Welcome to my documentary, titled: Call me Back
Consider the double meaning of calling someone back after they leave a message, and the way this entire documentary is calling the viewing audience back to the 90's, the "Before Times".
The cinema world is about to get a beautiful surprise, hopefully by the end of 2025.
During the 90s (when I was in my mid-20s to mid-30s), I was, well, for lack of a better term, the most nostalgic person in the world.
You see, I systematically saved 14 years of answering machine messages from 1988-2002.
Yeah. I really did that. I sometimes can't believe it myself.
And rather than have these tapes be revealed after I die by my sister or nephew, there was an extraordinary opportunity to tell the story of these messages.
I realized there was an opportunity to design/create/write a film about my journey saving them, and more importantly, my friends' journey, as expressed in these tapes, in the 90s.
CONTEXT FOR SAVING THEM
Here is some context for why I saved them, and how I "accidentally" saved some voices of the "Before Times" (before Internet, cell phones, texting, social media, AI) history.
First, I deeply loved the sound of (some, to be honest) voice!
Whether it was music, the sound of actors in film and TV, or the sound of a subset of the people in my life leaving me messages, voice thrilled me..
Voice often transformed me, took me to a sublime place of awe and wonder.
I'm someone who would choose to keep my hearing over my eyesight.
My past has a lot to do with this.
LOSING DAD
I tragically lost my father when my parents divorced when I was 5. So there's that. Thud.
Yeah, I know I'm not the only one. Especially in our modern era. But it sure *felt* that way at the time.
Chances are probably significantly above 50% that you, the reader, had some version of a parent loss in some form. If you did, I'm sorry, and depending on your circumstances, I can empathize.
But damn it, dad. He found a new wife, who happened to be jealous of me and my sister. They chose to live (what seemed very) far form us in the Napa Valley...they settled in Arizona.
Ouch. I was devastated.
Now, I'm aware that there are way more traumatic stories and more significant losses, epecially other countries with deep economic issues, wars, etc.
But in my subjective world it was quite a loss...and one which will soon explain the motivation for saving my answering machine messages.
It was quite challenging to seem my dad in person, given the circumstances. I got to visit maybe 4 days a year.
Overnight my relationship with Dad became relegated mostly to the phone, and many answering machine messages.
I felt like the boy in the French children's book "The Little Prince". I was alone on the moon, scarf flapping, a rose in my vase, and only able to see my dad with my little telescope.
If you suspect that some of what I'm writing here might be good material for the film, thank you, and most of it is already in my script!
So, phones were my lifeline to my dad. Weirdly, Dad's voice sort of...well...WAS him. At least in my emotional world.
And it did not help (or hurt?) things that he was a former college-level actor, singer, and a stellar storyteller. I thought it kind of fitting that my dad was in several Shakespeare plays at the University of Connecticut.
So yeah, my dad left me these delightful messages that I'd run home to listen to after school. Pretty pathetic, actually. I'd listen to them 5 times. Then, like most parents, my mom would eventually press the delete button.
But unlike most kids, that deletion felt like it also deleted my heart out for the next 15 minutes. And I'd go to bed sometimes dreaming about what the next answering machine from my dad would be in, say, 5 days.
Could I have asked my mom to save them? I guess. But to be honest, she did not care so much to hear his voice, if you know what I mean.
So I went for years with those little heartbreaks.
So many of our childhood wounds get alchemized into our greatest talents; we compensating for those wounds, and somethings that is expressed in some creative form.
I have a Master's in Psych, another in Education, and a BA in History, so I think about, study, write about these topics.
THEN I HAD CHOICE!
So when the time came, and I had more agency and choice, I started doing a bold thing: saving each and every one of my friends and family's answering machine messages!
No more delete button for the precious voices of my life.
And maybe, just maybe, there would be a day that I could...you guessed it...put the "voice pieces" of my life back together again.
Maybe that sounds cheesily trite, but I've always thought that when something sounds hackneyed, it's usually because so many people could relate to that experience. There's something almost archetypal about it.
Those universal experiences of growing up on this spinning ball of dirt called earth.
WHAT I SAVED FIRST
So I first saved them all in 1988.
What did that look like? Each day (or maybe 200 of the 365 days) I'd put a microphone up to my audio cassette tape recorded and I'd save those set of 2 days of messages.
