Might you be waiting to be found out?
29 10 2007One of my favourite websites is monday9am, which presents “short films… that do something”.
Normally, I find them interesting, challenging, provocative or even funny, but today’s film was very, very close to the bone.
Some of the analogies were so spot on, it made the hairs on my neck rise and I completely understood the filmmaker’s references to other people’s successes, while his final reference to Papillon, well…
So, if you want some idea about where I’m coming from, watch Waiting to be Found Out.
And then, ask yourself if all is as it seems?
It is a well crafted short film and I do feel it’s worth watching to see where some of us are coming from, but it’s also a cunning piece of propaganda, too.
The Davis Harris of the horses and denim is actually Dave Harris the business coach, whose “own business leadership experience provides him with a natural ability to coach executives, business leaders and managers on a one-to-one basis”.
“His goal is to help businesses achieve extraordinary things with as little disruption as possible, to the point where new ways of working become instinctive.”
He’s not the back-to-the-earth “downshifter” he carefully portrays in the film, but does that lessen its validity?
Yes and no.
Yes, because it articulates what some of us genuinely have thought and acted on. No, because like all film it’s a carefully scripted and crafted piece of make believe.
It’s still worth watching, but Dave really should have thought more about that title.
It’s what made me wonder about him and research him…
Hey, SH, I read you earlier, and want to add my congratulations for your fame. You deserve it! I too was struck by the film and posted on it, and agree things may not be what they seem. You state that the film is also a piece of propaganda–Yes, true, but I wonder to what end. If Mr. Harris is attempting to acquire coaching clients through the film, it’s not obvious. You had to research him to find out he does this. Perhaps he just wants to share this little slice of life with us.
A little more honesty would not have gone amiss. By all means stop working for someone else, by all means set up your own successful business and by all means get a life - but that doesn’t mean you have to play folksy horse person when you’re still in the corporate world doing the business thing.
It’s still a good articulation, though.
Hi SH, I stumbled across your blog and thought I should add that Dave had absolutely no part in the making of this apart from his part in front of the camera. As with all films I make it is just a conversation that tends to lead itself. No prescription. And the subjects have never been shown the film before it is posted.
It is never made for promotion, actually I only put the web address on there as a courtesy : ) It is all done with no money changing hands. And the intention is just to provoke the viewer to something better. Whatever that may be.
I think all my films tend to show a particular part of someone, a real part but still a part (the part that shows up when I am there).
Perhaps it is the part we are all capable of living through? I’d like to think so.
Thanks for posting : )
It is indeed. I wrote a response to your response to my response over on my blog and planned to further enlighten your readers, too, but it appears you and I are the only ones intersted in this at the moment.
So, I invite you, and anyone who happens by come and see! http://museditions.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/am-i-authentic-who-will-judge/