Everybody likes an underdog. Well, I do anyway.

In the Charlottesville City Council race, we had plenty. The Democrats, who I usually support, had a lock down on the vote. And frankly I thought it was unfair … and undemocratic to ignore the Independents in the race. Everyone deserves a chance to state their platform. I would give them that chance. Thus, Project Underdog was born.

Brandon Collins was running as a Socialist. Yes, a Socialist – card carrying. I thought they were going to tar and feather him.

His affiliation wasn’t some nouveau riche affectation. It was a sincere representation of the starving class. You see, Brandon is a dishwasher the Blue Moon Diner – albeit an overqualified dishwasher. He also plays the cello and teaches music. And he cares about poor people.

I interviewed him for a couple hours at Random Row Books, investigating his stances on poverty, labor and housing. Quite enlightening. You can’t get to the hospital by bus on a Sunday. I didn’t know that. 20% of the city lives below the poverty line. I didn’t know that either.

That’s what there spots were about. Plus some cello. I knew that was going to make them hit home. And the reality of his circumstances. Somebody commented on the videos: “I’ll vote for someone who rides the bus.”

Brandon didn’t win. But he got nearly 1,500 votes. Not bad for a Socialist.

I also did several spots for Independent Bob Fenwick. He got over 2,500 votes. And he also lost. I guess that’s why they’re called underdogs. And I still love them.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

OK, I’ll admit it. I went to Yale. But I didn’t inhale.

Well, the Association of Yale Alumni was sending a massive service trip to work in Chinese schools. And they picked me up as their documentarian – plus my ten-year old daughter. I got a lot of exotic footage … and ate a fried tarantula.

Here’s the accompanying article I wrote for the Alumni Magazine:

Letter from China, written on a ginkgo leaf.
by Brian Wimer, ’91

Across the street from the Peabody Museum grew a gingko tree. No, gingkoes are not indigenous to New Haven. Gingko seedlings were first exported from China in the 1800s. This particular tree was likely to have been one of the first shipped to the US, as it was over a century old – its life possibly charting the entire 110-year history of Yale’s active exchange with China.

“That ginkgo stood right outside my office,” recalls Mark Dollhopf, executive director of the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA). He says that visual testament inspired him to lead an unprecedented Yale Alumni Service Corps (YASC) tour to China this past July.

Don’t take this Corps lightly. It’s more of an army. The tour boasted 184 participants (129 grown-ups and their 55 kids) from twenty-five states and seven countries, representing Yale classes of ’58 to ’10 as well as numerous other alma maters. And they weren’t there for the dim sum – although they did spin their share of lazy susans.

Arriving in Shanghai, these world travelers were whisked west to the town of Xiuning, where they were to teach three schools of Chinese children in an intensive week boasting tin flutes, teepees, a full curriculum of core studies, plus three or four pandas. “Programs like this go a long way,” says Jason Petsch ‘05. “We’ve touched thousands of lives here.”

Take a Tuesday morning at 8am and you might hear an echoing verse of “Eyes-ears-shoulders-knees-and-toes” met over the middle school quad by a harmonica hum of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and a bout of “Bulldog-bulldog-bow-wow-wow-Eli-Yale.” Meanwhile, across town at the high school, beside the muralists and the library renovation, some students would be scripting and a shooting a short film, as others learn from coast-to-coast to Skip-to-the-loo-my-darling.

Like the story of Johnny Apple Seed, read in carefully-labored English, seeds were being sown. Dollhopf says that it’s Yalies’ duty to leverage the privileges they’ve enjoyed and provide opportunity where its granted. True, these endeavors first began with the Yale Foreign Missionary Society, who’s intentions were admittedly parochial. Today’s Yale-China Association has a more secular goal.

The YASC also brought literature, math, science, drama, photography, Yoga and even Spanish. A contingent of business mentors took students through the rigors of profit loss analysis and working capital. A medical team compared with Chinese counterparts surgery notes and cures for the common cold. Serving, sweating and evading bird poop, the Corps toiled from 7am to 8pm, often later, when karaoke allowed. At the end of the course, in Beijing, YaleGALE taught how to hold a class reunion. Yes, Yale brought much. But the exchange was even-handed.

“We came to teach, but what we did was learn.” says Valerie Hotchkiss ’90 PhD, who brought her eleven year old son Sam. The YASC was moved by the tears their Chinese charges shed at their departure. This education was beyond theoretical. “I got more from this than I gave,” concurs Carl Davis ’68. Indeed, in China, one can make a ceremony of a gesture.

Today, the gingko no longer stands on campus. It came down in order to make way for the new SOM building. But its wood was salvaged and carved into bowls. These bowls were returned to China, presented as a parting gift to the YASC’s hosts in Xiuning. Gingkos are known for their healing properties. Now we discover that they are good, as well, for building bridges.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

How do you create a buzz, without using honey? (Or money?) Answer: Music.

You know the Beatles song Come Together? Well, apparently John Lennon had originally written it as Timothy Leary’s campaign song, when he ran against Ronald Reagan for Governor of California. Leary got caught with pot and dropped out of the race, but the song remained. Now I know what all those crazy lyrics were about.

Well, my wife Ivana Kadija was running for City School Board. So I asked my musician friend Gene Osborn of We Are Star Children to write her a campaign song, based on her platform that “Health is Academic.”

