indyish’s first newspaper interview!

If you harrass them they will come. (the press that is. insert saucy smily of your choice here.)

I got to do a little interview for a small ArtsWeek profile about Indyish and the ARts Weekend, for next week’s issue of the Montreal Mirror. This is one of our town’s cool weeklies- most town’s have 2ish but we have 4 because of the bilingualism. But that’s pas rapport (irrelevant).

The funnest thing about our little interview was that the gentleman conducting it- a freelancer for the Mirror- was in a class I TA’d two years ago. The class was advanced television and video which, though I’ve taken many video classes, is not my specialty. My job description involved working their writing; and work it I did, scrawling all over their their papers with my green pen, or pencil, and making them resubmit. I love writing and respect it too much as a forger of public opinion to let undergrads pass a class with airy and awkward papers full of nonsense and nothing. It took me and the prof about a year to shake them from some old, ingrained cop-out writing habits (insert angry-with-the-school-system smily of your choice here), but they all wanted very badly to be challenged and to learn, and I got to learn a lot from them and from the prof about video art, documentary, and how much serious work and thought it takes to do it well, so it was a mutually successful endeavor. Their video and written work rocked our socks off in the end. So of course I take full credit for this ex-student’s freelancing success. Just kidding.

Anyway, our little interview was good- he connected with the exact things that I think are important about what we’re trying to do, and took the time to write down me quotables. We’ll see how it turns out though, and I’ll make sure to put a clipping up for you here. Cheers! r.