have any of the packaging and much lower distribution costs but for some reason these content producers want me to keep paying the old prices. Why does it cost me the same to download a movie as it does to rent a physical DVD from a store? Their costs go way down, their control goes way up, and the value to the consumer doesn’t change accordingly.

I’d actually rather not watch than be squeezed into the old paradigm. I stopped going to the movies pretty close to when I got my big screen TV and now I have a 32″ 1080p TV in addition to the 55″ 1080i. I have multiple Tivo’s, an Apple TV, and xbox 360, pc’s, a slingbox and all kinds of other things that will let me get the content from the provider that does it right. The quality just keeps getting better with my home viewing experience so why would I spend $10 or more to have a social experience that I want to be a non-social experience?

Again, the content producers need to embrace their consumers. I won’t pirate content but I just won’t consume. There are a hundred ways they could be getting more of my business. They could start by giving me what I want in the format I want it and by not treating me as their enemy.

Dare to dream.