 Hello, and welcome to our show. Today, we're meeting one of our new staff members here at Tau Meeting TV. His name is Steven. Welcome, Steven. It's been lovely working with you for the last month. I'm happy to have you in Burlington. What brings you to Tau Meeting TV? Hi, Travis. It's been lovely working with you as well. I've learned a lot from the entire staff, but from you, especially. What brings me to Burlington? I went to college here. I went to Champlain. As did you. Yes. Not to promote Champlain College explicitly. I studied filmmaking here. I'm from New Jersey originally. I really fell in love with the area. I really fell in love with the community. And after graduating 2021 and returning home, I would periodically look for employment opportunities here as an opportunity to return and reconnect with the strong friendships I made here and reconnect with this community. It's nature. It's beauty. It's people. It's a really amazing area. It really is. Yeah. I mean, one thing I love about working here is the constant interaction with community members. That's one thing that I also always strive to do. And be like, hey, come in. Have a show. Do you feel so far like you are empowered to either do that or feel even more empowered to go out and interact with the community? Definitely. It definitely gives you a very interesting baseline perspective of all the different municipalities that make up the entire county. Because it's interesting just how wildly in terms of the needs they range. Because one of the amazing things about the county, and I think it's a lot of selling points for people, is that Burlington is small and manageable, but it's still like a metropolitan area. It's still an urban area. And then within 15 minutes, you're in the mountains or you're in a rural part of the state. And that closeness to nature is a selling point and is a drawing point to a lot of people. Also, it means that a town that's only two miles away has a radically different landscape and needs in terms of what it needs for its community and what its resources are and how close things are together and things like that. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, even when we film things here in Burlington, they even have more funding. They have better equipment and that kind of stuff while other municipalities that are just smaller, more rural, they might not even need that kind of equipment because they're not really expecting. Just the size of the rooms that we're filming in from one town to the next. It's radically different. It's radically different. That is, yeah, that's a really good point. So you're working in Burlington, but you live in Winooski, right? Across the bridge. Hey, yeah, how are you liking living in Winooski? I love Winooski a lot. I lived in Winooski my senior year. My senior year was the big COVID year. So housing on campus became a scarcity and we had to move elsewhere. But it's nice that now I'm living in Winooski when not half of it is shut down because I got vaccinated right as everything was opening up and then I graduated. And so it's nice to see that community thrive in a way I never got to see it before. It's a really nice town. I love being a 10 minute walk from the river. The Riverside Park, it's beautiful there. Yeah, it's just a really, there's a lot of good local restaurants and smaller mom and pop places. It's a really great town. And you're just, I'm a hop, skip, and a jump from Burlington proper. Yeah, so I mean, you haven't been in the community really since you graduated and during that COVID time. Like, well, before COVID, I'm sure you had some idea of what Burlington and Vermont had to offer and that kind of stuff. No. I'm curious kind of more so from your perspective, has that at all changed? Like, do you notice that either it hasn't bounced back to where it was, like, especially like community engagement and that kind of stuff before the pandemic or it has come back in full force? Like, cause you were just kind of saying since the pandemic, like everything's opening up, right? But like, I mean, I also remember, yeah, everything is opening up now, but I also remember at that time that everything was, people were still, we're still getting together, whether it be outdoors or somehow, there was still a large community presence even during the pandemic. So I'm wondering from your perspective, if you're seeing it and you're like, wow, it even seems more invigorated now than it did before. That's interesting, I feel like it's pretty much, I mean, it's the discussion that we as a world have been having for the past three years of what are the long-term effects. I mean, everything there is always gonna be more of a remote and digital component to a lot of things and there's gonna be people in our communities that are just immunocompromised and it's still at high risk and COVID-19 very much still exists. And in a lot of ways, the government is choosing to ignore it now because it's become a mitigated problem. But I definitely think in terms of foot traffic, a couple of weeks ago, I filmed the Plex Art Festival right across the street, right down on the corner on Northwood Newsy Avenue and there was dozens to well over 100 to possibly even 200 people was kind of spread out but there was definitely, and that was an event that was sort of grassroots and not heavily advertised everywhere and it just sort of, there