the harvey weinstein video shoot ... holy shit. (patron-only) (Patreon)

my friends....

i just finished the most powerful shoot of my career, and certainly, hands-down, the most profound one since starting this patreon. i knew it was going to be good, i didn't know JUST HOW GOOD. many of the people in the cast came through patreon: THANK YOU to everyone who sent in a submission to get involved.

instead of writing you a long post about it - which i can and will do when the video itself comes out - i'm just going to cut and paste the email i just sent to the entire cast and crew of the production. it'll help you understand.

this shoot wound up costing north of $35/40k when all is said and done. i won't really make a profit on it. but HOLY FUCK, because of patreon WE GOT TO MAKE THIS. so many women getting paid to work hard on a life-changing piece of art. FUCK!!!!!!

WE GOT TO MAKE THIS AND THERE IS REALLY NO OTHER WAY WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TO MAKE THIS WITHOUT PATREON. when you see it, you'll understand.

be proud to be part of this patreon. be very, very fucking proud.

i love you all.

xxx

a

$5 patrons...i'm going to send you guys the original video treatment to read when the video drops. i've never done that before, it'll be fun to let you in on the backstage emailing of a giant shoot like this.

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subject: a thank you is not enough

Dear Cast & Crew of the Mr Weinstein Shoot,

hey all…oh my good lord. i’m back home in upstate NY after our epic shoot day…..and flat on my back after sixteen straight hours of feeling, talking, moving, and like all of you, climbing endless stairs. my ass and legs are sore. and sometimes coming back to the real world after a shoot like that is disorienting, i hope you all made it back to real life ok :)

words are hard to find for this one. i’ve made a lot of videos in my day but this experience blows everything i’ve ever done away. to feel so aligned and connected with a group of people…i mean, it’s why i got started in this whole art job to begin with: to create space out of the ordinary where souls could connect and transcend the ordinary - while paradoxically getting closer to real life. 

and i mean it truly: every single one of you, and your presence, made something possible that will never happen again. this is art at the level i always aspire to and don’t always hit: a group of human beings expressing something en masse that needs to be done, needs to be said, needs to be expressed...and i feel like we, as a masse, did that.

it’s so easy to despair nowadays. the giant movements of politics, the internet, people suffering in ways that we can’t imagine, it all feels so overly-much sometimes and every person i know is dealing with a high-level general-life anxiety about whether their personal contribution is ENOUGH to address the swirling morass of apocalyptic world events.

i know some of you have read my books and know my work well, and some of you were just meeting me and my world for the first time.

i have struggled all my life with what i call “the fraud police” - the idea that choosing to be an artist is a totally fruitless endeavor, that i’m never going to be a “real” adult, that someone will come unmask me in the dead of night. it’s taken me 42 long years but i’m getting over it, slowly. we’re all works in progress.

i’ve wanted to be an artist since i was a little girl, and i couldn’t explain why, and sometimes i feel like a lot of my adult life was taken up more with the struggle of “explaining why” than the actual doings of being an artist.

three quick stories

one:

when i was in the swarming pile of naked women on a red-lit bed at the end of the shoot-day, and everybody had a thigh in someone’s mouth and an elbow in someone’s crotch and a knee in someones neck and someone with their face pressed up to the bed about 5 inches away from me leaned in and whispered “hey amanda, thanks for your music” and i said “i am at my happiest, this is the reason i do all the fucking emails”

two: 

when we were warming up outside as a group with coco, natalie flagged me down and told me that we probably ought to move inside because she could see the episcopalian minister of our location-church across the street, eyeing us….and had just picked up the phone. i immediately had visions of our entire shoot getting shut down because we’d decided to go off-agreement and plant a group of half-naked women doing weird movements and sounds in the courtyard in front of a church in brooklyn. (FYI: that's why the outdoor warm-up ended so abruptly and we moved inside). one hour later the church coordinator told me that the minister had come onto the set, watched us rehearsing the group-sing-along, and was so inspired by what we were creating that she - the minister herself - wanted to invite us to please come PERFORM the song IN THE CHURCH as a part of series they run to empower women. i was like: yes. we will find a time to do it in the fall with as many cast members as possible. sorry: you’re stuck with me.

three: 

after the shoot was wrapped, someone from the chorus came up to me.

she told me about a difficult episode in her life that’s been bearing down lately. a friend was hashtag-me-too’d by a university professor. long story short, she burst into tears because she felt like she’s trying so hard to make progress, but it isn’t working, and her friend won’t stand up for herself, and she wept because she doesn’t feel like she can fix anything, change anything. like everything she does is just not enough. we held each other.

