MDMAfilms

megan boyle and tao lin are/were MDMAfilms



rating: 'afk'

• on july 2nd, 2009, on tao's birthday, you witness megan boyle and tao lin meet for the first time 'irl' at a book release party in manhattan, new york. you say, 'tao, this is megan, megan, tao...', tao says, 'i know you from the internet' to megan

• mid-2010 you hear that tao lin is having a reading in baltimore during part of the promotional tour for his second novel, 'richard yates'. megan asks you if you will be there. you say you will be there. you don't attend the reading. megan later tells you tao stayed at her apartment

• in november of 2010 you see that megan and tao 'founded' MDMAfilms, via facebook, and are listed as 'in a relationship'

• on january 8th, 2011, you read an article revealing that tao and megan, in fact, got married in las vegas, a day prior to the events in their movie 'bebe zeva', early november, 2010

they subsequently release three films in 2011:


MDMA: megan and tao take ecstasy in a car in manhattan, drive some, take a train, get off the train, get on another train, get off that train in manhattan, take a cab to times square, walk to toys 'r' us, and ride ferris wheel

MDMA (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.
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i don't feel inclined to enumerate the ways in which tao or megan's style of filmmaking seems similar to their writing

however, i think it is 'worth it' to draw similarities between the various media that they brand themselves with and the products' effect

in narrative, poem, 'art', and film, tao seems detached, distracted and hypersensitive to 'himself' and documentation of 'himself' seems the primary goal, discerning meaning and 'relevance' is, it seems, divided as both a subsequent pursuit, assessed during revision/editing, and a constant bilateral to his experiences

he also seems fascinated with 'boundary-pushing' as if he were leveling the field of collective discomfort by testing the spatial and sensory boundaries of others

megan produces poetry that—and appears in this film to be—constantly assessing 'okay-ness' and vast quantities of information being provided by the surrounding circumstances and a vague sense of her relationship to them coupled with a sort of brown-out observation of—and fascination with—life, desires, and consequences

co-branding their experiences in this mostly unbroken account of one evening in new york city seems a unique, natural way of collaborating and experimenting with ´the movie´as a medium

BEBE ZEVA: megan and tao meet rebecca 'bebe zeva' hershkovitz in a hotel, drive to another hotel, take a cab to a mall, return to the second hotel, drive to [another?] mall, walk through the mall, travis mcfarland joins them, they walk through a casino type area, they drive back to the second hotel, get into a jacuzzi, then get out of the jacuzzi

BEBE ZEVA (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.

feels akin to like, 'snuff films' maybe

while watching this movie, i felt the same range of deeply affecting emotional/analytical responses that i feel watching 'any other "indie" movie', with two exceptions, i think:

one, i did not feel myself become 'immersed' in the plane of view/perspective of the camera, i felt very aware that it was a movie despite there being no credits and seemingly chronological jump cuts

two, i felt no interest in dissecting/discerning technique employed to derive narrative, it seemed like self-conscious people trying to have a 'memorable' experience and seemed honest in its presentation of this, as opposed to implementing narrative tact/wealth to create an illusion of honesty

the 'hollywood-style' title 'mash-up' i might use to pitch this movie is: '"jackass: the movie" meets "the devil wears prada", with warholian sensibility/authenticity/vulnerability'

MUMBLECORE: megan and tao, in a not-necessarily-chronological narrative, travel between new york, maryland, ohio, north carolina, louisiana, and nevada. at the 'climax' of the movie they get married

MUMBLECORE (TRAILER 1) from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.

this film completes 'the trilogy', though it was filmed entirely prior to BEBE ZEVA

the film's clearly labored-over documentation of an essentially 'fucked' relationship harkens strongly to its titular generic relative, though its existence, independently, and especially as dissimilar to its predecessors, which vague the lines between documentation and narration instead of fusing them, has, simply by existing, created a new genre

falling somewhere spectral between mumblecore, pimplecore, and the well-established 'indiewave' movie—now a serious part of the hollywood 'machine'—i think MUMBLECORE establishes muumuucore (a la tao's publishing company) as a definite movie genre, in a similar way that lin and boyle's writing seems to have permanently altered literature

• on october 23rd, 2011, you receive an email from tao, authorizing you to view and review for mutual publicity MDMAfilms's current filmography

• ~.5 hours later, tao's facebook relationship status goes from 'married' to 'single', megan boyle 'likes' this status update

• a 140+ comment shitstorm 'arises', with the primary contributor, a certain james morrill, asserting that megan is an 'idiot' and 'slut'

•  according to megan's formspring account, you see that she still has ~30 copies of BEBE ZEVA left

• on october 26th, you see that gossip blog, hipster runoff, has utilized the filmmakers' 'separation' as a national-enquirer-esque buzzline to help 'launch' tao's DJ career, to which article you see tao replied 'jesus' via facebook status update

MDMAfilms's movies are available for purchase on their website, information regarding their movies can be viewed and modified on their IMDb page and individual wikipedia pages, all trailers, short-form movies, and event coverage can be found on their vimeo

PRESS KIT from MDMAfilms on Vimeo.