ADVANCE SCREENING
TICKET GIVEAWAY

at Spirits Bar & Grill – 642 Church Street, S of Bloor, Toronto

Tuesday, May 8  8:30pm

Two ways to win:

1. Enter the Random Draw

2. Dress as an Eccentric Dictator

Tons of movie swag

Follow @HarthTV @ParamountCanadafor more exclusives

I posted BATMAN’S NIGHT OUT on a Friday afternoon.

I set it to upload and then left to get in a cab and head down to the Air Canada Centre to join up with Naughty By Nature.

I was about to join them backstage and on the court to make a Harth TV/Naughty TV collaboration video of their half-time performance at the Raptors game.  I’m rather proud of this video, if you don’t mind me saying.

While I was in the cab, Toronto Batman texted me to let me know that Paul Dini had tweeted the video. The view count was already in the thousands.

Over the weekend, it was posted to a bunch of blogs including io9, The Daily What, and most of the Canadian mainstream media outlets. It was the #2 video on G4TV’s Attack of the Show, and Toronto Batman & I literally did more interviews than we could keep track of on our blogs later.

Throughout the following week is when it started feeling like a full blown meme with teenagers posting animated GIFs to tumblr, and review and response videos appearing online. Batman’s Night Out was the #2 most favorited video on all of Youtube, and it was in the Top 30 as one of the most viral videos on the whole internet at its peak.

My friends and I celebrated i grand style on the following Saturday night when the video crossed a million views. This was one of the most epic milestones of life, and I didn’t mind stopping cars in the streets or interrupting people in the middle of a conversation at the bar to let them know about it. The best was when I excitedly shouted “a million views!” at some girl I didn’t know, and she looked back at me and asked “Batman?” It was a full-blown phenomenon.

A week later, we celebrated with some of the fans at Harth TV studio where we had a little million views party and Toronto Batman, Raymi, and myself took on The Cinnamon Challenge.

I’m a big nerd for superhero shit since before I can remember. I’ve always loved following the news and rumors about superhero movies in development through the trade magazines. I spent summers drawing my own comic books at the kitchen table. I dreamed that when I was one-day a filmmaker, I would direct a blockbuster Batman movie. I still have the one I want to do for Hollywood but we get encouraging signs on the way to our destiny.

Gotta say what up to executive producer Alkarim Nasser, technology company bnotions, and the people behind Harth TV.  It’s very hard to talk about the relationship between these two firms, but suffice it to say that there are men of faith and vision.  This is an amazing thing that we are giving form to as an experiment in alchemy.  This is the literal manifestation of timeless principles that people have written about for centuries.

Watch for what’s upcoming on The Sean Ward Show: Jedi shit, Avengers, Spider-Man, and more with Toronto Batman…

I went to see The Dark Knight on opening night (extra special thanks to my homey George for the hook-up!) on the Imax screen. Overwhelmed, I knew that I had to see it again to give it a proper assessment.  Then I got my hands on a copy of it to watch at home and spent pretty much all of last weekend unable to extricate myself from the movie’s world.  Now that I’ve seen it a few times, deconstructed it, reverse-engineered it, and savored my favorite scenes over and over, I realize that it’s not just great.  It’s breath-takingly beautiful, graceful as a ballerina, and will be one of those benchmark movies that we judge others against for decades to come.

For all of the comparisons to Heat and GoodFellas, I am mostly reminded of Natural Born Killers.  Both movies share a go-for-broke fearlessness in their vision of a world in which what we’re seeing is real.  They go way over the top, but bring the story in for such a skillful landing that you not only buy it as possible, but probable and even likely given the right circumstances.  Batman Begins showed us Batman’s world in a way that made it feel absolutely real.  The Dark Knight shows us the real world pushed to an extreme where Batman makes perfect sense.

Much of the attention the movie is getting centers on the acting.  Everyone’s going nuts over Heath Ledger, but I found Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon to be the stand-out performance here.  But Gary Oldman is always great, and Jim Gordon is not at the centre of the phenomenon of this movie.  The Joker is.  Some have tried to make the case that the attention Ledger’s performance is getting has more to do with his death than the actual job he did.  Bollocks to that.  Cesar Romero’s is the best screen representation of The Joker as portrayed in the comics, but Nolan’s and Ledger’s is an absolutely perfect characterization of The Joker as he would be if he were a real guy.  And this brings me back to my Natural Born Killers comparison.

