Video Exclusive: Chapter 2 Of Girl Walk // All Day (Featuring The Staten Island Ferry!)

Becky Connor on speed.

As the project creator, the complaints that our project is filled with irony, and the star "a hipster" are surprising to me. I have a hard time seeing anything in the film as ironic -- the film is fantasy, yes, but it's hardly disingenuous.  If public expression of joy is ironic, we suspect you need a spark of excitement.  Naturally, we recommend turning up your own music and getting your dance on.

Since it's the internet and I have the microphone for the moment: An inspiring bit from David Foster Wallace, who wrote a piece about how irony tyrannizes us:

"Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval.... The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law."

One of the most important things I've ever learned as a filmmaker is that my main order of business should always be to arrive at a place where *I'm* happy with the work. Because a lot of what follows - good or bad, to some extent or another - is bullshit. And you can't please everyone, nor should any artist ever aim to.

For the most part, people who complain about "ironic hipsters" aren't your audience and their issues with the video have more to do with them than with the project. Insecurities have found a place to live on the internet, and it's called Comments Section.

Girl Walk All Day is terrific, Jacob. Love the DFW quote, btw. Keep on producing, man.
 
(Quick Note: I uploaded an additional image of myself for everyone's viewing pleasure. No, it was totally a mistake.)

I enjoyed it.

The only thing that smacks of hipster-style "irony" is the windbreaker -the whole "lets all laugh at the early-80s" thing. 
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Nice quote!  --

My problem with "irony" is this: it's generally known to exist when actions have an effect that is contrary to what is expected: in simple, a surprise.  But it is also understoond that irony is when you expect something good, and something bad results, never when you expect something bad and something good happens instead.  Irony is when a man cuts his business trip short by a day to rush home with flowers and a dinner date for his beloved wife, and catches her one day early in bed with another man.  But what about a hopeless, unemployed schlub who walks the G.W. Bridge to throw himself off -who happens to save a wobbly but well-placed bicyclist from tumbling over the railing - and gets hired into a great job out of gratitude, and it turns his life around?  That's, if anything, reverse irony.  

 Irony got big in the 90s -- the 20th century sensibility of tragedy and crack-up went mass at the exact same time that the 20th century went all happy-endingly reverse ironic.  We've never had it so good, despite these few recessionary years.  No more Mutually Assured Destruction, democracies breaking out in the most unexpected places, this city imperiled by gentrification rather than by blight and by flight, Africa beginning to make steps out of abject poverty, why, they're even telling us today we're beginning to turn the corner on AIDS...

This project isn't really up my alley per se, but let me say this: you thought up and executed through to completion what was clearly a fairly complex and, I would imagine, heartfelt creative vision. 99.9% of the Internet haters couldn't do that; if they could, they would know what that takes, and they wouldn't be haters in the first place. Fuck them. Anyone can be a dick from behind a keyboard; if you're going to criticize, at least say something substantive and not just bullshit about hipsters and windbreakers.

Completely loving the film so far.

Also, it never ceases to astonish me when sincerity and earnest joy are mistaken for "irony."

Thanks to you and Anne and company for putting together something that is genuinely enjoyable -- a love letter to the arts and to our city.

As an occasional reader of this site, and as someone who's greatly enjoying a bunch of people fulfilling their genuinely admirable desire of dancing around the city like a bunch of goofballs, I'm impressed with how utterly nasty everyone is in these comments.

Keep it real, assholes!

i don't know shit about dance - would this girl be considered a competent dancer, or is this more about exuberance?

Exhuberence. She's not bad, but its definitely about the joy more than technique or ground breaking choreography

Jesus Christ, stop motion?  FFS

tough crowd :\

At minute 71, do all of these annoying fuckers get shot?

ZzzzZzzzZzz

This stuff is really the absolute worst of hipsterism -- talent-free, ironic (the windbreaker), rampant look-at-meism, making NYC and it's innocent bystanders nothing more than a backdrop for a flyover Zoe.

 I really can't get my head around the idea that this will end up being 72 minutes long.

You seem like a sad, miserable turd.

Even at just two sentences, reading your post was a more painful experience than the video. (Nice non-ironic name BTW.)

I enjoyed that. Thanks, Jen.

She also plays a dancing tutor on the Good Wife.

You're right! I thought they were trying to copy this when I saw their video.

Goddamn hipsters get off my lawn!