would just be natural foot traffic and people being like, what's this? Burlington's a very walkable city for the most part despite how sprawling it is and it being on a hill. So I think you get a lot of that natural community engagement but I will say, I feel like, granted I'm not going as populated times, I do feel like things like Church Street are a little as populated than pre-pandemic times from my memory. But the other fascinating thing is I've never really spent the summer in Burlington. I've only ever been here and so I'm excited, I moved to the perfect time. I was only ever here during the school year so obviously the influx and outflux of these students that make up a large portion of the population during the school year that are not here year round. Yeah, you should probably already start to notice the streets are a little clear. Yeah, it's a little clear. It's really a crazy, crazy thing that happens but summers here are my favorite. My recommendation always is to go find an event that you wanna do and go do it, even if it's a nice day or it's a little crappy, just go do the event because there's tons of them and then you'll start to find that it's like a whole like, there's a whole network of folks that can point you into a direction to be like, hey, there's more events that you can come to and participate in. And that's what I do really like about Vermont is that it is really local and homegrown, like even going to like our neighborhood planning assemblies and seeing that it's really just volunteers in the community stepping up and getting stuff done, which I don't know, I honestly like, where you ever figure out how to get things done is. No, which is something that does not exist where I'm from does not exist almost anywhere else. It's a very unique phenomenon, the neighborhood planning assemblies. It's a very unique municipal level and it's very ground level that's very interesting. Yeah, and you've been to a couple, even though you are living in Winooski, you've been to a couple of bars here in Burlington. And yeah, when I moved here, and even before I started working here, I really didn't even have an idea that this, that that even existed. Existed, yeah. And I just think it's really cool. Another question I had for you is actually, is there anything from your community back home that you would want to bring here to either town meeting TV or to Burlington? Or is there something here at town meeting TV or in Burlington that you would be like, hey, I want to bring back home and spread this idea or I gotta stop. That's a very interesting question because community engagement where I'm from, one of the things I noticed when I moved to Burlington from where I'm from, I'm from a town called Westfield, which is pretty much the, your average picturesque suburban town. Like we won some crazy, like Great American Main Street Award in like 2004, of which we still have signs up around town, promoting that, it looks like it's plucked out of a Frank Capra movie and just plopped into the middle of New Jersey. But it also is a very wealthy town. I think we're one of the hundred or 50 wealthiest towns in the country. And there is a very unique shift in terms of where the area where the upper middle class lives and the just straight down the line middle classes. And obviously that's changing radically more and more. The housing market, things are getting built down and rebuilt and all these new construction. But the one thing I noticed about my town, especially like a lot of these towns and a lot of these meetings, most of a lot of citizens across the country is concerned as how does X affect property value? Because that's the way our economic has been, our economic system has been built around. That in my hometown, their community involvement basically goes in one, two ways. There are people who are hyper-involved with the town, hyper-involved with every meeting, hyper-involved with the PTA, hyper-involved with this, this, and that. And there's people who just wash their hands of it and they're like, all right, I'll vote on ordinances when elections come, but I can't really bother. And when I noticed almost immediately about Burlington and the Chittenden County area in general when I was in college, even for the students who come in and they're only living here for nine, 10 months out of the year, is that there's a much more healthy balance of people being generally engaged with the community and specifically within their own neighborhoods, but also like living lives. And that was a mindset that was more widespread rather than these pockets, these sort of very loud minorities who are hyper-involved and have these opinions on their communities and everyone else is just sort of actively ambivalent towards it. So it's a whole cultural shift. And I think the NPA is a perfect example of that, is that they're not really a governing body. They're more, you know, they're average community members coming together organizing and spreading information about what's happening in their neighborhood and how they can turn that, what's happening into something actionable and something that can affect them on a legislative level. It's very unique. Yeah. Especially when in an NPA, when, I don't know if they're talking about issues that may specifically impact their neighborhood. Even though I do find it kind of weird though personally that a lot of