Brandon Harris

In 24' they said survive to 25' but no one talked about actually surviving 25'! Despite a fire (for the ages), a con artist, a cancer scare, an increasingly depleted checking account and alot of garden variety betrayal and disappointment, I managed to do just that AND make a few things- some essays, a couple book proposals, a whole feature film - I'm pretty proud of. Grateful for all those who have stuck with me. Here's to 26' being the best yet and if not, perhaps just less grim?

42 and cloudy.

Made a new thing. I don't star in it, despite what the first paragraph of this @deadline story might lead you to believe, but I do appear in it, briefly, along with many of the remarkable people pictured here, without whom none of what I hope you'll get to see in a theater near you one day soon would be possible. Couldn't have dreamed this would happen on 1/1/25. Thought this picture up on little sleep and no calories for five days after living through the worst urban 🔥in American history. Couldn't have written it without Evan Louison, the actual star of the movie; couldn't have raised the capital and garnered the team to make it without my remarkable producers @maxmooney5 @thejenwestquest and EPs @bugjack @bigsharm @hollywoodhindu , Gill, Ben and especially Schuyler. Couldn't have photographed/lit it without @williamerouse @_shotbyzay @vandeskillz Thanks for the locations @fairfaxwright @jszlasa @glennagordon @betsyholt4 & @thechriswade And of so indebted to my cast: EL @leeleepitts @willjanowitz @ariebiancathompson @missannapurna @problematique_fave @lipschutz_and_lipschutz @jeanettaprich @steveholmgren @frankrjmosley @betsyholt4 @theandrehyland @jonwatkinswriter @zurahlynn @carolynzanelli @jimmycthatsme @carmenscottshow @christinaelizabethsmith @tshiunzadk & @davidscall

Summered.

Brown Paper Bag Party in Bohemia: films by Hal Hartley, Vin Diesel and Larry Carty Guest curated and introduced by Brandon Harris @ickeyshuffling Tuesday, June 17 @2220arts doors/bar: 7:30 films: 8:00 This shorts program revives a trio of tart, ironic, longish NYC-set films about the nature of racial and other identities, from directors whose work and personae within American cinema bridges the gap between the most crassily commercial (Diesel) and the most uncompromisingly arthouse (Hartley). -Brandon Harris OREOS WITH ATTITUDE directed by Larry Carty 1991, U.S., 30m, DCP 4K restoration from IndieCollect Richard and Janet are a young black couple desperate to “make it.” Inspired by Donald Trump’s THE ART OF THE DEAL (which we see Richard reading), they take social climbing to new heights by adopting a white child. Produced by Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon. Official Selection: New Directors/New Films, 1991 THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT directed by Hal Hartley 1991, U.S., 18m, DCP A side-eyed glimpse at the existential angst of the (mostly) white and unemployed creative class in Williamsburg, featuring a cast of Hartley regulars (Elina Löwensohn, Bill Sage, Bob Gosse). MULTI-FACIAL directed by Vin Diesel 1995, U.S., 21m, DCP A multiracial actor (Vin Diesel) enters a series of auditions where he plays different ethnicities to meet industry expectations in this hilarious and touching autobiographical short film that put Diesel on the map. Total runtime: approx. 70m. Special thanks to Chris McChane (Possible Films), Cameron Haffner and Sandra Schulberg (IndieCollect). Brandon Harris is the president and co-founder, with the director Shaka King, of I’d Watch That, author of Making Rent in Bed-Stuy (2017), director of Redlegs (2012), contributing editor to Filmmaker Magazine and a recovering streaming era Hollywood studio executive. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, VICE, Variety, and The New York Review of Books.

