Everything is Everything

Nametag Day Is Coming on June 1 – With a Documentary

Cross-posted from Huffington Post and the Nametag Day blog:

It’s coming on June 1, and I can’t wait.

We’ve been talking for the past month to everybody who will listen about Nametag Day (and it’s been onCBS New York, Channel 12 News, and Gothamist.) Every time I discuss it, I remember our test run in February.

Watching the video of that test run is the best way to envision what June 1 is going to look like. A smile. Making eye contact. Saying hi to someone and their cute dog as you pass them on the street. A bus ride spent getting to know the fascinating person next to you instead of on your cell phone killing time.

What’s it going to look like?

We’ll dispatch teams of four to six volunteers to busy parks and intersections all around the city. We’ll be holding a sign and handing out nametags, saying “It’s nametag day, would you like a free nametag?” If you don’t want one, we won’t push. We’ll announce the exact locations a few days before the event — the more people who sign up, the more locations we’ll have.

Then what?

People, all over the city from all walks of life, will take nametags! Of course not everyone will. Some won’t notice us or will think the idea is stupid — we hope they still take a minute to at least think about how we interact with each other. But the scores of thousands who do will be rewarded with an incredible experience. If you take a nametag from us, you’ll walk off and have a day like you were going to otherwise, but a little bit different. Maybe you’ll get in a conversation, maybe a dozen — about someone’s awesome shoes or nice haircut, or a topic in the news. Maybe you will meet a neighbor. Or maybe you’ll just go through your day looking at our city of eight million people a little bit differently.

The after-party

We’ll be throwing a giant after-party for volunteers on Saturday night. Come by and meet tons of new friends, all wearing nametags. We’ll announce details soon.

Documenting it all

I’d like us to make a documentary about this day. Take a camera or cell phone and capture video or photographs: friends, interviews with strangers. When a connection with someone affects you, tell everyone else about it. Then post it to YouTube or Instagram and send us a tweet at @NametagDay. We’ll put it up on our site.If you’re taking high-quality video footage, your can upload it in full resolution through a link on our site. Together, we’ll crowd-edit the footage. Mostly, I’m excited to see what happens, because none of us know what will. We know it’s going to be big, we know it’s going to be fun, and we know it’s going to make a big difference in everybody’s day. But beyond that? It’s our story to tell.

Nametag Day, being a social organization, is on the Facebooks and Twitters and Instagrams.

To volunteer go to nametagday.com. It only takes 30 seconds to sign up — we promise.

Setbacks and platitudes

We’ve hit a major setback with shooting my short just now, in a production (like many low-budget short films) that has been punctuated by minor setbacks and resolutions.

A typical response for me is to run through pieces of conventional wisdom. It’s a search to define myself and my situation, and glean from the zeitgeist what my mistakes might be and where I’m headed. The problem with platitudes, though, is they’re shallow and flippant and contradict each other. Here’s a few that I’ve tried out:

1. Fail quickly, fail often. Failure is part of this industry and life, and if you’re failing it means you’re trying.
2. Fight kicking and screaming until you win. Tenacity is the only way ahead in film and it will ultimately be rewarded.
3. Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wings burned off. Don’t ask for everything and expect it. Know what is and isn’t within your reach.

The drive to accept and rationalize events is part of our struggle to wrestle a series of unassociated points into a cohesive narrative that says something about who we are. And I’m not sure what this tells me, if anything, about who I am.

For now, this particular setback has meant that we’re not shooting the film on Thursday and I get to head to my brother’s graduation in Philly early (happy graduation David!) and spend more time with my family. So I guess I’ll add just one more piece of dubious folksy wisdom:

1. It is impossible to know what will come from events, or what meaning they will come to have in your life.

Check out my interview with author Brandon Shire about my attempts to get Shabbat Dinner out to LGBT youth and its launch as a Pay-What-You-Want model.
You can watch the movie at shabbatdinnerfilm.com. Article cross-posted from Brandon’s blog:

Welcome Michael Morgenstern, Writer and Director of Shabbat Dinner, a short film about gay youth. You can see the film online. It is a pay-what-you-want with 10% of the profits going to the Ali Forney Center which combats LGBT youth homelessness. (See the trailer below.)

Brandon: I really liked your film. Tell us what motivated you to create it.

Michael: Well, I’d been working on a TV pilot for years about growing up gay in Los Angeles at age sixteen. In the nineties, it wasn’t what it’s like now. There wasn’t a world for us–everyone who was out was older. As I worked on it, I was continually re-motivated to work on the script by all the articles in 2011 newspapers about gay teen bullying and suicide. Every time I read one I was powerfully affected to do something to reach these kids.

Brandon: How hard was it to make?

Michael: Every part of making a film, even a short one, is a challenge, and we set out diligently to find actors, locations, and a crew. I looked for theater actors, reasoning it would be easier to find an established and talented actor who was successful on stage and looking to get into film than it would to find an already established film actor. I sat down with my friend Matt, who listened to the character descriptions I gave him and came up with ten actors for each character. Then I looked up all their agents and called them. About sixty to 100 calls later…no joke…we had most of our actors.