His song was so good I had some other friends cover it. Next thing you know I have these eight great songs that people are sharing all over facebook (Gene’s original song A Stronger Mind got 100 “likes” and 40 “shares” in three days). Other bands contributing to this project included: Devon Sproule, Birdlips, Beleza Brazil, Dave Berzonsky, Trevor Przyuski, Estela Knott, and Fritz Berry.

I decided they needed videos to go with them – so, in the eleventh hour, I pulled together four videos featuring some of the more popular covers.

The “Health is Academic” platform became so influential, that most of the other candidates adopted some version of it into their bullet points. And, it became the subject of public debates, radio shows and more than a few letters to the editor.

Alas, Ivana lost. And I learned a lot about elections, dirty tricks and the extreme advantages the wealthy have in American politics. But the songs live on. And so does their message.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

You’ve seen Super Size Me. Well, this was more like Sugar Size Me.

A one-man experiment in sugar indulgence. The plan: eat the same 30 teaspoons of added sugar as the average American adolescent – for eight weeks. Periodically check my vitals: weight, blood sugar, vascular health, mental health (looking for ADHD symptoms) and whatever else my team of five doctors cares to look at.

You see, my wife has an online health network: yourishment.com. And she’s been getting people to eat less sugar. But there’s been pushback. Some folks – notably registered dietitians – seem to think that sugar is an essential nutrient (which it isn’t). And there’s a huge push by the food and beverage industry to make it seem good for you (just check out the The Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition).

Well, we set out to prove them wrong. And, boy did we. Pre-diabetic in 2 weeks. ADHD in 4 weeks. Rheumatism. Insomnia. Gum disease. And … made my body ripe for cancer. Not to mention changing from a borderline fit 19% body fat to a borderline obese 24% body fat.

I think I’ve had my last Hostess fruit pie. You can read all about it at:

SugarDaddyMovie.com

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

Actually, they should call this the Caffeine Film Project.

Write, shoot and edit a 5 minute short in 72 hours. Kind of like the 48 Hour Film Contests, but this one has a few Hollywood mentors (Jeff Wadlow – Cry Wolf) and a green light system at every stage of production. A perennially sold-out venue at the Virginia Film Festival.

I had participated a few years, won a few awards with some fairly outlandish films. Taste of Evil was a noir detective story set in a refrigerator, where a jar of Miracle Whip tries to find out who killed the ketchup. Hard Boiled was a gritty crime flick where the mob boss was the Easter Bunny. I love the weird things you come up with when you’re sleep deprived.

This year I wanted to make a documentary about the process. The producers decided to make me a participant. So, I had the same time crunch as the teams.

We juggled four cameramen (myself, Rich Tarbell, Jacob Canon and Kent Wiley), pulled in footage and lost a bit of sleep. The resulting film unintentionally won the Jury Runner Up Prize. Not bad for a doc in a narrative venue. This version included the awards and was incorporated in the next days’ screening. As if we hadn’t lost enough sleep.

Incidentally, I had some energy to spare – so I also wrote the script for another team – whose film Attack of the Trailer won the Audience Award (an unsuspecting couple preparing for a dinner party gets sucked into a series of B-movie trailers). So, all in all, it was a productive weekend. Sleep when you’re dead.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

Started in the sleepy college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, The Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers (AKA CLAW), is spreading like cooties; with sister branches in Brooklyn, Hudson Valley, New Orleans, Charlottesville, Washington DC, Durham, Taos, and Chicago. Part Theater, part sports event, all crazy, CLAW draws enormous crowds with all proceeds going to support local charities.

But leave the frivolity at the door. These ladies are risking more than their stereotypes by taking the stage. And it’s not always pretty as a French biracial, dancer/singer silent-film pornstar. This spring, favored-contender Achilles Hella suffered a complete fracture of her upper arm’s humerus, while competing against former-winner Tragedy Anne. Twelve screws and a steel plate later, she’s training to compete again, heading toward the upcoming CLAW Nationals.

This landmark documentary I’m doing with photo superstar Billy Hunt covers CLAW from its birth to national phenomenon, beyond the bustiers and burqas. Who are the iconoclastic women behind the movement and the wrestling personalities who grip up for philanthropic glory (this ain’t your mother’s Junior League)? Is it the fourth wave of feminism or the latest form of burlesque? And what’s with the Ref?

In this modern vaudeville, CLAW skirts the edges of entertainment, delving into social critique of contemporary women’s empowerment – all seen through the eyes of the people who go hand to hand, moment by moment, coast to coast. And when the CLAW Roadshow hits the pavement, the action may literally be coming to a theater near you.

This is just a little taste of what’s to come.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

Should be interesting when we actually get to filming the real movie.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

I’ve filmed these folks at various venues. Here’s a performance at Charlottesville’s Jefferson Theater, when they got a little crazy with the face paint. The funny looking bass player is Dave Berzonsky, with whom I went to Peru to film a music doc two years ago. The percussionist Eric co-owns Feast, the best cheese shop in town.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

The challenge was to cram all this info in a “60 Second Gala.” All that with very little available footage or royalty-free music. And a limited budget for motion graphics. Matt Thomas did the original designs. I messed with them a bit when we hit deadline after the umpteenth sign off.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759

Yeah, this doc’s going to rock.

Amoeba Art & Media (a.k.a. Amoeba Films) is an award-winning production company and film studio in Central Virginia.

Contact :: Brian Wimer, Primary Instigator • 434.249.8759