I used to love to talk about NBK with people who didn’t like it.  The most common criticism of it was that it offers its loathesome protagonists as heroes.  I then point out that the genius of it is on the social commentary level where it makes the point that if Mickey & Mallory happened for real, in the age of Marilyn Manson on the radio and Geraldo on TV, it would happen exactly as depicted in the movie.  And then those characters became genuine cultural icons. Tributes and homages appeared across various media, as couples dressed up as Mickey & Mallory for their first Halloween together.  I don’t even want to get into the real-life copycat crimes.  I’m getting back to The Joker, I promise.

To get the most out of The Dark Knight, you need to have been following the various viral websites that comprised the greatest marketing campaign for anything, ever.  There were websites for everything from Gotham’s transit system to the newspaper to the 24-hour news network, complete with a weekly magazine show featuring characters from the movie as guests (all of the websites were ‘defaced by The Joker’ a week before the film’s release).  I’m surprised that no other reviews have mentioned the brilliance and skill in how, via these websites, they started telling the story two months before the movie even came out.  At the beginning of the movie, when Batman asks Jim Gordon if he trusts the new District Attorney, you know all about him because you followed his campaign and landslide victory on the internet.

But that’s all small potatoes compared to what they did with The Joker’s own site.  For over a year leading up to the release of the movie, ‘The Joker’ had people sign up to join his organization and then he gave them orders over the internet.  It was a big series of flash mob events, the grand finale of which led participants to their local cinema to be the first to see the film’s trailer.  The campaign had rabid fans appearing in cities all over the world, in Joker make-up, often in large gatherings.  And that doesn’t even touch on the number of people not taking part in the campaign who painted Joker make-up on themselves in their Facebook profile pics.  And this is where The Dark Knight one-ups Natural Born Killers.  Oliver Stone held a mirror up to society so as to raise alarm to the fact that we live in a world where people might identify with Mickey Knox – an anarchic psychopath.  The marketers of The Dark Knight not only encouraged us but offered us incentives to declare full-on allegiance to The Joker – an anarchic psychopath.

In Frank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, a big part of the story involves young people, without a more appropriate role model, falling under the influence of the villain.  Within the world of the movie The Dark Knight, I imagine that The Joker would likewise inspire a host of followers, copycats, and imitators, and would probably even use the internet in much the same way that the movie’s marketers did.  I thought that this would have been something worth exploring in the movie.  That is, until I realized that they didn’t need to because they had already done so BY MAKING IT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE.  How much more of a nudge would it have taken, were this much power and influence in the hands of an artist with a slightly more anti-social creative vision, to push those Joker-philes to a place where life imitates art in ways that we don’t even want to think about?  And if that were to happen, you’d have to wonder what kind of force would emerge to stop them.

People have been saying for years that superheroes are our culture’s Greek Gods, and their adventures in comic books and movies are our mythology.  As technology has improved and the audience has grown accustomed to ever-higher levels of believability, movie-makers have been able to inch ever closer to putting us in a world where Batman and Spider-Man are real.  Marvel and the studios they were affiliated with were the leaders in this arena, but Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk each fumbled in their own way.  Each served as little more than a step in setting up the eventual big team-up movie, taking the audience for granted.  DC Comics and Warner Brothers have not only given us an all-time classic with The Dark Knight, they’ve gone and innovated the artform to a point where we can barely tell the difference between their world and ours any more.

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UPDATE, APRIL 2012: As the release of The Dark Knight Rises comes near, I’m thinking more about this movie.  I just caught something huge that I’ve never heard anyone else talk about.  The filmmaker’s didn’t give us The Joker’s background.  They left the door wide open for a young filmmaker to make the movie of The Joker’s backstory years from now.  Wow.  Do you think they counted on that when they set out?

Greetings everyone who listened to my episode of Where Monsters Dwell! That was a really fun interview and I can’t thank Mike, Remy, and Ryan enough for having me on.  I haven’t done an interview that in-depth in a long time!

I’ll post the episode here if I see a player link materialize but in the meantime here’s the link to the episode on their website.

To everyone visiting my site for the first time after hearing the show, here’s a few links for you:

Here is my Toronto Batman video that went nuts to the tune of a million views in a week.

Here is my Beatles comic book in the Harth Store.

Here is my Youtube channel, and I hope that you will subscribe (a Harth TV production!).