Brandon: How did you go about finding the young actors, especially two who were going to play gay teens?

Michael: For the teens’ roles, I went to a few acting teachers I knew and posted a bunch of times on Facebook, and eventually found my way to Dan Shaked and Chris London, who were absolutely wonderful. The whole cast was wonderful.

Brandon: The reaction to the film on the circuit has been very positive. Did it start out like that?

Michael: Our first few festival submissions received rejections — late submissions of an unfinished rough cut to the bigger fests, which are hard to get into even with a finished film and applying at the right time. Then I got into the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and after that, acceptances began to trickle in. When we were announced as part of Frameline, the trickle became a stream and I began receiving invitations left and right. I got so many that I made a shortcut on my computer so with six keystrokes I can email out the screener video.

Brandon: Is this film geared toward LGBT teens or adults? I know one of the scenes in it has caused some controversy.

Michael: As far as I’m concerned, this film is for teens. I made it to reach kids who are struggling with issues around coming out and being accepted for who they are (and not just with regards to their sexuality.) I was approached very early on by some educators and people who run organizations that deal with Gay-Straight-Alliances and schools, and I reached out to a few others. People who watched the film were very excited to see it, but inevitably when it came time to present the film to a committee, it was deemed too racy or sexually explicit. I offered to remove the controversial scene — I wasn’t thrilled to do so, but in the end I’d rather the film get seen. It wasn’t enough, and I think that even without that scene the film opens up too many doors about religion and identity, and the safer decision for an educator is not to show it.

I know that it will impact teens, though, and that the images that educators might consider objectionable or questionable will not be so to the majority of teens…but until the film wasavailable online the only way to high-schoolers has traditionally been through educators. I’m sure there are many educators out there who would be interested in the film, but I haven’t met them yet.

Brandon: Can you give us a hint about what you have coming up next?

Michael: Oh, man…lots. I directed two music videos that were a lot of fun, which were released a few months ago. I’m directing an abstract short film that I wrote about death and temporality. The talent involved, between the cinematographer Judy Phu, the composer Jonathan Russ, and the cast, who we’re not ready to announce yet, is so strong and I’m really thrilled to see this shoot happen. I’m also writing two features and planning a few other music video projects. If readers are interested, they can sign up for my mailing list (I don’t send too much, I promise!)

You can contact Michael on Facebook or Twitter, and connect with the page for his new film on Facebook.

Watch the film at shabbatdinnerfilm.com!

Nametag Day website launches with crowdfunding campaign! Awesome foundation sponsors Nametag Day!

And we’re live! We decided to put out the site right away without the capability to register, but you can sign up with your email list and when we get the registration stuff rolled out (within the week, I hope) we’ll send everyone an email letting them know.

Yesterday I received the amazing news that the Awesome Foundation, a NYC-based organization that gives $1000 each month to something awesome, decided to make Nametag Day its project for April. I’m giddy about this — it is so cool to be recognized by a group dedicated to awesomeness, and this will help us a lot with our website launch!

We’re launching an awesome website, which my friends Matt, Julia, and Tim have worked incredibly hard to get up and running. It will let people register to volunteer and give money through Crowdtilt. Once we get our initial $2500, every $10 given will get nametags to 60 people!

So a lot of really great news on the Nametag Day front!

A girl called Emily

I subscribe to The Listserve, a group with 20,000 members that lets one member post every day. Most of the time they are saccharine duds, but from time to time one comes through and wrenches your heart. It’s wild that this guy got his chance to post right as the DOMA hearings were happening.

Subject: a girl called Emily

Three summers ago, I am a fourteen year old boy on a summer camp, trying to avoid accepting that I am gay. On that camp is a girl I’d never met before, with big brown eyes and great music taste. Her name is Emily and as fourteen year olds on summer camps do, we become friends. On the last night of the camp, Emily goes to the disco ’with’ a girl, and tells me later that she thinks she might be bisexual.

After that conversation, I am inspired by seeing for the first time someone who could be open and proud about not being straight. On the spot I resolve to have come out by the last night of the next summer’s camp. I’d never before even considered telling people I was gay.

The camp ends, Emily and I speak online a few times, and somehow manage to always go to the reunion that the other one misses. Eventually, the conversations fizzle out, but I always have in mind the prospect of thanking Emily after I’d come out, of telling her that she’d changed my life without even realising.

Easter Sunday 2011. Sitting in a tree, I come out to my best friend.  By the end of May, I am coming out to my sister, who whilst being supportive, asks me to postpone coming out to our parents and everyone else until her exams are over. I understand, and comply, putting off that conversation with Emily another few weeks.

In June, I find out Emily has killed herself. I never get to say thank you, never get to let her know what she did for me. I try to stop myself thinking about what could have been if I’d come out sooner, because there’s no point.  I’ll never know whether being aware what she had done for me would have saved her. It’s too late now.

I don’t suppose that my story has a moral. But I know that I can never again allow myself to let friends slip away, thanks go unsaid or anything be left until tomorrow.

