For Your Oscar Consideration - UNZIPPED: An Autopsy of American Inequality

 UNZIPPED: An Autopsy of American Inequality is in consideration for the Academy Awards and the deep consideration starts TODAY! Please pass this along to any and all Academy members that you know, as I really can't think of many more important topics than making sure our fellow humans are housed. It's THE most basic human right, yet we allow so many of our citizens to sleep out on the streets in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It's just not right. And we all need to be talking about it until we can really be called a decent civilization, by providing the very least anyone can ask for - shelter. It was an honor and a privilege to help produce this film, and our team, led by director Colin Gray, is all in on doing whatever we can to help make it a world where the most basic needs are being met ... by raising the roof!

 

Many, if not most, Academy members live in Los Angeles and can see the massive and outrageous problem of people living on the streets every day. One can complain about it, or one can do something about it. We chose the latter by making this film. The intent we set out with was to at least start the conversation to find solutions, rather than look the other way, as so many do when faced with this situation. 

A good starting point with any tough subject is always EMPATHY. The NIMBY people who don't care what happens as long as they don't have to see houseless HUMANS in their neighborhood don't seem to realize how quickly it could be them. You lose a job, a family member gets an illness, your rent gets raised, and BOOM.  I've seen it happen to more than one person I know, and no one is as stable as they think they are. We have to start CARING more, because we truly are all in this together. 

 

 

We held a screening at Beyond Baroque on Monday night for Oscar voters to consider UNZIPPED: An Autopsy of American Inequality as a worthy competitor for the Academy Awards, and to raise awareness for our #RaiseTheRoof Impact Hub.  This is a resource that goes beyond the film to help people find help and resources in their area, as well as for those who want TO help and OFFER resources. It was clear that this topic truly affects us all, and it's high time we all did something about it. That is why we're pushing hard for an Oscar nomination. It's not about any personal glory for any of us. but a means to get the word out on a much larger scale, not only about the film, but the ISSUE - and the ways we can all work together to ENSURE that Housing is enshrined as a basic human right. Because it is. 

UNZIPPED is also a finalist for the Anthem Awards in the Awareness and Media category, and we'd be so honored if you would help this project by voting for us there too (anyone can, no need to be in the Academy!). It's nice that we're in the Awareness category, because that's exactly what we're trying to raise - along with roofs. Please vote here - https://celebrate.anthemawards.com/PublicVoting/#/2024/humanitarian-action-services/awareness-media-categories/. Thank you!

I know there are a lot of qualified documentaries, and a lot of very deeply important topics covered, but I really wonder which affect Los Angeles more than our homeless pandemic? Or the world, for that matter. I think about the Olympics coming up in L.A. in 2028, and wonder how they'll erase the inescapable sadness that is the homeless situation all over town? How they'll justify housing an entire Olympic Village for the athletes when they can't find affordable housing for our full time citizens? It's pretty heavy.  I'm currently in Minneapolis taking care of family, where it is starting to get cold. There are major homeless encampments in the city, and people with signs for help at freeway exits and busy intersections all around the Twin Cities and their suburbs. It's the holiday season, and I just don't know how any of us can feel good about any of us sleeping out in the cold. It's truly time to RAISE THE ROOF (that is a hot link for you to follow and get involved!!) for everyone, and I hope so much that you can all help us make it a reality where everyone has safe shelter and enough to eat. This is America, and we need to do far better by our People. We CAN. And we MUST.

UNZIPPED is available to watch now on Amazon Prime and Vimeo, and eligible for you to consider it for the Academy Awards right NOW! Thank you so much for helping us to #RaiseTheRoof!!! We truly appreciate it, and so will all the people we can help together. 

Season's Greetings to All! I miss you, Venice!

The Venice Premiere of UNZIPPED: An Autopsy of American Inequality - A True Venice Reunion!

The Venice Premiere of UNZIPPED: An Autopsy of American Inequality was held last weekend at the Mishkon Temple on Main Street, on a beautiful night in a historic building filled with friends. 

 

I had never been inside the Temple, and you would never know how big it is inside ... and how full it would soon be with all of our Venice loved ones. A long line formed outside, and the buzz was building as friends happily greeted each other and caught up as fast as they could before the movie was to begin.

 

The long road to getting this film out into the world began in Venice, and was made for and by Venetians. To finally get to see it in a room jam-packed with people that also care deeply about our chosen home was both very exciting and very moving. I was close to tears the entire evening. 

As I'm still deep in caregiver mode for my family in Minnesota, I had to just zoom in for the event. That made it even more special and emotional, because I had to soak it all in for just one night, and try to get to see and talk to everyone at once who I miss so dearly. Of course, that was impossible, so please consider this both my thank you note and my love letter to all of you who were there to support us and our Venice movie. 