………..

god dammit. here’s the thing.

it is enough. you are enough. not just every time you choose to march or vote instead of staying home, or comfort a friend who’s experienced an assault - though that is critical. every act is enough. and every artistic act, every creative act, every humorous meme, every fist in the air in any shape: it is all amounting to something right now. 

it will never be enough / it is all enough.

we can never underestimate the power of making something that isn’t “direct action”. it doesn’t work that way. you never know what is direct and indirect. humans are not some weird binary machine. we respond to what is in the air around us. 

all we need to do is look at the power of what musicians were able to ignite in the 1960s in the face of the vietnam war and the body bags coming back home in the dozens, then the hundreds, then the thousands…..to remember that art often comes in as first line of defense, not second.

as i told the chorus member from story #2: you have to start with yourself and remind yourself that you can’t fucking change the world in one fell swoop. you cannot single-handedly take down a university professor who pervs on his students. you cannot single-handedly take down a patriarchy that has been at the head of the table for thousands of years. you cannot single-handedly put harvey weinstein in front of a court of law.

but when woman band together, tell their truths, support each other, lift each other up, hire each other, LISTEN to each other, HEAR each other, give each other strength and space….this has been our female super-power since the dawn of time. this is why the lysistrata has withstood the test of time and theatre critics for millennia. 

this is why when one woman speaks her truth, then another, then another…an avalanche occurs. a tsunami. we are living in this age, and the forces trying to work against truth, freedom and progress have never been stranger. that is because what we are doing is fucking gigantic.

and by doing what we just did: committing to one single weekend act of expression, it counts more than you can literally measure….you never know where the dandelion seeds of energy are going to land. i know that the seed of this shoo is already inside me, bursting forth like a tidal wave of hope.

so thank you, thank you, thank you all so much for bringing your most sincere and present selves to this shoot.

i know it took a lot of patience and humor; that’s the nature of video shoots and meticulous art.

you were all so incredibly patient and brave.

i would especially like to thank all the women of color who came out specifically because they saw my post on social media begging for a more diversified cast. fuck yes. thank you. 

i’d like to thank coco for leading us in warm-up and being an important force behind the scenes to get the cast together. 

i’d like to thank the core dancers for working their asses off and clocking VERY long hours with extreme patience. and to everyone who showed up to be in the chorus: really: you made magnificence and personified power in numbers. 

thank you to natalie for threading it all together, to the camera and backstage and catering and production crew; you were beyond professional and perfect, your tireless work was felt by everyone, to my crew, michael and hayley: thank you for always showing up even more than you have to, your help was invaluable. 

and last….to NOEMIE: you barely knew me, and you took a chance. your work is more powerful than anything i can express. thank you for doing this video and creating this sacred experience for all of us. thank you, thank you.

i bow to you all. 

together, we created something profound. and enough.

i can’t wait to see the final cut…we’ll be in touch about release info!!

love & solidarity to you all,

amanda

ps. a word about social media: feel free to share vague backstage selfies and photos with me and the rest of the cast and all that, but don’t share anything FROM the set/shoot. we want it to remain a surprise. hopefully the video will be out within the next 4-8 weeks. we will let you know when we know what we know!!!!

p.p.s. i don’t usually send such massive group emails from my personal address but anything less, given what you’ve done for me and noemie and this project, felt disrespectful. just: please respect my privacy in kind and don’t share my email with anyone without checking with me first…i am perpetually buried under an email mountain.\m/ XXXXX

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all photos below shot by team AFP's very own hayley rosenblum 

left to right: natalie (producer), anna (1st AD), noemie (director), coco (dancer)

noemie choreographing a shot

jasmine power and yours truly teaching the main dancers the exact breaths of the song

noemie directing

watching the footage as it's being filmed in the front room. from left to right: anna (1st AD), michael (DP), lisa (steadicam operator), india (PA) and yours truly

jasmine and AFP - rehearsing 

coco karol leading the cast of dancers and chorus members in a warm up outside

cast photo on the set of the hotel room

jasmine, me and the chorus

bitch, please

i said PLEASE

......

more....

this photo above is by musician linsday katt, who was in the shoot.

and these, i took....

coco karol, my dear friend, getting directed by noemie...

our bad-ass crew....

noemie and the ensemble.

our producer, natalie watching the screen. camera PA jack on the left, and our gaffer alexa on the right

one last one from hayley:

the "brothel". we didn't let any of the crew into this room when we shot save the camera person.

you'll just have to wait....

xxxxxx

AFP

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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