the neighborhoods are designed with arbitrary governmental borders and that kind of stuff for your neighborhood planning commission or assembly. I really like that answer. I think that's amazing. Yeah, and also something I noticed here in Burlington. Besides work, besides politics, what else is it that you like to do here? Are you interested in doing here now that you live here and work here? What is something you wanna go out and do that is like other than work, outside, personal TV, Stevie, what are you doing? That's a great question. I love the area. I love, there's a lot of different places to walk. There's a lot of different parks. It's something I really appreciate about the area. Excuse me. I really like to walk and just, it's sort of unwind and relax and especially walking near the waterfront, either the lake or down by the Wynoski River. There's a lot of very tranquil options but my main thing is I see a lot of movies. I go to see a lot of movies. Some would argue an unhealthy amount of movies. A little less so now that I'm working again. Last year I saw 101 movies in theaters. I saw maybe five. And I saw maybe five. Pre-pandemic, that is the average American sees five. The average American in theaters, five. Oh. Yeah. Three. Exactly. And that's closer to a post-pandemic number. Oh wow. In terms of national averages. I'm in a different realm that is borderline unhealthy but that's a story for a different tag. No that's fair. I mean I'm the same way with TV shows. Like I mean I can watch TV shows for hours but like ask me to sit down for a movie. It's not happening and that's just my thing. But so are you a fan of the Roxy? Like are you more of an independent movie fan or are you there for the blockbusters? Are you? I'm there for almost anything. Almost anything. I will see almost anything. I do love the Roxy quite a bit. The only problem with the Roxy, especially now that I don't live in Burlington Proper's is parking so pain. But there's, I mean there's a lot. I love the drive-in. I love the drive-in. I haven't gone in, I haven't gone yet. I'm hoping to sometime this month. I love the sunset drive-in a lot. I think I really like all the theaters that are in this area. Essex, Palestine, Majestic Ten. Has Palestine opened back up? Palestine is open again. It opened relatively recently but that was the longest one. That was the one that was shut down for the longest period of time post COVID. Yeah, cause I mean I live right on over there in that direction so I'm just, I would drive by and parking lot empty. I'm like that's kind of strange for a movie theater. It's open again? But that's awesome that it's open back. I'm hoping to, there's a really cool theater in Montpellier that I want to check out called the Savoy. That's their name. The Savoy, yes. I've actually, through triple E here, did a whole speech about the Savoy. I heard a whole lecture about the Savoy Theater and it is really interesting. It seems cool. They have a queer film festival happening this weekend. They're showing The Matrix in Paris is Burning. They do have a queer film festival. They have all sorts of different things and you can even put in recommendations and that kind of stuff. No. Yeah, it's really an awesome, it's an awesome thing. They're trying to get their numbers back up post pandemic too. But yeah, if you want to find indie films from all over the world, you can really go for really anything. It's amazing, considering how small this market is, Vermont being the second smallest state in the country, it's amazing what The Roxy actually get. There are movies that I assumed, well, I'm never gonna get this because I'm in Vermont and The Roxy has it. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible that other Vermonters too want to shell out money for that. In fact, when Avengers Infinity War came out, Fandango on their social media released ticketing information of what the number one movie in the country and in 49 states it was Infinity War and in Vermont it was Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. It was the number one movie in the state. You can't make that up. You cannot make that up. You can't make that up. That explains the demographic perfectly. Perfectly, of like who's gonna go see those movies. I mean, I never even saw Infinity War. Yeah. So, that makes complete sense. Is there anything you're looking that's coming out in this summer, like looking forward to? No, in terms of movies or in general? In general movies, yeah. In terms of movies, I mean, Spider-Verse is out this week. Spider-Verse, I know, it's like the only movie I've been hyped for all year. I really wanna see Nicole Hollis-Effer's new movie, You Hurt My Feelings, which has Julia Louis-Dreyfus in it. Those two previously made a movie called Enough Said that I adore. It's Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in one of his final parts. She's a really great sort of humanist writer and director of sort of comedy dramas. And then Barbie. Can't wait for Barbie. Barbie, I thought that already came out. I'm surprised it has it. July 21. Wow, yeah. Barbie has really drummed up enough buzz. What do you think that is about? Like, cause, I mean, from my perspective, it's a whole bunch of movies. It's a movie about kids, a kid's toy. And it's not like it's toy story, kid's toy levels. I think it's gonna be fairly close to what the Lego movie did in terms