Insomnia10 minutes  ©1998
When a guy can't sleep he wakes his bedfellow in hopes of clearing his mind of all the bizarre thoughts that are keeping him awake. By the time he's done he's redefined his concept of existence, and drawn into question his present situation in life.
Distinctions
This short subject aired on Ithaca Public Access one time at 11:00PM, and generated more viewer complaints than any other program that was aired the entire broadcast season.
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Back Story

I had the idea to produce a video that contained nudity, but that the nudity was entirely incidental and had nothing at all to do with the concept. I settled on a couple of guys in bed, one who woke up and was having a bit of an existential crisis, and another who was there to talk to him and comfort him. No big whoop. It was really just an exercise.

At the time I was producing the video "Come." Back then I needed the Public Access facility to do the editing. They had a policy that any time you use their equipment it had to be for something that would be broadcast. You couldn't just product your own pet projects. Clearly "Come" was not the kind of thing that could be broadcast, so I used "Insomnia" as my cover. I was working on both simultaneously, "Insomnia" officially and "Come" surreptitiously When I was done I submitted "Insomnia" to the Public Access channel for broadcast and spirited away with "Come" for the MIX NYC Gong Show.

I didn't think much of it after that with respect to "Insomnia" getting broadcast. It was a pretty innocent video, just two naked buys in bed talking about the mysteries of life. But it created somewhat of a firestorm. In fact it garnered the most call-in complaints of anything that was broadcast on the Public Access channel that whole season. I guess that beyond just the nudity, the notion of two men sharing a bed together was more than the rural viewing public could handle. Other than that it remains little more than a footnote in my overall back catalog of work.

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