All of the happy reunions and catching up of course meant that the film had to start on "Venice Standard Time" - which is always a little later than stated. Once we got everyone seated, there was a land acknowledgement and welcome from Carol Levy, the Mishkon President, as well as an update and welcome from Kristina von Hoffman, President of the Venice Heritage Museum. The VHM was one of our chosen beneficiaries of the evening, as well as a valuable resource throughout the making of our film. We all learned that it looks like the VHM will have a home as soon as this year! Great news! It will be a wonderful place for people to learn all about our beloved town that has given so much to the American culture. Venice Family Clinic was also there as a beneficiary and partner, and the good they do for our community is on full display in our film. THANK YOU, VFC!

UNZIPPED is not a documentary trying to tell you how things should be. It is a vehicle to get a conversation started about how we can all find solutions together for the unhoused situation that has gotten out of control in Los Angeles in recent years. And get a conversation started it definitely did - even DURING the film! In true Venetian fashion, audience members were shouting back to the screen, cheering for faces they know and love, jeering at others who maybe are missing that empathy chip that is so crucial to any hope of harmony in our world. It was awesome. 

Cheers rang out as Run The Jewels kicked in and the credits ran, and then it was time for more socializing and catching up. As hoped, there was much discussion about the homeless issue, and what everyone thinks is best for Venice. PERFECT. Keep it up! We need to not look away, and we need to look out for each other - whether we have housing or not. It's a very complicated issue (as the audience let us know), but we don't have the option of looking away. We can all do better. We all MUST do better. And we don't want it to stop with seeing the film and having discussion about it. There are SO many ways to get involved in our #RaiseTheRoof campaign ... there are so many ways to help in the world - just pick ONE. 

It was all over way too soon, and I didn't even nearly get to talk to everyone I wanted to, but I saw your faces and felt your love, and carried it all back with me the next day (after the crucial and glorious beach afternoon, followed by Hinano's!) with a smile on my face and in my heart. 

If you weren't able to join us at the Venice screening, you're still in luck! The Oscar qualifying run of UNZIPPED begins TODAY at the Santa Monica Laemmle for one week. There will be a Q and A with our director, Colin Gray, after the Tuesday screening (that I will HATE to not be at), and I hope you can get there to see it in a proper theater. There will also be a New York premiere in May, and a big Hollywood red carpet whole deal premiere on June 1st, and a streaming release that will make it available in 192 countries right on your own tvs. Please stay tuned for all of the developments regarding the film, and please try to get involved in your own way. 

 

Affordable housing needs to be enshrined as a HUMAN RIGHT. It is unconscionable that there is even one person living on the street in a country this wealthy, never mind whole tent cities. It's really embarrassing, and as one of our interview subjects in the film says, other countries in developing parts of the world look at US as backwards. As they should. And we all know we can do better. 

There was a lot of work and heart and emotion put into this film, and our whole team has a deep love for Venice that is up on the screen for all to see. I miss our groovy old Venice, and anyone who lived there in those times knows what I mean. The magic is still there in Venice, it's just maybe a little harder to find than it was back in the day ... unless you know where to look. And all you had to do last Saturday was sit down in a darkened theater among your COMMUNITY gathered together to know that you were surrounded by that only in Venice vibe that will always be kept alive in each one of us, wherever we may go. 

THANK YOU, VENICE!! I LOVE YOU! Now go see UNZIPPED, let us know what you think, and let's roll up our sleeves together to make our Community - and the WORLD - a better, even MORE magical place. 

#RaiseTheRoof !!!!

90291: VENICE UNZIPPED - A Film For Our Community

Friends ... all you have to do is walk down any street in Venice to know that there is a massive issue with income inequality in our community. I believe it is THE issue of our time for our entire country. The way that you begin to understand any issue is through the stories from the people that it affects. So, when feeling an intense need to DO SOMETHING about it, and sharing stories about it, you start to come up with ideas for solutions ... and the way to do that is always knowledge. Learning about the roots of an issue, and going from there.

My friends Colin Gray and Megan Raney Aarons ("The Sibs") are longtime Venice residents and filmmakers, with several successful documentaries already under their belts, and they saw the same multi-million dollar houses with tent cities in their Venice backyards that I did, and once we got to really talking about it all, we felt that Venice could be zoom-lensed on as an example of what is happening across this nation ... and begin to do something about it.

90291: VENICE UNZIPPED is the film we are setting out to make. We'll embed with three families - one homeless, one middle class, and one wealthy - living in almost unimaginably different circumstances here in Venice. We'll also talk to friends and neighbors across all income and cultural divides, interview local and national thought-leaders from multiple points of view, and attempt to make some sense of it all. Will it be a cautionary tale about what not to do to a vibrant, diverse community ... or a success story about how people came together to preserve what is wonderful and historical about this place, and how we looked after our own? Time will tell ... and shooting begins soon.