of dissecting the legacy of that toy. And the legacy of Lego movie, I just rewatched large chunks of it cause I visited my four year old nephew. That movie is very smart about keening into the creativity that can be unlocked with Lego that it's this, and it is a toy that encourages creativity and really clever ingenuity and things like that. And I think Barbie, from what I gather from the trailers and how there's multiple different versions of Barbie is gonna be really keening into what it, like self-identity and how you choose to perceive yourself and how you express yourself out to the world. That's what I gather from the trailers. I think Greta Gerwig is a very, very smart filmmaker. And I'm also very excited that it's co-written by Noah Baumbach, who I think is also another very smart filmmaker. But wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Why do you think it's doing so well? Successfully. Like I understand the Lego movie, I think Legos might have more of a popularity amongst everyone because yeah, they've sort of had it. You could build anything. You know, it's like Minecraft. The reason why Minecraft is so popular is cause you can build anything. It doesn't matter who you are. You can just build whatever. And also the Lego movie had a really good story behind it, from what I remember. So I'm hoping the Barbie movie can pull that together, too. But. Well, I think part of it is just, I think it's sense of humor is very much in line with the youth culture right now. A very sort of me-me sense of humor. Very esoteric. Like there's a line in the most recent trailer where Barbie goes, do you guys ever think about dying? Like it's sort of tapping into that sort of youth existential thing. But also I think we as a country, particularly as a culture, continue to economically devalue things that directly appeal to women and femme audiences. And I think this is, it's another, it's yet another example of a movie that can appeal to all four quadrants, but has a very distinct feminine perspective and a very distinct feminine selling point. And an audience that is primarily underrepresented. And younger, too. And younger. And so like that's why I'm seeing it all over social media. So you've had 60 years of women who have grown up with Barbie. That's a really, really amazing point. You have four generations. Like four distinct, like boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, Gen Z, who have all grown up with this one doll-like. And it's many different incarnations. That's like, like American Girl doll. And yeah, like that's like American Girl doll. That's wild. I mean, I barely, I'm not in that world, but I understand that like you said, yeah, four generations of folks have really interacted with this as children. So now when they see it, it's familiar. And it's, wow, amazing. Thank you because I was just, because with the Barbie movie especially, I'm just, me personally, I'm just, I know I will never see it. Like I never saw the Lego movie. But I mean, I'm like someone who really enjoys animation. So it is definitely in my wheelhouse of something, but I'm just like, I guess since I'm not in that world. At the end of the day, it's gonna be a fun time. Nature Corporation spending millions upon millions of dollars to create two-hour toy commercials. But you can trojan horse a really great art within that toy commercial. You really can. All right, here's a question that might be divisive. What is your favorite movie? There's no such thing, Travis. I have one, so. I'm just waiting till I see a movie, I like more. Okay. It depends on the day. It really does. I could just start rattling off dozens upon dozens of movies I love. If you had to choose right now in this moment, if you're like, hey, this is my favorite movie, you should watch it. Right now if I had to choose in this moment, the movie I've been thinking about all day, as I've been very nervous to be on camera, it was Broadcasting News. It's a great movie. I've been thinking about Albert Brooks sweating profusely on camera, because that's the reality I've been trying to avoid, and I seem mostly successful for the most part. That's a really great movie. That was a huge hit when it came out in 1987, but I feel like hasn't been passed down to younger people in the same way that a lot of other movies from that era have been. It's a really, really amazing comedy. It has a great cast. It's James L. Brooks. It's a great movie. If you had to put a gun to my head, or three cameras, and ask me right in this moment. I had to. I had to do it. You talked about movies. Okay, mine's a labrinto dofano. Like Pan's Labyrinth. I love that movie. I can watch that movie at least once a year. I'll have a good time. I'll be quoting the whole thing. Have you watched his Pinocchio yet? No, I have not. It's fantastic. I've tried to watch his thing on Netflix that he released around Halloween. Oh, the anthology series? I got through one of them and then I was like, all right, it's Guillermo del Toro. This is a little spooky. I'm just chill for now. And then I was gonna pick it up again, but now we're on Rider Strike and now I'm not trying to really watch it. But that's it. Whenever you get the chance, his Pinocchio, it's phenomenal. It's absolutely phenomenal. I saw it at the Paris Theater, which is the theater that Netflix leases, with a Q&A with him and the co-director afterwards. Oh, that's awesome. And they brought out the maquettes for both Pinocchio and Gepetto and they invited any children in the audience to come upstage and see and move the maquettes and see how they work and see they're in a working. That was so cool. I miss the practical effect days. Number one, I miss those days because there's something about a dorky practical effect that will always look better than a okay CGI effect, especially like, I don't know if you've seen Doom Patrol on HBO. