WEBVTT

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Any tardigrade fans?

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No.

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No?

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A couple?

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OK.

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All right.

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Well, this is also
known as water bear.

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This passage starts out with
"The weakest and shallowest

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is deathless with me."

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And the reason I
went with this is

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because we're talking about
a very humble little creature

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that's about a millimeter long.

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But this humble little creature
that lives in moss, wet moss,

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I should say, can take 100
times the amount of radiation

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a human being can.

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It can take complete vacuum
of space and the cold of space

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and it can go
dormant for decades

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before it's reanimated by
a single drop of water.

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So that's why so there are
little things like that.

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So--

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Does it have seven legs?

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One, two, three, four, five.

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Well, there's an eighth one.

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You just got to use
your imagination.

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[LAUGHING]

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Yeah.

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All right.

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But maybe he had an accident.

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I don't know.

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Maybe he went to shop class
one day, was making a napkin

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caddie for his mom.

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I don't know.

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[LAUGHING]

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I don't know.

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I don't know any tardigrades,
I just draw them.

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[LAUGHING]

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So this was the last day.

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July 10th, 2013.

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I had eggs that morning.

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Anyway.

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But I remember it
very well because it

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was the last damn day of this.

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But again, I tried to do this.

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The momentum really
started picking up.

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I could barely sleep the
last week because I was done,

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I'm almost done.

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Oh, my God.

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So by this point,
I knew that this

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was the day I was going to
get the interior finished.

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So when I put the pen down--

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[SIGHS]

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I felt like, OK.

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Now I can get hit by
a bus or something.

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The work is done.

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Yeah.

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So those are the print outs.

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I'm actually a lot
happier than I look here.

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[LAUGHING]

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I'm just tired.

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Yeah.

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So I had to do all the
ancillary bits in here, too.

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I had to do the frontispiece.

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I had to do the forward, which
I had to write all out by hand.

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Some people think
it's a typeface.

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It's not.

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The entire book is written
out and drawn by hand.

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The entire thing with the
exception of the bar code.

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But I had to do this in my
bathroom mirror in my shorts,

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like some sort of serial
killer or something.

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[LAUGHING]

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Was ridiculous.

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Yeah.

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And all throughout
this project, Tin

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House, the guys at Tin
House, Diane Chonette,

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who is the Art
Director and my editor

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Tony Perez, such great
people who work with.

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Tin House has been such a
fantastic, supportive publisher

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with this.

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I can't say enough about them.

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This is where they
really, I mean,

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throughout the entire book
they just let me go crazy.

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They just let me do my thing.

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This is where we kind of did the
back and forth with the cover.

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And I'm glad that they
voiced their concerns

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and their opinions of it.

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Because otherwise
the front of it

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would look like Zeus rather
than Walt Whitman and that's

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not good.

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[LAUGHING]

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But I knew that we wanted
some sort of foil treatment

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with a linen hardcover with
some sort of paper belly

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band around the front.

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My thinking was eventually
what would happen

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is that the belly band would
eventually kind of slough off

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in 20 years and then what you're
left with was just Walt's face.

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Almost like a Bible or
something, you know?

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So like all the
exuberance is inside.

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It looks like pretty
plain on it and then

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when you crack it open, it's
just the universe inside.

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Kind of like a
geode or something.

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OK.

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So this is the revised sketch.

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I don't know why
Walt is pouting.

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But he is.

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I had to bring that
down a little bit.

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Maybe he wanted a cookie.

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[LAUGHING]

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And I was saying last
night, they kind of,

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when you put them
together like this,

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they actually kind of look
like Campbell's Soup cans,

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don't they.

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[LAUGHING]

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You know?

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I didn't even think
about that at the time.

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But we had to tone down
the red a little bit

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because originally we had like
this Chinese firecracker red

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and it just was kind of, it was
just calling too much attention

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to itself.

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It was competing too much
with the green and the blue.

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And we had to kind of bring it
down to like a Cherokee red,

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like a clay red.

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And I'm really glad
we did because it

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was much more in keeping
with the theme of the book.

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And so I had to
get rid-- and then

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the real work started,
which is basically

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start to do your dog and
pony show, getting out there

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and start getting out there with
the banners in the bookstores.

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And I've done these
flash tours where I just

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go through all the independent
bookstores in Brooklyn,

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just drop in, sign their copies,
and I leave little drawings

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for the folks there.

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Just to show my appreciation.

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Because book selling is getting
tougher and tougher every year

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and these guys are
on the front lines.

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And whether or not
your book does well

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depends on their goodwill.

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And it's just the
decent thing to do

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and it's also good business.

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And there's my buddy Bill.

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[LAUGHING] We're at
the BEA festival.

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And Bill lives
across town from me.

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I live in Mount
Holly, New Jersey,

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which is a little Quaker town.

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Bill, like the ursine
fellow that he is,

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he lives in this
trapezoidal pine

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cone of a little house
on the outskirts of town,

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which is heavily wooded
and there's a creek there.

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And he just grew out
his beard one winter.

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I said, listen.

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Around Christmas.

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I said, can you just
grow out your beard?

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I got a plan for you.

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He said, why would I do that?

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I said, just do it.

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Just do it.

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So then I had to get-- they
flew me out to Portland

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and we should-- do we
have any of these posters

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here tonight by any chance?

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Or no?

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We may or may not.

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Anyway.

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But yeah, they're all
available for sale now.

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We got all those suckers done.

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And that's the-- oh.

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I have one more thing
to show you guys.

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Hang on here.

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All right.

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Let me get rid of
that little bugger.

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I guess I'll save.

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I don't know what I changed.

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All right.

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Anyway.

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OK.

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Here we go.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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This is the trailer.

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[LAUGHING]

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[SCRAPING SOUND]

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[PASSING TRAFFIC]

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[LAUGHING]

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[SEAGULLS]

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[LAUGHING]

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[COUGHING]

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Excuse me.

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[COUGHING]

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Sorry about that.

00:09:05.110 --> 00:09:07.540 align:middle line:84%
So that's my dog
and pony show, guys.

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I'm not selling any
cough medicine tonight.

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[APPLAUSE]

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[COUGHING]

00:09:14.570 --> 00:09:16.460 align:middle line:90%


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The video was made by
my friend David Kessler.

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He and I are doing a
feature film right now,

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or I should rather
say, I'm helping

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David do a feature film about
the New Jersey Pine Barrens

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right now called Pine Barrens.

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If you put in
pinebarrensfilm.com,

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you'll be able to see some
clips of that particular film.

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It's really beautiful stuff.

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My friend Ben Warfield
provided the music.

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We all help each other with our
pet projects and our passion

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projects.

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We're fortunate enough to
have a community of friends

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in Philadelphia who
are all artists who

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will pitch in like this.

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Kind of like, I get that
sense about Tucson too.

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Whereas in New York,
it's dog-eat-dog.

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With Philly, we're
all in it together.

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You know?

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And so that too is a
Whitman, Whitmanian virtue,

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I should say.

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