Thanks for checking out my website!  Follow me on Twitter and Facebook and let’s, as Dre and Tupac put it, “keep it rockin’”

Last season’s festival darling was Jeff, Who Lives At Home.  I love watching Ed Helms and Jason Segel so I’m really excited to see this one.

I want you to come with me to the advance screening of Jeff, Who Lives At Home in Toronto on March 14, courtesy of Paramount Pictures Canada and Harth TV!

In the movie, Jeff looks for signs from the universe to determine his path.  Sometimes we all need help getting our life into shape.  Extreme Fitness wants to help you Get Your Life Into Shape!

• Five winners will each receive a double pass to the advance screening to the movie and a Jeff, Who Lives At Home prize pack
• Two winners, in addition to their double pass to the movie, will receive a six-month membership to Extreme Fitness
• One person at the screening will win the grand prize: a one-year membership to Extreme Fitness!

To enter, just leave a comment on this blog post and tell us about something you once did to get your life into shape.  Maybe it was that month you gave up drinking, that time you went on a cleanse, the time you (life Jeff in the movie) looked for signs from the universe to find your path, or maybe you kept your new year’s resolution to get on an exercise program?  Be creative!  Bonus points for boldness and creativity!  Winners will be drawn at random from all eligible entries.

Thanks everyone.  And good luck!  See you at the movies!

UPDATE: We have our winners!  Congratulations to Paris HT and Addision Wylie who each win the Jeff Who Lives At Home prize pack with advance screening passes + a six month membership to Extreme Fitness.  And to Sandy T, Kris Goetz, and Steven Raphael who each get the Jeff Who Lives At Home prize pack including a double pass to the advance screening in Toronto on Wednesday March 14!  Thanks to everyone for your AMAZING entries!

Having a successful life is not difficult.  All you’ve got to do is be successful.

Treating cab drivers well and giving them a good tip is an important step towards being successful.  Here’s how to tip cab drivers properly.

Step One

Throw a party.  Remember the first rule of party planning: put all of your focus on getting the women to come.  Don’t worry about the dudes.  If the women are going, the dudes you want there will be there.

Step Two

Take a cab home from the party.

Step Three

Figure out for yourself if the cab driver is having a lucrative night.  How long did it take for you to get a cab?  How busy are the streets?  Does it look like he’s making a killing or does it look like he’s not getting much business?

Step Four

Tip him big.  In fact, forget step three.  If he’s not having a good time, he’ll really appreciate it.  If he’s having a good night, tip him big and give him an even better night.  I like to round it up to the nearest five.  $15 on an $11 fare, $20 on $16, and so on.

If the fare is between $13 and $15 dollars, asking for a five back from a twenzie would give him less than $2 tip so I give him $22 and ask for five back, or ask for only $2 back from a twenzie.

In Conclusion

It’s important to not skip Step 3, even though Step 4 says to forget Step 3.  If you carefully undertake each step in the correct order, you activate mysterious powers in the universe that set in motion the mechanism that rotates your mind a fraction of a degree.  From this angle you can see how the world is made out of this business of generosity and cooperation.

Cab drivers are a good place to practice this skill because of how frequently you interact with them if you’re a mover & shaker in the city, and because of the nature of your relationship.

Have fun with your successful life.

If you like cars, social media, good-looking people, or fun, you were in for a treat last Friday night if you were going to Ford’s Blue Party.  It was at the Liberty Grand in Toronto and it was one of the more fun PR events I’ve been to in ages.  Ford did a great job staging the unveiling of their 2013 vehicles.  The blue theme gave it all a majestic air.  Between the elegant decor, open bar & food service, and the toys & games, they pulled it off with the perfect blend of pageantry and whimsy.  That’s a tough combo to pull off, but I was impressed.

This candy bar was the first thing that greeted you when you walked in.  I resisted the whole night, only allowing myself one chocolate-covered pretzel near the end of the party.

You couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the animated LED wall in front of the DJ. I’ve got grand ideas for this at Harth Fest 2…

Fancy a match??

I was the blue car. I figured out how to do it without the car careening off course at the turns. I would have won my match save for one miscalculation that sent my car flying off the track!

A lot of people were very sorry that they had dinner on the way to the party once they got there and saw the huge spread of food that was available.

What could these two be waiting for?

There was a big curtain cutting the room in half.  The room was filled with the sound of the drummers, the curtain fell, and the show began!

After the cars were unveiled, there was a draw for one lucky party-goer to win a vacation! You had to be present to win, so they had to draw three names before they had a winner.

