Keith Davis Young is a young designer and photographer from Austin, TX, and I just finished clicking through his flickr set bearing the rather inconspicous title 35mm. I had starry eyes. He captured a fantastic set of impressions and fragments of daily life. RVs, parking lots, diners and restaurants, people, furniture, all kinds of moods. Go take a look!
When traveling on a shoestring budget – like we did during research last fall – you generally aim for the cheapest accommodations you can get. In our case, we are talking about those cheap and seemingly endless motel chains that cover all of the United States. In fact, our budget for the whole trip was so small, we even had to go with the cheapest of the cheap. No exceptions.
Our first stay was in Newark, NJ, close to the airport. Our plane came in late at night, and we couldn’t get our rental car before the next morning. The hotel we had booked offered a free shuttle service from and to the airport. And so we were waiting with many others at the shuttle area to get picked up. Shuttle busses were constantly coming and going: Imagine brand new vans from Mariott and Hilton, from Best Western and Holiday Inn, painted in the respective colors of their hotels, dropping of travelers and picking up new ones. Drivers helped carrying luggage, loading and unloading. We kept waiting. And slowly began doubting if there was ever going to arrive a shuttle service for us, too.
Well, no reason for a doubt. Just a little more waiting, and an old Dodge van turned into the shuttle area. The Dodge’s color would have been grey, if it wasn’t for all the rust. This van was so dented you could only guess that it took part in Monster Truck Shows in its free time. Not as Monster, apparently. In the windshield was a piece of paper that read Howard Johnson Hotel. That’s our ride! I don’t have to mention that the driver was just a driver, no porter. And as if we needed another confirmation we kept looking for other travelers that needed a shuttle to Howard Johnson Hotel. But we were the only ones. After all, the hotel itself was absolutely sufficient. Our room was right in the middle of the airport approach path and next to the Interstate that went into Manhattan, but we were far too tired to even think about it.
Claire Martin‘s portfolio offers a set of amazing pictures of people living in Slab City (Link to Wikipedia), a community of campers and snow birds in the Colorado Desert, southeastern California.
And don’t miss her photo set about the Salton Sea, Californias largest lake, not very far from Slab City.
Right there, on the fringes of Slab City, you will also find Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain that we visited during our research trip last fall. Check out these pictures wie took.
The television documentary series “Mister & Missis.Sippi” that was broadcast on German television during the Easter holidays, is now available online via the library of its broadcaster 3sat. There are three parts of 45 minutes each that take its viewers on an entertaining journey by raft on the Mississippi, peeking into some true American backrooms. Please note: The show is available in German with only Interviewees speaking in English. And due to possible geo blocking it might be unavailable in non-German-speaking territories.
Part 1 – From St. Louis to Cairo
Part 2 – From Memphis to Vicksburg
Part 3 – From Saint Francisville to New Orleans
We’ve just added new pictures from rainy Michigan and Ohio to the AMERICAN BACKROOM Flickr photostream. All pictures were shot during our research trip last fall. Go check ‘em out. And don’t forget to leave a comment 
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately. Not because we don’t have any more to say or write about. No, the reason is one of our other projects: FREMDKÖRPER (English Title: IMPURITY), the first feature length film produced by MovieBrats (that is: us). The film was made over the course of the last two years and finally has been completed till the end of March. Reason enough to have a party.
But as always, in the final weeks up until completion, you just put in all your energy, tweaking little details up until the last minute. So, that’s why THE AMERICAN BACKROOM had to be put on hold a for the last month or so.
But here we are again, re-shifting our energy from FREMDKÖRPER back to AMERICAN BACKROOM. We have a couple news in store for you as well as several important project updates to be announced soon.
In the meantime we’ve also been featured in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, since AMERICAN BACKROOM is one of only a few 3D projects currently in production in and around Berlin, Germany (See, we didn’t even find the time to run a short note about that one *shakehead*). If you like to read the article (it’s in German only), that ran in the printed edition of the Tagesspiegel on March 9th, you can do so right here…
And to give you a little impression of FREMDKÖRPER, here’s the official trailer:
The Berlin Film Festival “Berlinale” draws to a close and the hustle and bustle of the European Film Market is already gone… and we found time again to upload a bit of new content from our research trip last fall: Head on over to the American Backroom Flickr-Stream to catch a couple new pictures from South Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan. There are more to come soon – we are far from finished exploiting all the photos we took during our trip.
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