WOOBIE'S GEOGRAPHY LESSON

A Movie by Seanie Blue & Joe Englert

This movie was one of the first video movies shown in a theatre in the U.S. Given its tiny budget and bizarre provenance, Woobie is one of the most satisfying projects I've ever been involved with. It played at the American Film Institute, at the Kennedy Center, and brought in sellout crowds for each of its four performances. And the ink! The movie made a lot of subsequnt projects possible, and gave borth to the Betapunks as well as Ecomedia by garnering critical commentary from every corner of the Imperial City.

The movie itself, unfortunately, did not deserve the praise it won, since its execution was a questionable priority throughout its creation. For the marketing, we can give ourselves an A+. As a product . . . well, it's hard to be honest and say it deserves anything but a raspberry.

Funnily enough, the movie has its own life in Ethiopia as a bootlegged disc. The very existence of the project brought odd media scrutiny. The article below commissioned for the Ethiopian Mirror is an example. The article actually does a good job of describing how the project came about, from its simple beginnings as a conversation between me and restaurauteur Joe Englert in an Adams Morgan bar, to the eventual video which brought a delegation from the Ethiopian embassy to opening night at the Kennedy Center.

But the media attention showed me that the intent of the creator is really what the critics are interested in. I learned right off the bat that trying to copy Scorsese or Tarantino was ill-advised, since critics hardly like their movies to begin with. It would always be more important to me to try for something original. Proved to be a valuable lesson.