After that year, I asked myself if I want to continue? And I did!
Something felt quite internally fulfilled by saving them, even if I thought I might not every listen to them again.
I just felt compelled to secure them, just in case.
Sometimes it was just like watering plants each day; a habit, routine or ritual.
And I liked hearing them a second or third time, anyway!
And so I went ahead with 1989. And it continued to make me happy, to soothe something inside me. I rested better at night.
And so my "garden" grew. And grew. And grew.
For 14 freakin' years.
Obsessive? Wellll...maybe a bit. Depends on how we conceptualize that term. Can we call it "obsessive light".
And didn't we all kind of have our thing? What's that epic line from the Beatles song Nowhere Man: "...isn't that a bit like...you...and...me-e-e..."
THE SCRIPT SO FAR
If you don't mind reading more, I'll continue to elaborate.
Let's see...my documentary script so far is about:
1. The "back story" (what I just shared) that provides context for me saving the messages (eventually told better and more artistically and beautifully in the film, of course, than I just did!)
2. Certain carefully selected messages (maybe 100-200 out of over 2000) that are deeply compelling, perhaps because of their content, but also because of a tone or inflection of inspiration and magic.
3. Occasionally my commentary before a message to provide context. Although there is talk on my team of doing this sparingly, allowing the messages to just speak for themselves.
4. Soemthimes tearfully or laughingly giving my return message to them, 30 years later, that I *wish* I had left for them. And usually, in so doing telling them how essential they were to me. Telling them how much I loved them, and that if I'd only known this or that, then I would have...
5. Soon to be attained footage of some friends and family's reaction to hearing *their own messages" 30-ish years later! Can you imagine? Wow.
6. Some carefully written and edited philosophizing by me and others about what it means that we don't leave (long) voice messages anymore, how tech is changing the way we relate to each other, how "The Medium is the Message" relates, where AI is taking us, and much more! In a fun way, not dry and overly academic.
7. Interview footage of me sharing about what a profoundly transformative process it was to go back (over the 2024 year)) and listen to each and every message of my life over a 14-year period. I'm really a different person. And I'm still processing it, and probably will be right up to the end of the formal completion of this documentary.
This will be a story like no other that has ever been told, since no one else (that I know of) saved years and years of their messages.
And since the era of long answering machine messages is over, mine is probably going to be the only authentic story about this topic.
And here is the kicker: my innocent nostalgia and obsession resulted in the existence of a rare time capsule collection, of that time just before "everything changed" (turn of the century and millennium).
I'm am in a unexpected position of being able to "call you back" to a time that is increasingly seen as quite exquisitely special, before cell phones, Internet, social media, etc.
And for that matter, the time before the dark era of terrorism, environmental degradation, and maybe even dire threat to humanity of global warming, AI, etc.
See where this unusual doc is going?
It kind of even defies the category of documentary, since is such a unique form of memoir. More like a "you-moir", since it was my *friends' messages* that became my personal record, not my messages.
So is this a "Doc-You-Moir?" Sorry. You did not deserve that. lol.
THE NUMBERS: HOW MANY MINUTES OF MESSAGES
Sorry to bring you back to middle school, but let's do the Math:
80 tapes x 90 minutes per tape = 7200 minutes of recording.
But considering silences, gaps, and sometimes the outgoing messages themselves (which we won't count), let's round down and call it 6000 minutes of *actual* messages.
That's 100 hours of messages or over four full days' worth.
Note: To re-listen to them, at the rate of 2 hours a day (that was listening, then I needed to transcribe them, which took another 2 hours each day), it thus took 50 days of listening and transcribing to complete the 14 years of messages.
CHRONICLE OF HISTORY
These messages include the most personal of shares, "regular" messages, comedies messages, and many references to the historical and cultural events of the time.
The Berlin Wall fell.
The Soviet Union ended (in most of its forms).
The Clintons took power.
The freedom of Mandella and the end of Apartheid.
Rodney King-related events/riots, etc.
Madonna rose in the music charts.
The films Forrest Gump and American Beauty (of course, many other great films came out; I'm just mentioning 2 for brevity).
Cell phones, email, and the masses getting Internet (just that little thing).
The Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to Bush.
9/11 (side note: part of the 9/11 memorial museum is hundreds of the final cell phone calls from those in the towers...heartbreaking).
Yeah. Kinda crazy.
Messages from family, best friends, friends, acquaintances, and yes, those random calls from, say, the phone company calling to remind of bills due, or an annoying "Invalid Number" or "Your Number Cannot be Completed as Dialed," with that machine voice we all abhorred (which will add some humor to it all!), etc.
FILMMAKER REVIEWS & FEEDBACK
According to the opinions of over 100 documentarians I've met in LA and NYC, this is a priceless time capsule of the intimate voices of the 90's.
It is, if I may humbly say so, absolute documentary gold.
No one has done a film about the topic "the era of answering machine messages".
And we have "proof of concept", in that people just loved their phones, loved messages, and they made their wai into the comedy of Seinfeld, Friends, Sex in the City, Office Space, Gilmore Girls, and so so many other TV shows and movies.
Ira Glass from NPR's "This American Life" (whom I met and talked to at Sundance) wants to do a piece on a romance story in the tapes, other podcasts have expressed interest, and a friend at the Smithsonian American History Museum wants them to be part of their collection after I'm "done" with them.
I imagine people like Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Malcolm Gladwell would be interested. We'll see.
The most important part of designing and editing this doc, by far, is the messages themselves.
Selecting the right messages, with the ideal "preliminary setting context commentary" before each message (if it adds to the story) and my or others' commentary after the message (if necessary), is where it's all at!
It will mostly be first person narrated (me), intertwined with the messages, and some talking heads and B-roll.
PERIOD PIECE ABOUT THE MEDIA PROGRAMMING OF THE 90's
To make it a truly charming period piece about the 90s, we will want to showcase some movies scenes, some jingles and song, broadcast news events, etc, and yet we'll have to get rights and pay for those. If done sparingly it will beautifully add to the story as little reminder of those times!
Oh, and for the fun of it and heck of it, here is more possible content for you to chew on.
Years after I stopped saving them (in 2002) I still had them!
One week, during the holiday in about 2016, I dug through my family attic storage space, pushed aside a mountain of boxes, cleared away some cobwebs, opened a box, and with a jaw-drop and gasp, I saw that there they were!
I instantly realized that I'd "accidentally" discovered a time capsule of gold (in the form of "the private phone messages of the pre-cell phone and pre-internet 90's America"), featuring many messages from my dad, but more importantly, the messages of my bright, fun, funny, vulnerable friends from the 90s (when we were in our 20s and early 30s).
And I when I knew this was a film, I started crying. Right there in the cobwebbed and dusty attic.
Now, one more topic to include about a possible collaborator.
HOPEFUL COLLABORATION WITH RICHARD LINKLATER
What filmmaker makes great films about fascinating characters (mostly in their 20s), and even took 12 years to make a film?
You got it, the legendary Richard Linklater!
Richard Linklater took 12 years to film his Golden Globe masterpiece Boyhood!
His film often focuses on people in their 20s (college, just out of college, or "slackers" who just did their own thing).
Let's look at his five most relevant films to the one I'm making:
1. "Tape" (obvious connection!);
2. The "Before Series" (focus on the depth of connection between actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, as well as playing creatively with TIME
3. "Slackers" and "Dazed and Confused," which depict Austin ,TX characters from the '80s (my messages capture Berkeley characters in the ''90s);
4. "Waking Life," which plays creatively with time, imagination, and dreams.
5. "Boyhood," which he filmed over 12 years (I saved my messages for 14 years)
I include Linklater because we hope to eventually either bring him on board as a consultant, and/or have him suggest someone else who is available, or just model this film around some of his great methods/processes/tropes! At the least, I think he will agree to read our script, and I've got a couple of possible connections with him.
MY BELIEF & DREAM
I genuinely believe (yes, I'm biased) that this will not only win awards, but even win those awards that one is not supposed to mention lest they seem boastful or worse.
(Humble whisper, I don't want to jinx this: I even think it could be one of the most important films of the decade, perhaps the main period piece about the 90s, calling the audience back to the "before times", which is a profoundly relevant and important conversation talking place in many part of society right now. The world is in a major crisis, and the timing could not be better!)