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. All practical effects as best as they could because they didn't have the budget to do all the animation. And for some reason, since they had great writing and really, really great artists on set, it didn't hold it back. And in my opinion, it actually made it better as a whole product because of everything was tangible. All the people were interacting with real things. And it forces you to plan more. You can't go, we'll fix it in post. Like you really have to, this needs to work in camera as much as possible. So you have to plan it out properly and time it out properly. Which to me, how did that become cheaper than animating something on a computer? Especially with 3D animation that is becoming increasingly cheaper day by day. All right, so we did live action. What's your favorite animated movie? Because that's a completely different question. There's too many. I love animation. My go-to answer is the Iron Giant, though. Yeah, there you go. I love the Iron Giant. I think that movie's perfect. I think it is such a smart. It's fascinating because that movie came out in 1999 and I think it is such a smart distillation of the entire back half of the 20th century in nuclear panic and that sort of rapid progress of the 20th century. If you look at 1911, it's the first flight and then only 60 years or less than 70s years later, we're on the moon. The amount of progress that happened in the 20th century is boggling. And then we had the internet to close it out. You had the internet to close it out. That was being used like while. In the turn of the century, radio basically did not exist and by the end of the century, the internet existed. And I think the Iron Giant is a beautiful distillation of trying to find humanity and find love in rapidly changing and scary times, which is a theme that's only more and more relatable as the years go on. And also the animation's perfect. The animation's perfect. I mean, it will never be recreated again like that. But I think I was like, I was 24 years old when I found out that Vin Diesel voiced the Iron Giant. I didn't know that. Homie's a legend for that. Like for me personally though, favorite animated movie, I don't know why I asked this. I think the best one of all time may have to be Shrek 2 though. I'm sorry, I think I have to say it. It was a huge hit. For a long time, it was like the fourth highest grossing film of all time. I think, well Shrek 1 was the first movie I remember seeing in theaters when I was like three years old, I remember going to the little theater, like me and my siblings, all five of us walking down to the theater, got the front row seats and seeing Shrek 1. And then by the time Shrek 2 came out, for some reason, since it wasn't even better than the original, it was just as good as the original. And I think that's why everyone's like, wow, this is such an amazing movie. Cause how many times you see a sequel and you're like, yeah, that is that great. No, it was a huge hit. Shrek was a cultural landmark. It changed the animation landscape. It was a serious contender for the poem, Fiora Can, what it premiered. Basically the best animated feature film Oscar was created so they could give Shrek an Oscar. Shrek was a huge cultural landmark. I have not seen it in the better part of a decade though. So I can't really comment on it. I saw it not too long ago. I don't know if the story holds up as well as I remember it, but I mean, it's not like hoodwinked. I don't know if you've recently seen hoodwinked again or remember it from your childhood. I wouldn't say recently though. No. I mean, I've seen clips on it of YouTube and I'm like, this is not the movie I remembered. No. It just doesn't look as good, but I mean 3D animation in our lifetimes has 24, 25 year olds. It has changed so much. Like we moved away from hand-drawn animation to fully gone into 3D and 3D is now cheaper than hand-drawn. No, well, I mean, part of that is just that the infrastructure doesn't exist for hand-drawn to continue in the way that it did. Yeah, and I mean it does and it is still possible. Yeah, it's lower level. It's people with Flash Animator on their personal computers and God bless them for keeping the flame alive, but... An anime. An anime, of course. Which is maybe America. Well, I mean, we can't forget about anime because it's the powerhouse of animation here in the world, so... No, it is. No, that's a very fair point. And so, I mean, as much as we think of L.A. for Hollywood, we think of Japan for animation in the similar or even music or that kind of stuff. That's what's really important. Global worlds. And it starts local. And it starts local. That's a great place to end it. Thank you so much, Steven, for talking with me about getting to know you. Have us. Thank you so much for having me. Of course, of course. Well, thanks for tuning in, y'all. I hope you have a good day. Adios.