All films take funds to create, and we are holding our first fundraiser at The Lantern House in Venice on June 16th, and we would love for all of you to be involved. Come to the fun event. Send a little (or big, if you can!) tax-deductible donation via our fundraising link HERE. (A detailed equity investment prospectus is also available upon request HERE. Donate to our silent auction of unique Venice items (let us know asap if that's a way you'd like to contribute, so that we may also promote you in the process!). Share your own stories with us, or point us in the direction of a good tale. This is going to be a film for our entire community, and thus, entire community involvement is crucial to telling the whole story.

We are also starting our search for the three families we’ll be embedding with in our documentary.  If anyone has a suggestion for a family who might be willing to participate in our film, please contact us HERE.  We’re looking for one homeless couple / family with or without kids, one middle class family with kids, one wealthy family with kids.  We will be very mindful of everyone’s time and space.  The plan is to film these families for 6-8 days total, each family, over the next year.

The fundraiser information, donation links, and the link to our brand new trailer are again all below. Please read, watch, share, and chime in to let us know what you think! This project is for all of us.

As a friend of Venice Beach and this eclectic, world renowned community… We Want You!  Come be a part of our feature documentary's grass roots fundraising event on Saturday June 16th from 7- 9pm.  Hot links to RSVP and for tax-deductible donations are in the attached PDF, as well as below.  

What:  90291: VENICE UNZIPPED fundraiser

Where: The Lantern House, Venice

Parking: Bike, walk, or park on street

RSVP: 90291veniceunzippedrsvp@gmail.com

Support: To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit:  https://www.documentary.org/project/unzipped

Sizzle link: https://wdrv.it/5b54d127c

The film:  90291: VENICE UNZIPPED is a provocative feature documentary about income inequality in America, told through the lens of one community and three families living in the same 90291 zip code, but at the opposite ends of the growing income divide.  In the film, we’re embedding in Venice, California, the once gritty, artistic and working class beach city, now the epicenter of gentrification in Los Angeles and a growing homelessness crisis. We’ll follow three families - one homeless, one middle class and one wealthy - living in almost unimaginably different circumstances, while putting a human face on Venice’s vanishing working and middle class.  We’ll then follow a proposed homeless housing project that’s splitting the community in two, make connections to gentrification and affordable housing issues in other cities, and investigate how poverty is being criminalized in America.  Is Venice, the last beach city of color, a cautionary tale about an eclectic community’s demise, or can solutions be found for protecting other income diverse cities across the United States?

Style: The film's point-of-view is investigative, fact-based, and deliberately non-partisan.  Rounding out our embed coverage will be interviews with local and national thought-leaders from multiple points of view.  

The team: Brought to you by long time Venice locals - writer / director Colin Keith Gray and producer Megan Raney Aarons (AKA “The Sibs” - Atari: Game Over, Being Canadian, Freedom’s Fury);  journalist / co-producer CJ Gronner (Blogtown); political consultant / co-producer, Marc Baranov;  EPs Amaechi Uzoigwe (Run The Jewels) and Lorien Gabel (Interlog, PINGG); Supervising Producers Matt Green (Refuge Wild) & Andrea McHugh (Hell’s Kitchen, Oprah Winfrey Show, Ghost Hunters); Emmy award winning editor Mohamed El Manasterly (The Square); DP Tyler Heckerman (The Cape); and Emmy award winning VR director, Ben Tricklebank (Clouds Over Cuba). Project is produced by GRAiNEY PICTURES and EVO Films USA.  

Schedule: We'll film Summer of 2018 through Spring 2019. Plan is to then complete the film by Fall 2019 in time for submission to Sundance and other premiere festivals. Goal is to then debut at a major festival and release the film Summer/Fall 2020 in advance of the 2020 Presidential elections. A larger social impact campaign will then launch around the film release to provoke further debate on the issues . Project elements include a virtual reality (VR) short film, an interactive website, an augmented reality app, and a comprehensive educational initiative.

Giving Back:  With a topic this pressing, we feel it’s important we give back.  90291: VENICE UNZIPPED will donate ten percent (10%) of the film’s total profits to leading grass roots organizations and NGOs that are actively engaged in income inequality & homelessness issues in Venice, and across America.

Funding: The project is being funded through a combination of equity investments in the Unzipped Movie LLC, non-recoupable grants, crowd-funding contributions, and tax-deductible donations to the film through its' fiscal sponsor, the International Documentary Association (please make donations by clicking on the Make A Donation tab above). A detailed investment prospectus (PPM) is available upon request.

Why you?  We'd truly value your involvement & support at our fundraiser as we craft, cast & compose this important story.  Filming to begin this Summer across Venice. 

We can't wait to make and show you this film! THANK YOU!!!