Tag theodore james

Originally posted: http://blogs.indiewire.com/spout/archives/2011/06/01/superheroes_hbo/
By Christopher Campbell
Add one more superhero blockbuster to your summer movie schedule.
I had heard a whisper of this a while ago, but now it’s confirmed: HBO Documentary Films bought the TV rights to Michael Barnett’s Slamdance hit “Superheroes,” a doc about those real-life costumed crusaders who are often likened to characters in the films “Kick-Ass” and “Super.” The funny thing is I didn’t realize it was official until I saw a magazine ad today for HBO’s summer doc series, which features a new premiere every Monday from June 6 through August 15. Other titles include such festival hits as “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” “Hot Coffee,” “Koran by Heart” and “A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt” (see the rest of the titles here). The news about “Superheroes” was also confirmed recently on the doc’s Facebook page, where I regrettably missed it earlier.
Of course I’m excited about all 11 films in the series (the only other I’ve seen so far is “A Matter of Taste”), but I’m especially happy for Barnett’s film, because it wasn’t seen by enough people in Park City and I know there’s a significant audience that will find it intriguing. Here’s a snippet of my review:

Often “Superheroes” comes off as also being more about the problems of the world than the costumed crusaders on screen. Through people like “Zetaman,” “Life,” “Mr. Extreme” and the simply named “Super Hero,” we are made to think about the issues of homelessness and violent crime, as well as police corruption and bureaucracy that lead to the necessity for these [Real-Life Superheroes] to pop up in cities across the nation…“Superheroes” will surely be a big hit with the RLSH crowd, of which there are hundreds more than the selected few in the film, as well as the Comic-Con/fanboy types. Plus it’s a well made, albeit fairly standard doc, without many flaws or bumps.

Fortunately, “Superheroes,” which is screening at Seattle’s True Independent Film Festival next week, is also apparently getting a small theatrical run in October and a DVD release in November.
Check out a trailer for HBO’s summer series, including footage of “Superheroes,” after the jump.

Originally posted: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/real-life-superheroes-really
By Jim Brasher
What are you doing this weekend? Going to brunch? Mowing the lawn? Fighting crime? Hmm…which one of these things is not like the other?
Welcome to the confusing, often contradictory world of self-described Real Life Superheroes. (That’s R.L.S.H for short). It’s a loosely affiliated community of people who develop their own superhero persona, put on costume and try to prevent crime in their neighborhood. And all without super speed, invisibility or wings.
So are they vigilantes or volunteers? Commendable or ridiculous? Is what they’re doing even legal? I decided to find out. Check out the video above for my night on patrol with “Motor Mouth.” But first, a little more about the cast of characters, starting with…

