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Interview by Jenni Miller 1Giant Leap is a multimedia project spanning every continent and incorpora-ting spoken word, music, and footage from some of the most original thinkers and artists of our time. I sat down to talk to the people behind 1GL, Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, in the spacious loft occupied by Island Music/Palm Pictures (the distributors of the 1GL CD and DVD) and came away enlightened. "This is a really cool venture," I commented, and Jamie piped up immediately, "All made on Mac!" (A day or so later during the Q&A after the 1GL film premiere in NYC, Duncan announced "God bless Apple Mac!" Maybe you had to be there.) They immediately made me feel at ease, and we began to chat. Duncan described how the pair met randomly. "Well, we met by accident, like you meet most people, and we started talking and we realized that there were a lot of things we both liked and disliked about the state of music, and especially the way that everything is put in little boxes. And we thought, okay, let's just try and get rid of the boxes and make music for music's sake. It's all harmony; let's see if we can make it all work together. So to do the demo, we sampled a lot of things and nicked things off cassettes and CDs. And when Chris Blackwell (founder of Island Music and Palm Pictures) got interested in our music, we said to him that we wanted to replace all the samples." Previously, Duncan had been in numerous bands and also worked as a producer, mixing albums for Dido, Take That and other big-name artists. By the time the two were ready to travel around the world with just their laptops, Duncan was well-acquainted with Apple and its creative software. Jamie was the singer and keyboardist in the UK band Faithless before embarking on his own projects. The two, equipped with Mac laptops, digital video cameras, and recording/editing software, traveled in 25 countries around the world collaborating with an amazing list of human beings.
A great deal of the legwork involved cold-calling would-be contributors almost at random. It wasn't hard, because just as they regarded me as their equal when I walked in the door, so too did they regard "celebrities" as just regular people. Duncan said, "The cult of celebrity is so huge in this world and climate, and they're just humans, you know. We're all just humans. And so when you're speaking to Dennis Hopper or a porn star or a hobo in the street, when you're actually with them, you're like, hullo there. You're chatting, and you talk about stuff, or whatever you need to talk about." |
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Jamie added, "It's about being addicted to our roles so much, our rank and our status... that this now could be really boring if you wanted to stay addicted to your role as journalist and reside there, then we have to stay in our roles as musicians or film-makers, and we'll never really meet each other.... so if we just throw that out the window, you're you, and we're us, and "hi, how're you doing," and you know what I mean? You actually got up this morning, and you had breakfast, and you've got a sister who's worried about this, or you've got a mom who you spoke to yesterday who drove you mad or you know - we're actually people having an experience, and when we meet on that level, it's incredibly nourishing for everybody, and the real s--t goes down." What is most striking about the project is not its colorful, salty and sexy contributors (which include sacred prostitute Cosi Fabian, Timothy Leary colleague-turned-spiritual leader Ram Dass, and artist/healer Gabrielle Roth) is its themes and their relevance today as never before. Both the DVD and CD are divided into 12 chapters, with each part having its own theme. Jamie said, "We got a twelve-film album, like you get a twelve-track CD. You get a twelve-film DVD." The twelve themes of the album are sex, death, confrontation, money, blasphemy, faith, happy, inspiration, time, unity and masks. These twelve topics came up with every person Duncan and Jamie collaborated with, and the two selected samples of music and poetry/prose or interview soundbytes from over several hundred hours of footage. Tom Robbins pops up in the blasphemy, faith, and inspiration chapters to discuss religion while wearing sunglasses, while Dennis Hopper is filed under death, masks, and blasphemy. Kurt Vonnegut discusses inspiration and time. Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, is interviewed for the DVD on money and consumerism. Not that the "famous" are the only ones with important things to share in this project; some of the most moving moments come from interviews with an orthodox cantor who lives in Bangkok, the owner of a hardware store in Mumbai, India, and Fred Reed, the indigenous "free-thinker" and philosopher from Sydney. The film and the CD are interwoven, with snippets of the interviews from the film used in layers during some of the songs; at other times, the film is almost set to the music of the CD. 1 Giant Leap's music is comprised of the magical vocals of Baaba Maal, Speech and Neneh Cherry, Eddi Reader, and a haunting collaboration between Michael Stipe, Asha Bhosle and Duncan. The first single of the album is "My Culture," with Robbie Williams and Maxi Jazz on vocals. 1 Giant Leap was started three years ago, and while an intelligent discourse on humanity, diversity and unity is always important, it has never been so important as it is today. Did the two ever dream of the impact their work could have or more importantly, that the world we inhabit could benefit so mightily from it? Perhaps not, but that doesn't change that the music and film of 1 Giant Leap can and should move you to tears... and beyond. |
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