**However, I want to use this opportunity to do more than tell a sad story. I’m asking you to donate some money to charity, however small or large a sum, in memory of Emily. What would then be amazing would be you emailing me the name of the charity you donated to and (if you want) the amount you gave. I could then email you all back, telling you how much money was donated by all of you in total, so you could see the difference the Listserve can make collectively.**

My friend deserves to be more than a sad story or a teen suicide statistic. Please, allow her to be your inspiration as well. I can’t change the past but you can all help to create a better future.

Thank you all so much,

Ethan
ethanfromlistserve@gmail.com
London

Personally I think there is a moral in there. Don’t wait. Be who you are now. Say what you want to say now. Tell the
people you love that you love them now. “Later” is just another word for “no.”

I’m excited to begin volunteering with the Trevor Project and potentially working with kids who are contemplating suicide. It doesn’t take much thinking to remember why that’s important.

Shabbat Dinner is on Seed & Spark!

Hey everyone,

I’m so excited about this that I’m pre-empting my official announcement, forthcoming attempts to design a pretty webpage and think through how I want to get the word out, to tell you about it here on my blog.

Shabbat Dinner is available on Seed & Spark, a wonderful video platform run by some friends of mine that they call fair-trade filmmaking. You can support films getting made, put projects on there, and watch films by yourself or with others.

So what are you waiting for?

It’s also available through a hidden link on my site with a pay-what-you-want model, if you would prefer to pay by Paypal (or what you want.) Expect a more thought-out announcement in the future!

So watch it! Send it to your friends! And let me know what you think of the film.

(In other news I’m filming another short in May! More later.)

Don’t give up, get pissed.

This morning I woke up upset. Checking my email, I saw that one more company had told us no for sponsorship of Nametag Day, and we received a minor setback in the preproduction of my short film Lily in the Grinder, shooting in May.

Sitting on the subway and wallowing in my pocket of angst, I turned on Billy Porter (yeah, so sue me.) It took me back to Beginning Modern Dance in college with Carol Abizaid, and I remembered the warm-up routine we did to that song. And I remembered what she said, which got me through that difficult routine: “when it gets hard, don’t give up, get pissed.”

And I got pissed. Fuck you world. These ventures will be successful.

And they will. Expect emails from me.

Why we’re starting Nametag Day

Watch it and share it! C’mon, you know you want to!

Many times I’ve looked down, hours after a conference or first-day meet-and-greet, and noticed that I was still wearing a nametag. I’ve always looked up right away, pretending that I forgot to take it off.

I love nametags, and not only because I’m really bad at remembering names and faces. I love that they invite everyone around to initiate conversation, acting as a green flag saying “come over, I want to talk to you!” They say “you don’t even need to ask for my name. Here it is. We are, in some sense, already friends.”

A few times I sat on the subway, wondering what the scene would look like if everyone were wearing a nametag. Nicer. Friendlier. “This is something I should propose to the mayor”, I thought…or maybe some large bank or other group. Someone ought to do it, that’s for sure.

And nobody did. And I didn’t meet the mayor.

So (and you’ve probably guessed this part) I realized that we didn’t need the mayor. We didn’t need permission. We can start a grassroots movement to put nametags on any New Yorker who wants one. A few months ago I mentioned the idea to five of my closest friends: Alejandro, Pete, Dina, Tim, and Julia, who all got really excited.

In our first meeting, a few principles were established. We’re not nametag day, we’re just organizing one part of it. It doesn’t start and end with our little group; it’s an idea that we are letting out into the world. We are radically participatory and welcome anyone and everyone to join in. Our mission is just handing out nametags, not selling anything or throwing other events (but we welcome others to do so!) And we want to see New Yorkers talk to each other more, engage, and share ideas and experiences — not just for one day, but every day.

We did a test run a few weeks ago, shot the video you see above, and are now looking for a sponsor. And just like that, an idea is on track to being a real thing!

What has been so much fun about the idea is that it gets people excited. People get it, and if they don’t, they get it after watching the video. It’s easy, at least in concept. It makes people receiving and giving the nametags happy. It’s fun. It changes the world around us for the better. The offers for help have been mindblowing for something that only had its kickoff event two weeks ago.

I don’t know where this is going or how big or small it will be. Whether we are sponsored or not, on June 1 the six of us are going to hand out nametags. If we have enough of your help, we’ll set up 50 (or more) distribution stations and give away 300,000 (or more) nametags to anyone who wants them. Maybe people will throw nametag parties that night. Maybe those in other cities will follow suit. Or maybe it will just be the six of us, handing out nametags and having the time of our lives.

How can you help? Sign up at nametagday.com and volunteer – that’s the biggest thing. Then, make some sweet sweet social media love to our Facebook and Twitter pages!

Email us at hello@nametagday.com if you want to get involved on our core team or have other ideas for us.

And if you want to find me it won’t be too hard. I’ll be the guy wearing the nametag on June 2.

Another great video: Amanda Palmer on letting people give

I love what Amanda has to say about being an artist and having a direct relationship with her fans:

Watch this: Lana Wachowski receives the HRC Visibility Award

Inspiring for so many reasons: the message, her life story, and the opportunity to listen to someone brilliant speak clearly, in high and low concepts, without talking down in any way.