Brown Paper Bag Party in Bohemia: films by Hal Hartley, Vin Diesel and Larry Carty Guest curated and introduced by Brandon Harris @ickeyshuffling Tuesday, June 17 @2220arts doors/bar: 7:30 films: 8:00 This shorts program revives a trio of tart, ironic, longish NYC-set films about the nature of racial and other identities, from directors whose work and personae within American cinema bridges the gap between the most crassily commercial (Diesel) and the most uncompromisingly arthouse (Hartley). -Brandon Harris OREOS WITH ATTITUDE directed by Larry Carty 1991, U.S., 30m, DCP 4K restoration from IndieCollect Richard and Janet are a young black couple desperate to “make it.” Inspired by Donald Trump’s THE ART OF THE DEAL (which we see Richard reading), they take social climbing to new heights by adopting a white child. Produced by Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon. Official Selection: New Directors/New Films, 1991 THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT directed by Hal Hartley 1991, U.S., 18m, DCP A side-eyed glimpse at the existential angst of the (mostly) white and unemployed creative class in Williamsburg, featuring a cast of Hartley regulars (Elina Löwensohn, Bill Sage, Bob Gosse). MULTI-FACIAL directed by Vin Diesel 1995, U.S., 21m, DCP A multiracial actor (Vin Diesel) enters a series of auditions where he plays different ethnicities to meet industry expectations in this hilarious and touching autobiographical short film that put Diesel on the map. Total runtime: approx. 70m. Special thanks to Chris McChane (Possible Films), Cameron Haffner and Sandra Schulberg (IndieCollect). Brandon Harris is the president and co-founder, with the director Shaka King, of I’d Watch That, author of Making Rent in Bed-Stuy (2017), director of Redlegs (2012), contributing editor to Filmmaker Magazine and a recovering streaming era Hollywood studio executive. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, VICE, Variety, and The New York Review of Books.

Boise to Baltimore Spring Media Festing in Reverse

Thanks @nytimes for giving Redlegs (2012) some "The Movies We've Loved Since 2000" Love. Perhaps I'll direct another soon. A boy can dream (of that and the @reds bringing back these beautiful unis of the past - no drop shadow pullovers and pinstripe home vests for the win)

Elgar Enders' home in Hal Ashby's THE LANDLORD - my single favorite movie still - as it looks today.

Next Saturday join us @metrograph for a screening of COFFY (1973) inspired by the essay on Blaxploitation and the selling of radicalism by Brandon Harris @ickeyshuffling in issue 004. Brandon will be joined for a post-screening discussion led by Maya Kotomori @utilitiesnotincluded with Kiernan “Knives” Francis @bigknives and ThugPop @thugpop We’ll keep the conversation going after and celebrate with our friends @gotham.ny (details at the screening) Tickets /film/?vista_film_id=9999004162

Apocalypse Bu: A walk amongst the ruins of Carbon Beach. Each of one of these images is a tragedy. My heart goes out to everyone affected. Sadly, it was only a matter of time; it's the way of this place, exacerbated by our mismanagement of this natural bounty. Assuredly not my first fire in these parts - I was displaced longer by Woolsey and last month Franklin came closer to my current home than Palisades has (yet) - but this was the "big one" I feared, and perhaps assumed, I'd one day see. At least until the inevitably larger next one, The Fire Next Time that Baldwin couldn't have imagined; he died a year before NASA's James Hansen spoke to Congress, during the sweltering summer of 1988, about the havoc that climate change would bring in a generation or two, the existential threat it would bring in three and our responsibility to those that will come after us to take radical steps to alter its course. Much of my life in this town was spent walking past these buildings that blotted out the sea, sites of world famous basquiat paintings and baseball card collections, the seemingly unattainable lives at the center of them hidden from the whirl of the coastal freeway. What a world. The lunacy of manifest destiny made plain. To know more about why this happened and how to best learn from the mistakes of the past two centuries as we try and plan for a better future, more in tune to what nature demands we do to steward this utterly singular place, as the Chumash and the Tong Va did long before the Spanish and the Anglos came, I found this Mike Davis essay, adapted from the Ecology of Fear, a clarifying read. /2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/ #malibustrong

I used to live across the street.