Ondi Timoner has fashioned a fascinating documentary out of more than 5,000 hours of footage on the life and works of Josh Harris, whom she calls "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of." After making millions on Jupiter Communications, an online research firm, Harris started throwing parties and meeting Manhattan's edgy artists. In 1994, he founded Pseudo.com, the world's first Web TV network. He was exploring new territory, and there was great enthusiasm about this creative experiment. Typical of his extravagant egotism, Harris predicted the eventual demise of network television. He was baptized as the "Warhol of the Web" but despite the high hopes, Pseudo.com eventually ran of out of steam and money.
Harris next turned to another technological experiment that was even more controversial called "Quiet: We Live in Public." One hundred participants volunteered to live communally in a bunker with cameras capturing everything they did from eating to sleeping to going to the bathroom to having sex to fighting each other. Naturally most of those who participated were exhibitionists but even they got tired of the lack of privacy and the feeling that they were being subjected to an insidious form of mind control. After much controversy, the art experiment was closed down.
Harris then decided to narrow the focus by turning the cameras on himself and his romantic relationship with his girlfriend. Viewers watched everything they did and responded in emails. This project seems closely aligned to Harris's final goodbye to his dying mother. Instead of acquiescing to her request to see him, he videotapes his farewell to her which is sorely lacking in any honest emotion or intimacy.
After a breakdown, Harris owned and operated Livingston Orchards, a commercial apple farm from 2001 - 2006. Currently, he is the CEO of the African Entertainment Network based in Sidamo, Ethiopia. We Live in Public was winner of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Film. It is a compelling cautionary tale about the use of technology to examine life, the dead-end of the quest for fame, and the strange phenomenon of a person who yearned to reveal everything about himself to an audience of strangers. Years before people were revealing all on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, social networks, and blogs, Harris was convinced that it’s fun to show and tell all online.
Special features on the DVD include a retrospective/behind the scenes at Sundance 2009; highlights of Josh's commentary of the film with video; and the official trailer.
