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Radio documentarian Dave Isay is in the market for people who love to talk about themselves. Isay is the founder of StoryCorps, a national project he founded in 2003 that encourages everyday Americans to share the stories of their lives. Isay has quite a story to tell himself. He's won a MacArthur "Genius" grant, a Guggenheim, five Peabody Awards, and a slew of other broadcasting awards, and has written four books. But he's modest when he talks about his listening project. Each StoryCorps conversation (between two family members or friends) at a StoryCorps location is recorded for free...
...think in almost every interview surprising and sometimes shocking things happen. We have 10 or 15 questions that work best. One of those questions is: Is there anything you wanted to tell me that you haven't told me before? That invariably leads to revelations that are surprising. One of our very, very first interviews was a grandkid who brought his grandmother to the booth, a very typical kind of interview. At the end of the interview, he says, "Grandma, is there anything you want to tell me that you haven't told me before?? She said, "Well, I want...
...that we live in a culture where we spend so much time kind of disconnected, quick messaging, or watching TV and all the screens in our house, the Blackberries, the computer screen, and it's kind of rare...for all of us to look someone in the eye and tell them you love them by listening to them. Just the act of someone saying, I want to hear about your life, moves people to tears almost in every single interview...
...didn't even tell them that the very popular, and very good, Pixar cartoon Ratatouille lost out to a French movie about the troubles in Iran. (Though Persepolis, take my word for it, is funny.) By the time I'd got back to my office I had realized that we critics may give these awards to the winners, but we give them for ourselves. In fact, we're essentially passing notes to one another, admiring our connoisseurship at the risk of ignoring the vast audience that sees movies and the smaller one that reads...
...Actually, it's hard to tell which if any of the critical faves will be popular, because most of the big winners (Diving Bell, No Country, Persepolis, Starting Out in the Evening, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood) are November or December releases. Half of them haven't hit the commercial theaters yet. Maybe the critical establishment has A.D.D...