THE MASKED MAN:
I’ll admit, I had a few misgivings about meeting a masked stranger decked out in Kevlar and leather in a dark garage. But as you can see in the video, those fears dissipated the moment Motor Mouth started talking. (Turns out, he never really stops talking.) He’s intense, driven, but also has a great sense of humor about the path he’s chosen.
“You have to be a little eccentric,” he said, “there’s no question about it. You gotta be eccentric and you gotta have a little bravado about yourself.”
We went on patrol in downtown San Jose, California with Motor Mouth, Anthem and Mutinous Angel. A typical night on patrol involves lots of walking and plenty of curious stares. But for Motor, his costume is a symbol, a visual reminder that someone in the night is paying attention.
“We’re just like that average man in his mid-forties or fifties going ahead and patrolling his neighborhood in a neighborhood watch group, except we do it with a little bit more flair,” he says. And, he insists, they’re out there as a deterrent only.
“We don’t want to get in the way of the police,” he says, “we try to work with them to the best of our abilities, because we do not see ourselves as vigilantes, not in the slightest.”
(A vigilante is someone who effects justice according to their own understand of right and wrong; someone who punishes an alleged criminal suspect outside the legal system. And that, as you may have guessed, is illegal.)
So Motor Mouth espouses a ‘deterrence-only’ philosphy. But the first rule of the R.L.S.H community is that there are no rules in the R.L.S.H community. (No formal ones anyway.) And not everyone subscribes to the same theories about what it means to prevent crime. So to get a wider view, we spoke to…
THE DIRECTOR:
Director Michael Barnett and producer Theodore James spent a year on the road, following close to forty Real Life Superheroes all over the country for an upcoming documentary called… Superheroes. They were kind enough to share some of their footage with us, and we met Barnett at Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood for an in-depth conversation about his experience.
“There’s not one thing the RLSH community focuses on,” he says, “they really do focus on everything, every aspect of the community, and how to make it better. And the thing that drives all of them, is people who do not care; that’s their mission, change the people who do not care to caring people.”
You can watch more of our interview with Barnett here. And stay tuned to this page for breaking news about when and where you can see the film.
THE LAW & THE GOOD NEIGHBORS:
We also spoke to Cindy Brandon, executive director of San Francisco SAFE (Safety Awareness For Everyone). SF SAFE is unique, a non-profit organization that works in partnership with with the police to provide neighborhood watch program to the residents and businesses of San Francisco.
She stressed the importance of alerting the police to any suspicious activity. “If you see a crime in progress,” she says, “your first reaction should be to call 911.” Getting involved in trying to stop a crime is a risky proposition.
“If they do intervene they’re putting their own life in jeopardy. While I think each person can make that determination themselves when they witness something happening, we tell people not to get involved, but to go into a safe place and call the police right away.”
Actual law enforcement officials stress the same message. According to Lieutenant Andra Brown of the San Diego Police Department, real life superheroes, “don’t have the backup that we have, and trying to take a situation into their own hands could perhaps get out of hand for them, and it could actually create more work for the police officers.”
“Now we perhaps have another victim we have to deal with, we have someone who maybe has been represented to be part of law enforcement, or an authority if you will, and that can confuse other people out on the street. So yeah, there’s a lot of situations where they could impede what’s going on, or what a police officer needs to take care of.”
THE ARTIST:
Like many members of the real life superhero community, Motor Mouth got his inspiration from the pages of a comic book. So we commissioned artist and performer Kevin McShane to create two original comic book panels for our piece, based on footage from our piece.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Motor Mouth, Mr. Extreme, Mutinous Angel, Thanatos, Dark Guardian, Master Legend, Life, Crimson Fist, Zimmer, Saph, Ghost, Asylum, Red Voltage, Zetaman. Their reasons for putting on a costume are as colorful and varied as their names. While I learned pretty quickly that it’s next to impossible to generalize about the Real Life Superhero Community, many share a common nemesis: apathy.
According to Motor Mouth, fighting apathy means “trying to awaken the minds of the public to the little bit of more they can do in society, to make the world a better place.”
They certainly had an impact of director Michael Barnett. “In the end, I found something pretty profound. I found people with often times very little resources doing really, sort of small but beautiful things to make their communities better.”
What do you think? Watch the video and let me know.
Video: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/real-life-superheroes-really
Video featuring Michael Barnett: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/we-interview-michael-barnett