Kerri from Ford took advantage of the nails & hair bar that was there for the ladies.

Here’s me with @cammipham (on the right) and her friend whose Twitter handle I didn’t get! I was working and I had to program a bunch of tweets of the cars so we were going to swap info on the next lap but we didn’t see each other!  Everyone saw Cam Mi again though….

…as she would go on to win Best Dressed later in the evening!

See the 2012 Mustang in front of the green screen?  I’ll show you what’s up with that in another post later today and link that here.

Here is a hint:

Look who I found! What up @ValTorontoGal

Here’s me with @Frikshun and @TheDanLevy

Another lady I don’t see enough of! Hi Bella!

And then I turn around and there’s Lisa and Lauren!  This is starting to remind me of Toronto’s “Social Media Summer of Love” in 2010.

In fact, Erin (pictured here) and I were talking about how this party was like a throwback to that magical summer before the scene fragmented when a bunch of us would be at a party and Twitter was blowing up with all of the tweets from everyone who was there, everyone who wasn’t there tweeting about how much they wished they were there, and a huge chunk of everyone you knew from Twitter in attendance.  The organizers did such a good job that the #FordBlue hashtag was trending pretty early in the evening.

It was a real treat to be able to catch up with everyone, and Ford pulled off a real feat making a party feel this unique and special in the face of how ‘been there done that’ we all are about these kinds of marketing & PR events.

See you soon!

Dateline Toronto.  DX3 was all set to be just a trade show until BNOTIONS showed up with a wrestling ring and most of their staff and took out the “trade” part and put on a show.  And what a show!  They built Skillodex live from the trade show floor over two days while elbow smashing their opponents.

What a party, flying off the top rope with some Javascript.

Featured appearances by Alkarim Nasser (founder and President of BNOTIONS), Paul Crowe (CEO of BNOTIONS), and Amber Mac (TV Host and best-selling author)

A whale of a time was had.

Classical Mystery Tour – a Beatles tribute backed by a Symphony Orchestra – is coming to Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto this Thursday!

This is a note-for-note live Beatles tribute performance with full costumes and, most excitingly, accompanied by the Kitchener/Waterloo Symphony Orchestra and I will be there!  How about you?

Crazy to think about how part of the reason The Beatles stopped playing live at all in 1966 was because they felt like they could not reproduce on stage what they were doing on their records.  Did you know that the longest concert The Beatles ever played during their touring years was 33 minutes?  They just took their nightclub act and put it in an arena or a stadium.  Their historic Shea Stadium concert in 1965 was only 27 minutes.  This was obviously long before the days of 3-hours-plus concerts with elaborate stage set-ups and guest performers.

It goes without saying that this is the most popular music of the 20th century and when it’s recreated on stage like this, it’s nothing short of magical.  I’ve downloaded a few performance clips from the show’s website and they sound totally authentic.  And the crowd that comes out for these kinds of shows runs the gamut from people who were there when Beatlemania was happening to pretty twenty-something girls dancing in their cutest retro-styled dress.

Get tickets to Classical Mystery Tour from the Sony Centre’s website (click).

And if you can’t make it, I’ve got you covered with a Beatles tribute of my own….

By now you have probably seen the Budweiser Super Bowl spot that’s being hailed as a viral triumph even before its big Super Bowl broadcast:

But where did they get the idea to crash an amateur hockey league and give them the ‘big show’ treatment?

As it turns out, the idea came from another video that you may have seen if you have been visiting my website for any length of time.  Remember this goodie from my ‘year of daily vlogging’?

A lot of the marketing and PR companies in Canada are based in Toronto. I know that a lot of PR people watch my videos and count on me to know what’s happening in the streets, so I always love it when some video or song or comic book of mine sparked an idea that ends up on a billboard or in a commercial.

Remember this 2010 Olympic billboard?

Where do you think the Toronto-based marketing people got the idea for the slogan from?

I’m not claiming it’s a rip off or anything.  I just know that a lot of people in these kinds of marketing & PR positions watch my stuff on the regular and I keep seeing so many of these ‘coincidences’ that at some point I have to stop wondering about it and just enjoy that my work is that impactful.

Love to everyone who ever saw any thing I made and thought that it was hot material.

“In the streets, my inspiration’s profound
You see my style copped all over town
I go to the club, the DJ’s dressed like me
I even heard some jokes I wrote spoken on TV”
- True stories as found in the lyrics to Intergalactavida by The Wizard of Rock featuring MC Sean Ward