Guru Pitka Will Teach You Sitar

Guru Pitka is the main character in "The Love Guru", the latest Mike Myers comedy. I've never been a Mike Myers fan so when I saw him doing improv at the Magnet Theater, I was surprised at how good he was. He didn't do any of the shameless mugging that you see in his movies.

This looks like a take off on the ubiquitous "Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar" fliers.

Papermovie

Let's say you want to make a movie. The problem is you have no budget, no movie camera, no movie film and no craft services table. Even worse, you live in Bulgaria. But you can still get your project made with Papermovie.

Depending on how you look at it, Papermovie is either an evolved storyboard or a lo-fi movie - so lo-fi that the pictures don't move.

Printed in flyer form, these movies are distributed for free in clubs, cafes, sports centers, cinemas, shops, tattoo studios, universities, subway stations, beaches and prisons. To see the whole story you have to collect all the flyers. Or you can visit Papermovie.com and read the stories while listening to their original soundtracks.

Papermovie is an end in itself. It's not a guerrilla marketing concept for a studio release or the pitch for a Project Green Light type reality show.

It doesn't get any more indie than this.

This Man's Name Is Jonathan Daniel

I found this posted near Union Square. The text reads, "This man's name is Jonathan Daniel. He is also known as 'J.D'. He is a thief"

This is either a private dispute being made public or a very subtle guerrilla marketing campaign.

Open Source Resistance

When I saw this flyer I was intrigued by its obscurity. A Google search led to Open Source Resistance.net. The stated purpose of the site is "...an attempt to start a grass-roots information militia, so ordinary people can fight to prevent a world where civil rights AND natural resources are both being strip-mined for the convenience of multinational corporations and People Who Know They Are Right."

I was reminded of Insta-Protest whose flyers I wrote about in March. Only the O.S.R. site is way slicker.

If you have a poster, movie, bumper sticker or any other piece of protest art, you can send it to the O.S.R. and, if it passes the one-man selection committee, it will appear on the site. The one man doesn't say who he is.

I looked at the art that made the cut and it is far more sophisticated than the Insta-Protest signs. This is protest by professionals.

Looking further I checked out a movie of an O.S.R. meeting that was raided by the cops. It starts with a militant looking guy addressing a crowd of hipsters, telling them to "wake up and give a shit" about what's going on politically.

It was during this segment that I noticed the quality of the video, multiple camera angles, seamless editing and clear sound. This was no amateur production. I grew suspicious of this "grass-roots" movement and I hoped that it wasn't going to end up being a sneaker commercial.

Turns out it's part of the guerrilla marketing campaign for the new Nine Inch Nails album. After the short speech, the kids are rewarded with a concert by Trent Reznor and his band. The show is supposedly raided by the cops, but it looks staged.

This whole thing feels like the skillful manipulation of a target demographic by a major corporation. (Nine Inch Nails is part of Universal Music Group.) It leaves me feeling a bit more cynical, and these days cynicism is the ally of the groups that Reznor and his Open Source Resistance purport to oppose.