Originally posted: http://current.com/entertainment/movies/blog/92969198_real-life-superheroes-get-their-own-film.htm
Superheroes aren’t just for fiction anymore — no longer restrained to the pages of comic books, the large and growing community of Real Life Super Heroes (RLSH) are on the streets as agents of change — with mixed results. No magical-power infused mega-beings, they do what they can to make a difference in home-made costumes, sometimes armed with pseudo-weapons — as an antidote to the pumped-up versions usually presented in films. And now they’ve been lovingly captured in a film of their own, the documentary Superheroes, which premiered at Slamdance. Producer Theodore James and director Michael Barnett gave us the low-down on the process, the provenance, and what comes next.
Q: Many of these real-life superheroes could be discounted as dorks or weirdos, but by the end of the film you manage to tease out their eloquence. What were the main traits of these people that you wanted to portray in the film? Is there something that you think they all have in common?
MB: There is definitely one thing the whole community has in common, and that’s altruism. I wanted to the audience to leave the film knowing that every single real life superhero does something heroic in his or her own way, to make their communities a better place, regardless of resources.
Q: Do you think they’re escapists?
MB: There is definitely a level of escapism for some RLSH but by and large, after donning the costume and experiencing what it’s like to actually help somebody, most superheroes become deeply entrenched in the notion that they can make a difference, be it big or small, and that seems to be the driving force for most of them. That, and it’s “hella fun,” according to a super hero we know from Clearwater.
Q: Was there any point where you wondered about any of your subjects’ sanity?
MB: Absolutely not! Not even with Master Legend. I think these guys — I’m speaking of the ones in the film, because of course its hard to speak for the whole community — are eccentric dudes and ladies. They put on a costume, and they realize something: That they can step outside of themselves and their lives, and maybe even become iconic in their communities. It really does something for them. Also, they all have day jobs. For example, Zetaman works at a packaging plant, Mr. Extreme is a security guard, Master Legend is an air conditioning repairman, some of them are tattoo artists… But a lot of them are trying to find a way to do it full time.
It’s funny how our culture treats people who calls themselves superheroes– they’re either ridiculed or adored in their community, but never treated with apathy. There are so many news stories are out there on them, and some of them make fun of them, and some celebrate them… But even when just putting a costume on and walking down the street – people will always react to them.
Q: Do they develop relationships in their communities?
MB: It depends, of course. Life helps people around his neighborhood in Harlem — homeless people, for instance. His community knows him well, and he knows his community. But then Mr. Extreme works differently — he listens to the police scanners and then he goes out and patrols the area where he hears there is a lot of criminal activity. The result is that the communities he helps don’t necessarily know him. But he’s still out there on the streets, at least four days a week. We wanted to deconstruct the “superhero” myth, in our society, and then rebuild a sense of what it means to be a real life superhero: Some want to fight crime, and others want to give food out.
TJ: A few of the subjects in the film confront drug dealers and try to bait criminals into committing crimes. During those nights of filming we were all a bit nervous. Thankfully nothing happened to the subjects or the crew.
Q: Many of your subjects never divulge their true identity to you… Did you find this was something that made it hard to build trust between you and your subjects?
MB: The opposite! Making this film has helped me understand that it is not necessary to know somebody’s real name in order to truly know them as a person. If anything, our lack of needing to know their true names helped them open up to us.

I think when we approached them and they didn’t tell us their names and bios, we were like “That’s cool, we don’t need them. it’s not part of our story.” Which is different from how reporters react — they need a name to print a story. But what’s a name, really? If someone wants to identify themselves as Mr. Extreme, then that’s who he is, to us. But, for instance in Mr Extreme‘s case, I nonetheless got to know him deeper than the costume. He’s a guy that I’ve gone to a couple times a month over the course of the last however many years, have spent hours on end with talking about his life, his family, and getting to know him. I don’t need a name to truly know him.
Q: How did you come across this subject, in the first place? And what made you decide to make a film about it?
MB: I stumbled upon this vast community online. Go ahead, google Real Life Superheroes. I dare ya!I’ve been a cinematographer for 15 years, and have shot a lot of films. I started directing a few years ago, and was making a film for a TV network that, that Theodore [James, the producer] was producing. He was looking for a project, and I mentioned that I’d been gathering some research on this thing. I turned the research in, to him, and he was amazed. He started doing more research, we got in touch with Mr. Extreme and we went to shoot him. He was the first one to agree to work with us. When we got home and we looked at the footage of him we just knew. We realized that this guy is fascinating, and we could just do a film about him alone! But it expanded: We got in touch with Stan Lee, and when he agreed, the community just fell into place.
Q: Were there any scenes that didn’t make the final cut that you miss terribly?
MB: We had to cut a lot of Zetaman, who is an exceedingly noble and humble guy. The work he does with the homeless is heartbreaking and inspiring. He is a true hero in every sense of the word and I’m bummed that we had to lose segments of his story line in the film. I’m also bummed that we had to lose Master Legend‘s “House of Death” scene. Keep an eye out for the DVD, it will definitely be on there!