Reviewed by Adam Boult
Featuring Josh Harris, Tanya Corrin, Ondi Timoner, Tom Harris, Jason Calacanis, Jon Harris, Alex Arcadia, Chris DeWolfe, Douglas Rushkoff, Harold Kaufman, Marc Geiger, Jessica Zaino, Owen Bush, Robert Galinsky, Missy Galore
Certification UK 18
Runtime 90 minutes
Written and directed by Ondi Timoner
Described as the “greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of,” and as “the Warhol of the web”, Josh Harris was a major beneficiary of the 90s dotcom boom, making millions through his knack for anticipating how people would use the then-nascent medium. After founding research firm Jupiter and then Pseudo.com, the world’s first Internet television network, he used his new-found wealth to fund and curate a ground breaking project called Quiet; part art installation, part social experiment, part millennial cult.
Quiet took place in an underground bunker in New York in the last month of the 20th century. 100 volunteers agreed to forfeit their privacy and live entirely on film – cameras were installed throughout, documenting their every move, with the results broadcast on Pseudo.com. Taking place at the same time as the first ever series of Big Brother, Quiet was a deranged distant cousin to the reality TV show; the bunker was fitted with a firing range and full-stocked armoury, sex and drugs were unavoidable, and Harris’s “anything goes” ethos was pushed to the limit.
Quiet was followed by a more low-key project in which Harris and his girlfriend broadcast their own lives on the internet, 24 hours a day, for six months. Struggling with personal and financial issues, the added pressure of constant surveillance would eventually drive the couple apart, and Harris to a mental breakdown.
Film-maker Ondi Timoner, herself, one of the inhabitants of Quiet, previously made DiG!, a hugely entertaining documentary following the band Brian Jonestown Massacre and their worryingly volatile front-man Anton Newcombe. In We Live In Public, she sadly has a far less compelling subject; Josh Harris is undoubtedly an interesting character who’s done some interesting things, but, unlike Newcombe, he’s just not a big enough personality to merit a whole film.
In documenting Harris’s heyday We Live In Public has captured a short-lived way of life, one in which youthful businessmen could suddenly find themselves with ludicrous sums of money and some oddball ideas about how to spend them. However, Timoner gives Harris far more credit for his prescience than is actually deserved, claiming that, through his surveillance projects, Harris was creating a visual metaphor for how we would all live in the internet age; surrendering our privacy to win the attention of strangers on the internet, with presumably dreadful consequences for our mental health. That’s a hell of a stretch, and one that fails to convince.
We Live In Public is nevertheless a decent period piece, albeit one that’s probably more suited to the TV or PC screen than the cinema, and Timoner is a gifted story teller. It’ll be interesting to see who she chooses as her next subject.